I threw the pickup into park and slowly reached for the double gauge.

One of them bastards was poking around old man Cooper's shed! That little gray sonofbitch -- the paper called 'em Zeta Reticu-somethin' -- was carrying off Cooper's snowblower. It didn't make no sense. He had stick-thin arms and boney legs, looking like one of those starving kids you could sponsor for just 50¢ a day. But there he was, carting off Cooper's hundred-and-twenty pound snowblower like he was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Carrying it above his head even, half jogging with those birdy legs like the damn thing weighed nothing! I'm telling ya, it made no sense. And what did a saucer man need with a snowblower anyway?

I got out of the pickup, pumped the shotgun and leveled it straight and steady on those big, black eyes.

"Put it down, you thiefin' sneak! Walt Cooper paid good coin for that John Deere you got there."

I pressed the blue anodized barrel against the side of his bulbous head, real soft like. Didn’t want him to take off like a scared jackrabbit and drop and bust Cooper’s good blower. His ash gray skin didn’t look like it had a lick of red blood running through it, and the fact that his naked ass body weren’t shivering made me all the colder. He was queer alright, running around naked as a jaybird, manhandling objects that he right and proper shouldn’t be able to lift, let alone carry.

But those weren’t the queerest things. He came to a complete stop when  I placed the barrel against his temple.

Then I got staring into his eyes.

Years ago at the carnival was a magician called The Great Garibaldi. He’d be decked all fancy from head to foot and have his moustache waxed in a black handlebar. He had a booth right there next to the gypsy woman who read those devil cards. Mom said gypsies kidnapped kids and cooked ‘em with turnips, but what did she know? Ma said Garibaldi was a  quack too and she was wrong.

You could pay 25¢ and he’d wave a gold watch in front of your face, real slow like, and he’d be whispering nonsense words… then BOOM! We’d be running around like a cluckin’ chicken, flappin’ our arms and laughing like idiots. We’d pay a quarter each and watch our friends cock-a-doodle-do as the October wind blew swirling clumps of leaves past the tents.

This reptilian bastard put The Great Garibaldi to shame. Those big black eyes reached right inside my head and turned my brain to jelly. I lowered the barrel ‘cause my will melted like hot butter. He took off with those sonofagun birdy legs and there I stood like some sleepy slack jaw.

My brain stayed that way for a few minutes then it wore off like that dopey feeling you get from novocaine at the dentist. I watched him take off over the crest of the hill heading toward Chipewa Creek, running with that goddang blower above his head like an ant carryin’ a walnut.

There was only one thing to do. My good sunglasses were squirrled away underneath the truck seat. They’d shield my eyes from his devil gaze, then there’d be no way I’d pull the barrel from his gray pumpkin head. BLAM!

I fit the sunglasses on all snug and started to follow his little chicken scratch tracks through the snow.