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"It started when the ship was seventy light years away from our home planet." My husband told the grandkids. "That was the last time your old granddad got to play a good game of golf."

I rolled my eyes, as I scrubbed the dinner pans, up to my elbows in soapy dishwater. Here it comes I thought, sighing to myself a little. He was never going to git over not being able to get more of them titanium golf clubs he got for retiring with a perfect work record from The Ford Company. I reached out with my foot and kicked the doorstop loose so the door shut between me and that story. It still bothered me some to hear him complainin’ and all.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday, and although I guess I saved the whole planet and everything, Herb was still kinda teed off about his golf clubs. Okay sure, he ain’t ever played another one of those tournament games and won, but honestly you’d think that golf was more important than them mean little aliens with long fangs drooling acid on my nice hardwood floors.

According to NASA’s telescopes the scout ships that landed in my back forty were advance lookouts for a bigger ship that had parked itself all those light years away; not that I have the foggiest idea what a light year is, but Herb seems to love saying that. Just between you and me I doubt he knows either.

Anyway, I sure do remember that day, although I’m getting on in years now and I reckon I just had me my sixty-ninth birthday. I still have more knives in my kitchen drawer then Herb ever had, bless him, though I know better then to go on about such things with that man. He might not be so almighty sharp, but the man never did miss a day’s work in his thirty years at General Motors building cars on the line. He come home most nights and always paid the light bill, never done no nonsense like running around on me or drinking overly much neither.

I am sorry for his clubs and I guess I’ve said so ’bout a hundred times already, but when a lady has her back in a tight spot, why anything that comes to her mind to do is just natural I reckon.

I had just finished up doing a fresh load of sheets in the washtub, and I had them all piled and smelling sweet in my favorite straw braided basket (which also got ruined that day though you won’t ketch me crying about it.) I was fetching them out back to the nice clothesline Herb strung for me between the house and my vegetable garden. Course I do have a pretty nice dryer, but it was high summer and there was a brisk Arkansas breeze blowing down from the hills, just as sweet smelling as you please. No dryer sheet in the world can match the perfume of wind-dried sheets on a day like that. I took special care of my house, still do I’d say and there’s things you kin do that can’t ever be beat by store bought and I ’spect that’s one of ’em.

So I carried that basket out through my back room headin’ for the laundry line with a bag of pins settin’ on the top of everything and I had just got down the back steps and all, when I saw one of them little alien things just squatting by my prize tomatoes in my little garden plot. Well I stopped dead in my tracks and I can’t really say what I was thinking about then, other then I jist couldn’t believe my eyes. I don’t rightly think I knew what I was seeing at first. It looked kinda like a really gross looking bullfrog, like maybe one that had got itself into some of that radioactive stuff in television movies; like one of them late night films about regular critters that have gotten monstrous.

It was right about then I noticed my prize tomatoes was all smashed, broken and some tore up by the roots and all, and without giving it much thought ( I’ve always had a quick temper jist like my mama) I took about five quick steps and then kicked that ugly ole thing square in its backside.

Well, it squalled right loud and after flying a few feet it hit the ground hard enough, but then it popped back up and turned around so fast I blinked a couple times, then fell back a step with my mouth hanging open wide as I stood there. It might have been an ugly sight from the back, squatting on all fours but from the front it was a mean looking thing sure enough. It rose up on its hind legs, and its face was down right horrifying with a pinched up looking four cornered mouth that sprang open in all directions as some kinda fangs popped out into sight. Clear strings of some kind of drool began dripping off of those teeth, and soon as it hit the ground, those drops just burned clean through everything they touched. There was a single bulging knob on its chin that looked to have clusters of eyeballs on it like a housefly’s got, and its front paws had some very sharp looking spines too, I reckon about twenty or so on each paw.

There were all kind of yellowish warty looking knots on that face and all of them were oozing some kind of nasty green stuff that started streaming down its black skin, and every one of those eye clusters turned a glowing red as it squealed at me. The thing took one huge hop and landed not more’n three feet away and then it spat a pretty good stream of that clear smokin’ liquid at me from the ground.

I guess it was only sheer fright that saved me from getting my face burned clean off ’cause with a shriek I threw that straw basket down at it, and pickin’ up my skirts, I cut and run for the porch steps before you could say Jack Robinson and I don’t recall as I touched a single step on my way up neither. I slammed the door so hard behind me that some plaster pieces cracked and fell right out of my porch ceiling. Gasping, I shot the bolt and then stood staring through the door glass at my basket of wet clothes; they was burning just as fiercely as if they was seasoned cord wood. That critter just stood there kinda starin’ at the basket, and it was then I noticed two more of them a further back in my tomato patch as well. Well Lord, I could feel my heart pounding away as I stood watching them for a while. I can’t say for sure how long but it was long enough to see that third one get back to drooling on my plants with the other two.

I looked again at my laundry basket and by then it weren’t nothin’ but a smoking hole in the ground where it had fallen. It was right about then that I really started to git mad, ’cause my mama gave me that basket and a goodly number of those sheets as well. I was double damned if some little monster was going to come and burn up everything nice I had.

I turned around and marched into the living room, and called up the Sheriff’s Department. I talked to the dispatch girl and said I had some vandals out back. Guess I knew well enough what they would think about what I really had out back there. Then I headed for Herb’s gun cabinet and snatched out his old double barrel shotgun and a few extra rounds of double ought. Then before I could lose my nerve, I ran back through the house to my porch door, and smashed the glass clean out of it with the butt of that shotgun. I swung it up near my cheek to get a good line on one of them. They were all kinda bunched together and the sound of that breaking glass brought all three of ’em swingin’ around to look at me as I stood there and shucked the action on that gun.

I centered the middle line running between the barrels dead center on the nearest critter and pulled the trigger just as I seen the farthest one jump, and t’other two went up in a fiery sheet of flame as they were blown and scattered into the sad remains of my tomato stakes.

I staggered back under the shotguns kick, and as I was fumbling for the other loads in my apron pocket, that third critter slammed into my porch door so hard the frame cracked. Then I seen its needle-like claws come tearin’ through that hard walnut door like it was paper. One of the little bits of wood flying off that door hit me dead in the eye and it hurt so bad I dropped that shotgun like it was hot, clapped a hand to my face and I stumbled back from the entryway. There was a rapidly widenin’ hole in that back door and with a holler I turned and scrambled for the living room, thinkin’ I wanted to get to my room and maybe just hide before it got all the way in. Herb had the car and it was seven miles to the next neighbor, so I knew I was in trouble for sure.

So I ran through the house with my eye jist smartin’ like crazy and scrambled upstairs to my bedroom across the polished wood floor to the walk in closet at the back of it. Grabbing the handle I pulled the door shut just as quiet as I could, and then kinda fell to the back of it, gasping and trying to stop breathing so loud for fear it would hear me. I reckon I will never forget that time, the sweat pouring from my forehead and my heart jist pounding so loud in my ears I couldn’t hear anything. I started groping around trying to find something I might use to fight with if it came to that.

Yep sure ’nuff you guessed it, my hand fell on the shiny leather lining around the top of Herb’s new titanium golf club bag. I grabbed the first iron I touched and slid it out of the bag, then tried my dandiest to hunker down behind the bag in the corner of that closet.

Right about then that cussed thing slammed powerfully hard into the closet door, and my nerves were so pitched up I let out a scream. Next thing I know those terrible claws came tearing through the door; guess they never heard of doorknobs where ever the hell they came from. By now I had tears streamin’ down my face and I couldn’t git my right eye open a ’tall, and with snot and sweat all over me as well, I decided that I had taken all I was going to take. Standing up I took a fresh grip on that golf club with one hand and lifting the bag up with the other I kicked that door just as hard as I could.

There was a pained squeal of rage from the thing as that door hit it square in its ugly little face, and it flew back sliding along my waxed hardwood floors, that big knob of eyes kinda popped and went gray. Well I hefted that bag of clubs right up with one hand and just heaved them at that little monster as it squatted, squalling with pain and drooling acid all over my nice floors.

To this day, Herb just can’t believe I threw that bag of clubs and all. He used to stagger a little getting those things in his car trunk, but sure ’nuff it went sailin’ across the room and landed dead square on that little bugger and it popped just like a bug getting squashed by a tire. A great big gush of that clear liquid came running out from under the bag and the whole shebang caught fire as them titanium clubs jist slumped into that spreading pool of acid. The next ten minutes was crazy as I ran around the house putting out the fires with my little fire extinguisher I got at the town safety fair last winter.

It was right about that time the Sheriff’s car pulled up. Well there was lots of flashing lights after a bit and sirens, and off I went to the hospital to get that bit of wood out of my eye and some of that salve they slather on you for burns; I got a few putting out them fires. Meanwhile, all kinds of troopers and newsmen and nosy bodies came to stand on the road in front and look on the mess that followed.

As I sat about a month later watching the TV, it finally came on the news that they had examined those critters and figured out they came from some ship they had seen with their telescopes, but it left not too long after I killed that third critter, and they thought I’d scared ’em off for good maybe. I had tried explaining it all to Herb, but I don’t think he really ever got the whole thing straight in his mind. Like I said, he ain’t the sharpest knife in a set, but he hasn’t ever let up on how I ruined his golf clubs.

I keep thinking ’bout how the President sent me a letter of some kind after I told everyone I didn’t want to go to the White house and all to see him. Seeing how I never have much liked going anywhere, I politely declined, although he wanted to give me a ceremony or some such.

Wonder if maybe he would give Herb another set of them clubs?

I sure get tired of hearing about ’em.

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