An Abduction Revelation: The Comeback Kid Returns

by Thomas Hay

  Since the car’s engine was still running, I decided I’d better haul ass and get on back home. The folks would be expecting me shortly.

  I shifted to reverse and tried backing away from the embankment, but the rear tires would only spin. I smelled burning rubber. This was not a good sign.

  I realized that the front wheels were embedded in a ditch that ran along the embankment. I was not going anywhere.

  Now whut?

  I looked around inside the car and noticed some bizarre sights. The front and driver’s side windows were smashed, making like giant spider webs. I tried opening the driver’s door, but it wouldn't budge.

  I tried the passenger door. It was stuck too. I tried pushing on it with my shoulder. It wouldn’t budge. Next I tried kicking it. It was being very contrary.

  Frustrated, I crawled into the backseat. Both back doors were jammed shut too. I started to panic, and this made me mad. I kicked both doors and cursed (good thing the folks couldn't hear me), but that didn’t help, either. I still couldn't get any of the doors to budge.

  Okay Tommy, pipe down and think.

  I took a deep breath, told myself to relax, and crawled back in front. There had to be a way to get out of the car. Good thing that it wasn’t on fire, or I’d be toast. I tried to roll the window down. It was stuck. All the windows were stuck. That’s when I again noticed the spider glass driver's side window. That just might be an escape route. After several kicks, each one a little harder than the last ( and a few more curse words), the window finally gave way.

  I crawled out of the car, staggered around a bit, and tried to collect my wits. I just happened to look to the sky and saw a full moon. Beside the moon were three small blinking blue lights, which flew off in formation and then disappeared into the night sky.

  I didn’t give what I saw much thought right then because when I looked at the car, I almost went into shock.

  Holy shit!

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  The moonlight and car’s headlights lit up the area almost as if it were daylight. Betsy was a mess! She looked like something you'd drive in a demolition derby, or something that had just came out of a junkyard!

  How can this be?

  The first thing that stood out, like a sore thumb, was that the door handles were missing, both front and back. It appeared that they had been sawed off.

  No wonder the doors wouldn’t open.

  The rest of the car was covered with dust, dents, and scrapes, front to back. The back fender was bent into the rear tire.

  I walked around and inspected the car from several other angles. The back was perfectly normal, and the rear lights were still shining. The passenger side, however, looked the same as the driver’s side. The door handles were missing, and the car was dented and scraped from front to back.

  The front of the car also looked normal, except that the sun visor on the driver’s side was crumbled and torn loose. Chrome strips were missing from nearly every part of Betsy. Without her makeup, poor Betsy was hardly recognizable.

  Whut in the world could have caused all that damage?

  I could only imagine what had happened. The car had to have skidded on each of its sides, possibly turning over and landing back upright with the front wheels embedded in the ditch that ran alongside the road. If the car had done all that, though, then how could I have stayed seated behind the steering wheel? The 1947 model automobiles had no seat belts or air bags.

  None of this was making sense.

  Since the car was still running, I figured I might as well try one more time to back out of the ditch. But first, I pulled the fender off the rear tire. I climbed back through the car window, put Betsy in reverse, and again tried backing up. The rear wheels spun and the smell of burning rubber once again filled the air. I tried rocking the car, to no avail. The front wheels were too deep in the ditch.

  Now whut... I was fit to be tied.

  I had run out of ideas and had just about given up hope when I noticed a set of headlights coming down the road towards me.

  “Need some help, sonny?” Asked a farmer, sitting atop his tractor.

  “Yes, sir. I sure do. Think yew cun pull my car out of the ditch?” I asked.

  “Let's give it a shot,” the farmer said.

  Luckily, he had a chain. I helped him hook it to the car’s fender, and the tractor pulled the car out quite easily.

  “Jesus, sonny, whut in God’s name happened here?” He asked, after surveying the car.

  “Guess I must of had an accident,” I replied.

  “You don’t say! The road’s done torn up near half a mile back. There’s debris scattered ‘bout everywhere,” he said, as he shook his head in disbelief.

  “Cun’t imagine how the darn thing is still a-runnin’.”

  “Yeah, me either,” I said.

  “Don’t look like yew is hurt none,” he said, as he looked me over.

  “Reckon not,” I replied, even though I felt my left elbow stiffening up.

  “Must of been yew’en headlights I saw a-shinin’ in the sky back yonder. I wuz a-wonderin’ where those strange lights were a-comin’ from. Yew is one lucky kid,” the farmer said as he scratched his head.

  “I reckon so. Much obliged for your help. I best be a-gettin’ back home. My pa will be wonderin’ what’s taking me so long.” I replied.

  “No problem, boy. Yew jest best take it slow. No tellin’ whut else might fall off.”

  “Yes, sir. I will,” I said.

  The farmer climbed back on his tractor and putted on down the road. I could hear him mumbling to himself. Something ‘bout “city folks”.

  I climbed back through the busted window and started the dreaded trip home.

  Shit, how am I ever going to explain this to dad, when I can’t explain it to myself? I wondered.

  Just as I came to the city limits, I passed a police car parked alongside the road, facing in my direction. As I passed, the officer looked up. He probably couldn’t believe what he saw. His eyes opened real wide and he started choking on the bite of sandwich he had just taken.

  All I could think to do was wave: “Evenin', Officer Cooper.”

  “Hey, Tommy. What’s going on?” He asked.

  “Just took the trash out to the dump,” I replied.

  He must have been real hungry, blind, or doing something else, because I made it home without him pursuing me.

  Teenagers tend to hide things from their folks. That seems to be a common occurrence in every generation. What the folks don’t know won't hurt them, or better, what the folks don't know won't hurt the teenager. Unfortunately, there would be no way I could hide this from my folks. I sat in the driveway for a few minutes, working up my nerve to go into the house.

  As soon as I opened the front door, Dad was on me like a fly on shit.

  “Where is yew been, Bud? It's been darn't near three hours since yew left,” he hollered at me. (When I was in a heap trouble, dad always called me ‘Bud’).

  Three hours! I hadn’t realized it had been that long.

  “I had a slight car accident,” I weakly confessed.

  “An accident!” He shouted. He rushed outside to see what I was talking about. The expression on his face, when he saw the car, would have stopped a grandfather clock.

  “Whut in Sam Hill happened?” He asked.

  “Don't really know, Pop. Maybe I hit a pothole and it caused the car to turn over,” I lied, grasping at a straw.

  “Yew is not hurt?”

  “No, I reckon not,” I replied.

  “Well, it’s way past your bedtime boy. We’ll talk ‘bout this in the mornin’,” he said, still shaking his head and mumbling something I didn’t quite make out, except for the word, “teenagers.”

  As I prepared to take a bath (we had no shower in those days), I noticed dried blood on my left sleeve. I looked at my elbow and arm, but saw no blood. In the mirror I could see a two-inch scratch on my elbow. It wasn’t bleeding and looked to be almos
t healed. Then I remembered the car’s smashed side door window. My elbow must have hit it.

  So why was there blood only on the shirt and not my arm? And the scratch looked to be almost healed?

  I noticed that my right upper forearm was bruised. Looking closer, I saw a pattern that resembled the handprint of a small child, but there were just three fingers and a thumb. I noticed the exact same bruise and pattern on my left forearm.

  I sat on the stool and bent down to untie my tennis shoes. At first I couldn’t get them untied. They were tied in a strange and unfamiliar knot. I finally figured out how to get the knot undone and removed my shoes and socks.

  I noticed that my left big toe was sore and bruised. I sure didn’t remember stubbing it. I reminded myself that I had just been in an accident, so I was bound to have a few bumps and bruises.

  A few years later I developed a toenail fungus on that same toe. I would eventually discover that was where the abductors implanted the tracking device.

  As I removed my undershirt and underpants, I noticed that the labels were on the outside. I had been wearing them inside out.

  How had that happened?

  I was too tired to ponder the questions, so I took my bath and went to bed.

  The next morning my folks noticed that I wasn’t wearing my eyeglasses. I had to wear them since the third grade. I thought I had them on, as I was seeing just fine. When I got them and put them on, my eyesight became blurred, and I had to take them off. When I removed the glasses, it was if I had them on.

  Whut the heck is going on here?

  My parents thought I was joshing, but when I read the headlines in the newspaper from across the room, they were convinced. I was happy. It was a dream come true, cause I was no longer Tommy four eyes.

  Also that morning, unbeknownst to me, the local radio station was reporting that several people had called and reported strange lights in the sky out by the city dump the night before.

  Dad was as confused as I was about how a car could have almost the exact same type of damage on both sides and none in the front or back.

  The next morning he drove out to examine the area where I told him I had had the accident. He was gone a long time. When he finally returned, all he said was, “Give me the car key. You’re grounded.”

  I reckon he didn’t find any potholes.

  The following morning, I awoke with blood in my underpants. Young boys my age were known to have wet dreams and I must have had a dilly. There was blood in my semen.

  Mom discovered the blood while doing the laundry. I was taken to the doctor. My urethra seemed to be damaged. He said not to worry, as it would heal itself in a few days.

  I had a hard time explaining to the folks that I had no idea what the doctor was talking about. Teenagers could do weird things, even in those days, but sticking something up my penis?

  Come on, man.

  I cringed just thinking about it.

  A week later dad returned the car keys. He had fixed the car enough for it to be street legal to drive. Since I would be leaving for the navy in the spring, he couldn't see spending the money to fix the dents and scrapes. Betsy became known as the Bad Mobile, but as bad as that car looked, there was no way was I going back to pedaling the bike.

  Dad never did tell me what he found when he went to check the accident area. He must have found something, because when I asked him about it years later, he got the strangest look on his face. He stared off into space, probing for an answer. After what seemed like an eternity, he looked me straight in the eye and asked, “How can I explain something that I don’t understand?” We never talked about the incident again.

  It would be many years before I was to discover what really happened that night.

  Behold: The Comeback Kid’s legacy has begun.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Inauguration

  NEW KID IN TOWN

  Great expectations, everybody’s watching you. Johnny come lately, the new kid in town. Everybody loves you, so don’t let them down. . . Everybody’s talking about the new kid in town. —The Eagles

  Every story has a beginning. Mine started with a twinkle in my Dad’s eye. I was born Thomas Leonard Hay, on April 15, 1943, at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas. My surname descended from William de la Haye, Butler of Scotland. In ancient times the use of a badge or sign was used to mark a tribe or individual. A family might revere a plant or tree because it was the plant of its God. The Hay clan plant badge was a mistletoe.

  If you should venture to Scotland - here are a few Scottish words that may come in handy:

  “Scummindooncatzzandugs,” which means: “The rain is indeed quite heavy.”

  “Sslikedeedawinter,” which means: “This summer weather is like the Alps in winter.”

  “Achawishwidd-steyedathame,” which means: “We should have stayed home.”

  My grandfather was Elijah Monroe (EM) Hay and my father was Leonard Monroe Hay. One of my favorite celebrities would be Marilyn Monroe. Remember the name Monroe. It will characterize my legacy.

  Mom and Dad were separated at the time. It had something to do with the world at war. Dad was an aircraft mechanic in the Army Air Force, stationed in England. He received a few days leave to come home and see me when I was about six months old. After that, he didn’t see me again until after the war.

  Following the war, my parents settled in Clinton, Missouri, where dad had been raised. Clinton was in Henry County, known as the Golden Valley. In the 1950s, Clinton was the baby chick capital of the world. 110 million chicks were hatched there annually. Clinton’s fresh air and pure natural water provided the ideal climate for producing healthy chicks.

  Clinton was also known for having the third-largest business “square” in the world. It was a typical small Midwestern town, where everyone knew everything about everyone else. There were no secrets in Clinton, or were there?

  RUNAWAY

  As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong. . Tears are fallin’ and I feel the pain.—Del Shannon

  “Come on, Flip,” I shouted at the mangy mixed- breed mutt following me. There weren’t many purebred dogs in those days.

  He wagged his tail as he caught up with his friend. I don’t know why, but at the age of four, I was running away from home. This would be my first memory.

  I was walking down the middle of the railroad tracks, about a half mile outside of town, carrying a small pillowcase packed with my meager belongings. I had no idea where I might be headed or from what I was running. I just knew I had to get away.

  “There he is! We found him,” I heard someone shout in the distance.

  “Tommy, where yew think yew is a-goin’?”

  Grandpa had noticed I was missing and had the whole family out looking for me. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about when they found me. Nobody seemed to care about me before, so I had figured I wouldn't be missed. After all, I was just one of many faces my grandparents had to feed.

  My relatives were in a panic because just a few months earlier, two children about my age had wandered off in the same area and had drowned in a pond nearby. Everyone was relieved that I was safe, but after the dust had settled, it didn't keep me from getting my first whupplin’.

  THE WAY WE WERE

  Memories, like the corners of my mind. Misty water-colored memories of the way we were.—Barbara Streisand

  Within the next four years, Mom and Dad gave me three sisters, Sandra, Barbara, and Susan. The folks must then have discovered what was causing all the siblings, because after Susan there were no more. Or so I thought at the time.

  We were raised in a house across the street from Franklin Elementary School. The school playground became our own private playground. It was an ideal location to raise a family.

  The neighborhood kids played all sorts of games, including marbles, lids, red rover, London Bridge, horseshoes, hopscotch, basketball, dodge ball, kick the can, football, and my favorite, baseball. We would spend ho
urs doing the hula hoop. Very few of us were overweight, because we didn't sit inside and play video games all day. All our games were reality games.

  We climbed trees and caught lightening bugs and even honey bees in our bare hands. The challenge with the bees was to keep from getting stung. I lost the challenge more than once.

  In the third grade my teacher noticed me squinting when looking at the blackboard. She told my parents that I should get my eyes checked. Sure enough, I was nearsighted. I became Tommy four-eyes and started feeling like an ugly duckling. Not many kids had to wear glasses in those days. Why, I wondered, was I the only one in the family with poor eyesight? Anyhow, it didn’t stop me from playing my favorite sport.

  IT'S ALL IN THE GAME

  Many a tear has to fall, but it’s all in the game.—Nat King Cole

  IOOF Team Having Uphill Struggle, read the sports headlines in the local newspaper, The Clinton Eye. “We’re not winning many games, but the boys are improving,” said our little league manager, Don Blystone. He agreed that the main objective was to develop sportsmanship, but suggested it would be good for team morale to win a game occasionally. In those days we kids played with our folks yelling and screaming for us, not at us.

  Baseball was the love of my life growing up. Even today it is still my favorite sport. At the age of seven, I became a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan. They were the only professional baseball team west of the Mississippi. My grandpa got me hooked on them, and we listened to many of their games on the radio together.

  “There it goes. It might be, it could be, IT IS, A HOME RUN! HOLY COW”, Harry Caray would shout. Stan ‘The Man’ Musial hit five homers in the doubleheader that day in 1954.

  Baseball was my outlet for a serious problem that was arising.

  BAD MOON RISING

  I see the bad moon arising. I see trouble on the way. I see hurricanes and lightning. I see bad times today. . . There’s a bad moon on the rise. —Credence Clearwater Revival

  Everyone had chores. My main chore was mowing the lawn with a push mower. We had a big lawn and it seemed to take forever to mow. I would visit the house in my adult years and couldn't believe how much smaller the lawn was then I remembered it.