Lost Time

A buddy and I were cruisin around one saturday night with barely enough money between us to buy a six pack of beer. We had half a joint of some mediocre weed, which we smoked after deciding to head out to the natural spring located in the Potato hills near Tuskahoma Oklahoma. The water bubbling up out of the ground there always tasted good and cool any time of year.

Once the joint was gone Dave popped the top on a couple of beers, handing me one. Someone had dug out the spring a long time ago and had embedded a concrete cylindar so a lid could be placed over it to keep the trash and leaves out. It was 20 feet or so from the gravel road which ran by it. But there was a spur off the road which let you pull up and park right near the spring.





I had pulled off on the spur and parked a little short of the end so we could have room to move around in front of the pickup. Dave and I were beginning to feel mild effects from the half joint we shared and sat in the pickup talking while we finished our beer.





Afterward, Dave dropped the remaining 4 beers in the spring to keep them cool while we gathered some dried branches and broke them up to make a fire. Dave was the fire builder. He would set kindling in the middle and construct a pile around it, always increasing the size of the sticks of wood leaving the largest ones to be placed on the top. In the process he would leave a small tunnel to the heart of the pile where the kindling was.





That night he had built a pile about 3 feet in diameter and almost 2 feet tall. Some of the pieces we pulled from under the leaves because they would be wet enough to slow the fire down. They would give off more smoke, but they wouldn't burn as fast. He had just got a flame going in the center of the pile and was squatting near the little tunnel he'd made pushing new dry kindling up to the flame to keep it going until it caught on and burned good.



I was feeling the call of nature and stepped around to the back of the pickup to relieve myself. I hadn't much more than started when a blinding light lit up the entire area. I remember looking up and seeing a shape hovering overhead and suddenly the light was gone and I was leaning back against the tailgate of the truck. Of course my first thought was to get myself zipped up before going to see ask Dave if he'd seen the object overhead. To my surprise I already was zipped.. That puzzled me a little but the need to check with Dave kept me moving.



I walked around the end of the truck and stopped dead in my tracks. Dave was still squating in the same place with that stick in his hand, but instead of pushing kindling up into the flame he was pushing glowing embers of an already burned out fire around. Afterthought- Had he stayed in that same position for the duration of the fire burning down so completely his pants would have most likely caught fire. At the very least his hands and face would have suffered first and second degree burns from the close proximity of the flames. There was no sign of scorching of any kind on him.

I walked up behind Dave and touched him on the shoulder and spoke his name. His reaction caught me completely by surprise. He bolted over the ed of coals and rushed out into the woods. I called out for him to stop several times before I heard the thrashing of his foot steps in the leaves come to a halt. When I heard him start moving again it was obvious he was returning to the truck. When he got close enough for me to see him he stopped for a moment to stare at the glowing embers of the fire then walked around to the passenger side of the truck and got in.

I was about to follow his lead when I remembered the beers still in the spring and grabbed them before I got into the truck. We drove back to town without uttering a word between us. I desperately wanted to ask him what he saw, but something kept me quiet. Maybe it was just the fact that he reacted the way he did. Maybe it was because I really didn't want to know. I still don't know what he saw. He never talked about it even to me.

When we got to town I pulled into the Bulldog Cafe and we seated ourselves at a table in the far corner of the dinning room. When the waitress came over I ordered a couple of cokes, more to justify our being there than anything else. Dave still hadn't said a word.

We hadn't been there long when the daughter of one of the local game wardens burst into the place. She was making her rounds, going from table to table asking the people at each table if they'd seen anything in the night sky over the potato hills.

Dave looked up at me and shook his head very slowly, as if to say "Don't say a word." When suddenly the girl went silent. We both turned to look in her direction and found her staring back at us. Instantly she started moving toward us.

"You guys saw it didn't you?" she asked before she was halfway across the room.

Dave and I stood at the same moment and started heading for the door before she reached the table.

"Wait!" her voice got louder, then just as we passed her on our way to the door she whispered...."You were there weren't you?"

I reached out and took her by the hand, and she came with us out to the truck. Dave went around to the passenger side and I signaled for her to get in on my side and slide over.

Once we were moving she started asking what we saw. She wanted to know what they did to us. How long were they there? She said she hadn't seen it arrive. She'd only spotted it as it lifted up into the air and sped away.

I drove out of town heading in the opposite direction. There was a two-fold purpose to my heading. First and foremost I did not want to go anywhere close to that spring again. Secondly, I wanted to take this girl home and drop her off. I wanted to get her out of our hair. She wanted to talk about this thing that neither Dave nor I wished to discuss at the moment.

Before we got to the lake, where she lived, I turned down a side road where we could get out and talk for a moment before taking her on home. I stopped in the middle of a bridge and we got out. I couldn't help staring into the night sky. Neither could the other two, for that matter... and suddenly she skreemed "There it is!" and pointed at a light moving through the sky.

It wasn't just a light though. It had an elongated shape which was horizontal. When she first spotted it it was moving parallel to the ground about a mile or so off the ground. Then suddenly, without changing the angle of the ship it sped away at tremendous speed at about a 50 degree angle to the ground. In an instant it was gone from sight completely.

Dave got back into the truck and yelled for us to go. We did just that. I dropped the girl at her front door and then drove Dave home before heading home myself.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I'd determined that it would probably have taken about 2 hours for that pile of wood to burn out completely. I tried to remember more but finally gave way to the fact that I just couldn't. I wanted to know what Dave had experienced but refused to force the issue with him. I never did find out and probably never will.

All I can say for sure about that night is that the fire burned completely out within a moment or two of being lit... and that light that flooded the woods where we stood only lasted a second or two.