TumbleDweeeb

THE POSSUM BRANCH SERIES
Episode 4: The Great Buzzard Roost UFO
By: Emmitt Owens (Index #12122025)

   They say nothing good happens after midnight. They’ve clearly never sat in a plywood box at the end of Slaughter Pen Road listening to this town lose its mind in real time.
     It’s 1:11 AM and the tower outside sounds like it’s humming itself to sleep. I’ve got a cracked mug of coffee, a board older than some of my callers, and four empty phone lines waiting to be filled with regret.
   I’m Possum.
     This is WDAR 96.6 — Dead Air Radio.
   You’re tuned to Possum’s Branch, the unofficial support group for people who believe, against all odds, that something interesting might still happen in Buzzard Roost, Alabama.
     Spoiler: it does. Just not always the kind of interesting you can explain to a therapist.
   I lean into the mic.
    “Buzzard Roost, it’s eleven past one,” I say. “The humidity is holding steady at ‘soup you can wear,’ the skeeters are running a blood drive without consent, and you’re rocking with WDAR 96.6—Dead Air Radio. This is Possum’s Branch, broadcasting from the scenic end of Slaughter Pen Road, just past where the county stopped believing in streetlights.”
   I glance at the phone panel.
     Line One blinks—three fast pops, like somebody’s jabbing the button with urgency.
   “Well,” I mutter, “that’s never good.”
     I hit it.
   “WDAR. You’re on the Branch. Tell me what part of your life fell apart tonight.”
     A man’s voice rushes out, high and breathless.
   “Possum. This is Cooter from over by the VFW. I just seen a spaceship over Buzzard Roost.”
     I sip coffee. Let him hang in the silence a second.
   “Cooter,” I say. “You sure it wasn’t just the VFW disco ball reflecting off somebody’s trailer?”
     “No, sir,” he says. “I know that ball. I helped hang it drunk in ’19. This ain’t that. This was a straight-up UFO. Lights. Movement. Defyin’ both God and gravity. And… I swear I’m not makin’ this up… it dropped something.”
   My eyebrows go up a notch.
     “What did it drop?” I ask. “Probe? Cow? One of my missing paychecks?”
   He hesitates.
     “Box of fried chicken,” he says.
   I let the silence stretch long enough for him to start doubting his life choices.
     “You’re telling me,” I say carefully, “that a vehicle not of this world entered our airspace, violated FAA guidelines, and then… delivered poultry?”
   “It was from this world,” he says. “The box said Bird King. But it came outta a ship, Possum. I was standin’ in the gravel lot behind the VFW, havin’ a smoke, thinking about whether I could fake my own death to dodge the electric bill, and this… this light comes over the tree line. Like somebody dropped a stadium on top of Pine Street. White in the middle, green on the edges. Moved like a skipped stone on a pond.”
     “And the chicken?” I prompt, because at this hour, I’ve given up on normal.
   “It slows up,” he says, “right over the road. I’m watchin’ from behind Emmitt’s old Chevy sign. Next thing I know, this little panel on the bottom opens up and thunk—one family-size box of fried chicken lands in the ditch like a care package from space.”
     He lowers his voice.
   “I checked the grease,” he says. “It was hot, Possum. Not ‘sat under a lamp’ hot. Fresh drop hot.”
     I rub my face.
   “Buzzard Roost,” I say into the mic, “for those of you just joining us, Cooter from VFW-land is reporting what appears to be the first documented case of an Unidentified Fried Object over town: UFO delivering takeout.”
     “I ain’t jokin’,” Cooter insists. “It circled once, like it was lookin’ for somebody. Then it zipped off toward the ridge like it got spooked. Left that box behind like a panicked pizza boy.”
   “You eat it?” I ask.
     He hesitates just long enough.
   “…Maybe one piece,” he admits. “For science.”
     “How was it?” I ask.
   He sighs in pure conflict.
     “Best damn thigh I ever tasted in my life,” he says. “But now I don’t know if I got alien marinade in my DNA.”
   I press my fingers into my eyes.
     “Stay on the line, Cooter,” I say. “We’re gonna open this to the floor, let the town vote whether you’ve been chosen or just very hungry.”
   Line Two pops to life.
     “WDAR,” I say. “You’re on the Branch. Experienced any poultry-based invasions tonight?”
   “This is Todd from the logging road,” a voice says. “I seen that same light about fifteen minutes ago. Thought it was the sheriff’s chopper. Then I remembered we ain’t got no helicopter.”
     “What’d it look like from your vantage point?” I ask.
   “Looked like somebody strapped a halogen shop light to a dragonfly,” he says. “Shot across the sky, stopped dead, did a little jig, and took off. No sound. I turned my truck off just to listen. Not even a whine.”
     Line Three lights up.
   I hit it. “WDAR. You’re live.”
     “Possum!” The voice is angry, familiar. “This is Gary from the Mad Mechanics shop. Y’all need to stop scarin’ people. That’s probably just some rich idiot’s drone.”
   “Did the drone drop chicken, Gary?” Cooter cuts in from Line One.
     “I don’t know what it dropped,” Gary grunts. “All I know is if a spacecraft’s tossin’ fast food, somebody’s gonna call me when it dents their hood, and I ain’t got time for extraterrestrial insurance claims.”
   Line Four joins the party.
     “WDAR,” I say. “Welcome to Fried Encounters of the Third Kind. Who’s this?”
   “Ms. Speegle,” she says crisply. “Retired lunch lady, alien skeptic, chicken expert. I’m callin’ to say if beings from another world are droppin’ free poultry, I will gladly join their empire.”
     Cooter jumps in.
   “Speegle, I’m tellin’ you, it was Bird King. The box had that goofy rooster mascot and everything.”
     “Aliens can read branding, too,” she says. “Maybe they hijacked a truck. Maybe they rebranded. Maybe Bird King’s always been a front. I been sayin’ for years that sauce was unnatural.”
   This is spiraling exactly the way I knew it would.
     Line Two flickers again. I catch the caller ID code.
   Of course.
     I hit it with dread.
   “WDAR,” I say. “You’re on the Branch. If you rhyme, I reserve the right to throw myself into the control board.”
     “Possum, my man in the static stream,
you won’t believe this brined-up dream—
I saw that ship above my route,
droppin’ chicken like it’s divine takeout!”
   I close my eyes.
     “Evening, Pickle Player,” I say. “Let the record show we now have multiple independent reports of a mysterious light in the sky dumping hot fried chicken on random citizens. Go ahead and tell the class what the sky told you.”
   He’s walking while calling; I can hear the squeak of his cart wheels.
     “I was rollin’ my pickles down County Line,
thinkin’ ’bout Brine and my scooter shrine,
when the night lit up like a Keno screen,
and there it was—glowing, mean, and green.”
   “Green?” I cut in. “Everybody else saw white and yellow.”
     “Center was white, but the trim was lime,” he says.
   “Looked like the universe flashed a Brine Time sign.”
     He sucks in a breath.
   “And then—no lie—it dropped a box,
landed near some drainage rocks.
I opened it up, and what I see?
Fried chicken steamin’, callin’ me.”
     “Did you eat it?” I ask.
   He hesitates.
     “I licked the skin,” he admits. “Just a little. For theology.”
   Gary groans from his line.
     “This is why I don’t go outside after ten,” Gary mutters. “Y’all treat the night like a suggestion.”
   I lean closer to the mic.
     “Alright, Buzzard Roost,” I say. “We got Cooter at the VFW claiming a UFO dropped Bird King on him. Todd on the logging road saw the lights. Pickle Player claims the ship matched his pickle aesthetic and gifted him a drumstick. Gary says ‘drone’ and ‘stop being dumb.’ Ms. Speegle has pledged allegiance to our new extraterrestrial poultry overlords.”
   I drum my fingers on the desk.
     “Anybody else seen something in the sky tonight?” I ask. “Or maybe a sudden, mysterious abundance of discount chicken?”
   Line Three lights up again.
     “WDAR,” I say.
   “It’s Bunjee McBride,” comes the nervous answer. “the bread truck guy.”
     “Lord help me,” I murmur. “What did the bread tell you about the aliens, Bunjee?”
   “It wasn’t the bread this time,” he says. “I was droppin’ off buns at Bird King an hour ago and their manager was freakin’ out. Said the fryers kicked on by themselves. No one touched ’em. Oil temp perfect. Like they was pre-heatin’ for a delivery nobody placed.”
     I pause.
   “That’s… actually the first detail tonight that gives me a chill,” I admit.
     “Then the drive-thru speaker crackled,” Bunjee continues, “and this weird noise came out. Not English. Not Spanish. Like… a dial-up modem garglin’ gravy. Manager said it sounded like somebody orderin’ chicken in tongues.”
   “Did you hear it?” I ask.
     “Bits,” he says. “And I ain’t been able to get it outta my head. It was like it—”
   He stops.
     I feel it coming.
   “—like it was callin’ an order from the sky,
‘extra crispy, make it fly—’”
   Click.
     I hang up on instinct.
   “If you can’t call with normal wording,” I tell the microphone, “stop calling us you … Idjeeuts.”
     Fifteen minutes and two songs later, things quiet down. Lines go dark. Tower hums. I almost convince myself we’ve collectively hallucinated the whole thing.
   Then I see it.
     At first it’s just a glow at the edge of the window, like some truck turned its brights on down the bend. Except it’s too high. A wash of white that pushes the shadows in the studio into sharper corners.
   I turn my mic off, stand up, and walk to the glass.
     Over the trees past the tower, something hangs in the air.
   Not a star.
     Not a plane.
   Not anything I’ve got a file folder for.
     It’s… smallish from here. Oval halo of light, center bright white, edges with a faint green tint, just like Pickle Player said. It moves—but wrong. Not smoothly like a plane. Not abruptly like a helicopter. More like someone dragging a mouse cursor across the sky.
   It zips sideways, stops dead without drifting, drops a few feet, then slides forward like it remembered gravity exists but doesn’t fully respect it.
     I feel a little something in my chest then. Not panic. Just… that uncomfortable click of your worldview resizing.
   The studio phone rings, muffled behind me.
     I don’t answer.
   The thing out there tilts, just a hair, like it’s sniffing for a place to land. Or drop something. It hovers above the road that runs past WDAR, right where the gravel lot starts.
     And then—
a small panel in the bottom of the light opens.
   Something falls.
     It’s not dramatic. No beam. No tractor field. Just a dark shape dropping fast, then a thud against dirt.
   The light hangs a breath longer.
     Then it flickers twice—like some kind of signal—
and shoots straight up.
   I don’t mean “up like a helicopter.”
I mean up.
     One second it’s there; the next, it’s a streak; the next, it’s a dot; and then the sky is just… empty again. Stars blinking like none of this happened.
   The whole thing takes maybe six seconds.
     My heart decides it would like to submit a complaint.
   The phone is still ringing.
     I go back to the board, hit the button.
   “WDAR,” I say, trying to sound like the universe didn’t just poke me with a fork. “You’re on the Branch.”
     “It’s Pickle Player,” he says, voice low. “You see that, Possum?”
   There’s no rhyme in it this time. Just awe.
     “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I did.”
   “You feel that in your fillings?” he asks. “Like your teeth remembered their expiration date?”
     “Yep,” I say. “Also felt it in my credit score.”
   We’re quiet a second, listening to the absence of that light.
     Then he says, slowly:
   “…I think they just DoorDashed the Lord.”
     I pinch the bridge of my nose.
   “Why?” I ask. “What fell this time?”
     He swallows.
   “Somethin’ hit the ditch by my cart,” he says. “Sounded like a Bible landing wrong.”
     Curiosity is a mean little animal.
   “Stay on the line,” I tell him. I throw on a track, kill my mic, and, against all better judgment, grab the flashlight from under the desk.
     The night hits me like a warm wet towel when I open the door. Crickets, distant dog, the endless hum of the tower buzzing like it’s caffeinated.
   The gravel crunches under my boots as I cross the lot. I follow the weak beam of my light to the ditch by the road.
     Something sits there in the scraggly grass.
   It’s a box.
     Not Bird King.
   It’s plain white, no logo, about the size of a shoebox. Steam curls from the edges like it’s embarrassed to be seen naked.
     “Of course,” I mutter. “Of course.”
   I glance up at the sky. Nothing. Just a smear of stars and a skinny moon minding its business.
     Against all my own internal safety briefings, I nudge the box open with the edge of my flashlight.
   Heat hits my face. Smell hits my soul.
     It’s fried chicken. Again. But not from anywhere around here. The coating’s wrong. Not Bird King, not Rooster Barn, not the VFW’s questionable potluck contributions. The crust is lighter, almost tempura-looking. The pieces are perfect. Too perfect. Like food styling for a commercial.
   I don’t touch it.
     I just stand there, staring at this unbranded miracle bucket in the ditch outside a barely-legal radio station, listening to some old soul singer bleed out of the open studio door behind me.
   “Yeah,” I say finally, to nobody, “okay.”
     I back away and go inside.
   Back at the board, I pull the song down and bring my mic up.
     “Buzzard Roost,” I say, “I would like to formally upgrade tonight’s status from ‘everybody’s tired’ to ‘something weird is actually happening.’”
   I swallow.
     “For legal reasons,” I add, “I am not advising anyone to consume any sky-chicken. But I am also not stopping you. This is America.”
   Pickle Player’s still on the line.
     “Possum,” he says, his voice back to its rhythmic clip whether he wants it or not, “this ain’t no maybe, this ain’t no joke—
we just watched the cosmos share its yoke.
If aliens ride with a deep-fry crew,
I think I finally found my homeworld, dude.”
   “Don’t,” I warn. “You join the Space KFC cult, I’m not visiting your mothership.”
     Line One lights up again.
   “WDAR,” I say. “You’re on.”
     “It’s Gary,” comes the dry reply. “I seen it too.”
   I sit up straighter.
     “You saw the light?” I ask.
   “I saw somethin’ that moved in a way I can’t fix with wrenches,” he says. “I was out back smokin’, lookin’ at the tower, saw it jerk around like a fly on a string. Then I heard a thud down the road. Figured it was another one of y’all droppin’ their dignity. But if it’s droppin’ chickens…” He pauses. “Well. I got more questions than answers.”
     “Do you have a drone that can do ninety straight up?” I ask him.
   “If I did, I wouldn’t be tow-truck poor,” he says.
     Ms. Speegle joins back in on Line Four.
   “I got out my binoculars,” she says. “I seen that thing. I taught earth science, and whatever that was did not respect inertia. Also, side note, if they’re recruiting test kitchen staff, I’m available on Tuesdays.”
     Todd again.
   “My air freshener told me to stay calm,” he says. “For once I listened.”
     Even Bunjee calls back, carefully prose this time, to say the Bird King fryers kicked on again right when the light showed up.
   I lean into the mic.
     “Here’s the part where a responsible radio personality would tell you this was all just a weather balloon, or swamp gas, or the sheriff’s nephew flying a homemade lawn chair drone he built from spare parts and bad judgment.”
   I glance at the window.
     “I ain’t that guy,” I say. “I saw something. It moved like nothing with a tail number. It dropped a box of food that shouldn’t exist outside a commercial shoot. This is the part of the story where I’m supposed to explain it away so we can all go back to being comfortably bored.”
   I tap the board with my knuckles.
     “But it’s 2:04 AM on Slaughter Pen Road, and the truth is: I don’t know what that was.”
   Silence stretches for a moment—rare for this job.
     Pickle Player breaks it.
   “Maybe the universe got a drive-thru,
and we just caught the first test crew,” he says. “Maybe it’s not ‘we are not alone’ so much as ‘we are not the only ones stress-eatin’ in the void.’”
     I sigh.
   “You realize,” I tell him, “if aliens picked Buzzard Roost as their first stop, it explains a lot about why nobody visits us twice.”
     He laughs.
   Ms. Speegle clears her throat.
     “All I know is,” she says, “if the sky’s throwin’ us food, it owes us a vegetable next. I’m not lettin’ aliens get away with just cloggin’ our arteries.”
   We field theories for the next half-hour.
     It’s secret government testing.
   It’s a viral marketing campaign.
     It’s angels, but they’ve updated to pressure fryers.
   It’s Preacher’s Transmissions sendin’ up signals and gettin’ catered.
     Somewhere between the laughter, though, there’s that hum in my bones from when the light went up too fast. We can joke over it, but it doesn’t quite go away.
   At 2:31 AM, I start winding us down.
     “Alright, night people,” I say. “Here’s what we know: Something flew. Something dropped chicken. Some of you ate it. Some of you are lying about not eating it. The sheriff is probably asleep. And there’s at least one box of morally complicated drumsticks sittin’ in a ditch outside this station that I am absolutely not touching.”
   I crack my knuckles.
     “Sometimes the world gets bigger in a way that’s all equations and telescopes,” I continue. “Sometimes it gets bigger because a thing in the sky does something that doesn’t fit in your head and leaves you greasy evidence. Either way, your life after is not exactly the same as your life before you saw it.”
   I let out a breath.
     “If you’re out there drivin’ home from third shift, or starin’ at your ceiling fan, or babysitting bread, and you’re feelin’ a little extra small tonight… remember this: whatever’s out there also chose to drop chicken in our ditch. So either we’re part of some cosmic delivery route… or the universe is just as lost as we are.”
   Pickle Player chuckles.
     “Either way,” he says, “tip your drivers.”
   I roll my eyes.
     “This is Possum,” I say as I cue up a slow track, “reminding the midnight people: you ain’t crazy for seein’ what you saw. Just don’t let it be the only weird thing you ever do anything about. Call your cousin. Write the song. Fix the truck. Go to bed. Live like the sky might lob you a surprise bucket any minute.”
   I fade the music up.
     Out the window, the road is empty. No lights, no ships, just the bruise-dark horizon and the steady blink of the tower.
   Then, faintly, from down the bend, I hear it:
     “ding… dill… ding… aling… dill”
   Pickle Player’s cart bell, rolling somewhere under that big stupid mysterious sky.
     I don’t know if the universe meant anything by tonight.
   But it made for damn good radio.
     WDAR 96.6 — Dead Air Radio.
   Possum’s Branch will return.