Photo Essays

Sometimes Nicabob and Deux and me like to play “Alien Planet” by the canal behind our house. It’s a game we made up all by ourselves, and Deux thinks we can make a video game and sell it and all be millionaires. I don’t know anything about making video games, but I surely would love to be a millionaire.

The canal is wide and deep, and none of us is really sure what’s on the other side. Nicabob tried to swim across once, but the current caught him, and we had to get his dad to help, and Nicabob got an ass whipping after that.

When we play the game, I’m usually the ship’s captain. I land the ship on an alien planet, and me and my navigator and my ship’s doctor (that’s Nicabob and Deux) explore the planet looking for alien life.

Most of the time the planets are lame. There are no aliens or they’re all dead, and the land is all burned up. Sometimes we wade into the canal, and the aliens are underneath, and they scratch at our ankles and pull off our shoes.

If Deux makes that game, and we get a lot of money, I’m going to buy a real live Christmas tree and cover it in blue flocking and buy tons of presents for me and my mom.

It was a Christmas ’bout four…five years ago. All the kids were squawking up a storm. Said they saw Little Baby Eyes outside the house. At first I thought they were pulling my leg. But, after ‘while I got up to look.

At first I didn’t see nothing when I came from around the back. It’s just a girl, I thought. A girl in a green hoodie. Then the light came, and it blinded me for a minute. Then I saw her for real. This was no human girl before me. She was a child of the light.

Then the light was all around me. The children danced, and there was a buzzing in all our ears. In all our brains. And, when it was gone, when she was gone, the children looked at me and asked if we had dreamed her. No, I said. Little Baby Eyes lives right here in the Parish. She lives right here amongst us.