text: After midnight, Robert Smith exits his house for an outside break from his work and blank painter’s canvas. There’s no need to wear his heavy jacket, knitted toboggan hat, or leather gloves because the night is unseasonably warm for the winter month in Lake July, North Carolina. The year is 1946. Robert gazes up at the moon, a half-moon illuminated on its left side. The intrigue from the moon’s surface makes him smile, but only a funny half-smile on the left side of his face to mimic the moon’s face. He imagines what it would be like to be up there, a kind of intergalactic wonder lust. What it would be like to travel the 238,900 miles into outer space, to walk through the dark plains and across the light grey highlands. The United States of America will not land on the moon for another twenty-three years. He inserts his left hand into his same-side brown pants pocket for a cigar and matches. He quickly finds the cigar but no matches. I think they’re some in the kitchen, he thinks. Going through the kitchen drawers for matches, he hears a scream. He recognizes the cry. His six-year-old, Alice, is having another one of her reoccurring nightmares. Something that’s been going now for a few years since that summer day in the city. Robert forgets the matches and hurries down the hallway to his daughter’s room. He finds her disturbed, sitting up in her single bed and clutching her plush stuffed teddy called Brown Bear against her chest. The sight of his terrified daughter is immediately upsetting. “I saw the green-faced man again, Daddy,” Alice trembles. He falls to his knees on the floor, moves to the bed, and wraps his arms around her and Brown Bear. “Everything will be all right,” he comforts and reassures the daughter. Like all the other times, she had nightmares about the green-faced man. Alice saw the green-faced man on August 4, 1943. And also, on that humid day, hundreds of other young kids across the US unknowingly shared the same experience. The tabloids ran stories about their local “beings from another universe” sightings. They wrote stuff like the aliens had infiltrated the USA. Is your neighbor an alien? Do they come in peace or war? And some weird fanatical stuff about aliens liking sweet potatoes. Each of these papers called the event something different. The North Carolina locals unofficially called it Green Day. Robert continues to squeeze his frightened child. He doesn’t want to let go because he doesn’t know what to do next. Mainly because he’s tired of seeing her like this and wants her fear of the green-faced man to stop. Over the past few months, he tried warm milk, told late-night stories about princesses, and let her sleep with the lights on, but mostly held her until she fell back asleep. All of his efforts have yet to have lasting success. He lifts his head and sees the crayons and paper on Alice’s desk, where she was coloring earlier. Then he suddenly comes up with another idea to mitigate her horror dreams. Could this work, he hoped desperately. “Alice, would you color with me?” He places two pieces of blank white paper atop the desk before them and asks her to draw a rainbow. Alice smiles because rainbows are her favorite things to draw. She reaches for a crayon and begins on the red arch. He proudly watches her draw the first curved shape. “Alice, would it be okay if Brown Bear asked you some questions about the green-faced man?” Alice finishes the red arch, shakes her head okay, and quietly begins working on the following orange line. Her dad reaches for the stuffed animal from his daughter’s bed and puts the toy to his ear. “What is that Brown Bear?” he pretends the anthropomorphic Bear whispers into his ear, which grants Alice a giggle. She’s done with the orange arch now and moves on to yellow. “Okay, I’ll tell her. Alice, Brown Bear wants to know if you could help us draw a picture of the green-faced man.” She gives him an agreeing nod. After some answer specific driven questions and a few deep concentration faces by Alice later, she tells her father that the green-faced man has large grey eyes like saucers and wears a black hat and jacket like Granddad. He hopes his idea to turn this information into crayon art will work. A few moments later, they’re both done with their drawings. Robert puts the final touches on his sketch, and Alice holds up her rainbow to her dad. “I love it,” he tells her, “and here’s the drawing Brown Bear and I made for you.” Based on Alice’s description, he presents his crayon drawing of the green-faced man wearing a dark overcoat, a black bowler hat, and a red tie. But he replaced the original green face with a green apple instead. He gives Alice a moment to inspect the picture. Her eyes zig-zag all over the waxy images fixating on the fruit-exchanged face. “What is that?” she points out. “Well, this is Brown Bear and my friend, the green apple-faced man. He wants you to imagine him instead of that other guy. Do you think you can do that for him?” “Okay, I’ll try.” He stays beside Alice until she falls asleep. The green apple-faced man, what a silly concoction, he laughs. He leaves her under covers and in dim light. He hopes that ridiculous idea worked. Robert finally lights his cigar under the moon around 2 am. I can’t tell her the truth. The truth is that her granddad is the green-faced man she saw back in 1943, that he’s from outer space, he was born on a Jupiter moon, and we’re both part alien. I can’t tell you now, but I will one day, I promise. For now, please believe in the green apple-faced man instead, Robert thinks, blowing out cigar smoke.