Result narrated by "Christopher Potter" in All categories

Cotton Pickens is feeling about as low as a man can get. Held up, robbed, and fired from his job as sheriff, things get even worse when someone murders Cotton's horse Critter. And it's all happening just as a flashy, fleshy stage company comes to town. Some folks demand the show be shut down for immorality. Some folks - Cotton included - sure enjoy the proceedings. But when a man gets stabbed to death, a bank safe gets blown up, and another county's sheriff starts imposing his will, Cotton realizes that a dastardly plot is taking over Doubtful.

By turns serious and playful, profound and trivial, sad and joyful, The Thing Is is a shape-shifting narrative, one that starts out as written by an alien, seeing the earth and its inhabitants from the outside. This perspective then becomes that of an everychild, who vaguely remembers having once been an alien and evolves into the biography of everybody who has ever lived.