WEBVTT

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I grew up on a forty acre
sand in rock farm in Oklahoma. I'm

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seventy four years old now, but
back when I was twelve, I got

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a job driving a tractor during the
hay harvest at twenty five cents an hour.

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Now. That may not sound like
much now, but my allowance was

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twenty five cents a week, so
it was a windfall for me. Plus,

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riding in a tractor all day was
far less work than the chores I

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had to do at the farm.
I would cut, rake and bail for

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ten or twelve hours at a time. Well, that added up to three

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dollars on most days. To me, that was a fortune. My boss

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offered lunch to his workers, but
he charged a quarter for a jam sandwich.

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Now, jam sandwich was a piece
of be loaning jammed between two pieces

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of bread, and we were lucky
he didn't charge for the water. The

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season was coming to an end,
with wet weather on the horizon and a

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quarter of the field still on the
ground. My boss wanted it cut and

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raked and baled and in the barn
before the rain hit the next morning,

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so he asked me if i'd stay
until the job was finished. I was

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tired to the toenails, but it
meant more money, so I said yes.

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By midnight, everyone else was headed
home. My boss usually picked me

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up each morning and dropped me off
at the day's end, but he was

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overly tired, and I suspected that
he may have tipped a few throughout the

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day. He asked if I could
walk home that night. It's just a

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couple of miles, he said,
keep the moon over your shoulder and you'll

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be fine. Neither of us remembered
the river and the marsh that lay between

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me and the house, And besides, I was young and it didn't seem

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like a big problem to me.
The moon was full and bright as I

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entered the woods. The storm was
still in the distance, but occasional bolts

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of lightning flickered on the horizon and
to remind me that it was getting close.

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It had been two hours and I
was beginning to cuss my boss and

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the swamp and my life in general. I'd kept the moon over my shoulder,

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like my boss had said to do, but I was lost. Mostly

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I thought about my grandmother. I
knew she would be sitting on the front

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porch waiting for me, and worried
to death. My granny was a little

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old lady who never used rough words
and rarely raised her voice unless she was

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provoked. When that happened, she
was a force to be reckoned with.

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Once I not so accidentally shot her
in the backside with my baby gun.

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That was not a good day for
either of us. The wind was picking

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up and singing in the treetops with
the approaching storm. I was working my

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way out of a deeper pool that
I'd stumbled into when I heard something that

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sounded like more than just a wind. Steering into the dark abyss that was

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the swamp, I saw what I
thought must be a mountain lion sitting on

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a large stump. In those days
of ignorant, indestructible youth, I reacted

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to fear with anger, and I
knelt down and searched out for a stout

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stick, ignoring whatever slick scale creature
slithered away from under my fingertips. I

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found one and I raised it over
my head. Come on you, some

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of bitch, I screamed in defiance. On knocky dang head off. When

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I looked again, the cat was
gone. The wind rose up and how

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some more, and I kept moving
when it died down again, and I

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heard that sound that wasn't wind.
Ahead of me, in a small moonlit

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clearing, I could see a shadow
darker than the other, standing tall and

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bulky. Its eyes glowed in the
moonlight. My grandmother's warnings of haints and

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buggers rang in my ears. I'd
never paid much heed to those warnings before.

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I knew haints were ghosts, but
she'd never described a book to me.

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I had assumed it was all the
overactive superstition of an old lady anyway,

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But now I wasn't so sure.
Thinking it was better to be safe

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than sorry, I started toward where
I thought home was. I'd like to

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say that I was too smart to
run, but that would be a lie.

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I was too tired. All I
could muster was a fast mosey.

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I didn't know if that thing was
behind me, if it was even following

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me, and if it was catching
up with me, or what it would

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do to me if it did catch
me. I only knew I wanted to

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get home. I swam the river
and staggered up onto the opposite bank,

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and, feeling the exhaustion in my
legs were like lead weights. There was

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no stopping, though, and I
didn't know where that thing was that I

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pushed on. A while later,
I found myself on the highway a couple

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of miles from home, too exhausted
now to take another step, and I

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stood there stalls in the direction I
wanted to be, listing for that strange

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sound that wasn't the wind, and
looking like something that had been dragged out

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of the swamp. When a farm
row pulled up in his old truck.

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You need a ride, boy,
he asked. I was too dirty to

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ride in the front with him,
but he let me climb in the back

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and drop me off on the road. In front of our mailbox. My

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grandmother was in her chair on the
front porch, with a cup of coffee

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in her hand and a fair sized
switch leaning against the wall. And with

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my last bit of energy, I
opened the side gate and made my way

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to the porch as she called,
where you been, boy? I explained

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about the last of the hay and
the approaching storm. I told her how

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my boss had said if I kept
the moon over my shoulder, I'd find

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my way home. I told her
how I got lost anyway. She sent

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me out to the pumphouse to clean
up while she made biscuits and gravy.

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I guess I didn't do too good
of a job cleaning up, because after

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we ate, she sent me to
the screened inside porch to sleep in a

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guest bed. A few hours later, I woke to the sound of a

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ruckus in the drive and picking out. I saw my grandmother shaking her finger

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under the boss man's nose as she
read him the Riot Act. You durn

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the idiot a grown man, and
you don't realize the moon. Don't hang

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steal in the sky. You ain't
so big or so old that I won't

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wear out a switch on you.
My boss kept his eyes on his boots.

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It was a good thing to stare
at when Granny was on a rant.

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In the winter of nineteen ninety nine, I was in a relationship and

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living with my girlfriend near the Turtle
Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. She was

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half chip Awhile on her mother's side, and she wanted to spend the winter

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close to her mother. If it
weren't for the excellent fishing and the best

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snow mobil ride trails, I would
have broken up with her to move back

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to Texas. I'd been living about
fifteen minutes south of Bellcourt the Turtle Mountain

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Reservation for about six months, so
I only had a handful of buddies,

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one of which lived about thirty five
miles in Duncyth. Duncith is about twenty

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miles west of Belcourt, so some
nights I would ride my snowmobile through bell

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Court to get there. I would
either ride around those areas or heading nor

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to another hick town in Canada where
some of the bar still honored the drinking

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laws that allowed for eighteen year olds
to be served. One day, when

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it was still light out but getting
dark around five pm, I was headed

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to Duncyth to meet up with my
buddy on my snowmobile. We just gotten

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a fresh powder after a blizzard.
My machine didn't have a res tag,

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so I was bypassing Bellcourt to avoid
being harassed by the reservation cops. That

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whole area was dotted with lakes that
in the winter became salt flats for snowmobiles.

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I had a Skidoo Formula triple six
hundred with every modification and upgrade available.

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It was like a ninja in the
snow. On this particular day,

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I was following a summer four by
four trail that circled the lake. It

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was a wide trail in summer,
but in the winter, especially after a

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blizzard, there was barely room enough
for one snowmobile to get through. The

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trail curved to the right and followed
the lake cove and dropped in elevation.

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I was flying down the path when
I saw that it was going to intersect

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with another one about five hundred yards
away at the lake bank. I had

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every intention of really opening up once
I hit that frozen lake. I could

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also see what I thought were a
couple of moose on the trail ahead.

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I hit the gas, thinking it
would push them onto the lake. There

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been times when I've gotten really close
to deer that way. As I reached

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the point where the two trails met
the lake, I couldn't see the moose

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anymore, and I thought they must
have climbed up the side of the trail.

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I blasted past that point and got
hit by an avalanche. I felt

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my machine suspension bought them out.
If I hadn't been wearing a helmet that

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kept my head from being crushed against
my tank, I think I would have

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been hurt pretty bad. I've been
doing about thirty five miles an hour at

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that point of impact, and I
almost flipped the machine, and as it

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was, I managed to come to
a stop about thirty yards onto the lake.

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I was overcome with a stench that
smelled like heavy of urine. Looking

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back, I expected to see a
moose, but that wasn't what was standing

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there. It stood up and screamed
long, loud sounds that was almost like

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a dog's yell. It was reddish
brown, like Chewbacca from Star Wars,

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and covered in hair that was six
to ten inches long, and it was

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really skinny. It reminded me of
a teenager whose head hands in height were

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still way ahead of his build,
or how a puppy looks real lanky.

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I could even see ice balls on
its hair, like snow dogs get.

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Its face was black, but his
eyes were blacker and sort of beady looking.

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It was seven feet tall, but
it definitely didn't look fully grown.

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It looked emaciated. The smell was
horrible. I worked maintenance in an apartment

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complex a few years ago and there
was a dirty hoarder whose apartment smelled almost

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the same. It made me get
oh God, I see those horder shows,

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and I think I would hate to
go in that place. But anyway,

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here we go. Let's keep going
with the story. The scream it

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made wasn't like a roar most people
say they hear. It was a scream

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of shock and fear. He got
his point across, and it was like

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he was saying, what the hell
just happened, and maybe wanted to laugh

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because he thought it was funny.
I was kind of in shock and trying

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to keep my machine running, but
it stalled out. We stared at each

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other for another twenty or thirty seconds
until I remembered I had a revolver in

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the front pocket of my backpack.
I carried it in case I broke down

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and had to deal with wolves or
drunken reservation boys who wanted to harass an

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outsider. I was trying to reach
that gun when I remembered he wasn't the

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only one i'd seen. I felt
a bad vibe coming from the trees behind

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him and thought it must be his
family group. It was like they knew

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I was reaching for a gun.
I felt dread in fear like I had

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never felt before. I got my
machine going and I got out of there

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as fast as I could. When
I got to my buddy's house, he

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was outside waiting for me. He
must have heard me coming down his drive

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doing seventy or eighty miles an hour
and sliding into a snowpile next to his

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driveway. He looked at my sled
and saw the damage to the hood,

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and I explain what had happened,
and he laughed, saying, you're lucky

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they didn't kill you, and each
you. We decided to armor ourselves,

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being careful to put the weapons where
they'd be easier to reach if we needed

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them, and we went back to
the point of that impact. There was

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a lot of hair and urine and
some really big tracks, but they were

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gone. I wasn't about to follow
their tracks into the woods that night,

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so I grabbed my plastic windshield that
had fallen off the hood and we went

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back to my buddy's house. Later, I found a bunch of hair stuck

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in the cracked hood as well,
and I saved it. But my girlfriend's

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mother told me it was a dog
man that i'd hit and it was just

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bad juju to keep it, so
I burned it. I don't believe I

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hit a dog man, though I
think this was a bigfoot, a teenage

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bigfoot. Also, don't think it
meant me any harm. It just fell

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off the bank as it was scrambling
to get away before I passed by.

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I also think they can read your
mind. It did mine. If you

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see one, please don't shoot it. If these things have feelings and personalities,

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then they're just trying to survive just
like us. They are real and

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one day someone is going to prove
it