I live in the marsh. My house sits up on the stilts right at
the edge of where the trees stop growing and the marsh grasses take over.
Beyond that is the river. It isn't a big marsh, maybe only a
mile or two long. Once the river bends downstream, the trees move back
in and come right up to its banks. But here where I live,
there's an open marsh, only a few trees scattered here and there. It
makes it so that I have to get into my flat bottomed boat and push
through the reeds and rushes if I want to run my trotlines. When the
rains come in the spring or any other time of year, of the ice
jams in the winter, the river comes right across that marsh a lot deeper
than it normally would, and it floods all the way into the woods behind
my house. For that reason, I don't keep a vehicle parked here at
my house. I have a truck, but I keep it over at Miss
Harrison's house for when I need it. She owns the farm on the other
side of the woods, and I've known her all my life, and she
don't care. She keeps the keys in case she needs to move it or
use it for something I don't need it myself. Very often, when I
run my trout lines, I generally head right up on the river to Benson's
Fish Market to sell what I caught. I don't need a truck for that.
The market sits right on the river. My boat has a motor that'll
get me there as long as I stay close to the bank. I can
trade fish for gas, and they provide enough of anything else I need right
there at the market. And mainly I buy a powdered creamer for my coffee,
cigarettes and my favorite candy bars. I only need the truck when I
have to go do some real shopping for other things like coffee and cann goods
and corn meal and flour and sugar and lord. It may not seem like
much of a life for most folks, but it cuts me fine. I
never was good at making conversation. Television never interested me much. I got
a portable radio that I played a little too often. It keeps me broke
for having to replace the battery so often. That's about the only entertainment I
ever enjoy. No one bothers me here, and I don't bother nobody it's
quiet and peaceful. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, I go to my brother's house
for dinner, and most of their kids and grandkids are loud and obnoxious.
The television plays too loud, and my sister in law complains too much about
the way the kids act and how loud the TV is, which makes me
wonder why she doesn't just turn it down and tell those kids to behave I
have one niece that I like, though, and she checks in on me
every now and then. She has one of those pocket phones that she never
sits down, and that irritates me. She drives all the way down here
when she can get through, or she walks through the woods to get to
my house, which is a good hilf a mile, and then rather than
have a good visit, she sits out on the porch and whinds and complains
because she can't get good service. Well, I tell her all the time
to leave that blasted phone home when she comes, but every time she shows
up she's got it with her. If she didn't bring me such a healthy
supply of Snickers bars, I tell her to stop coming all together. But
I do like my Snickers bars, and it does my heart good to know
that I've got one family member who cares enough to come all the way out
here to check on me. A month ago, Bren, that's my niece,
was sitting out on the porch watching something on the screen of her phone,
and I caught a little bit in piece of what it was saying.
It was talking about bigfoot. Now that's a topic I can talk about all
day long because I've seen them. Now, I know better than to tell
most people about that. They come down here to my home and throw me
in the back of one of those paddy wagons and haul me off to the
funny farm if I did. But here was Brn sitting right in front of
my porch, listening to some feller tell how he's been chased through the bayou
by one What is that you're listening to? I asked her. Well,
it's a YouTube channel about bigfoot encounters. She said, oh. I answered,
oh, I know, Uncle don She said, you don't believe in
those things, but I do. I love this channel even if you don't.
You gotta love these stories. I studied her for a minute, and
I wondered if I should tell her what I knew. I mean, that
poor girl has to walk through the woods to get to me. She might
not want to do that anymore if I started talking. I had to think
hard on whether or not I wanted to give up such a good supply of
Snickers bars, and finally I decided that it wouldn't hurt. She said she
believed, But it's easy to say that when you don't have any proof one
way or the other. I never said I don't believe, I finally said,
as I looked sideways at her to gauge her reaction. There's things in
these woods that people don't know about, like what she asked, in a
voice that was almost hesitant as mine. I stared out across the marsh,
to where the river reflected sunlight like a great, big gold coin on the
surface. I knew I'd started something, but there was still time to back
out if I wanted to. But did I really want to? Uncle,
don tell me what you know? I guess I wanted to, because I
said, I know there's creatures in these woods. I gestured over my shoulder
toward the trees on the other side of the house, and I know that
sometimes they come here, they try to get in. I watched her eyes
open wide and the colored drain out of her face. Her mouth worked for
a few seconds, like she wanted to say something but didn't quite know how.
I let her stew like that, half hoping I'd piqued her interests,
and half hoping I'd scared her into changing the subject. Are you telling me
that I walked through sasquatch infested woods when I come to see you? She
said, I had to be careful here. There was a time when the
answer would have been a straightforward yes. But in the last few years I
hadn't seen no bigfoot. I still had something trying to get into the house
at night. Sometimes when I'd get back from running my trout lines, there'd
be signs around the house. But to say I'd seen bigfoot or anything indicating
that's what it was any more recently than five years ago, wellou would be
a lie. And what I've been seeing, well, theyre just ain't a
name for that. I gave myself time to think about what I was going
to say next. There was no point scaring her too bad. Uncle,
don have you seen any recently? Now? Not recently? A fool would
have known that wasn't going to satisfy her. So when she started in asking
more questions. I settled back and smiled the way. She turned off that
blasted pocket phone and tucked it away, and then I began my tail.
Now you know your daddy and me grew up on this place, I said.
She nodded, well, even when we was kids, there were things
around this place. It didn't make much sense. She got up off the
wood stump I'd set up on the porch for a makeshift stool, and she
came over and sat beside me on my glider. It squealed a little at
the added weight before resuming the gentle back and forth motion that I was gliding
it through with my feet. We were twelve before we got our first glimpse
of those culprits. I continued. Back in the nineteen fifties, when I
was a kid, this old cabin was where we spent our summers. My
daddy had bought the land for Miss Harrison's daddy and spent a whole summer building
it up on stilts to keep it out of the water. I was seven
and my brother Steve was ten the first time we spent the night out here.
The cabin wasn't quite done yet, so Daddy found a small rise in
the marsh grass and set us a tent up. Being young boys, Stevie
and me wanted to sleep out under the stores. The mosquitoes nearly drained us
dry before we gave up and got inside the tent with Mom and Dad.
That must have been around midnight. By one o'clock, we were ready to
leave the tent and get into daddy's nineteen fifty one suburban and go home.
Thankfully, it was a dry summer, so we'd been able to drive it
right up to the house. There'd be plenty of times in the coming decades
when that was not possible. It all began when we were awakened by some
thing hitting the tent. Now this wasn't little tapping sounds or even something as
minor as acorns. Whatever was hitting the tent was the size of baseballs,
and each hit sounded with a muted thud as it sent the canvas walls flying
inward. Every hit brought a cry of fear from us kids. Daddy kept
telling us to hush, but there comes a point when the terror out weighs
of common sense. We were on that side of the scale. Mama was
having a hard time of it. Too. She kept her hand pressed to
her mouth to prevent herself from screaming and pushing us boys over the edge.
But one look into her eyes, even inside that dark tent, it was
obvious that she was as scared as us, maybe even more. I guess
I was too young to remember how the whole night went. But when the
sun came up, we crawled out of that tent and we found hedge apples
all around us on the ground. Well, Daddy mumbled something about their the
weren't no hedge trees being anywhere around us. Mama didn't hesitate. She started
packing up camp. We ate breakfast back at the house that morning. Brand
broke in then and told me that her daddy had already told her that story
before, and she never did believe it. Even if she did, it
never occurred to her that the camp he was talking about was my place.
Now. I could see the questions forming in her mind as she sat and
waited for me to tell her more. Yeah, this is the place.
I guess you never put two and two together, me living here all these
years, with your grandparents dying before you were born. She nodded at me.
Now I'm going to be flat out honest with you, After that first
night in the tent, I never thought my daddy would ever come back here.
It was a bit of a surprise to me and your daddy when we
moved in for the summer the following year. That's when I explained to her
how the camp was close enough to town that we could live here all summer
and my daddy could still get up every month and drive to the mill and
work. Well. After a few weeks we got overworrying what might be out
in those woods, ready to chuck some more hedge apples at us. The
kids are that way. Curiosity trump's common sense every time. Mostly the woods
behind the house were swamps. Like I said, between me and the river
is a marsh. That's a whole lot of exploring for two little boys to
do, and by the end of that first summer we knew every inch of
it. Over the next few years, we made this area our kingdom,
and we played cowboys and Indians and Robinhood and pirates and explorers. We fought
rattlesnakes and grizzly bears and evil sheriffs and greedy princes, and captured ships and
battle lines all around us. Cabin and not once did we see or hear
anything that would remind us of that first night in the tent. It was
the summer after I turned twelve before we had anything happen that brought back the
memories of those hedge apples. We're far enough south that summer can be miserable,
being pretty much surrounded by water. There's always more humidity in the air
than oxygen, and the mosquito swarm into the big hole, hordes of vampire
colonies that sweep you off your feet and fly away with you to a place
where they can drink your blood without having to fight off the big ones.
For that reason, me and Stevie always slept on the screened in front porch
where there was a bit of a breeze. I still like to sleep out
there when it gets too hot. Daddy and Mama had a bed in the
back room with windows on two walls to keep them cool at night. It
must have been early August, and we knew that our time here and what
we always called the river House was running out. In another week or so,
we'd have to head back to town and get signed up for school.
And Stevie was fifteen by then. He knew he'd be getting his driver's license
come the end of school year, so he was looking forward to going back
and getting started. I didn't see the rush. If it was up to
me, we'd live at that river house year round. But it wasn't up
to me. I was resigned to my fate. But I wanted one last
adventure. So one night, while we were laying out there on the cots,
I told Stevie that we should sneak out of the house and go down
to the river. Now. I love my brother. He's always been exactly
the kind of big brother he should be. He looked out for me when
we were kids, and he kept the bullies off my back. I was
a scrawny, wiry kid with a cock eyed walk due to my spine not
being completely straight. He had a lot of bullies to chase away. But
when it came to doing anything risky, it was always me who started it,
and it was always him who said we shouldn't ought to do that.
It wasn't me, So I wasn't too surprised when he said I should roll
over and go to sleep, and he wasn't too surprised when I told him
I refused to do that. It took a little coatsing and begging, but
he finally sat up on his cot and yanked on his shorts and t shirt.
I jumped up as soon as he did, and was already waiting at
the door by the time he got his shoes on. He stopped to tie
his, and I never did. It was a dry summer, which meant
we wouldn't need a boat to get down to the river. There were high
spots in the marsh, and if you know the path, and we knew
it by heart, you could walk all the way down without too much trouble.
I stepped in a muck hole once, but I got free without losing
my shoe, and Stevie turned down the wrong path right after that, so
we got a little off track. But it wasn't long before we were down
there on the river bank, throwing rocks in the river and watching the moonlight
dance off its surface. We're here, Stevie finally said, now, what
do you want to do? I hadn't thought that far ahead, and since
we didn't bring the oat down, we weren't going to go out in the
water. But I had a foot covered in mud and I needed cleaning,
and it was a hot night. Let's go skinny dipping. I said,
you'd have thought Stevie, being the reasonable one who never took chances, that
he'd have said no way, But he didn't. Instead he went to shucking
off his clothes. I shimmied out of mine, and we were waste deep
in river water in no time. The moon was full enough and reflecting off
the water enough that we could see pretty well all around us. The trees
at the edge of the marsh were dark, and the marsh grass was high
and held its secrets, but there in the water it was almost like daylight.
We got to playing and splashing and having a good time until we lost
track of time, so I don't know how long we'd been down there when
the first big splash happened in the water. Donnie, look over there,
a big fish jump, Stevie cried. I spun around to look where he
was pointing, in time to see another big splash. This time we were
both looking right at it when it happened. We knew immediately that it wasn't
a fish. It was a rock, and someone had thrown it there.
We both turned and looked back at the bank, thinking our daddy had got
up and found us gone. We knew we were in trouble, but Daddy
wasn't standing on the bank. There was no one there. Another big splash
of water flying up at us when another rock landed right in front of both
of us. It must have come from the bank, but we didn't see
anyone. I looked over at Stevie and his eyes were as big as mine.
We were both remembering another night when hedge apples was thrown at us.
I don't mind admitting that I was a bit scared now, and we could
see the roof of the cabin from where we were, but that was no
comfort. In fact, it was the opposite. We were painfully aware of
just how far from home and from safety that we were. Stevie started moving
toward the bank, and I thought he must have been crazy. I wasn't
about to get close enough to find out what unseen creature was attacking us.
We'd gone to the drive in the weekend before and came to camp for summer
and seen invisible invaders, And as far as I was concerned, there was
a Martian hiding in those reeds and it was going to catch us and eat
us like a catfish. Where are you going, I screamed, I'm going
home. Stevie yelled back from the bank, where he was already grabbing up
his clothes and shoes. Well. I took one more look around at the
black tree line, the deep shadowy pockets of the marsh, and the narrow
bank before screaming, wait for me. We started back up the path to
the house. That it did run. Stevie was older than me, and
he didn't have to deal with a crooked spine. It wasn't long before his
outline vanished into the marsh grass. And my heart was pounding by then,
and I felt my legs getting weak, like they didn't want to do what
I was telling them to do. Behind me, I heard what sounded like
a bulldozer tearing through the grass. Stevie, I screamed, hold on.
I could still hear my brother somewhere ahead of me. He was running and
grunning and maybe even crying, but I couldn't quite place where he was.
I could hear what was behind me, too. It was breathing deep and
making funny mumbling sounds, and I was having trouble breathing, like the wind
had been knocked out of me. Now I opened my mouth to yell from
my brother again, but the words would not come. I lost the will
to fight right about that, and slowly, as if someone had forgotten to
wind the clock, I began to stop running until I was standing still in
the path, and I dropped my shoes at my feet. All around me
I could hear funny, grunting noises. I was surrounded. There was more
than one. Please don't let it hurt, I prayed when I accepted that
I was about to die. At that moment, the reeds in front of
me burst open and Stevie stepped through. He grabbed my arm and jerked me
forward, and the sounds around us got louder and closer, but Stevie never
let go on my arm As he dragged me back to the house. We
reached the rise where the tall grasses died away and Daddy's suburban sat parked in
the yard, and the loud scream of the screen door popped and the sound
echoed across the marsh as we looked up and saw Daddy come out onto the
steps with a shotgun in his hand. He fired around into the air and
we turned to see what he was shooting at. That was when we saw
it. It looked like a giant man with long arms all covered in hair.
It stopped right at the edge of the tall grass and looked at me
and Stevie menacingly, like it wanted to eat it us. But somehow it
knew it wasn't gonna win against that fire stick in my Daddy's hands. Well,
we stared back at the strange beast. What is that thing? We
both said at the same time. We'd never seen anything like it outside of
a gorilla we saw once at the Saint Louis Zoo. But this thing looked
more like a man than a gorilla. It wasn't walking bent over on its
hands. It was standing upright and walking on two legs. It stared at
us, and we stared back at it. Daddy raised his gun again,
and the damn thing turned around and disappeared into the grass so fast we couldn't
rightly tell which direction it went. Daddy might have seen it from his vantage
point, but me and Stevie couldn't tell. But we could hear other animals
moving in the grass too. I was a scrawny kid, so that grass
always seemed taller to me back then. But the truth is, my brother
was a head take than me. Even he couldn't see where those things were,
And later we decided they surely had to go down on all fours to
disappear like that. Now, seven years later I went to the movies and
I saw that Patterson film. It was the first time I ever heard the
word bigfoot that I can remember. It didn't look quite like what we saw
that night at the river House, but it wasn't that far off either,
And all of that happened here. Brent asked it, sure did, I
answered, Did your daddy ever tell you that story before? No? She
said, I don't guess he ever would have. We never talked about it
again, He and I, Uncle don Why did you stay here if those
things are here? I didn't quite know how to answer that question. What
could I say? Over the years, those things have come right up to
the house and banged on it more times than I care to count. They
used to stand on the edge of the woods sometimes where we could see him,
But after that first night they never seemed all that threatening. We had
guns on us everywhere we went for a while. Mama wanted to sell this
place, but Daddy insisted this was his property, and there wasn't no smelly
apes gonna chase him out. Once I got out of school, I started
spending more and more time here. Daddy died first, and Mama followed soon
after. Stevie was a career soldier who didn't marry till late in life,
and I figured once he came home and got married and started having kids,
he'd want a place to bring him. Stevie never wanted anything to do with
this place. It became mine by default. Those things always stayed out in
the woods and the marsh grass and always give him plenty of room. I
guess you could say we got used to each other. For lack of a
good answer, I shrugged my shoulders and Brin studied the floorboards on the porch
for him, and then looked out across the marsh to the river. And
then she looked right at me, and she asked what happened to them?
I didn't understand her question at first. When I sat there staring at her
with a blank look on my face. She said, you said, not
lately? Where did they go? Yeah? I did say that. I
leaned my head back, looked up at the ceiling, wondering if I should
tell her more I was at that crossroads again where I didn't know if I
wanted to say more or not. I guess someone should know. These new
things ain't nowhere near as respectful of boundaries as the Bigfoot were. They come
to the house at night, but they scratch at the screens and claw at
the boards in a way that makes me think they're trying to figure out a
way in, and when they figure it out, there won't be much I
can do to stop them. They're not as big as the Bigfoot, but
I think they're a lot meaner. When I was a kid, there was
a man around town they called Shorty. Fellers always around town like to pick
on him. Well, one day they cornered him and they were really going
to give him what four There were five of them and one of Shorty,
But when the last punch was thrown, it was Shorty who came out on
top. Now, my daddy told me to learn from that. He said,
it ain't the size of the dog in the fight, Signe, it's
the size of the fight and the dog. Well, I think these things
have a lot more fight in them than those Bigfoot. Ever, did I've
seen them lately? They stand out at the edge of the trees, and
they watched me with eyes so angry. I can feel their hatred. I
was scared of the Bigfoot when I was a kid, but I got over
that. I'm scared of these things now, and I think I always will
be in the end. I looked at Brent and I said, nobody really
knows. I'm sitting here on my porch tonight and writing this all out in
my notebook. I hope if someone finds it, they'll read it and know
what happened to me. I won't be here to tell em. Those things
are standing out in the grass and they're watching me, and the sun is
going down, and once it gets dark, I doubt I'll have much longer
to live. Please God, don't let it hurt