Speaker 1: He was just there. Now, I suppose it would be
the more accurate way of referring to the thing. It
was just there, kind of half sitting or sprawled all about.
It wasn't sitting upright as you or I might. It
sure wasn't standing. It looked as if it was lying
on the sofa, except there wasn't a sofa. I don't
recall if I've ever seen a sofa big enough to
have held that thing. On occasion, it would look over
in my direction, not at me, because for the moment
there was no way for it to see me. At
least at the time. I hope that to be true.
It would just look over in my direction and smile
as much as was possible. I'm not sure that it
smiled often. It didn't look as if it had the capability,
but it was sure giving it a good try. One
thing I am certain of is that it was proud
of itself and what it had done. That's why it
kept looking over while trying to smile. I'll tell you
what it reminded me of, But it reminded me of
the way my father used to look when he would
park his mowing machine in the garage after he had
finished with the yard each week and then go walk
around on us law. My father was always so proud
of the job that he had done each week after
mowing the grass. He loved the way it looked when
every blade of grass had been cut and all were
the same height. Again, how everything in that moment was
just as it should be. That look on my father's
face each week when he had finished was unforgettable and unmistakable. Well,
that thing had the same prideful look on its mug
each time it would look over in my direction. I
can only tell you of what I was seeing at
that moment, and I couldn't see all that well, but
I could see better than I wanted to, and all
honest see, I wish I had never seen any of
it at all. That thing was horrible. I don't think
it to be out of place to call it an abomination,
something that never should have existed in the first place.
A talking like that will likely make some folks hot
under the collar at me, But guess what, I don't care.
The folks that would raise came with me were never
in a position that I'd been in. So until you've
walked in my shoes and all that Now I've watched PBS,
and I'm not a complete dullard. I know the all creatures,
great and small thing and the sentiment behind it. Everything
has a reason for being, and each one is special
and unique and should be revered in one form or another.
But this thing has no more business being around than
mosquitoes or fire ants. And in my opinion, and it's
just my opinion, the world would be better off without
some things in it. And the thing I watched that
was one of them. Sprawled out on the ground as
long as some of those tiny electric cars that some
people drive. Now, that probably weighed more than those cars too.
It wasn't just long. That thing was beefy and solid.
It wasn't long and lean like a college basketball player.
It was built, I mean like an NFL pass rusher,
big thick ropy muscles flexed and quivered each time it moved.
You could see them all pumped up under its fur.
This thing was bigger than Figno had been when he
had been playing the Incredible Hult, much bigger, and Forigno
was stacked when he had been doing all that, covered
from crown to ankle bone with filthy, matted, coarse looking hair,
that was knotted up in a dozen different places, like
an old stray dog's hair would look before it thins
out and sheds its winter coat and the spring. And
it stunk worse than an old dog too, smell like
garbage as you had let sit inside the can too
long before taking the bag out, that rich, sweet smell
of meat that had gone south. That when you smell it,
it really isn't too bad, but the longer you're around it,
the worse it gets. That's the way this thing smelled.
And trust me, it wasn't something else that drifted across
me on that breeze. I know how right that thing was,
but I'll get to that in a minute. Thinking back
on it as I'm writing this, I can still smell
it in my memory enough that I can almost taste it,
and when it comes that strong, I easily end up gagging.
A couple of times. I've even had to heave up
my breakfast. It's been months since the day I was there,
and I can still see it clear as day. It's
lounging around, just looking about, sometimes directly at me, though
it never knew I was there, or you wouldn't be
hearing this story that thing had no the problem with killing.
Also know that better than I want to. You could
see it in its eyes, and that thing didn't take
lip from anything. They were hard eyes, like everything it
had ever seen was ever gonna see was beneath it
or inferior to it, big and dark, yellowing, some as
if it was old. Maybe it was old. I don't
know how anyone could tell. You couldn't go by how
it moved, because it was spry enough. It didn't move
its arms to waste something with old, worn out joints moved.
If it had an edge, it scratched, real limber like,
no matter where it had to reach, and some of
those places were best forgotten, along with the smell. Now
this thing had no shame. What it did have were hands,
a big, strong, leathery looking hands that were covered with
that nasty hair on the backsides. Its feet were the
same way. It may have gotten shorted on looks, but
it made up with the foot size. Now I fell
a pretty big shoe, but its feet were at least
twice as white as mine and maybe twice as long.
But out of everything that was so horrible but hypnotizing
to look at, I think it's teeth or what held
my attention the most. The four in front corners of
the top and bottom were sharp and long, like dog's teeth,
and the rest were short and thick and blunted, just
right for grinding against whatever meat or flesh Those sharp
ones had ripped from something. Each one seemed about the
size of my thumb. Before you say anything, no, all
wasn't close enough to see them that well. One of
its teeth was missing, and the space between the ones
that remained looked about the width of my thumb. And now
I'm fine with guessing at it like that. If you
want to know them more precisely, then you go find
one and peel its lips back and you can take
a look. That'll be your affair, but I won't be
going with you. I've had my share and that was
enough to do me. Now you have a fair idea
of what it looked like. That was what I was
trying to accomplish, and I've described it as best as
I could without drawing you a picture on paper. And yes,
I have done that a couple of times. I haven't
shown my drawing to anyone, mainly because I have no
ability to draw. It looked like something an elementary school
student might have drawn. But when I look at what
I put on paper, I can see exactly what I
was trying to draw, and it sends shivers up and
down my spy. Anyone else might think I was doodling,
but when I look at my drawings, they scare me
to death. I bet you're wanting to know how I
came to see one so well without it seeing me. Well,
that's what I'm going to tell you right now. Now.
I'm not especially bright, not as dumb as some, but
not as smart as a lot. I can't ever remember
how to tell a joke, and I never have been
much counted telling stories. But I'm not a liar, and
I'll tell you what happened to me, and it'll be
up to you if you want to believe me or not.
Of all the things i'll lose sleep over being believed about,
this isn't one of them. This is what happened, and
I know it did because I was there. I'm not
what you might call a regular nine to five guy.
It's not that I don't believe in working for whatever
I want or might end up having. I just don't
like being told what to do. There is something about
following orders that I could never get beside now work,
And to tell you the truth, I think I work
harder than most because I'm always out hustling up something
to do. I just don't go to the same job
and do the same thing every day. I don't answer
to anyone for the most part. If I go without
supper or a pack of smokes or new use when
I need them, then it was all my fault for
not trying a little harder. I don't take orders, but
I don't blame anyone but me for my situations either.
I'm as likely to be painting a house as I
am to be chopping saplings out of a fence row.
I've dressed stiffs in the basement of the mortuary, and
the next day I handed out flyers in front of
the Pigly Wiggily for a beauty salon. It's not the
easiest way to put dough in your pocket. But if
I have enough to get bone, I don't have to work.
If I don't feel like it now, I can go
fishing instead. People locked in a cubicle can't do that
whenever they feel like it, can They not without getting fired.
I mean A while back, I was doing some work
for the Italian man who owned a nursery. He's a
real nice man, and he throws work at me whenever
he gets these big pushes. He knows I work hard
that I don't get bent when he says he doesn't
need me any longer. If he had hired someone to
do what I was doing, he would either have to
find them something to do when the job played out
or fire them. And with me, he just RILs off
a few bills and shakes my hand until the next time.
It works well for the both of us. He had
called me and said that he had two tractor trailer
loads of rose bushes coming in, one trailer one week
and another the following week. Eight thousand rose bushes on
each trailer that had to be pulled from one gallon
pots and reset into two gallon pots so they could
keep growing bigger. You ladies might think that roses are
the best things since indoor plumbing, but after twelve or
fifteen thousand, you won't care if you never see another
god dang rose. The work was rough, but it paid well,
so I was on the fence about it being my
last day doing that job. A bunch of us were
sitting around eating a sandwich in the midday stoppage when
mister big and Zoli came walking through with the man
who was his foreman for the nursery. They were talking
as they walked. Actually, mister big and Zoli was talking
and James was listening. I wasn't eavesdropping, but I did
hear him, and it was not hard to hear. Mister
bigg and Zoli. I really like him, but I'd never
take him fishing. He even says good morning at the
top of his lungs. So what do you think he
was talking about, Well, he was talking about bat guano,
that's droppings from bats. He had some plants coming in
the next few days that really took to bat Guanoh,
it's supposed to be really good fertilizer, but for the
load of plants he had come and it was the
very best. According to someone, he was warning a good bit,
really badly. But the stuff was so expensive that he
would lose money on his plants if he bought the
bat stuff. They were almost out of the shed we
were all sitting in when I slid off of the
world bench I was sitting on and ran down to
catch up with them. I got them stopped, and I
told them that I was sorry for interrupting them, but
I could get them some batpoop if they really wanted some.
It wouldn't be all nice and neat and bags like
if they had ordered it. But I felt real sure
I could get them ten or twelve five gallon buckets
full if that would help them out. They looked at
me like I was crazy, but I just stood there. Well.
We talked a bit, and they asked me where I
could go get so much, but I wouldn't tell them that.
And mister bigg and Zolie and James were both nice men.
But if I told them where the stuff was, they
would have sent a couple of guys and they could
have gotten it for themselves without needing me at all.
I had just found a new source for cash, and
I was keeping it to myself. James kept mumbling about
how what I would bring would be pure and not
mixed with filler and sand, how sixty gallons would be
equal to twice or even three times at a bag
they could buy, how it would go further and be
a lot cheaper. In the end, we settled on a
price per bucket, and that the nursery would supply the
buckets and the shovel, and I promised to work through
the weekend and bring them the stuff the monday coming up.
Those were two happy men walking away. I knew it
was going to be kind of a nasty, gross job,
but I was feeling pretty good myself as I went
back to work on those damn rose bushes. Now, before
I tell you the rest of this, I'll say one thing.
I didn't tell those men where that backcrap was because
I didn't want them going in and getting it, and
that's what they would have done, and I wouldn't blame
them if they did. For my own good, I kept
the location to myself. It's the same reason I haven't
said the name of the town where I live in,
and I'm not going to that's for my own good
and yours. I listened as often as I can to
Cam's program, and I like it, and that's why I
sent this to him. But I read the comments from
y'all sometimes, and I don't want to turn on the
local radio one day and hear about some stranger from
Oklahoma or Pennsylvania getting torn to pieces or killed. If
one of you curious types knew where the story took place,
you'd be wanting to come and do some poking around.
I don't need anyone in and up in the graveyard
on account of what I saw, so trust me, you're
better off stand right where you are and just listening
to how things happen. Now, I'll get back to the story.
As I mentioned earlier, I like to fish. It's how
I relax and come Saturday night, there isn't much anything
better than a plate full of fresh fried fish with
onion rings and iced tea. I have this place where
I like to wet the hook because I always have
the pond of myself, and I never leave out from
there without a stringer full. It's real dark there, trees
all around keep most of the water shaded out of
the wind, and it's my kind of place. But it's
as hard as pushing a chain to get there, and
that's why no one's ever there. Anyone with a fishing
rod knows of it, but it isn't worth the hassle
for them to get there. But I have a four
x four square body that won't ever win a beauty contest,
so I don't mind getting there back before Hector was
a put the brains in the Highway department decided that
a tunnel was needed to get from here to somewhere
else faster, so they figured that going through a mountain
was better than going over or around it. What they
didn't figure on was that the mountain wanted no part
of it. Those crews didn't get more than halfway through
before someone realized that they were spending more time fetching
out all the mountain bits that had fallen during the
night than they were spending on the actual digging and boring.
The machinery they kept having to throw away because of
being crushed by fallout didn't swallow easily either, and the
sixth man to die in that hole really tied the
bow on all of it. They stayed long enough to
shore everything up inside like they were going to continue
the next day, and then everyone just split and never
came back. Nature has been taking it back ever since.
And the entrance to that tunnel that goes to nowhere
isn't more than a couple of hundred yards from where
I like to fish. I expect you wouldn't have been
able to hear yourself think down there when all the
construction was going on, but it's quiet now. They closed
up shop, chewed up the road on the way out
so no one could go mess it around down there
and set audios. But they hadn't counted on me, and
how much I liked to fish. I don't guess they
didn't figure on me being the nosy type, else they
would have sealed that great hole up. The first day
I found that pond was also the first day I
went snooping around inside. And that's how I knew about
the bats. I can take her leaf snakes and spiders
and rats and wasp I may not like them, but
they don't bother me. But bats are a different thing altogether.
I'd never cared one way or the other about bats,
because I'd only ever seen a couple. But inside that tunnel,
well that'll change your mind, all right, thousands of them
hanging there, quivering and twitching, and the dern floor of
that tunnel near covered with their droppings. The first time
I went in there, the smell was so rank that
it made me sneeze. And I guess the racket woke
them nasty devils up. They dropped off the roof and
swarmed around, flying about one hundred miles an hour, not
out of the tunnel, just around and around until they
calmed down and they roosted again. I just squatted down
and covered my head. While it was going on. It
had been like standing in the middle of a pile
of leaves and someone switching on a leaf blower from
every direction, except that the leaves and the tunnel could
if they wanted to. Now I don't care if bats
do eat mosquitoes. I hate the creepy little things, and
I couldn't wait to get out of there. I only
went back in a couple of times after that, and
not very far either. I really didn't care if I
never went back inside again. They could have the tunnel,
if I could have the pond. But then the idea
of making good money for not a lot of work
came up, and I started talking myself into going back
in and staying in while I worked. It hadn't seemed
so bad an idea when I was talking to James
and mister Bigg and Zoli, but the more I thought
about it later, the more I wished I had said nothing.
But still, a deal is a deal. So I went
that Saturday morning to shovel up sixty gallons of that mess.
I tried to be smart about everything, but trying was
about as far as I got. If I had been
on the ball, I would have left all my bucket
at the entrance in the daylight. I could have filled
up a couple and brought them out and got new
buckets and some fresh air. But I was in a
hurry to fill them and have done with this place.
I knew the whole time that if this worked, mister
big and Zoli wasn't going to hush until he had
me bringing him buckets full every week. But I wasn't
going to worry about that until later. Instead of doing
as I should have, I stacked all the buckets inside
each other and slid the handle of the shovel through
the wire loops, and I put that shovel on my shoulder.
I would have everything I needed. Once I got in
deep where that stuff really covered the ground, I would
have to make a half a dozen trips back in
and out, but I could go as fast as I wanted,
because the buckets would be full by then, and I
would be done when I started fetching them back outside.
I had new batteries in the spotlight that's attached to
my ball cap that I wear when I go coon
hunting or catfishing. I was hoping that the light wouldn't
bother the bat, since it would be pointed mostly straight down.
The biggest part of the time I was going to
have the light, and this seemed the best way to
see in there. I wasn't worried about noise either. It
wasn't like I was going to be digging through hard dirt.
I was just scooping up bat droppings. It was my
plan to have those buckets filled and sitting in the
back of my truck by early afternoon, and my reward
for a job well done was my cooler with two
sandwiches and three high life sitting on ice beside my
favorite rod and reel in the truck. Twelve buckets of
bat crap and me catching a few fish was going
to make for a good day. The shoveling went better
than I expected. The stuff was nasty and it made
my nose burn, but it filled the shovel easily and
fell into the buckets quietly. If I moved my head
wrong or too quickly, I could hear the bats above
me and getting agitated at being disturbed, but I would
face the light towards the ground and they would settle
down again. And I stayed nervous the whole time, but
as time passed, I learned how to operate in there
sort of live and let live situation. Everything went so
well that after I had the buckets filled, I picked
up one and used it to really mash the guano
down and pack the other buckets as tightly as I
could with the stuff so I could put more in
each one. The buckets weren't heavy even after being filled,
so I tried to give mister Biggins only his money's worth. Finally,
when I couldn't pack it in anymore, I reached down
to get the first two buckets so I could haul
them out, And that was when I heard the noises.
It was a racket like I had never heard before.
If you ask me while I was standing there in
the dark what was going on, I'd have guessed that
a pack of dogs were really having at each other
the most awful growling and yelping you've ever heard. And
there I was so deep in that tunnel that I
couldn't see the outdoors light or anything else. A ceiling
full of bats were hanging over me. The most got
awful fight up ahead of me. And there I was
sitting in the dark with twelve buckets of bat droppings.
I was figuring out what I was supposed to do next,
and a scream came from up ahead, and then a roar,
like from an animal in one of the old Tarzan films.
It took everything I had not to add my own
droppings to the collection. And then everything went quiet. And
if the bats had been disturbed by all the growling
and bellowing, they weren't showing it. The only, and I
mean the only reason why I picked up two buckets
and started out was because I knew I didn't want
to be in that tunnel come dark. When the bats
started waking up and leaving. I didn't want to go
back out, but I didn't want to stay either. I
didn't even want to go fishing any longer. I just
wanted to go home and sit quietly with every damn
light in the house on. I took ten or more
minutes just getting back to where I could start seeing
daylight again, even carrying a bucket in each hand. That
I should have been back in five minutes or less,
but I was doing some slow walking because I was
really afraid. I didn't know what I was afraid of exactly,
but I was sure that I should be. The ground
was soft thanks to the bat droppings covering everything, so
I wasn't making any noise with my steps, and just
as soon as I saw the first signs of light,
I turned off the light attached to my cap. I
didn't know if anything was up ahead, but if there was,
I didn't want whatever it might be to know that
I was in the tunnel. Even slower than before, I
continued to walk. I saw the hump against the tunnel wall,
but it didn't register with me that it was anything,
just a big, dark hump on the side of a
dark tunnel. The light from outside spilled in, but only
just so far. I could see shadowy outlines, but not
any details. Like when the sun is first coming up
in the morning, you can see but not all that well.
The difference was that the sun was already up as
high as it was going to get, but it wasn't
going to get any brighter inside that tunnel, at least
not back where I was standing. So I took a
deep breath of that file smelling air, and I started
walking again, creeping. I inched my way closer and closer
to the entrance of that tunnel, and I could feel
the sweat rolling down my back, and there wasn't a
sound to be heard. Not even birds or breeze from
outside was making any noise, and I just kept walking,
seeing a little better with each step. I began to
feel better because I wasn't seeing anything moving up ahead.
Well that doesn't mean that I was skipping and whistling.
I was still more scared and I had ever been,
but seeing nothing up ahead was making me feel a
little better. Whatever had made those terrible noises must have
had their fracticing gone on, and nothing could have made
me happier. I didn't care what had made all that
terrifying racket, and I didn't care if I ever knew
or not. All I wanted was for the way to
be clear so I could get finished and get out
of that tunnel. If mister big and Zoli like what
I brought to him, I would be glad to tell
him where I had gotten that stuff now, and I
wasn't planning on ever coming back here again. No amount
of money was worth this. As I neared the opening
and could more or less see. Movement caught my eye.
Everything was still mostly shadows and dark, but the light
was making it possible to see outlines of things, and
one of those outlines moved. I stood very still and
I watched, but I did not see any more movement.
It finally dawned on me that what I had seen
was like when you stack a big pile of cloth
or tarps up in a heap. Eventually a bit here
and there is going to shift as the pile settles.
That is what I believed to have happened. Something had
been piled up in a heap while I was deeper
in the tunnel, and it was beginning to settle. That
was what I had seen. Feeling better, I moved closer
to see what the pile was. The pile of whatever
it was stank worse than the bat droppings. As I
drew near to it, I sat my buckets down and
I pulled the collar of my T shirt up to
cover my nose and mouth. I knew it wasn't going
to help, but I did it anyway. I looked to
the tunnel entrance and I studied it carefully. I wanted
to make sure I was alone. Before I switched my
cap light back on. As bad as I wanted to
be done with the work and away from there, I
was awful curious about the huge pile that I couldn't
see any details of. I switched the light on and
bent my head down so that the light wouldn't shine
on it, and then I stepped back, holding a hand
over my t shirt covered mouth to keep me from screaming.
It was an animal, not just any animal. It was
the biggest thing I had ever seen, like something in
between a man and an ape, and it had huge
patches of blood matting down its fur in a dozen
different places. Its mouth was wide open, like it had
been trying to holler when it died, and blood was
staining its yellow teeth, and big gougers were torn in
its body, and you could see dark blood pulled up
on the ground from where it had dripped from the fur.
I watched its chest and I saw no movement at all,
and there were no sounds of any kind coming from
this thing. The eyes were still glads. I see, whatever
this thing was, it was dead and it was obvious
that it was. The First thing I wondered was what
could have been strong enough to kill something so big,
And then I remembered the carrying on that I had heard.
Whatever this thing had been scrapping with had beaten it.
I don't know if the sound made me look to
the tunnel entrance, or if I looked and then I
heard the sound. But as I looked toward the light,
while wondering about what had taken place, I heard the
scrapping and rustling of something moving in the bushes and
deadfall just outside. I stood there, frozen, but I did
have enough sense to switch off my light. Nothing ever
terrified me as badly as when I was plunged back
into darkness again. I've been on my own for many years,
and that was the first time I could recall praying
that someone would come and get me. I was so
scared that I was having trouble breathing. It was as
if I couldn't remember how. And then a giant silhouette
ambled into view. It looked as though it could fill
up the entire entrance to the tunnel. It couldn't. I mean,
it was big, but it wasn't that big. It just
looked that way to me. It came walking in like
it owned the place, but it was favoring something a
hurt leg or a foot, or maybe it had some
pain somewhere higher up. I didn't know, and I didn't care.
I was guessing that it had been hurt during that fight.
I was guessing about the fight too. What I was
seeing was the only thing I could imagine being large
enough to have taken down that thing at my feet.
It might have won the fight, but it had suffered
in the doing. So. You could tell by how it
was moving. It was looking deep into the tunnel, directly
toward where that thing lay dead, and the next thing
it was going to eventually see would be me. And
I knew I didn't stand a chance against something that size,
so when it turned its head to check behind it,
I dropped immediately to the ground, and I used the
dead thing as a shield or a barrier. I lay
there on the ground that was covered in bat droppings,
and I huddled up against that stinking animal for a
long time without making a sound. I was listening to
hear what the other one was doing, but no sounds
came from it. After a while, I crept up onto
my knees and I peeked out over the dead body
and the one that had come in had laid itself
down in between where I was and the tunnel entrance,
and it was just sprawled out there. I didn't know
if it was tired or hurt bad or just guarding
its trophy after the kill. All I knew for sure
was that the thing didn't know I was there, at
least not yet, and that was the only good thing
that had happened all day. I was guessing that I
had enough of that bat smell on me from working
that the thing up ahead couldn't smell me for three
or four hours or so. I laid there. Every now
and then I would hear it breathe loudly or growl
or rumble, and it would shift its position now and then,
but for the most part, it just sort of sat
there or laid there. I kept wanting to sneeze, but
I would pinch my nose until the feeling went away.
My throat and eyes were burning, and I was beginning
to wonder if I would ever get out of that
tunneling back to my truck. At some point, I began
asking myself if the thing up ahead might actually eat
the thing that I was laying beside, and if it
came back to do that. There was no way I
could remain hidden. I couldn't slip past the thing up ahead,
and I couldn't go anywhere but further back into the tunnel.
But that was a dead end filled with thousands of bats,
and I really was starting to come unwound. I couldn't
stop my hands from shaking, and honestly, I really wanted
to cry. I was so scared and frustrated. And then
I heard the thing up ahead of me began to grunt,
and I watched as it rolled over on to its
knees and heaved itself off the ground until it was
standing again. And when it moved forward, that is to say,
it moved toward the dead one that I was hiding behind,
I was sure that my life was about to be over.
I didn't have any regret spring to mind, but I
remember thinking that I would like a few more years,
and that I didn't want to leave this world ripped apart,
with all of my pieces scattered around for bats to
crap on. That big thing up ahead looked toward the
dead one and bellowed or roared so loudly that I
ducked my head and I prayed that it would stop.
The sound bouncing off that tunnel wall was not just terrible,
it was deafening. I don't know why it stood there
and yelled some animal thing I'll never understand, I don't guess.
But when it had gone quiet again, it turned and
began limping toward the entrance. I watched it until I
couldn't see it any longer, and then I listened until
I couldn't hear anything. That was when I finally stood
for the first time in hours, and I started toward
the entrance. I didn't run, but I didn't poke around either.
I walked as fast as I could while listening. For
all I knew, that thing could step back in the
tunnel at any time. I reached the edge of the opening,
and I squinted in the light, even though the sun
was starting to fade a little. Only then did I
remember all those buckets of bat droppings. As far as
I know, they're still sitting in there where I left them,
because I didn't go back for a single one of them.
When I saw nothing outside, I ran like the devil
was after me, and I didn't stop until I reached
my truck, and I climbed in and I tried three
or four times turned the key before I could control
my hands enough to start the engine, and I backed
up so far and so fast that I set a
pretty deep ding in my truck bumper against a tree.
But when I shifted into Ford, I wasn't caring about
a dent in a galvanized bumper. All I cared about
was getting home. I never ate that night after making
it home. I didn't drink as many high lifes as
I thought I might. All I did was sit there
and tremble. After three showers, I could still smell the
bat crap and that thing I had hidden behind. It
was Monday morning before I started getting an appetite again.
I stopped where I often did. I ate a bite
before driving over to see mister bigg and Zoli. He
was all smiles until I told him that I didn't
have anything for him. Now. I didn't lie and make
up a story about why I had failed to come through.
I just didn't say much of anything. He was quiet
when he took the thirty dollars that I offered him
for the shovel in the twelve buckets that I had
not come back with. He didn't seem all that mad,
but he hasn't called me about any other work since
that day. I guess he was disappointed that I'll let
him down, but I can live with that. The fact
that I was alive at all was enough for me.
I haven't been back to my favorite place to fist
since that day either. I don't know if I'm ever
going to go back there. I thought about reporting what
had happened to the wildlife people or the Sheriff's department.
I didn't think they would believe me, not even enough
to go in there and see for themselves. But if
they did, I didn't want to take the chance of
someone not being as lucky as I had been. I
guess someone could happen up on that place and do
that bit of poking around, but I had never seen
much sign of anyone one going down there, not much
around the pond and none around the mouth of that tunnel.
So I just stayed quiet to everyone until I decided
to write it down and send it to Cam's program.
The listeners here are about the only ones I thought
might believe me. So that's my story. Think of it
what you will. I was not brave when it happened,
and I was not brave enough to go back to
try to hunt it down. I was scared, and I
don't mind admitting it. You can all say or think
whatever you want, but I know that you would have
been scared too,