They were a logging family. Guess just about all of them were loggers, except for Ava May, who married good and moved to Valdosta. There were three brothers - Harold, Jasper, and Walter. They all worked hard at logging, mainly under the supervision of their Uncle Joe, who also worked hard - when he was sober. All of them had big families, but most of their kids had married real young and moved off.
Walter and his wife, Jean’s were all gone except for Pearly and Danny (who wasn’t quite right). Pearly wanted to move in with her boyfriend, but he didn’t have the money just yet to rent them a place. There wasn’t much hope for Danny moving off. As I said, he wasn’t quite right and you could tell it by looking at him. But he was good help with the logging, as long as there was somebody there to tell him what to do.
Danny would sweep their yard with a broom till the sand felt like gray sugar under your bare feet. He did this for Jean, his mama, as she couldn’t walk too good. Her foot got mashed when a log truck ran over it by accident. Now she stayed inside most of the time, watching T.V. and crocheting little doilies for your tables. Guess she had to keep working at something, as she’d been working hard all her life till her foot got mashed.
The first I heard about bigfoot, was when Aunt Lillian bought her a lot on the Red River. She was a widow now and wanted to be close to her kinfolk. One thing she loved to do was fish. Her and Uncle Joe would go off and set catfish lines in the river around her lot. That’s when it got strange. They came in one night looking real serious and talking in whispers, like they didn’t want some of us to hear what was going on. That’s what got me scared to begin with - the whispering. It wasn’t natural for them. They were some of the loudest talking people you ever heard. Comes from talking above chainsaws and log trucks. It wasn’t till the next morning, that I found out what was going on. Aunt Lillian said “Let’s don’t go camping out there on the river for awhile. Wait till we get the trailer in.” This didn’t make sense, because she would camp out there every night if Walter and Jean would let her. So I went outside and found Danny.
He was sitting on the side of the porch making little patterns in the sand with his toes. So I did, too, for awhile.
Directly, I asked him why everybody was whispering last night.
“Bigfoot,” he answered.
“What in tarnation is a bigfoot?” I questioned.
“Well, the one I seen it was kinda hard to tell. First I thought it was some kinda bear, but it walked up too straight. Then, I saw it was a man. A big, hairy man. Almost up to here,” he said, as he pointed to the eaves of the house.
“That big? Are you sure?” I asked.
The next time Aunt Lillian mentioned camping out was when we were putting down her drum for a septic tank. We’d been out there all day digging and hauling gravel. When we got that done and the power pole set, we could move the trailer in. Walter said, “No, let’s don’t camp out here tonight. Not yet.” And then Aunt Lillian called him a yellow-bellied chicken. Walter’s face turned red and the veins on his neck stood out. “I ain’t no chicken. Fix up the camp and I’ll go git us some firewood,” he snorted. Nobody asked me and I sure as heck didn’t want to sleep out there close to that bigfoot!
It began to get dark and the bugs were singing in the trees. Uncle Joe had started a good fire going and Aunt Lillian was hunting the grill to put over it. By that time we were all starving to death. So I hollered I’d watch the fire and get the grease hot if they’d go get the catfish off the line. So they went. Pretty soon all I could hear was cussing and carrying on. Danny, Walter, and I all ran down there. Crashing sounds came from the woods. Aunt Lillian was saying some awful words and Uncle Joe was, too.
Danny and Walter went down the riverbank first. It was pretty steep right there and you had to hold onto roots in some places. Right then, a big, dark, hairy thing came running past me. It had both hands full of something and it sounded like it was laughing! I was so scared, I went down that river bank on my backside. They were all down there, looking at a huge set of tracks that led down to the water and back up again, into the bushes. This is when it all began to make sense. Bigfoot had beat us out of our supper, cause the catfish line was now empty!
