Life in the Flood Plains

I live in the marsh. Some folks would call this the swamp, but I know better. It’s the marsh. My house sits up on 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 with only a few trees scattered here and there. From where I sit, I can jump in my flat-bottomed jon boat, push right through the reeds and rushes and run my trot lines. During the dry spells, I may have to walk down to the riverbank to get to my boat, but I don’t mind. Walkin’s good for the soul.

When the rains come, or the ice jams up the river in the winter, the water comes right across the marsh and floods all the way into the woods behind my house. Sometimes, there might be little humps of dry ground where I can walk here and there. That’s why I don’t keep a vehicle parked here at the house. I got a truck, but it sits over at Miss Harrison’s farm in case I need it. She owns most of the land on the other side of the woods. I’ve known her my whole life, so she don’t mind. She keeps the keys and uses it as her secondary farm truck. It keeps the engine running, so I don’t mind. That’s how it is for me and Miss Harrison. We don’t mind.

When I run my trotlines, I generally head right on up the river to the Benson’s Fish Market to sell what I caught. I don’t need a truck for that. The market sits right on the river, and my boat has a motor on it that’ll get me there as long as I stay close to the shore. I can trade fish for gas, and they provide enough of anything else I need right there at the market. Mainly, I buy powdered creamer for my coffee, cigarettes, canned beans, and my favorite candy bars – Snickers. I don’t eat much of anything else.

I guess some folk look down on how I live, but it suits me fine. I never was good at making conversation. Television never interested me much. I got a portable radio that I play a little too often. It keeps me broke for having to replace the batteries, but that’s about the only entertainment I ever enjoy. No one bothers me here, and I don’t bother no one. It’s quiet and peaceful. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, I go to my brother’s house for dinner. 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 never had no kids, so maybe that’s how it’s done. I don’t know.

My Favorite Niece

I got one niece that I like, though. She checks in on me every now and then. She has one of those pocket phones that she never sets 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 the house, which is about half a mile. Then, rather than have a good visit, she sits out on the porch and whines and complains because she can’t get good service. 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 Snicker bars, I’d tell her to stop coming altogether. But, I do like my Snicker bars. And I guess I like Brin. She’s a good niece. Besides, it does my heart good to know that I got one family member who cares enough to come all the way out here to check on me.

About a month ago, Brin was sitting out on the porch watching something on the screen of her phone and I caught little bits and pieces of what it was saying. It was talking about bigfoot. Now, that’s a topic I can talk about all day long. I’ve seen ‘em. I know better’n to tell most people that. They’d come down here to my home, 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 Brin sitting right on my front porch listening to some feller tell how he’d been chased through the bayou by one.

“What is that?” I asked her when my curiosity got the better of me.

“It’s a YouTube channel about bigfoot encounters,” she said.

“Huh,” I huffed.

“Oh, I know, Uncle Don,” she said. “You don’t believe in those things. But I do. And I love this channel. Even if you don’t, you gotta love the stories.”

I studied her for a minute and wondered if I should tell her what I knew. I mean that poor girl has to walk through the woods to get to me, and 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 Snicker bars. Finally, I decided 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 gave her a sideways look to gauge her reaction. “There’s things in these woods people don’t know about.” I waited.

“In these woods?” That got her face out of that phone. “Like what?” She was interested, but now, I had to figure out how much to tell.

I stared out across the marsh to where the river reflected sunlight like great big gold coins on the surface. I had to think. I’d started something, but there was still time to back out. If I wanted to. But did I want to?

“Uncle Don? What do you know?” It wasn’t the question, it was how she asked it. She wanted to the truth.

I guess I wanted to tell her, because I said, “I know there’s things in these woods.” I gestured over my shoulder toward the trees on the other side of the house. “And I know they sometimes come here and try to get in.”

I watched her eyes open wide and the color 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 interest, and half hoping I’d scared her into changing the subject.

“Are you telling me I walk through sasquatch infested woods when I come to see you?” She finally got out.

“Well…” I had to be careful here. I might have said, “yes,” a few years back. But lately, things have changed. For one, I haven’t seen no bigfoot in a while. I still have something trying to get into the house at night. Sometimes when I get back from running the trotlines there are signs around the house. But to say I’ve seen a bigfoot, or anything indicating that’s what it was, any more recently than five years ago, would be a lie. And what I have been seeing… I just ain’t got a name for it.

I gave myself a minute to think about what I was going to say next. There was no point in scaring her too bad. I liked my Snicker bars too much for that. Besides, when the bigfoot came around, they came day or night. They had no fear of sunlight. These things… well, I can’t say they fear the sun, but they seem to like the cover of night a lot better. I never knew Brin to come for a visit before noon, nor stay later than maybe two or three. I figured she was safe.

After a solid minute and another “Uncle Don,” from Brin, I said, “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, smiled at the way she turned off that blasted pocket phone and tucked it away, and began my tale.

The First Encounter

“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 that didn’t make much sense.” She got up off of the wood stump I’d set up on the porch for a makeshift stool and came over to sit beside me on my glider. It squealed a little at the added weight before resuming the gentle back and forth motion I was guiding it through with my feet. “We were 12 and 15 before we got our first glimpse of the culprits,” I told her.

Back in the 1950s, when I was a kid, this old cabin was where we spent our summers. My daddy had bought the land from Miss Harrison’s daddy and spent a whole summer building the house up on stilts to keep the water out. I was seven and 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 up a tent for us.

Being young boys, Stevie and me wanted to sleep out under the stars. The mosquitoes nearly drained us dry before we gave up and got inside the tent with Momma and Daddy. That must have been around midnight. By two o’clock, we were ready to leave the tent, get into Daddy’s 1951 Carryall Suburban and go home. Thankfully, it was a dry summer, so he’d been able to drive it right up to the house. There would be plenty of times in the coming decades when he’d had to park it up on the road and we’d had to walk down about a quarter mile through the woods.

Things went south pretty quick in the tent that night when we all woke up to the sound of something hitting the side of it. This wasn’t little tapping sounds, or even something as minor as acorns. Whatever was hitting the tent was the size of baseballs. 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 terror outweighs common sense. We were on that side of the scale. Momma 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, and 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 about the time the sky started turning a velvety grayish blue, we finally got the nerve to crawl out of the tent and head for home. Hedge apples litter the ground all around the tent. Daddy mumbled something about no hedge trees being anywhere around us. Momma didn’t hesitate. She started packing up camp. We ate breakfast back at the house that morning.

Brin broke in then and told me her daddy had told her that story before. She said she’d never believed it. Even if she did, he’d always been real vague about where it happened. I could see the questions forming in her mind as she sat and waited for me to tell her more, but I was a little hesitant. I wondered why Steve never made it clear where that story took place. I guess maybe he didn’t want to scare her.

“Yeah, it was this place. You should’ve figured that out. This being where we spent our summers growin’ up ‘n all.” She shrugged her shoulders to that. “I’m gonna 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.” I didn’t need to explain 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 morning and drive to the mill to work.

After a few weeks, we got over worrying what might be out in those woods ready to chuck some more hedge apples at us. Kids are that way. Curiosity trumps common sense every time. Mostly, the woods behind the house were swamps. And, of course, between the house and the river is a marsh. That’s a whole lot of exploring for two little boys to do. By the end of that first summer, we knew every inch of it. Over the next few years, we made this area our kingdom. We played cowboys and Indians, Robinhood, pirates, and explorers. We fought rattlesnakes and grizzly bears, evil sheriffs, and greedy princes, captured ships, and battled lions all around this cabin. And not once did we see or hear anything that would remind us of that first night in the tent.

The First Sight

It was the summer after I turned 12 before anything happened to make us think of those hedge apples again. We’re far enough south that summer can be pretty miserable. Being pretty much surrounded by water, there was always more humidity in the air than oxygen. And the mosquitoes swarm into big ole hoards of vampire colonies that’ll sweep you up 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’n 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 Momma had a bed in the back bedroom with windows on two walls to keep them cool at night.

It must have been early August. We knew our time here at 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. Stevie was 15 by then. He knew he’d be getting his driver’s license come the end of the 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 the 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 kept the bullies off my back. I was a scrawny, wiry kid with a kinely cockeyed 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, not him. And it was always him who said we shouldn’t oughta do it, not 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 refused to do that.

It took a little coaxing 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 that he got his shoes on. He stopped to tie his. I never did.

It was a dry summer which meant we wouldn’t need the boat to get down to the river. There are 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 of it without losing my shoe. 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 riverbank throwing stones in the water and watching the moonlight dancing on its surface.

“We’re here,” Stevie finally said. “Now what do you wanna do?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Since we didn’t bring the boat down, we weren’t going out onto the water. But I had a foot covered in mud that 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. 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. The marsh grass was high and held its secrets. But there in the water, it was almost daylight. We got to playing and splashing and having a good time until we lost all track of time. So I don’t know how long we’d been down there when the first big splash happened in the water.

“Donny! Look over there! A fish jumped!” 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 shore, thinking our daddy had got up and found us gone. We knew we were in trouble. But Daddy wasn’t standing on the shore. No one was.

Another big splash sent water flying up at us. Then another rock landed right between us. It must have come from the shoreline, but we didn’t see anyone. I looked over at Stevie whose eyes had to be every bit as wide as mine. We were thinking of another night when hedge apples was thrown at us.

“Stevie?” I asked unsteady like. I don’t mind admitting that I was a bit scared. 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, from safety, we were.

Stevie started moving toward the shoreline. I thought he must have been crazy. I wasn’t about to get close enough to find out what unseen monster was attacking us. We’d gone to the drive-in the weekend before we came to the camp for the summer and seen Invisible Invaders. 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 catfish.

“Where you going?” I screamed.

“Home!” Stevie yelled back from the bank where he was already grabbing up his clothes and shoes.

I took one more look around at the black tree line, the deep shadowy pockets of marsh, and the narrow shoreline before screaming, “wait for me!”

We started back up the path to the house at a dead 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. My heart was pounding by then. I felt my legs getting weak like they didn’t want to do what I was telling them. Behind me, I heard what sounded like a bulldozer tearing through the grass. “Stevie!” I screamed. “Wait!”

I could still hear my brother somewhere ahead of me. He was running and grunting and maybe even crying. But I couldn’t quite place where he was. I could hear what was behind me too. It was breathing deeply and making a funny mumbling sound. I was having trouble breathing like the wind had been knocked out of me. I opened my mouth to yell for my brother again, but the words wouldn’t come. I lost the will to fight about then. Slowly, as if someone had forgotten to wind the clock, I began to stop running until I was standing still in the path. 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 God. Don’t let it hurt,” I prayed when I accepted that I was going to die.

At that moment, the reeds in front of me burst open and Stevie stepped through. He grabbed my hand and jerked me forward. The sounds around us got louder and closer, but Stevie never let go of my hand 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. The loud slam of the screen door popped and reverberated across the marsh as we looked up and saw Daddy come out onto the steps with his shotgun in his hand. He fired a round 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 us, but somehow knew it wasn’t gonna win against that fire stick in Daddy’s hand. We stared back at the strange beast. “What is that thing?” we wondered. We’d never seen anything like it outside of a gorilla we saw once at the St. 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 at it.

Daddy raised his gun again, and the darn thing turned around and disappeared into the grass so fast we couldn’t rightly tell which direction it was going. Daddy might have seen it from his vantage point, but me’n Stevie couldn’t tell. We could hear other animals moving in the grass, too. Now, I was a scrawny kid, so that grass always seemed taller to me back then. But the truth is, my brother was a head taller than it. Even he couldn’t see where the things were. Later, we decided they surely had to go down on all fours to disappear like that.

Seven years later, I went to the movies and 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.

Knowing When It’s Over

“That happened here?” Brin asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” 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.

“Uncle Don,” she said, “why did you stay here if those things were 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 can count. They used to stand on the edge of the woods, sometimes, where we could see them. But after that first night, they never seemed all that threatening. We carried guns with us everywhere for a while. Momma wanted to sell the place, but Daddy insisted this was his property and there weren’t no smelly apes gonna chase him outta here.

Once I got out of school, I started spending more and more time here. Daddy died first and Momma followed soon after. Stevie was a career soldier who didn’t marry till he was 38. I figured once he came home and got married, then started having kids, he’d want a place to bring ‘em. But 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 I always gave ‘em plenty of leeway. I guess you could say we got used to each other.

For lack of a good answer, I shrugged my shoulders. Brin studied the floorboards on the porch for a minute, then looked out across the marsh to the river. Then she looked right at me and asked, “what happened to them?”

I didn’t quite 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 thought with a crooked smile. I put my head back and looked up at the beadboard 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 knew 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. They crawl under the house, too, and gnaw at the floorboards under my feet. And when they figure it out, there won’t be much I can do to stop ‘em. 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 Shortie. The young fellers around town liked to pick on him. One day, they cornered him and they were really gonna give him what for. There were five of them and one Shortie, but when the last punch was thrown, it was Shortie who came out on top. My daddy told me to learn from that. He said, “It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, Son. It’s the size of the fight in 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 watch me with eyes so angry I can feel their hatred on me. 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 Brin and said, “who knows?”

I’m sitting here on my porch tonight, writing this all out in my notebook. I hope if someone finds it, they’ll read it and know what happened to me. I hope it ain’t Brin. Should’ve told her to stay away from here now. But someone will come. I won’t be here to tell them what happened. They’ll have to read this notebook. Those things are standing out in the grass watching me right now. The sun is going down, and with every darkening minute, more of them appear. They nearly got a hole wore in the floorboards now. Once it gets dark, I doubt I’ll have much longer to live. Please, God. Don’t let it hurt.