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The coyote fell out of the sky like somebody had accidentally dropped him from off of the top of a lonely wandering rain cloud.
All right – so I know just what that sounds like when I say it - but I had already witnessed a grizzly bear stepping out from the inside of a birch tree and I had seen an up-to-this-point mythical Cape Breton Bigfoot performing a triple-face-first-belly-flop down a Nova Scotia mountain side. Seeing a sky-diving coyote drop down onto a birch tree grizzly bear from off of a random wandering cloud didn’t really surprise me in the least.
The coyote was about the size of a large German shepherd and he landed directly upon Bigfoot who had just finished landing upon the grizzly bear. The tri-multaneous impact of the coyote banging against the Bigfoot who banged upon the grizzly bear’s back shook the ground around me like a small-to-medium earthquake.
“Woof,” I said, as if the coyote had actually dropped onto me - only it sounded more like I was trying my very best to woof just like a grizzly bear. I wondered if somehow maybe I had actually said something in grizzly – like maybe please don’t eat me.
At least I had managed to stop screaming along the way.
Bigfoot tipped backwards. The bear stood up and the coyote sort of shook his own head like it might have rattled inside.
Warren moaned just a little.
I wiggled the backpack from off of my shoulders, pulled off my windbreaker and tried to wrap it over Warren’s chest like a big neon blue bandage – which only resulted in me getting some of Warren’s chili-con-carne blood on my jacket.
Warren was dying.
There wasn’t any other word for it.
I wondered if that was how it happened with my real Dad. It didn’t much for me to think of me seeing him lying there next to that baby carriage on some dusty Afghanistan road, his blood and his vital fluids chili-con-carne soaking down into the dirt. I felt something wet quivering in the corner of my eyes and I told myself it was nothing more than a drop of chili-con-carne juice.
Meanwhile, Bigfoot did his best to roll and curl up and protect his own belly. Actually, it looked to me like he wanted to curl up into a big shaggy Boy Scout knot and maybe pull himself tight enough to somehow disappear up his own behind-hole.
Which didn’t quite work.
The coyote stumbled over to the birch tree and leaned on it like he was slowly falling asleep. I think he might even have peed on the tree just a little too, which was kind of gross and probably smelled a little funny – even from this far away.
While all that was happening that wandering rain cloud that the Coyote had fallen off of seemed to sort of drift down out of the sky and park itself in a nearby thicket of alders – which seemed like a sort of a strange behavior for ANY sort of a rain cloud.
Then, while I was staring at the rain cloud, Bigfoot got one of his great big feet worked up into the gut of that birch tree grizzly bear – like he was trying to balance that big bear atop of one big foot. The next thing I knew Bigfoot twisted, trying hard to keep those big grizzly bear claws away from his rib cage – which had target written all over it. Meanwhile, the grizzly bear was doing his very best to swallow Bigfoot’s entire left arm from the elbow on up. And then Bigfoot worked his other big foot up into the grizzly bear’s big saggy gut.
I could see what was coming next.
“Do it,” I said, whispering softly aloud to myself. “Get that big foot up there and kick-stomp old King Kong Yogi right back to the heart of Jellystone Park.”
I’m not sure just when I had started to cheer for Bigfoot.
I mean, he was most likely going to eat me for dessert if he managed to make a main course out of the grizzly bear. I should have been crawling over to my stepdad and thinking about some sort of an escape plan - but my feet had still somehow not quite remembered how to move.
“Do it,” I repeated. “Kick-stomp Yogi.”
I still don’t really know why I was cheering.
Maybe I had just watched one too many wrestling matches on television but I felt I had to root for somebody – and so far Bigfoot hadn’t tried to eat me.
“Go, Bigfoot, go!” I called out.
The coyote giggled.
Now I didn’t know that coyotes could giggle but then again I also didn’t know that coyotes could sky-dive either. Meanwhile, Bigfoot threw me a dirty stop-bugging-me kind of look as if he somehow understood just exactly what I was saying.
Then Bigfoot pushed just as hard as he could with both of his big feet, his free arm, and the arm that the grizzly had almost swallowed nearly up to his elbow. He pushed hard, using all of his leverage, and then he flung that birch tree grizzly bear up off him. The bear made a fine fat arc across the skyline like a big shaggy funny-smelling eagle.
Then the bear sort of bounced two or three times hard when he landed and kept on rolling downhill. I guess being built on a slope the way he was – with his big high butt and his low-slung head he had a whole lot of trouble rolling downhill fast.
When he finally stopped rolling the grizzly bear picked himself up, shook it all out and did his very best to look as if he had intended all along to allow that Bigfoot to boot his big furry butt down the side of the mountain - which was right about when the coyote stood up, sucked in his breath and then he swelled himself up with a single mighty inhale. It was like he took a deep breath that kept on getting deeper.
He swelled himself up to about the size of a small-to-medium pickup truck birthday balloon and then he leaped – howling like a rabid fire engine siren – aimed directly at the grizzly.
At that exact moment, while the pickup-sized-coyote was hovering above the grizzly bear like a giant coyote-shaped hot air balloon in some sort of a weird Thanksgiving Day parade - a huge raven – about the size of full grown nuclear jet plane – swooped down and plucked the grizzly bear up like he weighed nothing more than a feather or two.
That raven beat his big black wings and then he took off airborne.
Only he didn’t exactly pick up that grizzly bear.
It was more like the raven’s claws reached down inside the bear’s body and pulled out a living breathing thundercloud – which should not be confused with the thundercloud that the coyote had sky-dove from off of. I could see that tiny little birch bear thundercloud floating and hanging in the raven’s grasp as the big bird beat its heavy black wings and disappeared over the horizon – thundercloud and all.
“Moose turds,” Bigfoot growled – which I am guessing was Bigfoot for swearing.
Then Bigfoot bent down and picked up a rock the size of a Volkswagen engine and he threw it at the escaping raven – only he missed.
The rock knocked down an entire good-sized chunk of that alder thicket, almost crushing that rain cloud – so I guess that Bigfeet were environmentally unfriendly.
“Hey, watch where you go throwing them rocks!” a voice rumbled from somewhere deep inside of that alder thicket. “You nearly hit me that time.”
I looked hard but I couldn’t see anyone in there – unless maybe they were hiding there inside of that rain cloud.
Meanwhile, the raven flew directly over my head. I felt the raven’s shadow pass over me and it was like one of those chills that came at you out of nowhere, running up and down your backbone like an army of frozen tap-dancing zombie-ants.
What was left of the grizzly bear just lay there and the coyote landed in the dirt right directly beside the bear’s remains like a half-ton of awkward.
He made a sound like a falling pancake when he hit the dirt.
SPLAT!!!
We had won, I guess.
“YAY BIGFOOT!” I shouted out.
I couldn’t help but feeling happy. If someone had given me a pair of bright pink cheerleading pom-poms I would have shook them hard and maybe done a triple-cartwheel and followed up with a double-hernia-split. It felt a little better than screaming, I supposed, but I still have had better ideas in my time. The way I figured it this Bigfoot was either going to eat me or save me for later – like maybe for a midnight snack.
I figured if I cheered loudly enough it might spoil his appetite.
What the heck - if worse came to worse I could always wake Warren up and get him to sing about going over the mountain again.
Maybe even on-key.
Bigfoot lumbered over towards me. It was a little like watching a fully grown wood lot suddenly up-root itself and take a casual sort of Sunday stroll. I could feel his natural Sasquatch heat and I could smell his stink and his heavy feet thumping down on the mountain side like a wall full of walking thunder.
I tried to run but somebody had nailed my feet down into the dirt.
Bigfoot got closer.
I looked around for someone to help. Warren just lay there and bled a little longer. He sort of bounced softly every time Bigfoot took a step. Warren was still moaning each time he bounced so I guessed he was going to live just long enough to serve as the second course in a two course Bigfoot banquet.
The next thing I knew Bigfoot was standing over me, his shadow nearly swallowing me whole. That was something to be thankful for, I guess. At least I wasn’t going to die sunburned. So I opened up my mouth. Then I closed it again while Bigfoot stood over me just looking. Finally I found a few last words hidden in the dry and empty cave of my mouth, somewhere back in behind the pizza-stained enamel of my second left molar.
“Please don’t eat me, Mister Bigfoot,” I said. “I’m sorry I thought you were mythical.”
Which really wasn’t much as last words went.
Bigfoot blew his breath out through his lips.
For just a moment in time he sounded just exactly like my stepdad Warren, blowing his breath over his lips to show just how much teenage suffering he had to put up with. And Warren was right – the Bigfoot had a pair of the saddest-looking eyes I had ever seen.
“Eat you?” Bigfoot said. “Not even with a pair of rented-out teeth,”
I just lay there in the dirt and gawked.
Somehow hearing Bigfoot talk like that was even harder to believe then seeing him beat up on a way-out-of-place grizzly bear.
“And I for sure aren’t no stinking myth,” Bigfoot rumbled, before turning back to staring towards that fast-disappearing raven. “Don’t think that I didn’t hear you saying that earlier, loud and clear.”
I still couldn’t find anything else to do but stare stupidly upwards at something that was NOT an hallucination, a lie, or a rural myth..
“He doesn’t really like to be called mythical,” the Coyote said, leaning over me and grinning ear to fuzzy ear. “Just so that you’d know.”
I nodded slowly.
Then I pinched myself.
“This isn’t any kind of a dream,” Bigfoot growled, without even bothering to look down at what I was doing. “So you can stop pinching yourself.”
All the same I pinched myself again.
Which hurt.