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It was like something out of one of those old John Wayne movies.
Dad-not-Dad stood at one side of the clearing and Bigfoot stood at the other.
“I thought that I had seen the last of you,” Dad-not-Dad said to Bigfoot. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead by now?”
“Not hardly,” Bigfoot said.
Dad-not-Dad shook his head.
“That’s the problem with things nowadays,” Dad-not-Dad said. “Time was, you’d decapitate a fellow and he would have the common decency to STAY decapitated.”
“That’s your story,” Bigfoot said. “That’s not my story.”
Dad-not-Dad turned his head and let his gaze fall on me.
I felt a chill run through me like I had gargled ice cold glacier water in the middle of a March blizzard.
“I am thinking that you probably had some help,” Dad-not-Dad said. “I am thinking that boy might have been telling stories on you.”
His eyes hardened just a little.
“That’s the Teller in you, coming out,” Dad-not-Dad said, looking down at the Warren-cocoon lying there in the dirt beside him.
“We’re not related,” I said. “Warren’s just my stepdad. Let him go. He isn’t anything to you.”
Dad-not-Dad laughed at that.
“You’ve been listening to the wrong kind of stories,” Dad-not-Dad said. “The fact is that fellow in that holding-cocoon has done his very best to take care of you.”
He had?
“You knew the true story all along,” Dad-not-Dad said. “You were just too busy talking to stop and listen to what your ears were trying to tell you.”
I was?
He wasn’t carrying a gun – but I still couldn’t escape the feeling that he was just about to pull one from out of his sleeve and shoot me dead, maybe three or four times fast.
“Do you know what I like to do to boys who tell too many stories?” Dad-not-Dad asked.
Bigfoot took a slow shaky step forward.
“Over my dead body,” Bigfoot said.
Out of all the phrases in the dictionary WHY did he have to pick that one?
Dad-not-Dad turned his gaze back onto Bigfoot.
“Oh I can arrange that particular development easily enough,” Dad-not-Dad said. “And this time I guarantee it’ll stay stuck.”
“What about me?” Coyote asked, stepping out of the shadows of the cave. “It seems to me that you and I have some business to discuss.”
Dad-not-Dad just grinned.
“You don’t really think that I am actually worried about what you might do or not do, little brother?” Dad-not-Dad said to Coyote.
“You ought to be worried,” Coyote replied. “I might have learned a trick or two since we last spoke.”
Dad-not-Dad smiled sadly.
“Funny,” he said. “I don’t think I ever remember speaking to you. In fact, if I had to sum your entire life story in one single word I would have to go with unmemorable.”
Coyote just growled.
“And as for you,” Dad-not-Dad went on, shifting his gaze back to Bigfoot. “Back from the dead or not, you just don’t look all that ready to be talking about teaching me any sort of a lesson.”
He had a point.
Bigfoot did NOT look half as tough as he did when I first met him. I guess being decapitated and speared to death will do that to a fellow – no matter how strong and hairy he starts out as.
“Enough talk,” Bigfoot growled.
He ran straight at Dad-not-Dad who just stood there waiting calmly as several hundred pounds of enraged Sasquatch charged in his general direction.
Bigfoot built up speed.
Dad-not-Dad still did not move.
And then at the very last moment before impact Dad-not-Dad stepped to one side, leaving his foot leaned out. It was the oldest schoolyard trick in the book and it worked perfectly. Bigfoot hit Dad-not-Dad’s stuck-out foot with his own snowshoe-sized monstrosity and performed a wondrous triple somersault in mid-air before crashing to the dirt.
Dad-not-Dad looked down at his fallen opponent and shook his head sadly.
“You really aren’t up to this sort of thing, are you?” Dad-not-Dad said. “Maybe you should have brought along some help with you?”
It wasn’t Bigfoot’s fault. He was still recovering from being decapitated and poked with spears about a hundred times or so. Still, I blamed myself for his weakness. I should have told his stories longer and stronger.
I should have done better than I had.
“He doesn’t need any help,” Coyote howled. “He’s got me!”
I had almost forgotten that Coyote was still standing beside me – only he wasn’t standing anymore. He took off running, straight at Dad-not-Dad, and for just a half of a half moment I thought that I was about to see a repeat performance of Bigfoot’s wondrous triple somersault of death.
Dad-not-Dad just stood there waiting.
I guess he was figuring the same thing as I was.
Only Coyote wasn’t interested in attempting Bigfoot’s triple somersault of death.
About halfway to touchdown Coyote spread his arms wide like a big funny-smelling shaggy eagle.
And then he flew.