*****
The month of September went by quickly with the boys making lots of new friends at school and Karen settling in as a high school English teacher. A career she had never seriously considered while taking her masters at the University of Toronto, but now felt more rewarding than any job she could have imagined. Lex seemed to have developed a real interest in getting up and off to school on time every morning, Karen never had to wake him or chase him out the door for school even once. And Ricky seemed to develop a real appetite for fruit, salmon and shellfish, for which his Uncle Jeff demonstrated his approval by bringing by as much salmon and mussels as Ricky could handle.
It was cold that early October morning when Ricky headed off to school and his morning routine. When he got to the stump he found his polished green stone and laid out some salmon steaks in wax paper that he took from the fridge along with a few large Bartlett pears. Lately the dark figure just inside the tree line made little effort to conceal its presence and as long as Ricky didn’t look directly at it, his friend would stand half hidden behind a tree and just watch him. Ricky figured his friend was about a head taller than Lex, which made it taller than mom and about as tall as Uncle Jeff’s shoulder. He had no way of knowing for sure, but because of the size he figured it must be a kid like him. Ricky felt that he and the young Old One had been building a foundation of trust.
Today turned out to be different. As Ricky finished taking his offering for the one he left he heard the same “Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!” he had heard up near the ridge all those weeks ago. The sound was definitely close and in the 9 o’clock position relative to him and the stump. Within seconds the sound came again, “Whoosh! Whoosh! Thump! Thump!” but much closer and Ricky could see a very large figure looming in the bush, maybe sixty feet away. His friend in the 12:00 position now stood completely in the open and appeared as a man wearing a big fur coat. It was only a shape he could see, no face or other defined features. “Sooowheeet!” came the whistle and the younger one rotated his body a quarter turn while the head still faced Ricky. ““Sooowheeet!” came the whistle again along with the “Thump! Thump!” and Ricky could see the large one to his left banging an arm on a spruce tree. “Sooowheeet!” came the response from the younger one as he rapidly faded into the darkness of the bush. By the time he looked back for the large one, he was gone. Ricky looked to that stump as he passed by every morning for weeks but he never again found an offering there. He even looked in the doghouse a few times, but it appeared that his friend had gone.
It was the Friday night before Halloween that Sunday that the boys had a sleep over and invited “one friend each” as directed by Mom. Ricky invited his warped buddy Gary and Lex brought Tommy the rifleman. Karen brought home two extra large pizzas with enough chips and pop to keep the boys belching all night. After supper the boys settled into the living room and began to argue over who got to play what game on the large screen TV.
“OK, we’ll flip ya to see who goes first,” Lex said. “The winners get their choice for an hour of play.”
“Half an hour of play,” Ricky countered.
“I’ll flip,” Tommy jumped at the opportunity, pulling a quarter out of his pocket. “Heads we win. Tails you lose.”
“Very funny, jerk off!” retorted Gary.
“Hey listen, whitey!” Tommy said as he leaned forward on the L-shaped sectional couch.
“Don’t start, guys?” interjected Ricky, forever the peacemaker. “Heads we win.”
Tommy flipped the coin and let it land on the open newspaper on the large four by four square coffee table in front of them.
“Heads, we win!” shouted Gary.
“For half an hour,” Lex belatedly agreed.
“Yeah, and you’re lucky we let you whities go first?” advised Tommy.
“Well, we won the toss you jerk!” retorted Ricky. “And what’s with all the white man remarks, you turd? I’m as much native as Lex and probably you too. Both of your parents aren’t native, so cut the crap with all this I’m First Nations and you’re white garbage.” It was Ricky’s home and he was tired of listening to all of Tommy’s crap about not being native enough to hang around with him and Lex and their other friends. He wished Lex would stick up for him in all this racist crap that Tommy spouted off all the time.
“We were here first and are part of the spirit of the land and the nature in it,” Tommy challenged snobbishly.
“Ah, you’re just a bigot. Where do you hear all that crap anyway?” Ricky was tired of this argument and dismissed Tommy’s ignorant ranting.
“At least Lex and your mom look native. You don’t,” jabbed Tommy.
This really hurt Ricky and his mouth went off without thinking. “Well if you’ve been here all of your life how come you’ve never seen one of the Old One’s and I have?” Ricky taunted Tommy.
“What are you talking about, Old One’s?” Tommy asked.
“Sasquatch, Bigfoot , Wildman, Old One. You don’t even know what they’re called but you’re so native,” shot back Ricky.
“You’ve seen a Sasquatch?” Tommy leaned forward and laughed infuriating Ricky.
“It’s true,” said Lex, finally stepping in on Ricky’s side.
“No way,” insisted Tommy, “I know people who have searched their whole life for evidence of the Sasquatch and you guys move into town and see one in the first few weeks you’re here? My dad has seen footprints and gone into the bush many times looking for other evidence of the Sasquatch and he has never seen one.”
“I’m telling ya,” it’s true, Lex insisted.
The brothers spent the next hour going over the details of their discoveries regarding the Old One’s with Gary and Tommy. Video games were forgotten as they got all swept up in Bigfoot fever. They used the Playstation instead to search the Internet for information and watch Youtube videos into the early morning hours, long after Karen went to bed. Before turning in to sleep that night the boys made a pact to prove the existence of the Sasquatch and become rich and famous.
“Do you think you can find the spot up on the ridge where you found those smooth red stones once again, Ricky?” Tommy was asking.
“I dunno. But I am willing to try,” Ricky replied all excited to be of a mysterious adventure.
“OK, in the morning, when your mom goes out shopping we will all go up to the ridge and see if we can find the spot with the pile of red stones and any other sign of the Old One’s,” Tommy said to universal agreement as Lex turned off the lamp and each settled into their respective sleeping bags strewn about the living room.
Chapter 6: Forgive All Trespasses
A Guest for Halloween: A Lex & Ricky Mystery Page 9
