by Phil Truman
“Hell, ain’t you never heard of the Tsalagee Hill Man?”
Sunny burst out laughing. “The Tsalagee Hill Man,” she repeated when she got her breath. “Don’t tell me you actually believe all that Bigfoot stuff. That’s just a story parents made up so their teenagers wouldn’t go parking.”
Punch did know that, although it’d never stopped him in his adolescence from visiting some of the back roads on a Saturday night. That is, until the Saturday night in his junior year when he, parked with Waynette Heilmach on a road out by that very lake, heard a low guttural snuffling somewhere close to the back of his daddy’s Rambler. That sound so chilled Punch’s spine that he jumped behind the wheel, fired up the Rambler, and sped away. When he looked in the rearview mirror, he could make out a large dark form standing in the moonlight. He’d never forgotten that night, nor had Waynette. When she asked what had gotten into him, the terrified Punch had said to her, “Didn’t you hear that? Something was back there. Something big.”
“Hear what? Whadda you mean something big?” she’d whined with disappointment as she went about re-adjusting her clothing.
“Oh it ain’t all legend.” Punch said to Sunny. He shook his head and looked at his feet, crossing his arms at his chest. “There’s been some incidents reported just recently, and I’ve seen the thing myself.”
“Oh, really,” Sunny said. “So where did you see it?”
Punch had never been entirely sure that whatever spooked him that night with Waynette was actually the Hill Man, but he’d heard enough stories and seen enough evidence over the years to convince him the creature was more than just a myth. As far back as the 1850’s the Native Americans who lived in that region had tribal stories of a large hairy man-beast who roamed the woods and hills in the eastern and southeastern part of The Nations. The Choctaw people called him Hill Man Who Yells at Night; the Cherokees called him “He Who Lives in the Hills” and later simply “The Hill Man.”
Every year or so someone would claim they’d seen the Hill Man ducking back into the woods, or lurking around their out buildings at night, and when an animal—livestock or pet—would turn up dead or missing, the Hill Man always got blamed. Usually, when a rash of sightings and animal harassments would escalate to more than five in a two-week period, Bigfoot investigators would scurry into town from out of the urban newsrooms and academia woodwork to look for physical evidence, and take some pictures. They always left with volumes of eye-witness accounts, a few strands of hair, some plaster casts of big footprints, and some photos of deer, coyotes, and cows their motion-activated game cameras took.
In all the years of reported sightings, no one had ever gotten a clear or up close photograph of the Hill Man. That continued into the first decade of the Twenty-first Century when having a camera ready at any opportunity became as easy as reaching in a pocket and taking out a cell phone.
Punch had seen his friend White Oxley’s eighteen seconds of Super 8 movie film he shot in 1977 of what he claimed was his encounter with the Hill Man. It showed some seemingly large bipedal creature walking across a road and into some woods at a distance of some two hundred yards. The film was grainy, jerky, and overexposed in spots with no discernable details of the thing, but White claimed it was no hoax and was willing to sell it to any investigator for a hundred thousand dollars.
So Punch knew what he was talking about, and he aimed to put as much of a scare in this snotty woman as he could.
“I seen it not far from here, out near this lake.”
“Uh-huh. When was that?”
“It was, um, well, back in high school. I’uz out here one night.” Punch smiled. “Me and this girl.” Sunny looked back at him with distaste. Punch continued. “And this thing, this creature,” He raised his hands above his head, fingers in a claw form, looking very much like a bear in a two-legged battle stance. “...huge, maybe eight, ten feet tall, came out of the woods and started pounding on the truck of my car and growling like nothing I ain’t never heard, and don’t never want to hear again.”
“What did you do?” Sunny asked, not looking overly impressed.
“Well, I done what anyone woulda done; I got the hell outta there.” He stopped and thought for a second, then added, “I needed to protect the lady.”
“Right,” Sunny said with a doubting smile and nod.
Punch looked toward the lowering sun, at that time about fifteen minutes from dipping below the horizon. “Anyway, don’t think you want to be out here after dark. How far away is your car?”
“Not far,” Sunny answered. “About a quarter mile or so.”
“I expect you better get going, then. I’d walk you to it, but I got to get my boat back across the lake. You just stick to the path and I reckon you’ll be awright. I wouldn’t dilly dally, though, if I was you.”
Punch thought she definitely looked nervous and a little apprehensive by then. Mission accomplished.
“Well, yes. Maybe I should be heading on back.” She looked here and there, trying to see into the darkening woods. She gathered up her things, her bag of stones, and trudged off into the forest. That little excitement she’d felt fought with her sudden disdain for this man, and that angered her.
Grinning, Punch watched her for several seconds as she walked away. “You watch out now,” he shouted after her before she disappeared amongst the trees. A sudden gust of wind moved the trees and brush behind him, and he looked about uneasily, his grin fading. He hurriedly returned to his boat, and pushed it quickly off the bank and into the water. Drifting five feet from the shoreline, he yanked the cord to start the outboard motor, but it didn’t catch. During his third yank, he wondered if the Hill Man could swim.
Chapter 5
Punch Goes Fishing
Punch’s Balsa Boogie Plum Crazy hook-up with Sunny Griggs had come not quite three months after Buck’s funeral, where he’d first seen her. Three days past their lakeside meeting, he decided to do a little research on her.
“You ever run into that Griggs woman?” Punch asked White Oxley, his booth partner at Arlene’s Café.
“Who?” White asked as he dumped another packet of Sweet N’ Low into the tan liquid in his coffee mug.
“Sunny Griggs,” Punch repeated.
“Ain’t she the girl Buck and Lorene raised?” White asked as he stirred the creamy sweet beverage that had once been coffee.
“Yeah. I run into her the other day.”
“Where at?” White asked.
“Out t’lake. I was out there fishin’ and I... well, she was on the shore and we run into each other.”
“On the shore?” White raised his eyebrows and took a slurp of his barely coffee.
“Yeah,” Punch said. Then continued, “So, anyway, there was this Griggs woman lookin’ like some kind of lumberjack or sumpin. Straw colored hair, flannel shirt and jeans. Kind of a good lookin’ woman in her own way. Out lookin’ for spiritual rocks, she said.”
Oxley looked up when Punch said that last part, and leaned his back against the booth’s cushion, his eyes intently on Punch.
“Anyways,” Punch continued, “we started talking. Started out friendly enough, then she started talkin’ about this Mother Goddess, she called it. I thought she was jokin’ around, so I tried to joke around with her, but then she started to get kind uh snotty and huffy about it. Don’t think she liked it much that I was fishin’. Said something about the fish belonging to that there Mother God. I tell you what. First I ever heard of it.”
“Yeah, I seen her around,” White said after another slurp. “She come back to town after Buck died. Heard she’s some kind of new-age hippie. Maxine Applegate says she practices witchcraft.”
Punch knitted his brow, then smiled. “Well, if anyone would know that, it’d be Maxine.” He leaned toward White, and said conspiratorially, “I thought she was kind of uppity, so I started telling her to watch out for the Hill Man in them woods, trying to scare her and all. She just laughed at me, but, I dunno, she might’ve wet h
er pants by the time she got back to her car.” Punch leaned back and shook in a quiet laugh.
“I seen the Hill Man several times,” White said without humor. “You seen my movie picture I got of him. If you put some fear into her, she oughta been scared. That thing ain’t no laughing matter. He’s sure enough out there.”
Punch continued with his grinning and head shaking. “Well, it was funny,” he said.
White took another sip and set his coffee mug back down on the tabletop. “Why you so interested in that Griggs woman, anyway?” He kept his right index finger crooked through the handle hole.
Jo Lynn swooped in from White’s left back shoulder and sloshed fresh coffee into White’s mug and then Punch’s. Some of the molten brown liquid splashed onto White’s index finger, and he jerked it away uttering a soft “Ow!” then sucked on the spot.
Punch winced a little at Oxley’s question and gave him a “shutup” look. He looked up at Jo Lynn who stood looking down at him, pot of hot coffee in one hand, the other on her left hip, and a blue norther swirling in her eyes. Punch smiled with apprehension. He thought she sort of looked like she might pour the rest of that pot of coffee onto his lap. “Hey, babe,” he said to her in an attempt to divert the conversation, hoping maybe she hadn’t heard White.
“Well,” Jo Lynn said after a few seconds. “Ain’t you going to answer White’s question?”
“What questions is that, darlin’?” Punch asked with all innocence.
“He wanted to know why you’re chasin’ after Sunny Griggs?”
“No, he just...” Punch said and looked at White for help. White examined his finger as if expecting a blister to rise. “Now, just a dang minute, Jo Lynn. I ain’t chasin’ nobody. All I— ”
“Well, that ain’t been my experience,” Jo Lynn said with a smirk. “Just about anyone with a skirt seems to get your attention.”
White slid down the booth bench closer to the wall, and picked a plastic creamer cup out of their basket. He cracked the sealed top and poured the contents into his coffee, seemingly oblivious to the war brewing not three feet to his left.
“Now, no!” Punch said with mounting frustration, a little louder than he wanted. Heads in the other booths and tables turned to look. Glancing toward the others, then back at Jo Lynn, he spoke in a lower voice, “See, you don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about. At the time, she didn’t have on a skirt.”
Several of the curious sitting nearer to Punch’s booth broke out laughing. Jo Lynn looked at him with disgust and shook her head. As she wheeled to walk away she muttered, “You’re so stupid.” But loud enough for Punch to hear.
“No wait, Jo Lynn, that ain’t what I meant,” Punch called after her with a plaintive whine. He looked to the laughers, but they’d all turned back to their own groups to carry on their low laughing and head shaking. Punch turned crimson from the base of his neck to the top of his bushy-haired head.
“Thanks a lot, Oxley,” he said with humiliated anger. His friend shrugged and continued to concentrate on stirring his cream and sweetener diluted coffee.
Chapter 6
Punch Dances With Jo Lynn
The Punch and Jo Lynn dancing duet—that Texas two-step, that jitterbug, that waltzing rondo, that allemande left and allemande right, that cotton-eyed Joe, that fandango and tango—had begun in earnest in the mid-70’s. They’d both been young then, not much more than kids.
When Jo Lynn had confronted Punch about Sunny Griggs at Arlene’s, the two were situated in one of their estranged, post-marital, cohabitating arrangements, about the fifth one to date. But their colorful history together had begun some thirty years prior.
Nineteen-year-old Jo Lynn had come into Arlene’s on a Sunday evening in the spring of 1973, just before closing. She asked the café’s owner if she had any job openings. Arlene sat next to the cash register counting money, and writing in an open ledger. When Jo Lynn came up to her, Arlene stopped writing, and carefully looked the girl up and down. She saw a spindly, pretty girl with a lot of brunette hair and a sad, fearful look in her eyes. She also noticed a dark area around her left eye under a heavy blanket of make-up, and the scab of a cut on her lower lip, which the dark red lipstick hadn’t quite concealed.
“Where you from, honey?” Arlene asked.
The girl looked nervous, her eyes darting. “Oklahoma City,” she said.
“What brings you way out here to our little town?” Arlene asked. She laid her pen aside and leaned forward toward Jo Lynn, putting her elbows and forearms on the counter.
“I’m just... I have an aunt here I’m staying with. I wanted to get away from the city for a while.”
“You in some kind of trouble?” Arlene cocked her head to the left, frowning slightly, but not in an unfriendly manner.
“No, nothing with the law or anything. There’s this guy... he... we broke up and I wanted to get away... from him,” Jo Lynn said. Tears started to well in her eyes, and she sniffed, putting the heel of her right hand to the corner of her eye. Then she smiled and expressed a little air in a short laugh. “You know how it is,” she said, lips trembling.
Arlene looked at the blue-green bruises dotting the girl’s arms from wrist to bicep. “Uh huh,” she answered.
Indeed she did know, having had some experience herself with black eyes and split lips dealt out by a man. But that had been decades past, and the guy now lay moldering in his grave, the recipient of a forty-five slug to the heart from a military policeman’s service pistol. Two MP’s, had come to their base housing unit in response to a call from neighbors. Her husband, an Army mess sergeant in a drunken rage, had charged one of the MP’s with a raised butcher knife. That incident had left Arlene a young widow; most likely, just in time. She’d taken what was left of the soldier’s ten thousand dollar life insurance benefit given her, and had come home to Tsalagee where she opened her café; leaving her battered past behind.
“Your folks back in Oklahoma City?” Arlene asked.
“No,” Jo Lynn said. “Both my parents were killed in a tornado...”
Arlene sucked in air making a startled sound. “Oh, my,” she said. “I’m so sorry, dear.”
Jo Lynn nodded and looked at the floor. “I’ve got a brother in the Navy. We never were very close. Haven’t heard from him in a while... and Aunt Rose, that’s who I’m staying with. She’s about all the family I got left.” Her voice trailed off as she looked up at Arlene.
“Aunt Rose? Is that Rose Leach?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sure, I know her. A nice lady. You have any experience waitressing?”
“No, not really,” Jo Lynn said looking at the floor again. “I worked some at a McDonald’s when I was in high school. The last couple of years I’ve been working in a factory.”
So Arlene, as usual her heart being bigger than her better judgment, had taken Jo Lynn on as an employee, even though she and Poncho—her fry cook—could pretty much handle the place at the time. But in most cases the instincts of Arlene’s big heart proved to be wiser than cold judgment in the long run, and hiring Jo Lynn became a shining example of that. She hadn’t really expected the girl to stick around longer than that summer of ’73. But the girl settled in and the two of them struck up a friendship that lasted the rest of Arlene’s life. Arlene seemed to find the daughter she never had, and Jo Lynn regained some of the mother she’d lost.
When Arlene died in 1996, Jo Lynn found that she had inherited her employer’s small house and small business. Out of honor and respect and love for her friend and patron, Jo Lynn left Arlene’s name on the door and on the menus and on the small neon sign that hung above the outside corner of the building. Arlene’s had been a town landmark for nearly sixty years. Calling it anything other than Arlene’s Café just wouldn’t seem right.
* * *
The first time Punch laid eyes on Jo Lynn back in ’73, the muscles that tightened his jaw and kept his mouth closed, fell slack. He was twenty-one at the time, and Jo Lynn
had just started her first day at Arlene’s. Punch’s jaw remained in that dropped position, his eyes intently watching the girl’s every move, until Hayward Yost, sitting on the counter stool next to him, leaned over and suggested to Punch that he close his mouth. Hayward told Punch that the expression made him look like a fool. He added, he doubted that particular look would impress any girl, let alone the pretty one stacking a tray load of clean coffee cups under the counter in front of them.
Punch immediately complied only to have the condition involuntarily return, when Jo Lynn finished with the cups and stood in front of him. She took the pencil out of her piled up red-brown hair, looked at him coolly and asked, “What can I getcha?”
The new waitress cocked her head in query after ten seconds of waiting for the slack-jawed Punch to reply, then looked over at Hayward as if deciding maybe Punch was too mentally disabled to answer her question.
“Is he with you?” she asked Hayward in a voice which seemed to convey suspicions about Punch’s mental capacity.
“No,” Hayward said smiling kindly to the girl. “No, he came in here all on his own.” The big man reached over and put his meaty left hand gently on Punch’s right shoulder. He leaned closer to the young man’s face and said in a slightly louder voice, “Didn’t you, Punch?”
Punch nodded but kept his open-mouthed stare on Jo Lynn.
“That’s right,” Hayward said patting Punch’s shoulder. “That’s right.” He turned back to Jo Lynn. “He does pretty well for himself most of the time, considerin’. We’re real proud of him.”
Punch seemed to come back to earth. He closed his mouth and blushed, then leaned over and pushed Hayward a little with his right shoulder and arm. “Stop it, Hayward,” he said, and then started looking at the menu a little sheepishly, thinking maybe he could impress the girl with the fact that he could read.
Hayward laughed and jostled Punch back. Jo Lynn looked at the two of them; confusion pinched her eyebrows.
“You just start here?” Hayward asked her. Everybody knew everybody in Tsalagee during that time, and this pretty young thing behind Arlene’s counter on a Monday morning was a total and pleasant surprise.
