by Steve Vernon
“Bigfoot went over the mountain,” Warren sang, badly off key. “Bigfoot went over the mountain. Bigfoot went over the mou-ount-tain, to see what he could see.”
I knew what he was doing. He was just trying to make me laugh and forget about my grumpiness but I was not going to fall for that.
I held onto my frown like it was piece of Bigfoot-proof armor.
There was no way that I was going to let him see me grin.
I jammed my earplugs even deeper into my ears.
I touched a button.
Somewhere deep inside of my two year old i-pod my favorite band – The Squealing Sacred Sea Monkeys – began shrieking out my absolute favorite song – Misunderstood #23.
We are talking fifteen minutes of raw electric guitars, jackhammers, bagpipes and three guys yelling MISUNDERSTOOD-NUMBER-TWENTY-THREE, MISUNDERSTOOD-NUMBER-TWENTY-THREE, MISUNDERSTOOD-NUMBER-TWENTY-THREE.
Which was just plain absolutely perfect for drowning out a stepdad’s off-key singing.
Next, I bent a stick of peppermint gum into my mouth and I started chewing just as loudly as possible.
Warren hated loud chewing. He complained at every meal – telling me to close my mouth because he said that I sounded like an animal. And then I would say that I needed to keep my mouth open to breathe while I chewed and then Warren would blow his own breath out in a display of exasperation and then Mom would tell me to listen to my Dad and then I would listen to my Mom and I would pretend for just a little while longer to listen to Warren – who really wasn’t my for real Dad.
Baby carriage or not.
Which is why we were hiking out here in the highlands of Cape Breton.
We were out here because Mom had some sort of freaking convention to go to and Warren had decided that he and I really needed to bond. That was the word he used. Not bond, like in James Bond – but bond, like in glue.
That word “bond” always made me laugh. It made me picture the two of us – Warren and me, stuck together in a tangle of Crazy Glue, Quick Dry Cement and leftover boiled oatmeal after the pot had dried on the counter overnight.
I am talking gross.
Warren said that he and I really needed to get on a hiking trip together and that we would bond like a real stepdad and stepson ought to – an idea that was lame enough to need its own wheelchair ramp and a handicapped parking permit and maybe even an extra set of crutches and a cast.
I mean, I could be sitting in a Toronto movie theatre right now – eating a big old bag full of salted popcorn and chewing on a well-ketchuped hotdog.
Heck, I could have even been watching a movie in a Halifax theatre – which was about as close to being in Toronto as a single green pea was close to being a forty acre field of pea plants – but I wished that I was there and not anywhere but where I really was – namely, here.
With Warren.
I swatted at a mosquito – which was a little like draining one eye dropper’s worth of sea water out of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The bugs out here were thick enough to eat a grown kid alive. I absolutely hated being up here in the Cape Breton highlands. As far as I was concerned we were way too close to the clouds. I had the feeling that the sky was going to open up and swallow whatever was left of me after the bugs got through with chewing their fill of my flesh.
I missed television.
I missed movies.
I missed candy stores.
And I missed Dad.
But for now – all that I could do was to look straight ahead and try my very best to ignore Warren’s off-key singing.
“Bigfoot went over the mountain.”
The man didn’t give up easy, I’ll say that much for him.
We kept on walking.
There was a birch tree standing about twenty feet in front of us – with that pale white bark that birch trees wear, tattering loose from the tree’s trunk like a paper jam in a printer.
I focused on that birch tree.
I told myself that so long as I kept on walking towards that birch tree that everything was going to be just fine.
Then something strange happened.
The bark of the birch tree began to blur and ripple and twist. Then the bark grew oddly furry and then the tree grew into a bear.
I know just how that sounds.
I know that the bear must have actually been hiding behind that tree only it sure did not look that way to me at all. It looked more like there was some kind of a door hidden in that tree – a door that the bear just stepped out of.
And that bear looked freaking mean.
You know how you always see bears in the movies and they either look cute or kind of gawkish and clumsy?
Well, this here bear was neither cute nor gawkishly clumsy. This here bear was a Godzilla-sized grizzly bear – about one thousand pounds of stink and claw and tooth and ugly stomach hunger that was going to kill us and eat us and he did not seem too particular about the order in which he was going to accomplish this in.
Warren was right.
There were no grizzly bears in Cape Breton.
But I guess this particular grizzly bear did not know that.
I guess that this grizzly bear maybe had not studied his geography.
In any case, that badly-misplaced grizzly bear charged straight directly at us.
“You have to tell,” Warren quietly said – looking directly at me as he turned to face the charging birch tree grizzly bear.
I have to tell what?
Warren didn’t say anything else.
All that he did was to stand there and wait.
I saw Warren put one hand up towards that oncoming birch tree grizzly bear, as if to say stop. The grizzly bear swarmed over Warren’s skinny stuck-out arm like he was a big gigantic furry tidal wave. The next thing I knew Warren was lying on his back on the ground being eaten alive by that gigantic birch tree grizzly bear.
I mean – how do you deal with something like that?
This bear was eating my freaking stepdad – a guy that I hated – but he was still my freaking stepdad – and more importantly, as skinny as Warren was he might just not be enough to fill the hunger of a for real birch tree grizzly bear.
I opened my mouth to scream.
The stick of gum that I was chewing on slid down my chin and it stuck there like a chunk of peppermint-flavored fungus.
The Squealing Sacred Sea Monkeys kept on shrieking MISUNDERSTOOD #23.
And all the while that birch tree grizzly bear had Warren pinned down in the dirt just chewing like Warren was a peppermint flavored meatball.
Warren still had that one skinny arm of his stuck straight up with his thumb jammed halfway into the hollow of the big bear’s ear. It looked as if he might have been rooting for ear wax. I don’t really think that Warren’s thumb was hurting that birch tree grizzly bear all that much. The bear had his head pushed down into Warren’s windbreaker and the t-shirt underneath and was gnawing and chewing on what was underneath the t-shirt.
Namely, Warren.
I ought to do something.
I ought to pick up a rock or a branch and charge in there and rescue my stepdad.
I ought to show that birch tree grizzly bear that my kung-fu was a whole lot stronger than all of his stink and his hair and his teeth – only I did not have any sort of kung-fu and that birch tree bear was awfully freaking big.
I couldn’t do a thing.
It was like I had been zapped with an alien paralysis ray.
I was frozen stuck with fear.
The only thing that wasn’t frozen stuck was my mouth. My mouth was open and it was screaming louder than a hundred horror movies rolled into one.
Which was right about when the Cape Breton Bigfoot showed up.
For real – and totally un-mythological.
Chapter Two – Pure Harmonized Terror
Up until this moment I had thought that the Cape Breton Bigfoot – or for that matter an
y sort of Bigfoot-type creature in the whole wide world – was nothing more than a figment of somebody else’s sick and twisted imagination – but I guess that the stories all were true because here he stood – almost tall enough to stunt double as a totem pole with arms that dangled somewhere close to his anklebones and feet that looked big enough to snowshoe clear to Alaska on them if he wanted to.
That Cape Breton Bigfoot was running straight down the side of the hill, straight at me – and then he spread his arms wide and then he flew.
Or at least that’s what it looked like to me.
Halfway through mid-charge Bigfoot tripped one big left foot over a teetered-up rock. Then he flipped over and stuck that same big left foot up into the air behind himself in the wrong direction and pointed his nose straight down towards the dirt and sort of cart wheeled face-first straight down the side of the mountain.
I’m not saying it was pretty.
Mind you that birch tree grizzly bear was awfully surprised to see that Bigfoot coming, like he was. The birch tree-bear let go of Warren who sort of lay there in the dirt and bled quietly. I couldn’t tell if Warren was breathing or dying or just lying there dead already.
As for me, I was still frozen stuck with fear.
The birch tree grizzly bear stepped over what was left of my stepdad and stepped up towards Bigfoot who was still cart wheeling straight down the mountain.
Straight towards me.
The only problem being that I was stuck standing between the hurtling Bigfoot and the geographically-displaced birch tree grizzly bear – which was a really bad place for any sort of seventeen year old boy to be – especially if he ever dreamed of living to see eighteen.
So I ran straight towards Warren.
I believed that if I could get there to Warren I might either save him or maybe just hide behind him. At the same time I screamed even louder. I don’t know if my screaming somehow helped my running much but it sure took my mind from off of my mad blind panic.
The birch tree grizzly bear came straight at me. All I heard was snarl. All I saw was teeth. All I could feel was fear. Do you want me to use bigger words? Do you want me to tell you how I was terrified and my heart was beating like a riot of heavy metal drummers? Forget it. I didn’t have time for fancy description.
I was way too busy being just plain scared.
Meanwhile, that Cape Breton Bigfoot crashed into a pine tree. It looked like he broke his neck and a few other less important bones. The tree snapped in two and Bigfoot turned twice more times in the air. He hurtled over my head and then he smacked down back-end-first into the dirt with a mighty big thud.
I don’t know about you – but I was pretty sure that the Cape Breton Bigfoot had just killed himself.
Which only left me with the Godzilla-sized geographically-displaced birch tree grizzly bear to worry about – so I supposed I ought to be grateful only I was too busy screaming. I was certain to run out of scream sooner or later but my vocal cords kept seeking out new octaves of panic. The Squealing Sacred Sea Monkeys kept screaming in my ears – MISUNDERSTOOD-NUMBER-TWENTY-THREE, MISUNDERSTOOD-NUMBER-TWENTY-THREE, MISUNDERSTOOD-NUMBER-TWENTY-THREE and we were all making one heck of a noise.
I caught hold of Warren and I tried to drag him clear of the battle. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going to drag him to. It wasn’t as if I had thought all that carefully about my next step. I just knew that I had to do something.
Like maybe get myself eaten alive by a grizzly bear that hadn’t bothered to study his geography too hard.
I shook Warren.
He rolled his gaze up towards me. It looked to me like he was looking at me and through me and straight on past me. It looked as if he were trying to tell me a story with his eyes – like he was trying to stare out an entire forty-eight volume encyclopedia of meaning with one single momentary wide-eyed glance.
What was he trying to tell me?
I couldn’t tell you, even if I knew.
Warren groaned a little. His t-shirt looked like he had accidentally dumped an entire pot full of homemade chili-con-carne right on top of it.
The only problem was I knew just what that chili-con-carne really was.
It was Warren’s blood mixed together with pieces of Warren’s grizzly-torn body.
Right now, Warren looked as if a dozen exploding baby carriages had gone off around him. He felt kind of wet and loose beneath the fabric of his t-shirt. I didn’t know what to do about it. So I screamed again. Screaming hadn’t helped me all that much so far, but perhaps the third time would be luckier than the first two tries.
And then the Cape Breton Bigfoot sat up and growled along with my screaming. I think he might have been trying to harmonize along with my terror and The Squealing Sacred Sea Monkeys – only he was going to have to do a whole lot better than he was doing in order to keep up with the likes of my kind of pure intense shrieking terror. I was screaming notes that would have given a rap-ranting opera singer a case of rusty-throated laryngitis.
The birch tree grizzly bear ignored my screaming and lumbered directly towards Bigfoot.
I would have been smart to run, right about then. Only I was way too busy screaming to think of any really smart thoughts. I should have thought of something else to do, like maybe peeing in my pants or learning to speak Lithuanian – but right now all I could think of was that if I screamed loudly enough then maybe somebody might actually hear me getting suddenly eaten to death.
At least then I could hope for a decent sort of burial, assuming the birch bear left anything behind to bury.
The birch tree grizzly bear got a little closer to Bigfoot. Then Bigfoot sat up a little straighter. Then Bigfoot blinked and he shook his head. He was drooling a little down one side of his chin and his eyes were wobbling – he had hit the ground that hard – but I wasn’t about to pass him a napkin or a pair of corrective glasses.
By now that birch tree grizzly bear was making those angry hungry woofing choof-choof sounds that I had heard grizzly bears make on the Wild Outdoors Channel. Only I couldn’t quite seem to be able to reach the remote control to change the channel – namely, because this wasn’t the Wild Outdoors Channel.
This was a real honest to grizzly bear life and death.
Most likely mine.
Meanwhile Bigfoot raised himself up on the palms of his hands. He pushed himself upwards hard and then he launched himself forward in a sort of hopeful leaning leap, right at the same time as that grizzly bear charged on in.
Bigfoot had hold of a chunk of that tree trunk that he’d knocked down. I didn’t remember seeing him pick that tree trunk up. I think it even surprised him that he was still holding onto it I guess it was just something his right hand did while he was trying to stand up. He swung that chunk of pine trunk at the birch tree grizzly bear, connecting with a fat wet smacking sound as the swung trunk landed square against the side of the grizzly’s ugly wedged head.
WHACK!!!
The birch tree grizzly bear shook his head. He made another choof-choof sound and he kept on coming. Bigfoot reached his free hand straight out and he caught hold of the grizzly’s thick woolly throat, figuring on choking the grizzly to death as near as I could figure. The grizzly reached out its teeth and caught hold of Bigfoot’s stretched out forearm. Bigfoot swung the chunk of trunk down just as hard as he could on the back of the big bear’s neck – three or four times in a row – which looked to me to be a big mistake.
The chunk of trunk shattered against the large hump of muscle on the back of the grizzly bear’s neck. The next thing I knew Bigfoot was holding nothing but a fistful of sawdust, toothpicks and semi-ambitious splinters.
The bear reared up and caught hold of Bigfoot – hanging onto his slab like shoulders as if he was hoping for a fast lesson in slow dance technique.
The two of them looked like a couple of fat hairy and world-class-ugly television wrestlers, way too tired to go one more round.
S
o they just leaned on each other really hard.
It was an absolute deadlock.
Which was right about the exact moment that the coyote fell out of the sky.
I guess things happen fast here in Cape Breton.
Especially when you didn’t want them to.
Chapter Three – A Big Shaggy Funny-smelling Eagle
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.
