by Steve Vernon
“It will be okay, Adam,’ the voice of Warren said. “Just you wait and see.”
I didn’t have all that long to wait.
BOOM-BALOOM!
Raven hit us again.
The Warren-cocoon bounced even harder and then it slid right out the door with me still hanging onto it. I stuck one foot out against the left side of the doorway and the other foot against the right side and I hung on for dear life – barely managing to hold onto the Warren-cocoon.
I could see Warren and I could see my Dad and the two faces were flashing in front of me like a playing card clothes-pinned onto a spinning bicycle wheel.
And then Coyote was standing directly beside me – with his teeth sunk down into my left leg – trying to haul me back inside.
I could feel his teeth digging in and even though I knew that he was doing his best not to hurt me much – he was also doing his level best to hang onto my leg – which meant he had to bite down hard.
Which hurt.
A whole lot.
“OWWW!” I yelled.
“Stmmmm Cmphlighning,” Coyote mumbled – which I think was him asking me to stop complaining – only my leg kept getting in the way of proper enunciation.
And then he bit down harder.
“Owww!” I yelled, nearly as loud as Bigfoot.
And then I kicked Coyote with my other leg.
It wasn’t that hard of a kick and I didn’t really mean to do it. It was just sort of instinctive. It was just as instinctive a move as him biting down on my leg even harder in return.
“Owww!!!” I howled out – twice as loud as Bigfoot had EVER yelled.
And I kicked again – only this time Coyote yanked his head backwards – pulling me and the Warren-cocoon back into the safety of The Prophet.
Great, I thought.
We’re winning.
And then Raven grabbed hold of the far end of the Warren-cocoon.
Great, I thought.
Now we’re NOT winning nearly as much as we had been.
I could see the Godzilla-sized bird somehow reaching in and shrinking down just enough to catch hold of the end of the Warren-cocoon with his beak.
I had never seen so big a bird from this close up before now but I’m pretty sure that Raven was grinning at me.
“I’m losing him,” I shouted – meaning the Warren-cocoon. “Pull harder.”
“UMPH-LOOGHEN-HUM,” Coyote mouthed over my leg – meaning that he was losing his grip on me.
The whole time Raven kept on laughing.
I guess that he had never seen anything half as funny as the two of us jammed up together on top of each other in that mystic pink motor home doorway, hanging onto that big fuzzy Warren-cocoon with all of our might.
Did you ever watch a domino tipping match?
You know – where somebody with a WHOLE lot of spare time on their hands will lay out some really cool sort of a design – like maybe a maple leaf or a map of the Yukon Territories or the outline of a fully grown bull moose just by lining up a giant forever-long row of dominos?
And THEN – once they have got that entire moose/maple-leaf/map=of-the-Yukon laid out then they’ll crouch down and give that very first domino just a tiny little flick just hard enough to tip that next domino which tips into the third domino and finally that entire moose or maple leaf or Yukon Territory map is nothing more than a long mess of dominoes laying on the floor waiting for somebody to pick them back up.
Well that was just sort of how it went with me and Coyote and the Warren-cocoon and Raven. We were stuck at what my geeky chess-playing step-dad Warren – whom I was clinging onto for dear sweet life – would have called a stalemate.
Until Bigfoot jumped in.
Chapter Twenty Six – Raven, Prepare to be Plucked
It happened like this.
First I heard The Prophet asking somebody that I couldn’t exactly see just what the heck they thought they were doing.
No, I don’t know why The Prophet said that.
Like I said I just heard it, is all.
Then the next thing I heard was Bigfoot replying loudly that he was going to do something – so I guess maybe it was Bigfoot that The Prophet had been talking to in the first place.
And then Bigfoot did something.
In spades.
Only I still didn’t see a thing that was happening around me.
That’s just how it goes, isn’t it? Most things that affect you in this life go on without you ever really seeing how it went.
Your Mom falls out of love with your very own Dad and then decides that a divorce is a really good idea.
You didn’t see that happen.
Your Dad gets blown up by a baby carriage full of roofing nails.
You didn’t see that happen either.
That’s how life works.
All you ever have to live on and follow are stories that other people tell you. The important things in life are USUALLY the things that you can’t feel or touch – or even see.
So I DIDN’T see Bigfoot letting go of The Prophet’s steering wheel.
And I DIDN’T see Bigfoot leaping in my direction.
“Where are you going?” the Prophet asked again in a panic sounding voice – which didn’t do much for my confidence at all.
“To do something,” I heard Bigfoot replying. “I could use a little help if you could spare it.”
And then all at once Bigfoot let go of the wheel and stood behind me and caught hold of both of my shoulders and then he jammed both of his feet squarely against the wall of the Winnebago – and me and Coyote and Bigfoot must have looked like a three-man bobsled team trying to luge down four hundred feet invisible ski trail in the sky.
“Here we go,” the Prophet yelled. “Bottom floor, coming up.”
The big pink mystical motor home veered wildly out of control – with no one at the steering wheel. The Prophet was still beating his wings but it was like watching your drunken uncle trying to learn how to polka dance after the band had stopped playing. He couldn’t seem to fly in a straight line at all.
We hurtled downwards like a giant pink comet.
I could see the Labrador shoreline just ahead of us but I wasn’t certain if we were going to land on the shore or the ocean or maybe just crash and burn and die.
That was a really cheerful thought, wasn’t it?
The very last thing I remember was the feeling of Warren slipping away as the Raven pulled him free from my grip – and the taste of salty choked-back tears funneling down my screaming throat while Bigfoot pulled me back into the safety of the giant pink mystical travel home that was busily falling out of the sky.
“Hang on,” Bigfoot told me – only he did not give me a single clue as to exactly WHAT I ought to be hanging on to.
Then he pulled me up and then he even managed to grab hold of Warren and pull him up too – and I can still see that look of consternation and disgust on the beak of that Raven after Bigfoot had yanked my cocoon-stepdad out from his grasp – and then all at once Bigfoot let go of my hands, kicked off straight out the side door of The Prophet and launched himself directly at the onlooking Raven.
“GEE-RON-AH-MO-BANZAI!” Bigfoot yelled.
I had to grin at that war whoop of Bigfoot as he entered freefall.
That reckless yell meant one thing and one thing only.
Raven feathers were going to be plucked
I would have sat back and enjoyed the show – but I was WAY too busy trying my best to hang onto my stepdad and to not to fall out of the giant pink drunken-uncle-polka-dancing Winnebago and down to my death below.
It’s important to remember that.
A fellow has GOT to keep his priorities straight.
Chapter Twenty Seven – A Giant Geronimo Free Fall Pancake
I’ve got to admit that Bigfoot almost looked weirdly pretty and maybe even just a little bit graceful hung out there in thin mid-air wit
h his arms spread wide like a giant furry sky-diving wanna-be-paratrooper Wookie.
Mind you, I am not really sure just what Bigfoot was actually thinking, jumping out of the safety of The Prophet like that.
I mean, Raven had a whole lot more options when it came to aerial maneuverability.
Raven could turn to the left or the right. He could fly straight up or he could spiral downwards or he could just flap his wings and hover there for a little while.
As a bird – when it came to sky – Raven had a whole lot of possible options.
Bigfoot – on the other hand – had one single undeniable choice, and that one choice was to fall straight down – which is why it kind of surprised me when Raven banked and turned in such a way as to meet Bigfoot in a perfect mid-air collision.
Which was about the time that The Prophet tilted and spun and I almost lost my grip upon the slippery goop of the Warren-cocoon one more time – which almost slid and fell out of the side door of the mystic pink Winnebago, yet again.
Sometimes it seems as if life is nothing more than a whole lot of doing the same thing over and over and over again until something finally works.
“DAD!” I shouted, nearly jumping out of the Winnebago myself.
Yeah, I know.
I went and I said the “D-word”, directly in Warren’s direction.
It didn’t matter that Warren hadn’t actually heard me yelling that “D-word” – what with him being covered by that mystical pine needle cocoon of his.
It was still the “D-word”.
Meaning, Dad.
And I had said it at Warren.
I almost jumped, too. I don’t really know what I thought I could accomplish by jumping but I still felt that knee-jerk of reflex galvanizing through the calves of my legs and the only thing that stopped me from hurtling out of that door towards certain death was Coyote hanging onto me for dear sweet life.
Raven kept on coming towards Bigfoot and Bigfoot was primed and ready.
I watched as Bigfoot grabbed a fistful of midnight black feathers with his big left hand as he hurtled past Raven, bringing his big right fist hooking upwards into a wonderfully beautiful right hook.
“POW!!!” Bigfoot yelled – just as his right fist hit home.
I’m not really sure if yelling pow made him hit any harder – but Raven shook the right hook off and handed Bigfoot a hook of his own – namely he drove that giant heavy beak of his deep down into Bigfoot’s shoulder meat.
I saw something red spilling down Bigfoot’s shoulder – and it didn’t look like ketchup to me at all.
“OW!!!” Bigfoot yelled.
Meanwhile, the Warren-cocoon slipped a little further out the door and the Prophet kept on falling and the Labrador dirt was coming up fast.
“Do something!” I shouted – not sure if I was talking to Coyote, the Prophet, to Warren, or even possibly to myself.
Gravity is funny, that way.
It works awfully quick, whenever you don’t want it to.
“I am falling just as fast as I can,” the Prophet yelled back. “Maybe if I am careful I can land on top of Bigfoot and break my fall – once the Raven decides to let go of him.”
At the same time Raven ripped upwards with his heavy talons, slashing and tearing deep vicious gouges out of Bigfoot’s big furry belly.
I saw more red not-ketchup spilling out of Bigfoot’s belly-fur.
Bigfoot didn’t seem to be bothered by that not-ketchup. He took another solid swing – only this punch had about half as much of the “POW!!!” of his first swing.
“Pow!” Bigfoot weakly yelled.
Maybe he should have yelled just a little bit louder – because Raven easily dodged Bigfoot’s second punch. Raven banked to the left, shaking his head so that Bigfoot swung like the world’s largest and fuzziest set of dog tags you had ever seen – and then Raven twisted his head down and caught hold of one of the feathers that Bigfoot was hanging onto.
At which point Raven pulled that vital feather loose and then he reached down and yanked out another of the feathers that Bigfoot was hanging onto.
This feather-yanking didn’t seem to be hurting Raven one bit – any more than it would hurt you or me to pluck a hair out of our head – but it was making it awfully hard for Bigfoot to hang on. Each feather yanked meant one less feather for him to hang onto.
And then he dropped.
Meanwhile the Labrador landscape was getting a whole lot closer.
By now it was becoming a bit of a guessing-match as to which of us was going to hit first.
The Warren-cocoon, Bigfoot or the Prophet.
With us inside.
“Hang on, Adam,” Coyote gravel-whispered in my ear. “Think about feathers in a soft summer updraft.”
I felt myself being wrapped up in a gray fuzzy crash blanket as Coyote wrapped himself entirely about me and the Warren-cocoon and then we jumped out of The Prophet’s door.
It was a cool and wonderful kind of experience. I’m not quite sure how he did it. According to every rule of gravity that existed we should have been falling at the exact same rate of speed that the Prophet had been falling at the time that Coyote had jumped.
Only we didn’t fall.
It felt as if Coyote was made out of nothing but dandelion dandruff and dust motes. We sort of hovered – not really flying – just lofting a little upwards and then sort of floating gently down to the dirt. I could see out of the corner of my eye Coyote’s big pink tongue lolling happily in the breeze all the while him grinning a big old happy Coyote grin.
I guess he was feeling pretty pleased with himself.
Which was right about when I noticed that Coyote had those two freshly-plucked Raven feathers sticking out of his big Coyote grin. I don’t know how he managed to catch those feathers and if Bigfoot had actually MEANT to drift them Coyote’s way, but Coyote was sure feeling pretty happy and more than a little bit smug about catching those magic Raven feathers and using them to float the way that he did.
And I guess I couldn’t blame him one little bit.
We landed as if we had been falling through water. I almost felt as if someone were filming me in slow motion – like I was falling in some kind of a dream space.
Just try and think about feathers, he had said – and that’s exactly what I was trying hard to think about.
I was thinking about feathers and I was thinking about freshly-blown soap bubbles on a hot summer evening and I was thinking about moon-walking astronauts, dandelion fluff and bright billowy cotton candy parachutes.
And whether it was my soft-headed thinking or Raven’s magic feathers or just plain dumb luck we landed and we stood there in the Labrador dirt and watched as Bigfoot and the Prophet crashed to the ground like a giant Geronimo free fall pancake.
I’m not saying it was pretty.
“WE’VE GOT TO SAVE HIM!” I screamed. “HE’S GOING TO FREAKING CRASH AND DIE!”
“I’m open for any sort of suggestions you can think of,” Coyote said. “But as far as I can see we are REALLY short on options.”
I reached down and I laid my hand upon the Warren-cocoon and I could feel a sort of warm comforting tingle as if someone were reaching up through the pine and swamp grass sides of the big funky sticky cocoon and holding onto my hand saying there, there, everything is going to be all right.
Namely, Warren.
And then all at once I saw The Prophet soaring down in a sort of semi-controlled crash dive. He seemed to be almost aiming himself towards the plummeting Bigfoot.
Bigfoot kept on falling.
The Prophet moved a little closer.
The ground came closer too.
And then all of a sudden everything got WAY too close.
Chapter Twenty Eight – Dead and Back Again
The way it happened was like this.
The Prophet waited until he was just close enough and then he opened up a hatch in his side that
hadn’t been there before. I guess that he was figuring on catching Bigfoot with that hatch door and scooping him up like a big pink Tonka bulldozer. Only his timing was just that much off and instead of scooping Bigfoot up that freshly-opened hatch caught the big hairy Sasquatch in the side of his ribs and Bigfoot took a triple and a half flying Lutz-Eagle over the top of the hatch door and then fell the rest of the way straight down to the ground.
It might have broken his fall just a little but it might also have broken his ribcage.
I’m NOT saying it was pretty.
“Oops,” Coyote said. “Nice try.”
It WAS an awfully good try.
Too bad it did not work.
“This is going to hurt him a whole lot more than it hurts me,” Coyote said, squinting – but not looking away.
Bigfoot hit the ground awfully hard.
Do you want to know how hard he hit?
Just try and imagine what it would look like if King Kong had dropped a slightly-used Barbie Doll with a dog-sized-rock chained securely around her tiny pink plastic ankles from about a thousand feet higher than the tip-top of the Empire State Building.
Just try to imagine the sort of impact that the plastic vinyl of that dog-chained Barbie Doll might make, falling from that far up.
Then multiply that impact by a couple of dozen infinities.
Bigfoot hit that hard – and then some.
I saw the dirt around him kind of sink in – like a heavy boot sinking into a deep spring mud puddle.
Oh good – I thought – the dirt was soft and it absorbed his impact and he is safe and alive and everything is going to be okay.
Yeah, right.
My golly, but what a great big fat bunch of lies we can tell ourselves in about three and a half seconds worth of thinking.
I took off running to the crash site.
Coyote was running close behind me.
When I got there Bigfoot was lying quietly in a patch of tall grass. His face was the approximate color of sunburned rust and there was all of that not-ketchup and he had more bruises than the world’s rottenest apple and as far as I could tell he was just barely breathing.
“Is he dead?” I asked Coyote. “He can’t be dead.”
