I live just beyond the city limits, right where what the townies call the country starts.
This would be Ohio.
But I'm still close enough that the teens in town have been making their way to my place
for the last several years right after Trick or Treat.
And it seems they have one mission to destroy my pumpkins.
Now this upsets me a lot.
Me and my kids and my grandkids carve these pumpkins together every year.
So I take it real personal, though I know I shouldn't.
And yes, I do know.
Everyone says I should bring those pumpkins inside as soon as Trick or Treat is over.
Not that any kids come out our way for Trick or Treat.
But my response is I shouldn't have to.
I say the townfolk should be teaching their kids better and keeping track of them on Halloween
night.
Instead, they keep gifting the town over and over with a fresh crop of juvenile delinquents
every year.
And besides, I like the look of lit pumpkins along my drive and out on my porch steps.
I love their glow that reaches out into the darkness.
It's kind of spooky when I look out the window.
And it's also a really beautiful sight for me with a lot of memories.
So that Halloween, I decided I was going to do what their parents would not.
I was going to teach them a lesson.
I can't a pepper spray and some small balloons with red dye mixed in.
That was my arsenal.
And yes, I cleared this with the deputies I knew in town.
If they trespassed, I could use non-lethal force on them.
So I sat up late on Halloween with all the outside lights off, a thermos of coffee that was going
lukewarm out on the fence post right next to me.
And I was sitting in an old folding lawn chair that creaked under me every time I shifted
or even breathed this year.
I was waiting for them.
I unplugged the motion light out along the drive so I'd keep the dark advantage.
And I parked myself out there in the shadows right beside the porch post near the edge
of my house with a heavy mag-light flashlight sitting right across my lap.
I kept the dog inside because, well, he's no good at guarding anything, he's way too friendly
and then he barks at a leaf moving.
I didn't need that.
As I waited and sipped my now lukewarm coffee, I noticed a shift in the night air.
It was getting that bite to it that let me know.
The frost warning I'd heard earlier on the news.
Well, that was no joke.
We were going to have a hard frost overnight.
The later it got, the more I began to wonder if the teens were coming at all.
Maybe they knew I was there waiting somehow.
Eleven o'clock passed.
Almost midnight passed.
And the night had stayed very quiet.
Somewhere down in the corn stubble in the field next to my house, a coyote yipped, then it
shut up like its mom had gone to him.
I knew the sound of tires and the sound of footsteps coming along my drive.
I'd heard it for years.
I was primed for this.
I had rehearsed exactly what I was going to yell out at them when I caught them.
And then I began to hear something.
I didn't hear tires.
I heard footsteps all right, but they were different.
These were big, heavy.
And the crunch on the gravel, it was different than the crunch you hear with a boot or shoe,
and a soft sneaker.
There was a different echo in the crunching.
A shoe has a hollow crunch sound on the gravel.
What I heard was a light muffled gravel crunch.
Yet the gravel was popping loudly.
At first it was a faint crunch and pop, down away on the drive, some bit from me.
There was no hesitating in the walk.
There were no sneaky steps that I've heard with the kids before, or so I thought.
No, this was coming straight on, right at me, and it was not trying to be quiet.
I squinted my eyes in the darkness, and slowly I began to see a shape.
It was hard to see.
I just had the indoor lights coming through the windows, and they didn't stretch too far
outside.
But the glow from them gave me enough to begin to see a shape in the distance.
I'm looking at the size of that shape.
And then I get hit by the smell, musty, and smelling like an old zoo.
"Now this was not right," I thought.
Not right at all.
Suddenly the hair on my forearms pricled under the planal shirt I was wearing.
I told myself, "Get ready."
Now, on one hand, this didn't look at all like the shape of a teenager from town.
But then again, I didn't know every teenager in town.
Maybe this was a new one.
Maybe this was their new star football player I'd heard about.
And from the vague shape, he was sized for it.
I could already read some of the size of it, probably six and a half feet, maybe a little
more massively wide.
Some of the shape, though, felt wrong to be a teen.
Even a great big one.
But then I thought, well, nowadays, these kids are being raised on some kind of mash-up
between marital grow and a lot of fast food, and a lot of them turn out really huge.
The steps left the gravel, and they came up on the grass that was between the fence and
the gravel drive, and I heard a soft, sudden sound as it did so.
It was then I saw the real shape and how not right it was, even for a mutant, tiny teenager.
Shoulders too wide.
A head perched too far forward.
There was no hat, no hoodie, no strings.
None of the shapes I see were teenagers.
It walked right up to my front porch, right where the pumpkins were lit and still glowing.
I saw then it was covered in something dark and heavy.
Now it might have been a costume, that was my first thought.
But then I looked, it didn't have the look of one.
It paused at the bottom step where the biggest pumpkin sat fat as a hog.
I wasn't going to wait any more.
I thumbed the mag light on and lifted the beam, expecting to startle at least one big teenager.
But no.
The light caught hair.
Dark brown hair.
Not fur like a dog, and it wasn't shaggy like some cheap costume.
This was real hair.
It's a little bit more awkward, coarse looking, hanging close to the skin, laying in a tight
pattern.
The flashlight beam outlined a chest and shoulders bigger than any football player, even with all
their gear on.
Then it found the face.
And oh my, that face.
Let me tell you.
The eyes reflected briefly in the light, a real deep amber color.
Costumes and masks?
They can't do that.
And a human wearing a costume or a mask?
It wouldn't reflect the eye shine like that.
It didn't flinch when the light hit it.
It sort of squinted and half turned from it.
Yet it kept an eye looking my way the whole time.
Then it leaned at the waist, and it took the biggest pumpkin off the steps.
This pumpkin was uncarved.
It was just a solid decoration between the carved ones.
I grew all these pumpkins, so I always had plenty.
And I mean, it took that big pumpkin.
Fingers went around it the way a man would pick up a basketball.
Then I heard a soft, wet crack.
As it split that pumpkin, like it was some soft dinner roll.
Seeds and strings spilled out over the steps.
It made a low sound the way a man would hum happily as it ate its dinner.
It scooped orange pieces of flesh out in big, bent handfuls, cramming it in its mouth.
I heard it chewing.
It was wet and powerful.
Big slurps.
I heard sticky splats of seeds as they hit the steps.
I was stunned, I guess.
I was watching.
I was seeing it.
But I wasn't believing it.
And I don't know why I spoke.
I guess my brain still had teenager stuck to whatever was going to happen that night.
I can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes.
And that night was one of those times.
"Hey," I barked out.
It was exactly as I'd practiced it.
"Knock it off!"
I really used the exact tone like I had planned to yell at some kids.
The head on the big foot lifted slowly.
I got another good look at the eyes.
I saw then how wrong they really were.
They were set wider apart than anybody I knew.
There was no white to them either.
Just that strange amber reflection in the light.
A threat of pumpkin hung off its lower lip, and swung as it looked my way.
It chewed a couple more times, slowly, thoughtfully, deliberately.
As if it was thinking about whether or not it was going to do something to deal with me.
It took another handful of pumpkin innards, and dropped the empty pumpkin shell.
It seemed to only want the insides of the pumpkins, and it had no interest at all in the
rind.
And I don't know why, but I had a moment where I had that exact thought.
And then I remember thinking, "How weird!
I thought it would want the rhyme too."
Yep, strange thoughts, and I remember having them.
But I was already in a strange situation.
So who's to say what's really a strange thought?
I watched as the big foot then opened its mouth and made a sound that was almost as if it
was hissing at me.
I saw its teeth then.
Flat, blocky, very yellow.
All of this was beginning to register in my brain that maybe confronting this thing wasn't
the best idea.
Maybe I should have just sat there in the darkness and stayed quiet.
I didn't raise the flashlight any higher.
Something told me that really wasn't a good idea.
Maybe it was the hiss.
Might have been my late realization of what I was looking at.
And I did have that realization, though half my brain denied, that I was looking at a big
foot.
Then I both held that pose for about twenty seconds, looking at each other.
During that time a car drove down the road out in front of my house.
It stayed frozen as the car passed.
I mean it was as still as a statue.
When the car sound and lights were long gone, I heard it take a big sniff in the air, a deep
sniff, a sound that lifted the hair on my arms all over again.
It angled its head.
It looked for me to the other pumpkins lined up like targets along the steps.
It looked at me for a second longer than necessary.
It was telling me, "What are you gonna do about it?"
Then it leaned forward and picked up the next pumpkin.
When it looked at me again, it wasn't like it was worried I was gonna do something.
No, it looked like the raccoon had looked last year when my wife accidentally left the
dog food bag on the back porch.
It was deliriously happy, greedy, blissful, and absolutely at home.
No one there was nothing I was gonna do about it.
As for me, it was like looking at some terrible accident out on the road.
I knew I shouldn't, but I couldn't stop myself.
I watched in silence as it worked through three of those pumpkins.
Despite how messy the pumpkins are, it worked through them quick and neat, leaving
the pumpkin halves rounded and scraped clean from the inside.
When it looked its palm, I could hear the rasp of the tongue on its skin.
The smell of fresh pumpkin mixed with that bad odor that it gave off, turned my stomach
in a way I can't explain, and I still smell it to this day whenever I carve a pumpkin.
At the time my body didn't know if we were at a harvest festival or at a terrible zoo
where none of the enclosures had ever been cleaned.
When it reached for the fourth pumpkin, the one I had carved with a crooked grin, it paused.
The grin on the pumpkin made a black gap where the candle had burned out earlier.
The big foot shoved two fingers in that pumpkin mouth and pushed inward, caving the whole thing
in with a dull pop.
I don't really remember doing it, but I guess I did.
I shifted in my chair. I did something, but the chair gave out a tiny squeak, and that
was enough.
I'm still not sure why the noise was more upsetting than the light, but judging by its
reaction it was.
Maybe it understood if it heard the chair, it thought I was getting up, but I wasn't.
Suddenly the head snapped up and the whole torso twisted right toward me, the light
hitting right in one of its eyes before it moved its head just enough to avoid direct light
contact.
The growl at gave wasn't loud, but I heard it.
The grow was low, and it came from too deep in the chest to belong to anything that I've
ever known walking on two legs.
It put one foot up on the step.
I saw toes, long and splayed, mud and pumpkin pop webbed between them.
I didn't run because there wasn't anywhere for me to go.
I knew the only other entrance into my house was the back door, and I knew it was locked
and chained from the inside.
My wife always does that before she goes to bed, and that's where she was.
She said I could wait up if I wanted, but she was going to bed.
I had come out the front door, and I expected I was going to go back in through the front
door.
But I couldn't do that with the big foot standing on my steps.
There was nowhere for me to go that I could quickly get to or get inside.
So I did the only smart thing I've probably done without really thinking about it in my
life.
I lowered the light, turned my face away, just enough I didn't have direct eye contact,
but I could still see it from the sides of my vision.
I set the mag light down in my lap.
It was still on, but that took the light off of its face, and it lit up more of its shoulders
down.
I put both hands out, palms up, so it could see I had nothing in my hands, assuming it
could see beyond the mag light.
The pepper spray was at my feet, as was the bag of balloons filled with red dye.
I could have used the pepper spray, I guess, but it wasn't a strong one.
I had deliberately bought a milder spray, because I didn't want to hurt the kids.
I just wanted to make them think twice about coming out here.
So I didn't think it would be much use against a big foot.
I was praying the things that I'd heard all these years were true, that not all of them
were bad, not all of them are killers.
This one was brown-haired, and I had always heard the black-haired ones were the bad ones.
It stood there for a count of five, maybe, letting out that same low growl.
Then it blew hard through its nose.
Scoop the carp pumpkin up in one hand, and back down off the steps without looking away.
It kept its body turned toward me, quartering sideways away from me into the darkness of the
yard.
After a few seconds I heard the muffled crunch of gravel popping again.
I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath, but when I heard the gravel pop I thought
it was gone, and I suddenly started breathing again.
Well, I was wrong.
It wasn't gone.
But I had gotten up, folded up my chair, grabbed the bag in the spray, and I was beginning
to walk to the front steps.
When I suddenly saw a dark shape come right at me from the darkness.
It was back, and moving quicker this time.
It got to the steps just ahead of me.
It reached down, and it grabbed the last two pumpkins on the steps in a sweeping motion,
pulling one under each arm.
Then it rose up towards full height, and it looked right at me.
Again, slow and deliberate.
My mag light was still on, but I didn't point it at its face.
Not that it mattered.
I could still see its face, and I still see it sometimes when I'm sleeping.
And I don't mean in a good way.
For a heartbeat it stood there, and blocked my porch steps.
Again, another act of defiance or dominance.
I was maybe 15 feet from it.
It had those pumpkins, and it gave me that greedy, happily delirious look like the raccoon
did.
Then it made a short, chesty, oomthing sound.
Then it was gone, right down the lane, and melted into the darkness somewhere out there.
I got inside the house as quick as I could, and then I realized I'd left my thermos of
coffee out there on the post.
Well, too bad.
I wasn't going back out for it.
I turned the porch light, and all the other outside lights on.
All I had left of my pumpkins were the ones I had brought in earlier.
They had all already gone out.
Normally, I would go through the house and relight them, because I'd like to stay up late
watching movies, binging on popcorn and candy.
Yeah, I'll admit it.
I'm still a kid at heart.
Sue me.
But that night I did not relight the pumpkins in the windows.
In the morning I went out and swept the strings and seeds off the porch and down into the grass.
They were prints there.
Right there in the bare places where the frost really hadn't taken hold.
Long, wide.
Each one deep enough to catch this land to the sun and be visible.
I saw the pulp cling to one of the prints.
I stared at the prints for quite a while, letting their size sink in, making it match up
to what I had seen the night before.
I did not measure the prints, and I really don't know why I didn't.
It just might have made it all too real.
Now here I'd been accusing kids from town for three years over my pumpkins.
But had it been the kids?
Was I wrong?
Or was it only that night I was wrong?
I thought back over the past few years and all the pumpkin halves that I've picked up.
I looked at them in a different way suddenly.
All this time I'd just assumed those pumpkins had been thrown or slammed down to end up
the way they did.
But now I'm rethinking it.
I'm imagining slamming a pumpkin or throwing it and how what results would look different
than just two halves.
I'm thinking about how many of those pumpkins went missing each year, even before Halloween.
But most of them were destroyed or missing on Halloween night.
Now I've thought about that too and I've had to think about why.
Next I can figure is I don't put the carved ones out until late in the afternoon on Halloween
right before the sun goes down, right before I can light them and enjoy them.
So I wonder if the smell of the fresh-carb pumpkins draw it in.
So where does it live around me?
I don't have an answer on that one either.
Here where I live in Ohio I'm mostly surrounded by farms and fields.
Now there are a few islands of trees that separate them, but no real forests where I'm
at.
So this baffles me.
Where does it live?
Where is close enough to me that it could smell those fresh-carb pumpkins?
I can't give you any answers.
But since that Halloween I've set several big fat pumpkins on the bottom step every Halloween
night.
I pull in my carved ones with the faces.
But the big pumpkins, well they're a sacrifice.
I do carve them, but I don't worry about shaping a pretty face.
I carve it so it's a fresh cut that smells.
I don't like those pumpkins either.
I just set them there.
And some years I've put some out all along the drive.
Also fresh-carved.
I set them out, turn the lights out, then go in and watch my movies in the family room at
the back of the house.
No matter what I hear, I don't look out front.
I don't want to see.
Now in the morning when I wake up to feed the dog and let him out, there's a pulp on the
grass and there's a faint, stinky zoo smell on the cold air around the porch.
I no longer complain loudly when I'm in town about the juvenile delinquents that everyone
is apparently raising.
I say nothing.
Sometime before Halloween I go into town and I take a lot of my homegrown pumpkins to
a church and for a day or two, I'll sell quite a few of them on a corner.
But I keep the biggest pumpkins for my Halloween bigfoot, truthfully, on a couple of the bumper
crop years.
I've set out fresh-carved pumpkins weekly well into November and they are always broken
and scooped clean.
So make it that what you will.
Teens or bigfoot?
I think it's bigfoot.