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I grew up in a very small town at the top end of Morgan County, Alabama.

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Back in the 70s, I knew just about everyone in our small town.

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We had exactly two stoplights on the main street going through town.

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We had one grocery store and one catch-all kind of hardware store.

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There was one post office and a couple very tiny miscellaneous shops, but that was all.

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Down there, the hot summer seemed to stretch on forever, which as kids was paradise.

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All of us kids had bikes, a pocket knife, maybe a cane pole, and for us, that was all

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the freedom we needed.

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My best buddy was Ronnie.

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And Ronnie and me, well, we figured out real quick that Crooked Creek was the place to

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catch catfish.

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They weren't out in the open of the creek, mind you.

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No, the good ones stacked up in the deep holes right under that old wooden bridge.

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Now you gotta picture it.

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That bridge was older than my granddaddy.

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Planks were all gray and soft with rot in many places.

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The creek water was black and was slow flowing underneath it.

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At night you could smell the mud from that creek before you were near enough to hear the

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water trickling.

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And we always went at night because that's when the catfish were hungry.

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One July evening, the summer night air was so thick with humidity, it was more like trying

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to breathe through syrup than air.

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The bullfrogs were thumping out on the bank.

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Many nudged me and said, "Hey, let's sneak out, hit the bridge.

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I bet we haul in a messa catfish."

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I didn't even think.

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I said, "Yeah, let's do that."

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We grabbed our rods, a couple jars of stink bait, and sneaked out long after our folks had

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gone to bed.

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The moon wasn't all the way up yet.

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But the world was very dark.

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I mean real dark.

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He was that kind where the trees all seemed to lean in over the road, like they're listening

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to you, like out of some old scary cartoon.

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It was that kind of dark, and that, of course, is the best kind of night to get yourself

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a mess of catfish.

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By the time we made it down to the bridge, I noticed the crickets were all hushed up.

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I did notice it, but I didn't say anything.

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I thought they hushed up because we were traipsing through, though that had never hushed

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them up before.

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Mostly I didn't want Ronnie calling me chicken.

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Over the creek the sky above was open and clear.

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We could see stars in the sliver of a pale crescent moon.

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The light coming down was faint, but enough that we could make out shapes in the shadows,

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and it bounced up off the creek waters.

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We settled under the bridge and got set up for fishing.

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In every other way it was a perfect, idyllic summer night.

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It was Alabama hot and sticky with no air movement, yes.

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But the water lapping on the banks in a steady rhythm?

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That's something I can still hear in my mind to this very day.

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And all the while tree frogs and cicadas were making a solid background of noise for us.

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And the mosquitoes?

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Well, those weren't part of a perfect summer night, but there's no having a summer without

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them is there.

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And all the while the old boards of the bridge above us would pop and creek.

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My daddy told me once it was from the changing temperatures in the humidity at night, kind

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of the way a house would move and settle every night.

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I don't know if that's exactly right, but it made me less jumpy as a boy when I thought

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about it that way.

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It was a good and normal hot summer night.

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Well, for about 10 or 15 minutes anyway.

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Then we heard it, a splash, not a small splash like a fish splashing around or a bull frog

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jumping in the water.

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This was big, heavy.

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Then I heard the swishing in the water, and I somehow knew something was waiting in the

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shallow just upstream.

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It was dark, but I saw the shadow of Ronnie's head turn towards me.

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Then he whispered, "Dear?"

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"Nah, I thought.

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Dear don't wade slow and loud like that."

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That swish-swish sound was more like a two-legged person walking through the water.

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I'm thinking that, and then there was this strange grunting noise.

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Not real loud, but more like an involuntary grunt, like when you're old and you try to get

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up off the floor.

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It's like that.

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And I know dear blow and snort, but I've never heard them grunt, not like that.

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Me and Ronnie both were looking upstream, even though it was too dark to see anything clearly.

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Many figured we were about to get caught out by somebody who would then write us out to

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our parents.

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And that would mean daddy would have to make a show a tan in my hide with a belt, just

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to make mama happy.

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And that's when the smell hit us, with our heads turned right towards it, and then we got

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our snooze full of it.

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"Lordy, I'll never forget it."

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Like rotten eggs and wet dog left out in the sun on an Alabama summer day.

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It turned my stomach right over.

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Ronnie gagged a little and whispered, "What is that?"

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I couldn't answer.

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Not only did I not have an answer, I could barely breathe in enough to get a word out.

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The smell was that bad.

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The waiter started to come closer and closer.

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That's when I knew for certain the waiter was walking on two legs, which meant they were

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not any of the animals around there.

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You could hear it in the cadence.

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Step, splash, drag.

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Step, splash, drag.

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It was like it had legs that were too long for the water that it was in, and feet so big

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and heavy they were getting sucked down in the muddy bottom on every step.

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We pressed back against the bridge piling, our hearts hammering.

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I had my pocket knife out.

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Like that would do a lick of good, but you used what you've got.

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Then out of the shadowed darkness, it appeared.

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At first I thought a man was out there.

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I saw they were very tall, broad shoulders with arms at hung low.

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But then they bent down.

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I saw the thin shine of moonlight on the water roll off hair, not skin.

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Like black hair clinging to it like wet carpet.

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It was no mistaking it.

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Definitely not skin or some kind of clothing.

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Unless someone was wearing a fur coat on a hot summer night in Alabama.

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A very, very big someone that is.

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It leaned into the current, arm swinging out.

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And in just a couple seconds it scooped up a catfish, roughly the size of my leg.

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Then it lifted it, like it was nothing.

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And it looked like it was holding it just right, not touching either the pectoral or the

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dorsal fins.

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People think a catfish stings you with its whiskers.

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But that's not it.

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It's the fins that will get you.

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So this thing, or this being, knew how to handle a catfish.

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I saw it repositioned the wriggling fish so it was belly up, still avoiding the fins.

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It brought its belly up to the mouth and took a large bite out of the middle of the fish,

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biting straight clean through it.

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I couldn't believe it.

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I thought I'm seeing this wrong.

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Because maybe it's so dark.

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But at the same time I know I didn't see it wrong.

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I know what I saw.

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And the sound of that wet squishy bite echoed under the bridge.

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And it matched what I saw.

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A low night breeze came just then against our backs.

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I felt it cooling my sweat.

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I felt it, but I didn't process it.

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I was in a stupor at what I was seeing, I guess.

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The thing chewed, swallowed, and started to take another bite when the breeze reached it.

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It was the breeze that carried our scent.

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It suddenly lifted its head and sniffed the air like some blood-hound.

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And then its head turned in a snap, right at us.

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Now from the moonlight I could see two amber eyes that glowed in the dark, catching just

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enough star and moonlight to show what they were.

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They weren't round like a deer or narrow like a man's.

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But they were big and set wide apart.

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Those eyes locked on us like it had been out there hunting for us all night.

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Next to me Ronnie made some kind of noise in his throat.

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It wasn't loud, but that tiny sound was all it took.

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The creature rose up to its full height out of the water.

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The water pouring off its body dropped the two halves of the catfish, and it let out a growl

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that I could feel in my ribs.

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I don't even remember standing up.

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One second I was crouched down.

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The next I was running full tilt, smacking my shins on roots, busting through brush, going

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blindly at full speed.

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It's a wonder I didn't run smack into a tree and knocked myself out.

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Ronnie was right behind me.

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Both of us too scared to do anything but run.

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We weren't yelling or anything, but we were breathing hard and running.

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We didn't stop until we hit the county road.

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We were all bent over gasping for air.

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Our rods and all of our equipment were left down at the creek.

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Shakey legs got us home, and along the way there was a promise made.

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We weren't telling anyone about this.

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And that bridge?

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Well, I went back there plenty of times.

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Just never alone and never at night.

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But I rode the bridge on my bike more than a few times that summer.

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I would look over and I would see fish heads and bones scattered all over the rocks below.

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Picked clean.

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I told myself, raccoon did that.

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Or maybe it was some weird homeless person eating raw fish.

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But I didn't believe any of that myself.

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First time I rode over that bridge again was two days later after we saw it.

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And Ronnie went out there together.

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I stopped and got off my bike and looked over the bridge, right where our stuff should

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have been.

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But there was nothing there.

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Of course, anyone else could have come along and seen all of our stuff and went down and

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got it.

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But if you asked me and Ronnie, we thought that creature got rid of our stuff.

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Well, that's what our young minds thought at the time anyway.

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Today, I don't know.

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Maybe it was some weird homeless person after all.

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Maybe they were down there eating raw fish and that's what we saw that night.

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We really didn't have a homeless population in our little town back then, but we did have

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a couple crazy people and they did walk down to the creek sometimes to wash and wash their

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clothes as best they could.

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I never heard of them though going at night.

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And the few that I knew of, well, they weren't the kind to have fur coats of any kind.

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And they sure wouldn't have worn them in the summer, crazy though they might have been.

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But we didn't really believe for one second that it was a homeless person or one of the

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crazies or even a person at all.

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I know what I saw standing knee deep in that creek eating catfish under the moonlight.

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And it wasn't any man.

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There's only one word for it.

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Bigfoot.

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And yeah, we got them in our area.

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I didn't know it then, but I do now.

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I don't live there anymore.

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But even if I did, you wouldn't catch me going down there on dark nights, not even as a grown

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man.

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[ pause ]