PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

 In the summer of 1983 I was just a kid and a strange incident occurred that as of yet I can find no good explaination, here's what happened.

 My bedroom was at the back of the house, a coverted porch with windows on two sides and I was used to seeing the stray owl or bat fly by silhouetted momentarily by the light from the dusk to dawn lamp, illuminating our barn and the thickly foliaged dividing line between the yard and the woods beyond. Nighttime held no terrors and it was dark about nine o'clock.

 I noticed something and what I can only call a sense of danger swept across me like nothing before had. I dropped my copy of Watership Down and rushed into the livingroom. I looked at my step-dad and croaked "Somethin's out back" My dad didn't not even question me with a 'what' or admonish me with a sneer, so intense must have been my look. He grabbed the shotgun from it's place on the mantle and quietly but quickly went out the front door.

 The night air was cool and dad stepped around the corner of the house. I followed on his heel, careful to let him be first. Suddenly he stiffend and slightly raised the gun.

"Ho! Who's out thar?" he yelled in the direction of the sixteen foot tall 'bush' that grew behind our house. No answer. " Hey! you better get outta thar!" still no answer.

 Blam! dad fired a single round into the air disrupting the silence of the night with short echos . I was glued to where I stood determined on some level to make a stand against whatever I saw and what my dad certainly believed was there. 

 The bush that had been the focus of dad's attention began to shake left, right, back and forth for the span of about twenty seconds. It captured my attention and I was unable to look away. Then it stopped.

My dad raised the shotgun to his shoulder and walked slowly toward the bush and I followed. 

 Behind us my mother, quick witted as she was had gotten into the truck and pulled up shining its headlights into the back flooding the area with light. Once again my dad yelled out " Ho! Get outta here !" There was no other sound except our steps and the rumble of the trucks motor.

 Then a sound like a heavy exhale erupted from the bush and it began once again to shake and roll this time with great fury. So dense were the leaves, however, I could see no form in the bush no man or animal that would wrap this night in fragile logic. Dad was not transfixed unlike me and began firing shot after shot, shreading wood and greenery. My mother yelling his name John! John!John!

 Then silence and slow cautious inspection the event was done and peace returned. The next day I did as thorough an investigation as I could but found no blood and no tracks just broken branches and a story that no one believed.

 This was the summer of 1983, Choudrant Louisiana and it is all true.