All kids love ghost stories for bedtime stories so I'm starting to practise for my Grandchildren...
A Grandfather’s Tale
You want me to tell you a story, ok I’ll tell ya a story, here Jaime Lee you climb up on this old knee and here Lily you climb up on this one. Now let me think….I know did I ever tell you the story about the time I met old “Hermit Joe”? No ok then well it was back when I was a young fellow no more then 40 or 50 I’d say…
I was hunting the backwoods of Sutherland’s Lake, Cumberland County, not too far from Londonderry in good old Nova Scotia. The country is hilly with forests of mostly maple trees with stands of spruce and fir in swampy areas scattered here and there that the locals called swales. My brother-in-law, Henry, was from this area and though we’d started out hunting that morning together eventually he almost always left me behind and I’d be forced to follow my compass and hope to hit a familiar sight or road. They’d often joke that he’d go home and have a sandwich and a cup of tea while he waited for me to find my way back to where we started.
That day though I run up against an animal that I wasn’t quite prepared for. I heard this weird off tone music that I’d never heard before almost like the screeching of an old ornery tom cat accompanied by a voice that you could almost but not quite decipher the words to. The swale it was coming from was at the foot of the hill I stood on and as I neared it I caught glimpses through the trees of movement but nothing more.
This area as you know was also the sight over the years of the legendary yeti or big-foot so to say I was a little nervous was an exaggeration.
So I checked my gun to make sure it was loaded and slowly started walking again. I finally reached the edge of the tree line and although part of me was scared of what I might find the other half was to curious to let it get out of range. Walking along the tree line I found a path or I guess it was more like a tunnel through the heavy brush. Something had hacked and tramped down a entrance into the swale not much higher than three or four feet. Debating the wisdom of going any further I finally threw caution to the wind and hunching over entered the shadows of the tunnel. The weird music and ungodly singing continued and I finally reached what looked like a one room box made of scrap wood, tin, cardboard and tree boughs. There was a window or at least an opening and what I saw startled me for a moment. I grew up on tales of big foot but I thought I’d actually found one and a cold shiver ran down my back. I held my gun a little tighter as I silently studied the figure before me.
Long reddish brown hair hung in tangled mess blending with the hair on his beard and chest. His hands were huge and hairy as well and capped with fingernails over a half inch long. The instrument he was playing was at one time a guitar but had been taped and
wired together so much it looked like something dragged out of a science fiction nightmare as an instrument of torture. I was finally starting to understand some of the
words he sang and the song went something like this:
I’m Hermit Joe, I’m Hermit Joe
How I survived nobody know
I live off rabbits and wild berries too
Better than what I used to do
It was then I shifted my weight and felt the earth slip out from under me as I fell into
a booby trap. I threw my rifle to the side as I started to fall fearful it might go off accidentally. As quick as I had fallen, the man/beast was out standing over the hole with a
nasty, looking knife in his hand. He cackled and displayed mouthful of missing or rotted teeth “Lookie here at what I caught me“ he laughed doing a little dance around the edge of the hole. Picking up my rifle and sticking the knife in the ground he left. I didn’t know what to expect when he disappeared but he returned momentarily with a crude ladder
that he dropped down the hole. “Come on out young fellla I won’t hurt ya.” He said.
Reluctantly I climbed up the ladder and took the grimy hand that was offered to me.
Following him through the door of the cabin where I could see my rifle he asked: “Do
you want some tea or something?” he asked, but noticing the three teabags hanging by
clothespins to a string over the rusted woodstove I quickly declined.
Instead I pulled out the two bottles of juice I’d had in my backpack and offered
him one. I watched as he opened it and taking a cloudy looking chipped glass from a
shelf, he poured half the juice into and added water from a dented coffee can to fill it up. The rest of the juice he recapped and put up on the shelf. Offering me a milk crate for a seat he pulled up another one and began to tell me his story.
“Names Joe, Hermit Joe. I been back in these woods for over twenty –three years now I reckon. Yes siree I live off the land with the occasional skirmishes to hunters cabins in the fall to see what I can scrounge that they leave behind, tea, coffee, flower what ever and I hunt and fish in between. I used to be a city feller once like you till I got in a fight with a feller over his girlfriend and done killed him. His brother was a Mountie cop on the other side of the province and so I had to make a run for it.” He paused took a sip of his diluted juice before going on.
“Not much more to tell really the few people who have seen me over the years think I’m either big foot or a big old bear and I don’t normally stay around to let them find out the difference. Cept for you so I hope you’ll keep my secret, anyway that’s about it now I needs me beauty sleep” he said curling up on some furs in one corner.
As the darkness grew I knew there was no sense even trying to find my way out of the woods in the night so I cleared a spot on Joes floor and grabbing some of the furs from a pile on the table I made a bed and before long we were soon snoring the night away.
At dawn’s first light I was awake with a thousand questions on my mind to ask Joe but he was gone. Although disappointed when I exited the tunnel through the swale I was pleased to see he had blazed a trail of orange hunter’s tape through the trees and I knew it would lead me back to familiar ground. Coming out on the old path we had used early the day before I followed it and was pleased when a half hour or so later I met up with my Brother-in-law and a couple of local boys who were just getting ready to mount a search for me. They were sitting around a campfire drinking coffee before heading out. After pouring me a cup we all sat down and I told them my story and about how I had met “Hermit Joe”. I saw the three men exchange smiles and knowing looks and yet they never said anything till finally I lost my patience and ask “What is so funny anyway?”
They exchanged knowing looks but it was Henry who finally spoke: “Felix, I don’t know how to tell you this but…”
“Yes what?” I asked impatiently
Henry stared into the fire poking a stick around in the coals as he started to speak: “There was a Hermit Joe and he was wanted for murder, but he was tracked down to a cabin up close to where you say you met him. He resisted arrest and when the Mounties saw him lifting what they thought was a rifle but turned out to be a walking stick they opened fire and old Joe took 13 bullets to his chest. That would have been about 20 years ago I reckon.”
Finding it hard to believe, but knowing although Henry sometimes stretched the truth when it came to the size of a deer’s rack or how big a trout he caught out of the river, he seldom lied and his companions nods told me that this story was true . I stood poured out the dregs of my coffee and started walking up the trail to where I’d passed the last marker before breaking out on the trail. I wasn’t surprised when I found the markers were gone.
…and that is the story of old Hermit Joe now off to bed with the two of you before he comes a looking for supplies. I laughed as the two giggling girls ran up the stairs to their beds.
Well done, Felix! My brother and I used to listen to a radio program, years ago, called, "The Hermit's Cave" that would scare us to death, hehehe and yet we couldn't wait till each Sunday evening to listen to the program. My grandsons would love your story about Hermit Joe. I did!
Thanks!
Your story about Hermit Joe is delightful! I couldn't wait to read how it ended. Thank you.
Reviewed by Judy Lloyd
3/5/2005
Sounds like a story a grandfather would tell. We also told them at camping trips and in cabins in the woods when the class went on field trips for the weekend.
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