When adults talk, children listen, and their fantasies are put in high gear by uncle's tall tales and then....
When I heard the deep growl from the bushes I knew the puma was there. Smelling it’s foul breath told me it was tooooo-near! and ready to roar…SUPPER!
Vacationing at my uncle’s house in the foothills of the Blue Sierras is a drag for a city boy like me anytime, but there we were…again.
The only consolation was my cousin Billy Joe and his 7-11 gang of outlaws. The name of the gang being the age range of its members. I don’t know about being angels when apart from each other but I don’t agree that together “we are not better than a rash of chicken-pox”.
That summer, in Billy Joe’s and my eleventh birthday we were comparing presents,
I got a Play-Station and he got a BB-gun. My cousin doesn’t have a computer, so, summer was going to be…FRESH AIR!!!, lots of it.
One evening, the grown-ups were entertaining themselves famously by telling us, the
“innocent” children about hunting grizzly bears “until there was no mooh’!” We also had to
hear that anybody, but anybody, at night, with a strong searchlight, could blind jackrabbits and deer and…”pluck’em up like ripe melons”.
When asked about pumas…”pumas?, you said pumas?…plenty of them, sometimes coming down from the hills to mess around the rubbish bins…and go after youngsters not in bed by summer midnight curfew.”
If we believed that…nah!
But in bed by ten o’clock and bored stiff in the dark, with grown-ups merry party going on in the floor below we decided to sneak out of the house and go “hunting us a puma”.
We could take Billy Joe’s BB-gun and I could kind of “borrow” dad’s chromed six-cells
searchlight, his pride and joy, tucked away in our car. Anything happening to it…and he was
gonna go ballistic. But what could happen? If not to make sure that it got not a scratch.
Climbing down from our bedroom window, without awakening Billy Joe’s brother Elliot, and onto the roof of the carport was a cinch. Then, on the ground at the back of the house we ran away giggling at our cleverness and the taste of the forbidden breakaway.
A little over hundred yards from the houses was a hammered dirt road lined with naked bulbs streetlights lamppost. Across it, the only way was uphill into the outback.
Once we crossed the road and into the darkness a cactus greeted us, painfully. So we went slowly until we could see by the moonlight. The searchlight was for the puma; we didn’t want to give us away. We kept climbing through a maze of thorn bushes with sharp needles that pelted our shins like overgrown mosquitoes.
We climbed until we where hundred yards over and five or six hundred away from the road when my cousin whispered about going no farther, and that we were to lie down and be very quiet.
So we did it.
We, at once, got surrounded by an eerie silence, which pushed forward the knowledge acquired at school about wilderness, creatures of the night beginning with scorpions, spiders,
and…and thank God! for a coyote interrupting my thoughts howling its head off somewhere.
And we still waited some more.
After a while I followed the moon’s travel from one cactus arm to another, getting tired of nothing happening…and my left leg going numb and my elbows going numb and… hunting you said? Yah, right! I need to say something, I was going ape from boredom.
“What we do?” I whispered.
“We wait” Billy Joe whispered back.
“I meant once the puma gets’ here, then what?”
“ Shine the light in the puma’s eyes!” The way he said it was like telling me to shut-up!!!
Lying on the dirt, surrounded by unfamiliar shadows was not my idea of hunting pumas.
I don’t like darkness, known or otherwise, and this one was giving me the creeps.
I was in the middle of a mega yawn when in front of me and to the left where Billy Joe was supposed to be, a bush shook a little. At first I wasn’t alarmed.
But my attention was diverted to that spot with my eyes boring down on it trying to se my cousin peeling his nose or something, willing the bushes to move, wishing them to move and after a million years of waiting a needed to know:
“That’s you Billy Joe?” I asked as low as I could.
“Me what?!”.
“You moving or something?”
“Nope”.
Now I was alarmed, and when the bush I was still watching moved yet a little more…I felt the hairs of the back of my head rise and I blurted read to panic:
“Got snakes here Billy Joe?” To me, snakes are no better than menacing shadows.
“Ain’t got any snakes here, what you talkin’bout?”
“The bushes” I said whispering no more, I could feel my eyes about to leave its’ sockets so hard I was trying to look through leaves and shadows.
“What about them?” he sounded irritated by my lack of respect for hunting in silence.
“They shook hard a couple of times”.
“I thought it was you!” Billy Joe uttered now alarmed as I was.
At that moment the bush in front of us shook like something BiiiiiiG! was trying to come through with a low and deep growl, sending foul hot breath right on our faces.
“Shine the light!!! Shine the light!!! Billy Joe’s hollering nearly stopped my heart. Then…his BB-gun went off with a pathetic little plop! followed by a blood curling “roar”.
All at once the beam of the searchlight illuminated through the branches a huge open mouth
with two rows of massive teeth, an enormous wild looking eye and a nostril big enough to walk inside, all of it ready to fall over my cousin.
Momentarily distracted by the sudden light “it” stopped and I, no more than four feet away did the unthinkable, bolted up and forward and smashed the searchlight on top of its head which again produced the blood curling sounds whilst trashing the bushes going for us.
“Its not a puma! It’s a MONSTER!!! Billy Joe yelled at the top of his lungs.
By then we were up and running through thorn bushes like it all was soft cotton, down the hill with all the speed we could gather, which apparently wasn’t enough because the beast was still roaring and gaining on us.
Billy Joe was pumping wildly with both arms, none of which was holding a BB-gun, trying not to fall on his face and avoid getting slapped by a cactus.
I was faring not better as I tried to fend my face from painful lashes, gulp down my heart choking my throat and not carrying Dad’s beloved flashlight.
The first hundred yards went like a dream, we weren’t running, we were flying!.
After that, our legs started getting heavier, air inn and out by painful burning mouthful. The town down there, was getting farther not nearer or it was to me. Suddenly I saw my cousin what I thought a long way ahead, leaving me alone with a monster kicking on my heels.
“Stop!…(gasp)…Billy…Joooe!…(gasp)…Stoooooop!!! I was begging with tears of
despair blurring my eyes, after all, I saved his life!
“I can’t!…I can’t!” He was running downhill so fast that I didn’t think he could. But the realisation that maybe I was to be SUPPER! to whatever was snapping it’s chops on my back
send my legs flying with renew power and my lungs with the power to scream down the walls
of Jericho all over again, apparently awakening our neighbourhood and a few more.
Then…we were out of the darkness running under the streetlights by the dirty road, and
we could run no more. Our screams had aroused everybody in several houses and them were
coming our way. With the view of our protectors our strength gave up and we collapsed on the ground, no getting air enough in our lungs despite we were panting like mad.
We heard “it” trashing the bushes and still coming after us, but before we could run again…“IT” was in front of us, with bewildered eyes and as scared as we were, a lost little wild donkey, its mouth wide open calling “mother!” with deep eardrums splitting…
“Heeeee Hawww!!!…
Heeee Hawww!!!…
Heeeee Hawww!!!”
Whoa George you write a heck of story!
as my eyes begin to read I could not stop
Was so curious to find out the ending it kept
My interest Excellent job!!
PS I'm afraid of the big Pumas!!
Love Peace and hugssss....Morning Star
Georg, you tell a whale of a great story! You have a way of drawing your reader in from the first word, and your words pull us through from beginning to end. Excellent job; bravo!
(((HUGS))) and much love, your friend in Tx., Karen Lynn. :D
Heeeee Hawww, Indeed! And as one who has seen pumas from a distance, a very far distance, I would much rather be staring into the eyes of any other creature in the dark, including that donkey!
Big hungry wild cats are not something to be taken lightly.
Heeee Hawwww and hee, hee. Truly a wonderful story. Growing up in New Mexico we heard all kinds of stories meant to keep us inside after dark. Being a girl, it was no problem for me. I hate most things that go 'bump' in the night, but some are quite enjoyable.
