Bigfoot Goes to Waffle House​
by Olivia Langston

Runestone, volume 12

Bigfoot Goes to Waffle House​
by Olivia Langston

Runestone, volume 12

When the kids from the Crystal Creek trailer park found Bigfoot, Isaiah wanted to cut his throat and mount him on the wall in his daddy’s shed but his sister, Sadie Lou, saw the big thing’s wet brown eyes and started crying so loud she threatened to wake the neighbors. So, they pried his hairy leg out of the bear trap and helped him hobble over to Tyler’s Mama’s van, where Michael sat waiting to wipe the blood out of his fur. ​

“What do we do with him, then?” asked Michael, taking off his flannel and tying it around the monster’s feet. He had just turned ten, but he looked younger, half a foot shorter than the rest of the boys, with baby blonde hair, a face full of freckles, and front teeth so crooked they almost looked like they were missing. He pressed his scrawny hands together and prayed over the thing’s bloody ankle.

​With a roll of his eyes, Isaiah scolded, “Prayers is for people. Don’t waste yours on it.” Isaiah, the tallest of the boys and the second oldest, squatted down to avoid bumping his buzzed head on the roof of the van, squinting at the big, whimpering thing that was supposed to be a legend. Sure, Bigfoot was tall, taller than any man he’d ever seen, covered in dirt-matted fur with broad shoulders and hands bigger than any of their faces, but his eyes were big and dewy, like the deer his daddy hunted with his rifle on Saturday mornings. They were the kind of pretty, gleaming eyes that Isaiah preferred to see dead. That was how he knew he was winning, that and the proud smile he’d see on Daddy’s face. He thought that was what big, tough monsters should be like, him and his daddy. He didn’t expect Bigfoot to be that scared and fragile, like a prey animal, or a girl. It made him scowl at the creature while Michael tended to it.

“How stupid are we gonna look talkin’bout him of we don’t come home with his head?” Isaiah knew how this worked. He remembered the first time he went fishing, how he came home with his arms stretched as wide as he could reach and told his father he caught a fish that was this big. He’d lied, of course, told his father he’d let it go after. His father sent him up to bed without supper. Stories don’t fill our bellies, he’d said. If you wanna eat, you better bring home somethin’ bleeding.

Isaiah had only meant to ask Tyler and Michael the question, but Sadie Lou started wailing again. “Hush! If we want anybody to believe us, we gotta kill him!”

​“We don’t gotta kill him!” she cried as Lottie Jane put out her cigarette and pulled her into her lap.

“Yes, we do!” Isaiah argued, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his overalls.

​“No we don’t!”

“We do!”

​“We don’t!”

​The siblings had an unspoken understanding that whoever argued their point the loudest was right, and the volume built until Isaiah remembered that little girls could scream shrill enough to make all of their ears ache.

​“Alright, enough, enough!” Tyler huffed, his hands plastered to the sides of his head. “Listen, it’s my mama’s car so I make the rules–” he caught a glance from Lottie, the oldest and the coolest of the Crystal Creek kids, “–so I contribute to the rules. We’ll think about it, Sadie, okay? We won’t kill him right away.”

​“But if we don’t kill him,” said Michael from the floor of the van, “what do we do with him?”

​“Can’t we be his friend?” Sadie asked with a sniffle, hiding her face under Lottie Jane’s arm.

​Isaiah wrinkled his nose and frowned. “His friend?”

Tyler’s tone was softer despite his disapproval. He asked, “How are we supposed to make friends with a Bigfoot, Sadie Lou? He don’t talk or nothin’.”

​“He don’t gotta talk!” the little girl pouted, breaking free from Lottie’s arms to crawl over the back seats until she reached Bigfoot, clinging to his hairy arm and making him grunt as he turned his deer eyes down towards her. “We were mean to him! We gotta say sorry.”

​“We don’t gotta say sorry to nobody!” Isaiah scowled, hands balled into fists at his sides. “He was in our woods! He’s a trespasser!”

​“God says we should forgive others and their trespassers,” Michael said.

​“Not quite what he was talking about, bud.” Lottie shook her head.

​“My daddy says we should shoot trespassers in the face,” Isaiah said, glaring at the youngest of the boys, “and he don’t argue with God.”

​“He ain’t a trespasser.” Tyler looked at the creature, his leathery, wrinkly face, and meekly argued, “I think he might’ve been there first.”

​Michael nodded. “Bigfoot’s like, a million years old, right?”

​“That ain’t the point!” He looked to his sister, his scaredy-cat sister who cried whenever she saw a wasp, let alone a big hairy monster, who now sat cuddled against the thing’s side. “What if he scares Sadie? You don’t want her cryin’ the whole way home, do you? Right?”

​Michael and Tyler followed his gaze, then shared a look between each other. ​“She don’t look scared.”

​“Well she’s gonna be! He’s freaky! He’s gonna scare her shitless and make her cry her eyes out!”

“How about we put him to the test,” suggested Lottie Jane. “See if he’s cool enough to ride with us. If he gets along with us, we’ll let him stay, and if he sets Sadie off and makes her cry, you can bring his head to your daddy.”

Isaiah knew Lottie Jane’s suggestions were really commands. He’d only make an even bigger ass of himself if he argued. “Fine,” he grumbled, saving his dignity. Then, to the creature in the back of the van, “You can stay for now, tough guy, but the second you make my sister cry, you’re comin’ home without a head!”

Isaiah locked eyes with Bigfoot, staring him down, and he didn’t know what was worse, the fact that Bigfoot would win if this turned into a fight, or that he didn’t fight at all. He only gazed at Isaiah with those wide deer eyes and grunted. It puzzled him in a way that only added to his fury. There were only two things Isaiah people and animals alike to be, scary, or scared of him. Bigfoot was an unnerving neither of those things, and Isaiah knew that would keep bothering him until Bigfoot was dead.

​“If you wanna ride with us, you gotta follow our rules, got it? Not everybody can fit in with the Crystal Creek kids. We’re the coolest, toughest kids this side of the mountains, you can’t tag along if you’re just gonna embarrass us.” Isaiah continued. It was a pointless endeavor and Isaiah knew that. Legend or not, Bigfoot was an animal, and Isaiah was a man. Isaiah’s place in the world was above it, and Bigfoot’s place was at the business end of his daddy’s shotgun. But for his soft hearted friends that didn’t understand the natural order of things, he would simply have to prove it. “I’m Isaiah Weathers, and I’m the oldest boy, which means I’m pretty much in charge.”
​
“No you ain’t,” Tyler argued. “I turn thirteen before you do.”

​“Yeah, but… pretty much.”

​“Come on, Isaiah, don’t fib.”

​He sputtered for an excuse before saying, “Well, I’m a leader-type like my daddy, and I’m a big kid anyway, so I’m pretty much in charge. Which means you gotta do what I say.

​“That’s Sadie Lou, my baby sister.” Isaiah watched Bigfoot look down at the girl tucked beneath his hairy arm. She wore a dress that their mama had made from a pillowcase, but the bottom was already striped with grass stains. “And I know she’s annoying, but you gotta be nice to her or I’ll kill you right here right now, got it?”
​
Bigfoot grunted again. Isaiah wondered if the dumb thing even knew what he was talking about. He would eventually, when Isaiah would be cutting his throat.

​“That’s Tyler,” Isaiah nodded to the boy in the passenger’s seat, with braids that hung in a halo around his head and fell just above his brows. The kids at school liked to make fun of his braids, but Isaiah never understood why. He thought they made Tyler look real tough. “He’s the smartest out of all of us. He had his times tables all remembered before he turned ten.”

Tyler looked down at his hands. “You don’t gotta say all that, man, what does Bigfoot care about times tables?”

​“He’s gotta know you’re smart so he doesn’t think he can boss you around.”
​
Michael looked up at Bigfoot from his seat on the floor of the van. “Bigfoot don’t look bossy.”

​“That’s Michael. He’s less smart.”

​“Hey!”

​“Knock it off, you two. Michael’s plenty smart in his own way,” said Lottie as she lit another cigarette and put it between her red painted lips.

​“That’s Lottie Jane. She’s fourteen, but basically an adult.”

​“She’s actually in charge,” Tyler interrupted.

“That’s all of us, so you know where you stand now, right? Right at the bottom of the list.” Bigfoot grunted again, and Isaiah groaned and threw his hands into the air, “How is he supposed to ride with us if he ain’t sayin’ nothin’?”

​Lottie Jane turned to look into the back of the car, asking, “You boys hungry? We haven’t seen Sue in a hot minute, I’m sure she’d like to meet our new friend.”

Isaiah stared at her through the rearview mirror, perplexed, “You want to take Bigfoot. To Waffle House.”

Lottie shrugged. “Ain’t no better place for him, I don’t think so.”

Isaiah stuffed his hands in his pockets and grumbled, “I could think of a few.”

“Look,” Lottie Jane turned around in her seat to face him, “if Sadie’s gonna cry anywhere, it’s gonna be there. If he doesn’t scare her for our whole lunch time, Bigfoot can stay, and if he makes her cry, you can skin him for your dad or whatever you were goin’ on about. Deal?”

Isaiah spat in his palm, then stuck out his hand. “Deal.”

Lottie gave it a shake, then wiped her hand on the side of her jeans. She lifted Sadie Lou up out of her lap, then set her down on the floor of the van. “Get your booty in a seat and buckle up, you’re too young to ride without a seatbelt.”

That was all the encouragement Sadie Lou needed to climb up into the backseat and fasten her seatbelt. Isaiah took the seat next to her. Michael stayed next to Bigfoot on the floor.

​“Sorry, Bigfoot, we don’t got a seat big enough for you,” He muttered to him, “but I’ll stay back with you, so you don’t get lonely, okay?”

”He’d fit better without a head,” Isaiah grumbled with a pout.

​Lottie snapped her fingers. “Can it.”

Bigfoot wrapped a hairy arm around the youngest boy’s shoulder and held him tight to his side, and when they hit a bump in the road he didn’t go flopping against the back of the seats, the hairy creature keeping him secure in his place.

“Gee, thanks, Bigfoot!” He flashed him a crooked toothed grin. Bigfoot stretched his lips to give one back.

​“What are you gonna do next, give him a kiss?” Isaiah asked with a sneer, but Sadie twisted beneath her seatbelt to offer,

​“I wanna give Bigfoot a kiss!”

​Isaiah gripped her shoulder and turned her back around. “No, Sadie, he’s probably got gunk in his teeth or somethin’.”

“He’s got a little gunk, but not as much as you,” Michael teased.

​“Well,” said Tyler from the front seat, “yours are only better because they’re too far apart to get gunk stuck.”

The three boys laughed with each other, Michael retorting, “I know you ain’t sayin’ nothin, Tyler, when you gotta floss your front teeth with a mattress!”

​“Stop it, you three!” Lottie Jane could somehow keep the bite in her voice even when she was laughing.

​“What, Lottie? Scared you might catch some smoke?”

​“You know she ain’t — look at her teeth!” Tyler pointed her way and all four of them roared with laughter again. Bigfoot attempted a laugh of his own, smiling with too many teeth as he made huffed, roaring sounds.

​“Ain’t nothin’ to say ‘bout my teeth!” Lottie snapped back, “My teeth’s gonna be on billboards one day, while you brokeasses ain’t gonna have nothin’ to do but look up at it and pray.”

With a pout, Michael said, “That’s idolatry.”

​Lottie shook her head, blowing smoke out the window as she pulled into the parking lot. “That’s show-biz.” She parked the car the right way, as she’d taught the boys, with the white line in between the tires so other jackasses don’t swing their doors open and scrape up the sides of the van. She looked to the left, to the right, then put out her cigarette and called, “Clear.”

​Isaiah reached back to unbuckle Sadie Lou while Tyler hopped out and opened the back of the car to help Michael and Bigfoot. “You think they’re gonna let him in?”

​“He looks human enough, don’t he?” Michael asked as he took Bigfoot’s hand and guided him onto the pavement.

“If you squint.” Lottie nodded, taking a step back with a frown.

​“We can say he’s got like…” Tyler paced around him in a circle. Isaiah couldn’t help but think this was more trouble than the monster was worth, “…some kinda condition. That makes him all hairy.”

​“Ain’t nobody gonna buy that! Look at him!” He towered over the rest of the kids by a good foot or two, and Isaiah could tell his hands looked big and strong enough to squish one of their skulls like a rotten apple, if Bigfoot only had the brains or balls to do it. But looks could be scary enough, sometimes, that was something he knew well, so he lifted Sadie Lou up to see his mouth real close. “Look at his teeth, Sadie, I bet he could eat you right up.”

Sadie gasped, and Isaiah had almost thought he’d won, but then she said, “They ain’t half as bad as Michael’s.”

The damn teeth thing got the whole group of kids laughing, with a wide grin even splitting Bigfoot’s furry face. Grumbling, Isaiah set Sadie Lou down and stormed into the Waffle House. The rest of the kids followed, Lottie holding Sadie Lou’s hand, and Michael holding Bigfoot’s.

Luckily, the place was empty enough that Sue was mopping the floor rather than waiting on a table. Isaiah wondered if this was the first time the grime-slick tiles had ever gotten cleaned.

Sue’s wrinkle lined eyes squinted at Bigfoot as he ducked beneath the doorframe. She pushed her red bangs up out of them to get a better look. For a moment, the old woman just gawked at the figure towering over the children, her mouth hung open to reveal her missing front tooth. A tense silence hung between the kids until Sue finally asked, “New friend?”

The boys sputtered over excuses in unison.

“He’s got a condition.”

“He’s a liberal.”

“He’s just plain ugly, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

Isaiah, however, was quick to offer, “You can tell him to leave!”

The waitress looked up at the big, hairy monster, then down at the little boy holding his hand. She sighed and raised her hands in surrender. “It ain’t none of my business, as long as he can cover his check.”

With a pout, Isaiah stuffed a hand in his pocket, fishing out a ten and a crumpled handful of ones. Tyler pulled a ten and a five out of his, Michael counted out ten quarters with a couple of dimes and nickels, and Lottie pulled a small stack of ones from her purse.

Sue looked at the wads of cash and coins in their hands, pursing her lips. “Yeah, that should be enough.”

Lottie cracked a rare smile. “Thanks, Sue.”

They piled into their usual booth at the corner, but once Lottie and Tyler got seated, Isaiah looked to the seats, already a third of the way full with just two kids. “It ain’t gonna fit.”

“Sure he will,” Tyler said with a roll of his eyes.

“Nuh uh,” Isaiah said, looking down at his sister again, “he’s gonna take Sadie’s spot, then she can’t sit with us.”

Just as Sadie’s bottom lip was starting to wobble, Lottie Jane scooped her up into her arms, “Come on, now, Isaiah, don’t start. It’s fine. Michael, you can sit next to Tyler. You can come here, Isaiah, and Sadie Lou can sit on your lap. Then the big guy can sit next to Michael. See? Easy.”

“It ain’t fair,” Isaiah said, but took a seat anyway, and let his little sister sit on his knees. With the table covering their feet, Isaiah fixed his eyes on the menu, but lifted his foot to stomp on Bigfoot’s.

It howled like a coyote with a bullet between its shoulders, and scared Sue bad enough to make her drop her mop bucket, but Sadie Lou only reached across the table to grab Bigfoot’s hand and ask, “Are you okay, Mr. Bigfoot?”

Bigfoot only snorted, and Isaiah warned “Don’t call him Mr. And you better not start squirmin’ or nothin’ or else I’ll eat all your hashbrowns.”

Sadie Lou took his hand and linked her pinky with his, chirping, “Promise!” It made it real damn hard to stay mad.

“Y’all gettin’ your usuals?” Sue asked.

Isaiah nodded, but turned his head to the deer eyed, monkey faced elephant in the room. “What are you getting?”

Bigfoot looked down at the table and grunted.

“That ain’t on the menu. See? He don’t even know how to read! He’s not cool!”

“Neither does Sadie Lou.” Tyler said, and Isaiah grumbled to himself. He was getting real sick of getting shut up, but if he pressed the issue, then it would be his fault when Sadie Lou burst into tears about it. He kept quiet.

“He wants a hash brown bowl!” Michael leaned across the table, towards Sue. “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, B?”

“Don’t give him a nickname!” Isaiah swatted at his shoulder.

“Ooh!” Tyler raised his hand. “And some grits!”

“And… some…” Sue scribbled into her yellow notepad, “grits. Got it. It’ll be out in a minute, kids.”

“Thanks, Sue!” They said together. Bigfoot grunted and spread his lips in another attempt at a smile. Isaiah wrinkled his nose.

“That’s nasty.”

“He’s just smilin’,” Michael said, patting the thing’s shoulder like Isaiah’s words hurt its feelings or something. That only made it worse to him. It wasn’t like he was a person, after all. He didn’t feel nothing. He didn’t even know the words coming out of their mouths, Isaiah would bet.

“Yeah, ain’t nothin’ wrong with smilin’,” Tyler’s consolation interrupted by the grin that spread across his face, “unless your teeth look like Michael’s!”

“Knock it off with the teeth thing!” Michael sulked. “I was made in God’s image!”

“Yeah, dude, from memory.” Tyler snorted. Even Lottie laughed at that one, a wheezy, raspy sound. It made Sadie Lou start giggling. That was what made Isaiah’s resolve break into a grin of his own.

“You guys are idiots.”

Tyler leaned over to Bigfoot to explain, “We’re just teasin’ each other. It’s how we have our fun, so don’t be sensitive if we start makin’ fun of you. You gotta know we don’t mean nothin’ by it.” Bigfoot grunted, and Tyler nodded. “Yeah, exactly. No snowflakes at our table.” Great, now Tyler thought he could talk to the damn thing.

Sue returned soon after, a tray of their dishes balanced against her hip. “You kids ain’t gettin’ into too much trouble today, right?”

Sadie’s eyes shined in a way that Isaiah knew could only mean trouble. “We caught a—“ before she could spill any more, Isaiah clamped a hand over her mouth.

Sue looked between Sadie and Bigfoot. She shrugged. “Ain’t none of my business. I’m not a cop, y’all can quit wettin’ yourselves. I won’t ask. Tell your… friend… to enjoy his grits.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Bigfoot reached for the bowl in front of him, but Michael shooed his hand away.

“You gotta pray first.”

Bigfoot grunted, tilting his head.

“Like this.” He took Bigfoot’s left hand, and Lottie took the other one. Tyler took Lottie’s, Isaiah took Tyler’s and Sadie’s, and Sadie reached across the table for Michaels, until their arms of varying skin tones, sizes, and fur colors formed a halo above their greasy meals.

“You wanna say grace this time, Sadie Lou?” Michael offered.

Sadie nodded and recited, “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. Amen.”

They released each other’s hands and dug into their food.

“You know,” Michael said through a mouthful of scrambled eggs, “when you’re a big kid, you can make up your own prayers. Then you can pray for everybody in the world, and God will protect them.”

Her eyes sparkled and she gasped. “Really?”

”Yeah, really.” Isaiah agreed, reaching over her shoulder to snatch a slice of bacon.

“Except for the democrats.”

“God ain’t got nothin’ against the democrats, Isaiah, knock it off,” Tyler said through a mouthful of hash browns.

”Tyler’s folks are democrats,” Michael explained to Bigfoot in a half whisper, “because his mama’s black but his daddy’s white. But we don’t care none, because he’s family.”

Bigfoot grunted, then grabbed a fistful of grits. Even Lottie Jane grimaced at the sight of it oozing from between his thick fingers and sticking in his fur.

”That’s nasty.” Isaiah turned away to gag, even as his friends laughed at the sight of it.

“Look, Sadie, he’s gonna get all that mess in your hair bows!”

“Hey!” Sadie reached up to cover the ribbons that held her curly pigtails in place. Her eyes widened and grew glossy as she pouted.

Isaiah grinned. “See? We shouldn’t have brought him here! Y’all feel stupid, yet?”

“He’s learnin’, asshole, you’re the one who should feel stupid!” Tyler sat up, finally daring to raise his voice. “You’ve been naggin’ him all mornin’ when he ain’t done nothin’ to you, I’m tired of it.”

“Because he don’t belong with us!” Isaiah raised his voice louder.

“He belongs just as much as you—“

Isaiah slapped his hands on the table and stood. Sadie crawled out of his lap and into Lottie’s arms, whimpering the beginning of a high pitched wail. “Tyler, shut the hell up! You don’t know nothin’bout who belongs where! Your democrat daddy’s so ass backwards he ain’t teach you a thing about common sense!”

“My daddy taught me right from wrong better than yours did!” Isaiah flared his nostrils, but Tyler didn’t back down, pushing himself up to his feet, “He got more sense than your deer killin’ daddy will ever have!”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Isaiah clenched his fists at his sides and sneered. “If your daddy had enough sense, he could put some dinner on the table!”

“That’s enough,” Lottie warned, voice firm as she covered Sadie Lou’s ears.

“Oh yeah?” Tyler met Isaiah’s sneer with a glare of his own. “Well maybe if your daddy had enough sense, your mama wouldn’t keep showin’ up to church with black eyes.”

Isaiah leapt across the table, hands grasping for Tyler’s neck. Lottie and Sue shouted in protest, but their words were silenced by the sound of blood roaring in his ears. He didn’t care about nothing but making Tyler shut up. He knew nothing about his mama, nothing about his daddy, and if he wanted to keep saying shit about his good Christian family, he’d make sure the boy couldn’t talk no more.

He felt two thin hands grasp at his shoulders, with nails long enough that they could only be Lottie’s. It didn’t matter if she was older than him, he was a boy, he was stronger, strong enough to push her off of him and onto the slick tile floor. But then two bigger hands grabbed for him and covered his whole back, and Isaiah didn’t feel so strong anymore. The pair of hands lifted him up off of Tyler and into the air, Bigfoot grunting and panting behind him like an animal.

“Get off of me!” He howled, pounding his fists against Bigfoot’s fingers. “Let me go!” But from all the way up there, he could look at Tyler and actually see him, his first friend, gasping for air with his own hand around his throat. He looked up at his friends, only to find Sadie Lou’s little pink face streaked with tears, but her wet blue eyes weren’t on the monster holding her brother up in the air, they were on Isaiah, wide and full of fear. But above the sound of his shouting, the blood roaring in his ears, Lottie Jane and Sue fussing over Tyler, he heard the high pitched, quivering wails of his sister.

“Stop it, Isaiah!” she cried, clinging to Michael, the only kid left in the booth, “stop being so mean!”

He fell still in the monster’s hands. Lottie helped Tyler sit up, moving his hand away to look at the bruises Isaiah left behind. Bigfoot set him down, but still towered over him, as if the damn thing didn’t want to let Isaiah get away before he had to look at the damage.

Hanging his head, Isaiah mumbled, “I’m sorry, Tyler.”

Lottie helped Tyler to his feet, a hand on his shoulder as he said, “I’m sorry too.”

“Hurry up and eat your damn food,” Lottie said, sitting the two boys back in the booth, but grabbed Isaiah’s arm before he could sit, “you’re damn lucky we didn’t listen to you, you hear me? Who knows how bad that could’ve gotten if he didn’t stop you. You better thank him for coming with us. You’re lucky we don’t stick to the rules of our bet and give him your place instead.”

“Well why don’t you?” Isaiah asked, bitter, defeated. “Why don’t you send me away and let Bigfoot win?”

“Because that ain’t how we win,” Lottie let go of his arm. “We win by sittin’ here and lovin’ each other and eating our damn hash browns.”

He sat down with a frown, chewing on a bite of eggs. “But then who loses?”

Lottie took a sip of her Diet Coke and said, “Nobody’s gotta.”

Isaiah fell silent as he ate, until his sniffling sister reached for him. He pulled her back into his lap, wiping her tears away. “Come on now, you ain’t got nothin’ to be cryin’ about. I said I’m sorry.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Sadie Lou. I didn’t mean to make you cry.” No matter what he said, her tears didn’t stop. She sniffled and whimpered until she saw Bigfoot scoop up a handful of grits and bring it to his mouth. She burst into a fit of giggles, and Bigfoot only did it again, this time grabbing even more and making an even bigger mess of his hairy hands. Isaiah thought it was revolting to see the wet, grainy lumps clumping into his fur, but it made Sadie smile as he wiped the last of her tears from her damp, pink cheeks. Michael began to laugh with her as he tried to clean their new friend up. With enough handfuls of scrambled eggs and syrup sticking to Bigfoot’s fur, the table was full of laughter again. Everybody was laughing except for Isaiah, who sulked in his corner of the booth as Sue came back around for their check.

“I like your new friend,” Sue said to Lottie Jane, pointedly looking above Tyler and Isaiah, “I say he’s a keeper.”

Lottie paid their bill with the pile of loose coins and cash they’d pooled together, saying softly, “Sorry about all the fightin’, Sue.”

“I don’t mind it as long as you promise that’s the last one. You kids better stay out of trouble,” Sue said as she punched the numbers into the register, “I don’t want any more rough housing.”

“We’ll try,” promised Tyler, “but we’re just kids.”

Sue shook her head. “You’re big kids now, you gotta act like it, okay?”

“Okay! We’ll try.” Michael nodded as he took Bigfoot’s hand. He grimaced and said, “It’s still sticky,” but didn’t let go.

They said their goodbyes and left the Waffle House, following Lottie back to the parking lot so they could pile into the van, but Isaiah stayed back.

“You can sit in my seat, Michael.”

“Are you sure?” The blonde boy looked at Bigfoot in the back of the van, then back at Isaiah.

“Yeah,” Isaiah said. “I’ll take the floor.” He sat with his back pressed against the door, looking at Bigfoot’s big brown eyes and struggling to see the prey animal that he had so easily before. Instead, he saw Tyler, gasping and clawing at his hands while Isaiah squeezed tighter and tighter. The thought of the kill didn’t seem much like a gold medal anymore.

“Thanks,” he muttered, only loud enough for the beast to hear, “for stopping me. That wasn’t nice, I won’t do it again.”

Bigfoot grunted at him and wrapped a hairy arm around his shoulders. Lottie hit a bump in the road, but Bigfoot kept Isaiah steady.