The October Music, Stanza 2 - Day 20

Giant’s Steps

            Ain’t nobody talkin’ much ‘bout it on account of how tragic it all is, but the world should know ‘bout Paul Bunyan and how he’s ruinin’ our li’l town. Ever’body talks ‘bout how he’s this folk hero, shapin’ the world t’ something more magical. That’s all horsepiss, if’n you forgive m’French. He ain’t no hero. That un’s a gotdang mass killer.

            We’s just fine, y’know? We ain’t got much but we’s a simple town. We farm and got families. Ain’t much money but love and food and what more can a feller really ask outta life? Got my wife and my four sons and we work the land that my daddy gave to me and his daddy gave to him and all th’ way back t’when we set down roots in these here parts. What we can, we grow ourselves and what we can’t, we trade fer with our neighbors. It works.

            Then word spread, as it always does in a small down, ‘bout this giant man roamin’ ‘round. Folks say he’s ten foot tall and wanders with an ox bigger’n him and bluer’n the clearest lake. I says that ain’t possible but ever’one else talks ‘bout him in some sorta awe, like. Ridiculous, I says, but I get ignored as always.

            Anyhow, near ‘bout two weeks ago, the Sanderson boy come runnin’ down the road to my house, outta breath, cryin’, and covered in blood. My first thought was bandits. We don’t got ‘em very often, but they always cause a mess ‘a trouble, so I got my shotgun ready. He’s babblin’ on ‘bout Paul Bunyan and I ask him if he’s been drinkin’. He says ‘no sir’ and tells me Paul Bunyan visited their house that morning. He weren’t no ten foot man – just a hair over six and a half foot – but big and handsome and carryin’ an axe what he use to chop down trees. With him, he got his ox. Feller painted the damn thing blue and the boy said he looked near on to death.

            Sanderson boy said his daddy Lucas invited this ‘Paul’ in fer dinner, as is the neighborly thing to do, but the man said no. Said he was wanderin’ the land t’clear out the unneeded brush chokin’ the growth ‘a good, honest trees. Well, Lucas done said he appreciated that since he had a mess ‘a brush on his property. Then Paul said that weren’t what he meant and took the axe to Lucas and then to the missus and the three boys. The one that escaped played dead and waited ‘til Paul left ’fore runnin’ to me.

            Don’t rightly know what the bastard meant by unneeded brush, but I do know we got some ‘a them bank folk come this way over the last coupla months, askin’ folk if they wanna sell their land. Ain’t no such thing as coincidence in my mind.
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But legends don’t exist and I ain’t met a man yet who don’t die from bullets.