a mountain tale by my Guest Author, my daddy
It gets dark in the Mountains. Strange things creep around our house. Sister Ellen is afraid to go outside at night. Of course she is a girl. Not me, I’m not afraid of the dark. At night a kid is supposed to stay indoors and hope that coyotes, bears, and haunts will go away before morning.
Sister Ellen and her little brother
Sometimes Sister would say to me, “Little brother why don’t you go outside and see if the moon is shining.”
Poor girl, she should know that the moon could shine on its own. Last Halloween time Ellen came back from school telling spooky stories about witches, black cats, ghosts, and goblins. She shook her finger at me and began to sing,
Once there was a little boy,
Who wouldn’t say his prayers,
And when he went to bed one night,
Way, away up stairs,
His mama heard him holler,
And his papa heard him bawl,
And when they turned the kivers down
He wasn’t there at all.
She’d sing about how his parents hunted high and low.
And all that they could find of him,
Was waist and round-about.
And the Goblins will get you,
If you don’t watch out!
“Why don’t you go outside, brother. Nothing would get a kid like you.”
She didn’t know that I waited for a chance to prove how big and brave I was. Then, when winter turned into spring, I got the chance I was waiting for.
Mike came up. We were playing on the hillside back of the chicken house when a “Boom. Boom. Boom,” sounded from the little fir trees at the edge of the forest.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a Hammering Goblin,” my friend said. “If we slip up there real quiet, maybe we can see him.”
“I don’t need to see him.”
Sometimes a Goblin will just get a kid. It’s best to say your prayers every night.
“Then we can tell the girls.”
Mike was interested in doing something brave to tell the girls. We crept through the sagebrush on the hillside. Soon the hammering was close to us, right back of the first little fir trees.
“You go first,” he said.
“No, you.”
“It’s your hill.”
“You’re a special guest.”
“We’ll go together.”
We were about ten steps from the edge of the trees when the hammering stopped and a large Ruffed Grouse flew up from the bushes. The grouse must have warned the Hammering Goblin and sent him running up the hill like we went running down.
My friend was disappointed.
“Shux!” he said, “We are going to Cafilornia next week and I wanted to tell your sisters.”
“Cafilornia? Is that a long way from here? I’m going to miss you.”
“Yeh, I know. I’ll miss your little sister.”
Little Sister, Sister Ellen, author