The Leg

         Can you imagine being chased by a wooden leg with no body attached? Oooooh, scar-eey, I guess! Well, it almost happened to me.

         Years ago when I was nine years old, my family went down to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Oregon.

         I always liked Grandma’s place because she lived out in the country. They had an indoor toilet in a little room with a real tub, hot water from a faucet and a sink to wash your hands in. They had a big brown barn, an old well house with a creamery inside, a big vegetable garden and a long, long white chicken house a little farther up the hill. They always had chickens, horses, hogs, and cows in a large corral out back of the chicken house.

         I liked to walk around their farm and look at the garden, talk to the animals and look in on the chickens.

         Usually some of us kids went up there together, but this time no-one else wanted to go, so I went alone.

         I hadn’t noticed anything different at the barn or around the old tree at the left side of the path on the way to the chicken house and the tractor barn, that was way out back in the hay fields. I looked at the chickens, talked to the horses and looked at the garden.

         I started back down the trail to the house. I got passed the Model T car by the barn okay, then there it was! Over there, leaning up against the tree, wearing a shoe and sock, "waiting"! I’d never seen it before. It’s like, it jumped out at me. I screamed and ran crying like I’d never run before, back down to the house.

         They, the adults, asked me, what was the matter. I told them that Grandpa’s leg was going to get me. Mama said, no it’s not, it’s fake, not real not alive, and is not going anywhere alone. I didn’t believe it though, not for a minute. I knew better, so I stayed down near the house until it was time to go home. You won’t catch me going up to the corral alone ever again. One of these days it is going to grow a body and come for me. I know it!

         I never went up to the chicken house alone again ‘til I knew the leg wasn’t there anymore. As far as I know the leg is still up there leaning against that old tree stump.

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