It was around Halloween or just after, so perhaps a trick or a tall tale.  A very tall tale.  About a very tall man, Big Jim, out walking an Armadillo?  Or was it?  An allusion or delusion that I was sure wouldn’t be mine.  Until  …

… one evening at twilight I was walking along the Mill Creek trail, absorbed in my thoughts when there appeared a man?  Or so it seemed.  A man and yet, insubstantial.  Very tall, thin, almost skeletal.  I approached him from behind, afraid that a big gust of wind might  just blow him away.  I turned to look back they way I had come, thinking that when I turned back he would be gone.  He wasn’t.   I then noticed something to his right that was somehow even stranger.  Some kind of animal.  An  Armadillo, in Walla Walla, Washington?  It couldn’t be and yet as I got closer, it turned and raised slightly and looked me straight in the eye.  It definitely was an Armadillo.  The man turned also, almost in unison.  No, not almost.  They were somehow linked.  Strange, macabre, and yet somehow appropriate dance partners.  The most striking thing about the man was not his height, but his hands.  Fingers so very long, and yet like leaves in a breeze.  I looked up to his face, into his eyes, and then, had an almost overwhelming urge to look back down at the Armadillo.  I thought better of it.

Approaching the man, I held out my hand.  We shook.  It was like an adult shaking hands with a child.  And yet completely normal, comfortable.  Not gentle, but totally without any malice or ill will.  He could crush the bones in my hand like kindling, but never would.  It was outside the laws of probability.

I said, “Is your name …”

He said, “My name is Big Jim.”

I asked, “What is your last name?”

He repeated, “My name is Big Jim.”

I then did look down at the Armadillo.  He looked straight up at me.

I asked Big Jim, “What’s the Armadillo’s name?”  He looked down and the two traded something, a look, a thought, a desire.  And from Big Jim’s mouth came, “Arthur.”

Arthur turned and started up the trail, as did Big Jim.

I was going the same way, and yet I hesitated.  I felt that if I followed them I might end up where they were going and I didn’t feel that I was ready to end up there.  So I decided that my walk was at an end.  And started back home.

I was left with a lingering question, was Big Jim walking Arthur or was Arthur waking Big Jim?

And even a more significant question, Did it matter?  I didn’t know.  Yet.