Dear Bigfoot,

Please accept this as the cover letter for my story, Exactly What Happened to Me “That” Day, and Why.  I hope you like it.  But more than anything, I especially hope you get this letter and that you answer it.  I can’t tell you how excited I am.  Though you wouldn’t know it, I have quite a history with you, and seeing your name (Is Bigfoot your name?  If not, what is your name?) and your picture on the Defenestration website was such a bolt out of the blue that, well, it just has to be a sign.

See, here’s the thing: I believed in God.  Maybe I still do.  I don’t know.  Does that make me an agnostic, or just one of the damned?  Do you believe in God?  Do Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) go to church?  Or temple, or mosque, or whatever?  (Please don’t be offended.  I don’t mean “whatever” like what-ever.   I just mean that I don’t want to suggest that if you’re religious you should naturally be Christian.  I mean, I think Jesus would probably have said something like Let the Bigfeet (Bigfoots?) come unto me, for they are children of God  or Cast not stones at the Bigfoot, for he is your brother; do unto him as you would do unto me or something like that.  I just mean that I think he would have been nice to Bigfoot people (again, I apologize if that’s not the right term), but not that you would have to be Christian.  I mean, I’m not sure I believe in Him either.  He hasn’t written me back.)

Sorry, that got more, I don’t know, twisty, than I meant.

So, here’s the thing: I know lots of people, well, not know, but I’ve met, or at least heard, lots of people who say they know God (only one who says he’s seen God, but still), but they can’t really prove it, and like I say, nobody (or, rather, Nobody) has written me back.  The thing is, two people in my family say they saw you, and I wasn’t sure whether to believe them, especially after all the God stuff, but now, now I think maybe I should.

Okay, so it was a long time ago (a long, long time ago in one case) that they saw you (if they did), so maybe it wasn’t you, but one of your relatives?  I don’t know.  Do you live longer than us?  Anyway, the first one in my family who said he had met you was my grandfather.  His name was Silas Abercrombie (which you can tell it was a long, long time ago just from the name), and he was in the First World War.  He was Canadian (which some people think is funny by itself, but I don’t understand exactly why), and he said that before he left for France he met you in the woods.  He said that they were training in the woods and that he got lost in the dark and that you found him and led him back home.  (The thing is, he wasn’t right after the war, and though he became a tax attorney, he spent one week every month chained to a post in my grandparents’ back yard, stark naked, mostly complaining bitterly about baseball.  He only ever talked about you when he was chained up out back, but the thing is, when he talked about you he was very calm, and didn’t complain at all.  He said you were very kind, that you taught him how to start a fire with nothing but snow, and that you had a lovely singing voice.  When I asked him about you once when he was a regular lawyer, he just looked down at me and didn’t answer.  He lived to be one hundred and fifteen, by the way, and when he died, in 2000, he was the last left-handed survivor of World War One.  And my grandmother said he never met you, that he really just had a French Canadian girlfriend and that he snuck away from training to see her.  I don’t know.  She’s still alive.  She’s only 73, but that’s a whole other story.)

The other person who said he met you is my cousin, Frank.  He said he met you at a gas station outside of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.  He said he was trying to get to California where he was supposed to have this job, and he ran out of gas way out in the desert at night, outside of Truth or Consequences (which is a cool name, whether you actually met Frank there, or not).  Anyway, Frank says he walked down the road and found this old gas station, and nobody was there and everything was locked, but then he saw you, and he said you went over to the gas pump and did something to it, I don’t know what, that made gas come out of it, and you gave him a gas can so he could fill up his car.  He didn’t say anything about your singing voice, but getting gas out of an old gas pump seems sort of like making fire with snow, so I figured maybe that’s a thing.  But see, here’s the thing: Frank got real religious while he was in jail, and he says he saw Jesus, too, so I wonder if his story about meeting you isn’t just the same sort of thing?

So, Bigfoot, if it really is you, could you please write me back?  Even if you don’t like my story, Exactly What Happened to Me “That” Day, and Why, I would be very grateful, in an existential sort of way, if you would let me know whether you are real or not, and even, if possible, whether you (or another Bigfoot you know of) met my grandfather in Canada back in 1915, or even my cousin Frank back in something like 1983 in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (though that one does seem less likely to me).

Yours in hope,

Silas Abercrombie, III

PS I forgot to mention that my name is Silas Abercrombie, too, even though I’m not old, because I’m named after my grandfather who may (or may not) have met you in 1915.

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Jonathan McLelland lives with his wife and sons in Alabama, where his family has been since the Flood, more or less.  An architect most days, he impersonates a college professor one day a week, and maintains his secret identity as a writer by publishing very little.  He made his literary debut with a story in RustKeeper, which promptly ceased publication.  If there had been credible evidence of his involvement in the Gardner Museum heist, Netflix probably would’ve interviewed him.  That they didn’t speaks volumes.