I Really Don't Know

My grandfather died two years before I was born, in 1978. My grandfather was laid to rest in a small town in Louisiana. I have been there before. Believe it or not, it is one of those creepy cemeteries like you see in the movies; topping a small hill with weeping willows and other shadowy trees. My father, barely 19 at the time, took my grandfather's death pretty hard. One night, not long after the funeral, my dad drove up the old shale driveway that curves its way up the hill and through the gate. He told me that he had been so depressed and so empty at the time. He just wanted it all to end. He closed his eyes and told the Lord to come for him, to take him. At that instant he heard something large and heavy trotting its way up the driveway. In the stillness of the night, the hooves were loud and unquestionable on the shale. His eyes flew open and he shot a glance down the hill. He could barely make out a large shadowy bulk trotting up the driveway at a steady, unbreaking pace. He knew what it was. A black bull. It had materialized out of no where. And he knew it was coming to kill him. My father told me that he began to pray aloud, taking back what he had said, all the while jerking at his car door. The sound vanished. He was drenched in the eerie silence again. Very slowly, he turned his head and stared down the hill. There was nothing but a blanket of darkness, and the October wind whispering over the loose rocks and shells in the driveway. The bull was gone just as strangely as it had came.

You can believe this story or not. But I believe what my father told me. I don't know where the bull came from or where it went. But I do believe there was a bull on the driveway that night and I do believe it was coming to kill him. I will admit that the cemetery hill does overlook a cow pasture, and you may believe that the bull had gotten loose. But it appeared and disappeared from the driveway. And remember one other thing. Bulls don't move at a steady, determined speed. The walk real lazily and slowly, or they run.