We walked on, feeling like two dejected warriors in the Alpine woods without our elephant and minus one almost-new battery-operated glove until we spied Bigfoot’s tracks in the snow — big, round splots leading up the side of the wash. Heartened by our discovery, we armed ourselves properly with snowballs and told each other this was the genuine article.
The snowfall was heavier now, really Bigfoot weather, and we knew how much Bigfoot liked storms, or we’d find tracks all the time.
We followed the footprints all the way to the Wigginses’ house, only to find little Bobby Wiggles in them, hand-me-down boots overheating and making great puddles with each step.
Bobby stood looked at us, cheeks flushed from heat or stinging wind.
Then he or she — I couldn’t tell if Bobby Wiggles was a boy or a girl — giggled and went running into the house.
Timothy and I stayed out in the snow searching for Bigfoot tracks but found only rabbit tracks, which we followed in hopes that Bigfoot might do likewise, since aside from children there was nothing else for it to eat in our neighborhood, and no children had ever been reported eaten. Bigfoot may not have been hungry, but we had had only a few gingerbread cookies since noon; so when the rabbit tracks zagged near my house, we didn’t turn again. We forgot the rabbit and Bigfoot and walked the rest of the way through the ghost-white woods to my front door, where we kicked off our boots and threw down our jackets and gloves. Mom and Dad were in the media room in front of the kitchen monitor, checking the Christmas menu.
“Go back and plug your gloves into the recharger,” Dad said without glancing up.
But Mom must have looked up because she said right away, “Both of them.”
“I lost one,” I said.
“Go back and find it.”
Timothy and I looked at each other.
Mom was still watching me. “It won’t do any good,” I said finally. “We were up on the hill, and Timothy’s aunt sicced the grass cutter on us.”
“Why would she do a thing like that?”
Timothy and I shrugged.
“Well, I’ll call her and ask her to let you get your glove,” Dad said, rolling his chair to the comm console.
“The grass cutter got it,” I said, more willing to face punishment for losing a glove than what might happen if Dad found out the day before Christmas that we’d closed her house’s eyes.
“I told you she was getting crazier by the minute,” Dad said.
“She isn’t dangerous.”
“How do you know that? The grass cutter, of all things.”
