Parkwood

The swinging door triggered the bell on the inside of the restaurant, but nobody seemed to notice.
Nobody, that is, except Patty.
Patty Kelleher looked up when the bell rang above the front door of the Squatch. Recognizing the fellow from the video interviews, she walked around from behind the bar, wiping her hands on a bar towel and tossing the towel into a bus tub before arriving in front of the man.
With an eyebrow raised, she let out a little huff. “Well, at least you’re right on time,” she said. “That’s something.”
Positioning herself solidly in front of this tall and gentle fellow with the deep blue eyes who stood at attention before her, she let out a sniffle and a squint as she surveyed him from eyebrows to hiking boots and back up again.
While she scanned for anything out of the ordinary that might identify him as an alien version of the human she was expecting, the man caught a glimpse of something shiny on Patty’s hip. Patty’s pink-handled .38 Special handgun stuck out in its holster, barely but obviously in view beside her bar apron—just the way she liked it.
With hardly a change in expression or movement of his head, the stranger’s eyes quickly returned forward just in time to meet up with Patty’s eyes, which had already returned to his face.
Patty seemed pleased that he noticed she “packed,” as she liked to call it. Today, however, she mentioned nothing of it.
Instead, Patty stated matter-of-factly, “So, you’re here. That’s good. Glad you made it.”
Now holding his hiking beanie and not shying away from the inspection but also not flinching an inch, the man looked caringly back at Patty and nodded slightly as he let a slight grin escape. “Thank you, Patty. I’m pleased to be here.”
Patty gave the man a satisfactory double pat as high as she could reach on his back and headed to her home position behind the bar, but not before pointing to an empty booth near the back of the restaurant, which she obviously wanted the man to occupy.
The man tucked his hat into his duffel bag, hiked the bag higher onto his shoulder, and headed to the designated table.
By the time he slid into the booth, Laura Miller, the sixteen-year-old Patty hired to help with serving, had already headed toward the table. Laura was carrying a steaming plate of a Patty Melt and home fries in one hand and a Coca-Cola in the other. She nearly spilled the glass of soda as she set it on the table, and a few of the fries slid off the plate as they came to rest in front of him.
The man acted as if didn’t notice the spills. Thanking her, he focused on the table before him as the waitress timidly scurried off to the kitchen.
He shrugged off his canvas coat, gently laid the coat on top of the duffel next to him, faced forward, and folded his hands. Bowing almost unnoticeably, he closed his eyes and shared a silent and quick prayer with the Lord. Apparently, the prayer was more noticeable than he expected, because when he opened his eyes, he realized the restaurant had gone quiet in a moment of silence out of respect for the man’s short chat with the Almighty.
Once he picked up a fry and lifted it to his mouth, the crowd again returned to its normal lunch-time volume.
A deep voice behind the man jolted him from his food focus. “Don’t worry about them, you’ll get used to things around here.”
Following the voice came into view the body of a giant, sporting a full beard and a red-and-black plaid flannel shirt. At the sight, the man in the booth leaned a little and cut a glance past the giant and out the front window, half expecting to see Babe the Blue Ox in a parking space next to the Sasquatch statue.
The giant wedged his way into the bench seat opposite the man, nudging the table slightly in an effort to make more room to fit. Then, reaching out his hand—which was larger than the stranger’s head—and with a loud and gregarious voice, the giant bellowed, “The name’s Paul. I know, I know. Don’t worry, the last name isn’t ‘Bunyan,’ it’s ‘Bernard.’ Paul Bernard. Chances are, you’ll never forget it.”
The man across from him grabbed his napkin and wiped the fry grease off his own hands as he leaned forward to clasp the enormous hand in front of him.
Paul laughed a mighty laugh as they shook hands across the table.
The giant said, “Glad to have you here, Padré. Looking forward to it.”