My grandfather taught me all about the Mule Man. On summer nights at the farm he’d take a few too many swigs of Jack Daniels, and the stories flowed.

He told me how the Mule Man kicked open the chicken coop, how he knocked down the fence so the horses could run free. He told me about peeking out the screen door one night because the dogs barked like mad. That’s the one time granddad saw him, far off at the edge of the porch light. A man’s body. A mule’s head. The Mule Man stood–staring, staring–until granddad ran him off with a shotgun blast into the sky.

Visions of the Mule Man kept me awake at night. Was he in the closet? Under the bed? And I never, ever, looked out the window for fear that he would be there, watching me with his big, muley eyes.

But when night turned to day my fears evaporated. I loved spending summers on the farm, roaming the pastures, trying to teach the barn animals to speak. I even explored the woods in the back of the property. And I was hardly ever afraid, even when I felt, as I often did, an unseen presence lurking, staring at me through the trees.

Granddad owned a beautiful piece of land. Two low hills cleared for crops, butting up against a forest in Tennessee’s central basin. The rich soil had grown cotton once. More recently it grew corn. It was so very different from the suburb where my parents raised me up north.

I don’t remember why I stopped going to the farm. Probably because of summer sports camps and part-time jobs. I hit high school and never looked back. Then college. And a career in the city.

I didn’t return until after granddad died. Someone had to wrap up his affairs, and mom was a mess and dad so swamped at work.

I didn’t expect my excursion to Maury County to last longer than a week. But things got complicated. Granddad owed money. Lots of it. So I stuck around long enough to watch the bank take the farm that had been in my family since before the Civil War. A sign announced the future home of Greensleeves Estates. Seriously? I asked aloud. Greensleeves? And I noticed when the land became a checkerboard of half-acre plots.

It was the survey stakes that drew me back to the farm, after sundown, hours before I would leave town for good. I couldn’t save the land, but by God I could commit felony vandalism.

I parked in the gravel driveway. I stood in the lawn, observed the farmhouse and barn, the hills practically glowing in the moonlight. I got to work, stooping to uproot a stake, toss it away, and move on to the next and the next.

I lost myself in the work, shuffling trancelike, muttering obscenities about yuppies, McMansions and suburban sprawl. I moved further and further toward the woods in the back of the farm.

That’s when I saw him. The Mule Man stood where the forest ended and fields began. He was entirely naked, but the thick hair swaddling him made him appear less so. His mule head looked too heavy for his thin frame. Long ears reached skyward. The moon shone like silver pupils in his eyes.

I froze, stooped over with my hand gripping an embedded stake. Time passed. A minute, an hour–I’ll never know. Eventually I righted myself, easing the stake from the ground, nervously tossing it aside.

The Mule Man nodded–calmly, decisively–as if we’d reached an agreement. He turned. He disappeared into the deep woods.