The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac (25 page)

Sometimes, on the phone, the observer would begin by apologizing, stuttering, “I sound crazy, but I know what I saw. No one believes me. My friends, my family. They say I'm nuts.”

Eli always forced himself to remain distant, but what he wanted to tell them was,
I understand. Believe me, I understand. You can rely on me. We'll find him. We'll find Mr. Krantz together.

How funny that would be. What silence he would hear on the other end of the line. God, an admission like that would terrify them. No doubt they would just hang up.

So he spoke to them calmly, asking only for a simple, detailed report, no apologies necessary, and they were comforted by his disinterest and professionalism.

The randomness of it all was disheartening at first. When he founded SNaRL, he had expected to narrow in on Mr. Krantz's exact location quickly, but the locations of the sightings varied greatly, from the Olympics to the Sawtooths to a highway sighting near Miles City, Montana.

Mr. Krantz could be anywhere.

After a few years, however, the ubiquity of these creatures made Eli happy. Did it even really matter anymore whether it was Mr. Krantz he found or some other ancient wood ape? Wouldn't humanity benefit, regardless? And wasn't that a good thing, that the heartbreak of his childhood had led to this interesting career, strange though it might be?

Why, he should be grateful to Mr. Krantz!

After all, one did not simply happen upon Sasquatch research. Cryptozoology was an inspired profession, if not a practical one.

And he believed this would be his legacy. He would better the world and make his family proud. It pleased him to think of it this way. He was doing this for his daughters.

He stood with Ginger now, his hand resting lightly between her shoulder blades as they took in the small, clean space.

“It smells the same in here,” Ginger said. She was smiling. “It reminds me of childhood.”

He went to the sturdy safe beneath his wide clean desk.

“What's the combination?” she asked as he toyed with the lock, scrolling from one number to the next.

“Amelia's birthday,” he said.

“Aw,” Ginger said, splayed out now in Eli's revolving office chair. “That's sweet. You should tell her that. She'd like that.”

He didn't reply. Amelia required constant proof of his love. The most he could do was just stay patient. One day, he believed, she would understand everything: why he'd divorced Gladys, why he'd married Vanessa, why they'd shared a daughter together. (And, really, didn't she realize that Ginger's conception wasn't exactly planned? That it wasn't about replacing anyone?) It was illogical, Amelia's neediness. He should not have to explain his love. It was not a scientific phenomenon, although Amelia treated it like one.

“Hello, buddy,” he said, opening the safe and taking out the precious metatarsus.

“It's a man's bone,” the scientist had told him over the phone, almost a decade ago now, and Eli's heart had sunk. But then, after a slight hesitation, the scientist had continued, “Mostly, anyway, it's a man's bone. But some things don't quite match up, genetically speaking. This could be for a few reasons. Contamination, maybe, in my lab, or … I don't mean to sound spooky here. It's either from a man's foot or the foot of something very recently related to man.”

“You mean there's evidence of interspecies mingling,” Eli said. He thought of Agnes and Mr. Krantz's odd coupling. Maybe Mr. Krantz's own mother had been human. Or his father. Perhaps therein lay the attraction to Agnes.

“Yeah, sure,” the man said. “Like an ape mom or grandma or something. Some men are real perverts! It's a possibility, genetically speaking.”

He heard the scientist doubting himself on the other end of the line. Eli appreciated the seismic shift this nerdy lab rat was undergoing: A notion this rational man had never, ever believed suddenly seemed a distinct possibility.

“I don't know,” the lab rat had said. “Maybe my interns fucked it up. My advice? You should get it tested again in a bigger lab.”

But Eli was content enough after that conversation. Someone from the lab leaked the story to the local press, and a small collection of national papers took up the headline. The story sparked additional funding and international attention. Phone calls and letters arrived at SNaRL from around the globe, reporting their own hominid sightings. Eli enjoyed a healthy, skeptical fame.
This is it,
he thought.
The beginning.
He was financially comfortable again. He let his podiatry license lapse.

Through it all, he remained a thorough scientist. He meant to have the bone retested, but then in the mid-eighties the police came and took the metatarsus away from him, arguing that maybe it was the bone of a missing and/or murdered person. Their forensics department examined the bone and came away slightly baffled but convinced, in the end, that it was from a man's foot, after all, although there was no John or Jane Doe with a missing appendage. Eli threatened to take them to court to get the metatarsus back, and eventually, bored and indifferent, the police chief brought it to the SNaRL office himself.

“Bigfoot, eh?” he had said, offering the bone to Eli as if it were a large pen. Eli frowned as he accepted the metatarsus, noting that someone had written on it with permanent marker. He didn't like the police chief. He hated the word
Bigfoot
. The police chief grinned and said, “Thought I saw Bigfoot this morning, on my front porch. Huge, hairy. Had this big, fat back.”

Eli looked up at the man, interested.

“Don't get your panties in a bunch, Doc. It was just my wife!” The man had roared at his own joke and Eli had turned away from him, his face flushing with disgust.

“Enjoy your fifteen minutes,” the police chief had said, and slapped him so hard on the back that it stung. “Adios, Doc.”

“Thanks,” Eli had said calmly, but he wished he had the manliness to spit in the police chief's eye.

“Why are we taking the bone?” Ginger asked now as they drove toward Lindsay's barn.

“Final touch,” Eli said. He looked out over the blackened fields, recently torched after the last straw harvest.

Ginger was looking in the same direction, at the scorched fields and at the rolling Palouse farmland beyond. “Beautiful,” Ginger said, and Eli thought not of the landscape but of his Sasquatch model, and he agreed.

*   *   *

L
INDSAY'S BARN WAS
light-dappled, the dust swirling lazily through the air like flecks of gold paint. Lindsay's mother sat in an Adirondack chair on her back porch, facing the barn, smoking and drinking coffee, and she waved to them as they drove up the gravel road.

“Early start?” she called.

“Hope it's all right,” Eli said as they exited the car. “Lots to do today.”

“Don't I know it. Linds is showering. Has an appointment at the hair parlor at eight. Then the decorum coach comes to teach her the proper wave. What's that you got there?”

Eli looked at the metatarsus in his hand. He gripped it like a knife. It was white and pale and long. “Just something for the float,” he said.

“It's the foot bone,” Ginger announced, and the woman's eyes lit up.

Everyone knew about the bone. It was a source of pride in Lilac City.

Lindsay's dad stepped out onto the porch, his own steaming cup of coffee in his hands. Lindsay's mom said something inaudible to him, and he glanced up at Eli and Ginger and then strode toward them, spilling a trail of coffee onto his jeans and moccasins.

“The famous foot bone,” he said. “You don't say!”

He stopped before Eli and thrust out his hand. “Joe Meeks,” he said. “Pleasure.”

He crushed Eli's small, nimble hand in his own, so that Eli winced from the pain.

Joe Meeks peered at the metatarsus. “What's she made of? Plaster?”

Eli was appalled.

Ginger said, “It's made of bone.”

“Real bone? Must have cost a pretty penny, I'll bet.”

“He found it. In the forest. It was in a bear trap.”

“Bullshit,” Meeks said, and then whistled. “Must be fun, huh? Cryptozoology? That's what they call it, right? You know what I do for a living, Mr. Roebuck?”

Eli was unsure, and he said so.

“I'm a banker. I work for Inland Empire Bank. Shiny glass building on Riverside? You've seen it.”

Eli said that he had.

“Top floor. View of everything in the world from there. The whole valley, the river. Gorgeous.” He took a sip from his mug of coffee, balling up his free hand against his hip. “Not that I get to enjoy the view. Too busy. Hunkered over the desk all day. I forget to look up!” He shook his head. “It's a busy gig, but I like it.”

“Wonderful,” Eli said. “Now, I hate to leave you, but if you'll excuse me…”

Ginger slipped away into the barn, heading for the lowboy trailer.

“Next week is vacation,” Meeks said, not taking the hint and following Eli companionably into the barn, “and I'll be hunting just outside Pend Oreille. Last year I took down the prettiest stag, you wouldn't believe. I've hiked all over those hills.”

“It's beautiful country,” Eli said.

“And would you guess what I've seen in the forest? I mean, talking Bigfoot and all?”

Eli was silent, concentrating on aligning the bone to the bottom of the right foot. He muttered to himself about how perfectly it fit. He had calculated all of it so very beautifully. It would be the final touch, to have the famous bone as a part of the re-creation. It would give his Sasquatch an air of reality that Eli knew could not be faked. He would be very careful of it, to ensure that it was not damaged. He would ride with the model to the parade, keeping his hand on the real bone until the parade began. He would be there when the parade finished, to slide the metatarsus free again and return it to its secure location in his lab. And, in the meantime, the crowd would look on his Sasquatch and feel how very correctly rendered it was. They would be moved. It was the closest Eli had ever come to being superstitious.

“I've seen nothing,” the man said. “Absolutely nothing. Not a trace of anything. I mean, I've come across deer carcasses. I've seen a mountain lion, even. I find elk antlers everywhere. Decorated my entire den with them. But there is not a single damn trace of any giant hairy monster like Bigfoot. And, believe me, if anyone were to see one, it would be me.”

Eli checked his watch. The electrician would be arriving at nine to wire the Sasquatch to the float.

“I mean, wouldn't someone have shot one by now? Or hit one with a car? Wouldn't a guy like me have come across a dead Bigfoot in the forest and thought,
What the hell,
and phoned for help?”

Eli hated wasting his time on ignorant questions like this. He ignored Meeks as best as he could. He could see Lindsay's personality in her father, and it amplified his dislike.

Some students had wrestled the model onto the float the night before and now Eli jumped aboard to get a good grip on the head, to arrange it on the highest platform at the back.

Eli hoisted the thing to its feet, and Meeks scurried onto the float to help him.

When finished, they both stood back, looking admiringly at the giant brown beast.

“Looks great, Doc,” Meeks said. “Real cute.”

Eli wiped his face clean with the handkerchief in his pocket and then polished his glasses. He squared his shoulders at Meeks.

“With all due respect, Mr. Meeks, I'd like to address your concerns here as straightforwardly as I can.”

“Please,” Joe Meeks said, his insincere face puckering.

“Have you ever hit an animal with your car?” he asked.

“Yes. A few.”

“Deer, I imagine?”

“Yes. A dog once.”

“And when you drive down the road and see roadkill, what species is it, typically speaking?”

“Deer, usually.”

“Stupid animals, deer,” Eli said. “Poor things. They are also as plentiful as mice in this area. Really, almost like an overgrown varmint. Pretty, at least.”

Meeks was silent.

“Have you ever hit a mountain lion with your car?”

“No.”

“Have you ever aimed your gun at and shot a mountain lion?”

“No. Things are damn fast.”

“Have you ever seen a mountain lion in the wild?”

“Well, like I said, yes, I saw one up at Priest Lake, hunting elk.”

“And how long did it linger in your field of vision?”

Meeks stared at him, confused.

“I mean, did it stay there for a good few minutes? Did it sashay in front of you, posing?”

“Well, no, it was just a moment's sighting. I told you, they're damn fast, those cats, and rare.”

“And, Mr. Meeks,” Eli continued, “when you walk through the woods, do you stumble frequently over the bodies of deceased animals? Mountain lions, deer, elk? Anything?”

“No. Not frequently. I've seen a deer carcass, I guess. Once. I'm not sure—”

“And why do you think that is, Mr. Meeks? Is it because animals have never lived there? Is it because they have never died?”

Mr. Meeks made a show of returning to his coffee mug, of feigning amusement. “I can't wait to hear your conclusions here, Doc.”

“Do you know what it means to biodegrade?”

Meeks scoffed, “Come on. Sure I do.”

“Do you know how many mountain lions exist in the continental United States, Mr. Meeks?”

“A lot, I suppose.”

“Yes, a lot, relatively speaking. Between twenty thousand and thirty thousand or so. Quite a few. Comparatively, do you know how many of these fellows, these hominids, are alive and thriving? Just an estimate?” Eli touched the belly of his Sasquatch. “And, to make it fair, let's include Canada and Alaska in this, as well.”