The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac (26 page)

Meeks laughed. “God only knows.”

“My own personal estimates suggest between one thousand and five thousand hominids in all of North America.”

Meeks's brow furrowed as he crunched numbers in his squidlike banker's head.

“All of your proof of the Sasquatch's nonexistence, then, is irrelevant. Bigfoot, as you so insultingly call him, is far more elusive than your average mountain lion and far more intelligent. Like other living and dying forest animals, he biodegrades quickly. He is not part of a dumb, overpopulating species like deer, who are too stupid to avoid our loud, bright roadways. His observability is practically nil. And yet he has a long-standing presence in North America. The country's original inhabitants made numerous sightings of him, long before the first white person ever walked here. There are numerous sightings even now. Eagle Scouts have seen him, doctors, Christians, atheists, scientists. And, yes, also the insane, the mistaken. You have not seen him, Mr. Meeks, but I have. I am, unlike you, a man with a medical degree and an illustrious academic career. I have seen him and have been trying to see him again ever since.”

Meeks looked very small before Eli, a bug he could squash.

“You have a relationship with money and have built a career on it,” Eli said, “but your money is more of a human fabrication than my Sasquatch. So, please, let me get on with my work.”

Meeks swallowed more coffee. The barn had turned sour in the morning light, the manure warmed and stinking. The old boards on the walls were gray and splitting. Outside, Lindsay Meeks skipped to her mother's car, ready to visit the hair parlor and emerge as her own imagined thing: a beloved princess.

“Tonight is the parade,” Eli said, turning away from Meeks. “I have a lot more to do.”

Behind him, Ginger squealed. A few of her friends had arrived, and they swarmed together and began giggling and whispering. The tall kid, Gary, arrived, too, and Ginger kept her distance from him, coyly, Eli felt.

“Well, no one's going to argue with your intelligence, Roebuck,” Meeks said. “But, you know, it doesn't mean you're not living in a storybook.”

Eli shrugged. Men like Joe Meeks would never understand. They believed only what they were told in school: Everything has already been discovered; humanity is progressing fluidly; inequality and injustice are relics of the past.

The whole world is fragile,
Eli thought then, and the barn became poignant with his daughter's laugh and the childish gluey smell of the Sasquatch.

Eventually, the electrician arrived to wire the Sasquatch for movement and sound. The beast could now kick out his very real-looking bony foot (with the metatarsus displayed front and center in it, settled delicately between two fiberglass bones, which were then attached to the stiff papier-mâché ankle) and raise his wide, long arms high into the air.

Ginger came and stood beside them as they played with the motions.

“He's going to kick Lindsay.”

“No,” Eli argued, “not if she stands right here, at the edge of her platform.”

“Is he still going to howl?”

The electrician affixed a wire, and the paper-fanged mouth opened. Out came a soft, kitten-like meow.

Ginger and her friends laughed.

“What a pussy!” Ginger's would-be boyfriend quipped, and more people laughed.

This was his daughter's crush? A foulmouthed disrespectful turd?

“Gears are too loose, man,” the electrician said, chuckling. He seemed annoyingly unconcerned. “Speeds it up. Twists the tape, too. Makes it sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

The Sasquatch flung up his arms and meowed.

“Fix it,” Eli said.

The electrician tinkered with the simple gears in the Sasquatch's back, and then he ejected the cassette and laughed at the tangle of tape that exploded from the open deck.

A few purple-coated festival officials, known as the Purple Sleeves, arrived in a lavender limousine. The limousine would drive the princess to the parade and follow the float after she boarded it. The Purple Sleeves wandered into the barn. They were a few old men and a middle-aged woman; all of them sported lavender fezzes. They reminded Eli of performing monkeys.

The most ancient of the Purple Sleeves hobbled over to Eli and squinted up at the Sasquatch.

“Those arms are too high,” he said. “There's a parade code, mister. No float over twenty feet.”

The Sasquatch lowered its arms as the electrician worked on the gears.

Eli frowned. Why had no one told him the size requirements?

“It's only when he raises his arms,” Eli told the Purple Sleeves, and, as if listening, the Sasquatch shot his arms skyward again, meowing.

“Shoot,” said the electrician. “Now I have to unwind the tape again.”

“So keep the arms down,” the old man said, and the group of small, elderly Purple Sleeves squinted at Eli like so many angry raisins. “We don't want anyone getting hurt. Or scared. This is a family-friendly event.”

“It's a
Christian
event,” the middle-aged woman said. “It's a celebration of God and country.”

Eli said, “I thought it was a celebration of Lilac City.”

The Purple Sleeves exchanged concerned looks. “Yes, it is,” the woman said, fingering a gold cross at her neck. “It's about God, country, city.”

“And our public schools,” Eli said.

The woman pointed at the Sasquatch model. “He's about as demonic as we allow,” she said.

“Kids love monsters,” Joe Meeks said, stepping up behind them with a fresh cup of coffee. “It'll scare the pants off of them.”

The Sasquatch lowered its arms with a weak meow.

“Maybe not,” Meeks chuckled.

Eli regarded his Sasquatch desperately. He wanted it to make an impression that Lilac City would never forget. And not the wrong impression, not a silly impression, but an intimidating one, one that would make all of the soccer moms and tennis dads quake in their sneakers.

But then the truck arrived, backing up to the lowboy trailer, and Eli, frustrated, realized that he would have to send an imperfect Sasquatch out into the world.

“I'll get it, old man,” the electrician said lazily. “I'll get it. Just wait.”

Lindsay bounded up to him, hair shellacked into a slick bulb atop her head, all excitement today, no regrets. “He looks neat-o, Mr. Roebuck—I mean, Dr. Roebuck! I'm happy to share the float with him today!”

Despite Lindsay's well-intentioned enthusiasm, Eli was annoyed. His shoes, he noticed, were dusty from the filthy floor of the barn, and he had a sudden urge to find a hose and wash them clean.

The electrician, bent over the wires, cussed approvingly and then rocked back onto his heels. “There ya go. All better.”

The Sasquatch raised his arms again, slowly this time, powerfully. He bellowed a loud, terrifying roar.

Lindsay Meeks screamed and thrust her palms over her ears. The Purple Sleeves glared at Eli.

Eli pulled out his wallet and handed the grinning electrician a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.

*   *   *

E
LI AND
G
INGER
were walking down Riverside Avenue now, threading their way through the thickening crowd. People sat in lawn chairs brought from home or reclined on hastily thrown picnic blankets. The whole area was tense as people bucked against one another for space.

Eli had left the Sasquatch's side only when forced to go by the Purple Sleeves. He tried to argue for the protection of the metatarsus, but they ushered him away, telling him, “It's fine, it's fine. We'll take care of it. Don't worry. High schoolers only now, mister.”

He had refused to budge until Gary and Carol/Karen/Kathryn offered to stay right there with it until the float began to move.

“Okay,” he'd said, taking a breath. “Okay.”

He had then allowed Ginger to pull him away.

“There's Mom,” Ginger said now, waving. Vanessa was waiting for them beside the library entrance, their agreed-upon rendezvous. “And, look, there's Amelia.”

Eli saw Amelia with her fiancé, Jim. Jim had his hand protectively on her back, and they stood close together. It always looked as though they were about to make love or as if they'd just finished. It made Eli uncomfortable.

Jim, seeing them, came forward and offered his hand to Eli. “Good to see you, sir!” he said.

“Yes, yes,” said Eli distractedly. “You, too.”

The parade began. There were nearly two hundred participants in the lineup: the library, the fire department, all of the Lilac City schools (private and public), square-dancing societies, gardening clubs, various military orders, car dealerships, rodeo queens; there was even, oddly enough, a limousine-fan-club entry, which Eli found ridiculous, although he supposed they entertained the little children. His own float, carrying the princess and the Sasquatch, would be situated near the end. It could be hours before the float made its way to them. Eli eyeballed the crowd impatiently.

Ginger was chatting excitedly with her older sister, and Amelia cocked her head, half-listening.

“Can we find a place to sit?” Amelia said, speaking with the same tempered, impatient disdain she always seemed to use with them.

“Yes,” Eli said. “Yes. Good idea.”

Amelia took the lead. She found a small, cramped corner of pavement and claimed it. “Will you be all right standing, Dad?” she asked Eli. “Jim brought some chairs for you and Vanessa.” She turned to Jim. “Get the chairs, Jim.”

“Sure thing, babe. You'll be right here?” he asked, and Amelia said yes.

“I don't need a chair,” Eli said, but Jim had already disappeared into the crowd.

“Might as well get comfortable, Dad,” Amelia said. “We'll be here a long time.”

A marching band thundered past, followed by a group of pretty horses, the largest of which took a dump not far from where the Roebuck family stood. A clown raced up to the steaming pile and shoveled it quickly away. The procession continued slowly. The crowd cheered and grinned and twilight fell. Eli considered the other floats: None of them were as impressive as the Comstock High float.

“Our float's the best one, huh, Ginger?” Eli said to his younger daughter.

“Guess so,” she said. She was scanning the crowd, no doubt seeking her friends.

Jim had returned with two chairs and a blanket and cooler. He unfolded the chairs, and Eli did his best to avoid sitting in one but finally decided it wasn't worth the struggle. Besides, he didn't want to insult Amelia. He lowered himself into the chair and unwittingly groaned—his knees had been hot to the touch from standing, his arthritis kicking in, and sitting down was nearly orgasmic.

“You okay?” Amelia asked him, and he thought he saw judgment on her face.

“Yes, sweetheart. I'm great.”

“Thank you for these chairs, Jim,” Vanessa said, happily seated, opening a Coke from the cooler. “So thoughtful of you.”

He saw Amelia roll her eyes. She thought Vanessa was a cornball.

If Vanessa noticed the eye roll, she did her best to hide it. She reached over and pressed Eli's hand. “Isn't this fun?” she shouted, and Eli, for her sake, agreed, but he was tired. He removed his spectacles and cleaned them with his neatly folded handkerchief. When he reset them on his nose, he could see that the streetlamps were igniting, one at a time. Soon it would be dark.

“One seventy-five, Dad!” Ginger shouted, pointing to the numbered placard that was pinned to the front of a bright-green float. “Five more to go!”

Then her friends arrived, one of them the tall kid, Gary, one of them Carol/Karen/Kathryn, who Ginger enthusiastically introduced to her sister (Carol/Karen/Kathryn's real name, it turned out, was Margot). It was not hard to see how proud Ginger was of stylish, beautiful Amelia. Amelia accepted the introduction serenely, as if she understood that she was a treasure to be shared.

It made Eli happy for his daughters that they had each other, despite all of the tension within their family. He hoped that, after Ginger matured further, they could be close.

“Dad!” Ginger yelled. “There it is!”

And he looked and saw it: the impressive purple float with its two raised platforms, wheeling slowly up the road toward them. The Comstock High band preceded the float, energetically playing the theme from
Star Wars,
and the drill team danced athletically to the music. The crowd went nuts. The float was the most spectacular display of all.

Lindsay Meeks was admittedly very beautiful, waving happily from the lower platform, her enormous lavender gown sparkling like a star-studded gloaming. The evening light softened the overeager angles of her face, Eli thought, or maybe it was just her smile, which, for the first time, seemed sincere and childlike. Her arms took turns waving, one after the other, the one lifting gracefully and then falling, the other lifting now, then falling, as though she were performing a one-woman ballet. It might be said that she was the star of the entire evening, until the Sasquatch slowly raised its own arms—bulging, powerful, intimidating arms—and bared its apelike mouth, its sharp white fangs, and roared.

Eli felt the roar in his shoes. The crowd screeched and applauded. Eli flushed with pleasure. Up on the lowboy trailer, standing just below the mechanized Sasquatch, Lindsay Meeks winced. She recovered quickly, redoubling her efforts, waving, smiling, blowing kisses to the crowd. The Sasquatch lowered its arms and kicked out its bony foot, the one with the real metatarsus. The kick just narrowly missed Lindsay's behind. She would have three more minutes before he roared again.

Eli turned behind him to gauge his family's reaction and saw Ginger holding Gary's hand. She wasn't looking at the float at all but up at the boy's mouth.

Oh, don't kiss him,
Eli thought, but then told himself it wasn't his business and turned away.