The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac (31 page)

Agnes didn't understand what these women saw in their stupid pets. But, she knew, it wasn't her place to judge.

What Agnes wanted to say, what she really, really wanted to tell them all, was that all love is natural love, so long as it's invited, and also that the woods are terribly dark and cold when you're lonely.

*   *   *

A
GNES WALKED SOUTH
down the busy street, away from the brick Unitarian church, through a small pretty neighborhood, toward the bus depot. Her son lived on the hillside, she knew. She had spied on his house before, had watched him emerge from its thick stucco walls with his wife. She liked this wife. She liked how tall and awkward she looked, pretty and wild-haired, like an overgrown tree. She looked like someone who could easily bend with the wind. Those sorts of women, the flexible ones, made excellent wives. Agnes had never been flexible. She was as strong as a flint stone, with a will just as unbending.

Spying on the house, she had seen that there were daughters, too, and even little grandchildren. Her great-grandchildren, she recognized with a twinge of unfamiliar feeling.
I could snatch one of them away,
Agnes thought. Lure the littlest girl with candy into the forest. It would be so easy! The girl would miss her family at first, but in the end, when she learned how much simpler life could be in the woods, she would be pleased, even grateful. Humanity was a shitstorm. The woods were just as cruel, but unapologetically so.

It was the apologies that killed you. Forgiving and asking for forgiveness were exhausting work, the worst chore of all for a woman. Mr. Krantz, thankfully, never apologized, never sought forgiveness. There was a beautiful freedom in this.

They both did what they wanted. If either of them disapproved, well, then, so be it. They could continue living in the shack together or, hey, there was the door. A shabby door, yes, lined by a dirt threshold that Mr. Krantz routinely sprayed with his urine, but it was a door, nonetheless. You could leave whenever you wanted.

She had never passed through that door with the intention of leaving him, not once, not even when blisteringly angry, not even when the new wife arrived, not until this very day, and even now she was unsure about her departure. She didn't know if it would be better for her in the end or if it would be, at this late date, entirely stupid. But she could no longer watch Mr. Krantz fuck his young wife, not without clawing out her own eyes. It was unbearable, even after he returned to Agnes's bed and held her in his arms as she wept, cooing to her softly. No, it was too much. Not even she, so unbending, so strong, could handle it. She might have been able to when she was younger. She might have been able to step in between them, supple and fierce, and roar in the young woman's face. She had certainly done it before, a scene that excited her husband and made him ignore the other lover entirely. Now, dry as an old leaf, brittle-hearted, she could only weep from her bed as the lovers pushed and pulled at each other. She could only cover her face with tattered, moth-eaten blankets until, in one final explosion of noise, their coupling ended.

She climbed onto the bus, hating its mechanical stink, and handed the driver a few of Mr. Donald's coins. The bus rumbled and roared and traveled along the interstate to Idaho. Then it turned north, with Agnes tired from the day's loud sights and sounds, and deposited her in Rathdrum.

Agnes hiked out of town, thinking of the new wife. She followed the familiar deer paths of the forest, letting the branches scratch at her face and entangle her hair without putting up her hands in defense. Here was the creek—its edges frozen—in which she bathed. Here was the pile of rocks she used to wash and pound her clothes clean. Here were her husband's carefully laid droppings, a warning that made the mountain lions and bears roar in contempt before they slunk away.

Here was the little shack in the woods, once her happy home.

Here, inside the shack, was the new wife, sitting in the dingy recliner, looking balefully at her fingernails. She glanced up at Agnes. She'd been crying.

“I need a manicure,” she moaned. “I'd kill for just a nail file.”

Her hair was growing out but was still shorn in a shaggy, fashionable bob. She wore sparkling silver ballet flats and a pretty navy sweater. Agnes thought she should tell the new wife about the color navy.
Don't wear it in the summer. It attracts mosquitoes and black flies.
But summer was a long ways from now. Let her be.

Agnes came forward and touched the girl's shoulder. She wordlessly handed her a rock. When the new wife stared at it, nonplussed, Agnes took the rock back and drew it across her fingernails.

The new wife followed suit, taking up the rock and filing her nails with it. Her face brightened. “Thank you,” she said.

Agnes noticed then that the new wife's wooden thumb ring lay on the side table, recently removed.

“I said thank you,” the new wife repeated. She was not annoyed, Agnes saw, but desperate.

Agnes felt sorry for the new wife, but she avoided, as much as possible, speaking to her. She was only trying to help the new wife grow accustomed to their silence.

“Will you cook dinner?” the new wife asked her. “Should I?”

“You will,” Agnes responded shortly, and then went to lie down on her narrow bed and rest.

*   *   *

B
ACK IN THE
semicircle, sitting stiffly in her simple metal chair, Agnes told the group that she both loathed and admired the new wife.

“She's nothing like me,” Agnes said. She worked at the wooden ring on her thumb as she spoke. “She wants to talk—all the time—and she misses city life. She spent all night filing her toenails. She can hardly boil water. She buses to Lilac City to buy toilet paper and new shoes—shoes with heels that look pretty but are worthless in the forest.” She stopped here, took a breath. “The point is, I don't understand her. I never went back. Not for toilet paper, and not even to visit my son. My own son, for crissakes, who I loved more than anyone in the world—even more than myself—until I met my husband.”

“Maybe that's why you stayed away,” Mr. Donald suggested. He stood at the podium again, but he looked tired, sort of slumping over it as if he might collapse onto the floor. Agnes could smell alcohol on his breath. She thought he might be hungover. She wondered, pitying him, if he wasn't depressed, like the rest of them.

Why was there a man overseeing their women-only meeting? Why did leaders always need to be men?

“I don't understand,” Agnes said.

“Maybe you stayed away because seeing your son would wound you? Make you question your choices?”

Agnes shook her head. “No. I stayed away because I wanted to stay away. Motherhood didn't suit me.”

“Motherhood suits all women,” the man said. He lifted a pen and jotted something down on a clipboard that lay before him on the podium. “I think we're reaching the heart of your suffering here. You abandoned your son, your duty to him, and now you find yourself alone. Tell me: When was the last time you saw your son?”

“I saw him,” she said, “a few years ago.”

“When?”

“The volcano,” she said. “When the volcano blew.”

Mr. Donald laughed. “Mount Saint Helens? That was twenty-four years ago!”

Twenty-four years! In the forest, time was both mercurial and phlegmatic. God, how old did that make her now? How old did that make Eli?

“If I may ask another question,” Mr. Donald said. He said it so low, so dramatically, that she almost couldn't hear him. “Was he happy to see you?”

Agnes wasn't sure, really, but Eli hadn't screamed at her or pushed her away or anything like that.

“And would he be happy to hear from you now?”

The simplicity of this question was like a kick in the face. She sat up straighter, swallowing hard.
Does he know the answer? Does he think he would know the answer to this, if I don't know the answer?
She felt a moment's anger toward this man, then an insipid jealousy.

“Yes,” she said. What she meant was:
Yes, of course you would ask that, you stupid man.

The man did not take it that way. “Yes,” he said. “He would be elated. Which is why you should reach out to him. Family is salvation, Mrs. Krantz.”

Agnes felt hope then. It was inexpressible and discomfiting.

Flannery, the woman pregnant via her dog, put her hands on her belly and gave a happy little sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh. She was, like the other tortured souls in the room, touched. It also gave her hope, Agnes saw, the assumption that the love between a child and his mother never dies. Flannery must have hoped the same for her dog babies, that they would stand at her bedside as she grew old, that they would all love one another unconditionally, no matter what.

Agnes did not want to dash the pregnant woman's hope. She smiled and touched the woman's knee and said sincerely, “I've always loved him. That's the thing. You always love them. Even when you don't.”

She wished she could say that the reverse were true, that children always loved their parents, no matter how horrible the parenting, but she could not.

It takes a certain sort of woman to leave her young child for a new husband, for a whole new life, and Agnes was that exceptional sort of person. She had assumed, upon leaving: Once a mother, always a mother. The truth, however, was not so simple. Out of sight, out of mind was more like it. But it was true that even after long stretches of not thinking about Eli at all, he would return to her, rising up from the dry soil of her heart like a noxious weed. And then, just as certainly, the weed would be plucked up or would wilt, the soil smooth and unmarred again, usually for long stretches of time.

Mr. Donald moved on to Flannery. “And when is the due date?” he said, his tone serious.

“It's hard to say,” she said shyly. “We're not certain. You know, because of the species.”

“And you've heard,” he said, “that we'll help with the adoptions.”

“Yes, I've been told.”

Agnes wondered if Flannery had had an ultrasound, something that hadn't been around when she was pregnant with Eli. She'd heard the other women asking about it, and thought it sounded eerie and wonderful to peer into one's own darkest space.

“I'm wondering,” the woman said meekly, “if I can keep at least one?”

Mr. Donald's smile flickered but his voice remained upbeat. “What an excellent question. I'll speak to you privately about this. Let's think about what would be best for the babies, and for you.”

The pregnant woman looked quickly over at Agnes, as though begging for help.

Agnes thought carefully before she spoke, about Eli, about Mr. Krantz.

“He's probably right, you know,” she said. Her voice sounded hollow, despite her best intentions. “It will be easier on you to just give them away.”

“Well, it's only a notion,” Mr. Donald added. “A point of entry.” He narrowed his eyes at the women in a way that was supposed to denote respect but was really, Agnes felt, quite insulting.

Agnes, annoyed with Mr. Donald, said loudly to Flannery, “What, exactly, do
you
want? It's your choice.”

Flannery stuttered for a moment and then fell silent.

“Now, now,” Mr. Donald said. “Let's not make this about choice. That's too easy. Sometimes we don't know what's good for us. Our emotions get in the way. Sometimes we must have faith and trust in others.”

Agnes reached over and grasped Flannery's hand. She squeezed Flannery's swollen fingers with as much force as she could muster, the arthritis shooting painfully up her own arm as she did. She was trying to communicate,
Have strength. It's not his life. It's your own.

“Now,” Mr. Donald said. “Let's talk about our emotions. We women are emotional creatures. Let's talk about our emotions today. Let's explore!”

Agnes grimaced. As if emotions just sat there, static and obvious, like unchanging monoliths, perfectly defined.

Agnes knew: Emotions were like the moss on the forest floor, trampled, fluid, hidden.

Try to put your finger right on the moss, and its form spreads and changes.

“Let's begin with you, Agnes,” Mr. Donald said.

“Okay,” she said. “I'm annoyed.”

The room laughed, and Agnes was happy to see that Mr. Donald seemed worried.

*   *   *

I
N THE SHACK,
Agnes and the new wife awaited the arrival of their husband.

The new wife flitted from one task to another, all things that Agnes had never done: pouring coffee, plucking her eyebrows, reading magazines that she'd brought from the local library.

Eventually she heaved a large sigh, cocked an eyebrow at Agnes, and asked her, “How can you stand it?”

Agnes was lying on the woven gray rug Mr. Krantz had stolen to celebrate his union with the new wife. She liked to put her face against the rug and smell its newness, so foreign to this familiar room. She uncurled her limbs and stretched and turned toward the new wife, confused.

“I mean,” the new wife said, “how can you just sit there, doing nothing all day?”

“I'm not doing nothing.”

“You've been lying there, dozing. Resting. I don't know. I can't stand it.” The new wife plucked a small silver tube from her pocket. She opened it and applied a fresh coat of lipstick to her already-sanguine lips. “You know what he needs? A television set. I think he'd like a big flat-screen TV, right there.” She put up her hands in a frame and looked through them, picturing the television against the shack wall. “I mean, we'd need a generator. But he could get one of those easily enough.”

Agnes almost smiled.

“I know you're old, but are you sick?” the new wife asked, genuinely concerned.

Agnes shook her head.