West of Here (17 page)

Coleman was pensive. He picked a ball of lint off his ugly sweater, considered it, lobbed it over his shoulder, and scratched his ear with a sigh. “All this acting out — the bad grades, the skipping, the attitude — is this about your dad?”

Curtis heaved his own sigh and looked out the window. “Why does everything have to be about my stupid dad? Ancient history — there’s a class I could pass.”

“I was just wondering whether —”

“No, okay? No.”

“But maybe if you just —”

“I’m fine. Seriously … can we stop?”

Why was it that somebody was always there to offer unsolicited advice? And they always wanted to talk.
Let’s talk,
they’d say,
tell me about it, you’ll feel better,
but mostly they’d ask,
Why are you angry
?

“What are you angry about?” Coleman wanted to know.

“I’m not angry. I’m annoyed.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Of course I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk at all. I just want to
not talk,
okay? Do we
have
to talk? Couldn’t I just listen? Couldn’t you just tell me a bunch of stuff about how it’s going to be for me if I don’t
get my grades up,
and how I ought to
embrace my heritage
and
take responsibility for myself,
and I’ll just sit here and listen? Or maybe you could just
not say
all those things this time and just give me all the papers and stuff I’ll need to fill out for the job thing.”

For once, Coleman didn’t say anything.

AMBLING DOWN THE
sunny side of Front Street toward the center of town, in no hurry whatsoever, Curtis took a small comfort in knowing that whatever bullshit awaited him at High Tide Seafood that afternoon, it couldn’t be as bad as three days ago. He passed the boarded storefront that was once Pop’s Restaurant and, before that, Charlie’s. The only thing left now were the big brown letters
RESTAURANT
, partially obscured by a
FOR LEASE
sign, and in the window, hanging crookedly, half of a waterlogged menu. Prime-rib dip $7.99. Surf-and-Turf $9.50. Curtis paused briefly at Coho Unlimited, Port Bonita’s premiere tourist boutique, with its regionally famous window display: an explosion of stuffed giraffes and ceramic chickens, and faux-Indian art, phony muskets, and wooden seagulls, and mermaid-encrusted fondue bowls. There was a five-foot chainsaw-sculpted salty sea dog captain named Old Ned, smoking a pipe by the door. There were racks and racks of postcards near the front entrance.
Gateway to the Olympics. Hurricane Ridge. Thornburgh Dam.
And though there were no tourists about, a four-hundred-year-old poster in the window boasted 30
PERCENT OFF OF ALL STOCK
! Next to this hung a yellow flyer:

Dam Days, September 2–3!

Come celebrate over 100 years of Port Bonita history!

Featuring Live Music, Logging Competition, Chainsaw Carving Contest, and World-Famous Salmon Bake

Proudly presented in part by your neighbors at Wal-Mart.

Fucking Wal-Mart. They killed everything. Curtis could hardly recognize this place anymore. He was almost embarrassed to admit that as a child, Port Bonita had seemed like a glorious place, the center of the universe, and Dam Days had seemed a grand occasion marked by fry bread tacos and brass bands. Now it seemed stupid: a bunch of fat whites and sad-looking Indians mulling around Lake Thornburgh as if there were anything to see, anything to celebrate but a hulking mass of useless concrete and a lot of chain-link fence. As if Port Bonita were anything else but one big fucking Wal-Mart.

A half block later Curtis passed Gertie’s, where even at three in the afternoon, a handful of sketchy-looking dudes and one old lady with yellowing bleach blonde hair stood out front smoking cigarettes. She looked like Skeletor. They all looked like Skeletor.

Curtis fired up a Salem. Deadsville, that was this place.

Report 1017 (class B)

Year: 2006

Season: Spring

State: Washington

County: Clallam

Nearest town: Port Bonita

Nearest Road: Elwha River Road

OBSERVED
: The following events happened roughly two miles above the Thornburgh Dam along the Crooked Thumb trail, the first week of April 2006. This area has had a lot of sightings (mostly class B) over the past several years, so I was not completely surprised by the events of that night. In fact, my purpose out there was to call-blast after dark (using uncompressed digital recordings of the Snohomish Whoop-Howl and Del Norte calls), employing a Peavey JSX 212 cabinet and a 120-watt Joe Satriani Signature Head. Loud as hell. I used a 12-volt marine battery with 300-watt square-wave inverter for juice. I had to make three wheel-barrow trips in with all my gear, which I could hardly fit into the Goat (my ’73 GTO 400ci sport coupe).

My plan was to get in early and stay put, hunker down, and drink a few brews in the dark (but I wasn’t drunk during any of what transpired; with the amp and everything else, I could only carry four beers on the last trip — I can’t even feel four beers). I’m an experienced hiker with a lot of cryptoid-tracking experience (I had a class C encounter off of Highway 112 near Joyce 7/6/99, as well as a possible class B near Hoko River 9/11/2003. Both sightings, nos. 0645 and 0914, are in the SFRO sightings database). I am also very familiar with the area, having lived my entire life here (Bucket Brigade class of 84!). Lastly, I know what a bear sounds like. I’ve hiked Crooked Thumb many times. Above the dam along the western shore of Lake Thornburgh is a lot of second-
growth fir and hemlock, which has seen a little harvesting in recent years, but most of it is protected, or supposed to be. I parked at the slab and hiked to just shy of mile marker 2. I employed the use of a scent mask (Dave’s Pop-Up Scent Canisters combo kit with detachable wick — got it at Big Five). I also hung pheromone chips around my encampment. These I acquired via a guy on the Internet and are supposedly the same chips utilized in the Quachita Project in 2001, made of part-human and part–great ape pheromones. They don’t really smell like anything, but I’m not a Bigfoot (although I wear a size 13).

The Elwha might be dead below the dam, but above the dam it is still wild. I’ve been told by hikers it is some of the wildest and most rugged country anywhere. My theory as to why the Crooked Thumb trail is proven to be a hotbed for sightings in the past, and why I’ve chosen this area as the focus of my field research, is because it is heavily tracked by deer in all seasons. This allows the Sasquatch an abundant food source in the winter months. Also berries are prevalent (huckleberry, thimbleberry, salmon berry) and there is an accessible freshwater source via both Lake Thornburgh and the upper Elwha. The trail is broad and flat for the first few miles allowing for easy migration, but the lake is otherwise hemmed in by mountains.

After my camp was set up, I hunkered down until dark. The anticipation gets creepier the darker it gets and the less you can see. About an hour after dark I blasted my first call (a ten-second Del Norte). As anyone who has ever call-blasted knows, to hear these sounds amplified is incredibly eerie. It was extremely dark, and the moon was hidden deep behind cloud cover. I’m not afraid of the dark, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of this dark. This is a big kind of dark. I never get used to it. A third-generation NVD is at the top of my wish list right now. (I saw the Night Optics D-300G-3A goggles at Big Five for a little over 3K — I should’ve bought them!)

I waited nine minutes before my second blast (another Del Norte). I got no response to the vocalization, but I did hear something move in the brush uphill from me (probably a deer). I decided to try a few tree knocks on a nearby fir. For this purpose, I brought a 33-inch, 31-ounce Louisville Slugger Triton Softball bat (also a Big Five purchase).
I wrapped the barrel of the bat in a half inch of duct tape so it would lose the aluminum sound and make a good thud. After a series of four syncopated knocks, I listened for a few minutes and received no response.

I waited seven more minutes before blasting a Snohomish Whoop-Howl. My neck hair stood on end when four seconds later I got a faint response from (I’m guessing) a quarter mile to the west. The response did not sound so much like a Snohomish as it did a Skamania Howl. It was the most chilling thing I’ve heard in my life. I suddenly felt extremely cold and I actually got the shivers and my teeth were chattering together. The other thing is that I suddenly felt like I had to go to the bathroom.

I waited about sixty seconds with my teeth chattering, when I heard another vocalization from the west. This was particularly alarming because this thing was moving pretty fast. The second vocalization sounded considerably closer. I immediately blasted another call and got a response seconds later. The closest one yet. My hand was shaking badly. I could hardly press play. I’ll be honest, I was about ready to get the heck out of there. I didn’t like the way this thing was coming after me. Suddenly, from the east I heard the strangest vocalizations I’ve ever heard. It sounded like talking, like somebody speaking in tongues and it was very close, in fact it was all around me, as if I were being surrounded. I was so scared at this point that I almost blacked out. I huddled up in a ball, clutching the Louisville Slugger.

The vocalizations were really deep, deeper than anything human. They were fast. They kind of floated on the air. I can’t quite explain it. The smell was pretty strong, like skunk cabbage or rotting garbage. I couldn’t really tell how close they were because to tell you the truth even though my senses were sharp, I wasn’t sure I could trust them. My heart was beating in my ears, and that may have affected my judgment. I really cannot say how much time passed. I kept expecting them to walk right into the camp. In which case I would’ve probably had a heart attack. But at the same time (and this may sound weird) I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt before. My whole body was like one big nerve ending.

Finally, I got up the balls to turn on my headlamp and jump up and swing the beam of the light in a circle at the woods all around me. I can’t say for sure what I saw. All the shadows were disorienting. But there was definitely movement in the woods. I saw something big move behind a tree, and I heard brush snapping behind me. As I swung my head to the north, I thought I saw another big shadowy figure move through the beam of my flashlight, too quickly to identify but big enough that it could only be one thing. It was moving away from me, scrambling up a steep embankment. From west of me came another chilling vocalization that almost gave me a heart attack. It was more of a screech than anything else, similar to the Gifford Pinchot recordings from fall of ’96. After a minute, I began to realize that they had all moved off, and a few minutes later I heard another vocalization from the west, pretty far off. These things were fast. It’s hard to imagine anything moving quite that fast in the dark.

I’m still not sure how many there were, but if I had to guess I’d say there had to be at least three because of the directions of the vocalizations and the forest noise. I know what I heard, and I don’t care who thinks I’m crazy.

I did not sleep one wink. I kept making noise throughout the night. It was by far the longest and most terrifying night of my life, and for sure the most memorable (even more memorable than the night I scored 39 points against North Mason in the ’84 regionals). As soon as it was light enough to see out, I started loading my stuff out. On the way back to the Goat on the second trip, I noticed something that looked like animal scat (see Also Noticed).

ALSO NOTICED
: On my second load back to the car in the morning, about two-tenths of a mile east of my camp, I noticed what I believe to be fresh Bigfoot scat. It was really big. It looked like a big melted caramel or something. I sent samples to SFRO for analysis, but they were returned with a nasty letter from the postal service. I later gave the samples to SFRO investigator Greg Beamer who sent them to Central Washington University for analysis.

OTHER WITNESSES
: None. I do all my cryptoid-tracking solo to avoid forest noise. In this case I wish I would have brought somebody. It would have been a lot less scary, and I might have collected better data instead of curling up in a ball clutching a baseball bat.

ENVIRONMENT
: This is a thickly wooded area running along the lake shore on a high bluff. As I said earlier, there is abundant game along this trail. My camp was approximately two miles above the trailhead, which obviously isn’t that far, but as experienced cryptoid-trackers know, most sightings happen in the ecotone.

Report submitted by: Dave Krigstadt

Follow-up investigation pending.

JUNE
2006

“Krigstadt! Your shadow’s here,” said Jared. “And I need an invoice for those clams FedExed off to Fletchers ASAP. As in, before lunch. And don’t forget to order wet-locks. I’m not eating another two hundred pounds of coho because you for —”

“Yeah, I got it. I got it.” Krig made a show of rifling through some papers on his desk. When he was sure Jared had turned, he grabbed his nuts. “I got it right here.”

Jared disappeared into his wainscoted office.

“Little prick,” Krig mumbled. It was one thing to take orders, but to take them from a little ass-munch like Thornburgh, who’d only been there five months, was almost too much to endure. Goddamn little senator’s son — just like the CCR song. Where the hell was Thorn-burgh when Krig led the Bucket Brigade to the regional championship on the glory of his sweet stroke and sure-handed crossover, huh? Where was he when Krig dumped in thirty-four against Forks? In eighth grade, that’s where. On top of all that, who was pulling honor roll two years in a row? That’s right, Krig. Not as dumb as he looked. He was even in philosophy club for a while, with people like Edward C. Posniak and Katherine Lewis, but the geniuses were even smugger than the jocks. And their humor was insufferable. C’mon, seriously, Spinoza jokes? The point is, it wasn’t about brains, getting ahead; it wasn’t even about who you know, because, well, Krig knew everybody in this town. It was about, it was about …