West of Here (53 page)

PINNACLE PASTA
, the wrapper said.

AUGUST
2006

“See, now look at the similarities,” said Krig, leaning forward on the burnt orange sofa, slowing the frames manually with a furious clicking of the remote. “See how the shoulders rotate? See how the arms swing when he walks?”

“Yeah, okay,” said Rita.

“That’s a mountain gorilla — silverback.”

“Ah.”

“See, that’s the mistake a lot of people make — they use the bear comparison. It’s like comparing apples and wolverines. Well, of course, it doesn’t look like a bear. But it just might be a North Amercian gorilla we’re talking about, here.”

“Why do you suppose he evolved so tall? I mean, there’d have to be a reason for something to evolve so tall, right?”

“Hmph. Interesting question.”

“And the white Bigfoot in Texas,” Rita pursued. “Why would that one be white? I mean, an abominable snowman, yeah, I can see that. But a white Bigfoot in Texas?”

“The white Bigfoot is a complete hoax.
Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science
is concerned with the hard evidence. The P.-G. footage, the Skookum Cast. There’s thousands of hoaxes every year. In fact,
most
Bigfoot sightings are hoaxes. Show me a sighting report and I can tell you right away whether it’s a hoax.”

“How is that?”

“They almost always use the bear comparison, for starters. They always say the same things: ‘It had long brownish red fur, but it wasn’t a bear.’ ‘It smelled like a skunk.’ ‘It walked away slowly.’”

“What’s hokey about that?”

“First of all, I didn’t smell any skunk. And those things weren’t walking slowly. But what’s really hokey about the fake ones is that there are no
details.
The fact that they say the same old things just tells me they’re making it up. It’s all about the specific details. That’s how you know it’s the truth. It doesn’t always make sense, I guess, but it isn’t vague.” Krig paused the video and avoided Rita’s eyes, surprised by the sickly rush of emotion welling up in him. “My encounter on the Elwha was at night.” He shifted his weight ever so slightly away from Rita on the sofa. “So I didn’t actually see anything —
no reddish brown hair, no big feet
— and that’s not good enough for some people. But I can tell you what the strange, deep whispering sounded like — it sounded like it was circling the inside of my head. And I can tell you how it all made me feel.”

“How?”

“Terrified. But more alive than I knew possible. It was the only time in my entire life that I felt like anything was possible.”

“I’ve never felt that,” said Rita, fishing out a Merit. “Mind?”

“Go for it,” he said.

“Dave,” she said, firing up her Bic. “We need to talk. I just … I guess I …” She hesitated.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that right now my life is … I don’t …”

“Do you need more time off?”

Softly, she began to sob. Krig moved in closer and pulled her head to his shoulder and stroked her hair. She straightened up almost immediately and wiped her eyes and gathered herself and puffed on her cigarette. “I just want to thank you for being such a good friend the last month. Really, Krig, I don’t know how I would’ve made through all this stuff with Curtis, and Randy, and the rest of it, if it weren’t for you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I love doing it. You’re the coolest girl I’ve ever met — the coolest
woman.
”

“Oh, Dave, but I’m not. Look at me, look at my life. I’m damaged. I’m almost forty and I’m about to start my life over.”

“So? So, that’s a good thing, right?”

She swiped once more at her runny mascara and drew deeply from her Merit until the cherry crackled. “I don’t want to hurt you, Dave.”

Krig felt the ache immediately. It was as though her voice came from somewhere else. His eyes sought refuge on the television screen, where the P.-G. footage was frozen. Why
did
they evolve so tall?

“If I were in a different place in my life,” Rita pursued, “things might be different. The timing is all wrong. I feel like I’m using you as it is.”

“How?”

“To get over things.”

“But I
want you
to get over things.”

“Nobody should be a springboard, Krig.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. It’s not right for anybody.” She receded into smoking silence.

Krig set aside the remote and scratched his neck. How was it that he actually believed her? “I get it,” he said.

“I don’t think you do, Dave. It’s really not about you.”

“I get that, I really do. Maybe we should just be friends for now. You know, until you feel like you’re ready or whatever. There’s no hurry. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m moving to Seattle,” she said.

“When?”

“As soon as I can afford to.”

“How soon is that?”

“Probably not soon enough. But it’s gotta happen as soon as I can afford to. There’s better resources for Curtis in the city. Better opportunities for me.”

“Why don’t I go with you?” Krig said, startling himself. “I’ve got money. I’ve got almost six —”

“It’s something I need to do alone. With Curtis. I owe him that. But that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t come visit us,” she said brightly. She set a hand on Krig’s knee, and that was a first. He put his hand atop hers as though to trap it there like a butterfly.

“I’ll definitely come visit you,” he said, knowing that he would never visit her and knowing that it would not be the failure of good intentions or the gradual withering of desire that prevented him from doing so but an act of will, mostly for her sake.

When Rita left that night, she kissed Krig in the doorway in a way she’d never kissed him before, not awkwardly, not recklessly, not defiantly, not desperately — but sweetly, softly, carefully, like something meant to last.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
, Friday, when Rita arrived at High Tide with a hard-won sleep still tingling in her bones and her hair in a jumble, she found a crisp white envelope in her work locker.
Rita,
it read in a masculine hand. Hesitantly, she opened the envelope, with a mounting certainty that it contained bad news, at best a lovesick plea from Krig to feed her ambivalence. Rita swooned upon revealing the envelope’s contents. Inside was a check signed by David Dalton Krigstadt for the amount of fifty-seven hundred dollars.

There was a note:

Rita,
I Googled your question. One paleontologist I found said gigantism is typical of cold climates, and
Gigantopithecus
was a form of the Ice Age megafauna. Another dude said it was probably an endocrine imbalance.

Krig

P.S. I’m taking off for a few days, so if I don’t see you before you leave, good luck.

P.P.S. You can take as long as you need to pay this back, seriously. It’s just sitting there anyway.

After Krig left the note at High Tide that morning, he drove east toward Sequim, without really knowing why. Maybe he’d go out to the spit. Or maybe drive up to Hurricane Ridge. For now, he just felt like driving. The traffic was light on Route 101. The Goat was hitting
on all cylinders. Maybe he really should take off for a few days. He’d only told Rita that he was leaving so she wouldn’t confront him about the check and talk herself out of cashing it. The thought of changing a life with one gesture left Krig giddy. Maybe he should go to Seattle and hunt for an apartment for Rita and Curtis. Surprise them by doing all the footwork and research, maybe even put down a deposit. Nah — that might be kinda weird. Boundaries, Krig reminded himself. Boundaries.

Surprising himself, Krig drove right past the Dungeness spit, clear to Discovery Bay, where he ate a six-egg omelet and drained an espresso milkshake at Fat Smitty’s. With his distended belly pressed fast against the counter, Krig stared down at his empty plate. Somehow he wasn’t upset about Rita leaving. By breaking his heart, she’d actually sort of inspired him in a way. What the hell was he doing all the way out in Discovery Bay? Something about this breakup had a butterscotchy taste.

After breakfast, Krig navigated the Goat in a wide arc out of the gravel lot and surprised himself once again by hanging a right onto Route 10. With his stereo uncharacteristically silent, he drove the hundred-odd miles south down the peninsula to Olympia, where he walked around the farmers market, bought a star fruit, a Chinese lantern, and a pair of wrought-iron candleholders for J-man and Janis. After dropping his bags off at the Goat and feeding the meter, he browsed a few antiques malls, took a tour of the capitol building, and ate Mongolian stir-fry.

AUGUST
2006

Throughout work that Thursday, as she spooned and gutted chum by the dozens, pausing only to itch her nose on the shoulder strap of her rubber apron, never speaking to Hoffstetter as he slit bellies mechanically beside her, Rita struggled with the question of Krig’s check. How was not accepting the loan the right thing? Why the heck was she morally obligated to return the check — why? Why couldn’t the check just be an answered prayer, a stroke of good fortune, or simply a huge favor? Fifty-seven hundred bucks could change everything. She and Curtis could move to Seattle as soon as next week and get an apartment. She could buy two or three months with the remainder if she scrimped, three months to coordinate the best care for Curtis, three months to navigate the labyrinth of social services, three months to get a job (something better than waitressing or processing — maybe something administrative), three months to begin a life that didn’t start in a big fat hole. The mere thought of fifty-seven hundred dollars strengthened Rita’s resolve to the point that she actually felt hopeful about the future for the first time she could remember. But take away the fifty-seven hundred dollars now and suddenly all her plans seemed impossible, suddenly the thought of a future was exhausting. The thankless drudgery that she’d be forced to undertake in the name of incremental progress seemed unendurable. Didn’t she deserve a break? Didn’t everybody get some kind of break eventually?

When she took her ten o’clock break, Rita retired to her locker. Even before she fished out her smokes, she seized the envelope from her purse and looked at the check long and hard, until the slant of Krig’s handwriting looked like an old friend. As lunchtime approached, she convinced herself to tear the check up on her next break and be done with it. When she went to her locker again and clutched the check
firmly in her fingertips, she couldn’t go through with it. Instead she folded the check and put it in her back pocket. Throughout lunch, Rita smoked cigarettes on the loading dock. Occasionally, she pulled the check out and unfolded it and pondered the possibilities anew. Maybe the thing to do was wait until next week, talk it over with Krig when he got back: make it legit, put it on paper, design a payment plan, even add a little interest — maybe then, taking the check would feel right. But it still wouldn’t be right — why? Krig was trying to buy her freedom, right? Like maybe her freedom to love him at some later date? Is that what this loan was for Krig — a way of holding out hope? A string attaching the two of them even after she left? Oh, but what a small price, one little string — especially one attached to a heart as reliable as Krig’s. Maybe Krig really didn’t need the money. Maybe he gained something bigger by his sacrifice.

When Rita arrived back at the trailer after work, she skipped dinner and began cleaning the kitchen. On her hands and knees, she scrubbed the buckled linoleum, cleaned the grease-spattered oven, douched out the sticky fridge, and washed the windows until she could no longer see the glass. Next, she attacked the monstrous carpet, with its green tentacles, running the old Oreck over it until it lay in one direction like new-mown grass. In Curtis’s room, Rita slowed her pace to gather from every corner, from under every carelessly strewn T-shirt and pair of jeans, his discarded drawings, which she paused to consider as she scrupulously stacked them. The proportions were a little off, but they were the work of a talented sixteen-year-old boy — maybe not a prodigy but a boy who, with the right opportunities, with enough encouragement, might make something of his abilities. Straightening the tattered edges, Rita set the stack of drawings carefully aside and resumed her work folding Curtis’s sweatshirts, stripping his bedding, correcting the upended lamp, and vainly scrubbing at the spreading mold blotches along the back wall. The little room shamed her more than the rest of the trailer. It didn’t seem to matter how much she scrubbed or straightened the boy’s room, it remained as cold and squalid as a cell.

In Seattle, they’d have a real home, Curtis would have a real room —
she’d get him a bed with a frame, a desk, a computer, a chest of drawers. They’d get an apartment with good light, lots of windows, wood floors. The refrigerator would be full. She’d keep the place neat and orderly. They’d shop together like they used to, confide in one another as never before. Curtis was going to snap out of all this — he was improving daily: no more twitching, no more screaming, no more clamping his eyes shut and covering his ears. Any day now, Curtis would begin to recognize all that was once familiar — and just in time to forget it. Because everything was going to be different once they got out from under the cloud of hopelessness that forever hung over this trailer, this rez, this entire town.

Krig’s folded check was dog-eared and tired at the crease by the time Rita arrived at the clinic ten minutes early for visitation on Friday. Meriwether, in his signature white suit and white ten-gallon hat, his braided ponytail dangling halfway down his back, was already in the waiting room, perched in a straight-backed chair, his feet barely touching the carpet, so intent on
Jeopardy
that he did not look up as Rita entered.