The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac (24 page)

Lindsay approached Eli now, massaging her hands together as though for warmth, wearing, as always, the glittering brass tiara on her head.

“I wanted to talk to you, Mr. Roebuck,” she said in response to Eli's distracted hello. Eli had to stop himself from correcting her:
That's Dr. Roebuck to you, young lady.
“I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm
petite
.” She twirled for him, her pale skirt fluttering prettily as she did so. She gracefully rested on point and gestured at the giant papier-mâché ape. It lay facedown, hovering above its newly detached legs. “Look at this dude! He's a freak. You can't have some giant ugly freak standing behind me, you know? I'm
petite,
Mr. Roebuck. He'll dwarf me.”

“He'll contrast you,” Eli said. He appealed to the girl's vanity. “He'll make you more beautiful by comparison.”

The princess seemed not to hear him. She anxiously masticated her bubble gum. “This is my float,” she said. “It's my float, being made in my parents' barn. I mean, why have Bigfoot on the float at all? I mean, what's the deal-ee-o, Mr. R?”

“It's the school's float,” Eli reminded her. “This Sasquatch here is the school mascot, representing the whole student body.”

“What if we made it, like, two feet tall?” Lindsay suggested. “Like a cute little baby guy?”

“That would be really cute,” Carol/Karen/Kathryn cooed.

“He could be holding a baby bottle,” Lindsay said excitedly. “He could be in a sweet little Bigfoot diaper.”

Carol/Karen/Kathryn squealed in delight.

Eli took a deep breath. “Our Sasquatch,” he said, “is precisely seven feet five inches tall.” He rose up to his knees, his hands on his thighs, and addressed Lindsay in a scholarly way. “This is a modest size for such a creature, Lindsay. Some hominids have been estimated at over twelve feet.”

“God, I can so see it,” she said, opening her palms before her, framing the lowboy trailer. “A tiny Bigfoot baby, right at my knees maybe, and everybody in the crowd saying,
Aw, isn't that so totally precious!
They'd be like,
Cutest little monster, EVER.
”

Carol/Karen/Kathryn cried out, “Yes!” She was clearly in love with the prettier, more confident senior.

“Pay attention to those gluteal muscles,” Eli said to the younger girl, struggling to remain patient. “You're spacing them too far apart.”

Carol/Karen/Kathryn flushed, bending back over the mascot's butt, working the crumpled newspaper into a more accurate position.

“It's getting late,” Eli said now. “We'll finish up our work here, and then we can place him on the float.”

“That's what I'm
saying,
” Lindsay said. “We could totally bust out a mini-Bigfoot. It'd be so much
faster
.”

“Linds,” a voice said. “Linds. Leave the doctor alone. He's trying to work.”

Eli turned and saw the girl's mother, a mannish middle-aged woman. She wore loose flannel pajamas and slippers shaped like fuzzy pink bear paws. She was smoking. They looked hardly at all alike, the one masculine and brooding, the other petite and bubbly, but they shared the same snapping eyes and the same defiant posture.

“I'm talking to Mr. Roebuck here about
ideas,
” the girl whined, but her mother persisted.

“Leave Dr. Roebuck alone. Go along to your friends.”

Lindsay gave up and moved away, toward Ginger and the others, dragging her feet.

“God. These girls of mine. I swear. So perfect. Go
fuck up
once in a while, you know? Stop succeeding! It isn't healthy to be flawless at everything you do.” She nodded toward Ginger and the tall boy who stood speaking together. “Your girl is nice. She's a sweet girl.”

Eli agreed. There was not much else to say about Ginger. She was plain-looking—far from ugly, but not pointedly beautiful.

“You happily married?” the woman asked him then.

“Yes,” he said. “Sure.”

“Well, you know. I'm not. My husband hates me. They all hate me, in one way or another.” She laughed at this, as if it were hilarious.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Eli said. He was amused by her frankness. “Maybe you could leave him?”

“I could. But I'm in love. And love makes us stupid. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“That sounds painful.”

“It's easy enough.” The woman tossed her cigarette on the floor and ground it into the shit-strewn floorboards with the toe of a pink bear slipper. “I remember your first wife,” she said.

He remembered then: This woman's eldest daughter had attended school with Amelia. “Gladys,” he said.

“You hated her guts,” the woman observed.

“It wasn't as extreme as that.”

“She was an odd bird, Gladys,” the woman said. “I remember that about her. Really odd. The scarred head and stuff.”

“Well. You know. She's not well, my ex. Not well in the head, I mean. She has some mental issues.”

“So you left her,” the woman summarized, her tone disinterested.

“I fell in love with someone else.”

There wasn't much else to say about it, but the woman stared at him, shifting her weight from one bear slipper to the other. The shine in her look made him slightly uncomfortable, so Eli turned back to the Sasquatch model. The legs were much shapelier now and were, at the very least, fastened to the torso correctly.

“Good job, partner,” Eli said to Carol/Karen/Kathryn, and she beamed.

“Well,” Lindsay's mom said. “Anyway. Thanks for the conversation. Sorry to chat your ear off.”

He accepted her heavy, warm hand and shook it. “Pleasure to chat with you.”

“Good luck with the monster,” she said as she walked away.

“Hominid,” Eli corrected under his breath.

“God,” Carol/Karen/Kathryn said, “Lindsay's mom is
so weird.
”

“We're all weird,” Eli said, and it struck him as a wise and accepting thing to tell a child.

*   *   *

O
N THE DRIVE
home, Ginger asked him how it was going.

“It's better,” he said. “Tomorrow looks good. We'll wire the dummy for ambulation. Anyway, the legs are accurate now, so his gait will be pretty realistic.”

“You mean he'll be walking on the float?”

“Well, lifting his legs up and down. Swinging his arms. Walking in place, yes. I hope.”

“Does Lindsay know this?” Ginger asked.

“Sure,” he lied. “Does it matter?”

“It's just,” Ginger said, “Lindsay's wanted to be Comstock princess her whole life, and, you know, she's supposed to be the centerpiece of the float. So if you're making this giant, moving monster—”

“Sasquatch are not monsters, sweetie,” Eli reminded her. “They're hominid. Or hominin, even.”

“Right, Dad, I know. The humanoid or whatever, got it.”

“Hominid. From great apes. Or hominin. Meaning directly related to us. The debate—”

“My point is, Dad, you can't just put a giant moving humanoid up there behind Lindsay and expect people to think it's great. Lilac City loves its Comstock princess. She—not the monster—should be the center of attention.”

“Hominid,” Eli said. “I get what you're saying, Ginger, but we're talking about representing the entire Comstock High student body here. We're talking about respecting the natural identity of the Comstock High mascot. Lindsay is just a girl, a girl who wins things.”

“The Comstock princess represents the student body, too.”

“My impression of Lindsay is that she doesn't care at all about the student body. My impression is that she only cares about how pretty and popular she is.”

“She's really, really nice,” Ginger said, her voice growing nasal and annoyed. “She's like the nicest cool girl there is. That's why she won, why we all voted for her. 'Cause she says hi to us in the hallway and partners up with us in class. She's nice, Dad. She's not a mean girl like some of her friends.”

He hated hearing Ginger speak this way. “I think you're just as pretty as she is, Ginger,” Eli said to her, and he meant it. “You have a warmer beauty. She's like an ice queen. And she's too skinny. Guys like a little flesh.”

“I think it's a good idea. The mini-monster thing. Instead of the big guy.”

“Mini-hominid,” Eli said, taking a turn too quickly. “She told you about her three-foot-tall Sasquatch idea?”

“She told everyone, Dad, and we all think it's a great idea.”

“‘We all'? ‘We all' who?”

“You know. Me. Gary. The entire float committee.”

“Is Gary the tall kid with the baseball cap?”

Ginger's face and neck blotched at the question.

“You like him,” Eli said, steering onto their street now, “and I think that's great. He looks like a nice kid.”

Ginger put her face in her hands. “Ack. Kill me now.”

“But I agreed to help with the float committee on one condition,” Eli continued, “and that was to create a fully functioning hominid/hominin model based on my research of Northwest Sasquatch.”

“But, Dad—” Ginger protested weakly.

“That was my condition, Ginger,” Eli said firmly, pulling on the parking brake and shutting off the ignition.

He turned to Ginger and put a hand on her left shoulder. She smiled at him for a moment and then pulled away, up and out of the car. He was glad to see that she wasn't mad at him, not really.

*   *   *

T
HE NEXT DAY
was a Saturday. The parade was taking place later in the evening, so they had a full day to wire and affix the Sasquatch model to the lowboy trailer.

Eli shook Ginger awake at dawn and urged her to dress quickly. Once they were in his car, Eli offered her a bagel and a box of apple juice, as he would when she was a little girl. She accepted the food sleepily and leaned her head against the window. She wore shorts and purple high-tops and a roomy navy sweatshirt. She had matured faster than Amelia, had large breasts and a thicker waist. She looked entirely like a grown woman. This made Eli a little sad.

“Why are we up so
early
?” Ginger asked, sucking on her juice box.

“I need to stop by the office first,” Eli said, and Ginger groaned.

“Couldn't you have woken me up
after
?”

“This saves time,” he said. “Besides, you used to love coming to the office with me.”

“Yeah, Dad, like, when I was six.”

Her grumpiness rang false to Eli. He knew she was delighted with the time they were spending together. Eli relaxed his balding head comfortably against the headrest, stretching his forearms with his palms flat against the steering wheel. He spent so much of his time in solitude that it always surprised him when he enjoyed the company of others. Ginger's company was both unobtrusive and pleasant. Ginger was unlike any of the other women in his life: She asked little to nothing of him, accepted him simply for what he was.

But then she said, “Lindsay'll look beautiful in her gown today.”

For a brief moment he saw Lindsay as Ginger saw her: the rightful heir, the rare and justified blessed, the effortless girl who Ginger admired from afar, beautiful and confident and excellent.

Ginger had once glorified Amelia this way and perhaps still did.

He made a face. “Those dresses always look like overworked wedding cakes.”

To his relief, Ginger laughed. She wasn't taking the whole business
too
seriously, then.
Good,
Eli thought.

“You know something?” he said. “You'll probably have more fun than Lindsay. A kid like that—it's a lot of pressure. And you're good at so many things and involved in so many things. I'm proud of you, Ginger. I don't ever tell you that, but I am. I'm proud of you. Your mom and I both.”

Ginger watched him from her side of the seat with large pretty cow eyes, her mouth slightly ajar, looking half amused and half flattered. She took a big bite of her bagel. It left a giant white smear across one cheek, which she made worse with a swipe of her wrist.

“Napkins?” she asked, and Eli shook his head.

Ginger took another bite of her bagel, chewed, and swallowed loudly as Eli parked the car at the SNaRL office.

“I'm not jealous of her, Dad.”

He said, “Good,” and set the parking brake.

“I mean, it would be cool,” she said, “to wear that dress and wave to everyone and have everyone tell you all the time how great you are, but mostly it sounds boring.”

“Exactly,” he said, but he felt sorrowful then.

Eli knew he struggled with fatherhood. He wondered if it would have been different if he'd had boys. Boys could be mischievous and violent, but girls were vituperative, emotionally sensitive. It was always a shock to him when Amelia battled him on some misunderstood slight, or when Ginger suddenly burst into tears, hurt beyond reason over something so meaningless as a raised eyebrow. Sometimes he thought it was because women were so much smarter than men, more aware of implied meaning. Other times he thought it was because they were a little vain and a little crazy, all to varying degrees.

Not that he wasn't a little vain. Not that he wasn't a little crazy.

They stood together now in the SNaRL office, the lamps overhead flickering into fluorescence. For the office, Eli had rented a small space in downtown Lilac City. It was the first floor of a historic brick building that faced the riverfront. It had no windows, only squat walls and ceilings. Despite the lovely view outside, its interior was no more than a tidy cement box.

Eli had an elaborate filing system, a maniacally organized desk. A chalkboard, recently washed to a black shine, covered the west wall, and sturdy metal shelves lined the eastern wall. The shelves bore the small but convincing evidence gleaned from Eli's most successful fieldwork: a few foot molds from noted tracks, a narrow card box containing envelopes of scant hair samples, two or three vials of soil containing urine deposits, a glass jar of dried, loose scat. Cabinets on the southern wall held paperwork from the region's many sightings. Eli carefully documented each call or letter he received, no matter how ludicrous. He approached every observation with a scientific mind-set, grinding into the smallest of details. It was true that a few of the sightings were reported by maniacs or attention-seekers, but most of them were from sincere, hardworking types who were baffled by their own encounters with the thing. For example: an ophthalmologist who happened to see Bigfoot walk out of a dilapidated, abandoned house from the forest-facing window of his clinic; a beautician living on the nearby Spokane Indian Reservation, a self-described “very sane mother of five,” who came across a swaybacked hairy ape bathing itself one early morning in Mathews Lake. Her oldest daughter, a straight-A junior-high student, was also there. The girl screamed so loudly that the creature bucked and howled back at them menacingly before fleeing into the forest. And then there was Eli. He, too, had seen the massive beast.