The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac Read online

  Oh, if she were not such a down-to-earth woman, Gladys thought, she would toss herself at his feet and pound the floor with her fists!

  The doctor kept his hands on her, as though worried about this possibility.

  Gladys struggled to summon the correct tone. Her surprise had melted away, and in its place sat a stout and ugly rumination.

  How could you do this to me? she wondered, but she couldn’t say it aloud. It was too self-pitying.

  It’s my own fault, she thought instead. I’ve let your fancies go too far. It’s time to put my foot down.

  For as long as Gladys had known Eli, he had obsessed over the local legends of what she referred to as “his monsters” (a term that Eli disapproved of; “Hominids, Gladys,” he corrected hotly. “They are great apes, more man than beast”). It did not escape Gladys’s notice that he became a podiatrist due to his keen interest in arboreal footprints. On the only forest walk she’d ever taken with him, during their short engagement, he had brought her to a small clearing and showed her one of his “findings,” as he called them. “The finding” was a long, oval impression in the dried mud. It certainly looked like a foot, if you squinted at it correctly, but Gladys was embarrassed by his certainty.

  “Well,” she’d said. “Very interesting.”

  He had beamed. He had driven her all the way from Lilac City to this dry, sparse forest outside Rathdrum, to tell her about his childhood. She had listened to him dully. She questioned her rationality in marrying someone with such a wild imagination. But he’d already set up his podiatry practice in Lilac City, and they’d purchased a handsome house, and he’d given her an enormous diamond ring that she enjoyed showing around. He seemed perched on the edge of success, and it was the sort of success that Gladys wanted. Besides, she’d reasoned to herself, aren’t all men strange? Don’t all men have disagreeable hobbies? Some men frequented seedy bars and flirted with loose women. Some men drank too much and beat their wives. At least, for all of his strangeness, Eli was a loyal husband and prodigious provider.

  And so it was a conscious—and erroneous, she saw now—decision to accept and even encourage his interests. It was a boyhood hobby, nothing more. She pretended to find it endearing when he returned from the library late in the evenings with a few Xeroxed articles from the Seattle P-I, from The Wenatchee World or The Lilac City Monitor, mentioning in some small way a random (purported) sighting. Twice a year he left town to camp in the Selkirks, to spend a week combing the densely treed hillsides for evidence. He even made molds from these footprints, a few of which sat hidden away in his den (she would not permit them in the dining or living room), chunky monoliths that Gladys dusted once a week with a resolute wifely cheerfulness. It was nonsense, but she allowed it, mainly because he kept it to himself and for the most part didn’t bring it up at dinner parties or bridge games.

  When he did bring it up, it was keenly embarrassing. For a time he became obsessed with the Patterson-Gimlin film, which he called Patt-Gim. They had watched the interview on late-night television. Eli had grown so agitated during the interview that he spilled his Tom Collins all over the new tan club chair. Gladys had gotten down on all fours to scrub the fabric clear of lemon and sugar, but Eli remained on his feet, staring at the television with a look of complete madness. The next night, at a dinner party with one of his partners, he brought up Patt-Gim and spoke passionately about it for a few minutes, all while his colleagues and their wives smiled into their drinks. One of the wives caught Gladys’s eye and grimaced pityingly. Gladys was beside herself with anger and frustration. Rattled, concerned, she berated Eli on the way home for his puerile behavior.

  “People don’t believe in your monsters,” she said as he drove. “It’s humiliating.”

  “Hominids,” he corrected. “Or hominins, maybe. But not monsters, Gladys.”

  She had never been so annoyed with him. They went inside, paid the babysitter, and readied for bed. Gladys had given him the cold shoulder for the rest of the short evening, although, as usual, he failed to notice.

  But now Gladys wished she had fought him harder, had killed the conversation then, before it all went too far. She looked at him and saw a dreaming little boy. She was exhausted by his silliness. She wanted to slap him.

  “We’re on the cusp of greatness,” Eli pressed. “He’s out there, waiting to be discovered. Clever fellow, evasive but waiting for us, whether he knows it or not.”

  Gladys put her palms over her ears. “Stop talking, please. I have a terrible headache.”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Gladys,” he said. “This is science. It’s about discovery. Self-discovery, even. The more we know about Sasquatch, the more we’ll know of one another. I wish I was out there, filming my own footage. I wish I could get my hands on that footage, to watch it again. It just replays endlessly in my mind. An endless loop.”

  What could she do? Other than chide and beg, which only added to the humiliation, there was no sure way to shut him up. She was the wife. It was her job to support him, to get out of his way, or, at the very least, to give the impression of supporting him, et cetera. Their future was in her hands. She would have to say something strategic to snap him out of his dreamland.

  She began with a neutral phrase—an amazing idea—meaning to add, however, that she disapproved, and also to say, with some derision, that the whole business was batty.

  It was too late. He had already lunged from his knees to embrace her. Gladys cried out as though expecting to be slugged, and then she felt herself wrapped in his familiar, spindly arms. She stopped breathing for a moment, baffled and overwhelmed. When he pulled away, there were tears rolling down his cheeks—actual tears! She had never seen him cry, except when his father had died, but even then there had been only an ugly open quaking of the mouth, a facial bleariness. But now he cried from relief, as freely as a child.

  “I worried so much,” he said, “about what you would say. I thought you would fight me tooth and nail. What a shock this must be to you, Gladys. But I feel—” He stopped here, releasing her and bringing clasped fingers to his heart. “I feel that if I don’t do this, I will die. I will die a sudden horrible death. Have you ever felt that way about something? That you must either commit fully to the task at hand or die an agonizing death?”

  He was not really asking the question of her, only marveling over his own appetites, and so Gladys said nothing, although what she thought was, Yes. I felt that way about marrying you. All of those long years ago. Perhaps not so much because of an extraordinary love for him but because it meant that she would be released from the tedium of her girlhood, a life that had been comfortable enough but as shineless and unsupportive as an old, beat-up pair of shoes. She had wanted stability, status, success. And Eli, to his credit, had so far brought her those things.

  And now what? Would she lose everything?

  “I do support you,” Gladys said, through gritted teeth. “But what of Amelia?” she asked. “What of her future?”

  Eli rose to his feet. “I don’t want you worrying about money, Gladys. I won’t leave you in the poorhouse. I still have my license, after all. I’ll keep a few patients from the practice. The patients will come here, to the house, for treatment. Just a handful of them, enough to keep us comfortable. You won’t want for anything.”

  “But just enough? What does that mean?”

  “You know, dear, it wouldn’t hurt us to live in a smaller house, in a more modest neighborhood, with more modest things.”

  Gladys blanched. “You can’t mean you’d sell the house?”

  “Fact is,” he continued, fidgeting, “this could be a gold mine. If I can prove his existence, just think of it. The money. The fame! Imagine if I produced a verifiable corpse! There’s nothing we’ll want for. And I believe I know how to find him. I believe I have an advantage. I practically know him personally.”

  Gladys hesitated. Her husband was mad, she feared, but she was comforted by his promises of money and
fame. She was not ashamed of her desire for wealth. She was a grown woman, after all, and deserving. And she wanted the best for her daughter. She wanted the best clothes for her, the best education. God forbid the child should attend public school or community college.

  Gladys felt herself giving in; she had no choice but to accept his empty promises. His Northwest ape! His Sasquatch! It was ridiculous, Gladys knew. But watching him as he paced excitedly back and forth, she was temporarily appeased by his ardor.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “You have my blessing, Eli. Godspeed.”

  To her own ear, she sounded Shakespearian. She was pleased with herself. Eli, even more pleased, kissed her flush on the mouth, and the kiss becalmed her. She was the perfect wife, and he was the adventuresome husband who would win them glory.

  Why not? The world was filled with strange things. Maybe he would find one of them.

  The conversation over, Eli went to pack for his next expedition and Gladys rose and began to tidy the house. She went about her tasks cheerfully enough, but as she returned some wayward shoes to the foyer closet, a hard knot formed in her gut.

  What, exactly, had she agreed to?

  The knot tightened as Eli put his bags in his car.

  She was agreeing, she sensed, to their doom. She thought of the black birds all those year ago, which she had written off as no more than birthing hormones. She’d experienced other “episodes,” as Eli called them, but none of them had been so intense.

  But now the starlings flooded her vision again. The world darkened.

  She was agreeing to change. Change was a bad thing. It only brought about more change. She wanted nothing to change, nothing at all.

  She raced into the driveway to flag down Eli’s car and demand that he stay. He mistook her waving arms as a fond farewell, and he waved back at her through the car window. She could see his grin clearly as he backed out. Could he not see her downturned mouth?

  Eli. Get back here. Right this instant.

  She stomped her foot, shook a fist.

  He sped away with a last wave.

  Reentering the house, Gladys was very aware of her vulnerability. She was a woman, alone. What if a thief came? A rapist?

  What if Eli was killed in the wilderness by a mountain lion or by a falling tree? These things happened. How would they even locate him? What would become of Amelia? What would become of Gladys herself?

  What if he met another woman? A female cryptozoologist? Someone more to his liking?

  Gladys had been lovelier as a young woman but she was older now, thick in the waist and throat, too dedicated to one man. She was all used up. Who would have her?

  Stop it. You’re being silly.

  She shoveled the shoes into the closet without her usual orderliness. She went to the kitchen and wrote down the list for the maid.

  TO DO:

  Dust all rooms on first floor.

  Dishes.

  Do ALL laundry (don’t forget the towels this time).

  She stopped there. The letter D rose before her with its fat, pregnant belly. DOOM, she saw. She wrote quickly, Whatever else you can fit in, and underlined it, and put several exclamation points following. Then she started on the menu for the cook.

  Dinner, she began, then, seeing again the oppressive letter, crumpled up the paper and, with weak fingers, started again. Supper, she wrote, and felt that it was a more noble term for the evening meal, but her fingers shook so strongly that she could not write another word.

  The maid arrived, and then the cook, and by then Gladys had regained her excellent posture, if not her usual confidence. Amelia returned from school and droned on about her classmates. Gladys sat across from her at the dinner table and mechanically ate. Left to her own devices, the cook had served them peasant food: beans, meat, over-steamed greens. It tasted wretched, but Gladys choked it down. Uncertain of what to do then, Gladys excused herself for bed.

  “Mom, no,” Amelia cried. “You’ll miss Hee Haw!”

  “Trash,” Gladys said. “Nothing but hicks and whores.”

  “It’s my favorite show. It’s comedy.”

  “Hicks and whores.”

  Amelia sulked. Gladys left her at the table and climbed the stairs to her room.

  She slept fitfully and awoke in the morning with what felt like a crushing hangover.

  Shaky and sick, Gladys dressed. It was a gorgeous day outside. The swaying trees, the singing robins, they all mocked her.

  Accepting only a mug of coffee from her daughter, Gladys slid into her chair with a whimper. Amelia buttered toast and readied for school. She left for the bus stop without a word. Gladys was glad when she was gone. She could better nurse her misery alone.

  To distract herself, Gladys decided to drive into Lilac City for a shopping expedition. She deserved a respite. Perhaps she would buy something lovely for Amelia. A new hair ribbon, maybe. A new tie for her husband. Sometimes a new tie could fix everything. She laughed, madly and loudly, and the sound of her laughter seemed to cut a hole into the fabric of the world. God, she thought. How alone I am! How abandoned!

  The steering wheel vibrated against her palms and she thought for a moment that it was an inner quaking, a breaking apart. She parked beside a short avenue of shops and stepped onto the sidewalk. I’m dying, she thought. I’m about to die. This revelation satisfied her. I will die and then he’ll see. That will end the argument. She pictured her funeral, her gorgeous black gown and gleaming ebony casket. Beside it, Eli would weep. Amelia would beat on his back with her fists—How could you do this to her!—and he would moan his remorse into the relentless sheets of rain.

  Gladys parked in a garage downtown and took an elevator to the street. On the sidewalk, she tried to enjoy the cheery atmosphere, the bustling bodies around her, the salesclerks and the occasional passerby telling her hello, recognizing her as the good doctor’s wife. They allowed her the elevated status that she had always carried among them. Hello, they said to her reverently. Hello, Mrs. Dr. Roebuck. She smiled at them. Then she lifted her gaze to the awning above her and read the cursive writing painted there.

  Well, Gladys thought. A new shop! I’ll go in and welcome the owner.

  She pressed inside through the French doors, triggering a bell. Despite the teeming sidewalks, the store was empty. It was cool and dim but not at all unpleasant or gloomy. Rather, it was an immediate feast for the eyes, an exploding bouquet of color and flair. Items were piled everywhere, cluttered on the floor, sitting on tables, leaning against one another haphazardly as though they might, at any moment, tip over. The shop gave Gladys an immediate sense of euphoria.

  The shopkeeper was not present, although Gladys could hear someone shuffling around in a back room. At first, Gladys wandered the store timidly. She eyeballed some of the peculiarities: a chair that rocked sideways rather than front to back, a statuette of a nude woman with a beak and wings, a kite that quivered on the wall as if in mid-flight. Bolder now, Gladys picked up a normal-looking wooden box and turned it over in her hands.

  She opened the latch.

  Out flew a live yellow bird.

  Gladys screeched. The bird fluttered wildly about the room. Looking for a way outside, it threw itself furiously against the glass windowpanes. Terribly embarrassed, Gladys tried to follow the bird and recapture it, but it flew through her fingers like a feathered missile. Gladys dropped the box, panicking. The box hit the floor, clamped shut, and the bird disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.

  Gladys cried out for help.

  “Yes?” a voice said. “How can I help you?”

  A long, shady slip of a woman stood behind her, regarding her with wide round eyes. She wore a full-length velvet dress, buttoned tightly at the throat. Two sparkling red globes swung from her heavy earlobes.

  “Your bird,” Gladys said, pointing to the wooden box, too unnerved to pick it up again. “I’ve killed it.”

  The shopkeeper bent and retrieved the tiny receptacle.

  “The bi
rd?” the shopkeeper said. “Dead, you say?”

  She opened the box and out flew the bird again, twittering, flashing yellow against the windows.

  Then, glowing with a private, satisfied smile, she clamped the lid shut. Again came the puff of purple smoke. The bird disappeared.

  “As right as rain,” the woman said. “Really, it’s impossible to damage any of our goods. They are”—she gave a careless wave at the shelves—“invincible.”

  “I’m so relieved,” Gladys said. “You have no idea. With the week I’ve had, I just couldn’t have added a murder to the list.”

  Gladys laughed too loudly. An awkward silence fell. The shopkeeper watched her carefully. Gladys found the shopkeeper’s face ravishing, so waxen smooth and pure, although she seemed by her stiff carriage tremendously old.

  “Please,” the shopkeeper said, her hands primly clasped before her waist. “Look around. Enjoy.”

  “Oh,” Gladys hurried to say, “I just wanted to step inside and welcome you to the area. I hadn’t noticed your shop before! How long have you been here?”

  “How kind of you,” the shopkeeper replied in her calm, steady voice. “We’ve been here a good forty years now.”

  “Forty years?”

  “A little over.”

  “Funny, I’ve never seen you,” Gladys marveled. “I’ve shopped this street for half my life.”

  “People pass us by until they need us,” the woman said.

  She gave Gladys another charming smile. It cut through the wan darkness of her face like lightning. And then she walked over to the cash register, bobbing up and down like a large chicken. She bent behind it to withdraw a wide blue feather duster, which she began to wield around the dustless room, passing from aisle to aisle with her awkward gait. The feather duster shook and giggled like a tickled child.