Then a branch snaps behind her, and Vera’s heart’s pounding so fast she can’t think. She’s running now, stumbling, pushing ahead on wave after wave of pure instinct, adrenaline, and dread. She’s crying a little, breathing hard. Now she knows something’s after her. “Louise!” she screams. “Louise!”
And finally breaks through. The woods thin; she can see where they end. Vera finds herself in a broad, open meadow where her first thought is: this isn’t Bigfoot’s kind of place at all. No cover, no protection. She’s still scared to look behind her, but forces herself: no one’s watching from the woods. The only living thing in sight is Louise, who’s stopped ahead, waiting.
Vera can’t tell her what happened to her in the forest. Nothing happened to her in the forest. What she wants to say is, “Let’s go home.” A piercing rush of homesickness and discomfort has Vera counting the hours till she can leave, remembering the first time she ever slept at a friend’s house and stayed awake hearing a grandfather clock chime the hours, pining for Dave and Norma and her own bed. That was Louise’s house, too.
“I’m tired,” she tells Louise now, meaning she can’t possibly trek back through the woods. They’ll just have to call in the Red Cross helicopter and airlift her out of here.
“We’re almost home,” Louise says, and Vera sees they’ve come full circle. This meadow is the view from Louise’s window.
“I hope Earl’s started the fire,” Louise murmurs absentmindedly. “There’s grilled salmon and barbecued corn and salad from the garden.”
AFTER A DAY AND a half at Louise’s, Vera feels like one of Shaefer’s monkey statues: see no, hear no, speak no anything at all. She’s pretended not to hear Louise and Earl waiting till they thought she was asleep at the other end of the cabin, then making love, not to hear Earl come in at three the next morning, or their rasping, angry whispers till dawn. In between Vera followed Louise as she cooked, milked the goats, and weeded the garden. Here we will talk about nothing but food. Their best time was picking blackberries side by side with the afternoon sun shining on the clusters of reddish-black fruit. Their fingers and lips got purple; the thorns didn’t scratch hard enough to hurt.
What does hurt is the relief they both feel when they’re back in the car and on their way to the airport. They’re silent for most of the ride. When Louise asks if Vera wants her to wait for the plane, Vera says, “No, airport parking’s always so difficult.” Vera knows she’ll always love Louise, but how often can you jet clear across country to talk about goat cheese? Something’s gone wrong. But what? And how to fix it? Will bringing it up be misconstrued as an attack on Louise’s life? And what if one of them says it: It’s not their friendship at risk so much as the story of their friendship. That’s all they’ve had for years, anyhow. But Vera can’t afford to lose any more stories. She’s bordering on panic again. The only thing keeping her from banging her head on the dashboard and howling is all that practice she’s had in pretending not to know what’s happening. By the time they’ve kissed and sworn to write, Vera’s so desensitized she can’t hear the interior voice that ordinarily starts telling midair-collision stories the minute she thinks about taking a plane.
It’s a kind of anesthesia that seems to last all day. Changing planes in Phoenix, she can pretend that the ten-seat tin can flying her to Flagstaff is a perfectly sane form of transportation, though the lack of a cockpit or even a curtain dividing pilot from passengers makes it harder to ignore the fact that the pilot’s drinking beer. Surely this must be against FAA regulations, even in Arizona. Vera focuses on the pilot’s cowboy hat; beneath it, the nape of his neck looks wobbly and vulnerable, like a baby’s.
At the Flagstaff airport, Vera’s directed to the “stagecoach” stop for the Ghost Circle Lodge, a shed built of that imitation knotty pine one finds in restaurants with names like Beefburger Barn. Inside is a bench made of upended wooden kegs. Vera’s expecting a haywagon or stake-sided pickup, but the van that pulls up is sleek and black, with windows tinted so dark you can hardly see in or out. The interior is carpeted, furnished with swivel easy chairs like a fifties nightclub on wheels. She’s the only passenger. It does feel luxurious, having the whole thing to herself; on the other hand, there’s no one to reassure her that the lettering on the side is for real, that the Indian kid in the Van Halen T-shirt who’s driving will take her anywhere near the Ghost Circle Lodge. The opaque windows don’t help, either. She has to press her face to the glass to see out, and then all she sees is blacktop, pine forests on both sides.
At last the stagecoach stops, and Vera gets out. In front of her is a sprawling fortress of rough cut stone and timber, and beyond that the Grand Canyon. Vera can’t possibly deal with both sights at once. She tells the driver, Thank you, yes, he can take her suitcase inside, then walks around the hotel and up to the edge of the canyon.
It’s beautiful, no doubt about it. And yet it’s not what she’d hoped. The first disappointment is that she can’t perceive it as a canyon, but only as some kind of sunken mountain range. She’d thought canyon meant something simpler: down on one side, up on the other. But this goes down and up and up and down again forever. The second is, it looks like every Arizona Highways cover she’s ever seen. She knows how banal it is, this inability to perceive extraordinary natural beauty as anything more than a picture postcard. But would it be any less trite to have the wind knocked out of her by this testament to the majesty of nature and the grandeur of God? The depressing thought occurs to her that extraordinary natural beauty is in itself banal.
She’d rather be anywhere than here. Anywhere, that is, but here or inside the lodge. It takes her a moment to understand her reluctance: The canyon’s a place of pilgrimage, like Lourdes or the Greens’ house in Brooklyn. Everyone’s come for one reason. And Vera feels as if she’s been and come back, still with her wheelchair and crutches. Perhaps all the Ghost Circle Lodge’s guests think and talk only of natural wonders, their hearts and spirits enlarged—if only temporarily—to Grand Canyon scale. Vera’s heart’s turned to stone.
What finally drives her inside is curiosity to see if her luggage still exists and the possibility that somewhere in that cavernous John Ford set is someone whose idea of a natural wonder is the abominable snowman. For this kindred soul—this convention of kindred souls—the whole canyon might be a movie set: background, that’s all.
But the lobby of the Ghost Circle Lodge won’t let you mistake it for a movie set, nor for one of those Johnny-come-lately Jackson Hole tourist traps tarted up like Miss Kitty’s saloon in Gunsmoke. What’s on display here is a century of western elegance, tradition, hospitality, respectful coexistence with the Indians and especially with their rugs, polished woodwork, copper hurricane lamps, oil paintings of Our Founder, and everywhere the most magnificent taxidermy: trophies of such venerable antiquity that only Our Founder himself could have shot them. And not just moose and deer but bison, antelope, elk, a giant javelina. Vera wishes these stuffed heads well; she hopes they last forever. Should these species become extinct, here’s hard evidence for future cryptobiologists that the buffalo and wild boar weren’t just creatures of fantasy but really did exist.
The discreet letterboard by the registration desk, WELCOME CRYPTOBIOLOGISTS, would certainly make it easy to register as one. Vera wouldn’t have to say anything, just point. If she’s going to write about this, though, it’s better to snoop around anonymously. Being recognized as a reporter—even a former reporter—from This Week will throw everything out of whack. Besides, the desk clerk is one of those stern, disapproving women with tiny mouths who always intimidate Vera. Declaring as a cryptobiologist—or even their invited guest—would be like telling her you’d come to a Hare Krishna convocation or a meeting of Cocaine Abusers Anonymous.
The elderly couple ahead of Vera are wearing so much turquoise it’s a miracle they can move. Perhaps the weight of his rings is what’s making the old man fill out the forms so slowly. The desk clerk watches them clank off, then says, “It’s like a sickne
ss. An addiction. They can’t get through a day without another turquoise fix.” Though Vera mostly shares this opinion of turquoise jewelry, she can’t tell if what’s being criticized is the object of passion or passion itself. What would this woman say if Vera told her that her current passion is people who hope passionately that dinosaurs are alive and well in the Congo?
Vera registers in no time, the desk clerk smacks her hand on the bell, and everyone’s hustling, the bellboy leading Vera at a brisk trot through the lobby and down miles of corridor to her room. The bellboy has a sweet face, a high, domed forehead, a turquoise stud in one ear. He goes to her window, waits till she’s watching, then pulls the curtain, revealing her own private view of the canyon. It’s a bravura performance, but Vera’s a lousy audience. From here the canyon no longer looks quite so postcardlike and insipid; as a matter of fact, it scares her. She’s frightened by that ragged hole in the earth, by that limitless space, by her sense that the bellboy’s let all that emptiness into the room with her; and her heart starts to pound as it did in the woods when she thought she saw Bigfoot. “That’s okay,” she says, “you can leave those shut.”
The bellboy can’t believe she means it. The accusing, suspicious look he gives her is what she’s been expecting since she walked into the hotel. She feels like a double agent who’s just given herself away, thinks with great sympathy that this is how that poor letter writer receiving KGB broadcasts in West Myra, Illinois must feel every day of her life. The dollar she gives the bellboy feels less like a tip than like hush money. Bribing the bellboy to keep quiet about her not liking the Grand Canyon—if that isn’t Kafkaesque, what is?
All during dinner, Vera’s been trying to pick out the cryptobiologists. It’s almost erotic, as if she’s come here to meet a blind date or secret lover, secret even to her. The only one she’s sure of is a man she dubs Big Bwana: pith helmet, khakis, beard. Her next bets are some associate-professor-of-engineering types, each with a wife and three kids, short sleeves, and terribly naked-looking, pale, freckled arms, all surprised by middle age in the long youth of fifties suburban husbands.
But as Vera and her fellow conventioneers assemble in the Saguaro Room for Ray Bramlett’s keynote address, she sees she was wrong. Big Bwana isn’t here, and though the associate professors are, they’re indistinguishable without their families; Vera can’t tell if these are the same ones she saw. Indeed, the most striking thing about the cryptobiologists is their ordinariness. Old ladies in beauty-shop curls and lime polyester pantsuits. Slightly artier ones in graying pony tails, folksy skirts, and sneakers. Pasty young men of the kind no one noticed until Son of Sam put them briefly on the map. Middle-aged husbands and wives who could pass for fraternal twins; outdoorsy young couples with the sunburned, shiny faces of cultists. Turquoise, squash blossoms, bola ties, but in more restrained quantities than on those seniors in the lobby. On the way to the Saguaro Room, Vera mistakenly entered a meeting of some self-improvement group called Dare to Be Terrific. What strikes her now is that the two constituencies look almost identical.
After all those sweeping vistas, it’s a relief that the Saguaro Room has no windows. Walls of gold-veined mirror remind Vera of her grandmother’s house. Light comes from under the mirrors and from thousands of pinholes in the ceiling that, if you squint, suggest a planetarium, only dingier. It’s a good thing Louise isn’t here.
Filtering out the general buzz, Vera tunes in on the women behind her, listening for their Bigfoot stories. But, like conventioneers everywhere, they’re complaining about the food: how their noodles Florentine tasted funny, and how the maître d’ said that many eastern visitors remark on this, but it’s just the different water, different minerals; nothing they can do. Minerals, water—that shut the old ladies up; it must have seemed like sacrilege to sit perched like eagles above nature’s greatest glory and dump on the minerals and water. Now they’re blaming themselves for ordering butter and cheese when all a body needs for lunch is a bit of rye toast and tomato. All this talk of simple food lulls Vera into thinking of Carmen and her radishes, so it’s not till the ladies stop in midsentence that Vera notices the man who’s stepped up to the podium and is waiting politely for silence.
“Good evening,” he says. “And welcome. I’m Ray Bramlett.”
Sixtyish, with a neat, graying moustache and what looks like all his hair, Ray Bramlett evokes David Niven playing gentleman cowboy. He’s wearing a string necktie, a western shirt, and over it, a boxy Navajo vest, handwoven in the palest golds and grays. Vera thinks of the Indian kid in the Van Halen T-shirt. It’s as if the white man and the Indian have swapped clothes, and the clothes the Indians got are worth about as much as the land they wound up with in their dealings with the Great White Father.
“Before we begin,” says Ray, “a few announcements.” There’s a slow, down-home gentleness in the way Ray Bramlett rolls each syllable around in his mouth. It’s impossible to imagine him yelling or getting angry. At the same time it’s very easy to picture him driving a wife or a child or a classroom full of students completely out of their minds with the thoughtfulness and deliberation behind every word.
“Then I’ll say a bit about who we are and why we’re here. I promise not to take too long, since the one thing I know you haven’t come for is to hear me ramble on.” Ray pauses for the obligatory murmur of laughter. Vera always wonders who the people are who can be counted on to chuckle at such moments, to make those sounds that have so little to do with real laughter. If Vera tried to laugh now, she’d probably bray like a mule.
“First, I’m sorry to say that Professor Dorothy Chasteen won’t be with us to talk on the sea-serpent myths.” Ray waits for the clucks of disappointment that finally come, as authentic as the laughter. “But I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that Dr. Chasteen’s just completed a major project—the birth of her first child.” Bramlett’s really working the crowd now—more laughter and even a smattering of applause. “And I’d like to remind you that tomorrow, in the Mimosa Room at eight, we’ll have the special event we’ve been waiting for when Mr. and Mrs. Carl Poteet present the first public showing of their history-making slides and tapes.”
Vera can tell how history-making these slides and tapes must be: this time the applause comes spontaneously, without Ray having to work for it.
“And now on behalf of myself and my colleagues on the board, I’d like to welcome you to the Ninth Annual Convocation of the American Cryptobiological Society. I realize that most of you are familiar with our origins, but let me beg your indulgence while I say a few sentences for the benefit of our new members, who, I’m pleased to say, are more numerous than ever before.”
Vera’s pleased, too. There’s no way of telling what numerous means, but it does seem to promise she won’t be singled out as the only new face. Meanwhile Ray steps on the gas and goes into high academic gear:
“Two hundred years ago, three hundred residents of the French town of Julliac saw a shower of stones fall from the sky. Naturally, no one believed them. There were accusations of mass hysteria, cartoons in every paper from Paris to Marseilles adding Julliac to that roster of mythical towns breeding only imbeciles and gullible fools. Luckily for Julliac and for science, just ten years later three thousand stones fell on the town of L’Aigle, nearer Paris and including among its residents a member of the Institute, who brought one of the rocks in for analysis. At which point it was found to be structurally different from any known geological specimen. And science had its first meteorite.
“The tragic thing is that science has yet to learn the lessons of Julliac. Let’s suppose that, one summer morning, the Lake Champlain monster—Champy, to us—emerges from the water and tours the backyards of Burlington, Vermont. Whole families spot it from their breakfast-nook windows. And who believes them? No one except the lunatic-fringe press. Besides, the witnesses will soon convince themselves it was a trick played by light or by their imaginations or hangovers, whichever the case may be.”
&nbs
p; Though the audience chortles knowingly, Vera senses it’s hardly a hangover crowd. She’s smarting from that reference to the lunatic-fringe press. Even so, she wants to get up and testify: this narrative of anomaly and disbelief is the story of her recent life! Perhaps she should move to Julliac, her true spiritual home.
“And so,” Ray Bramlett continues, “the American Cryptobiological Society was formed to make sure that an incident like the meteor shower at Julliac will never again be dismissed without a full scientific investigation.
“As most of you know, the gorilla wasn’t formally identified until 1847. The pygmy hippopotamus was not officially collected until 1913. Until those dates, sightings of these creatures were ridiculed as crackpotism, much like contemporary reports of Sasquatch and the yeti. But we must keep open the possibility that these unexpected creatures may one day join the list now headed by the pygmy hippo and the gorilla.
“This word, unexpected, is critical. For the life forms we cryptobiologists study are neither ‘extinct’ nor ‘legendary’ nor ‘unknown.’ The extinct is for the biohistorian, the legendary for the ethnographer, the unknown for the science-fiction writer. We devote ourselves to the study of creatures that one would not expect at the times or in the places where they have nevertheless been reported to exist.”
Vera’s charmed by the notion of all these people gathered in pursuit of the unexpected. And yet it seems slightly disingenuous to call these creatures unexpected. The scientist combing Nepal for the yeti is on some level expecting—certainly hoping—to see one. And for all the shock of that moment when she imagined meeting Bigfoot at Louise’s, Vera knows that some part of her was expecting to see him every moment she was there.
“And now,” Ray Bramlett’s saying, “it’s a great pleasure to introduce a man we have come to expect, to rely on for the latest Sasquatch research. Professor Gerald Davis.”
Bigfoot Dreams Page 27