Roanoke Ridge

by J. J. Dupuis

  “Should we pull in?” Saad asks.

  “I was just thinking that.” Last time we joined a crowd like this, we caught a glimpse of “Sasquatch.”

  The man is red-faced and his voice is starting to break. Sweat is visible on his brow and mats his hair. We both get out of the car and close our doors quietly to not interrupt him.

  “I saw it with my own eyes,” he says. “The government folks picked up the stakes and left. The sheriff is in there now.”

  “That don’t make it murder,” a voice in front of us calls out.

  “It sure means it was no accident,” the man replies.

  I recognize the man in the truck from the other night. He was the leader of the trio, the one inquiring about Rick Driver. How he found out about the departure of the SAIT people is a mystery, but it’s no surprise he’s here now. He reaches down into the crowd and pulls up the man we saw earlier who filmed the Sasquatch while searching for Professor Sorel.

  “We know there’s something out there, this man took a video of it!”

  The crowd looks expectantly toward the man, but he says nothing, just scratches his elbow while seeming to count every face in the crowd.

  “Go on,” the man in the vest says. “Tell ’em, tell ’em what you saw.”

  “Uh … well … we were coming back from searching a valley behind Roanoke Ridge, on the far side of the mountain. The sun was setting and we had to get back to the ranger station. Then we heard it, whatever it was. It wasn’t a big noise, just a little clicking noise. I was last in my group and kept looking over my shoulder. That’s when I saw it move. It was huge, camouflaged in all that bush. We locked eyes for just a second, then it took off, westward through a thick patch. Man, could this thing move. It leapt over rocks and logs like an Olympic athlete.”

  “We’re going to find this creature,” the man in the vest says. “And we’re going to find it tonight! The meetup will be at ten, at the end of Burnt Creek Road!”

  The crowd cheers like this is a stump speech. It seems a little too orchestrated, too convenient. Saad and I walk back to the car.

  Back in our motel room, we eat pizza for dinner and watch the movie Double Indemnity on Saad’s laptop. I text Ted, thinking he’ll back out of the Bigfoot hunt. To my surprise, he replies with a thumbs-up emoji, followed by see you at 9:45.

  There’s no relaxing. I count the minutes and feel my pulse rise. I look out the window and find a police cruiser in the motel parking lot. The windows are down and there’s no one behind the wheel. Someone comes out the door of the manager’s office: the deputy who interviewed me at the station two days ago. She is scribbling something in her notepad, the floodlight above the parking lot shining on her dark hair tied back in a bun. She glances up at my window and I wave. She nods at me, scribbles some more, then a look of recognition comes over her face.

  “Hey, Deputy,” Ted calls out, appearing out of nowhere and crossing the parking lot. The deputy’s rigid posture and stiffened jaw muscles relax, as though she is deflating. She smiles and seems to not know what to do with herself. “Hey yourself, Ranger,” she says.

  They both half turn as they pass each other. Then Ted’s smile disappears. I never thought he would be that calculating.

  “Good evening,” he says, when I answer the door.

  “Hey, Ranger,” I say.

  “Don’t you start,” he says.

  We both watch the deputy’s cruiser pull out of the parking lot, pause for a passing lumber truck, then turn out onto the highway. She’s visible in profile, looking down the end of her nose at the road. It looks like her hair is tied back so tightly it might snap.

  I turn to Ted. “How’s the investigation into Rick Driver’s death going? Any idea?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I hear things. The FBI has taken over the investigation since the crime took place on federal land, but they’ve bent over backward to make the sheriff’s department feel included, probably because of those gun nuts in the next county who think every federal employee is part of a covert invasion.”

  “Sheriff Watkins must love that,” I say.

  “Except all this investigation is doing is highlighting his ineptitude. He can’t even find where Rick Driver was staying. Plenty of people can place him in town up to two days before his death, but none of the local motels have him in their registries and his pickup is nowhere to be found.”

  When Ted follows me in, Saad looks at us without expression and begins packing his stuff. My bag is already packed, including my flashlight, glow sticks, a camera, a video camera, a bottle of water, and an extra sweater.

  I check the Bigfoot meetup site and confirm the location. Since the cellphone footage was uploaded, all the squatchers in the Pacific Northwest have been making their way out to Roanoke Valley.

  “Are you ready to hunt Bigfoot?” I ask.

  “This is a bad idea,” Ted says, sitting down in the back of our rental and pulling the door shut behind him. “If any of the guys find out I came with you, I’ll never live it down.”

  “I wouldn’t be too worried, if I were you,” I say.

  “I thought you came out here to find your professor, not hunt Bigfoot.”

  “One experienced woodsman goes missing, another is killed in the same area, and now there are these sightings? I can’t believe that these are isolated events.”

  Ted, leaning forward, peeks around the fabric-covered headrest at me. He sits back and exhales. “A lot of crazy stuff happens — it’s not all related,” he says.

  “It’s this or sitting around my motel room, praying your helicopters find Professor Sorel,” I say. “Unless you can pull some strings and let me back on the mountain.”

  “Point taken,” Ted says.

  A dozen cars line the grass at the side of Burnt Creek Road. An odd combination of smells wafts and whirls together in the air: bacon, peanut butter, even anchovies. There are a dozen recipes for the “perfect” Bigfoot bait, none of which have ever conclusively worked.

  To my surprise, there’s a camera crew here. Danny LeDoux, the TV producer, stands next to a van with the NatureWorld logo on the side. He’s in jeans and a blazer, the most casually dressed that I’ve ever seen him. He spots me, pushing his head forward like a turtle to make sure. I wave and he waves back, then knocks on the sliding door of his van. It opens and a man wearing a backward baseball cap, polo shirt, and khaki shorts pops out.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” Danny says.

  “You thought the roaring nightlife of Roanoke Valley would sweep me away?”

  “Mind if we tag along with you?” he asks.

  “I’m not going on camera,” Ted says. “No way in hell.”

  “We won’t use any footage without getting you to fill out a consent form,” Danny says.

  “You won’t tape me at all,” Ted says. “I want to keep my job.”

  “Okay, Ranger Smith, you’re out,” Danny says, turning to the cameraman. “No face time for the ranger, here, Chris.”

  The cameraman gives a nod and a simultaneous thumbs-up.

  “Ranger Smith. From Yogi Bear,” Saad whispers to me, responding to the look of confusion on my face.

  Lon Colney is here, too, wearing an outfit right out of Indiana Jones. He stands at the mouth of a logging road that splits off from the main road and curves around the mountain, watching the group in silence as backpacks are slung into place, flashlights turned on, battery packs on camcorders checked and rechecked. A semicircle forms in front of him as the faithful, the veteran squatchers, stand at attention. The rest of us follow their lead.

  Lon speaks. “As always, be careful out there, folks. One man has already died out here and another is missing. Look out for yourself and the person next to you. Respect the land and each other, and please, don’t wander off alone.”

  The squatchers fan out like we’re on a scavenger hunt at summer camp. Saad, Ted, and I stay together. Danny LeDoux and his cameraman, Chris, follow along behind us, sticki
ng close to each other.

  Although it seems like the ideal starting point, we keep away from Roanoke Ridge. Nobody wants to be caught disturbing a crime scene — we’re lucky the sheriff’s department hasn’t shut this thing down already.

  Ted leads us down a logging road that curls around the base of the mountain. We get far enough in and the bush on the left falls away as the hillside tapers and drops into the stream that looks black in the darkness. Voices carry on the wind, getting quieter and quieter as the squatchers separate. We rest on an outcropping of rocks, leafless branches stretching out overhead, and look across the valley as though from a sniper’s nest. Maybe it’s just the night-vision scope. There are definite advantages to teaming up with well-heeled TV producers. We pass it around like college kids smoking a joint.

  Suddenly, a loud bass call explodes from a cluster of fir trees across the valley, near the crest of the hill. It sounds like a demonic version of Tim “the Toolman” Taylor’s grunting. Through the night-vision scope I can see three men standing together. The middle one is cupping his hands around his mouth and making the call. The bass rises into something like the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan yodel, then into the sound a diva would make if you pulled the shower curtain back on her. There is total silence, then the squatcher calls again.

  I peel away from the scope and look off in the darkness, up at the stars, at the trees on the ridge that are black silhouettes against the night’s sky.

  From somewhere farther up the mountain, a bellow erupts, unlike anything I’ve ever heard. I look back at the squatchers who made the first calls. At first they’re frozen, then they split up. Two start ascending the mountain, the middle one stays behind, making his call again then listening for a response.

  Ghostly white flashlight beams shine through the trees, then start to converge as different bands of squatchers cross paths to follow the sound. Their lights look alien on the mountainside. Shouts echo from one side of the valley to the other, rolling over the ridge and through the trees. The beams of flashlights shine through the leaves, cutting swaths through the night like lighthouses off-kilter. I hear branches snap, dry brush crunch, the heavy thuds of boots running over dry soil.

  “There! He’s there!” a man yells.

  The flashlights start to coalesce — they’ve found a focal point. A cluster of men climb up onto the ridge, moving across it in a line chasing something that we can’t see.

  “Follow me,” Ted says. “We can take this trail back to the road and cut off whatever they’re chasing.”

  He breaks out into a sprint, the beam of his own flashlight swinging side to side like a pendulum. I follow like a distance runner, conserving energy, moving cautiously, always keeping one eye on the terrain in front of me and the other on Ted. My ears search for Saad constantly. I hear his steps, his laboured breathing behind me. Danny and Chris hang back. The beam from the LED top light on Chris’s camera diffuses as I run beyond it. Danny gives instructions but I can’t make them out.

  The starlight is enough to navigate the dirt road. Ted switches his flashlight off and I see his blue shirt clearly. We’ve managed to head the squatchers off at the pass, like we’re in an old cowboy movie. The gaggle of flashlight beams are coming down the ridge and heading straight for us, deviating only where the men holding them encounter obstructions, rocks and trees to climb around. A branch breaks and something heavy slides down the hill in an avalanche of dead leaves.

  Ted clicks his light on and does a sweep of the area immediately next to the road. I use my beam higher up on the hillside and Saad adds his to the effort. Ted walks a little farther up the road and I follow, gesturing at Saad to stay put. Danny and Chris stay behind me and to the right. We’re casting our net a little wider. The men on the ridge have slowed down, trying to climb down the hill without falling.

  “Who has the scope?” I whisper over my shoulder to Danny and Chris.

  My own natural night vision is horribly inadequate. Each amorphous blob could be a creature in a crouch, each branch could be an arm outstretched. A white LED beam hits me dead in the chest and works its way up. One of the squatchers is almost down to the road. The beam lifts up a foot and I’m blinded in its glare.

  “Who’s there?” a man’s voice asks.

  Bushes part and I hear feet on gravel. The beam pulls off my face and points to a section of road between Ted and I, just as a hairy figure crosses the road and dives into the trees on the other side, evergreen boughs snapping back in protest.

  It all happens in the blink of an eye.

  I can’t even be sure it was real.

  I take a step to pursue when I feel a tug. Someone has grabbed the handle at the top of my backpack.

  “Laura —” Saad says.

  In my peripheral, I catch the glimmer of a pistol. The muzzle spits out fire and the sound cracks the night. A cry of pain from somewhere in the woods freezes the squatchers in their places for a split second.

  Ted closes the distance between himself and the gunman and, not slowing his own momentum, snatches the pistol from the man’s hand before knocking him flat on his ass. “Are you out of your mind?” Ted shouts. “You could have killed any one of us.” He ejects the magazine from the pistol and puts it in his pocket. Then he draws back the slide three times, making sure the chamber is clear. “Is everyone all right?” he asks.

  “Oh, come on!” Danny says when he sees Chris lying on top of his camera, the lens separated from the body of the device.

  “Sorry,” Chris says. “I saw the gun and backed up, must have tripped on —”

  “Give that back,” the gunman says. In the ambient glow of all the squatchers’ flashlights, I recognize him as the man from the Paul, the one who brought this whole thing together.

  “Come by the ranger station in the morning and you’ll get it back,” Ted says.

  Three or four people, uninterested in the drama playing out in the middle of the road, shine their lights into the woods where the creature fled. The branches have settled now, leaving no sign of commotion. A lithely built man, dressed head to toe in camo gear, peers into the woods — then, as if seeing the perfect moment, jumps in after the creature. One other person follows before I join the fray.

  I have to confirm what I saw. I just have to.

  “Laura!” Ted calls out.

  Saad says nothing and joins the pursuit. We are not on a trail, not even a game trail. In a month or two the greenery will be too thick to effectively pursue anything faster than a tortoise. I hold my flashlight in an icepick grip, like a cop, with my right hand. My left is cupped on the top of my head, my elbow pointing forward, blocking the branches from snapping back and hitting me in the face.

  The trees part into a gully carpeted with moss and dead trees in various states of falling over. All varieties are here, from rotting logs to diagonal-pointing woodpecker targets to trees perfectly upright but with no buds on their branches, the kind that don’t even realize they’re dead. The two squatchers in front keep moving, following a sound from the trees ahead.

  I pause and shine my light on the ground. The moss is like a memory-foam mattress from those TV commercials, recording almost perfectly the imprints of whatever stepped on it. There has got to be a sign that something other than people has passed through here, but I see nothing but boot prints larger than my own.

  “Stay back,” I say to Saad. “Please.”

  Again he adds his light to mine. I take my phone out of my pocket and use the flashlight feature to increase the brightness. Saad follows suit and soon I have enough light to get a decent picture of the immediate vicinity.

  Poking up through the soil is a rock wearing a moss toupee. Down the centre of the moss is a thick, syrupy puddle that appears black in the glare. I take a few pictures before putting my phone away, then use my pocket knife to amputate the moss.

  “Saad, could you shine your light over here, please?”

  I tear the cardboard front off my notebook, slide it under the sheet of m
oss, and put the whole thing into a Ziploc bag.

  As we climb back up to the road, we see headlights coming from the opposite direction of the main road. It’s a convoy of jeeps. They stop in perfect synchronization, as if one brain is controlling all three. The lead jeep’s passenger door opens and a man gets out, then walks around the front of the jeep, eclipsing one headlight, then the other. He wears a uniform like that of Special Forces, the desert camo kind, and has a pistol strapped to his thigh.

  “What’s going on here?” he says. “We heard a gunshot.”

  The gunman, still dusting himself off, points to Ted. “He stole my gun,” he says.

  The other doors open and more men get out, forming a line behind the first man, who assumes the stance of a commander. They wear the same uniform and are also armed.

  “Who are these guys?” Saad whispers.

  “I don’t know the specific group, but they’re some kind of patriot group, like the Oath Keepers. Right-wing militias who tend to butt heads with the federal government over local land use and property rights,” I say.

  “I didn’t steal it, I confiscated it,” Ted says.

  “And by what authority did you confiscate this man’s firearm, and thus violate his Second Amendment rights?” the commander asks.

  “I work for the Forest Service,” Ted says. “He discharged a firearm dangerously close to civilians, with no regard for public safety.”

  “Have you learned your lesson?” the commander asks.

  “Yes, sir,” the gunman says.

  The commander turns to Ted. “I think you ought to return to this man what is rightfully his property.”

  “That’s not your call to make,” Ted says.

  “Did you hear that, gentlemen?” the commander says, turning to his men. “This forest ranger has declared himself a one-man Supreme Court.”

  “I’m enforcing the law,” Ted says.

  “Enforcing the law? Is that what you federal boys are doing, taking over a miner’s claim and burning down their shacks, and on what? Technicalities. I’d call that piracy.”