The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac

by Sharma Shields

She opened her arms to him.

  He recoiled. No. No, then, he was not pleased.

  “Eli,” she said. “Eli, hello.”

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Yes,” she repeated. “Eli, it’s good to see you again.”

  Eli glanced down at his watch, then up, and she felt that his expression was generous, affectionate even. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I hope so.”

  He looked down at the floor and noticed her worn shoes—slippers, really—and then his eyes lifted and fastened curiously onto her face. He peered into it, at a total loss.

  Then he said, and she would never forget it for the rest of her life, “Do I know you?”

  Her smile faded.

  Do I know you?

  It was a strange question. Agnes understood its basic meaning, but it was so very loaded. God, he didn’t recognize her! Had she changed so much in the last two decades? She wanted to explain to him, I’m your mother, but suddenly she wasn’t sure that she wanted to be his mother. Had she ever wanted to be his mother? What would happen to her if she accepted the role now?

  “No,” she said. “No. I don’t suppose you do.”

  “Did the newspaper send you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “No, I’m not with the paper.”

  “Ah. Well. They had said they might send someone. Although they weren’t sure. They were busy, they said.” Eli wiped at his face. “My career. What a shithole.”

  “You seem popular enough,” Agnes said. “There were hundreds of people here when I arrived.”

  “Popular. Well. Yes.” He looked around the room, at the scattered chairs and deflated balloons and remaining merchandise. “Yes. I suppose so. But I’ve never found him.”

  “You found part of him,” she said, and gestured to the foot.

  He smiled at the foot, waved his hand at it. “Oh, the real one was incinerated. I only had a single bone from it, anyway. That’s just a replica.”

  “Well,” she said, “could have fooled me. Looks like the real thing.”

  It helped her somehow to know the foot was a fake. She felt suddenly that she was a fake, too, and that this man in front of her was a fake. If they were all fakes, then none of this was worth crying over.

  “So. How can I help you? Are you a fan?”

  She was silent for a moment, staring at him searchingly.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I am a huge fan.”

  He reached forward and took her hand into his own and squeezed it. “One moment,” he said, and went over to a cardboard box sitting on the merch table. When he came back, he held a small wooden skull in his hand—a dog’s toy, really—a fake Sasquatch’s head. A joke of a thing. She noticed that he had signed it with a permanent marker, a careful, fussy penmanship that spanned the entire cranium.

  He pressed it into her hand. “Here you are,” he said. “It’s one of the few I have left. Good thing you came when you did.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Good thing. Thank you.”

  “Ah,” he said. He motioned to two women entering the wide room. “Here are my daughters. They’ll help me clean up this mess.” He turned back to her. “What was your name?”

  “Agnes,” she said.

  He took up her hand again and shook it firmly. “Agnes,” he repeated. Then, matter-of-factly, without a thread of affection or vitriol, he added, “That was my mother’s name.”

  Was.

  He smiled at Agnes politely until she moved aside, and the figures from the hallway approached, one short and dark and plain and the other light and tall and muscular. Her granddaughters. She smiled at them and lingered for a moment, giving everyone more time to recognize her, but their faces remained blank. They spoke to her robotically, polite and inhuman. Like androids, maybe. Naked gesticulating apes. It didn’t matter, then, who was related and who was not. It made her ache for Mr. Krantz.

  She hurried for the exit.

  The trio thought she couldn’t hear them, but her hearing was still sharp, and the sound was amplified in the cavernous room. She could hear every word.

  The taller daughter said to her dad, “Do you know that old bird? She’s a weird one.”

  The shorter woman added, “She looks crazy.”

  Agnes opened the door, trying to flee before she heard what Eli said next, his tone no longer phony and polite but sincere, admonishing.

  “She’s nobody,” he said. “And dangerous. Stay as far away from her as possible.”

  Agnes was outside now, safe from their words, but she put her palms up against her ears, anyway, as if to keep them warm.

  * * *

  THE SHACK WAS empty when she returned. It reeked of cooked vegetables and Mr. Krantz’s ripe body odor, but it was as hollow as an old gourd.

  A small piece of paper was left for her, with an address written on it: an apartment in Lilac City. Somehow the new wife had convinced Mr. Krantz to move with her there, no doubt funded by her wealthy parents.

  Come visit! the new wife had written, dotting the i’s with hearts. We’d love to host you!

  Agnes sat on the new rug. They hadn’t taken it with them. She stared at the note for a long time before taking up a pen and scrawling her own words across the top. She folded the note carefully and put it into the pocket of an old housedress. She would hold on to the note for almost two more years, fingering the thinning sheet of paper every morning and every night at Gertrude Elms until she received a pink, lacy announcement one cold January morning that Mr. Krantz and the new wife were expecting a baby.

  This was when she took the Gertrude Elms shuttle to the post office to buy an envelope and a stamp, when she finally mailed the faded apartment address to her son.

  It was more an act of closure, Agnes told herself, than an act of revenge.

  * * *

  AT HER LAST meeting with the Zoophilia Support Group, just before she moved into Gertrude Elms, Agnes reported that she had decided not to seek out her son, after all.

  Otherwise, what would she have said? That she was reviled? That he had recognized her but had feigned otherwise, refusing her even the simple kindness of acknowledgment? That she, an old woman, had disgusted her own granddaughters?

  So she said she’d never seen him at all.

  She was free. Now she could do as she pleased. After the meeting, she would tell Mr. Donald that she was cured. I’m leaving my husband, she would say. She would take him up on his offer to place her in a retirement home, Gertrude Elms or Silver Gardens. Whichever one has space for me, she would say; whichever one has a view of the trees. She very much looked forward to the pristine toilets, to the hot showers. She especially looked forward to the plates and plates of soft, warm food. Her teeth were ruined. The softness would make her weep with joy.

  But for now she just smiled and let Mr. Donald pass over her without comment to the pregnant woman seated on her left.

  Flannery chose this seat because, as she had earlier confided, she felt a kinship with Agnes. “One mama to another,” she had said sweetly.

  Agnes had nodded as though in approval, but she was merely being kind. A mama? She was no such thing. Neither was Flannery. The very word was revolting.

  “Everything’s worked out splendidly with the adoptions,” Mr. Donald told Flannery pointedly.

  Flannery was as plump as a cow now, bovine in both heft and manner. “I’m going to keep them,” she said. She turned to Agnes for approval. “I’m going to keep the puppies.”

  The man mumbled his objections. Agnes wanted to slap the pregnant woman’s dull, fat face.

  “Flannery, honey,” the man said. “Think of your future. Think of your children. Fatherless, strangers to this world.”

  “He’s right,” Agnes agreed. Her voice was loud and harsh and infinitely wise. “He knows what’s best for you.”

  Flannery—uneducated, easily swayed—gazed back at Agnes with a look of stupid incredulity. Troubled, she murmured, “Really? I thought you said … about c
hoice?”

  “Choice,” Agnes scoffed. All of the women in the room were watching her, their faces attentive and trusting. “There’s no such thing.” She crossed her arms, could feel her bony, weakening chest through the dense hunting jacket. “Shit in one hand, make choices in the other. See which one fills up faster.”

  Mr. Donald was pleased with her change of heart. He grinned at her. “Well, yes, Flannery. Don’t fret. We’ll figure it all out,” he said. “We’ll figure it all out very soon.”

  They did figure it out, and quickly.

  Flannery went into labor with her dog babies the very next day. Mr. Donald was there. Later, Agnes learned that the puppies nursed from Flannery’s breasts with their soft dog’s heads, their unopened eyes. Mr. Donald assured her that he would find a good home for them, that they would be loved and cherished; then, after securing her signatures on the necessary paperwork, he swept the puppies away. Flannery wept as they were taken from her, but Agnes liked to imagine that her relief was enormous, too, filled with inordinate sadness but also with boundless hope.

  Agnes knew the truth. She had heard rumors of how the ZSG handled their adoptions. Mr. Donald tried to convince them otherwise, but Agnes saw right through him. She could spot a liar as easily as she could spot her own reflection in a flat pool of water.

  She knew where he would take the babies. She remembered him striding through the forest, away from the swimming hole at Lost Creek. As soon as she heard about Flannery going into labor, she went to the trail and hid off to one side of the stream.

  He kept her waiting long enough that she began to shiver uncontrollably. She could feel the frostbite tingling her nose.

  But then he appeared, holding three wriggling potato sacks. He knelt beside the creek and filled each of the sacks with wide, heavy stones from the creek bed.

  He, too, was shivering, but he was also whistling a sunny tune.

  Agnes watched, hidden in the pines, as he threw the sacks into the deep swimming hole and waited until they sank. Then, brushing off his palms on his pants, he journeyed back the way he had come, whistling all the while.

  Agnes raced to the creek’s edge. She peered into the icy water, heart hammering. The puppies were down there, submerged. Drowning. Dying.

  There was no time to think.

  She dove.

  2005

  ANTIDOTE

  On the way to one of her three weekly therapy appointments, Ginger hit a unicorn with her car.

  Incredulous, racked (again) with guilt, Ginger relayed the story to her therapist, Gordon.

  “Wow,” Gordon said. He was a positive guy. He believed any deviance was a sign of progress. “A collision,” he marveled. “What a great way to battle your passivity!”

  “I creamed it,” she continued. “Came out of nowhere. One second there was nothing, black road, and then—blammo!—unicorn.”

  She could still see the poor animal before her: its ivory flesh and noble head, the long, tapered candle of its horn. Her car barreled toward it as though plunging into ecstasy.

  “So much beauty in the world, isn’t there?” Gordon said.

  “It happened on the way here.” She showed him her trembling hands. “Just before Glenrose.”

  “Glenrose,” he noted. “Lovely neighborhood.”

  “There’s silver blood on my windshield.”

  If he thought her crazy, his face belied it. “I hit an elk on Snoqualmie once. Crumpled the hood of my car. God, what a mess! I imagine a horse is similar?”

  “Unicorn,” she corrected.

  “Unicorn,” Gordon repeated. He re-crossed his legs. He took no notes. Ginger loved him for that. Her last therapist had typed every word she’d said into a laptop, and the typing had made Ginger very self-conscious. Gordon remembered—or pretended to remember—every detail perfectly well without ever transcribing a word.

  Now he asked her, “I wonder what your father would say about this?”

  “Dad? Oh. He would be skeptical. He’s a scientist, you know. A medical doctor. He prefers hard facts.”

  Gordon smiled. “He’s spent his life pursuing Sasquatch.”

  “He believes they are real. He would say, Conclusive evidence.”

  “But he’s never found one. Not really.”

  Ginger shook her head sadly. It was embarrassing to her, her father’s obsession. She didn’t want to be embarrassed by it anymore. It was unfair to him after all of his efforts.

  “I’m not blind to the parallels here,” she said. “But it wasn’t Bigfoot. It was a unicorn.”

  “Sounds like a ghost. There one moment and gone the next.”

  Recalling the animal’s moonlight flesh and graceful liquidity, Ginger agreed.

  “Do you remember what you told me about your father? The dream you had where he was dying?”

  Ginger waited, uncertain. She had said so much to Gordon about her dreams. They were horrible, almost always involving a family member’s death or dismemberment.

  “‘Gaunt,’ you said, ‘pale.’ Seeing him dead in the dream, you said he looked like a horse.”

  “Those teeth.” She remembered the cruel bony thrust of them. “He looked inhuman.”

  “‘He glowed,’ you said. ‘He shimmered.’”

  “I was relieved when I woke up,” she remembered. “That he was alive. Anyway. I see where you’re going with this—”

  “It’s just an observation, is all, Ginger. I don’t want to upset you. It’s just, the choice of a unicorn—”

  “Choice,” Ginger repeated dully.

  “—means you’re considering your own healing. Hear me out. The magic horn. The restoration of innocence. I believe you’ve stumbled on your symbolic antidote. See? I think we’re at a major crossroads here.”

  Ginger reached up and played with one of her earrings, a tiny dangling skull. “Antidote for what?” she asked, even though she knew.

  “The Gypsy curse,” Gordon said.

  Ginger wanted to believe him. She wanted to be free of it.

  “It’s really beautiful how this happened,” Gordon said. He tented his fingers together and held them up to his lips, thinking carefully. “You literally ran into the truth. Isn’t that outstanding? I mean, look at you! Taking matters into your own hands again!”

  “I struck it dead with my car,” she said doubtfully.

  “A confrontation.”

  “I killed the unicorn, or hurt it, anyway, just like I hurt everyone in my life.”

  My presence, Ginger had once told Cort, her ex-husband, is an imposition on the world.

  She was no good for anything now. Her girls needed her, she understood vaguely—they somehow loved her despite her general cheerlessness and forced smiles—but it seemed that goodness, like youth, had fled her permanently. She was thirty-two now, thicker-legged and softer-bellied, decent-enough looking, but uninterested in sex. She was just beginning to understand how average, at best, her talent at painting was. They had recently moved back to Lilac City, at her insistence, and Cort had joined a practice at Deaconess Hospital. Their separation began a few months later. To give herself some autonomy, she began to work at a local grocery store. At present she was the butcher’s assistant. Her favorite task was grinding the meat. She tried to remember when she had wanted more from life, but it was hard when you felt so undeserving of any of it.

  “I don’t even know what I saw,” she said now.

  “Believe in yourself.” The therapist had a wide forceful brow and a clean white beard. He watched her, concerned, and then confided, “I saw Jesus in an Arizona Pizza Hut. He was eating a banana. No one else could see him.”

  Ginger raised her eyebrows.

  “I mean, we were all super high.”

  “An acid trip is different—”

  “Immeasurably different,” Gordon allowed, “but it’s a type of delusion, isn’t it? Drug-fueled, perhaps, but a delusion nonetheless. And powerful. Your belief in the Gypsy curse is also a powerful delusion.”


  Ginger heard him but as though through water. Gordon harped on the Gypsy curse. He wanted to exorcise her. If she could just “let it go,” he said. No more guilt when someone got a cold! No more believing that the curse was to blame for her severe postpartum depression, for the failure of her marriage! No more anxieties about her dad’s imminent death! No more fearing that her two girls would one day very soon fall ill, irreparably, because no doubt the curse would destroy them, too!

  “The unicorn saw me,” she said weakly. “It knew who I was. It was afraid. I see what you’re saying, but—”

  “Your homework,” Gordon said, tapping on his watch to indicate the late hour, “is to find the struck animal. Pull over on your way home. Look for the horse.”

  “The unicorn. It limped into the woods. Its leg was hanging behind it, like in a war movie. There was a trail of silver blood.”

  “Pull over.” He rose, opening his palm to the door. “Follow the horse.”

  “Unicorn,” Ginger corrected again.

  “Unicorn,” he said. “Follow it. See what you find.”

  She left feeling hopeful, more grounded. Her therapist was amazing.

  * * *

  IT WAS THE middle of spring, wet and cold. The forest was strange at night, and Ginger, too long a city dweller, had a difficult time following the trail of iridescent blood. Despite the forest’s relative sparseness, she crashed and tripped clumsily over branches and debris. Limbs clawed at her as she walked, and every now and again she panicked, sputtering, as she careened through a spiderweb or an inexplicable wetness. Even the unevenness of the forest floor caught her off guard. A rat’s hole sent her sprawling. Picking herself up, bruised and scratched, bleeding, she stumbled on. She nursed a long-dormant anxiety about ticks. She opened up her flip phone and held it before her like a torch. The effect was a terrible one, giving birth to dark shadows that lurked against the trees. She clicked the phone shut and pressed on, half blind, led forward by the thin starlight glow of the unicorn’s blood.

  Her dad also loved the forest, considered it a second home. She thought of him now and felt for him a deep regret. He was a misunderstood man. Ginger had tried to explain him to Amelia, but Amelia had her own version of him, and Ginger’s version rang to her as supremely false.