The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac

by Sharma Shields

  The boy reminded Mr. Krantz of Agnes’s son, that smart, kindly child he’d met all of those long years ago. He had wanted to take the boy with them, but Agnes had said no, that it would be too unkind to the boy’s father. Mr. Krantz had reluctantly complied.

  But what did it matter now? He was to have his own son! He was certain Emily would have a boy. Mr. Krantz felt that things were going very well for him. He was blending in nicely, urination transgressions aside. He could go wherever he wanted now. He even sensed that he was circling in closer and closer to the doctor’s whereabouts. It would be only a matter of time before they met.

  Somewhere in town at this very moment, Mr. Krantz thought, the doctor was going about his own day, unaware that Mr. Krantz was looking for him everywhere. Mr. Krantz liked to think about this as he took in the sights of the town. He liked to think that they inhabited the same place, that one day they would literally bump into each other while rounding a street corner, and he liked to think of the doctor’s face brightening with recognition.

  A part of him still believed the doctor had set the trap, but Agnes had disagreed with him. The trap was too old, she’d said, too rusted. It had likely been left there by someone else.

  Maybe she was right, Mr. Krantz granted, but it was the doctor’s face, spectacles and all, that he pictured as he gnawed through his own anklebone to escape from those oxidized teeth. By that utterly desperate point, he had not eaten in more than two days, had sipped at the dew from the leaves but was otherwise tunneling toward death. The gnawing was less painful than he’d envisioned. Any pain was bearable after enduring the jaws of that rusted trap.

  When the foot came loose, he dragged himself to Lost Creek and swallowed its glacial waters mouthful by mouthful. He managed to catch a fish. He sucked it down and believed in the moments following that he would die in relative peace.

  But Agnes arrived. She’d been searching for him since dawn, walking slowly through the forest until she found him, drained and dying. No emotion—no disappointment or joy—crossed her face when she saw him. She merely dropped to her knees and began to address his wound. She did not ask what happened. She seemed to have her own notions about the whole business.

  She urged him to stand and helped him to their cabin, which was not too far away. He limped there with her, gasping from the effort, leaning on her smaller frame. He was in agony but grateful.

  He spent a week flailing on their cot. His wife nursed him as best she could. The rusty trap had poisoned his blood, or maybe it was the infection caused by the open wound, which she’d packed with handfuls of river mud. Beneath the dense grove of his fur, his veins blackened. Every infinitesimal movement pained him, from the blinking of his eye to the wiggling of his finger.

  His wife disappeared for a full day, and he wondered if she’d abandoned him.

  He didn’t blame her. He would have done the same.

  He thought for the first time how nice it would be to live as a normal man lived, in the city, with clean water that poured from faucets and a humming refrigerator filled with food. He could shave himself, he thought, could wear new clothes, could apply strong cologne. If he lived, he told himself, he would give it a shot. Urban living! Agnes had told him of a big city not far to the west, Lilac City, she called it, and he liked the name. He could move there and become a city dweller. The thought made him smile into the night of his pain. He closed his eyes and felt hope.

  Agnes returned. She was wearing the shawl she always wore when she (rarely) descended into Rathdrum. She frowned over him, stuffing a foul-tasting pill into his mouth. She seemed to have aged ten years in the last week, and Mr. Krantz wished he had the strength to reach up and touch her lined face. She was a good wife. His friend, even if he didn’t want her anymore. He accepted the pill and later, after sleeping, accepted another.

  The antibiotics worked quickly. Mr. Krantz began to feel like himself again. He took short, awkward hops around the cabin, then deeper into the forest, and then down the hill to Rathdrum, gripping trees for balance. Agnes encouraged him. She lifted an old crutch from a pawnshop and pressed it on him. He shoved it under his armpit for support, and with practice he regained his speed. He was nearly as fast as his old self but much noisier now. The noise bothered him, but it also gave him something to focus on. He listened to himself moving through the forest, listened to his panting and shuffling as he descended from forest to town.

  This was the onset of his restless phase, when he began studying the habits of everyday people.

  He wanted to understand them and learn how to blend in with them. He knew Agnes would have nothing to do with his plan. He kept it a secret. He waited, and watched, and plotted.

  Years passed. Eventually he met Emily, just outside town at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Rathdrum’s newest deluxe condominiums, which were owned by her parents. The condos boasted a view of the forest. She had wandered away from the crowd to the trees, where he presented himself to her, naked: crutch, healed stump, and all. Rather than run away screaming, she had smiled at him, impressed and playful. He drew her up under one arm then and there, ferrying her through the woods back to his cabin while she giggled and fretted. She was a nice enough woman, sheltered, pretty, and bored with life in Lilac City. She fell in love with what she called his “sense of adventure.” She did not, however, love the woods or the little shack. She soon demanded that they live in Lilac City. He agreed. She demanded that he wear good clothes, learn some manners, eat with cutlery, live like a real man. He agreed to that, too. He appreciated the challenge.

  They left a note for Agnes and went to live with Emily’s parents while their new condo was being remodeled for them. The parents received them both with open arms.

  “A real man’s man,” her father said, clapping him on the back. “Her last husband was a real talker. Couldn’t shut the man up. But you, you’re a humble sort. I appreciate a silent man.”

  “And attractive, to boot,” Emily’s mom said, waggling her glass of gin in the air in a sort of toast to him.

  Mr. Krantz stood with them on their ample lawn, with its glittering fountains and cylindrical topiaries, enduring the attention. He wore a polo shirt and a pair of trousers, specially sewn for him by a local seamstress. The clothes felt clean and comfortable, and he really didn’t mind them. Beside him, Emily snuggled against his arm and beamed; he could smell the fertility in her, and he thought about how well-fed his children would be.

  Soon after that, Emily’s parents told them the condominium was finally ready for them, and Mr. Krantz was relieved to regain some privacy.

  * * *

  AT THE DEPILATION appointment, the dermatologist entered the room and stood over Mr. Krantz’s prepped body. She warned him to brace himself.

  “This is the painful part,” she said, “although I probably don’t need to remind you.”

  This was his second removal. The dermatologist had suspected seven or eight appointments might be necessary in total, given “the severity” of his “hair problem.”

  Emily had been with him then. She had said cheerfully, “Whatever it takes. He can handle it.”

  She loved him without hair; she said that she could now see “the real him.” It was shocking to him to see himself in a mirror, smooth as a stone, and pale. The world was so much colder without his hair; he wore the clothes now not because it was expected of him but because he needed them to stop the shivering. Eventually, the follicles would be permanently damaged: The hair would never grow back. It would be a vanished part of himself, a premature death.

  Agnes would hate to hear of this. She would look at him as if he were crazy.

  What would Emily do about their son if he was hairy like his dad? Would he be expected to undergo the same laser-beamed torture?

  The dermatologist pulled up a stool and pressed a few buttons on the machine beside her. She took up the wand and bent over him, preparing to laser his hair roots into oblivion. He hated the feel of the gooey cream all over him; it s
melled terrible, too, of the most unnatural chemicals. His whole body tensed now, remembering the pain of the last treatment.

  It was worth it, he reminded himself. That was his mantra now. It was all worth it.

  The woods would always be there if he wanted them, once he finished what he’d come here to do. But the more he changed, the less the woods would accept him. He could feel both the pain and the comfort of this irrevocable shape-shifting, and he hated and lusted for it both.

  He gritted his teeth as the laser wand approached the top edge of his thigh.

  He closed his eyes and thought of the doctor then, much as he’d thought of him when he’d lain in the woods all of those years ago, bleeding to death in that rusted trap.

  It was worth it, to create a better world for himself, for his son, a world without such a man.

  He’d endure this pain, too.

  He’d become a man, whatever it took.

  Then he’d find the doctor.

  I’ll find him, Mr. Krantz thought, feeling his phantom toes curl. He breathed in the smell of his own scorched flesh. I’ll find him and I’ll kill him dead, dead, dead.

  2006

  PRODUCE THE MONSTER

  Nearing the end of his life, realizing with a frantic certainty that he might never locate Mr. Krantz, Eli became disagreeable; he became, as Vanessa teased him, a grumpy old man.

  He refused to speak at conferences anymore. He stopped trying to find funding for SNaRL. He paid for everything with his own retirement money, and Vanessa allowed him to do so. Crippled by a sloping spine and weak hips, Eli bought an ATV. It improved his mobility, but his visits to the woods felt more intrusive. He rattled through the forest loudly, wearing a headlamp, his father’s rifle in hand. He glared into the darkness and waited for Mr. Krantz to appear. He never did.

  After Jane Goodall expressed interest in Sasquatch research, there was a flurry of reluctant interest in cryptozoology. A few local journalists contacted Eli for comment. Despite his grumpiness, he did agree to an interview, if only to communicate his frustration with the whole business.

  “And what will you do,” a woman, some reporter from The Lilac City Monitor, had asked him, “when you find your Sasquatch?”

  They sat in his pristine home office, facing each other over the neat surface of his desk. Cups of coffee steamed before them, untouched. He motioned at the rifle leaning against the wall, a beautiful mahogany Winchester 1894 lever-action .30-30, a beloved gift from his father.

  “I’ll shoot him,” Eli said.

  The journalist bolted upright from her chair. “Kill it?” she cried.

  “Shoot him dead,” he confirmed. “Irrefutable proof. An actual corpse is the only way to prove its existence. It’s the only way.”

  The woman poked at him with a few more questions, but she was mostly finished. She primly tidied up her materials, her notebook and her unused pen and her recording device, trying to seem calm. Eli watched her gravely. He pictured her eager return to a miserable newsroom cubicle, where she would immediately type out her scathing, mocking, factual little article. She was so excited that she didn’t even say goodbye.

  Sure enough, the article appeared the following morning, placed, to his astonishment, on the front page of the paper.

  DEADFOOT, the headline read.

  Cryptozoologist Dr. Eli Roebuck has unexpected plans for his Sasquatch once he finds it: He’ll shoot it dead!

  Oh, the phone calls he had received after that.

  PETA contacted him, sending him a faux pelt splashed with red dye and a note that read, No creature will suffer! His own bleeding-heart-liberal daughter, Ginger, left him a message about how the president should ban guns. Amelia called, laughing, to say that she thought the article was a riot. Gladys wrote him a long, careful letter saying that he looked handsome, if aged, in the photo taken of him. Also, since he was so famous, would he mind sending her a little extra cash? There were medical bills, so many medical bills! Signed, your loving wife of nearly twenty years. Even his real loving wife, Vanessa, who typically supported him in all things, blanched when she read the article, which he had shoved at her with what she maybe mistook as pride.

  “You need to tone it down, Eli,” she advised. “You sound desperate.”

  Eli nearly exploded. Desperate! Wow! How astute! How smart you are! Way to go, Vanessa, you observant poet, you intuitive woman! How incredibly perceptive of you! Because who would have ever guessed? You’ve noticed that, after years and years and years of searching for this one goddamn thing, after tedious decades of research and catalogs and arguments and fieldwork and discussions and aching, throbbing desire, perhaps I’ve grown desperate! Well, I have! Thanks for noticing!

  He was not one for sarcasm, though, so he merely said, his face blank, “Ah. Well.”

  She was a good wife, a good wife who loved him. She patted his knee and gave him a sour smile. She cared for him. He sorrowed for them both.

  The thing was, about the killing: He meant it. When he went on his excursions nowadays, he took the Winchester with him. He stopped searching for Mr. Krantz during the day, believing firmly now that he was nocturnal. He wore a headlamp and bounced along the uneven forestry roads in his new ATV, his dogs happily panting in the backseat, all of them enjoying the cool night air, and sometimes he drank a little whiskey. Sometimes he yelled at the top of his lungs, emitting a pained, elongated yodel.

  It was a stupid plan: to drive an ATV, to wear a headlamp, to bring the dogs, to cry out in the night; why was he crashing through the forest like this, scaring away every living beast within a fifteen-mile radius?

  It was, as Vanessa noted, desperation.

  The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Eli remembered, and so here he was. Maybe if Eli was irrational, his own monster would finally appear. Who knew? Mr. Krantz might just wander over to the road and stare at him as he passed. From his own research, Eli had concluded that Mr. Krantz and his type were shy, private creatures but also curious. If Eli made enough noise, if he seemed interesting enough, Mr. Krantz might just come up to the road’s edge and peer at him. The key, the doctor believed, was spotting Mr. Krantz in the underbrush. And, if he saw him, he would stop the ATV, shush the dogs, raise a hand and murmur a soft greeting, then quickly aim the Winchester and shoot Mr. Krantz dead. Not because he was some sick killer, some horrible person, but because it was the only way to ensure both of their spots in the scientific firmament.

  It was not a revenge thing, Eli told himself. It was not about bitterness. It had nothing to do with his mom or with his lost childhood. It was about human progress. It was about humanity, period.

  Though he admitted to himself that he might enjoy the look of agony on Mr. Krantz’s beastly face.

  But nothing happened. The days grew colder and the nights longer, and then the days grew warmer and the nights shorter, and the cycle repeated itself, and sometimes Eli would go to his office window and look out over the forest and imagine moving, for the first time, away from Washington State, away from the north to warmer country, somewhere hominid-free, where time seemed to stand still. Hawaii, say. Jamaica.

  He thought of his mother, the old hag. She’d come to him recently at a conference he’d spoken at, and he’d blatantly pretended not to recognize her. He wanted nothing to do with her. He’d been both pleased and slightly disturbed by her hurt face, her slow walk away from him. She’d made no attempt to explain herself. Good riddance, he’d thought then. There were wonderful women in the world, Eli knew—his wife, his daughters—but there were also women like Gladys and Agnes, depraved, loveless, mentally disturbed women who didn’t truly know what they wanted from life. It was women like these who fucked up the world. It was women like these who hurt good men, who asked for too much, who slept with beasts. They made the pure impure: DNA; childhood; love itself.

  Eli began to mourn his entire adult life. No one would ever believe him until he emerged from the forest dragging Mr. Krantz’s carcass behind him. It was the only
possible vindication. As his life neared its close, it was the one thing Eli truly wanted.

  * * *

  READING THE LILAC City Monitor one day, Eli came across another article about Sasquatch, written by the same blond journalist. It focused on a middle-aged anthropologist and anatomy professor at the University of Idaho in Moscow, a man by the name of Eugene Ferm.

  Ferm, too, believed in the Sasquatch, despite the dubious reputation it earned him among his academic colleagues.

  Like Dr. Roebuck, he, too, was obsessed with the accuracy of existing evidence and floored by the scientific community’s refusal to take it seriously.

  For a moment, Eli believed that he had found an ally. He would drive to Moscow that very day, he decided. He would drive there and shake Ferm’s hand and offer to assist him in his research.

  “New species of apes have been found all over the world,” Mr. Eugene Ferm, Ph.D., said as he drank a strong-smelling cup of green tea. “Cryptozoologists, in fact, have played a major part in their discovery. The Sasquatch is not some ridiculous made-up legend, like a sea monster or a unicorn. Think of it as a missing link. Just imagine what it would mean for our natural history. It would be astounding! It’s important research.”

  Eli thought, Yes! I’ve felt and said these very same things for several decades now! He continued reading:

  “You’ve gotta have a great sense of humor to do this,” Ferm said, laughing, when asked about his angry colleagues and overzealous fans. “You’ve gotta have tough skin.”

  Again Eli thought, Yes! I adore this man! He, unlike anyone else, understands!

  But then, toward the end of the article, he was alarmed to find himself mentioned, and not in flattering terms.

  Despite the appreciation Mr. Ferm feels for his supporters, he admits that some of his most loyal followers are “a bit strange.”

  “These are people not looking at this from a scientific standpoint,” Ferm said. “They want Sasquatch to exist as a magical entity. They don’t want to sit and hear me lecture about bipedal ambulation, about foot flexes. They want some crazy circus-sideshow act. And then you have quote-unquote scientists—hobbyists, really—who are threatening to kill the Sasquatch if they find it. This is a disservice to serious researchers.”