Little Bigfoot, Big City

by Jennifer Weiner

  Every day since Jeremy had led half of Standish on a chase through the woods that had ended at the gates of the Experimental Center for Love and Learning, every day since he’d been exposed as a fraud and discovered that what he’d thought were Bigfoots were just kids, a little girl with a skin condition and a big one with wild reddish hair, there had been some new aggravation or shame visited not on him, but on his family.

  Jeremy had been warned. A letter had arrived at his friend Jo’s house, instructing them both to turn over all of their Bigfoot-related research, warning that there would be consequences for “you and your parents and/or guardians” if they failed to comply. The letter had been from something called the Department of Official Inquiry, a government organization that neither one of them had ever heard of, one that didn’t show up on Google . . . but it was real. He’d learned that soon enough.

  First his mother’s credit cards had stopped working. Then Ben had lost a wrestling match, his first one in three years, after the lights mysteriously went out in the middle of the match and the referee had failed to notice his opponent elbowing Ben in the nose. They’d come home to learn that his parents were being audited, which Jeremy knew had something to do with their taxes. And now this.

  He felt like a ghost as he ate his peanut-butter-less banana, pulled on his warmest gear, slipped into the garage, collected his Christmas present for Jo, and started to walk to her house. He waved at his father, who didn’t seem to notice him because he was busy talking to the police officers (“I know it says the policy’s expired, but if you’d just give them a call”). Nobody had said good-bye to him. Probably none of them even noticed he was gone.

  He made it to Jo’s house in less than fifteen minutes and pulled off his hat and mittens while he waited for her to come to the door. She grinned when she saw him, amused by his surprise.

  “You look different,” he said.

  “You’ve never seen me standing up,” Jo said, looking pleased, and Jeremy nodded. For a long time he’d thought Jo preferred to scoot her wheeled desk chair across the floor of her Batcave—the back porch she’d filled with computers and maps and whiteboards and corkboards—because it was faster than walking. He’d known her for months before she’d let him see her wheelchair, before she’d told him about the hip condition that her doctors had misdiagnosed, the surgeries she’d had, and how nobody was sure if she’d ever be able to walk again.

  But here she was, on her feet, leaning on an old-lady walker made of metal and gray plastic, with wheels so that it could swivel.

  “So it worked?” Jeremy asked. Jo nodded, her smile widening.

  Six weeks ago, Jo had been accepted as part of a clinical study at a children’s hospital in Philadelphia. She’d be undergoing an experimental surgery that would use some new high-tech compound to repair her joints. Both Jeremy and Jo had found the timing highly suspicious; both of them strongly believed that the Department of Official Inquiry had done something to get Jo accepted into the trial.

  Jeremy had been afraid that it was a plot to separate the two of them, to keep Jo in Philadelphia while he was stuck in Standish. He’d even worried that the study might not be a real thing and that the surgeons might get Jo on the operating table and hurt her instead of helping her.

  But his friend had promised that the clinical test was real—“my own doctor’s been trying to get me into it forever”—that a bad outcome would reflect poorly on the surgeons, and that it was her best chance at ever being able to walk.

  “And I want to,” she’d said. “I know it means I’ll be gone for a while, but if I can walk when I come back, it’ll be worth it.”

  So she’d gone off to Philadelphia. For six weeks they’d communicated by brief emails and even briefer texts. Jo believed that the Department was intercepting all of their communication and had probably found a way to track exactly what they were looking up on the Internet. “I will address that situation when I am home,” Jo had written, trusting that Jeremy would know what the situation was.

  Now she was back, in her familiar jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt and baseball cap. On her feet, she was exactly as tall as Jeremy. She had a piece of paper in her hands, which she’d shoved at him as soon as he’d started to unwind his scarf.

  “ROOM IS BUGGED” she’d written. Jeremy felt his eyes go wide as Jo reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny microphone, smaller than a fingernail, then pointed up at the smoke detector on the ceiling. She raised one finger to her lips. Jeremy nodded, then tilted his head toward the door. “Come see your Christmas present.”

  After Jo had warned him that the Department was monitoring his email, Jeremy had been afraid to use his own computer for anything but homework. He’d started going to the library to browse his favorite sites, the ones that tracked UFOs and Loch Ness Monster sightings and, his favorite, Bigfootisreal.com, and always he was careful to delete his history and use a different computer every time.

  He’d gone old-school to find Jo’s present. Instead of the Internet, he’d perused the Standish Shopper, a magazine-shaped gazette delivered to every house in Standish once a month, until he’d found a classified ad for what he’d wanted. The seller turned out to be an old man, with white hair and sad eyes and a garage so crammed with junk that Jeremy could have stayed there, happily, for days, just sorting through the piles. “I used to ride it with the missus,” he’d said, leading Jeremy on a narrow path between a love seat and something that Jeremy thought was either an ashtray or a spittoon, “but then . . .” Jeremy braced himself for a sad story about how the missus had died or left him or fallen and broken her hip, but the man had smiled and said, “She liked it so much that she wanted her own bike.”

  The man gestured at a tandem bicycle leaned against the garage wall. It was a Schwinn, painted blue, with blue-and-white seats and a sturdy steel frame. It was heavy, but that meant it was solid, hard to tip over, easy to ride.

  The listed price had been fifty dollars, but Jeremy was able to talk the old guy down to twenty-five, including two new tubes for the tires. An afternoon at Standish Cycles, a little grease for the chain and a new basket for the handlebars, and the bike was in perfect working order.

  “Can you ride a bike?” Jeremy asked as Jo bundled herself into her winter gear and made her way carefully down the porch steps to examine the bike. “Because if you can’t, you can just leave your feet on the pedals, and I can pedal us both.”

  “I can pedal,” Jo said. “They had me doing it for my physical therapy.” She settled herself onto the backseat. A few wobbles, one near miss of a mailbox, and they were on their way to what Jo had decided would be their first destination. Jeremy thought that would be the Experimental Center for Love and Learning, where Alice the not-human girl went to school, or maybe the forest, from which Alice’s furry cousin—quote-unquote—had emerged on Halloween, but Jo just shook her head and pulled a map of Standish out of her pocket when they stopped at the corner.

  “To go forward, we must go back,” she said. It was another one of her riddles—Jo loved riddles—and Jeremy knew better than to ask her to explain.

  Pedaling steadily through the slap and sting of the icy January morning, they made their way through downtown Standish, up Harley Hill, along a street called Wedgewood, then up Blossom Road, until they came to the Overlook, a neighborhood of grand old mansions that brooded on top of Mount Standish, peering down at the town from behind wide, shaded porches and gingerbread lattices. A few of them even had towers, like castles, and dormer windows that looked like suspicious eyes.

  “Thirty-Nine Overlook Place,” said Jeremy, who was sweating underneath his layers of fleece and wool. Jo nodded and directed him toward the woods, where they leaned the bike against a tree.

  “What is this?” Jeremy asked, standing on his tiptoes to get a good look. The house was enormous, three stories of brick and glass and stuccoed timber that sprawled behind a six-foot-high brick fence.

  “Take a guess,” said Jo, unfolding her wal
ker from where they’d bungee-corded it to the back of the bike. By then Jeremy had seen the letters engraved on a stone square that was set into the gate. “Carruthers House,” it read. “Constructed in 1837 by Milford Carruthers, Patriot, Statesman, and Founding Citizen of the Town of Standish.”

  Patriot, statesman, and exploiter of Bigfoots, thought Jeremy. He was remembering the illustration he’d seen of Milford Carruthers, posing next to a fur-covered creature in a cage. “The captive ‘Lucille,’ ” the caption had read. The Bigfoot—because that’s what she was—had worn an old-fashioned dress. One hand had held a parasol. The other rested on the lock of her cage.

  Except that illustration had appeared in 1912, more than a hundred years ago. Milford Carruthers had looked to be about forty years old, which meant he’d probably been dead for at least fifty years. Along with “the captive ‘Lucille.’ ”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Jo said, mysteriously as ever, after Jeremy had told her as much. They made their way cautiously up the walk, which had been shoveled and salted, and climbed the steps to the front door. There, Jo straightened her hat, pulled off one fleece-lined glove, and rang the doorbell. They waited . . . but there was no answer. Jo rang again, then knocked at the door, three firm raps. Still nothing.

  “Does anyone even live here?” Parts of the mansion looked perfectly spiffy—the front door looked freshly painted, the brass knocker recently polished, and the driveway newly resealed—but Jeremy could see the way the vines had grown up over the first-floor windows and how drifts of rotted leaves were piled on the lawn. It’s a disguise, he thought, and shivered, wondering who’d take the time to try and make a house look haunted while they were living there.

  Jo held up a single finger—wait. The door swung open.

  Jeremy wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the woman who stood there. She was old, maybe the oldest person Jeremy had ever seen. She’d probably been short all her life, and she was bent over a walker—a fancier one than Jo had, all metallic-blue tubes, with a cushioned chair to sit on. She had a head of fine white curls and watery blue-gray eyes, and she wore a down vest over a wool sweater and the kind of pants he’d heard his mother call “slacks.” There was a heavy gold ring on her right hand, and a wedding band hung loosely from her left ring finger.

  “Children!” she said, in a voice that was cracked and high-pitched and cheerful. “Come in!” Jeremy found himself thinking of the witch from “Hansel and Gretel,” the one who enticed a boy and girl into her house made out of candy because she wanted to eat them.

  “This is Priscilla Landsman,” Jo said, and the old woman gave Jeremy her hand, which he shook, very gently. It felt like a collection of Popsicle sticks wrapped in skin.

  “To the point, I am Priscilla Carruthers Landsman,” said the lady.

  “She’s—” Jo began.

  “Milford Carruthers’s youngest daughter.” Leaning on her walker, Mrs. Landsman scooted down the hallway at a surprisingly brisk pace. Jeremy had the impression of high ceilings and dark wood, painted portraits on the walls, the smell of smoke and old candle wax. The house seemed to grow warmer and brighter as they moved deeper inside of it.

  They ended up in what Jeremy thought might be called a sitting room, with fancy fringed rugs on the floor, deep leather couches, and tables made of patterned, polished wood, wedges of light wood alternating with sections of dark. Antiques, Jeremy thought. His mother would probably know what this kind of table was called, and what wood it was made from, and how much it cost. A fire burned high in the fireplace, flames licking at fresh logs, and candles were lit on a mantel still draped in boughs of evergreen. A clock with golden hands inside a cylinder of glass stood at the center of the mantel. Jeremy could hear it ticking.

  “Such a pleasure!” Mrs. Landsman was saying. “It’s so rare that I get visitors these days!” She rang a small brass bell on the table closest to her chair. Jeremy spotted a pile of large-print books on the table and an iPad on top of them. Almost immediately a young man in loose-fitting scrubs came into the room carrying a tray with three mugs and saucers, two pots, and a plate of cookies.

  “This is Warren, my companion,” Mrs. Landsman announced. “Cocoa or tea?”

  Warren poured the cocoa. Jeremy was careful to use his saucer and keep his napkin on his lap. Next to the fireplace were a dozen logs, neatly arranged in a circular iron holder. Above it hung a portrait of a man in old-fashioned breeches and a vest, with a bushy mustache that extended from his lips down to his chin. He had a rifle in his hands and his foot rested on a dead lion’s back.

  Priscilla sipped her tea and saw where Jeremy was looking.

  “It was a different time,” she said. “My father was a great hunter. He traveled all over the world, looking for exotic things to kill. Lions, boars, rhinos . . .”

  “Bigfoots?” Jeremy’s mouth felt dry.

  “Lucille,” Priscilla said, and sighed. “After all these years, I am finally going to talk about Lucille.”

  Jeremy’s skin was prickling. He opened his mouth, but Jo was there with her question first.

  “Did you see her?” Jo asked.

  Priscilla gave a gentle, sad smile. “Yes.” She closed her eyes, set down her teacup, and stretched her hands toward the warmth of the flames. “I knew her. She lived with us, for a time.” Her voice cracked. “She was my friend.”

  Bit by bit, with pauses for sips of tea, Priscilla told them the story. She’d been a little girl, maybe five or six, when her father had gone into the woods one morning and come back with a large, furry something slung behind his saddle.

  “We thought it was a bear at first,” she said. “Father took it in the stables, and he locked the door behind him, but I knew how to sneak into the hayloft. I could look down at him . . . at them.”

  Priscilla Landsman closed her eyes and resettled her hands in her lap. Her face softened, and her voice got higher, until Jeremy thought that if he shut his eyes he’d believe that he was listening to a little girl. “I saw that the creature—whatever it was—had a human face. It had hands—claws, really—and enormous feet, but a face like ours, underneath its fur, and I could tell that it was a she. He’d shot her in the side, but it looked like more of a graze than a dangerous wound. I watched as he lifted her off his horse and tied her hands and feet together, and then cleaned and bandaged her. Her eyes were closed, and I could hear her crying . . .” Priscilla’s voice broke off. She paused, sipping at her tea. “Her voice was all squeaks and snarls at first, but if you listened, you could hear the words. She was saying that she had children, and to please let her go.”

  Jeremy could barely breathe.

  “ ‘Who are you?’ my father asked. ‘What are you?’

  “She told him a name, but I couldn’t hear it. She said that she’d been in the woods looking for evening primrose and mayapple. He asked her the name of her tribe—you know there were Native Americans, Lenape, that used to live here—but she didn’t answer. She just kept saying that she had children.” Mrs. Landsman gave a shuddering sigh. “I’ll never forget that.”

  “And your father sold her,” Jeremy said. Mrs. Landsman’s eyes blinked open. “He trapped her,” Jeremy said, remembering the picture. “He trapped her and he sold her.” Jo gave him a stern look.

  Mrs. Landsman shook her head. “He meant to,” she said. “He meant to do just that. But before he could, she had to heal.” Her lips formed a thin line. “He couldn’t sell damaged goods. That would have ruined his reputation. So he kept her in the stables, hidden from my mother and my sisters and the servants. And then one day, after he left . . .” Priscilla shut her eyes, and she was quiet for so long that Jeremy was sure she’d fallen asleep.

  “I slipped through the back door and climbed up into the hayloft. I could hear all the horses, stomping and snorting in their stalls,” she finally said. “ ‘Little No-Fur,’ the creature was saying. She was calling to me; calling to me from down below. She knew I was there. She could
smell me. ‘Little No-Fur,’ she said. ‘Come down. I won’t hurt.’

  “So I crept down the ladder. He’d tied her to a post, with her hands and feet still bound. Her fur was still matted with blood above the bandage, and her teeth were so big, and her claws . . .” Priscilla drew a shuddering breath.

  “ ‘Let me go,’ she whispered, ‘and I will bring you a chest of gold.’ But I was too afraid. She had claws, and teeth, and I thought she might be angry—it was my father who’d shot her, after all.”

  Priscilla went silent again. A tear slid down her wrinkled cheek.

  “I had an apple in my pocket. I always put an apple in my pocket when I went to the stables. I’d feed it to my pony. I rolled the apple toward her, even though her hands were tied, and I knew she couldn’t pick it up. She closed her eyes, and I could hear her crying, and I ran out of the barn.”

  She sipped more tea. “For ten days, father kept her there, while she healed, and he sent telegraphs to every circus on the East Coast, telling them what he’d found, asking them to make their offers. He built a cage for her, like a giant birdcage. To this day, I can’t imagine what he told the blacksmith. He had clothing sewn, and he bought a hat, but no gloves or shoes. So the buyers could see her claws and feet, I suppose.” Mrs. Landsman stretched her gnarled hands toward the fire.

  “Every night, after dinner, Father would carry a bucket out to the barn, full of our leftovers. Table scraps and chicken bones, potato peelings and apple cores. He’d have her stand with her back against the cage, and he’d tie her hands and feet before he’d unlock the door. He’d give her food and fresh water and check to see how her wound was healing and clean her chamber pot. For the first few nights, I’d hear her begging him, but then she must have decided it wouldn’t do her any good, because she stopped. But she talked to me.” Mrs. Landsman sighed. “She asked me my name, and how old I was, and had I always lived in Standish, and was I big enough for school. I started bringing her real food: loaves of bread, honey, and apples.” She gave a rueful smile. “She loved anything sweet. She asked, ‘What will become of me?’ I didn’t want to tell her, even though I knew what my father had planned. I thought that maybe I could tell my father she was gentle, that she wouldn’t hurt anyone, and she’d be able to stay with us—with me—as sort of a pet.” Another tear slipped down Mrs. Landsman’s cheek. “She said, ‘I am not a pet. I am being a person. I have a family, and a home.’ ”