Little Bigfoot, Big City

by Jennifer Weiner

  He went to the largest diorama, which he remembered from previous visits. It depicted a man in black knee breeches and a black brimmed hat with a musket over his shoulder, standing on top of a hill. Jeremy remembered the cocky tilt of his head, the way his booted foot seemed not to be resting on the ground so much as stomping on it, the presumptiveness of his posture. His attitude was one of ownership, as if he were the king of all he surveyed. Jeremy looked down at the plaque. “Grayson Standish, who settled this town in 1671 and gave Standish its name,” he read. He wondered if the Bigfoots had been there when Grayson Standish showed up, if the Bigfoots had helped the new arrivals clear the land and cut the trees, plant and dig and build houses, before the humans decided that the Bigfoots were freaks and drove them into hiding.

  “Come on,” said Jo, who leaned on her walker and led them down a hallway lined with flickering fluorescent lights, past a display of the native birds of New York—all of them brown or gray or brown and gray, as far as Jeremy could tell—and into the room that held the museum’s one decent attraction, the gigantic model of the human heart. The deal was, kids were supposed to pretend that they were red blood cells, and follow the course of the blood through the chambers of the heart, up and down and, finally, out. The last time Jeremy had been in there, he’d felt uncomfortably squashed, and that had been years ago. He looked at Jo dubiously.

  “Do you trust me?” she asked. He could see excitement in the crinkled-up corners of her eyes, the way her mouth was lifted in a smile. Alice, meanwhile, was looking doubtfully at the narrow entrance, maybe wondering if she’d get stuck.

  Jeremy scrubbed his hands through his brown hair—too long, he could tell, and his mother, again, hadn’t remembered to give him money for a haircut—then shrugged and followed Jo up the staircase, with Alice behind him. He could hear the sound of a heartbeat booming in his ears. There were hidden speakers built into the walls of the model, to make it realistic, he remembered, but had it always been this dark? At least it didn’t smell like blood, Jeremy thought, although it did have the unpleasant tang of the inside of an overripe sneaker.

  They climbed up into a ventricle—at least, Jeremy thought it was a ventricle—and then Jo whispered for light. Jeremy and Alice pulled their phones out of their pockets, using their flashlight apps to cast bright beams of illumination, and Jo ran her hands carefully against the wall.

  “There’s people coming,” Alice whispered.

  Jeremy could hear two chattering toddlers and a mother, telling them to be good. Then Jo pressed something on the wall, and suddenly Jeremy could see seams in the wall of the heart—the outline of a door.

  “Push,” whispered Jo . . . and, when they did, the door swung open. Jo slipped through it. Jeremy followed her, and Alice followed him, and then there was sudden silence as Alice closed the door, and the noise of the heartbeat ceased.

  “Well, hello!” called a man’s booming voice.

  Jeremy blinked. They’d entered what looked like a storage area, a high-ceilinged room filled with the museum’s castoffs. He saw a skeleton missing a femur, rows of trilobite fossils on a wheeled cart, glass cases filled with insects and dusty butterflies on pins . . . and then, ambling toward them, a large, smiling man with hands the size of loaves of bread and a white lab coat as big as a ship’s sail.

  Jo was staring at him with her mouth hanging slightly open. “You’re Marcus Johansson,” she said.

  The man nodded, giving them all a friendly smile and spreading those big hands wide. “Guilty as charged.”

  Jo looked at Jeremy and Alice. “Marcus Johansson,” she repeated, like she’d said the name of a president or a pop star. Alice looked at Jeremy, who shrugged. “Dr. Johansson—he’s an anthropologist? The most famous paranormal scientist in the country? He used to work at Harvard, and then he started his own research center in Washington—”

  “And then I fell out of favor with the government,” Dr. Johansson said with a smile that sat easily on his big face. “New administration. They decided they’d rather spend their money on tracking the size of the crowds at the president’s speeches, than on little green men from outer space.”

  Now Alice was nodding. “I heard about this. There were hearings in front of Congress, right?”

  Jeremy remembered: the same man, maybe the tiniest bit smaller, in a suit and a tie instead of the lab coat, his tightly curled hair cut shorter and his voice rising as he leaned into the microphone and said, “If we are committed to exploring the outer reaches of space, why not be just as brave about understanding the wonders inhabiting our own world, hiding in plain sight?” He wondered if Skip Carruthers and the Department of Official Inquiry knew about this man. He’d have to be careful, the next time he saw Mr. Carruthers, not to tell him about the secret behind the museum’s heart.

  “There were indeed,” said Dr. Johansson.

  He held out his hand, first to Alice, and then Jeremy felt his own palms and fingers swallowed up in what felt like an ocean of warm flesh, with a grip that was surprisingly gentle.

  Marcus Johansson was at least six inches taller than Jeremy’s oldest brother, who was already six foot two, and he was big everywhere, broad-shouldered and blocky, with a big, round belly and thighs the size of Jeremy’s entire torso. His skin was warm brown. A curly black beard curved from one earlobe to the other, and his little round glasses almost disappeared into his cheeks when he smiled. A gold wedding band looked like it was sinking into the flesh of his left hand’s ring finger, like a doughnut disappearing into a vat of frosting. Jeremy wondered how big that band would have been if Marcus could have taken it off and whether he’d had to have someone make it up special for him.

  He greeted Jo last, bowing slightly over her hand.

  “We emailed,” she said, still sounding starstruck. “You probably don’t remember.”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “You asked some very perceptive questions about migratory patterns of Wahkiakum tribes.”

  Jo looked like she was going to faint as Dr. Johansson led them across the long room. “Time is short,” he said, “and our enemies are all around us.”

  Jeremy felt a quiver of unease, like a feather brushing against his back. He knows, he thought as he followed Dr. Johansson past a model of a Neanderthal, one of a velociraptor, a long table with ten seats pushed up around it, and a vending machine in the corner. It was dark, with all the high windows covered by shades, and a little spooky. Jeremy told himself that there was no way Dr. Johansson could know about Skip Carruthers. Nobody knew. Jeremy hadn’t told anyone anything. He’d kept his mouth shut.

  “Have a seat,” said Dr. Johansson. They’d come to a fireplace, with a fire smoking inside of it, and a fancy-looking carpet and armchairs and a couch. Everyone found a seat, and Dr. Johansson passed around a cookie tin, then stood and started flicking switches.

  When the lights were on, the room looked a lot less scary. A long wooden table stood against the wall. It held two laptops and a desktop computer, an old-fashioned-looking microscope, and an open family-size bag of pretzels. There were photographs on the wall, one of an incrementally smaller Marcus, in cap and gown, standing between two beaming people who were probably his parents, then another of a Marcus with no beard and bushier hair, in a different-colored cap and gown, with the same two people, only the man was less bald and the woman wasn’t wearing glasses. The third picture showed someone—Marcus, probably—in a football helmet and a green-and-silver uniform, his body airborne and apparently floating over the field, with one muscly, tattooed arm outstretched and one big hand cradling the ball against his body.

  “College,” he said, tapping the young-Marcus cap-and-gown picture. “Lo these many years ago.”

  “So this is where you’ve been,” said Jo, who still looked starry-eyed.

  “Do you live here?” Alice blurted. Jeremy looked at her, feeling grateful, because he’d been wondering the same thing himself.

  “Sometimes I do. Bedroom and kitchen are back
there,” he said, pointing toward a door beside the fireplace. “When my friends and I saw which way the wind was blowing—when we realized that our new president not only wasn’t going to invest in the paranormal but he might even try to persuade me to use what I knew for . . . well, let’s just say the wrong causes—I thought it would be prudent to keep myself”—he gestured at the room around them—“out of the public eye. I have some friends who still believe in the cause, and I had a long-standing relationship with the museum. When they built their addition, I was able to talk them into putting up a false front. On paper, on the blueprints, this”—he waved his hand around the expansive rooms—“is just marked ‘storage.’ And so here I am.”

  “But doesn’t the government know that Standish is one of the places where people say they’ve seen Bigfoots?” Jo asked. “Wouldn’t they look for you here?”

  “I’m sure they’ve looked, but they haven’t found me yet,” said the doctor. He took a seat in the immense leather chair and picked up his pretzels. The seat was shiny with use, and the wood creaked gently as he sat. Jeremy watched as he examined all three of them, his gaze shifting slowly from Jo to Jeremy, and then to Alice. “I guess I should ask how you found me,” he said.

  Jo was the one who told the story of their meeting with Priscilla Carruthers, how she’d told them to look in the biggest heart, and how Alice had been the one to figure out what her directions had meant.

  “Ah, Pris,” Dr. Johansson said, his smile widening. “She’s always been a friend to the cause. Gave us free access to all those woods her family owns. Donated enough money to the museum to make all of this possible.” He stretched his arms over his head, then tilted the pretzel bag toward Alice. “Nice going,” he said.

  Jeremy and Jo and Alice exchanged a glance. Do we tell him? Jeremy wondered, before deciding that it was up to Alice to tell him—or not—that she was possibly part Bigfoot.

  Alice took a pretzel. Dr. Johansson dipped his hand into the pretzel bag. There was barely room for it to fit. “Anyone?” he said, offering the bag to Jo, then Jeremy, who each took a pretzel to be polite. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just finishing a second snack.” He crunched a pretzel into nothingness in two big bites, then looked at Jo.

  “Let’s get caught up. Tell me what you guys know about Bigfoots,” he said. He still sounded friendly, but his gaze had sharpened.

  Jo and Jeremy took turns talking. Jeremy described the Bigfoot he’d glimpsed in the woods when he was ten. Jo talked about how she’d spent a lot of time in hospitals, and how her online wanderings had led her to websites that claimed that Standish had once been a hotbed of Bigfoots.

  “And you?” asked the doctor, looking at Alice, who shifted in her seat. She hadn’t taken her coat off, Jeremy saw, and her hat was still snugged down tight over her ears. “What’s your interest in our large-footed friends?”

  “Science project,” Alice mumbled, with her eyes on her boots. Even if Jeremy hadn’t known that she was lying, her flat voice and expressionless face would have been a giveaway.

  Dr. Johansson crossed the room. Knees creaking, he knelt down in front of her and took her hands. “Hey,” he said. His voice was quiet, pitched for Alice’s ears alone. “I get it. I know.”

  “You know what?” Alice said, in a voice that wobbled a little.

  “I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t fit in anywhere. Like you’re not like other kids. Like nobody understands you.” He gestured down at himself. “I was six feet tall when I was ten years old, and I was so heavy that they had to bring in a special scale to the nurse’s office when they weighed us. Whatever you’ve got going on, I bet I’ve got a story just like it.”

  Alice lifted her head, and Jeremy could see that her eyes were glittery with tears. “I thought I found a friend,” she whispered. “And then these guys said . . . they said I wasn’t human, so I thought . . .” She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out an envelope, and slipped a picture out from inside of it. Jeremy peered over the doctor’s shoulder, but all he could see was a lady in a hospital bed with a baby in her arms. “It’s from my baby book,” said Alice.

  “Uh-huh,” said Dr. Johansson, getting to his feet. “Mm-hmm.”

  He held out his hand for the picture. When Alice turned it over, he carried it to a scanner on the long wooden table, then sat down. A few keystrokes, and the picture was on his screen. Jeremy could make out details: the lady’s sweaty hair, the tubes running from both of her arms, the crowd of white-coated figures gathered around her. With surprising delicacy, the doctor raised his large fingers to the screen, pinching at the image, then spreading his fingers apart. The picture bloomed in close-up. Jeremy could see flowers in a vase on the bedside table, a plastic pitcher of water, a stack of papers . . . and a familiar letterhead.

  He heard Jo’s indrawn breath, heard the doctor grunt, then say, “Uh-huh,” as he felt his own mouth go dry. The top page on the bedside pile said Upland Community Hospital and appeared to have information about the new baby, her length and her weight and something called her Apgar score. It was the page underneath it that had caught everyone’s attention, the page topped by the words “Department of Official Inquiry” and the unmistakable logo of a staring, all-seeing eye.

  “Our friends in Washington seem to have attended your arrival,” said Marcus, sounding grim. Alice opened her mouth, like she was about to say something, but then she just shook her head.

  “And looky here,” said Marcus. His expression was eager, eyes wide behind the glasses, looking like Jo when she’d just pounced on some new tidbit of information on the Internet. His chair squeaked as his fingers rattled at the keyboard. Jeremy watched the screen as the doctor did something with his mouse, zooming in tighter and tighter on the single swath of Alice’s skin that the blanket left exposed.

  “You see that?” he asked.

  “Oh, wow,” Jo breathed. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Fur,” said Alice. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I had fur.” She sat down, yanked up the leg of her pants, and examined her (completely hairless, to Jeremy’s eyes) ankle, first the left one, then the right. “Where’d it go?”

  “We can add that to our list of questions.” Marcus stood up and gave Alice’s shoulder a squeeze. “You all right?”

  “Fine,” Alice said, with her eyes still on her legs. “Except that those people—these government people—they know about me.” Her voice was tiny, almost inaudible. She took her picture off the scanner, put it in her pocket, and huddled in her armchair, with her arms around her knees and her chin resting on top of them. “A lady in the picture, I met her when I was six. She said she was an educational consultant. She was supposed to help my parents figure out where to send me to school. But then I saw her in the picture, and I went to see her, followed her, when I was home for break. She went to an office.” She pointed at the screen. “Their office. The Department of Official Inquiry.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Dr. Johansson, and Alice nodded. “I saw the name and the eye. It was on the door. And you couldn’t even get off the elevator on their floor. There were guards by the door, and you needed a special ID card to get in.” She stopped, swallowed, and rubbed her eyes. “They’ve known about me since I was born.”

  For a minute, they all stood in a circle around her, Marcus with his hand on one shoulder, Jo with her hand on the other, and Jeremy with his hands in his pockets because he didn’t know where to put them.

  “It’s okay,” said Marcus. “We’re the good guys, and it’s a good thing you found us. We’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

  Alice was shivering, shaking her head. She’d pulled off her hat and unfastened her hair so that big chunks of it were hanging like curtains in front of her face. Jeremy thought that she was crying. He didn’t blame her. If he was the one who’d walked into a giant heart, found a hidden office, and learned that a shadowy government organization had been keeping track of him since birth, he’d probably be running around screaming or begg
ing his parents to get him a new identity and a new place to live.

  Marcus got up and made them all hot chocolate, and Jo murmured softly to Alice, saying things that Jeremy couldn’t quite hear while he sat feeling useless and uncomfortable and more like a boy than he ever had in his life. He imagined that his betrayal was somehow visible on his face, like Jo or Marcus or even Alice herself would be able to look at him and know that he’d been talking (not just talking, his mind whispered, but conspiring) with one of the government agents who’d been trying to find Alice.

  Finally, Marcus came back with three paper cups and another bag of pretzels.

  “Okay,” he said, settling his bulk back into his enormous chair. “Story time.” He leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. “Once upon a time, round about nineteen fifty-two, the government got very interested in the possibility of other life-forms. Not in outer space, where most of our previous efforts had been focused, but right here on good old mother earth. They formed the Department of Official Inquiry, which began as a branch of the CIA. First director was a guy named Milford Carruthers from right here in Standish. He was a Bigfoot believer from way back. A very charismatic, very persuasive, very wealthy guy. He had a sighting of his own.” He waited for Jo and Jeremy to nod, and said, “After that, he went from being a believer to something more along the lines of a fanatic. He spent the last years of his life in the forest, looking, and when he died . . . when he died, he left almost all of his money to the government, to fund the agency that was tasked with finding Bigfoots.”

  Marcus told them how, under Carruthers’s direction, the Department hired the smartest historians and anthropologists to research what they were calling Hidden Creatures. “Your vampires, your zombies, your leprechauns and what-have-you,” he said. “They zeroed in on what we know as Bigfoots as being the most plausible. Most of the others, they had nothing but stories and rumors and so-and-so’s great-great-great-grandfather who once swore he saw a Yeti in a snowstorm, or somebody’s grandma who said a leprechaun stole her dancing slippers from next to the lake. With the Bigfoots, not only did they have Carruthers’s firsthand account, but the same elements to the stories kept coming up. Same settings, same descriptions of the creatures. Whether it was the Pacific Northwest or upstate New York, you’d get reports of tall, hairy creatures who lived in the woods but who were intelligent, who had language, who seemed curious about our world, and who—and here’s the important part—were exceptionally long-lived.”