by Adam Gidwitz
“Sure! That is, if you want to tell us,” Uchenna said.
“We didn’t used to be called that,” Mack told them. “We used to be two different Nations: Duwamish and Upper Puyallup. Our people lived all the way from Puget Sound to the crest of the Cascade Mountains. We fished and hunted and gathered and took care of the natural world for thousands of years before Europeans started arriving.” Mack shook his head. “We welcomed them, but they kept taking more and more of our land. The United States Army kept showing up and telling us to move. Eventually, we signed treaties giving up most of our territory in exchange for a small reservation—on an old army base called Muckleshoot. They started calling us that, and the name stuck.”
Mack sighed. “The treaty was supposed to guarantee us our rights to hunt and fish and gather in all our old spots. But the federal government broke every promise to us, forbidding us from even hunting and fishing where we had for thousands of years.”
“That’s awful!” Uchenna exclaimed.
“Yup,” Mack agreed. “Just as bad, they forbade us from performing our rituals. They took kids away from their homes and sent them to boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their own language.”
“What?!” exclaimed Elliot. He looked like he might cry. “Why? Why would they do that?”
Mack sighed. “Because white folks believed Native cultures were primitive and our culture was holding us back. They believed the white way of life was superior—they really thought that. They figured that the best thing was to force us to give up our languages and our customs and take us away from our families. You know what they called it? ‘Kill the Indian and save the man.’”
“That’s horrible!” Uchenna cried.
Professor Fauna added, “Today this is called cultural genocide.”
They all stared out the TruckVanAc’s windows, trying to imagine what it would be like to have the government take you away from your family and try to kill your language, your beliefs, and your traditions.
Finally, Uchenna broke the silence. “Are things any better now?”
Mack grinned. “You bet, Sings Real Sweet. The Muckleshoot started protesting, and we took our case to court. We won our fishing rights back, and from then on, our economy came roaring back. We started our own seafood products company, a tree farm, built a racetrack, the White River Amphitheatre—”
“Wait,” Uchenna interrupted. “The White River Amphitheatre was built by the Muckleshoot?”
“Yes,” said Mack. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Are you kidding? Just this summer you guys had Weezer, the Pixies, Counting Crows, and G-Eazy! Oh, and Foreigner!” Uchenna started singing, “You’re as cold as ice! Ba-dum-DUM! / You’re willing to sac-ri-fice our looooove—”
“Annnnyway . . . ,” Mack went on, “a lot of the revenue that allows us to do all this comes from our casino—which is the biggest in the state. Two thousand people work there now, including plenty of local folks who aren’t tribal members. We spend the money we make at the casino on economic development, housing, tons on our schools, and—my favorite part—buying back land that was stolen from us all those years ago.”
“Yay!” said Elliot. “That sounds good!”
“You have no idea. A few years ago, we bought back Sasquatch Valley.”
“Is that where . . . ?” Elliot began.
“You bet, little buddy. It’s where the sasquatch live.”
Professor Fauna cut in. “That was when Mack and I became friends. He told me that they bought the land to protect these magnificent creatures. And I invited him to join the Unicorn Rescue Society.”
“Defende Fabulosa!” said Mack.
“Protege Mythica!” the professor replied.
“But now the sasquatch are in trouble?” Uchenna asked.
Mack nodded. Just then, he flipped his turn signal—which flashed like a neon sign—and started a wide, slow turn into the parking lot of a little joint called Bigfoot Burgers. “Let’s fuel up, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”
CHAPTER TEN
The parking lot of Bigfoot Burgers was mostly empty, except for the TruckVanAc and a white van with a small satellite dish on top. Emblazoned on the side of the van were the letters SNERT TV. Below the red letters were the words: ALL THE NEWS WE WANT YOU TO KNOW.
Jersey had fallen asleep during the ride, so Uchenna gently slid him into her backpack. Mack opened his door.
“WAIT!” Professor Fauna hissed. They all froze. Jersey woke up and made a grumpy sound.
“What is it, Mito?” Mack asked.
Professor Fauna pointed out the window of the TruckVanAc. “Do you see this van? The one that says SNERT?”
“Yeah,” said Mack. “It’s a news van. This place has been crawling with them. That’s one of the reasons I called you—”
“No!” the professor interrupted. “This is not just any news van! It is part of the new channel Schmoke News, Entertainment, and Retail Television.”
“Don’t they already own a network?” Elliot asked. “Lowest Common Denominator or something?”
“I love LCD!” Uchenna replied.
“You do?”
“Yeah! They’ve got so many great shows! My Pet’s Got Talent, Can Your Grandma Dance Like My Grandma?, and those awesome detective shows: Investigation: Houston; Investigation: Duluth; and Investigation: Saw Pit, Colorado.” Uchenna paused. “Actually, that last one is kinda slow.”
“You’re weird,” Elliot said.
Uchenna shrugged.
Professor Fauna waved away the children’s commentary. “Yes, yes, but they have started a cable news channel. And now their news van is here!”
“That news van has been stalking everyone around here for weeks,” said Mack. “They keep asking questions about Bigfoot and sasquatch and the Abominable Snowman and any other hairy ape they can find on the internet. Careful what you say in there—”
“I am always careful!” Professor Fauna announced.
Mack looked at the kids. They both rolled their eyes.
“Yeah, I’m tempted to leave him in the TruckVanAc,” Mack said.
Elliot began nodding vigorously. The professor announced, “My lips are peeled!”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Mack murmured. But they all clambered out of the TruckVanAc and made their way across the parking lot and through the swinging door of Bigfoot Burgers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bigfoot Burgers was a quaint little shack decked out completely in Bigfoot merchandise. Stuffed Bigfoot dolls, overpriced T-shirts (MY FAMILY SAW BIGFOOT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS DUMB SHIRT), and a display of Bigfoot Bars, which were gooey nut bars wrapped in cellophane, selling for $4.95 apiece.
As Mack walked into the restaurant, a man standing behind a counter wearing a white apron called out, “Hey, Chief! I got that oil set aside for ya out back.”
“Thanks, Senator,” Mack replied.
The man looked confused. “Uh . . . yer welcome,” he said, and walked back into the kitchen.
Mack turned to Uchenna and Elliot. “That happens a lot,” said Mack, shaking his head. “But not every Indian is a chief.”
“Just like not every white guy is a senator?” Uchenna said.
“You got it, Sings Real Sweet.”
An older woman with hanging jowls, granny glasses, and an apron emblazoned with the words BIGFOOT’S BEST BUDDY asked if they wanted anything.
“Can we get some fries for our hungry friends here?” Mack asked her. Then he turned to Professor Fauna. “I’ll be out back filling up the TruckVanAc.”
Mack walked into the kitchen and out of sight. Professor Fauna, Elliot, and Uchenna clambered up on stools at the counter. Just then, the front door swung open and a skinny guy with glasses and acne-covered cheeks hurried in, eating a Bigfoot Bar.
“Hey!” yelled
the woman behind the register. “No outside food!”
“But I just bought this in here!” said the skinny guy.
“Yeah, but then you took it outside, didn’t you?”
“But—”
“So now it’s outside food. You want another one? Four ninety-five.”
The skinny guy’s shoulders slumped. He put the bar in his pocket and slouched past the register.
Elliot and Uchenna watched him make his way to a booth in the corner. A stunning blond woman in a bright blue dress was already in that booth. She had long, black eyelashes and lipstick so red it could have stopped traffic at an intersection. Across from her was a heavyset, balding guy. There was a huge camera on the table. The skinny guy with the acne tried to sit next to the woman. There was much more room on her side of the booth. But she shook her head and said, “This side is for the talent, Sam.”
Sam Brounsnout, producer, crammed himself in next to the cameraman.
“Well, I just got off the phone with the bosses,” he said. “They want us to keep looking.”
“Keep looking!” the blond woman exclaimed. “We’ve been looking for two weeks! I’m Grace Goodwind! I don’t go tramping around in the woods for two weeks with no story, no leads, no prime time! What do you think I am? A journalist?”
“Aren’t you . . . ?” Sam mumbled.
“No! I’m a TV reporter. It’s not the same thing.” She tossed her long hair. It looked, momentarily, like she was in a shampoo commercial. “Bigfoot isn’t even real! How long are we going to look for something that doesn’t exist?”
Sam sighed. “I don’t know, Ms. Goodwind. The bosses said—”
“Ugh. Who cares about the bosses?”
The cameraman said, “Well, I, for one, would like to get paid.”
“Stow it, Jerry,” muttered Grace Goodwind.
“It’s Andy,” the cameraman replied. “We’ve worked together for a year and a half. Back at LCD. And before that, when you were on local—”
Grace cut him off with a growl. “Never. Mention. Local.”
Suddenly, a shriek shattered the calm of the burger joint. And then a bellow: “WHO STOLE MY BIGFOOT BARS?”
Everyone froze. The woman with the granny glasses was pointing at the box on the counter. A box that was now empty.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The owner came rushing out of the back. “What’s wrong, Ma?”
“My Bigfoot Bars are gone!” she announced.
“Those bars,” Uchenna whispered to Elliot. “They’re sort of like the ones your mom and grandma make.”
“Yeah,” said Elliot. “So?”
“So, isn’t Jersey obsessed with those bars?”
A motion from above caught their eyes. They looked up and saw the little Jersey Devil sitting on the head of a wooden Bigfoot statue, happily munching on a Bigfoot Bar.
“Oh no . . .”
Uchenna hissed at Professor Fauna, “Professor, hand me the backpack.”
The professor quietly handed it over. Unfortunately, neither he nor Uchenna realized that the backpack’s food compartments were unzipped—and two dozen Bigfoot bars went spilling out onto the floor.
“There!” the owner’s mother yelled. “There they are! That strange man STOLE them!”
Professor Fauna backed up against a wall. From the booth in the corner, Elliot heard Grace Goodwind shout, “Doug, roll the film! This could be good!” She slid out of her seat, grabbed a mic from Andy’s camera bag, and pulled up to her full, imposing height. She straightened her blue dress with a couple of expert flicks and tugs, shook out her shampoo-commercial-quality hair, and said, “On me!”
As the owner of Bigfoot Burgers and his mother advanced on Professor Fauna, Ms. Goodwind began to report:
“Grace Goodwind, here. Reporting from . . . what’s the name of this dump?” she hissed at Sam, the producer. “Never mind, who cares . . . Reporting from some pit stop in Portland, Oregon.”
Meanwhile, Professor Fauna was trying to persuade the owner and his mother to not call the police.
“You see, I did not steal them. . . . They were stolen, yes. But not by me . . . Yes, they were in the backpack that I was carrying. But that evidence is just circumstantial! . . . Who stole them? Well . . . uh . . .” Professor Fauna looked at the Jersey Devil, sitting on top of the wooden Bigfoot’s head. The owner and his mother followed his gaze.
“WHAT IN BIGFOOT’S NAME IS THAT?” the mother shouted.
“Sandy! Get that on film!” Grace shrieked.
But just as Andy panned to Jersey, Elliot pushed the Bigfoot statue over. The owner bellowed, his mother screamed, Professor Fauna scooped up the backpack, Uchenna grabbed Jersey, and Elliot sprinted for the door.
They burst into the bright parking lot just as Mack pulled the TruckVanAc around.
“She’s all filled up. I should go in there and ‘tank’ them,” he added, grinning. “Don’t you think?”
“No time for jokes!” Uchenna exclaimed, throwing open the door and tossing Jersey inside. Everyone piled in after her, just as the restaurant door burst open and Grace Goodwind, Sam, and Andy appeared. Andy was trying to get his camera back on his shoulder. “Did you get that? Did you get it?” Grace was shrieking.
“I don’t think so,” Andy answered. “The kid pushed over the Bigfoot just before I could get it in focus!”
“What’s happening?” asked Mack.
“JUST GO!” Uchenna shouted.
Mack gunned the engine and roared out of the parking lot.
“What was that thing?” Sam asked, as they watched the TruckVanAc peel out onto Route 101.
“Looked like part truck, part van, part Cadillac,” Andy answered.
“No, I meant that blue creature with wings.”
“I know exactly what it is,” Grace whispered.
“You do? What?”
“That,” she said, her painted red lips bending into a smile, “is my prime-time story.”
* * *
As the TruckVanAc hauled up Route 101 toward the Washington State line, Mack turned to the kids.
“Did that cameraman say you knocked over my Bigfoot statue?”
“That’s your Bigfoot statue?”
“Well, I carved it.”
“It was pretty good.”
“Was?”
Elliot and Uchenna looked at each other and winced. Elliot said, “Remember how you took off the head of your Bigfoot costume when we first met?”
“Sure . . .”
“Well, have you ever heard of foreshadowing?”
Mack sighed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Elliot had meant to ask Mack to continue his story about why he needed their help, but once they were safely out of sight of the news crew at Bigfoot Burgers, his eyes grew heavy. The long plane ride across the continent, the crash landing in the tree, the drive to Portland, and then the burger joint fiasco had exhausted him. And he wasn’t the only one.
Before long, only Mack—shaking his head and smiling—was awake. The TruckVanAc was filled with a symphony of snores, from Fauna’s raspy bass rumble, to Elliot’s bagpipe-like tenor, to Uchenna’s musical alto, to the delicate soprano trill coming from Jersey’s little snout.
Mack steered the TruckVanAc from outside of Portland, Oregon, to just south of Seattle, Washington, and not a single one of his passengers stirred. It was not until the big vehicle’s seven wheels went ka-thudd-ka-thudd-thudd-thudd-thudd-thudd-thudd that Elliot was jerked awake.
“AGGHH!” he shouted, trying to leap out of his seat belt. “We’re crashing!!!”
Mack reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “Calm down, Panics Easily,” Mack said. “That was just us driving over a cattle guard.”
“Sorry,” Elliot said with a sigh. “I was dreaming of the Phoenix.”
�
�Yeah, just seeing that thing on the ground gives me nightmares,” Mack agreed.
“Are we there?” Uchenna asked, rubbing her eyes and looking out the window. They were on an unpaved road in a forest. None of the moss-covered trees were as gigantic as the Douglas firs down in Oregon, but they were still way bigger than anything in New Jersey.
“Just about,” Mack said. “We’re in the tribal forest. My place is up around the next bend.”
Sure enough, as they topped a ridge and rounded a hill, there it was in front of them.
“Good gracious!” Elliot exclaimed. Uchenna just stared.
Perched on a crest looking over a wide, wooded valley was a huge, two-story structure made with a stone foundation and walls of big logs. There were balconies and wide windows facing east on both floors, and solar panels on part of the roof. The rest of the broad roof, which was slightly slanted, was covered with earth. Half was fenced in, and Uchenna could see that it held a beautiful vegetable garden with pathways through it. The other half was planted with small fruit trees and berry bushes. Yes, there was a garden and an orchard on the roof.
But the most amazing thing about the house was that the logs weren’t lying on their sides, stacked on top of one another, like in most log cabins. No, these stood upright. And every single log had been carved into the shapes of all sorts of animals: turtles at the bottom; bears and wolves and raccoons above them; and birds of prey like hawks and eagles on top.
They all got out and walked toward the house. “This,” Uchenna said, gaping, “is super cool. They’re like totem poles.”
“Yup. They’re not technically totem poles,” Mack explained. “Because you wouldn’t use a totem pole to build a house. You’d put them out front to tell a story or to memorialize something. But once I get my pal Jane Saw working, sometimes I get a little carried away.”