Busy Monsters

by William Giraldi

  “You are,” I said, “genius and messiah both. I’m certain I can find a race of giants in the woods. I mean, they’re giants. Must be about as hard to find as a Ricardo in Juárez.”

  Friend passed me Romp’s card—Romp had a card—and instructed me to converse with him about the expedition. The card stated simply, ROMP: I BRING IT BACK DEAD, with a telephone number beneath that promise. Friend then advised me to search online or else trek to the county library for Sasquatch understanding so I wouldn’t seem like such a luckless ass when I dialed Romp.

  “What should I know about this fella?” I asked.

  “Hunter. Scholar. Priest. Negro. Prophet. Man of jazz and all items sacrosanct. Shaves with obsidian. Has razzle and the necessary dazzle to mix it with. Also copulated with Florence Ballard in 1974. He wrestled Bigfoot in 1980 at Bluff Creek in Northern Cal, in the same creek bed where the famous Patterson footage was shot. He lost that bout, but just barely, and managed to chomp off the hominid’s ear. Then he tried to fire his rifle or his camera before he passed out, but, sadly, could not.”

  I asked who Florence Ballard was and he said, “Idiot. She was the second Supreme of the Supremes.”

  “Oh. He couldn’t get Diana Ross?”

  “Focus, Charlie. Sasquatch.”

  But wasn’t focus for those farther away from the web-footed than I just then felt? Finally I asked, “How do you know all of this about Romp?”

  “He told me. Plus he wears the severed ear around his neck. He’s been hunting Bigfoot ever since they grappled that day. Says it insulted his mother in words reminiscent of Aramaic.”

  I could see that I would need to proceed with gravitas, with doo-wop and pomp. Already in my cranium was a delirious slideshow of my detaining the celebrated North American ape man, of my blesséd reunion with Gillian, and of Jacobi’s hot dishonor in the face of my achievement. The ceremonies, awards, and millions were ancillary but welcome and I would show the proper meekness and thanks. Christ, too, was meek, and this people appreciated. He has done well for Himself, and so, I thought, shall I. Far from those bilked fatalists who condemn mankind as automatically snakebit, light-years away from God’s polish, I was a real go-getter, found my own burnish on this blue dome of commotion. Watch me work.

  Upon leaving my condo that day, Friend said, “Onward, and make sonnets of your sins.”

  “I shall. You as well. And keep your blood on the inside.”

  “Oh, and Charlie,” he said at my door, “don’t write about this one, okay? You promised your mother no more madness, remember? And believe me when I tell you that Romp is ninety-eight percent madness and two percent pilgrim.”

  Well, how bad could he be?

  THUS BEGAN MY Bigfoot research. I viewed online the infamous 1967 Patterson footage; the brawn and bulk of that beast swashbuckling across the creek bed caused lengths of electricity to hum over my bones. My Lord, it lived; that was no man in a monkey getup: the height and weight, the muscles stretching beneath sun-soaked fur, the mellifluous locomotion, the creepy turn of its head in a distinctly nonhuman style. White-haired professorial experts with many letters after their names—Dr. Grover Krantz at the front of the pack—spewed forth with the facts of the case and presented an arsenal of evidence to choke all naysayers: footprints, hair and scat samples, sixty years of eyewitness reports by undrunk citizens, and the holy grail of Bigfoot fandom, this Patterson film, all of which could not be indisputably disproved, not even by those Mickey Mouse computer maestros at Disney. Why, I thought, would any maverick scientist plumb the seas for a giant squid when this hirsute beauty lay in wait out there in the Pacific Northwest? And as for those multitudinous naysayers: each one had a slum for an imagination. Most men are not bold, never mind valiant; they find safety in the status quo. Magellan would not nod.

  After nearly six hours of absorbing Bigfoot factoids—you wouldn’t believe the kooks out there who think he came from outer space—I rummaged through Gillian’s library because I remembered a hefty book on Bigfoot that once adorned her bottom shelf. Although it had a publication date of 1980, the photos were colorful and the diagrams informative. I felt ready to dial Romp; ours would be the repartee shared between those intergalactic explorers digitized into being by George Lucas or that sane scientist Spielberg. I hadn’t really studied figures and available lore since college—unless you count the tutelage I endured under Gillian’s giant squid blitzkrieg of info—and so I was proud of my scholar’s efforts.

  Romp answered his cell with a bass-tone, “Yasss?”

  I said, “Romp, I am Charlie. Friend has put us in touch and I believe you could use my primate skills, also my proficiency in speaking to trees both ancient and new. Let’s talk.”

  And Romp said, “I’ve been watching you for the past six hours, Charlie.”

  Come again? Huh? He’d been doing what?

  “Across the street, in your neighbor’s treetop,” he said. “I’ve been spying you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come look.”

  As I sauntered my way through the dining room to stand at the bay windows, I said, “Sir, this causes me fear and the contemplation of space-time. Are you kidding?”

  “Romp don’t kid. You’re at the window now. Looky here, see the glow of my celly phone.”

  By Jove, there it was, across the street, atop Mrs. Ruby’s sycamore, the small blue-green burn of cellular communicato.

  “As I said, I am now afraid, and a fearful man is a dangerous man, so please explain your strange self.”

  “Friend called me when he left your place this afternoon and relayed your chart. I needed to execute binocular surveillance before you contacted me. My partner on this expedition cannot be among the undeservéd. You should close your curtains, Charlie.”

  “Well. Is it true about Florence Ballard?”

  “Affirmative. Plus I have others. Famous sisters you’ve heard on radio waves. I once built an altar to Negress Aphrodite and made sacrifices of the Inca sort.”

  “You couldn’t get Diana Ross?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  He said, “Friend tells me you’ve been to prison and know how to handle a rifle. He adds that you’re impulsive and reliable both, a hunter in your own right who embraces beatitude and has no qualms about homicide. You were prepared to massacre in the name of love. That’s sweet.”

  Was there a correct response to that?

  “I’m not exactly proud of these facts, Mr. Romp.”

  “Plus I’ve read your stories in that magazine and know the score. You speak Shakespeare and have a fondness for sharp objects. You are, I think, ready for voodoo. Wait one. I’ll be at your door.”

  What would you feel for that minute or more while a stranger named Romp descended from a treetop and made his leisurely way to your doorstep? Would you say to yourself: Self, your little life has reached a peculiar crossroads, à la Robert Johnson and the devil, and perhaps prudence is now in order. Or: Self, stop obsessing over a long-gone gal, giant squids, and Bigfeet; stop your communion with shady fellows of the night; perhaps rediscover Jehovah and his only boy, Yeshua the Nazarene. Maybe you would; but I, on the other hand, for that minute or more it took Romp to appear on my porch, was an alien to that much-lauded tool, introspection. Rather, I was reduced to a primitive, cold-blooded gadget capable of feeling only, and what I felt warned me of fright and then of freedom. Gillian, my many synapses shouted, every one like a downed power line on asphalt. Gillian.

  Romp stood six and a half feet tall, was equipped with the build of a boxer or prison guard villain, his blackness the inky Congo kind, emphasizing all teeth and eyeballs, his smooth crown sporting the gloss of a Tootsie Pop. When we greeted one another like men of civilized spheres, his grip swallowed my hand and threatened to detach it. The diver’s watch weighing down his wrist had abstruse functions unnecessary in central Connecticut. Those were the diamond calves of a sprinter. Two pockets on his camouflage cargo shorts were filled w
ith things that rattled. And there, yes, there around his trunk of a neck, just as Friend had said, dangled the bitten-off weatherized ear of some half-deaf miscreant.

  “Charlie,” he said in that bass tone, “I think better in the bath, and we have plans to draw.”

  He brushed past me smelling of primeval musk, leaving me at the door, my sweaty hand on the knob.

  I turned and said, “That sounds kinky in a way that makes my intestines move. I’d rather you didn’t, sir.”

  “It wasn’t a request. Lead the way and do it now. No drivel.”

  Lord keep me, I thought, and ten minutes later Romp lay soaking in my bathtub, me on the toilet seat with my head in my hands.

  “Good heavens,” I said, “cover that river monster with a towel. Please. My manhood is threatened.”

  “Here’s how this will work, Charlie. I quiz you on Sasquatch, and if you pass, you’re in. If you fail, I am gone and you never hear from me again. You are not part of the glory of capturing the anthropoid eyesore whose ear now adorns my throat.”

  “But I must. I must net a Bigfoot. Gillian—”

  “I know. Gillian the squid woman. But our journey mustn’t be one of puppy love rekindling, only enchantment, annihilation, and everything ontological.”

  I took my face from the safety of my palms and looked at him. A dab of soap bubble stuck to his chin scruff.

  “Are you making fun of me?” I asked.

  False blank face. “How so?”

  “That sounds like something I would have written in a certain mood: enchantment, annihilation, and everything ontological. I think you’re making fun of me.”

  “By the way, I love the scene in that one story of yours, where you climb up the Ferris wheel to rescue that gal. But, Charlie, I never heard of a man climbing up wet metal bars and not slipping. I mean, it was raining something hard right before that, right? And you didn’t slip? Come on, man.”

  Those purple scars on his chest looked as if some starved predator were trying to claw its way out from under his skin—the scars no doubt left by his historic grapple with the Sasquatch who’d insulted his mother.

  “Please just continue,” I said. “Everyone’s a writer, I swear.”

  “Okay, question one,” he said. “Which of these men was not a well-known Sasquatch hunter: A, John Green; B, René Dahinden; or C, Joseph Smith?”

  “That would be C, Joseph Smith. I know Smith as the illiterate wannabe sage of a goofy cult called Mormon, plus someone convicted of fraud and other high jinks against his neighbors.”

  He kept losing the bar of soap beneath his oversized self.

  “Correct. Well done. Question two. Why did Roger Patterson film his footage in Bluff Creek: A, he just happened to be camping there; B, there had been reliable sightings there the previous week; or C, he didn’t film the Sasquatch in Bluff Creek but rather at the very base of Mount St. Helens?”

  “The answer is B, he had got reliable tips from eyewitnesses. He followed the scent.”

  “Correct. And now the million-dollar question. Are you ready, Charlie?”

  “Ready I am, Romp,” and I clapped my hands here, once, loud and echoed the way sports people do when the game is on the line.

  He was now using a lavish handful of Gillian’s thirty-dollar shampoo to wash his hairless head.

  “Here goes,” he said, eyes closed. “The most convincing aspect of many Sasquatch tracks is: A, the shape, by which I mean length and toe formation; B, the depth of the prints, indicating the weight of the bitch; or C, the dermatological ridges.”

  “C, the dermatological ridges. Those can’t be faked. Only a handful of people in the world know about them.”

  His face changed to whoopee and gee-whiz.

  “Charlie,” he said, “you impress me. I can use you on this hunt. Our terminus is far into the abyss of the Pacific Northwest; we might not return. Be warned. But nevertheless we leave tomorrow at dawn. Arm yourself with hunger and the be-bop of jazz. Also, bring a crucifix and anything you know about witchcraft.”

  Romp’s whale-black form unfolded from my tub and then, towel in hand, strutted naked and dripping from the bathroom. Martin Luther once chucked his inkwell at Satan, who lurked behind him as he wrote by candlelight; and for a reason unknown to me, as I sat on the toilet lid that night, I had an identical urge. Don’t ask me to clarify it; our thoughts are lawless sparks going this way and that.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, going after him. “Hold on. I don’t know about this.”

  “Don’t know about what?”

  He turned to face me and let drop the towel, revealing once again the brown baguette that made its home betwixt his thighs. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that stereotypes aren’t ninety-six percent true.

  “This,” I said. “You. Bigfoot, the whole thing. I promised my mother no more madness.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, pulling on his clothes, “I read that scene. Didn’t believe a word of it.”

  “Huh? Why not? Why the hell not? It’s the truth.”

  We stood by the railing at the top of the stairs, Romp’s own big feet wetting my carpet, and I had a very clear vision of him pitching me over the banister to my broken-neck death below.

  “Hey,” he said, “don’t get mad, little partner. I’m just saying. Some scenes are more convincing than others. It being true don’t make it convincing. Didn’t you learn that in Intro to Creative Writing?”

  “What are you, man?”

  I believe my face was lemon-pinched.

  “I’m a whole lot of God-help-us is what I am.”

  Romp bade his farewell to me and then was gone. But, yes, I would go with him in the morning. Why? I’ll let the Ancient Mariner of Sammy T. Coleridge tell you why:

  Since then, at an uncertain hour,

  That agony returns,

  And till my ghastly tale is told

  This heart within me burns.

  See?

  I WILL SPARE you, listener, all the minutiae involved in packing for such an excursion, the jumbled thoughts in concert with such packing, the buzz-buzz of sleeplessness, the doubt, how I decided not to visit my parents to tell them of my hell-for-leather agenda, how Romp collected me the next morning in the drizzle, the Bigfoot-facts ride to the airport in Romp’s spray-painted tractor pretending to be a jeep, and then a six-hour-plus cross-country voyage with those false folks at Delta.

  Let’s ignore the narrative nudge in time and place and suffice it to say, for the sake of yarn efficiency, that eighteen hours after Romp left my bathtub, the two of us touched down in Bellingham International Airport in northwest Washington State, where we were then met by a cloak-and-dagger confederate who had prepared for us a four-by-four SUV swollen with cargo of both the legal and illegal variety, everything we needed and didn’t need for a two-week expedition through the crushing cataracts and sylvan snares of God-knows-where. I didn’t meet this confederate—Romp wouldn’t let me—and therefore cannot describe for you his anarchic attire or the sinister gleam in his one good eye. In a vision-pained sea of glinting autos in the middle of a parking lot—my sun shades were at the bottom of my bag—we inspected the SUV, kicking tires and so forth.

  “Umm, is this a hybrid?” I asked.

  Romp bent beneath the giant hood to scrutinize oil and coolant.

  “Do it look like a hybrid?”

  “Does it look like a hybrid? I can’t say it does, Romp.”

  “Ain’t no real man drive a hybrid, Charlie.”

  “I drive a hybrid.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Okay, Romp, I’m not going anywhere in this atrocity on wheels,” and I crossed my arms to show I meant it.

  “Don’t give me this holier-than-thou hybrid crap, Charlie. From what I recall in your writing, Gillian drives a Beetle, and that ain’t a hybrid, hypocrite.”

  “How do you remember that?”

  “You’re so skimpy on details it’s not hard to remember the few you have.”

 
He showed me the dripping oil stick, as if to flaunt the glacier-killing goo we’d be burning too much of.

  “She sold that Beetle and bought a hybrid when we moved in together!”

  He said, “I do not care, Charlie. Get in the truck. Either that or go away and you do not capture a Sasquatch to lure back your woman.”

  So I pouted in the front seat. Romp’s itinerary? From what I could gather, he planned to scout the British Columbia border through North Cascades National Park, Okanogan National Forest, and over to Colville National Forest, all the while stopping at key points along the way to sniff-snort around and perhaps volley a fusillade of ammunition. I didn’t recognize any of his termini as Bigfoot hotbeds of activity and made the mistake of telling him so.

  “Ignoramus,” he said, driving from semi-urban to rural, “we need to avoid the tourists and the infamous locales you see in books, including Willow Creek, the Blue Mountains of Walla Walla, and Skookum Meadows. Why? Because our prey avoids them. A beast he is, but not a buffoon. Some say he’s Muslim, knows Allah, maybe jujitsu.”

  “Right,” I said. Silly me.

  Our SUV was so cramped with gear—guns and ammo, food and water, blankets and knives, clothes and tents, cameras and telescopes, one chain saw, and, God help me, a trumpet—I couldn’t recline my seat. Romp’s musky cologne was unnecessary and nauseating; he had made it himself and doused his torso to lure the Sasquatch. Its ingredients were part urine, part quote Negress menstrual blood unquote, and part apple cider, not from concentrate. I wondered if Jacob Jacobi and my gal Gillian had used any scent for lure of the giant squid; snapshots of them swirled in my gray matter like those faulty fireworks you see shot off once a year by drunks. Outside my window the trees-and-valleys landscape grew godlier by the moment.