The Lawrence Watt-Evans Fantasy

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Eugene, Oregon?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, can I reach him…”

  “Listen, Mister, that’s all I can tell you. It’s probably more than I should tell you.”

  “But…” Rodney began.

  Then he realized he was talking to a dead phone; she had hung up.

  “Eugene,” he said. “That’s the other end of the state.” He hesitated, then dialed again.

  “Directory assistance,” said the voice. “What city, please?”

  There was a listing for an M.C. Betterman; a few minutes and a dozen rings later Rodney finally heard someone pick up the phone—then drop it; Rodney winced at the clatter.

  After assorted bumps and rattles, a bleary voice said, “’Lo?”

  “Is this Maurice Betterman?” Rodney asked.

  “Who wan’sa know?”

  Rodney sighed. “I’m looking for the Maurice Betterman who writes for the Midnight News,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Are you him?”

  “He,” the voice corrected. “Are you he.”

  Rodney took that as a good sign; in his experience only teachers and writers corrected people like that. “Are you?” he asked.

  “Migh’ be; why?”

  “We need a little more information about an article you wrote back in 1987,” Rodney explained.

  For a long moment there was no answer, and Rodney was beginning to wonder if he had been cut off, or if Betterman had fallen asleep, when the voice finally asked, “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Me’n Bubba,” Rodney explained.

  “Bubba.”

  “Well, that’s what I call him.”

  Click. Betterman had hung up.

  Rodney dialed again, and let the phone ring twenty-two times, hoping the motel operator wouldn’t notice and cut him off before Betterman answered.

  The motel operator didn’t.

  “Yeah?” his voice asked.

  “It’s me again,” Rodney said. “Look, please don’t hang up…”

  “You’n Bubba?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why should’n I hang up? You got three seconds to convince me.”

  “Money,” Rodney said quickly. “Lots of money.”

  For another long moment the line was silent—but no one hung up. Then Betterman sighed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

  Rodney told him.

  “You got a sasquatch there?” Betterman asked when Rodney had finished. “A real one?”

  “That’s what I said,” Rodney replied. “And he wants to know where you saw that other one in ’87.”

  “And suppose I tell you—then what?”

  “Then we hang up and stop bothering you.”

  “Suppose I don’t tell you?”

  “Then we’ll keep bothering you.”

  “You said there was money involved…”

  “Well, sure—aren’t pictures of a sasquatch worth money?”

  “Depends how good they are.”

  “You can take all the pictures you want of this one.”

  Betterman was silent for a moment before asking, “So where are you? Where can I see this thing?”

  * * * *

  Betterman stared at Bubba. “I didn’t believe you,” he said to Rodney. “I figured you’d just tell me it had got away or something.”

  The three of them had rendezvoused at a rest area on I-84, a few miles west of Hood River; Bubba had waited in the woods while Rodney met Betterman and escorted him over for a good long look.

  “Then why’d you come?” Rodney asked.

  “Oh, I figured I could get a story out of it anyway—and besides, it seemed like the quickest way to get rid of you,” Betterman explained, never taking his eyes from Bubba.

  The attention seemed to make the creature uneasy, but he didn’t flee.

  “I call him Bubba,” Rodney explained. “He doesn’t have a name, really—I guess his kind don’t bother with them.”

  “Does it…does it talk?” Betterman asked hesitantly.

  Bubba grunted.

  “No,” Rodney said. “But he writes notes. You brought your camera?”

  “It’s in the car,” Betterman answered.

  “Okay. Look, here’s the deal—Bubba, here, is lonely, and he saw in that article that you saw a female bigfoot, so he wants to meet her. Now, you tell us where she is, and we let you take pictures and ask questions. Fair enough?”

  Betterman looked at him, startled. “I never saw one before!” he said.

  “Okay, okay,” Rodney said. “You wrote that article, but I guess it somebody else that actually saw the critter?”

  Betterman shrugged, then hesitated, then looked warily at Bubba. The creature looked nervous, and despite the size, fairly harmless.

  “I made it up,” he said.

  Rodney and Bubba were thunderstruck. For a moment they just stared.

  Then Bubba growled. Betterman, suddenly aware that he might have done something stupid, began desperately explaining, “Look, I’m being honest with you, I could’ve jerked you around until I got the pictures, I could’ve told you anything, but I figured I should be honest, I just made it all up, honest!”

  “You did?” Rodney asked ominously.

  “Sure!” Betterman babbled, “I make it all up! I mean, everything, the Elvis sightings, Hitler’s clones, the UFO aliens, the three-headed babies, it’s all made up! Just entertainment, just stories!”

  “Nobody saw a female bigfoot?”

  “Not… I don’t… I don’t know!” Betterman wailed, as Bubba’s huge paw closed on the front of his shirt.

  “You don’t know?” Rodney demanded.

  “No! I mean, I do research my stuff, I collect clippings and everything, and maybe somebody saw one and maybe that’s what gave me the idea for my article, but I don’t remember! It’s been three years!”

  Rodney looked at Bubba, and Bubba looked at Rodney. Bubba let go of Betterman’s shirt and turned, reaching for his writing supplies.

  “You want to go check this out?” Rodney asked. “See what he’s got in his files?”

  Bubba nodded. Then he scribbled quickly with a stub of purple crayon.

  Betterman stared, amazed, at the sight of the huge hairy beast writing; when he saw what it had written, however, he let out a low moan of terror.

  OR I RIP HIS HED OFF, Bubba said.

  * * * *

  The drawer marked MYTH. BEASTS was two feet deep and full to overflowing; yellowed clippings were spilling out the sides. Betterman carefully hauled out the two fattest folders, labeled BIGFOOT and BIGFOOT (CONT.).

  Bubba stared as the clippings spilled out across the rickety table. His own collection was mostly tabloids, and these were not; instead, Betterman had restricted himself to relatively respectable sources. Where Bubba’s stories were mostly front-page features with screaming headlines, Betterman’s were mostly tiny items clipped from the back pages of obscure local weeklies, from columns with titles like “Unexplained” and “Briefly Noted.”

  Rodney was impressed—until he began looking over the material at hand.

  “There’s nothing on here to tell where it is!” he pointed out. “Or on this one, or this…” He picked up a larger scrap, stared, and said, “And this one’s from 1964!”

  “I’ve been at this a long time,” Betterman muttered.

  Rodney could believe that; Betterman had to be in his fifties, at least. “Why don’t you note where they’re from?” he asked.

  “Who cares?” Betterman shrugged. “This is just for ideas, I’m not writing a book or anything.”

  Rodney frowned.

  “Well, there might be some we can use,” he said. “I guess we better star
t sorting.” He sat down, and began reading.

  * * * *

  August, 1992:

  “Look, Moe,” the voice on the phone said, “They’re great pictures, I don’t know how you do it, they’re better than the stuff our lab here does, but we’re tired of bigfoot stories! Two years now you’ve been sending us bigfoot stories! People are sick of bigfoot, Moe; give us something on Elvis, or something.”

  “But they’re real,” Betterman insisted desperately. “I keep telling you that!”

  “If they’re real,” his editor answered, “Why are you sending them to us, and not Scientific American?”

  “Because Scientific American doesn’t believe me!” Betterman shouted, “And Bubba draws the line at letting anyone else see him!”

  “Bubba?”

  “Never mind,” Betterman mumbled. “Look, I’ll do an Elvis sighting, okay? I’ll have it in the mail tomorrow. How about he’s in a drug rehab program?”

  “Well, maybe,” the editor said. “But remember, people want him to look like a good guy.”

  “Maybe he’s been held hostage?”

  “Yeah, I think we could go for that. And if you could get photos…”

  “No photos,” Betterman said. “You’ll have to do that part.”

  “Okay, no photos. And no more bigfoot.” He hung up before Betterman could answer.

  Betterman sighed and turned to his ancient typewriter; by the time Rodney MacWhirter came in for dinner he had a complete draft of “Elvis Escapes Terrorists!” done.

  When Rodney and Bubba had first shown up, two years before, he had never expected it to turn out this way—two years spent trying to convince somebody that Bubba was real, when Bubba had apparently hit his limit of how many people he would allow to see him—two, Moe and Rodney.

  And Rodney had gone home to Milwaukee and packed up his belongings and moved out to Eugene, trying to find some way to cash in on his friendship with Bubba, all while tracking down bigfoot sightings and trying to find Bubba a mate.

  And neither of them had anything to show for it except a bunch of by-lines in cheap tabloids—Moe writing the articles, Rodney providing the pictures.

  And they hadn’t found another sasquatch. Poor Bubba was getting depressed, frustrated, and angry.

  “So how goes it?” Moe asked, when Rodney had thrown himself into the sagging armchair by the window.

  “Lousy,” Rodney said. “I checked out the last one of your clippings today.”

  “Nothing?” Moe asked sympathetically.

  “Nothing,” Rodney agreed.

  “So now what?”

  “So now we go tell Bubba the bad news. And maybe I see about finding an honest job again—my savings are just about gone.”

  “Ha!” Moe said. “I never had any savings! Or an honest job!”

  * * * *

  They met at the back corner of a rest stop on I-84 again, but nowhere near Hood River this time; Bubba had been working his way eastward, searching the forests, and had gotten out past the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, to somewhere in Baker County.

  Rodney explained.

  “We’ve tried ’em all, Bubba—everything we know to do. And we haven’t found a thing.” He shrugged, and turned up empty palms. “There’s nothing more we can do.”

  Bubba frowned, and wrote.

  ASK LEADING PYSCHICS, he said. He held up one of his own clippings; he had been collecting them from campsides and trash cans all across Oregon. This one’s banner headline read, “Psychic Locates Child Lost In Woods For Five Years!” The subhead explained, “Boy Lived on Roots and Berries!”

  “Psychics are all fakes,” Moe said. “We’ve told you that.”

  Bubba wrote, ASK ELVIS, and held up a clipping headlined, “Elvis’ Ghost Leads Woman to Lost Jewelry!”

  “Elvis is dead,” Rodney said. “Fifteen years, now.”

  Bubba shook his head angrily and held up “Stunning New Proof the King Still Lives!”

  “But even if he does,” Moe said, “How do we find him? He’s in hiding!”

  Rodney turned to argue, then thought better of it; Bubba wrote again.

  ASK UFO ALEINS, he said. His exhibit this time read, “Space Aliens Reveal Pyramid Secrets!”

  “There aren’t any UFO aliens!” Moe insisted. “I keep telling you, Bubba, it’s all made up! All that stuff in the tabloids! It’s all lies!”

  ALL? Bubba asked, holding a clipping of “Bigfoot Prowling Central Park!” against his chest.

  “All of it,” Moe insisted. “You’re real, but the rest of it is all fiction. They just made it all up. Elvis is dead. There aren’t any aliens.”

  NO BIGFOOT? Bubba asked.

  “None except you,” Moe said.

  WHERE’D I COME FROM?

  “I don’t know,” Moe said helplessly, “but you’re the only one.”

  Bubba stared at him for a moment, then turned, and before Moe or Rodney could protest, he had vanished into the woods.

  * * * *

  “You sure about this?” Moe asked, as Rodney forced down the trunk lid on his ancient Plymouth.

  “I’m sure, all right,” Rodney said. “Back in Milwaukee I’ve got friends and contacts; around here, I’ve got you, and about a thousand people who think I’m a nut who believes in Bigfoot.”

  “You are a nut who believes in Bigfoot,” Moe pointed out.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t help my job prospects,” Rodney said, as he headed for the driver’s seat.

  “Drive safely, then,” Moe said.

  “I will,” Rodney said, hoping Moe couldn’t see the cooler of Budweiser in the shotgun seat. Driving across all that empty country was bad enough under any circumstances; he didn’t want to face it sober.

  One of these days, he thought, he was probably going to get himself killed by misjudging how much he drank—but right now he didn’t care.

  “Say hello to poor Bubba if you see him.”

  “I will.”

  And then he was gone.

  * * * *

  The gas station was utterly nondescript except for the guy behind the counter. Rodney blinked at him in surprise.

  The fellow had thick, slicked-back black hair, a heavy and oddly familiar face; he wore studded white denim and very dark sunglasses, though the light in the little mini-grocery was hardly bright. He was also grossly overweight and obviously on the wrong side of fifty, which made the hair and studs and sunglasses look very odd. Rodney had the feeling that if he could see better, and hadn’t had those last few beers, he might recognize the man.

  But that was silly; who would he know at a gas station outside Missoula, Montana?

  “Somethin’ I can help you with?” the cashier asked.

  “Wish you could,” Rodney said, staring at the issue of the Midnight News on display beside the cash register. One of his last photos of Bubba was featured on the front page.

  “How’s that, friend?”

  Rodney pointed. “Friend of mine,” he said. “Can’t get a date.”

  The man behind the counter made a wordless noise of surprise. “The hairy fella?” he asked.

  Rodney nodded, then waited for the room to steady again. “Yup. Ol’ Bigfoot himself, out there in Baker County, Oregon—he’s been looking for a female for years, can’t find a one.”

  “That so?”

  Rodney decided against nodding again. “Yup.”

  “Seems to me someone could maybe do somethin’ about that,” the cashier said. His voice was familiar, too, Rodney thought.

  “I tried,” he said. “I spent the last two years asking people all over the northwest.” It occurred to him that he must sound like a lunatic, and that he would never have been talking about it if he were sober, but the cashier didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong.

  �
��Mebbe you asked the wrong folks,” the man said. His accent, Rodney realized, was from somewhere a lot farther south than Montana. “I been doin’ some travelin’ these past fifteen years,” the cashier continued, “and I met some interestin’ folks, some that was what you might call right out of this world. I’d guess that they might help us out here.” He picked a copy of the Midnight News from the rack and studied the photo. “Seems like him and me, we got some things in common, you might say,” he said, tapping the headlines.

  Rodney struggled to focus on the newspaper. The photo was down at the foot of the page, captioned, “New Sightings of Mystery Beast!” Beside it, a box proclaimed, “Elvis in Iraq for Secret Negotiations!” The main headline, under the clerk’s hand, read, “Space Aliens Save Sinking Ship! Bermuda Triangle Victims Rescued By UFO!”

  “Poor Bubba,” Rodney muttered.

  “Don’t you fret, son,” the clerk said. “Things’ll turn out jest fine. Now, you had the nachos and the bean dip; anythin’ else?”

  Twenty minutes later Rodney decided, as he sat in his car munching the last of the chips, that he was too tired—and, he admitted to himself, too drunk—to drive any more just then. He settled back for a quick nap.

  He awoke to a loud buzzing and a bright light; blinking, trying to shield his eyes against the glare, he stared out at the gas station.

  The light was coming from somewhere overhead; Rodney couldn’t see its source. He could see the overweight clerk standing in the doorway, head tilted back, dark sunglasses protecting his eyes as he gazed upward.

  He seemed to be signalling, making signs with his hands.

  That was crazy, Rodney decided. He must be dreaming. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  When he awoke again he shook his head to clear it, blinked, and put the car into drive.

  Weird dream, he thought. Some guy who looks like Elvis signalling the flying saucers—obviously, Rodney thought, I’ve been reading too many tabloids.

  * * * *

  The following night UFO sightings were reported all over Baker County, Oregon. The most peculiar feature was the story, repeated by a dozen witnesses, that a big hairy man had been standing on a hill near a campground, waving sheets of paper at the UFOs. The deputy who investigated the next day found letters burned into the grass.