“One day at a time, Lem. Sometimes…” He blinks back the tears. “Sometimes, it’s one moment at a time.”
I stare at the flames, and Charlie goes back to his Mount Rushmore. Maybe it’s a Bigfoot he’s carving out of that thing.
“Good to talk about it,” he says.
I wipe my eyes again with my arm and sniff.
I point to the carving. “What is that thing, anyway?”
He looks at it and holds it out, examining it in the light of the fire.
“I whittle until the wood tells me what it is.”
“What is the wood saying?” I ask.
He examines it. Then he pretends to listen to it.
“She’s pretty quiet tonight.” He smiles. “What does it look like to you?”
I squint and turn my head to the side, then close the other eye and wrinkle my nose.
“A bunny,” I decide.
He raises his eyebrows, looks at it again.
“I do believe you may just be right.”
“Mama loves bunnies,” I say, thinking of the gray ceramic bunnies she had on the rooftop deck at home. Bunnies dancing. Bunnies hopping. There was even one bunny holding a big red heart.
“Yes,” he says softly. “She sure did.”
“It’s gangrene.”
Tobin and Charlie are leaning over me the next morning, examining the scrape on my knee that I got when I fell on my way back from the pee spot. I’m not going to candy-coat it, either: it’s a gusher.
Bloody in the middle and all green on the edges. That’s how I know it’s gangrene.
“They’ll probably have to amputate,” I say.
Charlie and Tobin look at each other, and Tobin slaps his forehead and shakes his head.
“It’s not gangrene,” he says.
“Are you blind?” I point to it. “It’s green, see?”
“It’s a grass stain, you dope.”
“That’s what you know,” I say. “My fingernails are completely numb, and they say that’s the first sign.”
“Who feels their fingernails?” Tobin demands. “And who are they, anyway?”
“They,” I say. “Them. The people.”
“What people?”
“Is this really what you want to be talking about right now when I’m at death’s door? I need an ambulance and a doctor before I lose more than just my leg.”
Tobin blows air out of his mouth and looks at Charlie.
“She’s ruining the whole trip,” he says, and then he turns to me. “You’re ruining the whole trip, I hope you know.”
“Okay, now,” Charlie says calmly. “First off, Lem, I think you’re going to survive, and so will your leg. We just need to clean it up, is all.”
“I really think a doctor should do it,” I tell him.
“He is a doctor,” Tobin says.
I watch Charlie pull a first aid kit out of a brown paper grocery bag. He opens the box and takes out some cotton balls and a Band-Aid and some clear liquid in a bottle.
“A real doctor?”
“Retired,” he says, dabbing a cotton ball with the liquid.
“Oh.”
“This might sting a little, but I think it will save you an amputation.”
I take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes closed.
“Ready,” I tell him.
“Here we go,” he says.
As soon as he touches me, I feel the sting.
“Ouch!” I say, jumping. “It burns! It burns!”
Charlie blows on it, which takes some of the sting away. The clear liquid also cleans up the green stain.
I guess they were right. No gangrene. Just grass.
“It’ll be okay in a minute,” Charlie says, taking a breath and blowing again. “I think you’re going to live.” He dabs and blows again. “How are those fingernails doing?”
I check them.
“Still can’t feel them.”
He smiles.
“Perfect.”
I guess he’s right about everything.
This time.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a bug still burrowing into my insides, or that I don’t have malaria from the zillion mosquito bites on my arms and legs. I slap my neck and flick another mosquito off my finger.
A zillion and one.
Not to mention, I found out I’m allergic to expeditions. I didn’t know I was allergic to expeditions, since I’ve never been on one before. But clearly I’m allergic, because I’ve sneezed thirty-two times alone since the sun finally showed its face above the trees. My record is eight sneezes in a row without a single break.
Sneeze.
Thirty-three.
I wonder how many sneezes in a row a body can take before you actually achoo yourself to death. Maybe I’ll be the first. It was what woke me up this morning, and everyone else, too, since we all had our sleeping bags lined up in the same tent. Charlie said I was a good alarm clock and then put some dabs of white cream on each mosquito bite.
Tobin didn’t agree.
I figure this out because of all the eye-rolling and the forehead-slapping, and also because he tells me so once we get going on our after-breakfast hike.
“How are we supposed to come up on any Bigfoot with you making all that racket?” Tobin yells back at me over his shoulder. “You’re scaring them all off.”
Charlie is leading us through the woods with a large backpack hanging from his shoulders. Tobin is in front of me with the Polaroid camera around his neck, and I’m following with Tobin’s movie camera hanging from mine.
“Like I’m doing it on purpose?” I sneeze again. “I can’t help that I’m allergic to expeditions.”
“Well, you’re ruining everything,” Tobin says.
“That’s so rude,” I say. “You don’t think I’d have rather stayed with Mrs. Dickerson, sipping tea and munching on cookies, instead of stomping around in the woods looking for a giant ape?”
Sneeze.
“Again with the complaining.”
“You’re the one complaining.” I smack another mosquito on my forehead. “If I was going to complain, I’d complain about losing my blood to all the insects of the forest.” I smack my leg. “But you don’t hear me saying that, do you? No, you don’t.”
“If you’d let Charlie spray you with the Off!, they’d leave you alone.”
“That stink-in-a-can? I’d gag if I had to smell like that all day.”
Another eye roll.
“Okay, now,” Charlie says. “It’s daylight, anyhow. We know they’re nocturnal animals, and coming upon an actual Bigfoot isn’t likely anyway. So let’s keep an eye out for evidence. A footprint, hair, scat, something like that.”
“Patterson and Gimlin filmed their Bigfoot in the middle of the day,” Tobin reminds him. “In Bluff Creek, anything is possible.”
Then he glares at me again.
“Anything would have been possible,” he mutters under his breath.
The volcano inside me bubbles up a low heat, making me want to snatch that stupid hat off his head and smack him with it.
But I don’t.
“What’s scat?” I holler up to Charlie instead.
“Number two,” Tobin says.
“What?”
“It’s number two. You know, poop.”
Did he just say what I think he said?
“So, not only are we looking for a big ape in the woods,” I say, “we’re also looking for its number two? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Everything poops,” Tobin says. “What’s the big deal about it?”
“The big deal is you don’t usually hunt for it in the woods.”
Charlie stops then and pulls his backpack off his shoulders.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
Charlie unzips the pack and pulls out a hand-drawn map and an old magazine article from 1967 about Roger Patterson. Charlie and Tobin drew the rough map based on information in the article to try to find exactly wh
ere the Bigfoot was filmed. They’ve been studying it all week.
“I think we’re here.” Charlie points to a spot on the paper. “We need to head this way for another mile or so. Then we should be right up at the sandbar where they filmed her.”
“Yep,” Tobin says. “I think so too.”
“How’s everyone doing? Everybody okay?” Charlie looks at me.
Both Tobin and I nod.
“Let’s keep going, then,” Charlie says, lugging his heavy pack back over his shoulders. “I’ve got a good feeling we might just find something today.”
A zillion miles later, we finally stop. My feet are tired, and my nose is still running, and my mosquito bites are even itchier. But I won’t complain.
Not out loud, anyway.
“I think this is it!” Tobin shouts, pointing straight ahead. “Charlie? That looks like the dry creek bed. What do you think? Right up there! Through that clearing there!”
They study the map closely, and then look at the trees, then the map, and then the trees again. I yawn and lean against the big trunk of an old oak.
“I think so.” Charlie strokes his beard.
Tobin starts to run.
“That’s the sandbar there.” He’s pointing. “Right? This looks right, right?”
I yawn again.
“Did we bring any snacks?” I ask Charlie.
“For criminy sake, Lemonade.” Tobin turns around to face me with his hands on his hips. “We’re only making cryptozoological history here. Our names might just be in every history book ever produced from here on out, and you’re talking Twinkies?”
“What can I say? Making history makes me hungry.”
Charlie digs a Twinkie out of his backpack and hands it to me. It’s squished, with filling all squeezed out of the three holes in the bottom and smeared against the wrapper.
“It’s all smooshed,” I say.
“Tastes the same.” He smiles.
I take it and sit down in the grass under the oak while Charlie and Tobin examine the area to see if it’s official or not. I carefully peel the plastic wrap off the golden cake to save for licking later, and then devour the Twinkie in three bites. Who knew expeditions could make a person so hungry?
“This is where Roger Patterson stumbles with the camera, here!” Tobin points.
“And where she turns around and looks right into the camera, here!” Charlie says.
I watch them while I start on the plastic wrap, licking every last bit of the sweet filling. They study the map, then check for signs it’s a match. This tree and that rock and this clearing and so on.
When I’m done licking the plastic wrap clean, I scrunch it in a ball and put it in the pocket of Charlie’s Windbreaker, still wrapped around me from last night. I rest my head on my knees, my eyes feeling heavier with each blink. My lids beg me to let them stay shut each time my eyelashes touch.
“You walk the path the Bigfoot did, and I’ll take pictures,” Tobin suggests to Charlie. “That’s good…yeah, now turn and look back at me…riiiight there…” Tobin clicks the camera.
I sneeze, waking my eyes up for good.
“Why don’t you just scare away all the critters of the forest?” Tobin hollers at me.
My volcano wants to tell him to shut up.
But I don’t.
I stand up and brush the dirt off my backside instead. And that’s when I notice it.
Is it?
It can’t be. I squint real hard and take another look.
I think it is.
“Hey!” I call over to Tobin and Charlie, waving my arms frantically. “Hey! I think I found something over here!”
They’re so busy with their stupid map and re-creating the Patterson-Gimlin film that they don’t even hear me. I crouch down to get a closer look at the dried mud next to where I’ve been sitting. Then I get down on my hands and knees and eyeball the ground just like Tobin does.
I carefully touch what looks like indentations with the tips of my fingers. The mud is hardened, but the marks are as clear as day.
A footprint.
There’s a big toe and a smaller one and another smaller one and another. All five toes. Even a heel. An entire footprint. I’m sure of it. And it’s humongous, too, more than a whole ruler for sure. At least a ruler and a half.
Then I see another footprint.
And another one!
“Hey!” I say, louder this time. “I really think I found something here!”
They both stop talking and turn to look at me from over at the sandbar.
“Footprints!” I shout at them.
I lean down and touch the prints again. The afternoon sun is shining high up above me, sprinkling the forest with light through leaves and pine needles. In that light, shining down from the sky, I have found my very first evidence of the elusive Bigfoot.
Me.
Lemonade Liberty Witt.
Assistant Bigfoot Detective.
“I don’t see anything,” Tobin says, aiming his flashlight on the ground in the shade of the brush and trees and grasses while Charlie hovers over his left shoulder.
I’m on my hands and knees pointing out my discovery, and all of a sudden, I don’t even care about my mosquito bites or the scrape on my knee or that I’m dirty, tired, and hungry, or that I have to go to the bathroom again and the toilet paper is a zillion miles in the opposite direction.
“See here?” I say with my face close to the ground, studying the mud in the extra light of Tobin’s flashlight. “It looks like it could be a footprint in the mud. Aren’t these toes here? And maybe a heel there? Look at this one, and this one over here.” I point. “See them? I think I even see dental ridges on this big toe. Right here. Can you see it? Get your magnifying glass.”
“It’s dermal ridges, not dental ridges,” Tobin reminds me, getting on his knees too and shining the flashlight closer.
“Oh, man,” he breathes. “It is. I see them.”
He pulls his magnifying glass out of his back pocket and eyes them, nose to the dirt. Charlie looks around for additional signs by carefully lifting branches and peering under bushes.
“More prints under the bushes to the left,” he calls from behind a tree. “Two sets. A set of large footprints, and a set of little ones.”
“Same thing over here!” Tobin exclaims. “Adult and a juvenile, you think, Charlie?”
“Juvenile?” I say.
“See?” Tobin pushes the bush up to show me. “Small feet next to the big ones. Don’t you think, Charlie?”
“Could be,” Charlie says, placing his backpack on the ground and unzipping it.
“The Bigfoot that Roger Patterson filmed out here was a female,” Tobin explains. “Some think a mother. Maybe it’s her. Maybe it’s the same one. Wouldn’t that be spectacular? Wouldn’t it, Charlie?” Tobin beams.
“A mother?” I ask. “How do you know that?”
“Why do you have to ask so many questions?” Tobin blurts out, continuing to eyeball the prints with his magnifying glass. “Why can’t you just accept what I tell you?”
“I accept it,” I say. “I just want to know why. Is there some kind of law about asking questions?”
He ignores me.
“Tobin.”
“Fine. It’s because she has…you know…ex-extra parts,” he stammers without looking at me.
“Extra parts? What kind of extra parts?”
“You know…the girly kind…the, ah…the ones up top there.” He waves a hand over his front while a slow storm of red creeps over his cheeks. “Now quit asking so many questions and stop stomping around all over the mud—you’re going to ruin the prints.”
“I’m the one who found them, remember?” I remind him. “Me. I’m not ruining anything.”
He ignores me again.
“What do you think, Charlie? Should we cast them?” Tobin asks.
Charlie nods, pulling packets of white powder and a canteen of water out of his backpack.
“W
hat are you going to do with all that?” I ask.
“He’s mixing up some plaster of Paris; then we’ll pour it in the prints, it will harden, and we’ll be able to take the shape of the print back with us to study it further. The rain will eventually wash these away, and we won’t have anything left. But we should document the find with pictures, too.”
Tobin holds his camera close to the ground and starts taking picture after picture.
“What should I do?” I ask.
“Document with that.” He points to the movie camera still around my neck. “Channel Four News might want to use the discovery footage for a breaking news alert.”
I nod and find the power button on the side of the camera. It makes a soft humming noise. I point it in the direction of Tobin and Charlie working to preserve the prints in the mud.
“Tobin Sky, founder and president of Bigfoot Detectives Inc., and his trusty assistant, Lemonade Liberty Witt, have just discovered what are believed to be possible Bigfoot prints in the forests of Bluff Creek,” I announce in a reporter’s voice. “Lemonade Liberty Witt was on her first expedition when she came upon the prints. If it wasn’t for her quick observational skills, the prints might have been left undiscovered for eternity, or washed away by rain….”
Tobin peers at me over his wire-rims with an annoyed look on his face.
“It’s a silent picture,” he tells me.
“I know it,” I say.
“So just film it. We don’t need the commentary.”
I can’t help but smile.
“Tobin Sky will surely make Lemonade Liberty Witt partner after this amazing find on her part,” I continue. “It’s highly likely that 60 Minutes will want the first interview with Miss Witt. Maybe she will even take over as lead detective at the agency before the summer has ended—”
“Charlie!” Tobin hollers.
I have to cover my mouth so he doesn’t see me snickering.
So, it turns out there’s something even better than prints with dermal ridges.
Footprints with a midtarsal break.
We watch Charlie mix the murky mess of white powder and water together and then pour it into the dried, muddy footprints. There isn’t enough for all the prints, so Charlie just does two of the very best big ones, where you can see the clearest outline of the foot, and one of the very best little ones. When the first one is dry enough to pick up from the mud, Charlie reaches down and pulls it out of the earth to show us.
Lemons Page 7
