Sightings

by B. J. Hollars

  “All right, we got to get out of here,” I told him, standing to leave.

  He didn’t shift his gaze.

  “Hey, Sasquatch,” I repeated, louder this time “it’s time to hit the road.”

  Eventually, Sasquatch conceded, ducking beneath the balloon arch before following me to the parking lot where some of the guys had gathered around one of the cars, passing a couple bottles between them.

  “Yo, Sasquatch,” Lester cried drunkenly, his tie dangling from his neck, “you thirsty or what?”

  He was, apparently, and from that moment forward we referred to that evening as “The Night Sasquatch Got Soused on Peppermint Schnapps and Nobody Could Blame Him.” After all, if any of us had blown it half that badly with Becca Marsden, we would have done the same, probably worse, resorting to paint thinner or turpentine if necessary, anything to help us forget. In a show of solidarity, I matched him drink for drink, guzzling all kinds of throat-burning liquor in that silent parking lot, trying to ease our heartache.

  The other guys must have thought us hilarious, wrapping our lips around the bottles like a couple of nursing babies. We just drank until we could hardly stand, then took turns trying to climb the wildcat statue just beyond the parking lot lights. Somewhere between Dave riding the wildcat like a bucking bronco and Lester chipping his tooth on the statue’s tail, Sasquatch began his slow bumble back toward the woods.

  “Hey, Sasquatch,” Dave called, spotting him. “Where you headed? We gotta return that suit or my uncle’s gonna flip.”

  Sasquatch stripped down right there in the parking lot, removing the enormous pants, the button-up, the suit coat. He even placed his specially made shoe canoes neatly beside the cufflinks.

  I stumbled after him, following him to the edge of the woods but no further.

  “Ey, maybe I’ll see ya around,” I slurred. “Whatya think?”

  He shrugged, leaning against a tree as he doubled-over, vomiting a river into the leaves.

  “That’s what ya think, huh?” I laughed, balancing against a nearby tree myself. “Well anyway . . . anywho . . . we’ll see ya around, huh? Won’t we? Won’t we be seeing you around, Sasquatch?”

  He lumbered toward me, placed his palms on my shoulders, and nodded.

  For a time, I actually believed him.

  Looking back, there are plenty of other regrets; it’s the curse of retrospection.

  But mostly the guys I still keep in touch with, we just keep rehashing our senior year’s basketball season – its ups and downs, our untimely loss against Meadowbrook. Sometimes we dedicate entire evenings to discussing how things might have turned out differently.

  But no matter how many times we replay it in our heads – sticking one second more on the shot clock, one final release at the buzzer – the score never changes, nor do we come to new conclusions. We’re left knowing just what we always knew; that Coach was right, the only way we could’ve pulled off that win was with a healthy Sasquatch.

  He was a biological curiosity, sure, but we on the team always knew he was also something more.

  “A class act,” Dave once proclaimed during a lunch break at the auto parts store where he works.

  “Played ball with heart, too,” agreed Lester who now steams carpets for a living.

  Here in Wallerton, all that remains of Sasquatch are our weakening memories: a blurry yearbook photo, an empty space in the trophy case. Somewhere in my basement, there’s a pair of 26EEE-sized shoes, but I couldn’t tell you where.

  We’re not alone in our regret; Becca Marsden’s runs much deeper. After dropping out of college, Becca married a long-distance trucker, though they soon divorced after her husband decided his top priority was driving microwaves to Salinas, California. We figured this had all been in the cards for quite some time. She put on a couple of pounds, woke one morning to find cellulite clinging to her thighs, and can now be found working part-time at the public library shelving mysteries. I’ve been told she’s the proud owner of seven cats and enjoys making gingerbread houses. Rumor has it she dabbles in scientology.

  People swear that some nights – when she’s not at the library – her silhouette can be seen on the ridge overlooking the town. She’s hollering into the woods, begging Sasquatch to return to her, shouting to all who will listen that her prom-night behavior was the biggest mistake of her life.

  Despite my efforts, I’ve been unable to track him down myself. Old Sasquatch seems simply to have vanished into our past, a shadow of a memory. I’ve searched for him on every basketball court and in every Winnebago in the state. Every Dumpster. Even combed the woods behind the old high school, shaking a bag full of Big Macs.

  I’ve looked under rocks, in caves, in the streams where the fattest trout swim.

  Listened for the cracking of ice cubes.

  Sniffed for his stench.

  But the closest I’ve come are a few muddy footprints and an empty bottle of schnapps.

  Westward Expansion

  BLYTHEDALE, MISSOURI, 1999

  Manifest Destiny, Dad explained, is something we should always keep in the forefront of our minds. “Because the only reason California even exists right now,” he chided, “is because our ancestors made it so.” He nodded when he said this, walking my sister and me over to the scotch-taped map on the wall to trace the route the Fowler family trod while doing their part for American expansion.

  On Dad’s orders, Samantha and I would then shut ourselves in the computer room and play Oregon Trail in order to develop a better sense of our family heritage. Dad was adamant about our making use of this “learning aid,” often dropping by to check on our progress, see if we had yet reached Fort Hall or the outpost. Sam – a third grader at the time – didn’t yet know much of wagon trains, though this hardly discouraged her from arguing endlessly with me about how many axles and boxes of ammunition were required to survive the trek. Dad listened quietly from behind our computer chairs, though on occasion, the temptation to correct us proved too great. Once, when Sam and I decided to ford the river rather than take the ferry, our frustrated father informed us that fording a river was a “damn good way to come down with a bout of cholera.”

  “Haven’t I taught you kids anything?”

  When Dad wasn’t lurking, Sam and I turned our attention to hunting buffalo, clicking the mouse as fast as we could to bring the hairy beasts down. Once, Dad walked into the room mid-bloodbath, crying out, “Jesus, guys. Never shoot more than you can carry home. We’re not barbarians!” But we were, kind of, and although there were deer and rabbits to shoot, we knew better than to waste precious ammo on species that yielded so little.

  “You know, historically speaking,” Dad once explained, “the hunting aspect of the game is all wrong. Back in the good old days, pioneers were still reliant on the single shot muzzle-loaders. No way in hell a man could reload as fast as you’re shooting – not even someone as skilled as your great-great-great-uncle Floyd. Common sense tells us that, and history.”

  Yet we continued to break the rules of history – clicking fast, killing often. We figured our great-great-great-uncle Floyd would’ve been proud – no one ever went hungry in our camp. While spinning in our chairs, Sam and I munched the limbs off animal crackers and waited for the buffalo stampede. The moment their pixilated bodies invaded our screen, we’d play our white man part to drive them to near extinction.

  Click. Pow. Click. Pow. Ten thousand pounds of meat.

  Mom didn’t approve of any of this.

  “I don’t care who our ancestors are, that doesn’t give you the right to shut our kids in a room all afternoon!”

  “First off,” Dad countered, “it’s only for an hour or two every few days – a pretty minimal investment given the educational return. And second, once they manage to reach the ocean without wiping out half the goddamned wagon train, then they’re free to take a break.”

  Sam and I could often be found listening from the other side of the door – a fact Dad knew well when
he swung it wide.

  “Right guys?” he asked, looking at us. “Tell your Mom. Am I right or am I right?”

  We didn’t know. All we knew was he was our father.

  There were things about Dad that Mom said if our teachers found out, we’d have child services swarming all over the house. Things like Dad’s habit of leaving slabs of rotting meat in the basement sink. Things like the deer carcass splayed out in the living room for four days last November.

  That year, Dad transformed himself into a mighty hunter, and though he initially appeared childish in his oversized orange vest and camo hat, the rifle added an unexpected legitimacy to the charade.

  “Yup, off to bag some big game to feed the family,” he said, insisting that we line up at the door to see him off. He liked to give the illusion that he was headed off to war, not just the backwoods off of U.S. 20.

  And though we had our doubts, Dad turned out to be a pretty good shot, taking his deer during the season’s weekend opener, even snagging a turkey a few months later.

  Dad’s friend, Ron Carter, was a fellow hunter, and a man who ran a deer farm to support the small faction of hunting tourists who lingered within the city limits. Mom thought the entire operation repulsive – to raise an animal only to shoot it for sport – but Dad explained it to us in terms we could understand: “It’s called the Circle of Life. You saw the movie, right?”

  Ron’s industry made him nothing short of a venison aficionado. He ate deer the way most people ate chicken – in a seemingly endless array of possibilities. During his hunting years, Dad managed to try out nearly all of Ron’s recipes: deer patties, deer stew, chuck wagon venison, even venison stroganoff. Dad made a production out of each of his so-called “creations,” gathering us around the kitchen table for a sermon-length prayer, thanking God and the bullet and the deer and his steady hand. For theatric effect, he kept his meal veiled under a silver cover, leaving us to guess what peculiar concoction festered beneath.

  Beaming, he’d say, “Without further adieu,” and then, with a flourish, remove the cover. We’d look at it hesitantly, and hesitantly, he’d look back at us.

  “Well, Ron gave me the recipe,” he’d shrug, shaking his head. “Goddamn Ron. I didn’t think it would even turn out as well as it did. It’s a miracle, really.”

  Over the years, my father discovered that the problem with killing large mammals was space; that is, where you keep the carcass. Where do you keep a quarter hind? Ron Carter had recommended several butchers, but Dad – who fancied himself “one with the earth” – wanted to do it his way: “We shall honor this deer’s untimely death by dividing her equally between the living room and basement sink.”

  This alternative to butchering practices was not embraced by all, though my mother, who had long before learned to pick her battles carefully, turned to Sam and me and said, “Please don’t tell your teachers.”

  Before I could offer my own two cents, Dad and Ron had already begun dragging the front half of her into the living room atop a bloodstained tarp. She stunk of guts and wet leaves, though my father informed us that what we really smelled was victory.

  We turned to our mother for answers.

  “It’s only temporary,” she promised. “Just a day or two.”

  We kept staring.

  “Look, he means well. He just doesn’t know how to be well. Does that make any sense?”

  Sam and I nodded because it was easier than continuing the discussion.

  As Dad and Ron began filling the basement sink with her hindquarters, Sam and I took turns flipping through television channels, growing ever more uncomfortable with the third set of eyes watching with us.

  That year in sixth grade social studies, Mrs. Powell sent a letter home asking if Dad would like to give the class a short presentation on “the perils of westward expansion.” We were just wrapping up the unit, and she’d been impressed by my knowledge of Manifest Destiny, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and in particular, my analysis of the painting Dad kept in his den, the one called American Progress.

  “Basically it’s got this giant woman walking west with a book in her hand,” I described to the class. “And all around her, families are in wagons and on horses, and they’re all moving west, too. But the thing that most people don’t see, the thing that my dad had to point out to me, was that the white woman is stringing telegraph wire as she walks. It’s supposed to represent progress, I think, like the spread of progress to the west.”

  With that, quite regrettably, I’d piqued Mrs. Powell’s interest and proved my father a credible source.

  “Max, do you suppose your dad would be willing to speak to our class?” she asked one day after the bell rang. I knew the answer – Yes! Certainly! Where do I sign up? – but I shrugged and said he was usually pretty busy managing the line at the tire factory. “He works a lot of hours,” I explained. “And this is their busy season. Tire season.”

  “Tire season, of course,” she winked. “Well, maybe we’ll try him all the same, see if we can’t get lucky.”

  Mrs. Powell must have sensed my hesitation because she didn’t ask me to deliver the letter directly. Instead, it arrived in the mail (making it more difficult to intercept), and Dad, who rarely received anything that wasn’t a bill or a renewal request for American West Quarterly, made a grand production over the letter.

  “Well what do we have here?” he called, extracting a rarely used letter opener from his desk and tearing the top off the envelope. He began reading it aloud, and from where I sat next to my sister on the couch, I could just make out his delighted facial expressions through the doorway to the den.

  “Hey Maxy,” he called to me. “You know any Cynthia Powell?”

  “Social studies teacher.”

  I kept my focus on the television.

  “Says here,” he cleared his throat, “that she’s selected me to give a presentation over at your school next week.”

  “Just a small talk, I think, Dad. And not for the whole school, just our class.”

  “Mmhmm. A presentation. Some kind of speech, it says here. On the perils of westward expansion.”

  “Maybe for like ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Mmhmm. Well, I do know quite a bit about perils.”

  I glanced over to catch him drawing his finger blindly along the calendar. “Well let’s see if I’ve got any openings . . .”

  A few minutes later, I overheard him and Mom discussing it in the kitchen.

  “I don’t know, Amy. I’d have to take off work,” Dad said, ho-humming around for Mom’s permission. “It’s just that I’ve been selected and all, and I’d hate to deprive the youth of America from such a valuable learning opportunity . . .”

  “Just . . . try not to embarrass him,” Mom whispered. “He’s your son. Twenty minutes tops, okay? Tops.”

  He said sure, sure, of course, twenty minutes. A twenty-five minute presentation would be just about right. Maybe thirty, he assured, but not a minute more.

  I didn’t tell anyone he was coming. Maybe, I thought, the class wouldn’t even recognize him beneath his cotton smock.

  I entered Mrs. Powell’s classroom a few minutes early, and though he hadn’t yet arrived, I could sense a kind of father-son-impending-doom in progress.

  The others wandered in, slid into desks, anxiously awaiting the “surprise guest” Mrs. Powell had promoted throughout the week.

  “As you all know,” Mrs. Powell began, clasping her hands together, “today is a very special day for us. So special, in fact, that we’ve brought back a man who lived over one hundred and fifty years ago!” She waited for an awe that did not come. “And he made a trip all the way to the present day to tell you about a little something called . . . The Oregon Trail.”

  Jesus, I thought, Dad put her up to this. He probably wrote her lines.

  From behind, I heard the clip-clop of dusty boots, a familiar clearing of the throat. The others turned, but I didn’t; I knew what I’d see if I did.


  “Has any of you’s all seen Chimney Rock?”

  I glanced up to view him in full garb, a hand blocking out the invisible sun as he scanned the faces of my peers. “Well, has you or ain’t you? You ain’t slow in the head, are ye? Answer me!”

  On our family vacation a few years back, while driving through Oregon City, Oregon, Dad insisted we stop at some pioneer museum so he could show off his Floyd Fowler impression to the curator. The curator had listened thoughtfully as Dad recited his lines from memory. When he’d finished, Dad struck a heroic pose – knee bent and hands thrust toward the heavens – waiting for applause.

  “Well,” the curator had said, “that certainly was a liberal interpretation of pioneer colloquialisms. But you know, primary sources indicate that the language you have employed here, in particular the use of ‘ain’t’ and . . . was it ‘you’s all’? In any event, those phrases are anachronistic of the time period, and further . . .”

  Our red-faced father had no idea what the hell the man was talking about (he understood only that the guy wasn’t clapping), so he stormed out, grabbing my sister and me by our hands as Mom followed close behind.

  It was a tough lesson, though Dad’s classroom performance served as proof that he’d taken none of it to heart. However, thanks to a more forgiving audience, his reenactment of Floyd Fowler received an encore from my classmates. Dad did everything from demonstrating how best to slather on bear grease (“Nature’s bug spray!”) to how to carve an apple with a Bowie knife (“Nature’s carver!”).

  “You see, the thing most of you folks from the twentieth century don’t realize,” he said, clouds of dust puffing from his boots, “is that we pioneers didn’t have all those newfangled contraptions you have nowadays. If we want fire, by God, then we rub some flint together and we make fire.”

  “Can you make one right now?” asked Jimmy Goings.