Bigfoots in Paradise

by Doug Lawson

  The barn had been red once, but it’s gray and weathered now. They can still see an old, faded ad for chewing tobacco along the one side that faces nothing but a long stretch of fields, mounded up with what must be hills of green cow shit. Flies rise up in great glittering clouds as they pull in and a dozen cows mill in and out of the structure or are lying in the shade, chewing and swatting restlessly with their tails. Most of them are the black and white blotched ones, and they’re the worst looking animals Claude has ever seen—scrawny and runny-eyed, ribs showing, with big bloated udders that swing ponderously, threatening to tip them over as they walk. Only three of them are looking all right—three smaller, dirty white cows that mill in and around the others.

  Alpo takes some medical gloves from the briefcase and passes a set to Claude, then rummages around under the seat and pulls out two folded packages, one of which he hands over. “Be careful of a couple of things,” he says, unwrapping the other package. It’s a blue jumpsuit of some kind, made out of a thin, pliable material almost like paper. “Don’t come into full contact with any of them if you can help it. If you do, there’s gas in the back of the truck you should wash yourself off with, whatever touches. The quicker the better and watch out for your eyes. We had goggles last time around, but I don’t see any here now. They don’t move all that fast, so it shouldn’t be all that big a deal. Put this on, too.” He hands Claude a thin mask to cover his face and nose, then shakes out the suit and pulls the legs on over his shoes.

  He gets out of the truck with the briefcase. Claude puts the mask on over the bandages, pulls the gloves on, and then slides into the suit and zips it up. It’s huge and billowing—he feels inflated, like some sort of circus act, half blimp, half clown. Blankets of flies spring into the air, shifting and darting like flocks of birds across the sun.

  “What I need to do,” Alpo says, “is isolate each of the standard animals, look it over, and extract a sample of fluid from the spinal column. Then we’ll round up ours, those three whites and the calves, wherever they are, and take them with us.” He points to the white cows. “Bring the gas down. I’ll feel better having it close.”

  The cow doesn’t move, though its eyes track Alpo as he gets closer. He murmurs to it in a monotone. The cow doesn’t seem to react until he’s right up on top of it. But then it spooks, blows steam out of its nose, and swivels its head around. It lets out a low bawl and its legs start to quiver. It edges backward into the field, keeping its eyes on Alpo.

  “Circle around from behind,” Alpo calls.

  Claude makes a wide arc and comes in behind the cow, hands spread, enough to the side so that the cow can see him, but not far enough over that it’ll have a way to get by him. They back it toward the fence. The cow shivers more, lets loose a long fart, and Claude gets a hot whiff of it even through the bandages and the clotted blood in his nose. The gas is heavy and dank and foul, a soup of everything he hates about this country. He takes a step back and his eyes water up.

  “Pretty fierce, huh? I wouldn’t light any matches if I were you.” Alpo gets up to the head of the cow, grabs it around the neck, and sets to work. He pats the cow down, feeling along its sides and up under its stomach for any sores or strange lumps, murmuring low, meaningless words to calm the animal. He rolls back its eyelids on each side and checks in its ears. Then he cracks the briefcase again and takes out the syringe. The long needle slides smoothly between the thick vertebrae of the cow’s neck. Alpo’s thumb pulls back and the flask fills with a pale pink fluid. When it’s full, he pops it out, places it carefully in the briefcase, and replaces it with an empty one.

  They move on to the next cow, and then try for a third. It’s not easy—they’re a skittish bunch, prone to bolting, and the hard part is getting close enough to them to grab on. Alpo tells Claude to get Frank Charles, and they glove and mask him too. It takes Frank a few minutes to figure it all out—he puts his feet in the wrong legs and gets the mask on upside-down, and in the end Claude has to dress him. But he makes a fine sheepdog, running along the perimeter and rounding up the quicker ones. “I do this every morning,” he says. “Great way to get some exercise. Maxie! C’mere, girl.” The dogs leap from the porch and duck under a well-worn part of the wooden fence. Frank comes up behind the cows and claps his hands low to the ground and startles them into motion. Then he jogs along behind them, head thrown back and stepping high with his toes, pumping his arms into the air, just out of their view. He makes a lot of noise, huffing and clapping his hands and shouting. “Hey!” he says. “Ho there! Supercows, look out! I’m comin’ atcha!” The cattle swivel their heads back and forth, trying to get a look at Claude and Alpo, Frank Charles and the dogs all at the same time. They shift as a group in and out of the shelter of the barn, now bumping together, now scattering into the field. Frank Charles keeps jerking and shouting, the dogs circle and growl and startle them at random, and sometimes the cows run in the direction of Alpo and sometimes they don’t.

  But once they do reach him, Alpo calms the cows into a trance and they don’t move at all; they just stand there with blank looks while he does his thing. He makes notes on the small computer after examining each animal. When he’s on the last few, and those are all corralled into a group, Claude opens the back gate of the truck and slides out a metal ramp. He climbs inside, grabs a long length of rope, and ties a loop in it. There’s a bright flash in the distance and heavy thunder rolls in on the breeze. From up here he can see the long line of new thunderclouds coming in low over the endless stretch of stunted pine trees and scrub.

  Back down in the field, he comes up on one of the white cows slowly, in the same way Alpo did, mumbling under his breath. He gets up next to it and lowers the rope over its head. He tightens it and gives a tug. The cow doesn’t react. He tugs again, and the cow lifts its head and looks him in the eye. The cow’s eye is dark brown and its iris is full and black like his father’s, and there Claude is, alone in the middle of it all, reflected in that deep black pool of water.

  The feeling passes. It’s a cow, Claude tells himself. He gives it another tug and it starts walking with him, right up onto the back of the truck. In the cab, the flip phone is ringing, like some far-off, monstrous insect. He waits until it’s done.

  He’s leaning over to untie the knot when he hears Alpo give out a kind of high-pitched keening, a weird sound, like a rabbit run over. Claude hops off the truck and comes around. “Fuck me!” Alpo yells. He’s standing there in the center of a silent audience of cows with a gray look, holding one wet, gloveless, chimp hand up in front of his face and picking long slivers of a broken glass vial out of it. “The thunder spooked them,” he says. “They all shifted. Goddamn it! Get me that gasoline, will you? This thing was full.”

  Claude brings a jug over and pours it. There are several shallow bleeding gashes across Alpo’s small palm. Alpo grimaces as he scrubs his hand with the other gloved one, and nods for Claude to pour again. “I am so entirely fucked,” Alpo says. “I mean, like entirely.” He has Claude bring him a towel from the truck and he wraps it around the wound.

  When they’re finished loading, they douse the fly-covered, maggot-ridden bodies of the few dead cows with the rest of gasoline and set them alight. Alpo, subdued and withdrawn, has them toss in their gloves and masks and suits, and then he picks up another container of gas and spreads it across the field on the biggest piles of shit and sets them on fire too. They catch fast and burn high, and the black smoke is strong enough to make them all lightheaded as they lean up against the cab of the truck. The sky goes dark, and rain slides toward them in gray sheets across the trees.

  Alpo hands Frank Charles a stack of twenties. “So you know where you’ve been, Frank?” he asks.

  Frank nods and says, “I been down to the casinos in Folsom, drivin’ all night. I got lucky at the craps there just like I do every couple months or so.”

  Alpo says, “And you’re to wait four weeks before the milk is set for consumption or sale, as per your contr
act.”

  “I hear ya.”

  “Remember that consumption can have serious side effects, and that we can’t be held liable in any way should you choose to ignore the guidelines.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He scratches at the dirt with his foot. First one, then the other. He says, “Hey, you guys ever think of doing chickens?”

  “Chickens.”

  “Sure. Superchickens. Extra eggs, you know—maybe they could pop them out already hard-boiled.” He cackles. “I mean, chickens are pretty bad to start with. You seen what they eat, how they live in those big farms? Eating shit all day, then they kill you. How much worse could it get?”

  “I’ll pass that along.”

  “You should. I’d never touch ’em myself, mind you. You know those things came from snakes?”

  There’s a bright flash and the slap of thunder and a cow from the back lets out a startled bawl. Frank Charles waves, though they’re standing right in front of him, and he wanders back toward the house with the dogs in tow. The rain sweeps in like it was dumped out of a bucket.

  Alpo and Claude get back into the cab of the truck with the heater on. Alpo sets the briefcase full of cow fluid behind his seat, sighs, and gestures toward the house. Frank Charles is out on the porch. He stands there with his dogs in a half circle around him and his face tilted up at the sky with a train of smoke blowing across him and the rain sweeping in, his arms outstretched like a preacher over his congregation.

  “Guy’s not right.” Claude runs a hand through his hair to get it back out of his eyes. The bandages are soaked through with sweat and rain.

  Alpo pushes the glasses back up his nose. “Can’t say we didn’t warn him.” He lifts up his hand, peels off the towel, and studies it.

  “So you’ve got to tell me,” Claude says. “Is this all for real?”

  Alpo looks over at him. “The supercows?” Alpo says. “Remember, you’ve only seen part of it. If this goes like the other test groups I’ve seen, within two weeks all of Frank Charles’ livestock will be dead.”

  “Sure. Right.” Claude looks out the window on his side. All of Frank Charles’ cows have gathered under what’s left of the barn. “What’s that mean for you, then?” Meaning the scratches, his hand.

  Alpo doesn’t answer the question. “It’s your last day, right?” Claude nods. “Roy-boy call you?”

  “You know he did.”

  “He wants to make you an offer. You going to take it?”

  “Should I?”

  “I did.” Alpo shakes his head, holds out the injured hand and gestures with it to take in the truck, the cows, the farm. “Learn from your elders. And kid? If you make the right choice—and I think you just might? Then the less you know about any of this situation, what’s real, what’s not, the better. Get me?”

  Claude nods, feeling like he’s swimming across the wicked current offshore of Bouctouche Harbor, struggling for shore. He reaches under the wheel and starts up the truck. He backs up to the barn to turn around, then pulls around the house. Frank Charles doesn’t open his eyes, but he gives them two thumbs up as they pass. Claude pulls one short blast out of the air horn and there’s a flash of lightning at the very same time. Frank Charles cracks one of the widest, most off-center grins Claude has ever seen. His long, piss-colored teeth jump out of the twilight, and his mouth and tongue are so deep and black that all the rest of that last drive—picking up cows, burning things—all the rest of his way back across half of the world to his father’s Canadian coast in a beat-up old Dodge, all the rest of his long and quiet life spent catching fish and selling them to his father’s cousins and their cousins and friends that he knew once as a child and would come to know again, the face ambushes Claude, jumping out of sets of double-yellow road lines when he least expects it.

  THE BEEKEEPER OF RIO MOMON

  “WHAT YOU DO—” said the guy, and I rolled my eyes. He had on a red shirt and a Cleveland Indians baseball cap that I knew Hugo would think was ironic. “What you do is you go down to that burger cart. No, that one right there. Sí?” The guy pointed. Hugo nodded. It was across the flooded road, past the boys with the makeshift uniforms and the automatic rifles, past the tuk-tuks, down near where the bus was slowly being submerged. “Doble hamburgesa con huevo. You order the double burger with egg.” He hitched up his beltless pants and put his hand on Hugo’s shoulder—they were the best of friends now, apparently. “Then you sit on that bench. No, the blue one. Someone will come and get you.” The guy kicked at one of the dark-haired kids who swirled around us, eyes wide, hands outstretched. The kid dodged easily, laughed, and made what I assumed was an obscene gesture with both hands.

  “Can I eat the burger?” Hugo said. He mimed eating. “With egg? Can I eat it? Or will that throw off the signal?”

  The guy blinked. “Amigo, it’s your fucking burger, eh?”

  “We don’t want to buy drugs,” I said.

  “If we want to find Chuck, we need to think like Chuck, right?” Hugo said. “Chuck would definitely party with this guy, Kimmy.”

  I put my hand over Hugo’s mouth. “We need to buy hammocks. ¿Hamaca?” I drew a smile in the air with my hand. “¿Amanka? For the boat. For sleeping?”

  “Oh,” said the guy. He shrugged and looked at Hugo, who was, after all, the man. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I’m not sure why,” I said, releasing Hugo to speak. “Why didn’t we say so, Hugo?”

  “A burger sounds pretty good right now is why,” said Hugo. “Hamburguesa. With egg. Is it a chicken egg? ¿Huevo de pollo?”

  “Gallina.”

  “What’s a gallina?”

  “The hen,” I said. “The one that does all the work. Look, we really just want some hammocks.”

  “I take you to my brother’s house,” the guy said. “He has just what you want, amiga.”

  “There’s no one right around here who sells them?” I gestured vaguely. There were tents and ramshackle stalls at either end of the flooded street. People—gringos, mostly—sloshed slowly between them, heads down, with sodden bundles in their hands.

  “My brother, he makes the best hammocks. For the sleeping. The very best.” He signaled one of the tuk-tuk drivers. The driver started up his tiny engine and drove the rickshaw over to us through the flooded street.

  “Of course he does,” I said, shaking my head. I shifted my backpack. “This is going to take more than awhile, isn’t it?”

  “We got time,” said Hugo. “Maybe we should eat first. I know this good burger place?”

  I’d known Hugo since the third grade. If he had his way, we would have traveled here in search of Chuck powered solely by pot smoke and sugary breakfast cereals.

  “Never mind,” I said to the guy. “No thank you, amigo. Come on,” I told Hugo.

  “My brother, he will give you a very good price!” said the guy. “For the sleeping!” He climbed onto the step of the tuk-tuk. The driver followed slowly behind us as we waded down the sidewalk, through the crowds of children, away from the bus station and toward the stalls, or what was left of them. “What else you need? Fish? Bananas? Girls? You want to party?”

  “Party?” said Hugo, turning back.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing the frame of his pack and yanking it. Hugo stumbled and almost went down in the water, which was full of dirt and trash and a lot of other things that I didn’t want to think about. The river and the rain together had dredged out all of the town’s sins and were in the process spreading them around equitably. As if on cue, a pair of condoms swirled into the tiny eddy about my ankles. “This was a bad idea,” I said, shaking my head. I was tired of the rain, the heat, of this country and all of the boys with guns. I was tired of traveling. The flight had been typically awful. The bus had been thirty-one hours of Spanish movies, rows of beautiful, terrible babies howling in chorus, roosters posturing and strutting down the aisles, and a goat bleating loud enough to raise the dead. I was tired of Hugo, all of his endless verbal banter, the ADD
thing, the self-imposed frat-boy naiveté. I was tired of being tired. And I wanted a bath.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the tiny woman in the first stall. “Do you speak English? ¿Hablas español? Awesome. ¿Has visto a este hombre?” I held up the empty honey jar we’d carried with us since Lima—it had Chuck’s self-portrait on the label next to an old tattooed Indian man, both of them in front of a line of hive boxes. But it was Chuck who stood out: his dreadlocked hair in supernova, his face in one of his characteristic amused grimaces. The old Indian guy just looked tired. These men, I thought, exhaust all of us.

  The woman frowned as if her lack of recognition was a tragic source of grief to her. She shook her head silently. “No lo conozco.”

  “Didn’t think so,” I said. “Well, hey, estoy buscando hamacas?”

  “For the sleeping!” the woman said, suddenly electric. She threw her hands in the air and did a splashy little dance. “My brother’s hammocks are the very best!”

  “Of that,” I said, “I have no doubt.” I unzipped my money belt and watched as the crowds of children swarmed in for the kill.

  It had been nearly seven months to the day since I had heard from Charles Parham, aka Chuck Mustard, who we also called the Yeti for both his stature and his prodigious and elaborate white-blond hair. Chuck the squash farmer. Chuck the erratic scooter rider and crazed kombucha maker. Chuck the beekeeper and iconoclastic designer, whose bizarre and brilliant posters for our tiny urban farm in Oakland had gotten us noticed by Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and—disturbingly though very profitably—Walmart, and who I’d been more than a little in love with, though I’d been far from the only one.

  Chuck Mustard, who had suddenly departed two years back, to travel South America on the strength of his expansive personality and a shoestring budget grant from Burners Without Borders to do some sort of economic development. (Though exactly where, how, and with what resources seemed highly uncertain and frankly a little suspect.)