Sightings (7 page)

“She wants you to dance,” I repeated, demonstrating a few moves myself. He imitated my one-foot shuffle, though his actions only managed to magnify my own uncoordinated efforts.

She rolled her eyes, so he stroked the front of her face with his palm as nature dictated.

“Hey! Don't be a brute,” she joked, reaching for her compact and eyeing herself in the mirror. Upon spotting the damage he'd wrought she turned serious. “Damn it, Squatch. You smeared my foundation.”

We watched her stomp into the bathroom, trailed by her entourage, and when she finally returned ten minutes later she didn't return to us.

Becca – who had found Sasquatch so endearing just minutes prior – was quickly tiring of his inability to be a proper date. Upon their return, we wandered back within face-petting distance of our dates, though this time – rather than continuing where he'd left off – Sasquatch began massaging Becca's scalp, instead. She started shooting S.O.S. looks to her friends; the message received by all the homo sapiens in the room.

“Maybe you want some punch?” I asked Becca, hoping to get Sasquatch back on track or at least momentarily out of her hair. She shrugged as if she didn't much care either way, so I started toward the punch bowl, Sasquatch trailing.

“Now look,” I shouted over the music, watching as Sasquatch shoved through the punch line, leaving a few linebackers sprawling. “Becca's going to want to dance with you, so you're going to have to dance with her to keep her happy, does that make sense?”

He was so preoccupied fitting the ladle into his gigantic palm he didn't hear a word I said.

“Dance,” I repeated, sashaying. “Think you can do that?”

Ignoring me, he kept his attention on fishing out the ice cubes as if they were wild trout.

“Okay,” I said, grabbing his wrist, “nod once if you understand me.”

He shrugged instead, his hands swallowing up the punch cups as we started back across the gymnasium floor.

But upon finding Jenny standing alone in the corner, braces glinting like a buzz saw, Sasquatch's confidence quickly subsided.

“What happened to Becca?” I asked her.

Jenny – who, on more than one occasion had said, “Arnold, if Sasquatch is so important to you, why not take him to prom?” – flipped her chin to the opposite side of the gymnasium. There, Becca stood engaged in what appeared to be a spellbinding conversation with her ex-boyfriend, Ed Gorman. Probably, he was apologizing for having felt her up prematurely, though in comparison to Sasquatch's face-petting/scalp-massaging, at least Gorman's groping seemed a bit more conventional.

Jenny clopped off herself, and I reasoned there wasn't much point in following.

Sasquatch and I planted ourselves firmly on the bleachers, a pair of downtrodden wallflowers with nothing but droopy boutonnieres. We knew this gym well, having hustled down every inch of it, but everything looked different when we weren't the center of attention.

Years later, I'd return to that gym and find myself still haunted by the memories. All those missed free throws, lay-ups. The three-pointer from the top of the key. The jump shot. The other jump shot. How I pulled instead of passed. Ducked instead of dribbled.

But there were other regrets, too: wishing I'd found the nerve to ask out all the girls I hadn't. Wishing I'd unfastened the push-up bra when I had the chance, smeared the make-up, run my hands through a girl's perfect hair. Wishing also that I'd applied to schools, sent out game tapes, tried walking onto a team or two.

But I didn't, not ever, and as the years slipped away I just grew older, fatter, and accepted my place on the bleachers alongside everyone else.

Thankfully, on prom night, Sasquatch and the rest of the team managed to hold the future at a safe distance, boxing it out the best we could as the precious minutes of youth wound down. While most of the guys made it a point to stop by and tell Sasquatch how damn good he looked in that suit coat, those shoes, it didn't seem to shake him from his stupor. Breaking up was hard – I would learn myself a few weeks later – and not even Sasquatch's freshly combed coat provided adequate protection for his heart.

Two slow songs and a chicken dance later, I glanced over to catch Sasquatch's curled fingers fiddling with a loose cufflink while Frank Sinatra's “The Way You Look Tonight” wafted through the air.

“Here,” I sighed, taking hold of his hand and placing it on my knee. I rolled his sleeve down his hairy arm, inserting the metal piece back into its fitting. He didn't pay me the slightest attention, his eyes still focused curiously on the lovely Becca as she folded herself back into her ex.

“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 26
EEE-
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.

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.