Sightings (5 page)

All I know is, I'm not trying to will Felicity Blanket back because I'm in love with her, if that's what you're thinking. It's not like we're friends with benefits, either, which would be weird because we don't even run in the same circles.

Most likely, I'm just some normal guy with a mind like a sieve and a super special power. But let's keep that power a secret. The trick to harnessing a secret power is to keep quiet about it, otherwise everyone will want you dead or showing it off.

Sandy would probably say, “Way to keep that secret, Roger! You've got a mind like a sieve but a mouth like a vise,” which is funny to think about because if my mind were an
actual
sieve, then my brain would probably just run out my nose like some glorious booger.

That's probably why I'm so good at keeping my secret – I loathe boogers just like all normal guys.

But I love schooners, have I told you?

I guess that's about the one thing ol' Hitler and me have in common, artistically speaking. Though, if you look closely enough at our schooners, perhaps you'll find something else.

Go ahead, grab your magnifying glass, I'll wait.

. . .

See? Right there.

. . .

Look closer. It's as clear as the Rhine River:

We're both one oar short of a set.

It's difficult, even now, to distinguish senior prom from the one that came before. Both years held the same mysteries: we boys staring helplessly at our cufflinks and suspenders, trying desperately to crack their secret codes. Meanwhile, the girls had their own mysteries to unravel: hair, make-up, push-up bras, time logged in the tanning beds.

Despite all their similarities, there was at least one detail that distinguished one year from the next. Senior year, Becca Marsden – whose scent alone could cause boys' pants to swell – chose not to attend with her recent ex, Ed Gorman (their falling out the result of a mishandled groping session). Instead, she accompanied the new student who'd lumbered into our lives a few months prior at the start of the basketball season.

His name was Sasquatch, and he was furry, wore 26
EEE
-sized shoes. Measuring in at 7'9”, he'd immediately caught the eye of our basketball coach, who'd spotted him trampling through the woods behind the school Dumpster, licking grease from a yellow Big Mac wrapper. After hours of Coach's coaxing – “Look, Kid, you're about the only thing holding us back from a state title,” – Sasquatch eventually submitted, enrolling as a member of the senior class at Wallerton High just a few days after his recruitment.

He didn't have any family, so the boosters set him up the best they could, offering him an engineless Winnebago left to rust deep in the heart of an unknown wilderness. Tinted windows, a screened door – it was all that he required. Though, in truth, he also required privacy, and after a flurry of overzealous crypto-zoologists began making the “unknown wilderness” a bit more known, Sasquatch was rumored to have yoked himself with a few sturdy chains and dragged his home to a more remote location.

Equally troublesome was Sasquatch's brusque entrance into the competitive world of high school sports, particularly for the coaches of the teams in our division. They cited Sasquatch's ineligibility on a variety of fronts, and when our coach fired back (“Let the kid play for Christ sake!”), he was told to provide “the kid's” birth certificate, a
DNA
sample, a genus, and a species. Coach spent much of the next week working out the details of Sasquatch's genus and species, sitting him down in the library while he leafed through the
Field Guide to North American Mammals.
Coach had only made it through the D's (deer mouse, draft horse, dwarf rabbit) when local lawyer and sports activist Denny Hardaway rushed to the team's defense, warning the Indiana High School Athletic Committee of the discrimination suit they'd have on their hands if they remained hell-bent on violating Sasquatch's civil rights. Fearing legal retribution, the
IHSAC
allowed his entrance onto the basketball court, despite repeated warning of “the dangerous precedent” they were setting.

Yet three games into the season, the only “dangerous precedent” Sasquatch seemed to have set was packing the stands well beyond the fire marshal's liking. He'd become a sensation, making repeat appearances on the highlight reels on the 10:00 news, as well as earning the coveted cover spot of
Prep Sports Weekly,
silhouetted with a deflated basketball in his mouth beneath the headline:
This One's Fur Real.

While most of the team never really got to know him outside of practice, we all agreed he seemed like a stand-up guy: never a harsh word, never cocky. When Coach cried, “Wind sprints, ladies!” Sasquatch bounded down the court in six or seven strides, occasionally slowing so as not to make the rest of us look bad. Though three years as a dedicated benchwarmer had earned me a starting spot, I hardly minded losing it to him.

Sometimes, during the away games, I'd share a seat with him on the bus ride home, slipping ice cubes from my water bottle onto his rough and splintered tongue. Some of the other guys complained that he stunk – imagine a dead muskrat wrapped in a diaper – though after a few minutes the odor typically dissipated, or at least gave way to our own less-than-flattering scents. Sasquatch would sit silently for the entirety of the ride, just stinking and chewing ice – our combined fourteen feet folded magically into the seat. All around us, the guys blathered on and on about how much beer they were going to drink or how hard they were going to bang their girlfriends if they let them.

“Like . . . so hard,” boasted point guard Dave Malton, slapping his palms together. “And I'm gonna drink a whole lot of beer, too.”

Sasquatch never partook in any of those conversations. Instead, he just turned to me, mouth wide, until I slipped him a few more cubes. All he cared about was fulfilling his sacred duty: scoring thirty plus points per game, retrieving every rebound. In the beginning, it was all we cared about, too.

After the bus dropped us off in the school parking lot, we'd congregate beside the cars, saluting the Wallerton Wildcat statue as tradition dictated. Meanwhile, somewhere mid-salute, Sasquatch would always take his leave, wandering back into his woods undetected. He'd never wave goodbye or tell us we'd played a good game – no ass pats or shoulder squeezes from our center. Instead, he'd just vanish, no sign of him except for the gently trembling trees and a final whiff of his stench.

Throughout spring semester, I sat one row behind him in pre-calc, and while he never spoke, I'd watched him properly execute the quadratic formula on several occasions. He wasn't the smartest student in the class, but Mr. Hernhold seemed thoroughly impressed by his work ethic and dedication, informing Coach that if the rest of his players worked half as hard on the court as Sasquatch did in the classroom, there was no doubt in his mind we'd be headed to state.

But Hernhold's prediction proved wrong.

Throughout the year, our math teacher had warned us about placing too much faith in probability, and our team became living proof. Most likely, old Hernhold could've even taught us the mathematical formula that predicted our own demise, though he spared us the more complex equations. As far as we could tell (at least according to the stats we saw), no matter how many times we recalculated, the blame of our loss always fell squarely on Sasquatch.

Throughout the first half of our sectional final against Meadowbrook, Sasquatch served our team mightily, running up the score while crashing the backboards, growling when calls didn't go our way. Then the momentum shifted at the start of the second half. In the third minute Sasquatch slipped on a bit of loose fur, pulling a hamstring, and as we watched him limp from the court, we realized our sectional title was slipping away with him. Returning to the bench, ice packs appeared out of nowhere, though rather than place them on his tendon, Sasquatch preferred ripping them open and munching the ice inside. Nobody told him not to. We had bigger problems.

Coach had no choice but to replace him with me – a raw deal – but there weren't a lot of options. My skeletal 6'1” frame simply didn't warrant the same heart-pounding terror as a furry creature towering two feet taller, though I couldn't blame my lackluster performance entirely on the height differential. The truth was, I missed a couple of rebounds too, ended up going two for six from the line. Tripped over my feet, made poor passes, forgot all the plays we'd spent so long perfecting. I grew tired, sloppy, got called for charging on three consecutive possessions. Where was the pick when we needed it? The point guard? Everybody seemed to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time – including the ball, which somehow managed to ricochet off my shin and into the stands.

It was a massacre, and the only way Sasquatch could bear to watch our lead slip away was by peaking helplessly between his leathered fingers.

Our less-than-narrow defeat was neither quick nor painless, but eventually the clock had the decency to stop ticking, the buzzer kind enough to sound.

In the locker room, Coach rested a foot on the metal bleacher, droning on and on about how it wasn't anyone in particular's fault, how we “ladies” couldn't go blaming ourselves.

But we could. It was easy.

And in the rare moments when we weren't busy blaming ourselves, we were busy blaming Sasquatch's hamstring, certain that if only the trainer's Icy Hot/Vicks VapoRub magic cure-all could have healed him, then none of us would've had to witness what we had: that sulking, bewildered giant cramped in his too-tight uniform, shaking his head as Meadowbrook ran up the score.

The basketball season ended, as did Sasquatch's perfect attendance at Wallerton High. After the Meadowbrook game, he began showing up for school a bit more sporadically, rarely completing an entire week without my spotting the empty desk in pre-calc. Since the season was over, Coach didn't much care whether he was there or not, but strangely, some of his teachers did. Though it was always pretty apparent if there were no eight-foot-tall hominids in the room, Mr. Hernhold made it a point to read his name from the roll at the start of each class.

“Sasquatch?” he'd call, peering over the tops of his glasses. “Has anyone seen Sasquatch?”

By mid-March, sightings became something of a rarity, something worth whispering about in the halls.

One day after English class, Mrs. Gerry called me over and said, “Arnold, do you know where Sasquatch lives?”

“I mean, I know the general direction,” I told her, thinking back to all the times I'd seen him vanish into the underbrush after games.

“Well, do you think you'd be able to deliver this?” she asked, offering me a fresh copy of
Huckleberry Finn,
required reading to finish out the year.

I stared at the book without taking it.

“It won't bite, dear,” she promised, placing it in my palm.

I slipped it into my backpack alongside my math and bio books, each day Huckleberry growing flatter beneath their weight. A week later I realized that what I'd mistaken for a heavy backpack was actually my growing guilt. And since I didn't want Sasquatch failing English on my account, I decided to do what was asked of me.

One afternoon I loaded up with bug spray and an ice-filled water bottle and carved a path through the woods, following – to the best of my ability – the footprints he'd left behind.

It was about a forty-minute trek to the Winnebago, but when I finally got there, there was no mistaking it. There were huge dents in its sides and all the windows were covered with trash bags. A fifteen-foot
TV
antenna pierced the sky, and just beyond it, a screened door torn from its hinges. Though I couldn't see him, his musk was so pungent my eyes began to tear up. Instead of knocking, I held a few feet back, summoning the courage to take another step forward.

A sudden rustling from behind, and I turned to find him there, eyeing me curiously, a basketful of blackberries clasped tight to his chest.

“Um . . . hey,” I gulped. “Nice place. I like your . . . trash bags.”

He didn't answer, just reached deep into his basket, devouring a handful of blackberries.

“You get cable?” I asked, nodding to the antenna.

He opened his mouth, so I reached for the water bottle, tossed a few ice cubes onto his tongue.

“Anyway, I'm supposed to give you this,” I said, handing him the book.

He reached out a gigantic hand to retrieve it, smearing berry juice all over the pages.

I smiled, nervous, then smacked a mosquito.

“Well, okay. I guess I'll see you around then. In class or . . . wherever.”

He grabbed my water bottle, helping himself to the remaining ice cubes and offering me the basket in exchange.

I stared at the bug-covered berries, watching all those thoraxes mounting the fruit.