The Campfire...
Deep in the Pacific Northwest under a waning gibbous moon and pulsating stars ne’er affected by the autumn chill stood ages-old, great coniferous stocks of lodge pole and ponderosa pine and grand firs populating the Cascade Mountains for as far as an eagle’s eye could see. Below, the abyss of night, still, hushed, save for the odd crack of a bending tree limb, arthritic in the cold, and the incessant trill of crickets, nestled, waiting for a feast. A single amber glow emanating from the forest floor could be seen by any bald eagle or great horned owl that flew in search of warmth and an inviting perch.
Disquieting moments welcome a feathery audience.
Zooming over and down through the massive timbers, a camp site presented. An army green tarpaulin tent had been erected in the shadows near a field-stone lined fire pit that over a rusted grate percolated an enamel coffee pot. On an upturned log sat a man, a camouflaged hunting cap shoved low upon his head and wrapped in a matching jacket, his gnarled fingers reaching for the warmth of the fire.
Red embers bloomed and blushed, the pit’s dead-wood cremation emitting as effluent a lazy shaft of thick pine-scented smoke which snaked up and up through the stand of trees, well protected from the high swirling winds.
That fire, that smoke, it was a lone signal to one who lurked nearby.
The hunter’s withered hands reached for the coffee pot and poured a mug of the steaming Joe as twigs cracked, branches snapped and grunts filled the air. A god-awful stench soon attended, invading and offending the nose. The man’s eyes followed the stench, and with a laser beam focus discerned a being, an entity, standing silent against a tree trunk, its long ratty hair blending in far too well with the branches and underbrush. The thing was nine feet tall; the hunter estimating its weight at 700 pounds or more. Its bulbous and beady eyes, penetrating, ever shifting, yet oddly projecting fear or at least doubt that its appearance would be pleasantly met.
The hunter tensed but did not overly react.
He slowly rose to meet his visitor.
A sideways glance checked for the position of his high-powered rifle.
The weapon was there. Its leather strap hung from a tent pole. To grab it and shoot never entered his mind.
“Come. Warm yourself. Do you like coffee? I just poured a cup.”
With a final grunt and a lead-heavy shuffle, the entity left the cover of night and came into full view, approached the hunter, and said, “Thank you. The chill is fierce tonight. I could use a cup.”
The hunter knew a rare beast when he saw one. This was no Kodiak. This was no brown or black bear unusually deft on his hind legs. The joints moved fluidly and the leathery skin and facial features, replete with reflexive expressions of trepidation and wonder that shone in the firelight, were far more human than animal.
This was Sasquatch, Big Foot. And there was no shock in that.
All this time in camp he had waited for the meeting.
Fear had no place in discovery.
The barbarian spoke English. It seemed natural given all the time such upright mountain monsters had at lurking hunters and absorbing their lingo. Intelligence in man as in beast.
The speckled tin cup, filled to the brim with the aromatic bean juice, transferred hand to hand, and the pair settled down on upturned logs; a set of camouflaged knees on one and a set of hairy knees on the other, warming by the fire. There was an acrid smell to the beast — a thick mix of rotting flesh, urine, feces and a sulphuric odour. But the hunter couldn’t cast aspersions. He didn’t smell all that daisy-fresh himself.
Taking a sip of the steaming, rich brown liquid to warm his cockles and quell his nerves, Big Foot asked, “You’re not afraid?”
“Why should I be?” The hunter said, staring blankly into the flames. His speech was garbled like his mouth was full of rocks.
“Most of you… you human types are. You from around here? I don’t recognize you. You’re a stranger in these parts.”
“I live in Mammoth Falls.”
“Ah, out of state. Good.”
“Why good?”
“Not the local weekend warrior type. Dedicated. Serious. Will travel for answers. I get along with diehards, for the most part. They get an eye-full and they’re seeking me for the rest of their lives. I like to help, you know. I’ll scatter hints here and there and they get excited. If their enthusiasm boils over, to escape I’ll head up range. Fooling with man, as long as you’re careful, is a fine pastime between berry picking and decapitating game.”
“That’s what you eat?”
“You know that’s what I eat.”
The hunter didn’t know but he let the topic drop. The wind which had been high in the treetops up ’til now nose-dived in for the attack, licking viciously through the campsite and sending a shiver down the hairy beast’s spine. The hunter rose and rifled through his tent for his stored horsehair blanket. That sleigh cover could warm man or beast. He walked over and gently covered Big Foot’s wide and trembling shoulders. Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you’ll not fall prey to Mother Nature’s temperamental ways.
The hunter returned to his log perch, cleared his desiccated throat, took a swig of the brew, and asked, “Why me? Why this campsite? Is there a reason you’re making yourself known? I could shoot you dead right now and announce to all the world my find.”
“I’ve watched you for a few days. You don’t go anywhere. You don’t do anything. You just sit here, tending to the fire, keeping company only with your thoughts. I figured you weren’t much of a foe and maybe you’d be a good sport and help me with this wound.”
Big Foot raised his left arm, a massive appendage, and revealed a red patch of encrusted blood bordering a clean round hole, a gunshot hole.
The hunter felt no surprise. He rose and retrieved a first aid box from his stash, walked toward the helpless animal and cleaned the wound — the bullet pierced skin and sinew but not bone. All the hunter had to do was apply antibiotic ointment and bandage the injury. It was a lucky shot. Big Foot would live.
A cacophonous SNAP-BANG exploded in the woods. Big Foot jumped. The hunter paused. Man and beast, with penetrating eyes, made a 360 scan. Nothing appeared.
“You got clipped,” the hunter said, casually storing the first aid kit.
“Yeah. It happens. You humans shoot at anything. You’re an enthusiastic lot. The bullets will often ricochet off tree trunks and we’ll feel the return.”
“We?”
“Oh, sure. We are a family-oriented species. Close ties. A lot of inbreeding but we do what we can.” Big Foot scratched himself in odd places. The hunter assumed fleas but couldn’t be sure, and wouldn’t inquire.
“Thank you for your aid and comfort to the enemy,” Big Foot said with a wide grin. “I’m not sure why you hunters are out to get us but when bullets don’t find a home, we get a kick out of your hobby. Fooling you lot is quite enjoyable.” Big Foot took another sip of the Joe and shivered, shaking off the cold to invite the warmth, hoping not to overly antagonize the man.
“What do you mean?” The hunter reached over and refilled the creature’s cup.
“Oh, you know, leaving clues, bread crumbs of excitement to keep you guys coming back for more. It’s not like we want to be shot but we do like the attention. Well, the male Big Feet do. Our womenfolk think it’s ridiculous what we do for fun.”
“Such as?”
SNAP! WHIZ! BANG! A stick flew through the air…
Both hunter and beast ducked.
They looked up and saw the culprit. It was the bald eagle. Screeching. A second stick clamped between its beak. In a neighboring tree, a great horned owl sat stoically on a perch, blinking slowly with a disdainful stare.
Big Foot regained his composure, wrapped the horsehair blanket tight around his shoulders and continued…
“The footprints and the calls. Great fun. I have scads of clay molds back at the cave. I make them to resemble human feet, but larger. Your species is an arrogant lot. You assume our feet must look like yours. We have webbed feet, not human.” Big Foot raised his legs, and sure enough, revealed huge black webbing. They resembled nothing like the Big Foot tracks veteran hunters had found over the centuries and were positive were the real thing.
“And there you have it. A human on a string, obsessively following forever the trails me and my kind lay down for you.”
The hunter didn’t move, didn’t say a word. His expression, what you could see under that pulled-down cap, was still; yet the black of his pupils beamed in the firelight, lodestars affixed in a thousand-yard stare.
“And the calls, those baritone ‘hundred-dog" yowls you people fear the most. All I have to do is eviscerate the belly of a wolf, and there you have it. The sound that comes from a ravaged lobo that echoes through the pines is a call to death.”
Big Foot waited for the hunter to react with horror. Ne’er a flinch.
The bald eagle screeched.
The owl hoot-hooted.
The firewood cracked and spit.
And the wind, ever present now, rushed and swirled upward as in a vortex, howling and hissing through the nearby trees, reigniting the embers, sending sparks in all directions, yet the atmosphere around camp drew dark, loathsome.
“How did you get shot?”
“A Big Footer, I call them. Some obsessed searcher most likely on a quest to nab himself one of our kin in time for the 6 o’clock news. They’re the worst. Full of vim and vinegar and worms for brains, no-limit credit cards and high-powered rifles.”
The hunter took another sideways glance at his high-powered rifle.
Big Foot was indifferent to the resting weapon and continued his tale...
“I was out collecting berries for the family, blithe to my surrounds. I guess I moved too fast, or the wind was blowing in his direction and, sure enough, I came upon the feller. His look, I thought he’d pee in his camouflaged pants!” The beast slapped his knees and flip-top head opened his gargantuan jaws in uproarious laughter.
The hunter, repelled at the off-color remark, kept his own counsel. He didn’t appreciate Big Foot’s games. His blackened and spindly fingers reached out again for the flames. Big Foot continued…
“The fool grabbed his gun, nervously fiddled with the trigger, and bang, it went. The frightened soul couldn’t shoot the broadside of a barn but I caught the ricochet, and that’s all it took. I’m not one to have a temper, but my cockles went up...” The beast’s dilated pupils glistened like a predator who has caught the scent. He was reliving the moment, and it felt good. It warmed him. It invigorated him. A rivulet of drool escaped one side of his mouth.
The hunter’s eyes went cold. All life bled out of them. Big Foot continued…
“I hollered like a downed wolf and the roar sliced right through the pines. I barreled after him and gouged out his face. It took only one blow. He screamed through the mutilation until his airway filled and he drowned in his own blood, and that was it. He was a goner. Despite our size we can charge like grizzlies. Why your species never appreciated that is a wonder.”
The hunter made no sound. His posture took on a defensive air.
And if the eagle and the owl had zeroed in on the man, they would have seen the hunter’s neck sink into the jacket and his face lower a twinge.
Big Foot was a sophisticated being, and he knew not to over-stay his welcome. The beast rose to his feet, carefully folded the horsehair blanket and laid it gently on the log. He said in as fine and gentlemanly a voice as a barbarian can muster, “Well, it’s time I head home. The Missus will be wondering. Thank you for coming to my aid and letting me bend your ear. I mean, not really bend your ear. Aw, you know what I mean.”
The man stiffened. All limbs taut and at the ready.
Time paused for the hunter and the forest land froze into place. Microscopic detail erupted, and his awareness was at its peak; from the curious cricket with its filigree wings whose ignorance had him crawl into the flames to be burnt alive, to the errant pine cone, with each synergistic bark petal accentuated in the firelight, dropping into the pit, and in an instant igniting — from life unto death, in all things. The man’s breathing slowed to arrest his pounding heart.
Big Foot turned on his webbed feet and made for the woods. But before he faded into the brush, he swung ’round his massive head, and said, “After all these years… finally… one of you I can trust. I’d never have believed it. My kin said it would never happen but here you and I have been, jawing away with no need for blood-letting.”
As a final gesture, the behemoth returned to the fire to shake the hunter’s hand, to anoint this mutual understanding, to certify this peace, to move forward beyond all aggression. His gargantuan fingers sunk right through the hunter’s flesh as if it wasn’t there at all.
Big Foot’s eyes were as a wolf’s in a hunter’s sights. A knowing.
The hunter was not real. He was a ghost.
He was that man whom the beast had bumped into and savagely killed, and ate.
The hunter’s cap rose for the very first time and oozing blood, bone fragments, torn sinew and a dangling jaw danced in the firelight where a face should have been.
The bald eagle screeched.
The great owl hoot-hooted.
And a high-powered rifle shot roared through the air.
