18. In Search Of
ON A BRIGHT AND cold Saturday morning, John saw Father Duncan more clearly than he had ever seen him before. Duncan, that grizzly of a man, was kneeling in the sand. John could see his shoulders shaking with tears, or laughter, or passionate prayers. What does a priest pray for? For himself, for his own needs, for the same reasons that everybody else prays? John knew that priests also prayed for their congregations, for the Pope, for the blessing, for communion, for offering. Prayers for every occasion. Father Duncan kneeled in the sand and prayed, or laughed, or cried, or maybe he did all three simultaneously. Duncan, wanting to be heard by every version of God, prayed in English, Latin, and Spokane, a confusing and painful mix of syntax, grammar, and meaning. John could see that Father Duncan’s black hair had grown so much that it reached the small of his back. Duncan’s face was hidden behind those delicate hands, which were blistered, bruised, and trembling. The sun was so low that Father Duncan could have stood and touched it. Sand, scorpions testing the armor of enemy scorpions, tarantulas hiding in their self-made caves. That stand of palm trees still on the horizon. Storm clouds.
Feeling the need to run from that storm, John stuffed a few belongings into a backpack and hitchhiked down the coast. John often visited reservations searching for his mother, answers, some kind of family. Now, as he left, he didn’t tell anyone where he was going. He planned on being back to work by Monday morning. He simply locked his apartment door behind him and walked out into the cold morning. In search of Bigfoot, he hitchhiked south to the Hupa Indian Reservation in northern California.
John had become obsessed with Bigfoot after watching an episode of In Search Of, the Leonard Nimoy-hosted television series about monsters and myths. John had learned about the cabin in Ape Canyon on Mount Saint Helens where a group of miners battled a small army of angry Bigfoot. John had been fascinated by the account, reenacted for television by bad actors, but had doubted it. Bigfoot were incredibly strong and intelligent. If an army of Bigfoot had angrily attacked a small group of miners in a thin-walled cabin, then John doubted that the miners would have survived. Instead, John believed that the Bigfoot had been having fun with the miners, those pale-skinned men who loudly crashed through the forest, announcing their presence to everybody, never burying their waste, leaving behind foul evidence of their passing. John could hear the Bigfoot laughing among themselves as they hoisted rock after rock against the roof of the cabin. He could hear the terrified screams of the miners as they cowered inside. When morning came, after the Bigfoot had tired of their game and gone, the miners quickly abandoned their camp. Ashamed of their cowardice, the miners had invented the story of their epic battle against the monsters who lived on the mountain. That was how it worked. John knew that white men did not know how to tell the truth. They lied constantly about women, money, monsters. White men made promises and did not keep them.
John had been mesmerized when Leonard Nimoy introduced the footage of the “most convincing evidence of Bigfoot’s existence,” and then screened Roger Patterson’s famous film of his encounter with the monster on the Hupa Indian Reservation. John had kneeled down in front of his television as the Bigfoot stepped over the deadfall in the middle of a clearing, and walked, with enormous, beautiful grace, from left to right across the screen. Patterson’s horse, spooked by the monster, had thrown him, so the film was unsteady and dizzying. Despite the commotion, Patterson had kept filming as he fell, regained his footing, and ran after the Bigfoot. For effect, the frame was frozen just as the Bigfoot turned to look directly into the camera. Huge, brown, pendulous breasts; large chunks of muscle and fat carried at her hips and belly.
With his backpack and a few possessions, John hitchhiked to the Hupa Indian Reservation. It was a quick and uneventful journey. Over the course of fifteen hours, a long-haul trucker picked him up within the Seattle city limits and gave him a lift down Interstate 5 to Portland, Oregon, where John caught another ride, to the Hupa Reservation, with a salesman who leased movie videos to many of the small-town supermarkets, mom-and-pop rental stores, and obscure convenience stores in southern Oregon and northern California.
Once in Hoopa, on the reservation, John was unsure of what to do. He was confused by the spelling of Hupa, the tribe, and Hoopa, the town, and knew that something had been lost. And it appeared strange that this reservation town contained few Indians. It appeared to be a typical small town, with a grocery store, a gas station, a post office, a number of turn-of-the-century houses, a small clinic, and a few anonymous government buildings, though it was set down in the middle of a beautiful valley. The redwood trees filled the horizon. John walked around the town, attracting a lot of attention from the small number of Indians. The girls gossiped behind their hands, while the boys wondered if they could talk John into playing for their basketball teams. A tribal policeman with mirrored sunglasses and braids cruised by John. The Hupa Reservation was the kind of place where fugitives of all kinds came to disappear. John walked until he saw an old Hupa Indian woman sitting on a folding chair outside the local cafe. She was small and ancient, with a walnut face deeply lined with wrinkles. She wore a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt that read BIGFOOT HUNTER. A handwritten sign at her feet said BIGFOOT HUNTER FOR HIRE.
“How much?” John asked her.
“How much for what?” she asked, smiling with a full set of dentures.
“Bigfoot,” John said, pointing to the sign.
The old woman looked up at John. She saw a tall, handsome Indian man.
“What tribe you are?” she asked.
“Navajo.”
“Ah, one of them, huh?” she asked and laughed loudly. John’s face went hot. “Yeah, I knew a Navajo once. Laura was her name. Laura Tohe. You know her?”
John shook his head.
“Ah, she was a good one,” said the old woman. “Haven’t heard from her in a long time. A long time.”
Thinking of Laura, the old woman sipped at her Pepsi.
“What’s your name, anyways?” she asked after a moment or two.
“John.”
The old woman studied John’s face, trying to determine if the name fit his features. It did not.
“My name is Lu,” she said. “But everybody calls me Sweet Lu.”
She extended her hand and John shook it in the Indian way. He had learned some small things.
“You know,” she said. “Most people call them Sasquatch these days. Makes it sound more Indian, don’t it?”
John nodded his head.
“I’ll take you to find ol’ Sasquatch,” she said. “And I’ll give you the Indian discount, too, okay? How’s twenty bucks sound?”
John handed her the money. Sweet Lu then packed up her folding chair and sign, threw them into the back of a rusty yellow pickup, and hopped into the driver’s seat. John had to push a pile of newspapers and magazines to the floor before he could sit in the passenger seat.
“You better buckle in,” she said. “It’s a rough ride.”
Sweet Lu drove that pickup deep into the woods, using logging roads and cattle trails. Once or twice, she simply imagined a path through the trees and followed it. They traveled for hours, mostly not speaking, though Sweet Lu would occasionally break the silence.
“You speak your language?” she asked John.
“No.”
“Ah, too bad. That Navajo language is beautiful. Jeez, I remember when Laura Tohe would talk Navajo and all the Indian boys would come running. There was this one guy, named Phil something-or-other. Ah, he had it something fierce for her. Would ask her to speak in Navajo. Laura, say chair. Laura, say horse. Laura, say desert.”