Sasquatch Jerky

There was a woman in the kitchen with my father.  I could hear her voice from all the way down the hall.  I padded all sleepy-eyed into the room and there she was, sitting right there at the kitchen table. My father was standing at the stove making his famous crepes, which really weren't famous at all.   

“And who might this pretty young lady be?” The woman asked.

“This young lady might be Minnie,” said my father, placing a plate in front of the woman. “Min’s my little helper around here. When she's not busy sleeping in that is.”

“Nice to meet you, Minnie,” the woman said. “I’m Moe. That’s short for Maureen.”
  
My father put another plate on the table and sat in front of it. I looked at the woman for a minute, then took the carton of OJ from the fridge and my favorite Holly Hobby glass from the cabinet. I sat down across from my father and filled my glass up to the very top with juice while he shoved half a crepe in his mouth. He mopped his beard with a paper towel and wiggled his fork in the woman’s direction.

“I picked up Moe hitchhiking last night,” he said. “She didn’t have anywhere else to stay so I let her spend the night.” I slurped my juice without picking up the glass so it wouldn't spill.

“And I want to thank you once again for that,” Moe said. “You are a true life saver, Terry. My hero.” She placed her hand on my father’s, then quickly pulled it away and went back to eating her crepe, cutting it into tiny pieces which she ate with fast little bites like a chipmunk.

“It's TV,” said my father. “I told you to call me TV. Everyone else does.”

“Minnie, honey, look at this scar I got,” Moe said suddenly, swinging her leg out from under the table and twisting it so I could see. Running up the back of her thigh was a long scar of puckered flesh, shinier and pinker than the skin around it, which I could see was crossed with little wrinkles of cellulite.

“Want to hear how I got this big old scar?” She asked.

“Min doesn’t want to hear about your scar,” said my father. “Now finish your crepes. I made those especially for you and you'll hurt my feelings if you don't finish them.”

“It’s a good story though. You said so yourself, Terr- TV.”

“Eat up. Got a busy day.”

Moe shrugged then went back to her chipmunk nibbles. I noticed her eyes rolled up towards the ceiling when she ate. I slurped my juice and we all sat there in silence.




After he dropped off Moe my father came back for me and we drove out towards this place he wanted to look at. As he drove he kept a paper bag with a bottle in it wedged between his legs and every so often he’d take a swig then offer me some but I knew this was just his joke and so I just kept looking at the big trees out the window.

“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he said to me finally. “About picking up hitchhikers I mean. And I don't want you hitchhiking yourself, either. It’s dangerous and you should never even think about it.” We passed a place where a bunch of trees had been cut down and you could see out over the valley to the next hill. Some of the trees there had been cut down too, leaving a steep field full of stumps. There were still plenty of trees on the other hills though. Despite what they said on the news it looked like we were in no danger of running out of trees.

“I ever tell you this one time I picked up this guy?” my father asked. “It was not far from here. I was driving along and I saw this guy leaning over the propped up hood of his car by the side of the road. So I stopped and asked if he needed any help and this fella said sure, he could use a ride. He said give me a minute while he did something under the hood and then he got in. As I was driving off I could see in the rearview that his car was on fire."

“What?” I asked.

“Yep. The whole thing had caught fire just like that. I knew something was not quite right with him then. So I tell him I got to stop for gas and at the filling station when I pay for the gas I write on the bottom of the receipt HELP US. And the filling station guy looks at it and doesn’t say anything so I point to it and say, is that alright then? And he looks at it and says, looks okay to me. So then I drive off-”

“Wait, did this guy have a gun or something?” I asked.

“What? No. I don’t think so. I don't know. He just…well I knew I had to do something, it was obvious that this guy was really whacked out. So I-”

“Where did he want to go? Was he ordering you to keep driving?”

“I don’t know, someplace up the road somewhere. But anyways I finally figure out what I need to do. I tell this guy I need to make a stop first, and he says okay, so I drive us straight over to Dan’s place. You remember Dan.”

“No, who's Dan?”

“Dan with the twins around your age. Toni and- you know, the twins. You used to play together.”

“I never played with any twins.”

“Yes you did. Anyways Dan used to work at Folsom before I did. So I go over there and tell the guy to come in with me and Dan and I tie him to this chair see and...”

“Wait. Why’d you tie him to a chair?” I was starting to feel a little confused.

“Well, Dan was like, you know, I signaled him, see, I gave him the signal. The thing about Dan is he can tell about people, I mean when a guy's all whacked out like that, he can tell. Dan was in that place a long time, a long time before me, and he could tell pretty much just by looking at someone. So I figured, well, it’s out of my hands now, and so I left. Washed my hands of the whole thing.” He chuckled and shook his head.

“You just left the guy there. Tied to a chair. For no reason.”

“I just told you the reason.”

I sighed. “So then what happened?”

“Nothing. That was it.”

“God, Dad, that's even worse than your Bigfoot story.”

“I showed you those pictures, didn't I,” he said.

I saw a deer sign in the road. Someone had spray painted a word across it but I couldn’t tell what the word was we went by so fast.

“I can’t believe you don’t remember the twins,” said my father. “What was the other one’s name again? I can tell this is going to bug me. Toni and something or other.”

“I told you, I never knew any twins,.” I said.

We rode in silence for a while.

“Where’d you drop Moe off this morning?” I asked.

“Who?” my father asked. “Oh, right. Moe. Well, first she had to...”

He hit the brakes, not stopping completely but slowing down so suddenly that my seat belt cut into my chest. Right ahead of us was a flipped-over car, lying like a turtle on its back in the middle of the road.

“Don’t look,” my father said as he swerved around the car, but I looked anyways and I could see what looked like a pile of red clothes tangled up inside the upside-down vehicle, with maybe some things that looked like they might be arms. A little ways down the road my father pulled over.

“I’ll be right back,” he said quietly. “Stay in the car.” He took one last swig from his bag then chucked it into the woods. I heard it crash, then heard the sound of his boots crunching the road, then nothing. I thought about getting out and hitchhiking so that when my father got back to the car he’d find me gone and never know what happened. Then years later I’d drop in on him and act like I’d just been out taking a stroll around the block.

But I didn’t get out, I just stayed there. I pushed all the buttons on the radio but it wouldn't work with the engine off. I opened up the glove box and saw my father’s gun shoved in with all the papers. I heard his footsteps and I slammed the compartment shut and sat there drumming my fingers on the arm rest. My father got in,  buckled his seat belt, and turned the ignition key.

“Are they alright?” I asked, though I'm pretty sure I knew.

“They’ll be fine,” he said. The tires screeched when we pulled out. We drove fast and didn't say anything to each other until we got to Gary's Gas'n'Go at the base of the hill. A bunch of plywood signs were propped up in the gravel out front, reading things like "Sasquatch Jerky" and "Sasquatch Salsa." Gary was always trying to cash in on the Bigfoot craze, even though no one had reported a sighting in years.

My father stepped out to use the pay phone. He was in the booth for a long time but I couldn't hear what he was saying. After he hung up he went into the store and came back with a bag of jerky and a couple of Cokes. He handed me one. It was very cold and wet, with little flecks of ice on the bottle, and even though I never liked Coke I took a long gulp then let out a really big belch. My father gave me a look, then took a long drink from his own Coke and let out the longest, deepest belch I’d ever heard. It was like the bellow of some wild beast echoing through the trees. Then he gave me another look and this one seemed to say, Beat that. So I put the cold mouth of the pop bottle to my lips and look a long, long swig, feeling the sweet bubbly soda pour over my tongue and down my throat. I guzzled until I felt the carbonation build up down there, a bubble of gas dying to burst free, begging me to open my mouth and let it out.

I opened my mouth.