The Northwoods Bigfoot Hunting Club
by Patrick Harrington
“He’s out there.”
“Mmmhmmm.”
“She is too. Lady Bigfoot.”
“Mmmhmmm.” We hum and nod our heads. It is our prayer, our call and response, the creed of the Northwoods Bigfoot Hunting Club.
The Northwoods Bigfoot Hunting Club is more like the Northwoods Bigfoot Beer Drinking Club. We meet every Monday at T Bonz bar on the west end of Duluth and put back half a dozen bottles of Miller to a man. For Sharlene, make that half a dozen White Claws.
“That there’s more than a full paw,” she holds up her hand, like a tiger. She has one of those voices that is always loud, even if she tries to whisper. Mondays are her night off from the Kom-On-Inn. It’s also industry night, $20 a bucket, and she is so kind as to share her discount with us.
“Bigfoots have nails, not claws,” Danny reminds her. Danny is an acne-scarred UMD kid, both skinny and fat in all the wrong places. Sharlene thinks he has spent too much time online. And that he needs a haircut. She also thinks that bigfoots communicate with us telepathically and that aliens probed her grandpa in the 50s.
“When are you bringing around that girlfriend of yours? Or does she not exist.” Everyone turns. Talk of nonexistence is club taboo.
“She lives in Iowa. For college. Not that you would know anything about that.”
“Ooh college boy, you’ve only ever read about pussy.” Sharlene is making suggestive gestures.
They have this exchange in some form every week. For the past four weeks, that is, since Mark put up fliers around the Craft District announcing:
Bigfoot Believer? Sasquatch Sighter? Cryptid Curious?
Inaugural meeting this Monday at TBonz 8PM.
“And on Facebook, there is a Facebook group ya know, and a weekly event, everyone oughta join,” Mark reminds at the start of each meeting. He is a gruff hunter-fisher-snowmobiler type with a gravelly Iron Range accent and I laugh to myself every week when he says this. We agree that Danny and Sharlene like each other.
“Remember, we’re going on our inawgooral expedition this weekend.” Mark is wrapping up. He likes that word. Inaugural. Inawgooral. He must think it makes things sound official.
It is early March, and Danny says that bigfoots hibernate, but Mark thinks that since it has been a winter that wasn’t, we might have some luck. I don’t know much about bigfoots.
I would say that I’m new to town but I’ve lived here for 7 years and before I saw that flier last month, I had 3 friends and they weren’t really friends, they were my neighbors. The Jensens, Molly and Reece, to my right, and Frank to my left. We wave hello, mostly. Sometimes I feel so lonely my belly hurts, not my stomach but deep in my belly, muscles I think, or vertebrae, organs. I lie on the floor until it passes. Sometimes it takes all day.
I work the 4AM-noon shift at Kwik Trip Wednesday to Sunday. If Jasmine or Deon or Clarabel ask me to cover their Monday or Tuesday shift, which will happen two or three times a month, I always say yes. Now I only take Mondays on account of the meeting.
I’m happy at Kwik Trip. So is everyone that comes in, even if they weren’t the minute before when they were outside in their car. Something about the entrance does it. That little glass room before the main door is like a happiness gate. Everything that follows is warm, reasonably-priced convenience. The lights are always on, someone always home.
“Meet at the trailhead at 5pm,” Mark says. “And bring a flashlight.”
…
“Do bigfoots get lonely?” I ask. Dusk is unfolding among the aspen, birch and pine, pressing heavily down upon us. We are hiking north on the Superior Hiking Trail. The lake is to our right, and I glimpse through the barren tree branches its rich deep blue before it disappears into heaving darkness.
I remember seven years ago when I was driving north, towards what I didn’t know. I stopped at a pull out along 61. It was June and hot in my rust-pocked Civic with its broken A/C. I wiped my sweaty arm on my sweaty forehead and then walked the snaking trail through the trees to the lakeshore. I stripped down to my boxers, scrambled across slick rocks, and slid into the water. The ice cold animal shock of it sent me gasping to the surface. I lunged splashing for the shore.
Before I reached it, something stopped me, held me in place. I breathed. I don’t know what came over me. I managed to bring myself back under. I could hear pebbles in the small waves clacking against each other like the crackling of the universe. I decided then to move here.
“Lady Bigfoot is out there, too, remember,” Sharlene chirps.
“Mmmhmm,” Mark bellows from the front. I can tell Danny wants to say that bigfoots are naturally solitary creatures, only gathering for short stints during mating season, but as their population dwindled over the centuries, successful mating has become more and more rare. He told us as much last Sunday, we all know it, and we feel him wanting to tell us again.
“Mmmhmmm,” Danny responds, and I silently thank him. I feel Mark and Sharlene thanking him, too, my thoughts in their heads and theirs in mine.
We are heading for a cave Mark heard about. “Bigfoots rarely come this far south, except in winter months,” Danny said as we circled outside our cars in the trailhead parking lot, passing a flask of bourbon and shuffling from one foot to the other to stay warm. Ours were the only cars.
We walk on into the night, our headlamps bobbing like overboard sailors. As I hike, my steps and breath become as one. I look up and feel very small under the stars. There is no moon tonight, and like my chest the sky swells and contracts. So do my ears.
I think I hear the murmur of the lake. My mind imagining reaches out for the cave, darkness within darkness.
I don’t like to be woken up, and I worry what will happen if we do encounter anything. Mark has a sidearm on his hip, and Danny a pocketknife.
“So Saint Paul, what’s it like down in Oklahoma?” Sharlene asks.
“Flat and dry.” I say. “And hot,”
“Why’d you come up here to the land of flat and wet and cold?”
“The wet part, I guess.”
“Good fishing,” Mark says. “You fish? I’ll take you out sometime.”
“Duluth has hills.” Danny says. “Some people call it Little San Francisco.”
“No one calls it that Danny. Marketing mumbo jumbo,” Sharlene huffs. “You got family down there?”
“Nope.” I don’t tell them that I’ve seen as much of my father as I have of Bigfoot, or that Mom died 8 years ago from lung cancer still smoking a pack a day to her last day on earth or that Big Paul my fatso stepdad ended up with the trailer and the cats and everything else except Mom’s Civic, which died, too, my first winter up here. “Not anymore.”
“I’m sorry bud,” Mark says.
“Me too,” Danny says.
And Sharlene, “Uffda. Life’s the shits sometimes.”
We walk on in silence until we come to a cliff where the rock swallows up our lights.
“Let me go first,” Mark says. “If there is a bigfoot, or a bear, or something else, you’ll know.” We agree with Mark. He went to the trouble to make the fliers after all.
His light floats away and we wait at the mouth of the cave toeing the dirt. After some long, quiet minutes, he returns.
“Nothing in there. But you should check it out for yourselves. Pretty cool.”
“I think we should take turns and each go in alone,” I suggest, not knowing what has come over me. Mark nods.
“Like in Star Wars,” Sharlene says, “when Luke is in the swamp with whats-his-name, that little green fucker, Yodel.” Danny looks at her, surprised and, I can see in his dilated eyes, proud.
“Yoda you mean.” He is doing the voice and it makes Sharlene laugh. “Did you know George Lucas was thinking of Joseph Campbell? ‘The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.’” He is doing the voice again to Sharlene’s delight.
“Why don’t you go first?” Mark tells him.
Danny disappears into the dark like a firefly going out. A few moments later he whoops.
Sharlene starts. The orb of his headlamp re-emerges rushing towards us.
His eyes are big and he is out of breath, talking over himself, starting and stopping and describing the monstrous sight of something that should not be there, that cannot exist. I feel a fluttering, thrilling sickness—moths in my guts. I want to lie down on my floor.
Danny and Sharlene are back in the cave and I stand there rooted next to Mark and his handgun in shock. Then Mark unsticks me with an excited slap on the shoulder and we follow them in.
“It’s fresh!” Danny exclaims.
“But how is there only one footprint?” Sharlene is standing over him.
“Only mud in that spot,” Mark says.
“How is that?” Sharlene asks.
“Dunno. Maybe groundwater. Or a drip.”
Danny has his knife out, investigating the edges of the print.
“Now don’t go poking it.” Sharlene calls, concerned.
“We need a preservative.” Danny in a flash is behind Mark digging through his pack for the flask.
“Hey there,” Mark whirls around, but Danny already has something in his left hand.
“What the fuck!” Danny is holding a carved wooden block the approximate size and shape of the footprint on the floor, its five monkey toes covered in mud.
“Hold on. Hold on,” Sharlene says. “I wanna make sure I’m not losing my marbles. You mean you snuck around in here and planted the footprint?”
“Yes he did!” Danny shouts.
“I thought it would be fun for the group. You know, for the story.” Mark has his hands up, shrugging.
“That’s not how it works. It needs to be real. It can’t just be some story,” Danny is breathing hard. “It can’t.”
“Danny, that’s all it is, bud. A story. Someone has to make it up. I’ve been in the woods for 50 years and he’s not out there.”
“You think you own the story, but you don’t. You’re a hoaxer!” The knife glints in Danny’s hand. “Nothing but a hoaxer!” He lunges at Mark. Mark slugs Danny in the mouth, leaving him sprawled in the dirt. Sharlene screams, then lets fly a string of curses at Mark.
Mark shakes his head, “Ope, sorry bud, had to. You be careful with that blade.” He looks at Sharlene and then at me. “I’ll be at the cars,” he says and lumbers off. Sharlene kneels down to attend to Danny and continues cursing Mark.
“You fucking asshole. What an asshole. What did he want to do? Trick us? Fucking waste our time?” She has her hands tenderly on Danny’s cheeks. She spits in the dirt. Danny spits too, a galaxy of globby red. “That was great. Fucking stupid, but great. You stood up to that bully asshole.”
Danny’s breathing has calmed. He is completely still, stiller than I have ever seen him, as if under a spell. “He’s right.”
“I hate to say it hon, but he is. You shouldn’t carry that knife. It’ll just get you into trouble.”
“I mean about everything,” Danny says. Sharlene has calmed too, her fire out of fuel.
“Probably.” She helps him up and they walk out.
I look up at the ceiling and in the veins of sediment there are lifetimes, so many lifetimes. I hear the humming of the earth. Mmmmhmm.
He’s out there. Mmmmhmm. She’s out there. Mmmmhmmm.
We are meeting again. We just don’t know where.
Lake Superior Writers 