The Spirit

The fourth river! Jason fumbled open the survey map and looked at the streams. All five rivers led to this lake, but the fourth one was different. The lake’s oblong shape opened into a delta at the fourth river farther east than it did with the others.

The fourth river was the quickest way to the Little Harrington. The Bigfoot knew this! The Bigfoot knew these rivers!

“Buck, I ought to have my head candled. Montana fouled me up. Just because the Indian’s from there doesn’t mean the Bigfoot’s from there too! Dammit! Maybe he knows these rivers because he’s from around here! By God . . . by God!”

The Cascade Range began a few miles south of here, the gigantic mountains that ran all the way down to northern California. The Cascades were the traditional stomping ground of the Sasquatch.

Jason stepped out of the car and looked at the peaks on the horizon. The sun was setting, its slanting rays bronzing their slopes, as they marched rank after rank toward the south.

“He lives around here somewhere, boy!” said Jason in awe. “He’s been running around the country for some reason, and the Indian picked him up in Montana.” Fully eighty percent of all Bigfoot sightings occurred in the Pacific Northwest, in a fairly even area from where Jason stood. Jason could not begin to understand why a non-migratory beast would set out on such a journey, but he was certain to the depths of his soul that the ape was headed for home right now.

He slipped the maps into the glove compartment. He squealed the car back from the lake onto the road. He had to make one quick phone call, and after that Buck wasn’t going to be a city dog much longer.

The Indian was dreaming about Vietnam.

He lay deep in the rice paddy, absolutely motionless, hearing the lazy slap of rifles. The firefight had gotten the communications people first, so the rescue copters would not come. Now the guerrillas were moving in and killing the wounded.

The Indian had no spirit to protect him from the Viet Cong. He lay perfectly still, prepared for a long death, even as a bayonet tickled his leg. But the guerrillas moved on, apparently thinking he was already dead.

When night came, the Indian cautiously raised his head above the rice plants. All of his squad had died, none of them easily. A hard red boil formed in the Indian’s gut. He crawled out of the rice paddy, into the jungle. That night he slit the throat of a guerrilla and made a string for a bow from a length of his bowel. He carved twelve arrows and barbed the ends. Armed with this weapon, he tracked the enemy devils at night: the sentries, the gun bearers, and once an officer. He was a part of the jungle, a plains and forest dweller more at home in wilderness than the cleverest enemy devil. For the next ten days he ate nothing but tarantulas, lizards, and wild pigs. He gorged himself on stealthy death, stacking bodies in heaps in his mind and on trails causing major dislocation in the enemy’s forces.

Later a helicopter found him half dead. His leg was swollen to the size of a tree trunk. They told him a captured guerrilla had surrendered out of fear of him.

The Indian had hunted them down without a spirit to help him. This fact burst on him in the Army hospital, sending him into paroxysms of sheer terror at his own frail mortality. From then on he knew he could not face life without a spirit or a name.

His fingers tore out chunks of earth. He sat upright violently, just short of screaming his lungs out. Silent feet dashed away from him, thrashing the leaves.

He was not in a dream after all, or a jungle. He was in the woods somewhere in America. The dog cringed, wide-eyed, at the Indian’s obvious distress.

The Indian calmed down and oriented himself. He had overslept. It was evening. And he was completely alone.

“He’s getting scared now, isn’t he?” snarled the Indian. “His little momma isn’t sending him his dinner no more. So he come by to watch me.” He leaned closer to the dog, which quailed, one foot off the ground. “I’ll trade. A nice salmon for my name.”

He gave the dog the finger and ambled back to the road. The sleep had done him good. That and the food were reminders that there were some good things to say about mortality. He liked the goose bumps raised by cold air on his skin and the way his lungs carried this chilled air to the blood and thence all over his body.

The dog was not the only one shadowing him. The birds and crickets were quiet. A moving pool of silence alerted the Indian to the presence of the spirit just within the woods lining the road.

The tables were turned. The spirit was following him now.

The Indian stopped and looked into the trees. The harder he stared, the more the darkness danced.

“Hey!” he shouted.

The trees ticked under a breeze.

“What do you want from me! Come on out and tell me! Come on!”