The Spirit

Most of the vegetation was seeds, which made sense, too. The gelada baboon lived at mountain altitudes where the only food at all was seeds. Seeds could be dug, plucked, and gathered all year round without being missed. Ounce for ounce, they were second only to meat in protein. Barricaded by tons of rock, the mine would be even in temperature all year round.

Jason played his light over the bones. Shadows crawled behind the eye sockets with the light’s passage, as though pupils were rolling. After a second, Jason decided that in the case of Jameson the plumber, ignorance was bliss.

After the mine’s darkness, the gray cloud-­scudded daylight made Jason’s eyes water. A light drizzle drummed against the ore cars and dripped over the shingles and wood false fronts of Bullion Avenue.

A red Volkswagen with flowers pasted to the hood was parked beside his car. Behind the wheel was Martha Lucas, dozing in a maroon shawl. He rapped on her window, frightening her awake. “I saw you driving up here,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Really, Mr. Jason, this place isn’t safe for humans, living or otherwise.”

Jason sat down on the passenger seat next to her. He lit a cigarette.

“Moon’s spirit is a Bigfoot, isn’t it.” It was asked in a very matter-­of-­fact way. She might have been speaking about an interesting bird that had just flown by.

“Moon’s spirit is a type of man. Otherwise known as Bigfoot.”

“What does that mean?”

“Seeing as you’re an anthropologist, maybe you can tell me.” He told her about his fight in the river and what Kimberly had said about the chin. And his theory about Bigfoot’s resurfacing for food.

Normally she could believe the most peculiar things —disinfectant teas, the wonders of vegetarianism, probably even astrology. But face to face with Raymond Jason and his story, she faltered. “I don’t believe it. A man?”

“What’s more, that mine is packed with food for the winter.”

“And you’ve seen it?”

“Twice. I’ll never forget it. I figure Moon saw it in Montana and figured it was the Holy Grail. From Montana it moved to British Columbia and from there down to here.”

“Why was it moving around?”

Jason cracked the window to let the cigarette smoke out. “I had a hell of a time figuring that out. This mine is their home. Or it was until Jack Helder moved in and started dynamiting foundations, laying in pipe, and bringing all kinds of people up here. So one of them left to find a new home. Since there aren’t many isolated places left in the West, he had to run all over half the country. He returned here only a couple of days ago.”

He had buried the hook in his words, but she caught it anyway. “One of them! There’s more than one?”

Jason took a suicidally deep inhalation of smoke that almost certainly shortened his life by hours and exhaled luxuriously. “There’s at least two. Not many more, I expect. Not any more. The whole county doesn’t have enough food to sustain a population. One stayed behind, holding down the fort, so to speak, while Moon’s spirit was wandering around. That’s the one that killed Jameson and tore up your phone lines.”

Martha seemed to become physically uncomfortable, as Jason had been with her the night she picked him up. She sat upright in the seat, then slumped down again, then rolled down her window and rested her elbow on it. Then she looked at Jason for a long time as if trying to divine his intentions. “You’ve sure got this all worked out in your head, Mr. Jason.”

“Not all. I won’t have it all figured out till that thing is pinned down in a glass case with about fifty biologists looking it over. I wouldn’t throw a seven-­foot-­tall hairy man at you if Kimberly hadn’t thrown it at me.”

“Mr. Jason, the ski season is just beginning. They’ve killed people . . .” Her face suffused with panic.

“Yeah, I know, but don’t call out the Air Force just yet. They may very well be gone.”

Jason walked over to his car and came back with his own map, the one with the line tracing the thing’s travels. “Like I said, he was looking for a new home. If he found one, it seems to me, they’d want to get out of here before winter really comes down hard on them. If that’s true, I’ve lost him for good and Moon’s going to be very unhappy in spring.”

“Would they have left already? It isn’t very cold. They’ve got all that food.”

“He sprang one of my traps and injured himself. How badly I don’t know. It wasn’t fatal, since he made it from the Little Harrington. He might want to recuperate for a few days. Get himself back in walking shape, kiss the bats and neighbors good-­bye and all that. Then again, he’s tough as leather, and may have split as soon as he could, food or not.”

“And what if he didn’t find a new home?”