Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(56)
“I’ll be fine.” I’m not sure if Vincent meant this for her or Dan or himself. “Take it slow, careful…” He looked up. “I don’t need to make it all the way, just enough to get cell reception.” He patted his jacket, the high-end trekker kind with solar panels woven into the lining. He repeated, “I’ll be careful.”
“But you’ll be all alone.”
A pause at that. A warning.
Dan filled me in later about the argument I’d already missed. How he and Mostar had gotten up early, decided to let me sleep, and gone out to check on everyone else. That was when they’d found Vincent getting ready to leave, and how he’d already made up his mind.
The philosophy, the justification. Somehow Vincent and Bobbi had convinced themselves that the rocks were meant to scare us away. Our land was the goal, the shelter of our houses, possibly, as well as the food inside. They still weren’t ready to cross that mental line, to admit what those creatures really want. And when Reinhardt showed up…
Reinhardt.
He’d been listening, that’s what Dan thinks, through one of his broken windows, and came over to see what was happening. When he enthusiastically threw his support behind Vincent, Dan said Mostar gave up after that. No one, not even Carmen, who showed up at the same time, was willing to accept the truth. That’s why Dan had switched tactics, focusing on the perils of the hike. But, as I personally witnessed, this logic wouldn’t work either.
Someone just had to go for help. There simply wasn’t any other choice.
Why? Why are we always looking for someone else to save us instead of trying to save ourselves?
“Here it is!” We all turned to see Mostar shuffling back to the group. Dan told me when he’d pivoted to the terrain argument, she’d rushed back to her house for “something.” And that something turned out to be a bamboo spear. A proper one this time. Not the slapdash javelin from before. An eight-inch chef’s knife jutted from the hollow center of a thick, strong shaft, held there by what I thought was brown string but later learned was rubber-coated electrical wire. It looked powerful, deadly, and a little bit comical when held next to Vincent’s diminutive frame. (I also learned, later, that she’d been making it for Dan.)
“Here”—she held out the weapon to Vincent—“this is what I was talking about.”
“Thank you.” Vincent kept his hands at his sides. “But…I think…it’s a little…” His eyes followed the six-foot-plus shaft.
“I can cut it down.” Mostar started to turn away. “Give me thirty seconds.”
“I’m okay,” Vincent insisted, and held up the twin telescopic poles dangling from his wrists. “They’re better for balance anyway, I have more experience with them, and…” He ran his hand over his glistening upper lip. “I don’t…”
A glance at Reinhardt, who, surprisingly, had been silent all this time. “I…don’t want to make things worse.”
“Then don’t go!” Mostar jammed the butt of her spear into the ground.
He shrugged. “I have to.” Then, softer to his wife, “I have to.”
And that was that. A whole conversation in agreed code. Hints, warnings, even a weapon without mentioning aloud what it was for. Mostar just sighed, withdrew the spear, and gave him a big hug. So did the rest of us. I could feel the nervous heat coming through his clothes, the sweat of his neck on my cheek. Reinhardt gave him this confident pat on the arm, like one of those old black-and-white war movies where somebody’s sending the hero off to glory. I always hated those movies. Whenever someone said “Good luck” or “Godspeed,” I only heard “Better you than me.” Bobbi kissed him deeply and, for a second, I thought she was going to cry.
We followed him as far as the Common House and then stopped to let Bobbi walk him to the bottom of the driveway. Standing there waiting, our backs turned to give them some privacy, Mostar looked at her shoes and said, “They never listen. No matter what you say, sooner or later someone always tries to run the blockade.” And she muttered something in her native language, something I couldn’t catch. I half expected her to cross herself. Isn’t that what they also did in war movies, the old stout foreign women?
This one didn’t. She just clapped her hands twice with, “Okay, let’s get to work, a lot of broken glass to clean up.” As Reinhardt took Dan aside, mumbling something about his bad knees, I looked back to see that Bobbi was now alone.
I could see her head was bowed slightly, as she hugged herself, shoulders heaving.
“C’mon, Katie.” Mostar took me by the arm and escorted me down the hill toward her. “Let’s get her home.”
Vincent was gone by then, disappeared into the fog.
From my interview with Senior Ranger Josephine Schell.
Not all chimps throw rocks for dominance. In West Africa, primatologists recently observed them hurling stones against trees. No one knows why. There’s a theory that it’s some kind of “sacred ritual” for some yet undiscovered goal. Personally, I couldn’t care less why they do it, just that they do. It shows me rocks have multiple functions, and we can’t be sure about what all those functions are. If some chimps use stones in their monkey-hunting tactics and those tactics are being used by some of their larger, North American cousins, then both the Mount St. Helens attack and the bombardment of Greenloop weren’t meant to drive the humans away, but to drive them out into the open.