Snow Creek(15)

Make that one Bigfoot exception.

Otis had just got off his shift as a sawyer for Puget Logging Co. at the timber giant’s Snow Creek property. While returning to his truck, he says he stumbled upon a trail of large humanoid tracks.

“I knew what I was seeing right away,” he told the Leader. “I’ve always had a feeling that Bigfoot was out there, you know, watching the crew. Now there’s proof.”

Otis’s proof is in the form of two photographs of the tracks. In one, he put a dollar bill in the frame to show scale…





“We’re going to find something,” Dante insisted as he downed a bottle of Mexican Coke.

Maddie smiled encouragingly from her cell phone.

“Yeah,” she said as she clicked a deluge of Likes on her friend’s Instagram posts. “Something.”

The ride was rough going up the old logging road. Puget Logging had intended harvesting more timber there, but an endangered species, the spotted owl, put an abrupt stop to those plans. The irony was the little bird was discovered by a group of crypto-hunters in search of Sasquatch.

Sam Otis’s story cost him and everyone on his crew their jobs.

Maddie looked down at her phone.

“No service,” she announced.

Dante looked over at her. “You don’t always need to be on your phone. Let’s enjoy the moment.”

It was a familiar refrain. She was on her phone a lot. More so with Dante’s new obsession taking center stage.

Maybe they weren’t right for each other after all?

She glanced away from her nonfunctioning Samsung and thought it over. Dante was handsome. Kind. Had a good job. What more could she want?

The terrain grew rougher, steeper and the roadway narrowed.

“I feel like I’m in a NutriBullet,” she finally said.

“Yeah. Shocks are shitty on this car.”

That’s true, she thought. His car is shitty. That’s a solid strike against him.

“Let’s pull over,” she said.

“Nah. Can’t here, but up ahead I see a wider spot.”

A minute later, they stopped next to a slash pile of stumps and other refuse from the forest. It had been there such a long time that a Douglas fir seedling managed to get a foothold and rose like a Christmas tree topper from the wood rubble.

“I got to take a leak,” Dante said, on his way to the other side of the road.

I need to figure out where this relationship is going, Maddie thought as she perched on a sun-bleached log.

Dante stood in the familiar stance, legs planted apart, rinsing the road dust from a natural hedge of Himalayan blackberry bushes. The razor-wire-like brambles were laden with ripening fruit. The aroma of sun-warmed blackberries is many Pacific Northwesterner’s idea of summertime heaven.

“Hey, we should pick some berries.”

“Not over there,” Maddie shot back, making a disgusted face. “You’re gross, Dante.”

Dante rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean right here.” When he dropped his knees a little to zip up and looked down past the blackberries, a glint of silver struck his eyes. He craned his neck to see better.

“Maddie,” he said, turning to face her, “there’s a pickup truck down there. Let’s go check it out.”

It wasn’t Bigfoot, but it was something more interesting than just standing around waiting for something to happen, so Maddie agreed.

“Maybe someone junked it here when the logging stopped?” she offered.

“Sounds reasonable,” he said, as they slid down the ravine.

As they got closer, Dante could make out the tailgate.

“It’s a GMC,” he said. “This truck’s only a few years old.”

He started pulling off branches.

“Someone ditched it here,” she said.

“Wonder why? Better than my POS of a car.”

“No argument there, Dante.”

They walked around the vehicle. It was blackened by fire and the windows were broken out. Driver’s door hung open. In the truck bed, a mishmash of carpet and paint cans.

“Remodeler’s truck?” Maddie suggested, flicking away a yellow jacket.

Dante assessed the contents and gave her a quick nod.

“Stolen,” she said.

“Yeah, someone took it for some fun up here and ran it off the road.”

Maddie poked at the contents in the truck bed with a stick.

“Nothing to salvage here,” she said.

All of a sudden, her eyes locked on something in the truck bed. She stood frozen for a beat. Her eyes locked. She started to scream. It was a horror movie scream, the kind that slides up and down in volume and doesn’t seem to stop.

Dante, who was looking for a registration to see who the truck belonged to, hurried to where she was standing.

“You okay? Did you get stung?” He wrapped his arms around Maddie and tried to calm her.

Maddie stepped away from the truck; though her mouth was moving, she remained mute. All she could do was point the stick at something in the back of the truck.

He drew closer.

“What is it?”

“There,” she said, taking the stick and tapping against what she wanted him to see.

A desiccated human hand protruded from the carpet scraps. It was small, a child’s or a woman’s. The fingers were curved and crab-like.