In Search Of

"What's up with Dad?" Lenora Adams asked, the wee intrepid teen turning momentarily from a transaction at the cash register.

 

Lenora's eclectic grandmother Lucy had received a text from wayward son Billy Adams: out hiking with his partner Karl for a day-and-a-half now, in search of Bigfoot hunting in the fertile misty hinterlands by their fog affected, affluent hamlet on a hill, Mont Vernon.

"Not the usual caper, I'm afraid, peanut," Lucy replied with a glance from her phone. "Your father believes he's onto something, and apparently so does Karl."

"Gosh," said Lenora, pushing back her rounded eyeglasses, "If Karl thinks so..."

Lucy let out a sigh, and spun off from the old-fashioned counter.

 

Lenora returned her attention to the beefy customer waiting impatiently for a pack of Backwoods cigars, snapped shut the register, and fixed an efficient smile on the bearded, red-plaid outfitted hulk.

"How's your day going, sir?" Lenora asked, handing over the cigars.

 

"Fine."

 

"Please let us know if you cross paths with Bigfoot, there have been reports," she added, gaining a smile as the man exited the jingling door and went down the front steps of the porch, an overcast early April afternoon darkening the forsythia curtained store windows.

A veritable undersized iron fist, Lenora ran the general store under Lucy's tutelage in the growing absence of Karl and Billy. After Billy came out and divorced Lenora's mom, he and Karl bought and refurbished the Main Street landmark. The same ground upon which Billy's great grandfather, "Doc" Adams, had chocked his cart of naturalist remedies in a previous century.

Then Billy went freelance detective (fog, regressive child, sprung from the closet, over-trusted, Lenora couldn't decide), and set sights for largely local unexplained mysteries, Karl the highly educated trust fund baby at his side. Thanks to Lenora, the gay cryptozoologists were unknowingly trending on Creature.net, with 792 followers.

 

Karl was a writer by nature, yearned to pen the great American novel, and had shared his rather embryonic prose with Lenora, who delighted in the collaboration.

"Time to take in the flag, peanut," Lucy advised Lenora needlessly a half-hour before closing.

 

The learned mystic matriarch was often blind to see: a figurative apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Lenora threw open the jingling door with an air of histrionic gloom, surprising herself even more than Lucy, and cast a devious grin as she marched out.

Though rain wasn't forecasted, anything might occur on the raised topographical anomaly of Mont Vernon. Lenora leapt one-footed onto the porch rocker beneath a sheltering sky of leveled gray, balanced a hand on the thick vertical beam, and plucked the flagpole free, knees bending as she dutifully wrapped Old Glory.

Uprighting the flagpole, Lenora straightened a one-footed rocking gaze down Route 13 at the village charter sign swaying in a tree by an ascending farm field of misty green. A message to those passing through (as many were wont) the minute one-church hamlet, and preceding a treacherous vehicular drop which opened a glorious vista of farm and hinterlands, the sign scripted: "ENJOY THE VIEW!"

Lenora didn't get the stilted logic of a roadsign speaking directly to folks; it seemed inordinately risky. When she was sixteen, learning to drive with her father along, fu manchu Billy cackled in his thin gold rims, and tapped Lenora's hand gripping the wheel at ten-two. "Ignore the sign, Len!" Billy said. "I'll enjoy the view!"

Soon Lenora closed out the register, locked both doors and hung the closed sign. By dawn's early light, the fog would set: a damp shroud in which all was obscured. Nevertheless tempted, often arising prior to her alarm, Lenora had not yet walked alone through the village in the early morning fog.

 

"Remind me to order bacon and sausage patties--would you?" Lucy asked Lenora, the weary duo starting breakfast sandwich prep in the scant kitchen at the rear of the store.

 

Mum on the wayward explorers, and Bigfoot. Billy, and particularly Karl, were skilled on the Kenmore industrial griddle, and Lucy certainly so. Lenora, in her unpardonable youth, destined to prep, working the toaster in the morning.

Dropping a six-pack of bagels into the bread bin, Lenora announced unbowed to her grandmother: "I'm going to grab a sub from the cooler for dinner, then hike out to the hinterlands before it gets dark to find Karl and Billy."

Lucy wiped out the butter tray, tossed the rag, and adjusted her apron.

"Peanut, your dad wouldn't like that."

"You mean the dad who is searching for Bigfoot, right?" Lenora countered. "Gram, I know we're in some sort of climate vortex here, but I'm eighteen, and believe it or not--I've seen the hellhounds crossing the road at night."

"Don't make light, Lenora," she replied with a shudder, disbelieving. "When have you ever been out that late?"

"Only once can I say, Lucy," Lenora smiled teasingly, fixing back her eyeglasses. "One night Dad and I were driving by the swamp, you know near the hill heading into town, when four of the four-legged beasts dashed across our headlights, eyes aglow." The tale was true, and made Lenora think twice of embarking on her hike.

"If we're fortunate, Sasquatch hunts hellhounds, up through the northern corridor," Lucy uttered, deadly serious. "Your dad found scat, peanut--and it's not canine. So please, stay inside tonight."

Lenora fixed a pout; tiny invisalign teeth grinding. She surveyed her grandmother's yellow paisley top, bib apron graced by a black tourmaline amulet, short sleeves accentuating fleshy garden-toned arms. Lucy was a hippie.

"Gram, what were you doing when you were eighteen?" Lenora asked.

"Well, for one thing," she laughed, adjusting the apron: "Burning my bra!"

"Right? I'm going on a late afternoon hike, that's all. I will text my father and tell him I'm coming."

Of course Billy's reply was no no no. Perhaps least qualified on earth for denials, his child notwithstanding, Lenora devoured a chicken roll-up, then packed her gold badge Scout knapsack (hydration, hooded rain shell, sheathed field knife), the OG mentor quietly observant.

 

Finally Lenora slipped into her North Face fleece, and whipped her long ponytail over; a crisp garment tug, a conciliatory sigh and nod from Lucy.

"Safe harbor, my child," she imparted, culling from the amulet a Saint Christopher talisman. She placed the tiny unified feathered medal in Lenora's palm, swiftly and appreciatively pocketed. Lenora kissed her wise beloved grandmother goodbye, then exited the jingling door.

The town's cheeky parting shot rocked its hinges, a roadside wind tunnel effect at Lenora's back as she unsteadily gained the primeval mountainous vista.

 

To the left sprawled a bygone dairy farm: ancient occupied farmhouse facing the crossing road, skeletal livestock holdings punctuating a wide pasture long surrendered to raising young firs, spruces, and pines for Christmas. No wonder.

On the right lay the hinterlands: an immense vernal ground beneath the slate gray cloud mass. Unperturbed by a streak of lightning, Lenora respired sport fit and worked her rolling thinking thumb fidget, rush hour traffic crawling intermittently past the intrepid daughter in search of.

Below crossed the county border road, Purgatory Road. Two cars and a pickup glided the left which split the dairy farm toward development. None hung the hard right which snaked pebbled dirt for ages along the outskirts of the hinterlands and its four square miles, or two-thousand plus acres of harsh forbidding terrain, abundant wildlife, and inland swamp.

Lenora tucked away her fidget, and texted Billy: "I'm nearing Purgatory, would you or Karl please meet me?"

The signal failed, and Lenora tucked away her phone.

 

She strode along the dead zone wilderness road with hard vaporous breath; rugged boots kicking tire-track gravel, twisting a wristlet. Distant traffic receded along a wide curve until nonexistent. Traces of weird humidity marked the chill lonesome path, and the young explorer fought off a sensible urge to turn back.

She finally lit her flashlight and picked an entry into the damp woods. A nightingale's shrill, passionate melody piped above the infinite trilling insects. A dark gulch and split rock bank curtained by giant overhanging ferns seemed the only way forward. Later Lenora would swear to authorities it was then she heard a helicopter buzzing somewhere overhead.

"Len!" her father cried, his lantern a welcome beacon in the wild and moody separation. Lenora shouted a return and plowed ahead--scattershot LED beam clearing the spindly hindrances, heart lodged in her throat and mud flying, on high alert for the wet scent of hellhound.

 

Billy's slim approaching figure became apparent, and they met; hugs and scratchy kisses. She wasn't in trouble.

"Karl is noshing in the tent, trying to order free-trade wool socks on Amazon!" Billy cackled, a protective arm around Lenora, his lantern a yellow orb bringing the pair deeper into the mysterious reverberating biosphere. Lenora wiped her fogged glasses on her sleeve, and gained her bearings along the path.

 

"You know the professor," Billy went on, "he can't stop spending money. He doesn't understand what really counts. Scat, peanut. I found Bigfoot scat, a pile of it."

"Eww, Dad," Lenora said.

A low campfire lit a tract of inland swamp tweaking a few early peepers, the expertly geared canopy tent staked among the giant ferns above the still, opalescent pond. Karl emerged from the glow of the tent, grumbling regarding lack of service, and tramped down the grade to meet Billy and Lenora, tight-lipped grin below a shock of white hair.

"It's all your father, the renowned Billy Adam's fault, young lady," he said, sparkling green eyes fixed warmly on Billy. "Ever since our trip to Devil's Tower, those in the know have been searching." The couple sojourned last summer in Wyoming; Billy hiked the famous rim and meditated, while Karl holed up like a goat and worked on his novel.

"As if Erma Steinbeck here cares," Billy gently mocked. "You and I both know, Len, he will never finish that blasted tome." An inner light went off, and Billy grabbed Lenora's wrist disagreeably.

"Why did you decide to come out here when I told you not to, Len?" Why tonight?"

"Yes, peanut," Karl grinned, leaning closer: "Why tonight?" He placed a large gregarious hand on Lenora's shoulder, turned toward the glimmering pond, and began an oration to the chirping peepers, and perhaps somewhere out there, Bigfoot: "You see Peanut here, who is no bigger than a peanut..."

"Enough!" Billy laughed, and despite the uncertain nature of affairs, so did Lenora. Karl had a way of taking the sting from Lenora's longtime moniker; in many regards, a put down. Still, Lenora kept a packet of peanuts in her knapsack--which had somehow gone missing.

Near within the chittering, misty overhanging environs, a hoot owl woke to early evening viewing, and Lenora shuddered.

"I thought Bigfoot was vegetarian," she said to the two men of shadowed countenance, inexplicable ripples coursing the pond, recurrent flashes of lighting overhead.

"Omnivore, Len," Karl replied, "like us. Not to worry: Billy and I laid a meat lure for the hellhounds, and Bigfoot may be off on a hunt. Though those myths are the least of our worries. Right, Billy?"

Billy grinned sheepishly, glancing upward and scratching his chin beard; a decompressed whoosh popping Lenora's ears. "Hold onto your hat, Len," Billy urged mutedly, his hand in hers. "They found me."

An encompassing red mist lit the wide floral swamp, the hoot owl and a night heron taking flight as pink steam flattened the pond. A domed, compact multi-lit craft slowly descended among the ferns on the far side, and hovered silently atop the indigenous mountain laurel. A wondrous flying saucer direct from outer space.

Lenora leapt into Billy's fatherly embrace, eyes shut and averted, damp boots dangling. She hadn't signed up for this!

 

Billy sighed with deep content, then gracefully set down his daughter in search of; straightened her braid, and crisped her muddied fleece top. "Be brave, Len," he said. "This could be our ticket to the mothership."

An edge lit walkway dropped open leisurely across the pond, and a space creature of insignificant stature emerged. A jeweled silver sword hung at its winged, red robed hip. Clearly, a non-ornamental bearing.

 

No other option at hand, and yet only tangibly confident in its power, Lenora readied her sainted pocket talisman; the men taking heed of a potentially volatile encounter; yet remaining steadfast at the young explorer's back.

Bulbous mirrored housefly eyes red as rubies, a piercing third eye red-cresting a gilded skull, the creature floated closer until it hovered before the three humans. Icy diamond dotted nose glistening, its rigid, bejeweled cone mouth sonically transmitted:

"Take me to your leader."

Lenora looked up at the humbled men, fixed her eyeglasses, and stepped forward.


Fin