Where The Wild Things Are

(A Demeter’s Bar Story)

By Jeff Baker

Roger Hulot and his husband Paolo were the only customers in Demeter’s Bar that summer afternoon. The fifty-somethings sat at the table Roger sipping a glass of Merlot, Paolo tapping a glass of whiskey on the side with a straw.

“Can I get you guys anything else?”

That was from Zack, the bartender with the long stringy red hair whose soccer player build got more than one approving glance from the customers.

“No, we’re fine,” Roger said. “We’re enjoying the cool in here.

“Yes,” Paolo said, toasting Zack with his glass.

“Yeah, Zack said. “This heat is something else. The song ought to have said something about feeling as popcorny as Kansas in August.”

The redhead and the two graying older men laughed.

“Yeah, that’s just our bad timing,” Paolo said. “Coming back into the heat after two weeks in the cool of the mountains.”

“Mountains, wow!” Zack said. “Too bad you couldn’t bring some of that cool back with you.”

“We’re lucky we didn’t bring something else back with us,” Roger said. Paolo nodded and took another sip of his whiskey and Zack thought, shuddered.

“Pull up a chair and we’ll tell you all about it.”

It was about three weeks ago (Roger said) and Paolo and I had some time off work. My family has a cabin in the mountains they’ve owned since forever. We weren’t in any hurry so we stopped and stayed the night before we hit the Colorado border. The drive was nice, the weather was pleasant and the scenery was spectacular.

We made it to the cabin in late afternoon after a winding drive through part of a national forest and some low hills.

The cabin has been kept up and refurbished over the years; about a thousand square feet, two stories with electricity, running water…

“And a convenience store just down the road,” Paolo said. The three men laughed again. Then Roger went on.

The area was high enough for spectacular views of the trees and the mountains in the distance, especially from the second story bedroom.

It was after the second day that I noticed what I thought was a bear in the distance as I looked out from the bedroom window at dusk. It was large and lumbering and it disappeared through the trees, brown fur tinged orange in the setting sunlight.

We saw the bear again a couple of days later right at dawn, and this time there was more than one. I would have sworn one of them looked back at us as it was lumbering away. That afternoon Paolo and I walked up the hill to examine where we’d seen the bears. The little clearing we had seen them in was near a tall, gnarled tree so the spot was not hard to find. We were cautious though and we were sure to make plenty of noise so as not to surprise any bears.

In the clearing we noticed scuff marks in the dirt but no real footprints as there was a cover of leaves and the like. We could see a pattern of some of them flattened from something walking on them and this almost made a trail going into the denser part of the trees. Neither Paolo or I was interested enough to follow.

The doors to the cabin were pretty secure so we did something we weren’t supposed to do; we took some food, some grapes, an apple and the like and put it at the edge of the trees in sight of the cabin. Then we staked out the site from the bedroom. We fell asleep after dusk but the food was gone the next morning.

We put out some more food that afternoon, this time in front of the cabin to the side of the driveway, far enough away we hoped. Then we sat and waited by the upstairs hallway window.

After a couple of hours, Paolo realized he hadn’t seen any birds or squirrels or other small critters come and investigate the food. We realized that we hadn’t seen any squirrels, raccoons, foxes even birds.

They came when it got dark.

It was a family of four. We guessed a set of parents and two offspring not quite their size. They towered over our car as they walked past it. Big, hairy, with hands and human faces.

Sasquatch. Bigfoot. A family of Bigfoots. Or Bigfeet. Either way they were there.

Paolo pulled out his cellphone and tried for a picture in the dim light as the furry family helped itself to the food we’d left.

One of the apples rolled down into the driveway, under the car.

Mama Bigfoot calmly walked over, lifted the front end of the car with one hand and grabbed the apple. You’ve seen that old Superman comic cover where he lifts up a car? It was like that.

The Sasquatch finished the food and lumbered off. As they left, one of them looked up at our window and flashed a big smile.

It knew we were there.

Paolo and I talked and figured that the reason we had seen no more critters in the area was they didn’t want to come onto Bigfoot territory. Maybe the Bigfoots were encroaching on more territory, maybe eventually man’s territory. If there are enough of them.

Roger finished his drink and sighed.

“Paolo and I decided to cut our vacation short. We drove down to a motel in town and then headed back, trying not to think too much about an army of Sasquatch driving people away.”

“Yeah,” Paolo said. “Maybe they are some kind of elder race that’s been hidden. I used to read stuff like that in old paperbacks.”

“Hey, what happened to those pictures?” Zack asked.

“Oh, not much,” Paolo said pulling out his smartphone. “You really can’t make out anything in the dark through the window. That blurry thing there is the glint of light when the Bigfoot lifted the car. It’s blurry because I was so shocked I dropped my phone.”

—end—