Eileen Gunn: Questionable Practices

So I said, well, man, my sister’s not feeling so good, and we sure could use a place to sleep tonight. You know any place around here, any place warm? Andrea looked at me hard when I called her my sister, but she didn’t say anything. She’s cool, Andrea. We didn’t want to tell the sasquatch our whole story. Everybody needs to keep some truths to themselves. It’s the only way.

And the sasquatch invited us back to his place. Polite as can be. Seemed like a good man, this sasquatch.

We leaped out of the hot spring, and got dressed real fast. It was colder now. We were all warmed up, so the hot spring was not a dumb idea, no matter what Andrea thought.

Skiing behind the sasquatch, she gave me a what-the-fuck? look. It was so dark, I couldn’t see her face, but Andrea can do the what-the-fuck? look with her entire body.

I gave her a shrug that said later . Of course, Andrea was gonna have to rethink what I told her, and she was gonna have to ask why, and she was gonna have to just fuck with me on it, but she knew enough not to do any of those things while we were following a sasquatch through a frigid forest in the middle of the night.

We skied in the dark for maybe a half hour or so: it was slow going. The sasquatch, I noticed, had furry webbed feet that worked like snowshoes. Obviously, sasquatches evolved in the snow, like yeti. That’s part of my theory. I’m just learning about this stuff. I found a couple of websites that have been helpful.

So, we were climbing on some kind of a narrow path. Climbing is relatively easy on my mountaineering skis, even without skins, but going down you don’t have the control you’d have with steel edges. It was steep and icy. I was hoping we could get out of there in the morning without having to side-step all the way down. When we came to the sasquatch’s cave, it didn’t look like anything was there at all — just a wall of granite with a row of doug firs in front of it. But somehow there was a gap in the rock, and the sasquatch gestured us in.

Inside, of course, it was bare ground, so we took off the skis and carried them in. No sense leaving them out there, risking that it would snow during the night and cover them up. I’ve done it, can you tell? Even if you know exactly where you put your skis, it’s scary, out in the middle of nowhere, you don’t see ’em.

The squatch struck a spark and lit a funny little oil lamp, and me and Andrea looked around inside the cave.

Back from the mouth of the cave, the ground sloped down and the roof was higher than I could see, in the dark. It seemed big inside, even though we couldn’t see. I wonder if humans have some kind of sonar, like bats or dolphins.

We followed the wall, and, not far from the entrance, we came to a house made of logs and rocks. We went by several sets of doors and windows, like some old tourist motel, right in the cave.

We went in one of the doors and entered a big room. The floor was covered with the skins of deer and mountain sheep. No bearskins, I noticed. There was a strong musky smell, like raccoon or bear. Sasquatch, I bet.

There was another lamp, and there were big piles of balsam boughs, which I knew were comfortable to sleep on, and they smelled good. The sasquatch had a pretty nice place. Cold, though.

The sasquatch soon had a little fire going in a firepot, and there must have been a way for the smoke to get out, because the room didn’t fill with smoke. There was a pot of water on the fire, and, criminey, the squatch even had a bunch of those heavy, handmade pottery mugs, like the kind you find cheap at the Goodwill. What, did he carry those things all the way into the woods? Sasquatches shop at thrift stores?

Soon we were drinking fir-tip tea, which was good, if somewhat redundant in the mountains.

After a couple cups of tea, Andrea went outside to take a leak, and I got the sasquatch alone. I dug in my pack and pulled out the Hennessey, of which there was still a little left, and offered the sasquatch some. He took a pull, I took a pull, and pretty soon I was breaking out the grass. While I was rolling a couple fat joints, I told the sasquatch that I thought my sister had the hots for him.

He took this a good bit cooler than I might have expected. I mean, Andrea is a good-looking woman. I wondered what sasquatch chicks looked like, that he was so unimpressed. Or maybe there was just no accounting for taste.

I told the sasquatch that when Andrea came back inside, I could set it up for him with her. I told him this all had to be aboveboard. But I could tell, I said, that he was a stable fellow — solid, responsible — and my sister was ready to settle down and have kids. This last part was true, actually: Andrea and I had had The Conversation, though we didn’t come to any conclusion, or at least not one that made her shut up about it.

The sasquatch just nodded at what I said, and I took this as agreement. We smoked a joint on it.

Andrea

When I came back into the room, the old guy was warming up some kind of a soup he’s got in a pot near the fire.

“You folks are probably pretty hungry, eh?”

He and Christy had been smoking that homegrown Christy carried with him. Pretty punk stuff.

“Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t bring much to eat.”

“Well, honey, let me tell you.” He patted my shoulder, left his hand there just a little too long, y’know? “You and your brother shouldn’t go off skiing like this without bringing some emergency rations. You’re lucky you ran into me. I’ll take care of you.”

Yeah, I thought, I’m sure.

But he was nice enough, and the soup was okay, though lord knows what was in it. Roots and stuff. No meat. There was something potato-like, but it wasn’t a potato. I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to make the old guy feel bad. I’ve eaten a lot of weird stuff — a little more wouldn’t hurt me.

He had these handmade wooden bowls to eat out of. I’d seen bowls like that before. Very rustic, kind of Zen, you know? I took some meditation classes in Berkeley, and the monks, they had bowls kind of like that.

The cave was warming up a bit from the fire, but I wouldn’t have called it warm. The old guy noticed I was shivering, and put an arm around me. Christy moved away. Bastard.

“What’s your name?” I asked. He said something, but I didn’t catch it. It came out kind of funny, like he was clearing his throat at the same time.

“What?” I said.

“Call me Mickey,” he said.

“Like the mouse?” I asked.

“Like the mouse,” he said.

After supper, I left Christy and the old man talking, and lay down on a pile of balsam branches. I was tired, and it was soft and kind of cozy.

In the middle of the night, I heard a noise in my sleep, and I opened my eyes. Was it a noise I dreamed, or a noise in the real world? It took me a while to wake up. The oil lamps were out, but the fire was still burning, and by its dim light, I could see the old man moving across the room. He was wearing some kind of a tall hat. Other people came up behind him. It was very dark and shadowy, and completely silent. I wondered a bit if I was dreaming, but it didn’t seem to be a dream.

Where was Christy? He wasn’t next to me. One of those people looked like him.

I got up from the pile of branches and slipped my boots back on. I stood there in the dark, very quietly, thinking they couldn’t see me.

The old man came closer to me, and the group moved with him. Yes, that was Christy there, in the tall hat.

The people moved so strangely, like they weren’t used to walking upright, and the cave was so dim, lit with a faint orange glow that seemed to come from within the people themselves, that I thought again that it was a dream. They were carrying ropes of twisty brown vines with yellow and orange berries on them, like swags of tinsel from a Christmas tree, and they encircled me, looping strands of vines over my head. It wasn’t scary, though, it was like an interesting slow-motion dream. I felt that I could duck out of the vines and run away if I wanted, or wake up from it, but I didn’t want to. The berries seemed to give off a dim light, and I was able to see better, like my eyes were getting used to the dark.