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Small Town Monsters

7

it’s the exact size of life. Once they have had a whiff of something larger than life, they expand their perceptions of their own states—but without the benefit of crowded sidewalks, taxi’s, astronomical crime-rates, hourly news about the stock-market, and trade rags, without those things, they were forced to fill in the blanks using the meager tools they had to work with.

Folks like Buren Peoples and Larry Uriarte preferred to get creative with those tools. Some tools carve furniture or shape stone into beautiful art. Some tools fix plumbing and get broken cars back on the road. Folks like Larry’s and Buren’s tools create and perpetuated things like el chupacabra and Sasquatch.

Buck joined Larry and Kurt after knocking eight down on his first shot and picking up the other two on the spare. “Before you go blabbing on,” Buck said. “I don’t want to hear nothing about Sasquatch.”

“Sasquatch is real,” Larry said, “and if you don’t believe me you’re more than a fool.”

Buck rolled his eyes. Kurt smiled.

“Remember that elk hunt five years back when we got snowed in and froze our britches?” Larry asked.

“Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” Arthur said; it was the first non-reproachful thing he had said all night.

“Here we go.” Buck shook his head.

“We was up the throne ridge. The snow hadn’t pounded us yet, but we was under a pretty good dusting.”

“We’ve heard it.” Buck tried to cut Larry off.

“Well, he ain’t,” Larry said, pointing at Kurt.

“I haven’t,” Kurt agreed, shrugging.

“Fine,” Buck said and threw his hands in the air.

“We was separated, you know,” Larry went on. “We went our own ways. I had a daypack with sandwiches and a few granola bars and a 30-ought-6 slung over my shoulder. I hiked for the better part of three hours that morning until I found a perch overlooking a box canyon. Perfect, I thought. I hunkered down, took a few sandwiches out of my pack and settled in. I