Bigfoot Blues Lurks in Woods

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Coming soon from High Hill Press: Bigfoot Blues!

Posted by Dianna Graveman on May 4, 2012 in Readers & Writers

The daughter of a longtime Bigfooter enlists the help of her redneck friends to teach a sweet-talking city slicker a backwoods lesson in this rollicking tale by novelist Pamela Foster (Redneck Goddess, 2011).
Samantha is a pretty, spirited bartender who manages VD’s with her on-again-off-again boyfriend and business partner, Hawk. Although the bar is named for their dads (Victor and David), “half the kids in the county phone at least once to giggle some perceived original query.” The Indian, as Sam calls Hawk, is half Yurok and all philanderer, with an appetite for loose women and booze that threatens to ruin any chance of a relationship between the two. Still, Sam isn’t ready to give up on Hawk—yet.
When a finely-dressed, big-city author named Mark Nielson wanders into the bar one evening for a meeting of the believers, the locals expect trouble. But Sam can’t help but be swayed by the sexy stranger with “eyes the color of that variegated moss along a late summer river,” especially after the shabby treatment she’s received from Hawk. Sweet talk and flowers wear down her guard, and soon Sam has a new beau.
When the relationship suddenly takes an awkward turn, Sam’s allegiance to her  beloved father is placed in doubt. Filled with misplaced guilt, Sam begins to question her own beliefs, while fiercely rushing to the defense of her dad. Armed with her .38 and a plan to set things right, Sam leads her city-born suitor into the backwoods wilderness, with Georgia-bred Bubba and childhood friend Lefty trailing behind for support. But none of the four suspects the enormity of the adventure that awaits the group—and the discoveries that will forever change them.
Full of humorous asides and swelling with redneck pride, Bigfoot Blues blends together an eclectic group of believers and nonbelievers for an offbeat but delightfully satisfying tale.
Note: Bigfoot Blues is coming summer 2012 from High Hill Press! In the meantime, hop over to High Hill to find out about a contest to find Bigfoot…and to submit your own story to the Bigfoot Blues Confidential anthology.

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Bigfoot Blues

     My grandma and grandpa lived near Peckwan when I was a toddler.  If you aren’t one of the lucky folks who live in the far north of California, you’ve got no idea where that tiny community is. Unless you’re a fan of Finding Bigfoot, in which case you’ve watched Bobo and the team tramp through manzanita and salmonberry bushes, ford the jade-green Trinity River, and wade through primordial forests in search of The Big Guy.

     In the early 1950’s, Peckwan was a tiny community in the mountains populated by local Indians and by my white grandma and grandpa who were there because local Indian Bud Ryerson was Grandpa’s logging partner. If you’re A Believer, you’re ears ought to be pricking up about now.  Ryerson reported the first recorded Bigfoot sighting in the area and his wife, Vera, famous for her woven baskets, reported sightings no less than six times. She was also my grandma’s best friend.

     I spent a month or so each summer with Grandma. Grandpa was rarely home. He and Bud lived mostly in the woods, building logging roads and harvesting trees. It was mostly just Grandma and me in an old cabin on the side of a mountain. Vera lived just around the bend of a short trail, walking distance even for my short legs except for the sows that roamed free, rooting up acorns and occasionally eating some unwary child who got too close to their piglets. That’s the way Grandma told the story anyway.

     I grew up hearing tales of Bigfoot the same way I heard stories of black bear or cougar or wild hogs. One summer -- I must have been four that year -- a young male Bigfoot hung around and spied on the women as they worked in the community garden or hung up their clothes to dry in the hot, dusty air. The women whispered of “desires” and “kidnappings” and occasionally of “rape”; the atmosphere titillating and ripe as they giggled and compared notes of sightings until Grandma reminded them that, “Little pitchers have big ears.”

      The local children and I rode bareback through poison oak on stolen piglets, picked berries and even gathered acorns to store in wooden chests and bury in the creek for the cold water to filter so the women could make acorn flour.  But, I understood, even as a toddler, that the Indian world of my summer friends was different than my white world. Indians saw things I could not. They knew what roots to gather to make baskets, which mushrooms were delicious in stew and which gave you daytime dreams. Their world was both deeper and more narrow than my own. I don’t believe Grandma ever came right out and said so, but I understood that Bigfoot belonged to the Indian world.

    So, when my level-headed, German Grandfather returned wide-eyed from a logging trip with stories of road building equipment strung all over a mountain side and dozens of giant footprints – it made an impression on me.

     My newest novel, Bigfoot Blues, is the result of that impression.

Rain and Death

It's probably just me.  Usually it is.  But the timing was perfect and this image flashed into my brain. I 've learned to keep most of these little inside-my-head scenes to myself, but this one I'm going to share with you.
Our neck of the woods has had nothing but heat-washed blue skies for weeks.  A desolate, weak breeze occasionally rattles drooping leaves, birds hang their heads and pant through parted beaks, farmers pray for rain and cuss the local weather man.  In the city, lawns brown, air-conditioning units hum like giant cicadas, yard birds huddle dazed around dead, leaf-clouded bird baths.  No relief in sight.  We were hopeful for a time, expected relief any day.  Then we gave up all belief in rain, accepted our lot, taught ourselves to breathe shallowly and hug the shade.
This morning I'm on my way to the funeral of a friend's mother.  The lady was in her late eighties, and by all accounts, lived her life as fully as most of us.  This isn't a memorial to tragedy I'll be attending.  Still, her daughter, husband, friends will mourn.  They'll open thier eyes to morning light forgetful of their loss and be hit with the knowledge of her death again at full awakening.  They'll turn toward the phone to tell her some tidbit of trivia and realize, mid-stride, that she's gone.  Grief will overtake them for long, dark moments.
It rained last night.  Not the tease of a drop or two that evaporates before it can properly kiss the parched dirt.  No.  This was real, wind shaking the trees, moon racing black scrimmed clouds - rain.  Life giving water softening, penetrating, nourishing the good earth.
Pay attention.  Here's the tiny ephiphany for the day.
Might not death be to life, what that rain was to our thirsty land?  Is it possible that we go, day by day, year by year, until we grow accustomed to the hardship, until the longing for relief feels like foolish belief in a child's fairy tale?  Is not faith, whether in God, or rain, or Bigfoot - is not all faith - a choice we cling to, glory in, regardless of the last time our faces were kissed by proof?
I have a picture in my head of my friend's mother.  She's holding hands with Jesus, dancing on strong limbs in the warm rain, yearnings and hopes long forgotten, satisfied and fulfilled.