“The thought has crossed my mind.”
A few steps farther, a light flashed in our faces. We stopped and raised our gloved hands to shield our eyes. Over the menacing growl of a dog came a man’s rasp: “You can stop right there or I can let go of this here leash.”
The shadows in Perlmutter’s living room danced along the knotty-pine walls with the flickering in his fireplace. He was squeezed into a rocking chair, shotgun across his lap. His chest strained at the snaps of the down vest he wore over a red flannel undershirt. The German shepherd he called Shep crouched at his feet, glowering. Perlmutter reached behind his chair and fished a can of Bud Light from a cooler.
“Frosty, anybody?”
“No, thanks,” Joanie said. She sat in a chair Perlmutter had taken from the kitchen, its dull yellow vinyl seat back torn and peeling. I’d sunk into an armchair that sagged so badly that my butt rested below my knees.
“I’ll take one,” I said. I hoped the smell might cut the stench of cat stinging my eyes. He tossed the beer at me, hard and a little high. I snatched it out of the air as if I were wearing my catching glove.
“Whoa,” Perlmutter said. “Still got a little of that, huh? I saw you play a bunch of times, kiddo, including that last time. You played one hell of a game until the end there. What happened?”
“I screwed up.”
Perlmutter rocked back chuckling. “Well, I’ll be. That’s good. I didn’t figure anybody screwed up anymore. Every time I turn on TV, there’s somebody saying it wasn’t their fault, it must’ve been somebody else. Good for you.”
I saw little evidence of Perlmutter’s Bigfoot passion in his living room. An enormous rifle hung over the fireplace. On the mantel below sat a police radio next to a copy of the infamous fuzzy black-and-white photograph showing what purported to be a Sasquatch walking through a forest. An inscription etched across the top of the frame read, “The Truth Will Set You Free.”
Perlmutter rocked forward into the light, and the shadows fell away from the acne scars beneath his scraggle of a beard. He crushed his empty beer can with one hand and tossed it at the fireplace. Shep immediately rose, picked the can up in her jaw, and carried it into the kitchen.
“You folks in a trading mood?” Perlmutter said, dipping back into the cooler. “I got something to trade, but I ain’t talking unless it’s even-steven.”
“We don’t do trades,” Joanie said.
“Well, little Miss Mike Wallace, I’m talking to the boss here,” Perlmutter said. Shep came back and lay down by the fire. “And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t be writing in your little book anymore.”
Joanie gave me a sidelong glance as she shut her notebook. Perlmutter looked at me. “Didn’t you used to write for one of them Detroit papers?”
“Yep.”
“What was your byline?”
“A. J. Carpenter.”
“What’s Gus come from?”
“Augustus.”
“Augustus. Sounds like a Roman emperor. And the J?”
“James.”
“So you weren’t named for your daddy?”
The question startled me. “Actually I was,” I said. “My dad was Augustus Rudolph, after my grandpa, but they called him Rudy. My grandma’s dad was a Rudolph. My mom’s was a James.”
“And your momma’s daddy, that would’ve been Jimmy Damico?”
Again he surprised me. “That’s right,” I said. “You knew him?”
“My daddy and him used to hunt rabbits up around Sunset Trail where it zigzags there past Twin Lakes. Jimmy and his brother Bill. One of them had a kid who bought it over in Nam. I tagged along once or twice before I moved out here by myself. Ain’t sure they cared so much about the hunting, but they sure liked sitting around on the tailgate of Jimmy’s old Chevy wagon till dark, telling stories and drinking.”
“You knew my dad?”
He looked down at Shep. “A little. Bumped into him once or twice at the titty bar in Alden.”
“What titty bar?”
“Tit-for-Tat,” Perlmutter said. He’d noticed the surprise and disbelief in my voice. “Wasn’t there long. The cops got the owner for running coke and that was that.”
“It couldn’t have been my dad.” Mom had said he worked at a restaurant on those weekends. She had never mentioned naked dancers. But she wouldn’t have, would she?
Perlmutter took a long, slow sip of his beer. “Maybe I got it wrong,” he said.
“So, Clayton,” Joanie interrupted. “Why don’t you tell Augustus here how you got into the Sasquatch business?”
“Hah,” Perlmutter said. “This the interview part? Well, you know, as I told little Miss Wallace here, everybody’s got to do something. I used to work for the county extension service, and I’d see all these professor types coming up from downstate in their duck shoes and camo hats, getting all these grants and such to go chasing after mosquitoes and lily ponds and algae. I figured that money’d be better put to use looking for something ain’t nobody found yet.”
“Like Bigfoot,” I said.
“Yes, sir. You see that there on the mantel?” He pointed to the picture. “That’s a joke. A friend gave me that to remind me of my mission, because that picture, y’all seen it before, if that ain’t a guy in a gorilla suit, I’ll eat my gun.”
“Think so?”
“Aw, heck, the Sasquatch ain’t been definitively discovered. He’s no doubt out there, and me and Shep have set ourselves to the task of finding him, and we won’t give it up no matter what y’all put in your paper, will we, Shep?” He reached to pet the dog, but the dog turned its head away. “I got a whole museum in my garage and my tool shed and I showed it all to the little missy, but she don’t want to believe what she can see with her own eyes.”
With a glance I warned Joanie to keep quiet.
“You know, Augustus,” Perlmutter continued, “we all got stories to tell. Some are true and some ain’t and some are only half true, and those last ones are most liable to get us in trouble. Ain’t that right?”
“Yes,” I said, because it was. “But you’ve got to admit, Clayton, it’s pretty impressive how you’ve kept this museum going all these years.”
He grinned. “Well, it don’t hurt to have friends in high places. And that’s all I’ll be saying about that.”
“How did you know Blackburn?”
Perlmutter picked a birch log off a stack next to his chair and flung it onto the fire. The papery bark spat flames. “Not well. Saw him when I went to games, of course, and I’d say hello. I don’t think he was much for socializing. Now, I ought to talk, but Blackburn and his pal there, the guy who went and killed himself, I figured they were a little like me, they liked to go out and rough it up in the woods and have a few beers. I could see them out there at their bonfire once in a while, ain’t far from here. I tried to join them once or twice, but I could tell pretty quick they didn’t want me around.”
“They didn’t like you?” Joanie said.
“Who wouldn’t like a guy who rides up with a cooler full of cold ones?” He swigged his beer. “They had their own little club. Then one night I guess it kind of broke up.” He chuckled.
“What do you know about that?” I said.
He straightened in his chair, a movement I’d seen in many a source who knew something I wanted to know. I disliked them for it even as I tried to flatter them into telling me. “Well,” he said, “I might have seen a bit of it.”
“Come on,” Joanie said.
“Maybe this is where we talk about what you’re bringing to the table,” he said. “I believe you have an article you’re fixing to write about my livelihood.”
I pointed at the door. “Can we have two minutes?”
Out on the porch, the cold air sucked the cat smell from my nose.
