And again, picking their way across the bog.
And again, standing in the back of the crowd, at a liquidation auction. The Sasquatch sometimes wore Mr. Sorensen’s old seed hat and boots (he had cut out holes for his large, flexible toes), and sometimes wore the dead man’s scarf. But never his pants. Not even some kind of shorts. Or, dear god, at least some swimming trunks. The Sasquatch was in possession, thankfully, of a bulbous thicket of fur, concealing the area of concern, but everyone knew what was behind that fur, and they knew it would only take a stiff breeze, or a sudden movement, or perhaps the presence of a female Sasquatch to cause a, how would you say—a shaking of the bushes, as it were. Or a parting of the weeds. People kept their eyes averted, just to be safe.
The sisters were enraged.
Mrs. Sorensen was spotted walking with a Sasquatch past the statues and artistic sculptures of Armistice Park.
(“Children play at that park!” howled the sisters.)
They called Father Laurence at home nineteen times, and left nineteen messages with varying levels of vitriol. Fool of a priest was a phrase they used. And useless.
Father Laurence, for his part, went to the woods, alone. He walked the same paths he followed in his boyhood. He remembered the rustle of ravens’ wings, and the silent pounce of an owl, and the snuffling of bears, and the howling of wolves, and the scamper of rabbits, and the slurping of moose. He remembered something else too. A large, dark figure in the densest places of the wood and the tangled thickets of the bog. A pair of bright eyes and sharp teeth and a long, loose-limbed, lumbering gait that went like a shot over the prairie.
He had been eleven years old when he last saw a Sasquatch. And now all he had to do was pick up the phone and invite Mrs. Sorensen over for dinner. Huh, he thought. Imagine that.
The meal, though quiet, was pleasant enough. The Sasquatch brought a bowl of wildflowers, which the priest ate. They were delicious.
Two weeks later, Mrs. Sorensen brought her Sasquatch to church. She brought her other animals too—her one-eyed hedgehog and her broken-winged hawk and her tiny cat and her raccoon and her three-legged dog and her infant cougar, curled up and fast asleep on her lap. The family arrived early, and sat in the front row, Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch in the middle, and the rest of the brood stretching on either side. Each one sat as straight backed as was possible with the particulars of their physiology, and each one was silent and solemn. The Sasquatch wore nothing other than Mr. Sorensen’s father’s old fedora hat, which was perched at a bit of a saucy angle. It held Mrs. Sorensen’s hand in its great, left paw and closed its large, bright eyes.
Father Laurence did his pre-Mass preparations and ministrations with the sacristy door locked. The sisters hovered at the other side, pecking at the door and squawking their complaints. Father Laurence was oblivious. He was a great admirer of the inventor of earplugs, and made it a habit to stash an emergency set wherever he might find the need to surreptitiously insert a pair at a moment’s notice—at his desk, at the podium, in his car, in the confessional, and in the sacristy.
“A sacrilege!” Mrs. Ostergaard hissed.
“Do something!” came Mrs. Lentz’s strangled gasp.
“GET THAT DEER OUT OF THE CHURCH,” Mrs. Ferris roared, followed by a chaos of hooves and snorting and the shouting of women and men, and the hooting of an owl and the cry of the peregrine and the snarl of—actually, Father Laurence wasn’t sure if it was a coyote or a wolf.
Agnes Sorensen was too old to have children. Everyone knew that. But she had always wanted a family. And now she was so happy. Didn’t she deserve to be happy? The sisters pecked and screeched. He imagined their fingers curling into talons, their imperious lips hardening to beaks. He imagined their appliquéd cardigans and their floral skirts rustling into feathers and wings. He imagined their bright beady eyes launching skyward with a wild, high kee-yar of a hawk on the hunt for something small and brown and wriggling.
The priest stood in the sacristy, his eyes closed. “O God, your creatures fill the earth with wonder and delight,” he sang.
“Doris,” he heard Mrs. Ferris say. “Doris, do not approach that cougar. Doris, it isn’t safe.”
“And every living thing has worth and beauty in your sight.”
“Oh, god. Not sheep. Anything but sheep. GET THOSE ANIMALS OUT OF HERE.”
“So playful dolphins dance and swim; Your sheep bow down and graze.”
“Father, get out here this minute. Six otters just came out of the bathroom. Six! And with rabies!”
“Your songbirds share a morning hymn, To offer you their praise.”
There was a snarl, a screech, a cry of birds. A hiss and a bite and several rarely used swears from the mouths of the Parish Council. Father Laurence heard the clatter of their pastel heels and the oof of their round bottoms as they tripped on the stairs, and the howl of their voices as they ran down the street.
Several men waited at the mouth of the sanctuary, looking sadly at the pretty widow next to her hulking companion. The men reeked of mustache oil and pomade. Their shoulders slumped and their bellies bulged and their cheeks went slack.
“Eh, there, Father?” Ernie Jergen—Randall’s sober brother—inclined his head toward the stoic family in the front row. “So that’s it, then?” He cleared his throat. “She’s . . . not single. She’s attached, I mean.”
Father Laurence clapped his hands on the shoulders of the men, sucked in his sagging belly as tight as he could.
“Yep,” he said. “Seems so.” Family is family, after all. The dead have buried the dead, and the living scramble and struggle as best they can. They press their shoulder against the rock
