Here’s something from the current piece. For fellow West Seattleites, the coffee shop in question is indeed the Admiral Bird. This is a sequel to “The Wizards of West Seattle,” which is available in Neither Here Nor There, just out this week!
“You need to stop holding a grudge about it,” Penny said.
Albert snorted. “You tried to kill me!”
“I’m a demon. That’s my nature. And it was one of the old lady’s tests. You don’t need to worry about me any more.”
Albert didn’t say anything, but he was unconvinced. In the months since he’d become apprentice to May Huang, one of the wizards of West Seattle, he’d faced several tests, but none as harrowing as that long chase down Alaska Way towards Alki with a long-faced and eager Penny on his heels. Only his encounter and subsequent alliance with Mr. Gray had put a stop to that, and Albert was still unsure what the consequences of that would be.
Penny mocked him. She manifested as a bright-eyed woman of indeterminate age, her face sharp-featured. “Oh, Penny, you’re so scary, oh Penny I can never unsee what I have seen, oh Penny please don’t eat my soul.”
“I’m unclear why don’t eat my soul is an unreasonable demand.”
“I’m just saying, you don’t need to worry about it. Anyhow, Huang wants me to teach you about oracles.”
They were walking down California Ave, passing the Admiral Theater. They both saluted the Little Free Library there, Penny with a graceful curtsey, Albert’s bow slightly more awkward, as they passed.
“I know how oracles work,” Albert said smugly. “That’s how I knew you were something other than human. I found the Oracle, left a crayon in his path.”
“He’s powerful because of the limitations on his magic,” Penny said. “Being able to use only found objects is pretty severe. But there are other routes.” She pointed. “We’re headed to the Bird. I need coffee.”
“Isn’t that a flower shop?”
“And here you have a principle of oracles. Anywhere boundaries blur, they can manifest.”
He’d passed the store a hundred times on walks and seen the flower shop sign, but closer inspection proved the front was a coffee shop, shifting into flowers in the back as seamlessly as two interior shots Photoshopped together.
At the counter Penny ordered coffee but Albert shook his head when she glanced at him. She shrugged. He looked around: dinette tables and chairs, an old truck serving as coffee table, pictures on the wall, the frames the size of his hand, enclosing stamp-sized pictures. He went closer to look.
Each was a scene from West Seattle: the shore at Lincoln Park, the overlook near Huang’s house, the playground at Hiawatha, drawn in fine-nibbed pen and colored in jewel-colored inks that made each one, a summer’s day, come alive. They were as bright and lovely as the day outside, and he craved one of them instantly.
A little label by the cluster said, “Enquire at the register about the price.” He went back to where Penny was counting out her bills.
He waited till she was done and asked the woman at the counter, “Excuse me, how much are the pictures?”
She tilted her head, considering him. He was suddenly conscious of the smear of yogurt from this morning’s breakfast on the knee of his jeans, the fact that he hadn’t bothered to shave, and his “Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop” t-shirt.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Bigfoot
(As I’m transferring material over from the old configuration of the site to the new one, I’ll be reprinting a number of stories and articles. “Bigfoot” was written while studying at Johns Hopkins. My spouse at the time and I didn’t have a TV and spent a lot of time in the evening reading aloud to each other. This story owes a great deal to a few weeks spent with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the products of Mark Twain, whose works I love.)
Bigfoot twists around in the poolside lounge chair and admires her hairy ankle and the gold choker masquerading as an anklet there. The California sun feels hot and heavy on her shoulders. She thinks of Nair. What would light feel like on those shoulders where long coarse hair has always kept the sun’s touch away? Would the skin sear and blister? Maybe she’d try shaving a small patch; she could buy some sun block at the K-Mart.
“Tell me again how you came here,” the reporter says.
“Hopped a bus, honey. Wrapped myself in an old blanket and pretended to be ill. They wouldn’t have stopped for no bearded lady any other way.”
The reporter nods. She’s a hardened professional, but Bigfoot’s beard startled her the first time she saw it. It must be four feet long and Bigfoot’s braided it, woven in bubblegum charms, and tied it off with golden ribbons. It lies on her chest like a pet python.
The reporter’s not entirely happy. Her editor sent her to cover Bigfoot, promised a two page spread if the article was juicy enough. But it’s not. Bigfoot doesn’t have any scandals in her background, no rendezvous with John F. Kennedy, no secret love triangle with Liz and Dick, no unborn illegitimate children, no meetings in motel rooms with fundamentalist preachers, and no Hustler centerfold (although there have been offers). All the skeletons in her closet are plain unvarnished bones.
It’s not that she’s not colorful. But she’s too darn hard to contain in a single line. She’s larger than life and much bigger than a breadbox. Every time the reporter tries to think of a lead, here comes Bigfoot, all knees and elbows, bending the sentence out of whack and choking it up with that hair of hers.
Bigfoot grins as the reporter pauses and takes a sip of her pina colada.
“This house, this pool,” the reporter says, waving an arm clothed in creamy linen at the short cropped green grass, the white tiles, the three stories and five and a half baths. “How did you get all this?”
“This stuff? Oh, here and there. I always wanted a place like this one. You folks have it so easy here. No idea what the woods are like? They’re a jungle, a life that’s short, nasty and full of brutality. Always looking for something to eat, mushrooms, tree bark, small furry animals, you know. And you can’t light a fire because they’ll see you.”
“Who will see you?”
“The park rangers. They don’t approve of missing links. They say we bring down the overall tone of the park. I always tell them, look around, it’s not us that pitched these non-biodegradable styrofoam cups and beer cans all over the place. If you’re looking for someone who brings down the general tone of the park, I say, you’re not looking at the right species.”
“What are your plans for the future?”
“I’m doing Carson this week and ‘Wheel of Fortune’ the next. I’m going to give that Vanna woman a run for the money. Once they see me in an evening gown, she won’t have a chance. Why, she doesn’t have any more hair than one of those Barbie dolls. Just on her head, and even then not in all the right places.”
“Do you have any name other than Bigfoot?” the reporter asks, scratching away on her pad. She’s pretty hairless herself, but appealing in a skinny sort of way.
“You asking me for my name on a first date, honey?” Bigfoot says, and gives her a bawdy stare. The reporter flushes, and Bigfoot roars with laughter, then apologizes.
“Sorry, I forgot how you folks are.”
The reporter, whose name is Marjorie, goes out with Bigfoot to a bar. They drink 35 life insurance salesmen under the table, and then Bigfoot stands on top of the bar counter and starts to shout:
“Whoop! I’m Bigfoot! I’ve wrassled woolly mammoths left over from the ice age and tamed them until they gave down sixteen hundred gallons of mammoth milk! I’ve hollowed out giant redwood stumps with my teeth to use as a cradle for my daughter, and spit out the splinters to make a rocking chair! I’ve walked over mountains taller than a man could think and I’ve swum seas deeper than sorrow! Whoop! Whoop! I can out-drink, out-boast and out- love any person in this bar, and I’ve got the scars to prove it!”
The bartender tries to wrestle Bigfoot to the floor, but she holds him off with one hairy knuckled hand and keeps on shouting:
“Whoop! Whoop! I’m Bigfoot! I sing so loud that the birds give up and go south for the winter and then don’t come back for three years! I can walk so light you’d swear I was never going to get there and I can stamp so heavy you’d think I was never going to leave! I spin my clothes out of things so fine you can’t see them, flea’s wings and the tears of water and the shadows of fog and I’m so splendid in those clothes that the autumn leaves fall right off the trees when they see me! Step up and try to match me, folks! I’m Bigfoot!”
“You’re embarassing me,” the reporter says.
After the bartender succeeds in throwing the two of them out, Bigfoot stands on the sidewalk and screams and rants and hoots and hollers.
“You’re acting inappropriately,” Marjorie says this time and Bigfoot says, “So what?”
Marjorie wakes up in Bigfoot’s bed and doesn’t really quite know how she got there.
But the warm bed is replete with the fragrance of leaves and warm summer grass. Bigfoot’s hair coils around her, a little scratchy, and the beard lies over her breasts as though the snake had fallen asleep.
After Bigfoot’s made her first few media appearances, things start arriving for her at the house. White roses and daffodils, Godiva chocolates and a couple of diamond rings. She ties the rings into her beard and shows Marjorie how to sprinkle sugar on the roses and eat their petals.
But there’s too many roses for two women to eat. They fill the house, and stick out the windows, lie like snowdrifts on the lawn. News reports come in.
Ten thousand women have thrown away their Epiladies and stopped shaving their legs in honor of Bigfoot. Vanna White lets her armpit hair grow and the razor industry’s up in arms over this dangerous trend. Ten thousand other women shave their heads to protest Bigfoot’s dangerous example. The politics of letting one’s body hair grow is discussed on Oprah.
A man with short gray hair says Bigfoot is a crime against nature.
“What do you mean by that?” Oprah asks.
“She’s neither man nor beast,” he says.
“He’s got that right,” Bigfoot tells Marjorie, and pushes the power button. The light on the screen, Oprah’s face, the man’s face, the commercials for depilatories and douches and feminine deodorant all shrink into a dot of brightness which disappears.
More jewels arrive, and Bigfoot throws them into the pool so she can watch them sparkle.
Marjorie is of a divided opinion on all the controversy. She goes into the bathroom, takes out a Lady Schick disposable razor and shaves her right leg and armpit. As long as she’s at it, she trims the pubic hair on her right side, tweezes her right eyebrow and evens up her bangs a little. She stands in front of the mirror naked and looks at herself. It doesn’t seem to her as though there’s a lot of difference. But she knows in two days there’s going to be a lot of uncomfortable, itchy, red pimpled stubble.
Bigfoot howls with laughter when she sees her.
“Poor little thing,” she gasps. “You look like you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.”
Marjorie gets irritated. “You don’t need to feel so superior,” she shouts. “There’s pros and cons. Don’t think I didn’t notice the other day when you got your beard stuck in your zipper! Or when you spilled spaghetti sauce all over it! You come here from the wilderness and think you’ve got the solutions to everybody’s problems!”
Bigfoot smiles.
Marjorie continues. “Well, you don’t, Miss Neo-Thoreau! It’s not that simple!” Her face is red, and her throat is open and loud and screaming out the words like she never has before in her entire life. Bigfoot smiles even more as Marjorie screams and rants, hoots and hollers.
Marjorie can’t stand it any longer. “What are you smiling at?” she yells.
“You’re acting inappropriately.”
That night, the sex is the best they’ve ever had, inappropriate or not, and Marjorie learns to do some whooping of her own. In the morning, she opens her eyes and sees Bigfoot packing.
“Where are you going?’ she asks.
“Going to do some more traveling, hon. This is my vacation, after all. I got mountains to climb, clouds to catch, hearts to set aflame.”
She slips out the door. After a few minutes, Marjorie hears her start to whoop as she goes down the street.
“Whoop! I’m Bigfoot! You’ll never forget me and you won’t ever want to! My fur’s so fine that minks weep with envy and I smell so good I make roses blush. I know five hundred and thirty ways of making love standing up and I’ve forgotten more ways of doing it sitting down than you’ll ever know! Whoop! I’m Bigfoot!”
“Twin daughters,” Doctor Fantastik said. “That’s very sad. A friend of yours?”
“I bring him spices from the Southern Isles when I come up from there. Saves him on the merchanting mark-up.”
“And the duty, no doubt,” Doctor Fantastik said.
The sailor shrugged. “I’ll give you the address, and you tell ’em Cyril sent ya. They’ll see to my fee. They’re right desperate.”
“How so?”
“At least one of the girls been turned poltergeist,” Cyril said.
“Not both?”
“I wouldn’t believe it of Ellie, she was sweet as punch,” Cyril said. “But that Kim, she was a handful and half of hellion. If the poltergeist’s one of them ““ and the timing’s right as rain for that ““ my money’s on Kim.”
“I’ve extracted poltergeists before,” the doctor said reflectively. He fingered the pin on his lapel.
The girl leaned close. “You detach them,” she said.
He nodded.
“You put them in bottles.” Her breathing quickened and she licked her smile wider.
“Parts of them, certainly,” the doctor said. “I capture certain effluences that are useful in some experiments.”
He looked at the sailor, who was taking quick gulps of his fish tea. Dots of green seaweed clung to his moustache.
The girl pursed her lips as the doctor turned back to her, ignoring the man. His tone when he addressed her was as firm as though he were instructing a dimwitted and unruly child. “Go and find us a place to sleep tonight, Charlotte. Make sure that the rooms are clean and that the fees are under a silver apiece.”
She slid from her seat with an attitude of resignation, ignoring the newspaper, which the man was currently folding into a new shape as though to catch her notice. Her silk skirts rustled, nigh-inaudible ““ or perhaps that was her sigh? ““ as she moved back to the door.
The man gave up on folding his newspaper and laid it down on the counter in front of him, extracting his cup of fish tea from among the folds. “She your apprentice?” he asked.
Doctor Fantastik shook his head, indicating with a delicate shudder the impracticality of such a notion.
“Your daughter?”
“Charlotte is a patient who I am treating for a pronounced and malignant affliction,” the doctor said mournfully.
“A ghost affliction?”
“Indeed.”
Here’s something from the current piece. For fellow West Seattleites, the coffee shop in question is indeed the Admiral Bird. This is a sequel to “The Wizards of West Seattle,” which is available in Neither Here Nor There, just out this week!
