The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know (Russel Middlebrook: The Futon Years Book 1) (19 page)

I exhaled for what seemed like the first time in six hours.

It had been so long since I'd seen any color other than shades of green or brown that it was a little shocking to see Gunnar's red Geo Prizm. I don't know how that little car had made it this far in, but it had me worried about Gunnar's sanity all over again.

We climbed out of our car and looked around.

Ben referred to his GPS device. "The ridge is that way," he said, pointing.

Now I saw why Gunnar had stopped where he did. The "road" continued forward, but Ben was pointing into a massive, fresh clear-cut. It just wasn't passable by any vehicle that didn't have tank treads.             

I was about to suggest honking the horn, trying to get Gunnar's attention. But then I heard the roar of distant chainsaws coming from farther down the main road. We couldn't take the chance of them hearing us too.

Following Ben's GPS device, the six of us headed off into that clear-cut on foot.

There were pine needles
everywhere
, a layer of green snow that made the ground feel both slippery and springy. All around us, massive tree stumps loomed, chopped and twisted, their gnarled roots reaching out in front of us. The trees themselves were all gone, but most of their branches had been stripped and piled into giant heaps—like funeral pyres waiting to be lit. It all made for such an alien landscape, a cross between total desolation and something stark and beautiful.

This had been an old forest—it was the only way to explain the size of those trunks. That made the land seem even more sacred, the clear-cut even more profane. The ground had been raped, which is probably insensitive to say, but that's how it felt—like it was lying there naked, exposed. It was almost embarrassing, the way we could see every contour, every hill rising and falling. And because the land was so irregular, it was impossible to see very far head. It was also interfering with the GPS device again.

But Ben's compass still worked, so forward we hiked. The twigs and needles crunched under our feet—at least I'd remembered to wear boots this time. The stench of pitch was overwhelming, so strong it was giving me a headache.

We'd been hiking for at least half an hour when I felt a tickle in my nose. I knew that feeling well.

Another bloody nose
, I thought.

At first I didn't think much more about it. It was annoying, but like I said before, I got lots of nose-bleeds—I always had. And, as always, I'd brought Kleenex.

Then I remembered what Ben had said about bears being attracted to women who were menstruating.

Ben looked back at me, saw the bloody Kleenex in my hand. We'd already been hiking a while, so it's not like I could go back to the car, especially not by myself. Besides, what about Gunnar?

"It's fine," Ben said, but a moment or two later, a gust of wind blew, reminding me that the scent of my blood was now being carried far and wide.

Onward we walked. Then the land dipped down and we rounded a bend, and suddenly, somehow, we were surrounded by trees—actual trees, not hacked-off stumps.

"It must be a wetland," Ben said. "A pond or a lake. The loggers are required by law to keep a buffer around water."

It was definitely an older forest, a tiny fragment of the kind of woods that had once covered the entire area. Ben consulted his compass again, then nodded us forward, deeper into the trees.

The land was dressed again at last, and it was all graceful, flowing clothing—sweeping boughs and ruffled ferns. The hemlocks were like lace, and the moss dripped down like stoles. The smells were different here, more complicated, richer, but softer. Everything was soothing, even the sounds, and I couldn't remember when we'd stopped hearing the distant buzz of chain saws.

Ben was right: it was a swamp. Silver pools appeared on our left, languid and still, winding between the tree trunks. But unlike the one by the stinky picnic gazebo, this swamp smelled clean.

I remembered what Ben had said before, the first time I met him, about those Bigfoot eyewitnesses having the sense they were being watched. Suddenly I had that sense too. Or did I? Had I remembered what Ben had said and was now just imagining things?

We trudged on through the trees. The ground was wet here, even muddy in places, but there were no footprints, no sign that Gunnar had come this way before us.

But we weren't alone either. As we walked forward through that ancient forest, a great hairy beast lumbered into view in front of us, not twenty feet away—and this was definitely no grizzly bear.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It wasn't Bigfoot either. It was a moose. Sorry about that. It just seemed like things needed a little livening up there.

But there really was a moose. And the thing is, moose aren't anything to sneeze at, especially bull moose, which this one was. It had ridiculously skinny legs, but a massive body and an incredible rack of antlers on its head. The tips were sharp, reaching out in opposite directions like the two sides of a surprisingly scary Rorschach test (one I was failing).

The moose snorted, bobbing its head. Then it stared out at us from under that rack of sharp antlers.

The blood rushed from my nose in a sudden surge. It hadn't ever occurred to me that my nose would bleed faster during times of stress—and this was definitely a time of stress. But it made total sense. My heart was pumping something crazy.

"It's okay," Ben said quietly, gently. "Everything will be fine just as long as we don't make any sudden moves."

We started backing away. The moose huffed and shuffled its feet. Its hide was black and shaggy. And unlike the rest of this forest, it didn't smell soft and complicated—it just stank. We could smell it from twenty feet away.

Fortunately, the moose was already bored with us. It shambled off into the swamp.

I dabbed my nose. I'd brought Kleenex, but only three pieces, and now they were all completely soaked through with blood. I'd basically unfurled a blood-soaked flag and was now waving it at all the grizzlies.

We hurried onward through the woods, past the silver water, and the ground started rising again, sharply. Despite the strenuousness of the uphill climb, my bloody nose stopped at last. Up ahead, the trees fell away again, opening out into another clear-cut. Beyond that was a rocky ridge that definitely could have been the one that Ben had shown me in the photos.

There was another flash of unusual color nestled in with all those stumps and branches. It was blue this time.

Gunnar's tent. It had to be. We'd found him. But was he okay?

I started toward the tent, ahead of the others. "Gunnar?" I called.

But I was too enthusiastic—or maybe I was still a little wobbly from seeing the moose (and losing all that blood).

I stumbled backward, out of the clear-cut, back into the trees and undergrowth.

My arms flailed.

Then I fell.

I was sliding down, back toward the swamp and the moose. It wasn't a cliff or anything—it was more of a long sharp slope. At least I somehow managed to twist myself around, forward, so I was sliding down on my butt. But I was still hitting every rock and root. I tore at the loam, which was dark and rich. I could hear ferns ripping around me as I flew through them.

Toward the bottom of the hill, I finally stopped. At least I hadn't gone into the swamp. But the world spun around me. Everything smelled of pine and dirt and torn foliage. I had something nasty in my mouth—not dirt, I realized, but yellow spores from the underside of the ferns.

I looked down at the front of my shirt. It was covered with blood.

I'm dying!
I thought. I'd been impaled by a sharp pine branch, or maybe the antlers of that moose.

I glanced around, hyperventilating, but I didn't see a branch or the moose. Even so, I could feel my lifeblood leaching away with every beat of my heart. I only had seconds left to live.

No, wait
, I thought
. I just have a bloody nose again
. I must have hit my nose during the fall, and it had started back up. So I was fine. But man, I had lost a lot of blood. It really did smell metallic, like copper.

"Russel!" Min called from above. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm fine." I felt like an idiot that I'd just lost my balance and fallen backward off the hill. At least I'd realized I wasn't dying before I'd started screaming my head off. That
really
would've been embarrassing.

The sight and smell of all that blood was actually sort of disturbing, so I held my nose until it stopped again. That's when I also realized that I was covered with some pretty nasty scrapes. I struggled upright. The aches wound around my body in streaks, almost like a tiger's stripes.

By now the others had worked their way down the hillside toward me—more slowly, careful not to lose their balance too.

I saw Min first, then Ben. They both looked really concerned.

"I just had another bloody nose," I said, explaining all the blood.

Clive and Katie and Leon stepped into view behind Min and Ben.

And then came Gunnar behind them, looking just as concerned as the others, not crazed at all. He must have joined them up at the top of the hillside.

"You're okay!" I said.

"Of course I'm okay," he said, like the whole idea of his not being okay just confused him. "But ooohhh, boy, do you look like shit."

*   *   *

Min and Gunnar and Ben and the others fussed over me for a few minutes (something I secretly enjoyed). I also appreciated that no one made me feel like an idiot. I completely deserved it, but still.

Finally, Gunnar said to all of us, "What are you guys
doing
here?"

Both Min and I just glared at him, as if to say, "
REALLY?
"

"Okay, yeah," he admitted. "Coming here was stupid. You tracked me down, huh? But I really needed to do this."

I looked over at Ben and the others. "Give us a minute?" I felt bad asking them to leave, after everything they'd done for us—for Gunnar. But there were things I needed to say to Gunnar, and things I hoped he would finally explain to me, and I had a feeling it could get personal.

Once the others had walked away, I said to Gunnar, "What's really going on? Why'd you come all the way out here by yourself?"

He sat back into the ferns, crushing them. "I don't know. It's all been so strange since my dad got cancer."

Min and I looked at each other, and then we both sank down into the foliage in front of Gunnar.

"Your dad has
cancer
?" Min said. "Why didn't you
say
anything?" No doubt this was why Gunnar hadn't wanted me to come inside his parents' house that day—he hadn't wanted me to know.

Gunnar tried to find the words. "I guess I thought if I didn't think about it, if I didn't say it out loud to you guys, it wouldn't be real."

"Is he going to be okay?" I said.

"No," Gunnar said. "It's bad. Liver cancer. Months to live and all that."

Part of me was thinking,
Then what the hell are you doing lost in these woods, totally out of contact, you idiot?!
But I had a feeling that Gunnar's family knew him well enough to know that he could be pretty unpredictable.

That's when something else occurred to me: was this what Gunnar's Bigfoot obsession was about—what it had
always
been about?

I thought back to the night when Gunnar had first told us about Bigfoot. We'd thought he had something really important to tell us. Instead, he'd told us the origin of the word "Sasquatch".

That's the night he found out about his dad
, I thought. And it's why he'd been especially weird since then.

And why the hell not? If your dad has incurable cancer, there's not really anything you can do. It's either going to kill him, or it isn't, and you're completely powerless. But not so with the search for Bigfoot. With Bigfoot, you can interview eyewitnesses, make plaster casts of footprints, take expeditions deeper and deeper into the woods, even build a goddamn Bigfoot blimp. When it comes to Bigfoot, there's
always
something more you can do. And the best part is that Bigfoot isn't real, so you can search forever, and you never have to give up hope. Bigfoot is always waiting around the next river bend, or hiding inside the trees one forest over.

The whole idea of searching for Bigfoot because your dad is dying of cancer suddenly seemed so touching and awesome that I felt myself wanting to cry (or maybe it was all the aches and scrapes, especially one scratch on my right calf that
really
stung).

And then I had a really interesting thought. Maybe this was what
all
of Gunnar's weird obsessions were about—what they'd
always
been about. Rather than deal with something unpleasant in his life, he channeled his feelings and anxiety into something entirely different—something more or less manageable and understandable. I couldn't help but think:
Is there any way that strategy might work for me?
Then again, I guess I already had plenty of illusions of my own to cling to—plenty of paper lanterns to cover those harsh, bare light bulbs.

"I feel like an idiot," I said.

"Come on," Min said. "So you fell down a hill."

I laughed. "That's actually not what I was talking about. And it's incredibly sad that I have
two
things to be embarrassed about right now."

"What else are you embarrassed about?" Gunnar said.

"I've been jealous of you both."

"Jealous?" Min said. "Of us?"

Then I remembered what Vernie sometimes (jokingly) said:
Enough about you, let's talk about me!
Gunnar had just told us his dad was dying of cancer, but I was making it all about me.

"Nothing," I said. "Never mind."

"Russ?" Gunnar said. "Come on. Talk to us."

So I explained how I'd started to think of them—of everyone around me—as having either Unstoppable Career Drive or Passionate Aimlessness, but I didn't have either.

"That's crazy," Min said.

"How is it crazy?" I said. "You're twenty-three years old, and you've already got your whole life mapped out. Not to mention the fact that you also totally understand the whole physical universe."

Min laughed out loud, but not at me. It was such a bawdy, open-throated laugh that I somehow instantly knew she was laughing at herself.

"Russel," she said, her face softening. "I'm in
grad school
. Don't you know the whole point of grad school? It's so you don't have to make any actual decisions. I don't know what I want to do with my whole
life
. I like physics, so I picked it. But I don't know if it's what I want to 'do'. I have no idea. And you're forgetting something about my life—namely, the fact that I've just spent the last three months trying to figure out if I wanted to try a relationship with Trai and Lena, if I might be poly, only to finally say yes, and then have them turn around and dump me three weeks later."

Gunnar hadn't heard this part yet, so Min turned to him, as if to explain. But he cut her off with a nod.

"You're polyamorous," he said. "I know."

Typical Gunnar
, I thought. He had a way of always understanding more than you thought.

"And look at
me
," Gunnar said to me. "I'm so screwed up that I can't deal with the fact that my dad's dying. Instead, I have to go on a hunt for Bigfoot. And you think
you're
the idiot?"

I smiled. So Gunnar knew exactly what he'd been doing all summer, that it had been a conscious strategy. Somehow that figured too.

"Face it, Russel," Min said. "We're all just faking it. Gunnar, me, probably everyone. You're not any different from anyone else. Some of us are just better at hiding it."

I didn't say anything, just looked back and forth between my friends, the three of us sitting in that tangle of torn-up ferns (and a virtual puddle of my own blood).

Nobody knows anything.
That's what Vernie had said, but it wasn't just a famous quote by some screenwriter talking about Hollywood. Nobody knows anything about anything. I'd thought it was just me, but it wasn't.
Nobody
really knows what life is about. We're all just trying to make sense of something that doesn't make much sense.

Was this the secret to life—the thing I'd figured everyone knew except me? It was so obvious! And yet, it kind of wasn't. It was something I hadn't even known I didn't know. How
would
I know that everyone else was feeling this too if they're doing such a good job of hiding it? How would
anyone
know?

That's when something else hit me. Maybe nobody knows anything, but I did know one thing for sure: how important my friends were. They were the one and only reason I'd survived my teen years. And they were probably going to be the only reason I'd survive my twenties too.

I know a lot of people say their husband or their wife is the most important person in their life. I didn't have a husband, and given how I kept screwing it up with Kevin, I probably never would. But even if I did, and if we had kids one day, I wondered if they'd be more important to me than Min and Gunnar. As important? Sure. But
more
important? It was hard to imagine being closer to anyone than I felt to Gunnar and Min right then. And that made me wonder if somehow the very state of being gay, or maybe just being different and bullied and picked on, had somehow made my friendships more real, more important, more close. And
that
made me remember what Vernie had said about discrimination making gay people more interesting. Were these sorts of friendships the kind of thing LGBT people would be losing in ten or twenty years, once anti-gay discrimination was gone completely? Would it be worth it? Vernie had said suffering was always pointless, and I'd agreed then, and I still agreed now. But I couldn't help but wonder.