Lemons

I think I’ve moved to Jupiter.
Maybe Mars.
It’s not just that there’s a wooden statue of a Bigfoot in the center of town. Or that there’s an actual resident Bigfoot hunter running around with a single business card stuffed in his pocket. To top it all off, the old man even owns a shop out on Highway 299 called Bigfoot Souvenirs and More.
Which I find out is where he goes after breakfast everyday but Sunday.
After this morning’s bowl of bird food, we watch him from the front porch as he backs an old maroon station wagon named Jake out of the driveway and putters down Seventh Street.
“What’s with this town?” I ask Tobin after the car takes a left at the stop sign and disappears around the corner.
“What do you mean?”
“All this Bigfoot hullabaloo.”
He looks at me again, this time with his eyebrows wrinkled together.
“It’s not hullabaloo,” he says real serious-like. “It’s true. Haven’t you heard of the footage they got out this way eight
years back?”
I shake my head.
“The Patterson-Gimlin film?”
“Nope.” I examine my peeling nail polish like I couldn’t care less.
Which I couldn’t.
“They filmed a Bigfoot over at Bluff Creek on October twentieth, 1967,” Tobin says, taking a seat on the yellow porch swing.
I look up. “You mean… it’s really true?”
“Of course it is. You think I’m making this up?” he says, like I’m the crazy one. “And since that time, there have been hundreds of sightings all over. But no one else has caught one on film… until now.” He holds up his camera to show me. “I’m going to be the very next one to do it. Patterson, Gimlin, and Sky. I’ll be on the Channel Four News and everything.”
I watch him huff hot air on the lens and wipe it with the bottom of his red T-shirt. Then he squints through the viewfinder, pointing it in all different directions.
Left, then right. Right, then left.
Up, then down.
He huffs more air and wipes again.
I go back to my fingernails.
After I finish scraping all the polish off my pinky, I look at him again. “So, can I ask you a question?”
He doesn’t say anything, like he’s too busy concentrating on his lens to even bother with me. “If they’re really real, why is it so hard to find them?” I ask anyway.
“Who?” He looks up.
“Who do you think? The Bigfeet.”
“Foot,” Tobin corrects.
“What?”
“You don’t say feet. It’s foot. Bigfoot. Singular, not plural.” I roll my eyes.
“Bigfoot,” I say. “Why is it so hard to find them? What are they hiding from?”
He puts the camera down and stares straight ahead, chewing on his bottom lip.
“People,” he finally says, and starts squinting through the viewfinder again. Except this time he points the thing right at me.
“Why do they hide from people?” I ask the lens.
Tobin lowers the camera into his lap and focuses on his dark blue sneakers. “Cause people can hurt you.”