SIGHTINGS
*Fiction Excerpt: to read the rest, see The Southeast Review Volume 28.1
It’s difficult, even now, to distinguish senior prom from the one that came before. Both years withheld the same mysteries: we boys staring helplessly at the cufflinks, our suspenders, trying desperately to crack their secret codes. Meanwhile, the girls had their own mysteries to unravel: hair, make-up, push-up bras, time logged in the tanning beds.
Despite all their similarities, there was at least one detail that distinguished one year from the next. Senior year, Becca Marsden—whose scent alone could cause boys’ pants to swell—chose not to attend with her recent ex, Ed Gorman. Instead, she accompanied the new student who’d lumbered into our lives just weeks prior, at the start of the basketball season.
His name was Sasquatch, and he was furry, wore 26EEE-sized shoes. Measuring in at 7’9”, he’d immediately caught the eye of our basketball coach who’d spotted him trampling through the woods behind the school Dumpster, licking the grease from a yellow hamburger wrapper. After hours of Coach’s coaxing—“Look, Kid, you’re about the only thing holding us back from a state title”—Sasquatch eventually agreed, enrolling as a member of the senior class at Wallerton High just a few days after his recruitment.
He didn’t have any family, so the boosters set him up the best they could, offering him an engineless Winnebago left to rust deep in the heart of the wilderness. Tinted windows, a screened door—it was all that he required.
Just three games into the season, Sasquatch was already a sensation, making repeat appearances on the highlight reels on the ten o’clock news, as well as earning the coveted cover spot of Prep Sports Weekly, silhouetted with a basketball in his mouth below the headline: This One’s Fur Real.
While most of the team never really got to know him all that well outside of practice, we all agreed he seemed like a standup guy: never a harsh word, never cocky. When Coach cried, “Wind sprints, ladies!” Sasquatch bounded down the court in six or seven strides, occasionally slowing so the rest of us wouldn’t look bad. Though three years as a dedicated benchwarmer had earned me the starting spot, I hardly minded losing it to him.
Sometimes, during the away games, I’d share a seat with him on the bus ride home, feeding him ice cubes from my water bottle. People often complained that he stunk—imagine a dead muskrat wrapped in a diaper—though after a few minutes the odor typically dissipated. And so we’d just sit there chewing ice, our combined fourteen feet folded magically into the seat, our shadows bouncing with the rhythms of the road. All around us, everyone was blathering on and on about how much beer they were going to drink or how hard they were going to bang their girlfriends.
“Like … so hard,” boasted point guard Dave Wallerton, slapping his palms together. “And I’m gonna drink a whole lot of beer, too. Probably a gallon.”
Sasquatch never really found himself partaking in any of those conversations. Instead, he just turned to me, his mouth wide, and I slipped in a few more ice cubes. All he seemed to care about was fulfilling his sacred duty: scoring 30+ points a game, retrieving every rebound.
After the bus dropped us off in the school parking lot, we’d congregate beside our cars before saluting the Wallerton Wildcat statue as tradition dictated. Meanwhile, somewhere mid-salute, Sasquatch would take his leave, wandering back into the woods, undetected. He’d never wave or tell us we’d played a good game—no ass pats or shoulder squeezes—he’d just vanish. No sign of him except for the gently trembling trees.
I sat one row behind him in pre-calc, and while he never spoke, I’d watched him properly execute the quadratic formula on several occasions.
He wasn’t the smartest kid in the class, but Mr. Hernhold seemed thoroughly impressed by his work ethic and dedication, informing Coach that if the rest of his players worked half as hard on the court as Sasquatch did in the classroom, there was no doubt in his mind we’d be headed to state.
But Hernhold’s prediction proved wrong.
Throughout the year, he’d been warning us about placing too much faith in probability, and our team became living proof. Most likely, old Hernhold could’ve even taught us the mathematical formula that predicted our own demise. But as far as we could tell, at least according to the stats we saw, the blame fell squarely on Sasquatch.
After pulling a hamstring during the second half of the sectional final against Meadowbrook, he was forced to sit the rest of the game.
Coach had no choice but to replace him with me—a pretty raw deal—but there weren’t a lot of options. My skeletal 6’1” frame simply didn’t warrant the same heart-pounding fear as a furry creature towering two feet taller. But I can’t blame it entirely on our size differential. The fact remained that I missed a couple of rebounds too, ended up going two for six from the line. Tripped over my feet, made poor passes, forgot all the plays we’d perfected. I grew tired, sloppy, got called for charging on three consecutive possessions.
It was a massacre.
Our less-than-harrowing defeat was neither quick nor painless, but eventually, the clock had the decency to stop ticking, the buzzer kind enough to sound.
In the locker room, Coach rested a foot on the metal bleacher, droning on and on about how it wasn’t anybody’s fault, how we “ladies” couldn’t go blaming ourselves.
But we could. It was easy.
And in the rare moments when we weren’t busy blaming ourselves we were busy blaming Sasquatch’s hammy, certain that if only the trainer’s Icy Hot/Vicks Vapo-Rub magic cure-all could have healed him, then none of us would’ve had to witness what we had: that sulking giant cramped in his too-tight uniform, shaking his head as Meadowbrook ran up the score.
B.J. Hollars is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama where he has served as nonfiction editor and assistant fiction editor for Black Warrior Review. He is also the editor of You Must Be This Tall To Ride from Writer's Digest Books and the web magazine http://youmustbethistalltoride.net/. He has work published or forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Mid-American Review, Fugue, Faultline, DIAGRAM, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, and Hobart, among others.
