Hi, this is Dave the Hippie Mailman (my real name is David Morrison, by the way) and I've been involved with Adam and his family ever since they arrived to Monroe. First as their local mailman, hauling bag after bag of letters to the Little Baby Bigfoot. Then we became friends so I let Art and Elaine in on the local secret of Naked Lake, where I've been a regular for years and years. They seemed like people who would fit into that crowd and they were. Besides, I wanted to see Elaine naked (just kidding... right?). Adam grew up here, and up and up; and being a real-live Bigfoot, to over 8' tall. He went to Monroe High School, just like any other kid-- where he surprised everyone by being a pretty smart Sasquatch, graduating with top grades. After he turned 16 you'd see him driving around town in his old beat-up and modified Chevy Camaro, just like any other kid. He started playing guitar and tried to start up a band, just like any other kid. But he wasn't any other kid, he was world-famous as the Baby Bigfoot of Monroe, Washington, and by proxy so was his home town. We who live here never made a fuss about it because everybody got used to Adam walking around like a regular guy--hell, he IS a regular guy, just bigger and hairier, that's all. And then other squatches began to show up, so then we discovered that they were regular guys and girls too. But they made Monroe become even more famous. For me, working in the post office, it was like our small town had suddenly turned into a major postal exchange center. It was a catastrophe for all of us regulars when Weyenbauer Lumber closed down Naked Lake last year; we'd been meeting there for years and had become a little society of friends allowed to practice an alternative lifestyle. None of us were interested in meeting at some public beach after that, where casual nudity and a little innocent dope-smoking would get us all arrested. But then Adam's Nokhon Nation Project (NNP) came through and they were awarded a sizeable area of federally-protected land, which just happened to contain some nice little lakes on it, virtually untouched by man. By default I became the contact person for all the regulars and we organized a weekend trip to meet with Adam's folks and a group of Sasquatches. The NNP had been allotted a rectangular strip of wild forested land stretching up into the mountains, where Nokhons could freely live and have access to the "Embassy" out by Hacienda Forest. There were no roads inside that area, so we all hiked the five miles in to the lake that Adam had scouted out. We were unanimous that it was perfect: isolated, had a good-all-day sunny side, just the right size. We wanted to build a new dock, so we needed to make a road to bring in materials. But the whole idea was to make the scene as organic and close to natural as possible so that the Nokhons would feel at home-- and us too. That involved a lot of restrictions for us Nokhsos: the vehicle road should end a mile away from the lake, with a hiking trail in from the parking area; we refrained from using chain-saws and power tools, all lumber was hand-cut from fallen trees; nails and other metals were avoided in the finished dock to keep it skesk-free, requiring lots of old-fashioned tongue and groove craftsmanship. It was a challenge and a blast for those of us involved. Especially working with the squatches. They really have no such thing as WORK in their culture, which forbids them to build artifacts, especially if they have to use forbidden skesk like metal axes and hammers and saws to do it, so for many of them it was a new experience. They LOVED it (probably because they were getting away with doing something illegal according to their Atli) and let me tell you, those bruisers--male or female--are strong and energetic, so when they DO work it goes FAST. They hauled in fallen trees from all around and far away, big ones, up on shoulders between two squatches. They learned how to use two-man ripsaws to cut trees to size and even make flat boards for the dock floor. Man, if they ever want to get JOBS any contractor would be overjoyed to have that kind of man-(or woman)-power. Not that any of us wanted to be responsible for causing squatches to getting caught up the rat-race of jobs, clocks, taxes, economic worries--or shit, even CAREERS! Those guys can live off the land for free, they don't need money. Wish it was me. Of course, it could be me--if I was willing to vanish into the woods, living on ferns and thistles, give up my house in town, dump my pickup truck, computer and flat screen. I could do that--but I sure as hell ain't going to. Besides I like my postman job: it's cozy and easy. And interesting.
I've been working at the Monroe Post Office for so many years that I am now considered the Old Timer, everybody knows Dave the Hippie Mailman. I specialize in the mail for Adam, his Squatch & Friends band, the Nokhon Nation Project, Hacienda Forest. The Monroe Post Office now has an entire department dedicated only to their mail. Not only because there's so much of it, but also because of the need for extra security concerning potential terrorist threats. Mostly they get happy mail from fans and admirers, but they also get some hate mail and threats, which I have to deal with one way or another. The out-of-state post I refer to the FBI, the local stuff I refer to Adam. Even from the early Baby Bigfoot days Adam has always been getting a trickle of racist mail and a few actual threats from white supremacy groups like the Klu Klux Klan, some of which his parents had taken seriously. But since the success of Squatch & Friends the frequency of nasty mail has increased dramatically. The worst of them we report to the authorities, some of them clearly in violation of the Terrorism Act. One series of especially offensive and downright nasty letters-- hand-written on paper, not typed or printed --was from a local source, evidently written by a psychopath or someone wanting to be one. Someone who called himself "An American Patriot" and considered himself (definitely male) to be "an Angel of Death assigned by God to put an End to all that Sodomy and Sin going on in that damned Hacienda." Here is an example received by post 21 June: Hey Bigfoot! It was bad enough that one fucking animal like you was allowed to run loose in our American town of Monroe. Even worse that you got to enroll in our public schools with all our pure white Christian girls and boys. Especially the girls--you had no right to be anywhere NEAR them! And yet somehow you have seduced two of our young women (who need to be taught a lesson about fraternizing with the enemy) to serve in your decadent rock and roll band, and everyone knows about the immoral lifestyles of musicians, so I fear they have been abused and are forever lost to decent human company. But you are not satisfied with the damage you have done to those sluts-- now you pose as a "rock star" so that many other unwise young girls will be your "fans" and "groupies" and offer their innocent young bodies to your bestial perversions. I am not surprised that your music is a success, since all modern music is bad, and the worst of it is what young people want to hear. But all of that is nothing compared with what you are doing now--bringing on an invasion of Bigfoot hordes, legitimizing it by calling them a "nation". So now they are coming to take away our land, coming to insist that they are Americans and have the same rights as actual human beings. No no no! You are a threat to the American Way of Life so you--and all your kind--must be stopped. This is my fault for not having acted earlier, I was swayed by public opinion, but now I am ready to do my duty. Just so you know, I worked as a safari guide in Kenya for 20 years and am most expert with my trusty old elephant gun--a double-barreled .577-caliber Nitro Express--which I do believe can lay even a Bigfoot down. But I'm not a bloodthirsty man, you get one chance to get away before I cut loose. Take yourself and all your hairy friends back out into whatever backwoods slum they came from and just stay there forever. Soon. Otherwise I'll be coming for you--and your immoral bitches. Your parents might have to be punished too, for being such bad examples of American citizens. An American Patriot Adam usually took such letters in stride when he was the only one being threatened, but once his band and his parents were mentioned he took it very seriously. We reported the letters to the Sheriff's Office but the source could not be traced further back than to various public mail-boxes scattered around the town of Monroe. The paper and envelopes were standard stock, the handwriting was determined to be of a left-handed older male of standard-but-not-university education, there were fingerprints but none listed in any databank, and that was about as far as they could get. So Adam took over. He and I arranged to sort all post to the Hacienda into a special bag that Adam would pick up himself. Then he went through the mail until he found a new letter from "a Patriot", opened it himself and smelled it. The idea was that a minimum of people had handled the paper and he could pick up the scent of the writer. He felt that he recognized it, but could not recall where or when or who it had been. So then he had about five of his fellow squatches smell it too, so that they all had the scent. And they all went into town, wandering around, visiting shops and bars, just being social. Squatches are commonly accepted in Monroe by now, so there was no special fuss, nor did they mention anything about the special scent they were searching for. It was an underground operation. It took a week, not that they went into town every day. Cute little Masnia's parents, Dabronat and Malasna, had hiked into Monroe to go shopping for supplies, using their new hand-made squatch-sized backpacks to transport goods without a car, and had gone into the local Safeway. They recognized the scent and immediately called Adam on the cell phone they had been issued. Those two squatches are acclimating nicely to their new American life style, by the way. Adam happened to be at home when he got the call so he jumped into the Squatchmobil and headed straight for the Safeway. He called me on the way, since those threatening letters had been sent through the US Post Office so I could be a kind of "official arresting officer". Hey, I was all for it. We both arrived at the Safeway within ten minutes. Dabronat and Malasna had a man cornered-- he had tried to leave, to run--but they'd frowned a little bit and he just fell on the floor and blubbered. They hadn't even touched him; he was just so scared of them. Pissed his pants. I could understand that: two big hairy squatches would intimidate anyone, they must have weighed 1500 pounds between them, big, muscular monsters. Of course, of lot of their ravaging monster imagery gets spoiled by the clean white campesino coveralls they wear (sewn by Elaine up at the Hacienda), so that civilized squatches don't come into town "naked". But I know Dabronat and Malasna pretty well, both really nice people-- a beautiful couple, really-- and it was only their size that made them scary. The truth is that almost all squatches are perfectly peaceful by nature. The man cowering on the floor turned out to be old Wilbur Caruthers, a retired local lumberyard man, almost in his eighties, kind of frail, not especially healthy. A cantankerous old coot, in fact, who often got into disputes with the few neighbors he had out on Old Hand Road. He was an unpleasant grouch, but hardly dangerous, although it seems he wished that he was, according to all those hate-letters he wrote. But old Wilbur was just a pathetic mess when we arrived, sprawled on the floor of Safeway in his own piss, covering his head and getting ready to be ripped apart by ferocious monsters. Adam asked the other two squatches and me to back off so that he could deal with the man alone. He helped the old coot up, talked gently to him, didn't seem mad at all. A crowd of people had gathered to see what the drama was, so we escorted him out of Safeway to the parking lot. I didn't feel much patience for the man, but followed Adam's lead and kept things low-key, although I did inform him that sending hate-mail through the US Postal Service was a federal offence. He tried to say he "hadn't done nothin" and started to work up enough nerve to rant at how he was an innocent citizen being persecuted "by fucking hairy Bigfoots". But Adam looked him in the eyes and said, "You sent those letters, I recognize your scent. You threatened me and my friends--with an elephant gun, I do believe." He didn't raise his voice at all, but his tone was strict, "Specifically a double-barreled .577-caliber Nitro Express elephant rifle. Do you have such a weapon?" Caruthers opened his mouth to complain, but was too frightened to say anything but a squeak. Adam asked me, "How much prison time could Mr Caruthers be looking at, Officer? This being a Federal Offence and all." It was a trick question, Adam had never called me "officer" before, giving my Post Office uniform an extra significance, but I caught on: "Oh lots. Depends on how many people he threatened--you, Melly, Lissandra, Art and Elaine, other Nokhons--more people, more years, you know." Adam sat down on the asphalt in front of Wilbur Caruthers, really calm and non-threatening, bringing his head on a level with the old man's so that they could look each other in the eyes. "Look, sir," he began-- and old Wilbur did look, his head snapped up to attention. I think Adam sort of hypnotizes people with his orator's voice, but of course his size demands a lot of respect anyway, especially since he was three times bigger than that little old man. But now they were looking eye to eye, man to man. So Adam was offering the man some respect and Wilbur sensed it. "So tell me: do you really have such a gun?" Wilbur looked embarrassed, "Well...I used to," caught in a lie, "when I was doing safaris...about 50 years back." "So you weren't really going to shoot me, were you? You just wanted to rattle me a bit, maybe?" "Yeah, I guess..." the old man sensed that he might escape being ripped apart by a wild bigfoot if he said the right things, "... just kidding, really." Adam smiled understandingly but said, "Oh, no, you meant it. You really DO hate us Sasquatches, right?" Wilbur cowered again, not daring to answer. "I get the feeling you also hate black people, Indians, Asians-- and probably most white people too. Just about everybody, in fact. Even though none of those people have done any harm to you-- or am I wrong?" Wilbur clammed up, not about to answer. "Let me guess: you've never actually had any contact with any squatches before right now. Your prejudices are on autopilot." The old man got riled up now, "I got my reasons. The immorality! The bad music! The..." "I'm going to offer you a chance to actually meet some Sasquatches. If you come with me for a while we'll drop all the Federal Offence charges, although I am going to insist that you stop writing those letters. They upset me-- anyone who threatens my family and friends will have to deal with a pissed-off Bigfoot. I'm not always this polite." "Me meet... meet Bigfoots?" He seemed to shrink. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you and neither will they, I promise. I just want you to base your opinions on fact instead of uninformed prejudice, that's all." "I ain't gonna. You can't make me." Adam looked to me and shrugged, as if for a lost cause. That was my cue, I told the old buzzard "Well, okay, it's prison for you, I guess." Then I just had to twist the blade a little, because Wilbur Caruthers had always been such a grumpy old shithead, "And really, I do think Adam COULD make you go, if he chose to." "You can't put me in prison,you're not even a cop! You're just a damn hippie mailman!" "That still makes me an official agent of the United States Post Office," I said loud and proud, "and your letters are in violation of the Terrorist Act, Federal level." It sounded impressive, I knew it did. His lower lip trembled. I pulled out my cell phone, "All I have to do is report you to the FBI. Right now. I have their number here," and I started to punch in numbers. "Aw, wait a minute, Dave," Adam said, "let's try again. I'd much rather fix the problem than send a man Wilbur's age off to prison." Right, good cop bad cop routine. "Yeah, so would I, but this perp is not co-operating, so fuck him!" Having caught on, I got to be the bad cop. Which was kinda fun. "Wait," Wilbur's feeble voice. We looked at him. "Okay... okay, I'll go meet the Bigfoots," Wilbur said, defeated. "Well, then, let's go," Adam says, standing up to his full height and pointing to his car. His height was impressive, his car was not. Adam's car is famous in Monroe, a beat-up old Chevy Camaro convertible, primer grey-sprayed, definitely nothing fancy. Good strong V-8, tho, high-performance auto tranny. He and Art had stripped out the front seat so that Adam could sit on the back and drive, which he almost always did with the top down (he puts it up if he needs to hide being a Bigfoot for traffic safety). He calls it The Squatchmobile. Thing is, Adam is pretty rich now, he could have had any car he wanted. Hell, the Chevrolet Corporation has offered to BUILD him a special Bigfoot-friendly car based on a modern Camaro, for FREE, if he would just drive around in it. But no, he keeps talking about fixing up the old one. Truth is, he just didn't care, it was only transportation and it did the job, Adam is not one to get hung up on material possessions. So old man Caruthers got into the Squatchmobil, looking like he was on his way to Auschwitz, and off they drove. I had to go back to work at the Post Office, so I missed out on the meeting. It was a nice summer day so Adam took Wilbur out to our new Naked Lake. That must have been as much a shock for the old fart as meeting all the squatches. Especially since Melly and Lissandra were there (and naked!), the very girls Wilbur had accused of immorality, of being sluts, etc. There were also several human regulars and squatches of both sexes. They had a picnic going on, and everyone treated old Wilbur as a respected guest instead of as an enemy. When he finally was offered a ride home, he didn't want to leave. He'd had too good a time, discovered that he LIKED looking at naked girls after a lifetime of moral restrictions and judgments, and that naked men didn't bother him. He'd discovered, as everyone does on a warm day, that after five minutes one forgets that clothes ever mattered. Some of the young squatches could speak enough English to carry on a limited conversation, with some regulars to translate the hard parts (most of us speak a little Nokhontli now), and they had expressed interest in what a Nokhso of his age must have experienced. The thought of going back to his lonely dark old house on Hand Road made him sad. He asked if he could come back, and of course, he was told that anyone willing to be friends was welcome. The old squatch-hater became a regular himself. There were no more letters. I told that story just to say what kind of a guy Adam Leroy Forest is: most of the time he wins enemies over to become friends. The whole Sinsley family, for example; they were some SERIOUS enemies, but now they work together with Adam, Art and Elaine on their Nokhon Nation Project. Adam always goes for the most humane solutions, he never bullies anyone, which would be easy for a guy his size. It's we "humans" who consider bullying normal. I'd say Adam was pretty special, but actually, he seems to be a typical squatch.
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