Small Town Monsters. Craig Nybo

and spotted the competition. “Bill, Ray, Phil, Gerald; how you boys doing?” Kurt said with a nod to each of the opposing team members.

      The four men sat like a quartet of statues. “We’re going to kick your ass, that’s how we’re doing,” Bill said, nodding his boulder sized head.

      “Kick away,” Kurt said with a smile and picked up his house ball. He stood on the line and eyed the pins—far away down the lane.

      “Use the arrows, not the pins,” Arthur said. “And for the love of all things holy, follow through.”

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      Kurt ignored Arthur and made his approach. He let the ball pendulum back and forward then let it go. The ball rolled down the lane, back spinning at first. Forward momentum took over and it built up speed. Not a good shot. It meandered to the right and knocked the number-ten pin down with a crack.

      “You’re killing us here,” Arthur said as he looked up at the scoreboard just in time to see a one appear on Kurt’s card.

      “We’re kickin’ away, copper; how’s that ass feeling?” Bill said and all four of the red jerseys chuckled.

      “Remember, I’m a cop. I could cause you a lot of trouble.”

      “Just shoot,” Arthur said with more than a little impatience.

      Kurt shot. His second ball managed to knock three more pins down. He whooped and walked back to his team-mates, who shook their heads in disappointment; it would be another losing battle. Kurt sat in an empty chair between Buck and Larry, putting an arm around each of them. “So how we doing?”

      “We were doing just fine until you showed up,” Larry said.

      And so the games began. Buck, Larry, and Arthur gave Kurt a bad time about his horrible bowling. Kurt reciprocated with mock confidence and barrage after barrage of smack-talking. Larry, Buck, and Arthur loved it; Kurt gave them something to act outraged about; and acting outraged was something all of them were very good at.

      “Heard you been up to Buren’s place,” Larry said.

      Kurt rolled his eyes. “Word travels fast around here doesn’t it?”

      “That’s sure,” Buck said.

      “He got some mutilated live-stock is the word,” Larry said.

      “That’s right,” Kurt said. There was no use denying it. He had long gotten used to people putting their noses into police business. Usually the good citizens of DePalma Beach, such as The General, had the best of intensions; they were, after all, watching out for them and theirs. But most of the time it was just old fashioned gossip. People were curious. At first Kurt had been a hard-case about it. But he soon learned that it was just part of the job of being a full-time small-town police chief.

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      “Any sign of what got at ‘em?” Larry asked.

      “Looks like wolves. Sometimes they come down in the fall and pick off a few of the weaker sheep.”

      “Word says it was more than a few,” Buck said.

      “You’re up, Larry,” Arthur grunted over his shoulder, annoyed.

      Larry made his way to the line.

      “I heard it was fifty head or better,” Buck said.

      “It was nowhere near fifty head,” Kurt said.

      “That’s not what I heard.”

      “You weren’t there.” Kurt forced a smile.

      Buck’s eyebrows furrowed. “I got a small spread myself. If we got a problem in DePalma Beach, I’d like to know about it. And I ain’t alone.”

      “That’s a fair statement; we’re doing all we can,” Kurt said. “An official ranch warning comes out in the Herald in the morning.”

      After picking up a spare, Larry sat down next to Kurt. “I heard them bite marks was not from no wolf.”

      Kurt sighed.

      “Here we go again,” Buck said, rolling his eyes.

      “Don’t give me that,” Larry said. “We’s all thinkin’ the same thing.”

      “And what is it we’s thinkin’?” Buck asked.

      Larry swallowed a gob of spit. “Sasquatch.”

      “For the love of sweet Adam.” Buck rolled his eyes.

      “Can we stay in the game here boys?” Arthur scolded over his shoulder. “Buck, you’re up.”

      Buck stood and took his place at the line. “You got him started now.”

      Kurt could do nothing but smile. There was poetic simplicity in how these men, his bowling buddies, thought. As he had lived in the small community, Kurt had formed a theory that his neighbors lived out more than a little of their life experience vicariously through television, with its insipid sitcoms and predictable crime dramas. But television is larger than life; and if there’s one thing small town folk know about,

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      it’s the exact size of life. Once they have had a whiff of something larger than life, they expand their perceptions of their own states—but without the benefit of crowded sidewalks, taxi’s, astronomical crime-rates, hourly news about the stock-market, and trade rags, without those things, they were forced to fill in the blanks using the meager tools they had to work with.

      Folks like Buren Peoples and Larry Uriarte preferred to get creative with those tools. Some tools carve furniture or shape stone into beautiful art. Some tools fix plumbing and get broken cars back on the road. Folks like Larry’s and Buren’s tools create and perpetuated things like el chupacabra and Sasquatch.

      Buck joined Larry and Kurt after knocking eight down on his first shot and picking up the other two on the spare. “Before you go blabbing on,” Buck said. “I don’t want to hear nothing about Sasquatch.”

      “Sasquatch is real,” Larry said, “and if you don’t believe me you’re more than a fool.”

      Buck rolled his eyes. Kurt smiled.

      “Remember that elk hunt five years back when we got snowed in and froze our britches?” Larry asked.

      “Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” Arthur said; it was the first non-reproachful thing he had said all night.

      “Here we go.” Buck shook his head.

      “We was up the throne ridge. The snow hadn’t pounded us yet, but we was under a pretty good dusting.”

      “We’ve heard it.” Buck tried to cut Larry off.

      “Well, he ain’t,” Larry said, pointing at Kurt.

      “I haven’t,” Kurt agreed, shrugging.

      “Fine,” Buck said and threw his hands in the air.

      “We was separated, you know,” Larry went on. “We went our own ways. I had a daypack with sandwiches and a few granola bars and a 30-ought-6 slung over my shoulder. I hiked for the better part of three hours that morning until I found a perch overlooking a box canyon. Perfect, I thought. I hunkered down, took a few sandwiches out of my pack and settled in. I

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      seen droppings so I knew elk was all over those parts. I figured If I waited, they’d come to me.

      “I sat there for a couple of hours and saw nothing. Just as I was about to get up and find me a new spot, there was a rustle in the trees about thirty yards back. I wrangled my rifle off my shoulder and crouched behind