I work for the County Road Department.
I'm not out on the roads working, at least not usually.
Usually I spend more days than I care to count, crouched under some concrete spans, tapping
abutments and measuring riverbed scour while there's still enough daylight to do so.
It's not a glamorous job.
It's a notebook, a folding-level rod, and waiters that somehow, despite the best cleaning,
always smell like swampy water and old fish.
There's also a lot of waiting into murky waters.
I can't see into.
Now at the end of all of this, I've been promised a good retirement.
I guess we'll see about that in 12 years or so.
One day I got a call that came in around 430, not long before I was supposed to leave
at 5.
It had been a hard rain earlier that day, and I'd already been out checking several things.
But this call, well, let me tell you about it.
17 might have lost a little rip wrap, my supervisor said.
If it's not underwater, grab your numbers, and if it is, you do what you can and get out.
Now County Bridge 17 is a two-span, poured-in-place concrete job out on a secondary road that
only locals use, unless the main highway got clogged up and GPS reroutes everyone onto
that road.
There's a gravel pull-off on the south shoulder, and there's a big willow that tries to
eat up the whole north abutment every summer.
I topped off my thermos through the rod and the paint stick in the bed of my truck and
rolled out.
The storm that had blown through left everything fresh and clean, sort of, in a muddy way.
The sky was grey, but no storm clouds were left.
The river was up maybe a foot, and it was rolling fast over the rock.
By the time I eased onto the shoulder, set the flashes on my truck.
Dusk was already beginning to settle under the bridge.
It comes early in October.
My gear is simple.
Headlamp.
Hand-help flashlight.
Geoprene waiters and an orange vest that makes me look like a big traffic cone.
I carry a cheap tape measure and a hammer that I almost never use but always carry, and
that level rod that I fold up like a pocket knife.
I called it in on the radio.
17 on sight.
I got answered with static, which is usual out there, and that's fine.
I've been under far worse spans with nothing but my own voice to echo for company.
There's a crawlspace where the southern wing wall leaves just enough room to slide in, past
all the heavy cat tails.
The underside air of the bridge is different.
Cooler, yes, always, but it also carries the river's smell and the damp chalky smell of
concrete.
First thing I check is drift.
A storm leaves you a kind of story if you know how to read it.
Leaves, sticks, pieces of foam and other river debris all racked up against the pier noses.
If your drift line is up against girders, your numbers just changed.
Tonight the line was a palms width below the bottom flange.
Close but not chewing at the concrete.
I could see that deer had gone through sometime after the rain.
I could tell by the way the silk crust was still soft around the slots, and the edges had
not yet crumbled.
There were two small deer and one larger.
They chose the shadow under the north span, which is what anything with any sense would do.
There's the road above, the river below, and cover on both sides.
You know, a bridge is kind of a corridor from nature for anything walking through.
I marked the abutment, painted a thin dash at the left wing.
Yesterday's high water scarps still wet looking in the light.
That's when I noticed the other track.
Not a boot and not a shoe.
This was a wide, bare print pressed into a plate of silk near the water's edge.
It had that look where the toes aren't defined as in clean sand, but you can read them
by the way the silk bulges and the outer edges feather out.
But it was the width that got me.
The ball of it was as wide as my handspan.
It was no arch to speak of, just a solid flat weight.
What made me frown wasn't the size so much as the way it set into the ground.
Very deep, very careful.
The river had dropped an inch or two since it had stepped there.
I could see the little ledge around it where the water had once been.
I found all kinds of human signs under bridges, beer cans, wrappers.
One time I found a whole sleeping bag.
One time someone had thrown a dead microwave under there.
And sadly, once I found a person who had, let's say, accidentally unallogged themselves
doing one of their favorite habits.
So I know I can see and find almost anything when I go out on a job.
And bare feet?
Those on a strange thing to see down by the waters.
Well, not in the summer anyhow.
But this was late October.
The air had a hard bite to it, and whoever owned that foot had walked the silk the way that
you would move on rip wrap when you don't want to roll an ankle.
Deliberately and carefully.
I told myself this was probably just some trespasser, some kids on a dare.
Or maybe one big, good old boy that had one too many and threw his boots over his shoulder
for a laugh.
I could have almost believed any of those.
But then I heard a rock move.
Now people who haven't been around rip wrap hear rock sliding.
And that has kind of a sound to it, sharp and messy, a little avalanche sound that makes
everybody jump when it happens.
But this was not that.
This was the soft clack of one stone, then another.
It was set down and eased off like somebody was testing their step with their full body
weight and not wanting the whole bank to announce where they were by rock sliding.
It came from my left, the shadow side of Pier B.
I turned my head lamp, but my instinct was to keep the pier between me and whatever I couldn't
see yet.
I took two slow steps, keeping my shoulder almost brushing the formlines.
And I spoke as I always do when I find fishermen or teenagers or homeless people under some span.
County roads I called out.
Is there anybody under here?
My voice did not carry far.
I heard another rock tick and settle.
I got no words back, just quiet.
It was the kind of quiet that says something with feet and a brain has stopped to listen to
me, and they're trying to conceal themselves.
I heard the river.
I heard a tiny drip where water had worked through a crack in the deck above.
I heard my own heart in my ears.
Pier B roads I called out again, much louder this time.
I'm just checking the pier's.
Whoever you are, you're fine.
Just don't spook me and we'll all be home for supper with clean shorts.
I set it with a small laugh.
Nobody laughed with me.
I stepped to the corner of Pier B and edged around.
There's a narrow shelf where the rip wrap meets a pad of baked down silt.
My light pushed the shadow back and showed me the willow tangle that hugs the north abutment.
Between those two things, between the willow and the concrete, something very large stood
in that odd, quiet way that large animals do when they're deciding if they're going to
flee or fight.
You can read a silhouette under bridges in the dark.
You see the shape first, then how it holds its shape.
This shape had a head without a neck, at least not in the way a man's head and neck would
be.
The shoulders themselves were forward, rolled like it was carrying a heavy load across
its back.
The arm that hung nearest to me was too long if this was some man.
The fingertips were far closer to the knee than the hip.
It stood with no movement.
My light slid across it, and it caught nothing that threw back shine for eyes.
One reason might have been the angle.
Lights under bridges can do some strange things and bounce around.
But the real reason is, eye shine is for deer and raccoons and other animals.
This was not just an animal.
I saw it turn slightly, and I realized with a shock that I could see the line of latissimus
and deltoid under the hair.
Further shock, it had hair, everywhere, and a lot of it.
I did not raise my light to its face.
Part of that was maybe some fear, but a lot of it was, "I didn't want to turn this into
a confrontation."
Shining your light in someone's eyes can sometimes turn it to a confrontation.
Man or animal.
My hands found the rod and unfolded it.
You see, when I'm kind of nervous and I'm unsure of something, I do whatever it is I
am sure of.
And right then, my job was what I was sure of.
Peer bee scour pocket, I said aloud, because that's another thing I've learned about being
under there with all kinds of weird people and situations.
Talking helps everybody decide you're not a problem.
Whether it's a person or an animal.
I dipped the rod into the pocket that forms at the nose of the pier where the current hits.
Tape met stone at 29 inches.
Pre-storm was 27 and a half.
I wrote that down with a pencil that lives behind my ear.
All the while I was aware that I was being stared at.
Hard.
Thinking back on this now, I really can't believe I stayed and did what I did.
Maybe I was in some kind of shock.
Maybe I was testing my own bravery.
I honestly don't know.
Maybe I thought if I just acted normal, everything would be okay.
Now, there's a girder's web near there.
Each span has three flanges, like shelves, dusted with spray.
On the web of the center girder, about eight feet up, too high for my natural reach, I saw
something that looked like a wet spot.
Not splashes or drips.
It was a smear, the size and width of maybe a man's palm, but a palm that was far bigger than
mine.
I saw the wide heel of a hand, a little knuckle drag.
There was fine grit stuck in the moisture, like someone had braced themselves there with
their hand as they walked past on the unevenness.
The thing in the notch between the willow and the concrete, the thing with the muscles and
the hair, I saw it as it shifted its weight.
I saw it from the corner of my vision.
I saw it without looking directly at it, as I had been doing all the while.
That movement made a soft, snicking and clacking noise with a few stones that moved.
"Hey, I'm going to finish this and back out, okay?"
"You stay on that side," I said, then I added, "Yeah, you stay there and we'll both be happy."
I saw it turn its head, just a degree or two at my voice.
I can't say it was listening to me, but it was more like it was hearing.
I've wrote a note about the palm smear, that I would try to photo it on the way out.
Wrote that the North Wing wall settlement was a quarter inch since the last check.
Now truthfully, none of that was consequential, but I had logged it all anyway.
I took my phone out and shot a photo of the smear.
On the screen it looked like just a damp dark spot on some gray concrete.
This wasn't a clear print of any kind.
When I finally folded the rod up, I did it slow enough that anyone watching would know
this wasn't a threat.
I was making no fast movements.
I backed away slowly and in such a way as I could keep peer-beade between us.
All I heard was the rushing of the river around me.
Under the South span, the deer slots had overstepped and left.
Those little ones knew which way to go, and so did I.
I ended up coming out the way I went in, belly low, shoulders scraping cat tails.
The light on the truck flashed against the guardrail and made the world look real again.
Real red and amber I guess, but dirty and human.
At the shoulder by my truck, I stood there and called it in on the radio.
Seventeen to base, non-confrontational trespasser North span, finished measurements, will
return at ten hundred with partner for a daylight look.
The radio answered as it always did with just a hiss and a crackle with some broken words
coming back to me.
And for the record, they could always hear me on that radio, but I could almost never hear
them unless I was close.
Strangest thing.
Anyway, I stood there by my truck for a minute on the gravel, and then I felt that thing
that you feel when a adrenaline washes out and leaves your organs empty.
And I got in my truck, took a sip of coffee from my thermos, my hands shaking, trying to
steady myself.
I was processing what I had just seen, what I had just gone through, and I went through
it, being sure I was right, and I was.
I knew I was.
I knew what I had seen.
I sat there in the truck for several more minutes.
It was fully dark outside now, which comes early in late October.
What I was waiting for, I can't say.
Maybe I thought what I had seen would come up and show itself to me again.
Though that didn't make any sense either.
Finally, I pulled away and left the bridge.
The farther I drove away, the more surreal the whole thing had seemed.
Had I really stood there in the darkness under the bridge, with what I was sure was a big
foot?
I believe I had.
Now, sleep after something like that isn't really a good sleep.
It never is.
Your brain replays the same scenes over and over in your dreams.
Sometimes with different endings, sometimes with scary endings.
I told myself a lot of practical, no nonsense things over the next couple of weeks.
It was kids, kids just playing with a costume, I said.
Or maybe it was a big man that wasn't wearing shoes because drink and maybe other habits
made them make poor choices.
Though I didn't know of any man in the county that large.
Then I thought, "Black Bear."
Yes, it had to be a black bear standing up the whole time.
Although you and I both know, a black bear under a bridge makes no sense.
They're not fond of concrete and rocks.
And a black bear's shoulder doesn't hang the way that I saw it, and they're not muscled
up like a big rustler.
Next day at ten hundred, just as I said, I went back with Tom from the shop.
Now, Tom's good company.
He's not one to talk endlessly.
I parked at the same place, and we went down into the South Span as I had done the day before.
The bear print that I had seen had softened overnight.
Due and a small water seep had feathered the edges, so it was more of a suggestion than evidence
by that time.
Still, the width of it hadn't gone anywhere.
Tom put his boot beside it and nodded without smiling.
"That was a big fella," he said.
I nodded and said, "Yeah, he was."
That was all I could say back.
We just looked at each other, and both of us nodded again.
We both knew.
I know that Tom had had his own things happen with Bigfoot far outside of the job.
I had heard rumors.
He never talked to me directly about it, though.
But his look told me.
Those rumors?
They were true.
He had the look of knowledge to him.
So I showed him the smear on the girder web.
Now it had turned to a white ashy gray there, just a salt outline where fine grit stuck.
"You put your hand up there," Tom said, kind of half question in his tone.
"No, I can't reach it," I said, not without a ladder.
He took my phone and made me stand where I had stood and took a photo of me reaching.
In the picture, my fingers are good, 15 inches shy of that print.
We finished the job quickly and quietly.
We measured the scour pocket again.
There were no changes since last night, which told us the river had peaked and settled.
We marked the quarter-inch wing wall settlement, and called it benign for now.
We picked up a couple extra beer cans we found, a cracked bobbar, and a tangled plastic grocery
bag.
Since we would prefer clean outdoors, even if others don't.
When we slid back into the light, I looked once at the willow that guards the north abutment.
It was still full with a blaze of color, not having lost its foliage yet.
The willow moved and swayed, almost unnaturally.
Now maybe it could have been a breeze that I couldn't feel, or maybe it was the limb tips
that were touching the water, floating with the flow.
But I thought there might have been something else up under the arching, drooping limbs.
I hadn't felt it all day at the bridge.
But now, looking at the willow, I felt it, the feeling of something watching us.
I said nothing to Tom, and we headed back to the shop garage.
Back at the shop, I wrote the report the way you write reports.
If you want to keep your job, and your sense of humor, dry and practical.
Post storm inspection, County Bridge 17.
Scour increased 1.5 inches at peer B.
North wing wall settlement, 0.25 inch monitor.
Drift line at minus 1 flange thickness.
Evidence of recent human/tress passor presence under North span.
Non-confrontational.
Human daylight patrol by Sheriff's office.
Low priority.
I attached three photos that I had taken.
None of them were any evidence, and they would never make a believer out of anybody for
anything.
Well, because quite truthfully, they didn't show doodly squat.
I wanted to keep my job.
I never wrote about the other thing in a report.
I didn't write about how I shaped the size of an impossibly tall and wide man, with the
build of a wrestler was under the bridge with me the whole time in the darkness.
I didn't write about how I did not raise my light up to its face.
I didn't write about how I wished I had had a second light to light the area better,
because I knew I was standing there with a big foot.
On that last one, I thought about it.
And later the next day, I went to the hardware store after work, and I bought myself a second
light.
It's not fancy.
It takes the same batteries as the first one, because, well, let's just say I'm old enough
to have learned that lesson.
It rides on my vest now.
On the opposite side, Velcroed heavily.
So when I come around a pier, I can light up both edges at once.
Now since then, I've been under a lot of bridges because that's part of my job.
I don't have the luxury of saying I'm going to stay away from those places from now on.
But I am careful when I go under.
I keep concrete between me and what I might not see over there or can't see over there.
I make sure to announce myself several times before I go down under to do the job.
But I listen for the sounds of stones moving, water splashing, or footsteps on the rocks
or the mud.
But I listen most for the sound of one stone moving, just one being moved carefully.
And you'd be surprised how often you hear just one stone move.
You'd be surprised how many things are trying not to be seen out there, not because they're
monsters.
But because they've learned that humans bring a lot of problems.
Humans are loud.
Humans are trouble.
If you're looking for proof about Bigfoot, well I really can't help you, all I can do is
tell you my story.
But if you're looking for how a person keeps their hands steady when something is watching
them from the darkness and they have a job to do, I'm the guy to help you with that.
You go on and do your work.
You don't aim your light in anyone's face.
You leave room for both of you to pass each other, without getting too close into each other's
personal space.
You stay aware though.
You watch them, without looking directly at them.
You watch them, in case they make a move on you.
And of course they always could.
You really just don't know.
That river in this county, it will be here when I'm long gone and nothing more than just
a photograph in one of my great-grandchildren's shoe boxes.
That river will flow in eb.
Stones will move.
And debris will get backed up there.
And it will still act like a corridor for anything walking through there.
Now sometimes one of those things walking through there might just be one of us humans.
But there are times.
It's going to be something bigger, older, something built for the uphill run.
Let's know that if you both choose the same time to walk through there, do yourself a
favor and keep at least one peer between you.
Go on and measure what you came to measure.
Be quick about it.
Do your job and back out slow.
Keep a lot of space between you.
Be respectful.
Talk to it.
Now that night, after the coffee went cold and the radio had turned to nothing that I
could understand, I had sat there at my kitchen table and I tried to write down as much of
this as I could get down.
Now that writing is what I'm using to make this email to you.
I am sure that I will be back under 17 or another bridge just like it after the next storm.
In fact, I have been back under bridge 17 since this happened.
Nothing happened though.
But when I go back, I'll mark the wing wall.
I'll check the pocket and I'll curse the patch on my waiters that always leaks.
And if something's down there using the span, the same as me, well I aim to leave it all
the room I can.
And I'm going to keep both lights handy.
[ Silence ]