Chương 54: First Customer

Traveling through rural Pennsylvania, especially as you near the Allegheny Mountains, is strange because the dense forests hide the grandeur of the land around you. For miles, you can't see more than a few dozen yards into the woods on either side of the road, and then suddenly you round the right corner on the right hill and are treated to a sweeping vista of tree-covered mountains stretching out to the horizon.

This time of year, they were all reds and yellows and oranges from changing leaves, adding to the feeling that you were seeing a fleeting moment of stunning beauty. It's majestic, humbling, and short-lived because the road dives right back into the forest to obscure the beauty again. To me, it felt like swimming underwater. When I poked my head up to take a gulp of air, I saw a whole world that was always there yet hidden from me. Then it disappeared when I went back under.

Megan and I sat in the front seat of a pickup truck with the words "farm use only" spray-painted across the side. Despite my arguing, I ended up in the middle, squished between Megan and Domonkos with a shifter sticking up between my legs. We bounced down a dirt road that was barely two tire paths in thick grass. Domonkos reminded me of the old men I met briefly in Johnstown, the ones sitting outside the convenience store first thing in the morning to play dominoes.

He was gray and wrinkled and wore big wireframe glasses that I associated with the 70s and early 80s, the style favored by working men across the country. His nose had the shape and dimensions of a golf ball, and tufts of dark hair sprouted from his ears. He smelled like a basement.

"My granddaddy and great uncle loved this land," he told us as he drove.

"Before the gates, folks would come out here to see the caves, a couple thousand a year, going back to the 1800s. Was even popular during the Great Depression if you've heard anything about that." That was the first time Domonkos had mentioned caves on his property.

"Are the goblins in the caves?" Megan asked.

"Could be. All this business with the goblins started when I was cleaning out my pa's place. He had told me about the caves when I was a boy, of course, but I never got to see them. Then I found a box full of maps and deeds, but I can't get to it. Started to try, but all the old trails and roads got washed out and grown over years ago, and I'm not as young as I used to be."

"How did the-" I began, but Domonkos kept talking. Our contact said Domonkos had been pheasant hunting when he encountered goblins, not trying to access a specific set of caves. I decided it wasn't a detail worth quibbling over, so I let him continue.

"The route my daddy took is at the end of this road," he said.

"Used to be a reservoir out here, and then it's about a mile and a half to the caves, according to the maps. Whole hillside eroded, and I don't got the bones for rock climbing. Started trying to find a way around and saw goblin tracks. I'm as tough as they come, but one senior citizen against a dozen goblins doesn't have a happy ending. So I came home." Megan leaned forward to talk past me as we bounced up and down.

"And the EPA didn't help?" Domonkos snorted.

"They're the only part of the government more useless than the CDM. Said they couldn't find any signs of goblins and moved on. I bet they never even got out of the truck to look. Just drove around."

"The job is to kill the goblins so you can get to the caves?" Megan asking that question told me she wanted the same clarification I did.

"I want to see them before my time's up, you know?" Megan and I nodded. We stopped so suddenly that I nearly went through the windshield.

"Gotta walk it from here," Domonkos mumbled as he climbed out of the cab. As Megan and I got our gear out of the truck bed, Domonkos added, "I know this isn't a one-day problem. I'm a reasonable man. Want you to know that."

"Thank you," I replied.

"Let's figure out what we're dealing with."

"And make sure you kids don't get lost and die."

"That too." We had been hiking for only ten minutes or so when Domonkos pointed at the ground.

"Tracking was one of the things yinz wanted to learn. Am I remembering that right?"

"Yes," Megan answered. Domonkos squatted and pointed at two long indents in the soil.

"This here is from a deer. My daddy taught me to track by starting with deer. Lots of 'em around and the prints are simple enough. Like training wheels." Megan and I listened intently. We weren't wearing our helmets, and the drone was packed in a case in Megan's bag, but she had the forethought to bring a selfie stick. She held that now to record Domonkos' lesson.

"The first thing you gotta learn is that the search isn't as big as you think it is. A greenhorn sees a footprint and then looks around at this great big forest. Feels overwhelming. How are you going to find another track with all that ground to search? You don't. You gotta make your world real small. You're not searching the whole forest. No, sir. You're looking for the next track." Domonkos pointed to another track less than an arm's length farther down the trail.

"When a deer is walking, their step is maybe a foot and a half. Eventually, you learn to look at tracks, and you can tell how much of a hurry they were in, which changes the gait. Don't worry about that just yet. Foot and a half. That's all the farther my search is going to be. The tracks are pointing this direction, so that narrows it down more. And here we go, another step." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Sure enough, there was another deer print.

"Not searching the whole forest. Not even looking all the way around me. I've got a piece of pie that's a foot and a half long, and I block out all the rest."

"What if you don't find anything?" Megan asked. Domonkos grinned.

"Then your world gets a little bit bigger. Looking at my next piece of pie… Not seeing another track, but this part of the trail is baked hard from the sun. If I imagine she stepped on that and continued another pace, then I would find… Another print when the ground softens up again." He pointed to the next print.

"If I didn't find this one, then I might search a few more paces in the direction I think she went. Still nothing? I backtrack and pick another piece of pie to search. If that comes up empty, then I might go back to the trail I thought was right the first time and play it out for a bit. If I'm lucky, I pick up the trail again."

"You make it sound easy," Megan said, paying close attention. Laughing, Domonkos replied, "Well, it ain't. The clues get pretty damn small when you're not working with mud or snow. Could be a small batch of disturbed leaves, or maybe part of a berry bush is bitten off. Might only be a little extra dirt on the rocky slope they went over.

"Folks think a really good tracker is someone who is good at seeing stuff like that, and that's part of it, sure. The real trick? How many blanks can they go before finding the next clue? That means being able to picture all the steps a critter would take that didn't leave tracks so you can pick the trail up eight or nine steps later. That's hard as all hell, but I seen it happen." Later on in the hike, Domonkos let Megan and me practice on a new set of deer prints, and he was right.

It wasn't easy, but it was easier than I expected. Following his process of making my search area smaller, piece by piece, helped a lot. My practice thinking like a goblin to spot their traps seemed applicable here. But we hadn't seen goblin prints yet. According to Domonkos, a goblin stride was a little smaller than a deer's, but there seemed to be more variation in goblin sizes than in whitetail deer. Eventually, we reached a gully with a rock face on the other side.

"Used to be more of a hill right here," Domonkos explained, pointing across the creek.

"Now we gotta go downstream half a mile. That gets you around this problem, but then you're totally off the trail. Gets rockier than all hell too, so making up a new path ain't easy either." Walking along the creek exposed us to a litany of animal tracks–raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, birds, and even a mountain lion.

"That looks like a dog to me," Megan said, studying the pawprint.

"Sure does, but it's mountain lion," Domonkos replied.

"I was taught to look for two things first to help you tell. First, see how there's no claw marks?" The toes of the print were rounded. No visible points. Domonkos drew an outline of the print in the mud.

"If this was a dog, you'd see their claws at the tips of the toes." He scratched a point on each of his toe prints. Megan lit up like she finally understood a math problem.

"But cats can retract their claws."

"You got it. Next big thing to look for is the heel of the print. A dog's got a heel like a triangle. One point between the toes, then two points spread out from that on the back."

"Like a heart," Megan said as Domonkos drew that too.

"Suppose so, yeah. But if you look at the mountain lion…" The mountain lion's heel resembled more of an M-shape if you tried to write it with a thick paintbrush so the individual lines all mushed together, two points between the toes and then three at the back of the heel. Domonkos brushed his hands on his pants as he stood.

"Probably won't have trouble picking out a goblin print. No small children living in these woods." The rock face we needed to navigate around never fully disappeared, but there was a point low enough that we could finally get over it. Domonkos visibly struggled with that part of the trail. Climbing, even briefly, required more upper body strength and general flexibility than his worn body would allow.

Like he said earlier, the way forward from here was almost all rocks, enough that a perfectly healthy person would worry for the safety of their ankles. With all the cracks and loose stones, even a step that looked solid could shift suddenly.

"This was where I saw goblin tracks," Domonkos said, tracing a trail with a finger point from the forest ahead to the creek we had just crossed behind us.

"Looked like they came down this way to get water."

"How long ago was this?" I asked.

"Two, three months. Doesn't look like they come here for water no more, but that don't mean they're gone. They've just relocated." Neither Megan nor I disagreed with that conclusion.

"Here's what I want yinz to do for me," Domonkos continued.

"Find me a path to the caves that I can manage. I know, I know. You don't know shit about being out here. I got radios, and I got a fancy GPS, same kind Army Rangers use. I'll teach you a bit more about not getting lost and all, and you can strike out on your own. If you ain't idiots, you should be fine. If you get lost, you can radio me and boot up your GPS. I'll guide you home." This hunt was a lot lighter on goblins than I really expected.

The real job here was to chart a trail easy enough for Domonkos to follow. While I believed goblins were still around somewhere, these were mountains. If they moved their nest, we might not run across signs of them between here and this cave system Domonkos was so interested in. If we didn't happen to find goblins along the way? It sounded like we might not keep looking if Domonkos got what he wanted. Furthermore, I didn't share Domonkos' confidence in our ability to navigate a mountain forest alone.

"I don't know about going out there by ourselves…" Megan said. That sounded like her concerns were similar to mine.

"I'll teach you everything you need to know, and what we're talking about is less than a day trip. The old trail took an hour according to my granddaddy. Even adding a few hours to that for the detour, still plenty of time to get there and back before the sun goes down."

"What about teaching us the camping part?" Domonkos pondered that question for a moment.

"How about this: When you got part of a trail ready, I'll walk it with you, and we'll set up camp at the end of it. Can school you real good then." Megan was satisfied with that answer. She looked at me to see if I agreed.

"I'm willing to see how it goes," I said. Domonkos smiled.

"And people say your generation is hopeless. Come on. We can get a little more tracking practice in on the way back, and then we'll get you copies of the maps I got. And some coffee. Actually, coffee and pie. Talking about pie back there got me thinking about cherry pie and that sauce that comes with it. Mmm mmm mmm."