Maverick led them to the truck outside, spray-painted in streaks of green and brown. "So, I converted the food truck, or 'roach coach' as they're commonly known," Maverick said. He looked at Cushing. "It's killing you not to say anything, isn't it?"

Cushing nodded. Maverick showed them his recordings for call blasting, in which he played yells into the wild to elicit a response. He culled the calls from tapes of their show.

Cushing admitted the calls on American Myths and Monsters was a combination of bear growls and yodels. The floor of the truck was a pallet, with blankets and sheets piled on top of a twin-sized mattress. His closet was a pile of shirts and jeans in the passenger seat. The ovens and storage were gutted, filled with night vision goggles, spare tapes, and military MREs.

Maverick slept in the monstomobile because the house was filled with memories. But he still remained close, like the town he was permanently tethered to.

The monstomobile also provided respite from the bad dreams, of the skeleton held together with an old flannel shirt and weathered jeans, bones barely fused together with dried strips of tendon. His father's clothes, Maverick always thought, resting on a demon that crawls in from the same woods where the monster sleeps.

"Why don't you leave? Go up to Washington state. Better scenery, better Bigfoots," Cushing asked.

Maybe even have a house, Maverick thought. A house where he doesn't wake up from bad dreams that flood the room with the smell of decay and creek water, if only for a moment.

"There's a reason to stay, at least for me. My mission. My monster. It was just mom and me for a long time. Dad left in sixty. Place is paid for, so that's good. Ooh! I have some footprints, too."

Maverick pulled two plaster casts from a box in the truck. One he considered to be real, the other a forgery. Maverick carefully explained the difference.

"The one on the right is fake, the toes aren't splayed, which is what would happen if a real foot was stepping on muddy creek beds and leaving tracks behind. Plus, there's no midtarsal break. See, the real prints have a break in the middle, where the midtarsal joint is. This means they're flat footed, and their transverse tarsal joint has a way bigger range of motion than a human's ever could. We have one, but theirs is very different, definitely not human. Plus, this one on the left has dermal ridges. Those are the little lines that make up your fingerprints? You have them on your feet and toes too. Which is nearly impossible to fake!"

"Where did you get the real one?" Cushing asked.

"Mail order," Maverick said. "But I'm still looking. I've been reading a lot about primate locomotion so I can better recognize the real thing."

"You know," Cushing said. "And I'm honestly not trying to be a smartass, but if you put this much effort and study into literally any other field you probably wouldn't be living in a trailer."

"You sound like my ex," Maverick said.

"She might have a point," Cushing said.

"Guess we'll see when all this is said and done."

"Exactly. That's the point of this documentary," Cushing said.

Maverick returned the tracks to the truck and carefully locked it. "Can't be too sure," Maverick said. "Well. You ready to get out there?"

"Out there?" Cushing asked.

"To the bottoms! Where I'm going to be searching. You can't go with me on the actual search; a large group of people would just scare it away. So, we should get out there now for some footage."

"How far out there?" Cushing asked.

Maverick chuckled and slapped a hand on Cushing's shoulder, leading him away from the truck.