Rose met her husband, Fieldin Kohler, as an 18-year-old student in his college art class. It only occurs to her that he was the "caricature" of a predatory professor years later, when they have long been married. After marrying, the pair moves to a remote farm, where Fieldin leaves Rose to fend for herself and works on his unsuccessful, unsellable, and "melodramatic" paintings—many of which depict Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, marching towards a stone pyramid. Rose doesn't understand Fieldin's strange work, and begins painting her own more straightforward watercolor scenes. They turn out to be extraordinarily popular, though Fieldlin doesn't betray any resentment for her success. Eventually, Fieldin becomes sick and dies. That same night, Rose spots a shadowy figure in her backyard. Her first thought is that it's Wayne Lee Cowan, who bombed an abortion clinic the year before and fled into the woods. But Rose decides that the figure is, in fact, Bigfoot. She becomes obsessed with Bigfoot, becoming an honorary cryptozoologist and writing a letter on the matter for the area paper. It's only the ongoing manhunt and a constant FBI presence—towards which the insular locals are becoming increasingly hostile—that spares Rose the full force of public attention on her odd letter. Four years later, an FBI agent comes to the farm to make further inquiries about Wayne Lee Cowan. He promises to tell Rose if he spots Bigfoot, so long as she tells him if she spots the suspect. The next day, Rose visits her newly widowed neighbor, who warns her against talking to the FBI. The neighbor also frets about whether Wayne Lee Cowan and her recently deceased husband are staying warm in the woods as wintertime approaches. The neighbor goes on to recount how her late husband once buried their stillborn child on the mountain, and reflects upon not understanding the man she married. Rose says she doesn't understand her late husband either, referring to the mysterious pyramid in all his paintings. The neighbor tells her it's a metaphor for being led into bondage—presumably a reference to the Egyptian pyramids built by Jews. Indeed, Fieldin was Jewish—a fact Rose learned only after his death. Fieldin emigrated from Vienna as a child, which suggests he fled from the Nazis. That night, as Rose reflects guiltily on failing to understand her husband or his art, she spots Bigfoot again. She ventures into the dark, on the cusp of a spiritual experience, and looks down to see two plastic buckets filled with apples—presumably belonging to a human, rather than Bigfoot. The FBI helicopter looms above, suggesting that Wayne Lee Cowan was the shadowy figure all along.