Emory’s Gift (10 page)

If it was, he gave no indication. He was better at the expressionless look than I was.

Being stuck inside for the thirty days hath September gave me more than ample opportunity to wallow in the sadness that swamped me whenever I thought about Kay. She was the perfect woman for me in every way except her boyfriend.

Maybe her date with the military guy, whom I referred to in my thoughts as Sergeant Lunkhead, was all just for show, designed to make me jealous or something.

“Why did you put your head on my shoulder, Kay?” I asked the empty house.

Because Charlie,
Kay’s voice answered,
I love you. I’ve loved you ever since you gave me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

My urges weren’t sexual—for me those storms, while building on the horizon, were still a little ways off. I wasn’t picturing Kay naked, though it had not escaped my attention during Lifesaving that she did know how to fill out a bathing suit better than the girls my age. I was thinking about her in a much more pure and frankly unrealistic fashion, as a woman who would be devoted to me forever, who would never leave me, ever. That’s all I wanted.

Talking too much to yourself can lead you in unexpected directions. “Mom,” I said out loud one afternoon, but I didn’t finish my sentence. I’d tried a couple of times since her death to converse with her, to feel her presence and speak to it, but even in the cemetery it didn’t work. She was gone. She couldn’t hear me. My heart was aching and I needed to talk to my mother about it, but she was dead.

I felt a flare of anger, a twisted bitterness, at her for dying and leaving me motherless, trapped in a house with a man who often acted as if he were the one who died. It wasn’t fair! I hated her for getting that wretched disease and taking so long to die that when it finally happened, yes, I felt relief. Who wouldn’t?

This internal rant was immediately followed by shame and remorse. My throat tightened, my eyes squeezed shut, and tears tracked down my face. I was so, so sorry—sorry I had gotten angry at her, sorry for what I had done and could never undo. I didn’t hate her. She was my mom. I missed her so much it felt like my insides were torn.

One Saturday I received my junior-lifesaving certificate—I was now officially qualified to pull seventh graders out of the pool. There was no mention on the diploma of the fact that I was the only student brave enough to put his lips on the instructor.

She had signed it:
Kay Logan.
I put my finger on the signature, a bit disappointed that it didn’t give off an electric current.

Kay Logan.
There was only one Logan family listed in the Selkirk River phone book.

“Hi, Kay; it’s me, Charlie,” I said by way of practice, the phone still safe in the cradle. “Really? Well, I missed you, too.… Now?… Well, I’m grounded, but you could come over
here.
”

Despite how well that went, I didn’t immediately pick up the phone. My heart was pounding. Of course I could call her. We’d been to the movies together. I’d blown air into her lungs. We had a relationship.

I was a boy who fearlessly walked with a grizzly bear.

That’s what finally gave me the nerve: how many other kids could claim something like that?

A woman answered the phone, but it wasn’t Kay.

“Hi, can I talk to Kay?” I asked a little breathlessly.

“Is this Glenn?” the woman wanted to know.

“Who?”

Who was Glenn? Was that Sergeant Lunkhead’s name?

“I’m sorry; I thought you were someone else. Kay’s not here right now.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like to leave a message?”

Yes; when you see your daughter, would you tell her I love her?

“Hello?”

“Yes!” I blurted. “Tell her please that Charlie Hall called and that I got my certificate for Junior Lifesaving.”

“Okay. Charlie Hall. I will tell her.”

“Good.”

“Thank you for calling, Charlie. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye and thank you, good-bye,” I said formally. Then I hung up and reviewed the conversation in my head, wincing.

Finally October 1st arrived and my house arrest came to an end. That afternoon I blew out of those school bus doors and dashed up the hill and into my house, spreading my arms as if to embrace the glory of it all. At last!

Then I watched television like I always did.

After an hour or so, though, I realized I was wasting time and thought of something I could now do that I’d been grounded from doing.

The bear was not at the creek, and I carried my offering—a fruitcake—back to the freezer. I wasn’t going to leave the food just sitting there, even though it was a fruitcake and therefore of no use to anybody. I wanted the bear to know this gift was coming from me.

That Friday after school I headed off into the woods, drinking in the strong pine scent as it wafted on October breezes. I didn’t have any food with me—I wasn’t really convinced I was ever going to see the bear again. I did call out, “Hey, bear!” when I got to the creek, but nothing answered but my echo and I kept wandering.

I did not have a destination in mind, but after a time I found myself working my way up to what I thought of as the Old Cabin. At the rocky outcropping that was the spine of the ridge visible from our house the terrain dipped back down and then flattened for a while before plunging down all the way to the river. In the center of the flat area was an abandoned hut, the windows broken out and the interior sagging from several winters of exposure. I suppose at some time it was a place where hunters took up residence for a few days at a time, but that was before Jules McHenry bought up so much of the land to use as his personal playground.

McHenry was estimated by the kids at school to be worth a bazillion dollars. He was a rich oil guy from somewhere south, like Texas, I guess, and showed up a few times a year to hunt on the acres and acres of land he’d purchased all over the county. It’s what people did when they had so much money they didn’t know what to spend it on.

I liked to go inside the cabin and smell the dank, musty air, though it was somewhat creepy. One time a gust of wind blew the front door shut on me and I nearly screamed. The door tended to stick a bit and the thought of getting trapped in there panicked me a little, though there was a big square window in the back, glass long broken out, that I could escape through if I needed.

The Old Cabin had a long driveway that led up to the paved road, Road 655. There was a junked car on the property where someone had gone flying into the trees after losing an argument about centrifugal force with one of Road 655’s many curves. The driver wound up deciding the vehicle he’d ridden into the woods wasn’t worth the cost to tow it out of there. Mice lived in the car, and boys had pounded the sheet metal with rocks. My loose plan was to go check out the car after messing around at the Old Cabin, but I never got there.

Years later, when I wrote my book,
The Bear from Selkirk River,
I sat down with what felt like half the people from town, asking them to tell me their thoughts and recollections about the events that occurred in the fall of 1974. From that I was able to piece together a narrative that included conversations that took place outside of my hearing and to understand the thinking of some of those involved.

People always answered my questions happily enough; they were cooperative and friendly. And then they had a question for me, and it was nearly always worded exactly the same.

Did it really happen?

chapter

ELEVEN

I HAD taken just two steps inside the Old Cabin, fumbling my way, unable to adjust to the murky darkness, when the smell hit me. A dank, wild odor, both strong and familiar.

The bear had been in here.

Was he in here now? I froze, the bright square of light from the doorway cast on the floor in front of me like a piece of carpet. Gradually the interior images of the cabin worked to resolve themselves: there was the rusty sink, the door-less icebox, the pile of decaying tin cans. I held my hand up to block the light from the big broken-out window in the rear and saw more, including the torn and dirty mattress some unknown person had dragged in a year or two ago and placed against the left wall.

No bear. I let my breath out slowly. I strode over to the mattress, feeling the boards sag under my feet, the wood gone even more soft than it had been on my last visit. The ceiling, too, looked worse, collapsing in the middle. The elements were working on this place and would soon pull it down.

I couldn’t imagine a human being lying on the mattress, though it looked like a dog had left some fur on it. Mice had been busy burrowing in from the sides.

A shadow filled the doorway then. I whipped my head around and it was the bear, on all fours, watching me. I took a deep gulp of air, feeling cornered. I glanced at the big window, set a little high off the floor, but if I was motivated I knew I could dive through it.

“I didn’t bring you anything. Are you hungry, boy?” I asked unsteadily. I held out my hands to show him they were empty, and they were shaking a little from my heartbeat.

The bear took a step forward. In the small confines of that place he was enormous, his bulk blotting out the light from the doorway.

Run!
Though I had fed him and he seemed tame, some primordial sense within me was reacting to being this close to such a grand, awe-inspiring beast, urging me to try to bolt for the door.

“Okay. We’re okay,” I murmured.

I bit my lip as the bear pushed his head forward, virtually nose-to-nose with me. I shrank involuntarily against the wall. I looked into those eyes; I smelled his breath. His massive head, brown and round, with ears that popped up on either side like cupcakes, no longer looked doglike or cute to me.

He was far too close for me to try to get away now. If I had made a mistake by trusting him not to hurt me, it would be the last mistake I’d ever have a chance to make.

With a small chuffing sound the bear turned and lumbered away, grunting as he forced his way back through the narrow doorway.

I heaved a deep sigh and followed him outside. He looked over his shoulder at me.

“You want me to see if there’s anything to eat in my freezer?” I asked him. My voice came out normal and easy. That had been the acid test—if he wanted to eat me he would have done it. I would never be afraid of the bear again. With the simple and uncomplicated trust of an eighth-grade boy I approached him and put my hand on the coarse fur near his spine. “You startled me a little,” I said, feeling I needed to apologize since I’d nearly peed my pants in there.

There was a sudden squeal from above, up on Road 655, followed by a dull concussion that I felt as much as heard. “Whoa!” I shouted. “Car accident!” Though the bear had whipped his head up at the sound, he didn’t seem particularly excited. I turned and ran up the wide leafy trail that had once been the driveway of the Old Cabin, glancing over my shoulder.

The bear was still looking at me, but he was making no move to follow.

When I got to Road 655 I saw a Buick Estate station wagon about twenty yards away, pulled over to the side of the road. The brake lights were on, but then they winked out and the car accelerated away. I doubted that the driver had seen me.

Twenty feet from where the car had stopped, off on the shoulder, was a thick-limbed mule deer, small, a female. I walked up and looked into her blank, black eyes, the life gone from them. Blood was pooled under her and her legs were twisted—the impact had killed her instantly.

“Hey, bear!” I shouted. A light breeze made the branches creak over my head, the sound serving to accentuate how otherwise silent the woods were. “Hey, bear, come here!”

I sighed in frustration. Did the bear even know I was calling him? And though I had a fresh deer carcass for him, why did I think he would come at my command? Was he my pet? No, but what else would you call our relationship? “Friends” didn’t describe it very well, either.

While I was stewing over all this there was a thrashing sound and the bear appeared, carefully looking up and down the road, his nose up to sniff for intruders. I gestured to the dead animal on the ground. “Look here!” I called.

It was October 4th, and I now know that the bear was well into hyperphagia—the huge intake of calories to prepare him for the winter’s hibernation. He’d been eating acorns and pine nuts and berries but probably not, based on what I’d seen, fish. As he strolled up the road toward me, his eyes were on the fresh carcass at my feet, though he did glance at me as if to give thanks before diving into his meal.

Anyone who doubts the grizzly’s position as top predator in the food chain has never done what I did that afternoon: stand by and watch as a bear tore into and devoured an entire mule deer. It was somehow even worse that his bites were almost dainty, using his front teeth like a polite person at a chicken barbeque. It was both awe inspiring and somewhat sickening, and when his energetic claws wound up pulling the deer off the shoulder and down the hill a little bit I didn’t follow. The savagery of nature is sometimes too much for those of us who sleep in a soft bed under a wooden roof.

When the whole story of that afternoon and everything that followed was made known, my dad asked me what I could have thought I was up to. I was feeding a grizzly bear? Talking to it?
Playing
with it? What was I thinking?

The truth was, I wasn’t thinking anything. Did I stop for one second to question the sensibility of my behavior? Absolutely, especially when the bear had me cornered in the Old Cabin. But the world had already lost all sense to me. Things that I knew in my bones could not possibly be true were, nonetheless, inarguable facts. Though it was impossible to believe, my mother was dead and I would not be seeing her again. Once a person tried to live within that inexplicable construct, nothing seemed too outrageous.

Did it really happen?

Here’s all I can say to that: after the bear finished the deer carcass, he clambered back up the hill toward me like a dog tracking back to its master. It seemed as natural as anything in the world to put my hand out and touch his thick fur, to pat the huge head, and to say, “Come on.” As the bear obediently followed me, it felt completely reasonable that I would take the bear home with me, maybe feed him a meal directly out of the freezer. That my dad would let me keep a live grizzly.