Juggling Fire (8 page)
The pack saved his life. The fabric is torn and the deepest wound slashes along his left flank, sparing his belly. The rest are just scratches.
“It’s okay, puppy,” I murmur. “It’s okay.” I don’t look too closely or I’ll throw up.
I knot the pack around my waist and spend a few minutes searching with the monocle for an open route down the draw back to camp. Brooks lies on his belly and licks his wound. For a moment I scan farther. No smoke, no hidden camps with Dad about to charge out and help.
I scoop Brooks into my arms so he lies crosswise with his wound on the outside. Good thing I’m used to carrying a heavy pack. I carry Brooks as far as I can down the mountain.
When I collapse, I stroke him, both of us lying on the slope.
Without warning, I’m mad. Anger breaks over me. “What an idiot! The bear just wanted to be left alone. Was that too much to ask?”
I stand and walk off a few steps.
Brooks drags himself behind me.
“You could have got me killed too,” I shout.
Brooks lies perfectly still on his belly and whines.
My stomach cramps. I retch into the willows but nothing comes out. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. The ravens can devour the bloody lunch for all I care. Silence screeches in my ears. What am I doing? Brooks is in pain. And there’s no one else here to take charge.
“Come on, Brooks,” I coax.
Sunshine disappears from the valley below. Stars wink overhead.
“You can do it, puppy,” I tell him.
And he does, dragging one leg.
We get back to camp in the dark. I grope in my pack for my flashlight. I poke in the fire-pit ashes for a spark, but nothing glows. I’m trembling with cold and shock. It’s too dark to find kindling. I need to calm down, to focus on something else. That’s what my story does, I think. It takes me somewhere else.
The prince and the princess were still on their quest, searching
for the lake of true stories where the white birds roosted, when
the prince was captured by the Guardians of the Lake. Days
of wandering later, the princess too was discovered. She was
sleeping in a sun-drenched glade, sparrows twittering on branches
above her grass bed, bees lazily droning amongst yellow poppies
and blue gentians.
The guards led the princess to the stone-walled dungeon. One
guard marched ahead, holding an oil lamp. The princess ran her
hand along the wall as she stumbled through the dark hallways,
hoping to memorize the return route. They slammed the cell door.
She watched the last flicker of light retreat. The dungeon smelled
of mold. Far off she heard water dripping.
I haul Brooks to the tent door and push him in.
He smells like meat and fresh blood. The smell will advertise us to animals passing in the night. Don’t think about it, I tell myself. Lock the image of that bear out of your mind.
I sit down, kick off my boots, arrange my defenses inside one boot by my head and go to sleep, an arm flung over Brooks. I will myself not to dream. In the morning, I think, I’ll decide what to do. It wasn’t the bear’s fault. It’s not like he was vicious or cruel. He was only trying to eat some berries.
My sleep is empty, a long blank hallway with slammed doors on both sides. When I wake once, I force myself to concentrate on my story.
Then began a dark time for the princess. There was no action
possible. Nothing changed or happened for such a long time that
she was unaware of the passage of time. But still, in the distance,
water dripped. Soon she realized someone was whistling in time
to the drops.
“Who is it?” called the princess, standing to attention in
the blackness. She was so relieved to hear her voice, any voice,
that she shouted it again and again.
“No need to shout,” said a cheerful voice in return. “Talk
softly and I’ll walk to your voice.”
It was the prince, her beloved prince. She was no longer
alone.
“Oh, Brooks,” I choke out. He whines and licks his wound. I play with his droopy ears and then slide out. Blackflies are waiting on the screen. They swarm my face, crawling into the creases by my eyes and behind my ears. I smear their carcasses into my sweat. Brooks has to get better, because I sure don’t know what to do.
In the darkness, touch is the loudest sense.
The prince dropped to his knees before the princess and kissed
her clammy hand until it prickled with warmth.
Brooks is licking my hand, serious washing licks.
“Cut it out!”
The sun is already high. It’s another hot fall day in the forest. I light a fire, and when the twigs and branches have caught, I coax Brooks to join me. He lies by the fire on his belly. I boil water and drink hot juice from powder. I boil water again and add oats and butter and dried fruit. Brooks’s wound gapes open. I see the skin layer and underneath it—steak. How does something with a personality become meat? His ears are soft as Arctic cotton grass. When I stroke them, he slides closer to me so his head rests on my lap. He thinks I can make him better, I guess.
I eat slowly with my cottonwood spoon, forcing myself to swallow. Halfway through the pot, the porridge begins to taste good: hot and sweet. I finish it fast before my stomach rebels and then shove the pot to Brooks to lick.
He doesn’t even turn his head. Seems the last of his energy went into cleaning my hand.
It’s farther back to the road than if we go on to the cabin. At the cabin Brooks can snooze in comfort by the woodstove. So should I stay put or continue? It’s only growing colder.
At the cabin I can heat water in the washbasin and thoroughly clean his wound. There should be old dog food and, most important, there should be salt in the cache for soaking the cut. I have a couple of spoonfuls that will have to do until we get there. Mom always uses salt for keeping cuts from getting infected.
And, of course, if I go back now I’ll never know what happened to Dad.
But will Brooks make it?
Gray jays light on the spruce branches hanging far above the flames. Downriver, a raven caws and slowly flaps toward us. White dots slide over the mountain. When I focus the monocle, I see ewes and lambs napping in the afternoon heat on a rocky shelf, fresh snow patches directly above them.
I wash the pot in the creek and dip its bottom lip under the green water to fill. I hang a pole over the fire, weighing the end with stones so it hangs at the right angle. When the water’s hot, I pour some in my cup with a pinch of salt, find a clean (more or less) sock and pour the lukewarm water over Brooks’s cut. He yowls and snaps at my hand. Instantly sorry, he nuzzles into my leg.
“Don’t worry, pup,” I say, stroking his head.
While he sleeps, I toss my sleeping bag over some branches to air, and I open the tent windows to let breezes play through the screen.
Restlessness burns through my muscles. My thighs twitch.
I can see the cabin clearly in my mind. I see myself with Brooks, walking down the last miles of foot trail and then cutting across the clearing. I feel myself pulling back on the hammer so its head eases out the spikes that hold the window shutters in place.
What I don’t see is what the cabin looks like inside now I’m grown up. I’ve never been there alone without everyone else’s gear cluttering the space.
Brooks can sleep by the woodstove until he’s better. I can leave him safely inside while I look for clues to Dad’s disappearance. At night I’ll go to bed within four log walls that hold years of memories, the fire banked and smoldering in the stove. Red coals, flames yellow and blue.
What if the bear comes back? What if he won’t leave us alone?
That’s ridiculous to even imagine. The bear must have way better things to do with his time than follow us.
After a supper of cheese and crackers, I can no longer force myself to sit still. I break camp. I’ve made my decision. If I don’t get there this time, I’ll probably never try again.
I stuff the gear from Brooks’s torn pack into mine. I’ll sew it at the cabin. Now I’m in shape, I don’t notice the extra weight. I shrug the pack over my shoulders.
I douse the flames completely. The charred bones of branches collapse on the downy ashes. Brooks lies with his eyes closed, curled in a ball, his wound on the outside flank.
“Let’s go, boy.”
Brooks stares at me, astounded, and pushes his muzzle into my ankle.
I kneel down, my pack almost toppling me. I haul him up by his collar. “Sorry, Brooks. Staying put’s not an option. We need salt and food.”
Brooks takes a step using three legs, then sits, eyes locked with mine.
I snap the leash to his collar and tug. “Come on, pup.”
And that’s how we walk out of the forest and into the high country again. We rest every few minutes. I stand, leaning forward to take the weight off my shoulders. Brooks crashes on his rear and slurps at his cut.
Sometimes I shout to warn the bear we are coming. Sometimes I keep very still. I will be so happy if Brooks recovers. Funny, though, because yesterday he was healthy, and I wasn’t happy then.
I don’t know how best to avoid this bear. He needs lots of notice before we show up again to bug him. In the end, I yodel maybe once every five minutes. In between yodels I try to imagine my way back into the story of the princess’s quest, but I can’t concentrate.
When the last light is blazing from the mountain faces about me, I pitch my tent on a small knoll where I can see the valley spread below. The brush grows in patches lower than my waist. Far away, the river gleams silver. Under my tent is a bed of soft deep moss. I hold Brooks curled into my side all night and fall into a restless sleep. There’s something about moss I should remember.
Asleep, my dreams are confusing and not about the quest at all. I dream that my father is in a hut at the edge of a forest, ax in hand. He stares down the path at the thud of approaching hooves. A nightingale sings in a cottonwood by the bank.
I dig in my heels and gallop toward him. “Dad!”
My father’s face is yearning, his arms outstretched.
Then he covers his face with his hands.
When he removes them, fur is growing on his cheeks.
He snarls, showing yellow teeth, and holds his hands in front of his face, staring at them. Claws curl crooked at their ends, shining like knives.
I jerk back on the reins.
The tent and knoll are bathed in moonlight. Wind surges from the passes like a faraway tide. It was just a nightmare. The bear, I’m sure, is nowhere around.
“What do you love doing?” asked Mom, whittling a chunk of
poplar bark into the shape of a wolf. She dug the knife in hard
and blew away splinters of wood from a leg.
I leaned against a tree trunk in the sunshine and opened
my eyes, content to be with her.
“Lots of things,” I said.
Mom held her carving up to show me. “What are you doing
when you’re the happiest?"
I love mountains and forests and fairy tales and juggling
and being alone, I think. And I love you too, Mom.
Pain rattles like stones in my stomach. Mouth dry, I listen to Brooks’s ragged breath. Moonlight is so strange in the mountains. Every detail is transformed, washed in soft underwater light. I watch through the screen door. I think of my father’s face in my dream, before it changed, before he snarled and his warm hands grew to claws. Shrugging off the dream, I roll over but my fingers graze Brooks’s side. I draw them back into my sleeping bag, sticky with blood.
Later, I crouch over Brooks, who doesn’t want to move from the morning fire. “Come on, boy,” I coax. “You have to eat.”
I shove the porridge pot under his nose. “Sit,” I say, firmly. What I mean is “stand” but he doesn’t know the command for that.
His head stays flat on the ground. Only his tail thumps feebly on the moss.
I dip my finger into the porridge and shove it in his mouth. Brooks swallows and lumbers to three of his feet. The fourth is tucked up under the wounded flank. He takes forever to lick the pot clean. By the time I’ve loaded my pack and washed his wound, the sun is splashing the mountains with shafts of shadow and light.
We walk maybe a mile that day, through high country, above the tree line. Brooks hops on three legs the entire way. I make camp at the top of the second pass, with only a few willow twigs for fuel. Soon it won’t matter that I need to force myself to eat. At this rate, we’ll be almost out of food by the time we reach the cabin. We’ve eaten the last of the dry meat and bananas and cheese. There are still plenty of dried vegetables for broth, but that won’t give us much energy.
Before stopping for a cold supper the next day, I see bear tracks on the sandy bank of a creek crossing. All bear tracks look like they were made by a huge barefoot human.
Grizzly claws, however, are longer than blacks’, and the curve of the toes is flatter. A little farther along I see scat, stuffed with berries and purplish leaves. I growl at the mess and boot it apart with a branch. I sniff hard. Nothing.
Just the faraway smell of winter coming, of snow dusting the peaks. It can’t be the same bear. Male grizzlies have an enormous range, but why would he still be heading in our direction? It must be another bear just passing through.
I snatch gloves from my pack pocket and pull them on. We’ve walked almost across the pass now. But where the mountains draw back a bit, a narrow creek tumbles into the valley, flowing into what’s now a river. Clumps of cottonwood and alder grow along it. I walk through the trunks in the late afternoon with sunshine slanting along the ground. A few spruce grow among them.
I see the blaze at twilight. It’s definitely not the scratch lines of a bear or the gnawing of a porcupine. I run my fingers over the marks of the ax on the trunk. How many years has it been there? I walk by instinct, following the faint opening through the trees. If I concentrate too hard, I’ll lose the way. Eventually I stumble on another blaze, and another, both on young black spruce trees.
