I whirled around, nearly losing my footing on the slant. And I gasped.
The grizzly bear cub was at the top, the shepherd’s safe monument forming a backdrop behind her. It was wagging its head and baring its teeth at my dog.
In that frozen moment, before the panic and the terror, I realized two things.
The mother bear couldn’t be far away.
And I had forgotten to bring a gun.
“Bathsheba!” I screamed. “Bathsheba, come!”
She didn’t. As the cub began its descent toward her, she only bared her own teeth and snarled and growled as I had only seen her do one other time. One other time when I’d had to physically remove her.
Don’t be an idiot!
I opened my mouth to scream for Bathsheba again, but I knew as focused as she was on keeping the cub at bay, she wouldn’t even hear me.
But that cub’s going to hear you and so is its mother. That dog is the only thing keeping them from attacking you right now.
I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t leave Bathsheba. Once more I screamed for her but she didn’t look my way. The cub did. And he looked nothing like a teddy bear.
Run! Run, you fool!
I did—down the slope—skidding as I went because it was far steeper than I knew. The ground was loose and small rocks gave way under my feet and took me downward at a pace I couldn’t keep up with. I felt myself trip—watched myself roll—heard the hill following me in big angry clumps.
And in my tangled, horrified mind I saw myself hurtling off the side of the mountain, into the endless expanse below.
But I slammed into something—a rock formation that didn’t give way to the avalanche behind me. Pain soared up my back as I batted at the dust and tried to see Bathsheba. She was still snarling from some guttural place. She was holding her own, right?
The wind snatched the dust and I tried to stand. But what I saw paralyzed me against the rock. The grizzly cub ran, faster than its chubbiness should have allowed, straight at Bathsheba. With a swat of her paw, she sent Bathsheba over the ridge. Out of sight. And went after her.
Get out of here! Get out!
I found my body again and stood in a moment of awful indecision. I couldn’t leave my dog. I couldn’t just run away and leave her.
The yelp and the quiet after it made the decision for me.
Traversing this time instead of tearing blindly downward, I ran. I ran until I nicked the side of a rock and went down. The blood rose at once to the surface of the scrape, but it only struck more fear in me. I got up and ran again, in the direction I hoped would lead me to the road. I had lost my bearings completely. I could only run and hope.
I did reach the road, which meant I had only a mile to go before I got to the ranch, but my legs were too heavy to run anymore. I trudged, head down, along the side until a vehicle pulled up. And still I kept walking.
“Are you all right?” someone called.
I shook my head and walked some more.
“Ma’am! Are you all right?”
What part of no don’t you understand?
Let him help you.
I looked up to see the wildlife conservation truck backing toward me. The face that came into view out the window was creased with concern.
“Where you headed?”
“Bellwether,” I said.
“I’ll take you.”
I shook my head. “Will you please just go up and get my dog? The bear has my dog.”
My voice broke into pieces. And there weren’t enough horses and king’s men to put it back together.
Andy met the truck as it pulled into the driveway. Frankie, Joseph, and Emma were there, too, but no questions were asked. My wildlife rescuer must have called them while he was driving but I couldn’t have testified to that. All I could hear was Bathsheba’s last yelp.
And all I could say as Andy carried me into the house and Emma cleaned and bandaged my leg and Joseph made tea was, “I shouldn’t have left Bathsheba. Please go find her.”
“You need to tell us what happened,” Frankie said. “Just take it slow.”
There was no taking it slow. It all came out on its own in bursts I couldn’t hold back. Every one of them ended with, “You have to go find her!”
“Okay, Bo,” Andy said finally. “I’ll go.”
“I’ll drive,” Joseph said.
I didn’t have to look at him to see what he was forcing himself not to say: What were you doing up there without a gun?
“I left you a note,” I said.
“Note didn’t give me a chance to tell you that bear was sighted a half mile from the monument this morning.”
“All right, you two go,” Frankie said. “And be careful. Please.”
I heard Emma mutter, “Shoot the stupid bear.”
“He’s mad at me for not taking a gun,” I said when they were gone.
“He’s not mad—”
“But what would’ve been the point? I couldn’t have taken that cub down. I have no power over anything.”
Frankie eased me back into the tweedy chair and sat on the low table to face me. “You are absolutely right,” she said. “You have no power over. You only have power to.”
“Power to what?” I said.
“The power to pray.” She touched my cheek. “The Lord be with you.”
“And also with you,” Emma said.
I wasn’t sure what words they prayed as we sat in a clump with a frightened Mary above us. At first all I could hear was my own sobbing and Bathsheba’s snarling attempts to save me. When that subsided, I only knew that God was in the room. Because Frankie was holding me in her arms and Emma was crying with me.
When Joseph and Andy returned an hour later, I ran out to meet them. Andy lifted Bathsheba’s body from the front seat of the truck, wrapped in his jacket like a swaddled baby.
“I’ll get a grave ready,” Joseph said.
Andy started to follow him with the bundle but I stopped him. “I want to see her.”
“No, you don’t, Bo.”
“I have to,” I said. “Let me see her.”
Andy shot Frankie a look but she nodded.
So Andy knelt beside the truck and lay Bathsheba down and unfolded the jacket from her face. It was perfect. Still the prettiest dog face on the ranch. Still shiny-furred and black-nosed. If only she would sigh and snore and drown my hands in her happy saliva.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her. “I’m sorry I took you up there. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you. I’m so sorry.”
Joseph dug a grave close to the Cloister and Frankie arranged three smooth stones at its head. Then they all stood silently as I covered Bathsheba’s still-wrapped body with dirt. When I could no longer see her, Joseph said, “I used to think you were a good-for-nothing dog, Bathsheba. But I’ve changed my mind.”
“You brought joy to Kirsten,” Frankie said.
Emma grunted. “You made me laugh.”
“You saved Kirsten’s life.” Andy slid his arm around my shoulders. “And for that we will always, always be grateful to you.”
“Amen,” Joseph said.
I would have said amen, too, if I could have.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I knew I wouldn’t be able to before I even considered crawling into bed, so I dragged a quilt to one of the recliners instead. Emma appeared before my back even hit the cushions and handed me a steaming Crazy Trixie mug.
“Tea,” she said. “Joseph’s blend. With Hilda’s cream, of course.”
I nodded my thanks and cradled it between my hands. She had a cup too.
“You don’t have to stay up with me,” I said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because I promised I wouldn’t let you cut, and it seems to me like you might be primed for it tonight.”
“I’m afraid I might get there,” I said. “All I can think about is that if I’d waited to actually tell somebody where I was going, I wouldn’t have gone up there
with her. And if I’d had a gun—”
“Didn’t you hear what we all said at the grave? About Bathsheba fulfilling her purpose here and, hello, saving your life? And by the way, they’ve had two dogs and a cat die since I’ve been here, before you came, and they never had a funeral for any of them. Just so you know.”
“That just makes me feel more guilty.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Petersen, when are you going to give up this whole control thing? It’s not all about you.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Especially when she leaned her curly head back and laughed.
“What could possibly be funny?” I said.
“Me. Telling you to give up control when I’m over here hanging on to it like a third-world dictator. Seriously, can you believe I said that?”
She laughed again, an infectious kind of wheezy thing that made me laugh with her.
“Can I ask what you’re trying to control?” I said. “You don’t have to tell me, but . . .”
“They keep saying I need to tell somebody, and maybe I would if I could even think about it without going into some other dimension.” She looked at me almost sheepishly. “You’ve seen me do that.”
“And you’ve seen me hold a razor blade over my arm. What’s the difference, really?”
Emma grunted. It was a sound I was starting to like.
“I think I’m trying to control the memory for one thing. I get so far and then I can’t go any further.”
“Are you serious?” I felt my eyes widen. “Because the same thing happens to me.”
I didn’t add, And to Andy too.
“Then you probably don’t want to hear it.” Emma shrugged. “You’ve got your own stuff.”
“Actually I do want to hear it,” I said. “As much as you want to tell.”
Emma nodded. Her gaze drifted just above my head.
“After graduation from basic training I moved to Advanced Individual Training at Signal Corps School, Fort Gordon, Georgia. Then I trained at Fort Bragg as a signal corps paratrooper.”
I blinked. “You realize, of course, that I have no idea what any of that means.”
“It just means I was training to be combat support.”
“Combat,” I said. “You mean, like, in Afghanistan?”
“Not just like in Afghanistan—in Afghanistan. I found out about an hour after I got there that support was a euphemism. Almost every mission on the battlefield is potentially a combat mission. As part of a signal station I could find myself in unfriendly territory that had been friendly the day before, only somebody had decided to go after a unit’s signal assets or the front had shifted.”
I nodded my head like I knew what she was talking about. It didn’t seem to matter whether I understood or not. Just saying it seemed to be helping her.
“I’d had the same training as men: what to do if you get hit with chemical agents, what to do if the enemy sends a squad around to attack, what to do if it looks like your site is about to be overrun and you have a choice between shooting back or taking an axe to the gear and burning all the crypto.” Emma nodded at me. “And that was okay, you know? I didn’t want to be stuck in the rear echelon. And since a lot has improved for female soldiers since the beginning of the Iraq war, the guys in the unit I was assigned to integrated me into their band of brothers—”
She licked her lips and did battle with some tears that gathered at her lower lids.
“Do you need to stop?”
“No,” she said. “It’s just . . . that’s the first time I ever realized the reason that meant so much to me is because I never got that kind of acceptance from my own brothers.”
“That’s good, then,” I said.
“Yeah. I think so.” She blinked at the tears. “So anyway, I served with them for a year. During that time I flew from one forward operating base to another on CH-47 Chinook helicopters and I was shot at and mortared on a regular basis.” She tilted her chin at me. “And I always found ways to stay focused and deal with it. That’s when I learned how to pray.”
I waited, Frankie style. But Emma sat up straight in the chair.
“That’s as far as I get, and then I feel all this pressure in my chest and I can’t do it anymore. My entire second tour is just like this faraway dot I can’t reach. Joseph keeps telling me I will, that I have to keep relying on Christ to guide me through this. But sometimes I wonder if it’ll ever happen.”
“Does it have to?”
She looked down at her hands. “I used to ask that. When I was addicted to Ambien because I couldn’t sleep. When I was anorexic. When I had headaches so bad I thought I was going to explode and got addicted to Vicodin too. They call it PTSD.”
“Post-traumatic stress, right?” I said.
“Yeah. I’ve come a long way since I’ve been here. Especially since I arrived during lambing season and Frankie was, like, up to her earlobes in ewes and lambs so she asked Joseph to see to me for a week. Turns out he’d had it, too, from Vietnam, only they didn’t call it that back then. They told him he was lazy and a drug addict.”
I wondered if maybe drugs were what landed him in prison, but I didn’t stop her to say that.
“Anyway, he got me, you know? And like I said, he and Frankie have brought me so far. God has brought me so far. But for somebody with post-traumatic stress disorder, it would probably help if I could remember the trauma.”
She sagged back into the chair and sipped her tea and basically signaled the conversation was over. She looked drained.
I fell asleep in the chair, and when I woke up Emma was curled up on the couch. Still making sure I didn’t cut. Even with all she had to deal with, she cared that much.
Wonder what would happen if all three of you could dig up your pasts from where you’ve buried them.
Would we find mangled selves like Bathsheba? Or could we possibly be made whole like Sister Frankie?
And even Joseph. Somehow he must have overcome the secrets that he himself said had almost ruined his life.
There was hope in that. I tried to cocoon myself in it.
Share this chapter with your friends!
You have no power over. You only have power to. And power with God. #TheMercifulScar
Chapter
FIFTEEN
The next day, Friday, was my twenty-eighth day. I didn’t need the Nudnik to remind me that I had some decisions to make in the last two.
Frankie didn’t say that was why she thought I should take the day off. She said something about staying off my leg, even though my injury was nothing more than a scrape.
Yeah, you’ve done worse things to yourself.
But I insisted on at least doing my chores and helping herd the sheep. If I did only have two days left, I didn’t want to miss anything that might be in them. Once we headed down to the barn, though, Bathsheba’s absence was like a stake through my heart. I would have given anything for a handful of good-morning slobber.
On the way back from the south pasture, Frankie said they’d start the process of bringing in alfalfa the next day.
“The leaves are the most palatable part and they have the most nutrition,” she said. “So you want them to remain on the stems as the hay dries before you bale.” She nodded as if I already knew. “It’s all about timing, isn’t it?”
I said I guessed it was.
“Putting up enough hay for winter—thirty-five hundred bales—is an all-consuming job for Joseph and me, and, thank heaven, for Emma. That means I won’t be around as much.” She tilted her head back to look at me from under the cracked bill of her ball cap. “You okay with just early-morning and after-supper talks for us?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I still have Petey to watch over. I can do anything else you need me to do for the sheep.”
The inevitable, comfortable arm slipped through mine. “Actually I’d like to leave you and Andy in charge of the herding. You two can also buck hay as we bring it in. How does that sound?”
/> All day alone with Andy. How does she think that sounds?
“You think I can handle it?”
What—the sheep or the guy?
“I have complete faith in you,” Frankie said. “But remember I do want you to spend a minimum of an hour a day at the Cloister, nurturing Kirsten.”
“I will,” I said.
Frankie tilted her head at me. “And how will you do that?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What will you do to take care of yourself?”
“Um, I don’t know. Yet.”
“I’ll take that for now,” she said.
She headed back to the house and I went to the bum pen for another look at Petey. She liked a nice scratching between the ears after her breakfast had digested. Andy was waiting for me there, grinning like that cat from Alice in Wonderland.
“Sounds like it’s gonna be you and me, Bo,” he said. “You okay with that?”
Do sheep have prehensile lips?
I wanted to say I was, but I was nervous too. I had the falling feeling again, as if I were floating toward that pile of cushions.
And this makes you nervous because . . .
Because I’d fallen there before, and the cushions had fallen apart.
So let’s do that again just to make sure it’s still a bad idea.
“Bo?” Now Andy looked nervous. “Something wrong?”
“No,” I said. “Not wrong. Just scary.”
Andy ran his hand over his mouth. “Did I grow fangs or something?”
You’re giggling again.
“You did not grow fangs. It’s me I’m afraid of, not you.”
He was visibly relieved. “Tell you what,” he said. “How ’bout we take this one day at a time?”
“We only have two of those.”
“One hour at a time?” Andy’s hands flexed as if they wanted to touch me. He shoved them into his pockets. “I don’t want to push you, Bo. I just want to enjoy you. Support you. See where it goes. Is that scary?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
Did you feel that?
I did. It was me hitting the cushions.
Frankie sent us out alone that evening to herd the sheep back. I had spent my hour in the Cloister earlier, pacing and trying to figure out how I was going to ask Andy the one question that needed to be asked. Emma told me during Improving the Moment time that if I didn’t get out whatever was wearing a path in the floor, she wasn’t going to make me any more coffee.
The Merciful Scar Page 22
