The Merciful Scar

by Rebecca St. James

  “So what happened when Joseph came back?”

  “It was the end of my freshman year at MIT. When I came home for the summer and saw him here, I had this visceral reaction.” Andy worked his shoulders as if he were feeling it right then. “All this stuff just started churning in me and I felt, I don’t know, just sick.”

  “But you still didn’t ask Frankie about it.”

  “I didn’t really feel like I could then. Her dad, my grandfather, had just died, like, a year before, which left her with nobody to help on the ranch except some losers she hired who tried to make off with a bunch of her cattle. Joseph coming back was like a godsend for her and I didn’t want to mess that up.” Andy shrugged. “I talked myself into thinking I was just turned off by him because prison had taken its toll on him. He was completely closed off and when he did say something it was more like snarls than actual words.”

  “He’s come a long way then,” I said.

  “I know. I didn’t come home that much until I graduated, and by then he’d obviously done some serious healing. He tried to get a relationship going between us.”

  We’d reached the barn by then, and Andy leaned on the main gate. His gaze was so far away I wasn’t sure whether he was talking to me or himself.

  “I couldn’t blame how I felt about him anymore, but the stuff started messing with me again. It was like I was a different person, y’know—angry, depressed. That’s just not me and it freaked me out because I didn’t know why it was happening . . . except that somehow it was connected to him.” Andy almost grinned at me. “Don’t say it.”

  “What? ‘Why didn’t you talk to Frankie?’ That it?”

  “That’s the one.” He lost his attempt at the grin. “She was working with young women by then, had two of them staying here, and she was involved with all that. She would’ve dropped everything to help me if she’d known what I was going through, but I wasn’t sure I wanted her to. ’Course, she noticed something was up with me—I mean, that’s just Frankie, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So I made an excuse to go back to Cambridge. I was going to bury myself in grad school.” His grunt sounded a little like Emma’s. “It ended up burying me. I couldn’t numb the pain, and I couldn’t explain it, and I sure couldn’t focus the way I needed to. I was on a fellowship and I flunked out.” His gaze drifted back to me. “So here I am, feeling like a jerk because I can’t stand to be around a prince of a guy who has probably done more for my family than any three people could have.”

  “Have you thought about asking him if he knows why you’d feel that way around him?”

  Andy turned to me, so quickly and so full-on I took a step backward. Frustration took hold of his face.

  “I don’t know how to explain this to you, Bo. I can’t talk about it—not to him, not to Frankie—because every time I even think about doing it, it’s like something is trying to rip me apart.” He closed his eyes and sagged against the gate. “I guess I’m afraid if I confront Joseph, I’ll end up torn in two. Do you see?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  The only time during those structured days when I felt adrift was that hour every afternoon I promised Frankie I would spend in the Cloister nurturing myself.

  It wasn’t that there was nothing to do. In a cabinet in the den I’d never opened before I found shelf after shelf of every supply known to the art world. Van Gogh would’ve been impressed. I also discovered a table that pulled down from the wall; it bore the marks of painters and sketchers and writers who had been there before me, probably trying to express aches as deep as mine. On further investigation I uncovered an easel folded up behind the couch we never sat on. Within five minutes the entire area could be turned into a studio.

  I let it all stay out because it made the room look alive, but the thought of working with any of it brought up too much guilt over the fact that I was not currently back at Montana State designing a building that would somehow change the world.

  Those discoveries did inspire me to explore the hitherto unopened closets in the rest of the Cloister. The double one in the kitchen I’d assumed was a pantry was actually an impressive library containing mostly poetry and the stories of the female mystics. The cabinet where anyone else would have kept the cereal bowls held a collection of enough candles and soaps and scrubs to open a small spa. And in the broom closet, voilà: two guitars, a flute, and a saxophone.

  Too bad I didn’t paint, read for pleasure, or play a musical instrument.

  Pretty depressing, isn’t it?

  I wasn’t the only one who thought so. The second week of July, on a Thursday, I was languishing in one of the recliners and contemplating my decidedly uninteresting personality when Emma slammed into the house and flopped into the chair opposite mine.

  “Did she tell you to nurture yourself?” she said.

  I burst into guffaws. She sat there staring at me until I could breathe without gasping.

  “You done, Petersen?” Emma said.

  “Yeah.” A few more giggles leaked out.

  “You want to fill me in so we can both play?”

  “I’m sorry—it’s just—this whole self-nurturing thing isn’t working for me either, and when you said that . . .”

  I went off into another gale. Emma still didn’t seem to see the humor. She got herself out of the chair and padded around the room in her socks, sighing and then mumbling about how she should be out in the field helping Joseph instead of doing a craft project—and then picking up the sighing again. It would have continued to be comical if I hadn’t done much the same thing myself on a number of occasions.

  “Okay, look,” I said, “before both of us turn into Aunt Trixie, I think we ought to at least try to improve the moment.”

  “I don’t want coffee.” Emma’s voice was sullen as a three-year-old’s.

  “Then how about a spa?”

  She stopped pacing and gave me one of her deadpan looks. “Do I seriously look like somebody who knows how to do a spa?”

  “Okay, no,” I said. “But I do. Do you have a bathrobe?”

  “There’s one hanging on the back of my door. I’ve never worn it.”

  “Go put it on and meet me in the kitchen in fifteen minutes.”

  If there was one thing I did know how to do, it was set a scene. I gathered pretty much everything from the spa cabinet and found enough tablecloths to drape the room into shape. I rolled towels into an inviting pyramid, lit candles on every surface, and warmed several washcloths in the toaster oven. Just as I finished sprinkling lemon oil on them, Emma appeared in a white terry cloth robe that, cinched in at the waist, made her look like Jennifer Lopez.

  “This is great,” she said, “but it’s way too girly for me.”

  “It’s not girly,” I said, “it’s nurturing.”

  I coaxed her into a chair, propped her feet on another one, and went to work giving Emma the ultimate spa treatment.

  She fought everything at first. Why did she need to have her heels pumiced? Who cared if her elbows were as soft as a baby’s behind? What did I think I was going to do with that jar of gunk?

  Somewhere between the mud facial mask and the tea tree oil foot soak, her sense of humor kicked in.

  “Do you know what my army buddies would say if they saw me like this?” she said as I was wrapping her feet in hot lavender-scented towels. “‘You’re going soft, Velasquez. You’re gonna be worthless as a puddle of mayonnaise after this.’”

  “They’d say ‘a puddle of mayonnaise’?”

  “No. I cleaned it up for you. So where’s your spa treatment?”

  “This is all about you. Next time you can treat me to something.” I paused, loofah in hand. “I guess if we don’t know how to nurture ourselves, we can at least nurture each other. Which, by the way, you’ve been doing every afternoon with the coffee and cream. I’ve gained, like, five pounds since I’ve been here.”

  “You could stand to gain about ten more. I thought you wer
e anorexic when you first showed up. Anorexic and all about yourself.” Emma looked at her feet. “I was totally wrong about that. I’d take you in my unit anytime.”

  I think you just got nurtured.

  When Emma had been softened and smoothed and pampered in every way I knew how, I put on a bathrobe, too, and we had coffee in our recliners.

  “We oughta take a picture of this,” Emma said. “Prove to Frankie that we nurtured, already.”

  I took a long look at Emma, and I nodded. “I should take a picture of you. No makeup, but your skin is like cream. You’re pretty, Emma.”

  I expected a full-scale protest but she looked into her mug and her eyes glistened.

  “Somebody used to tell me that,” she said.

  “A guy?” I said.

  “Yeah. Buddy of mine in my unit. He’s the one who introduced me to the real Jesus, not the one that got preached at me growing up. We used to pray together.”

  “And he thought you were pretty.”

  Emma’s grunt was unconvincing. “Yeah, but you have to remember it’s not a glamor gig over there. Anybody who’s not a guy is pretty.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Patrick.”

  “Do you still keep in touch?”

  Emma shook her head. And continued to shake it. Until she stood up and said, “I can’t talk about this anymore.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She started for her room, but she turned around before she reached the den. “I know you, Petersen,” she said. “You’re going to sit there thinking it’s your fault that I’m upset. Just so you know: it’s not. That’s the most I’ve been able to talk about Patrick. Joseph will probably nominate you for a Medal of Honor for that, so don’t go taking yourself on a guilt trip. Are we good?”

  Say yes or you’re gonna be court-martialed.

  “We’re good,” I said.

  “All right. And tomorrow it’s my turn to pamper you. I’m taking you on my favorite hike.”

  No, see, pampering means—

  “Sweet,” I said. “I’ll be ready.”

  Emma was true to her word. When I returned to the Cloister just before noon the next day, she was tucking sandwiches into a backpack that, judging from its bulges, was already filled with enough food for an entire brigade and whatever else one needed for Emma’s Favorite Hike.

  “What do I need to bring?” I said.

  “Nothing. I’ve got this.”

  Now would be a good time to ask if we’re headed for boot camp.

  Emma hiked the backpack over her shoulder and gave me what I could only describe as a satisfied look. “I think you’re gonna like this, Petersen.”

  I thought so too. Even if it was like boot camp.

  From the number of orders Joseph gave us before we left in the truck, I wouldn’t have been surprised if that was where we were actually headed.

  “There’s been no sign of that grizzly and her cub,” he said, “but both of you carry. We clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, smile twitching.

  He squinted at her. “You have plenty of water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I better give you a flare—”

  “We’re going on a hike, Joseph, not mobilizing for Iwo Jima.”

  “Don’t get wise, Corporal,” he said.

  I decided I never liked Joseph better than when he was bantering with Emma.

  “He loves you like a dad is supposed to,” I said when we were finally on our way to the trailhead.

  “I know I would have gone back on the pills if it weren’t for him,” she said. “Him and God.”

  We drove in a different direction than I’d been before, to the hills north of the house. Emma called the area Four.

  “Where you take the sheep is Ten,” she said. “Frankie owns Two through Five and Eight through Ten. Thirty-eight hundred acres.”

  “Have you seen them all?” I said.

  “I was going to try to, but then I found this spot where I’m taking you and I figured I’d found heaven, so why look any further?”

  Emma drove until what she called a road ended in a pile of flat orange and tan rocks that looked as if a cave child had left them there when he was called in for supper.

  “We’ll hike in from here,” she said. “This is where it gets good.”

  She slung the backpack over her shoulder and I did the same with the thirty-thirty. We’d walked about a quarter of a mile before I noticed Emma didn’t have her gun.

  “Be nice to me or I’ll tell Joseph you left your rifle in the truck,” I said.

  Emma slowed and looked over her shoulder at me. “Don’t tell him,” she said. “I’m serious.”

  “O-kay,” I said. “I was actually joking.”

  “Not even a little bit funny, Petersen.”

  I kind of thought it was.

  Emma’s words chilled the air for a few more steps, and then she stopped and let me catch up.

  “I’m not trying to be a jerk,” she said. “I carried a gun so much in the army. I’m just trying to get away from all that.”

  I bit back the question, Have you told Joseph that? Everybody’s answer to that kind of query seemed to be an unqualified no, so why did I keep asking?

  Emma nodded for me to follow her. The trail was mostly a path of trampled-down grass bordered by thin yellow lilies and star-shaped pink flowers clustered at the tops of their leafless stems. It followed a long narrow ribbon of water that gleamed in Montana’s afternoon sun. I’d heard Joseph say water was like gold to a rancher: rare and valuable. The cottonwoods and huckleberry bushes seemed to think so too because they grew greedily along the banks, showing off their greenness against the stark weathered beauty of the rocks and the summer-faded grass.

  “See how lush it gets right up here?” Emma said, pointing.

  “Yeah, it’s like an oasis.”

  “Exactly. There’s a spring there.”

  “It feels cooler up here.”

  “That’s because it is. The perfect spot for our picnic—and I am talking epic perfect—is right around this bend—”

  Emma stopped in front of me. Everything about her was so suddenly on guard I fully expected antennae to come out of her head.

  “What?” I said.

  “Shh!”

  I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to—I saw the bear ambling toward us on all fours. With a smaller, thinner version of herself trailing behind her.

  The cub’s deceptively soft face I knew. It was forever branded in my brain. Yet he fanned up far less fear than his sharp-nosed mother, wide with rolls of heft, the fur around her mouth wet with purple juice as she moved in a Z-pattern, sniffing the ground.

  Emma slowly slipped a hand behind her back and motioned for me to retreat. I could hear Frankie in my head: “The best thing to do is back slowly and quietly away. They aren’t usually aggressive with humans . . .”

  I held my breath—not hard to do since I was barely breathing anyway—and imitated Emma’s every step. Frankie still whispered from my memory . . . “A grizzly can move at thirty-five miles an hour, so you aren’t going to outrun it. Just a calm, slow walk.”

  Slow I could do. Calm was out of the question. My heart slammed against my chest wall and every nerve shrieked for me to flee. Only the sight of Emma, backing soundlessly away from the bear, kept me from freezing on the path.

  The bear’s heavy movement stopped and I almost did, too, but Emma waved for me to keep going. The bear stopping was good, wasn’t it? That put more distance between us and her until we could get to the truck—

  The grizzly’s head came up, rippling the two large muscular humps on her shoulders, and I could hear her snorting at the air. Her eyes, tilted up at the outer corners, narrowed and searched. Until they found Emma.

  Emma stopped and closed her fingers into a fist behind her back. I kept moving, no longer even trying to pull off calm, but she tig
htened the fist insistently and I knew I was supposed to stop too. It was the single hardest thing I’d ever done.

  The bear was still on all fours, but she was now swaying her head. The snort-like sniffing had turned into blowing and the agitated neck strained toward Emma.

  Frankie must’ve been wrong. That’s aggressive.

  What had Frankie said exactly? “They aren’t usually aggressive . . . unless you have food.”

  OhmygoshEmma—the backpack.

  “She wants the food,” I whispered. “Give her the backpack.”

  Emma hesitated . . . then nodded. Moving at half-speed she pulled the pack from her shoulders and the bear watched, still wagging her head and huffing.

  Set it down gently, Emma. Set it down—

  Brave, calm, military-trained Emma probably would have . . . if the bear hadn’t suddenly risen on her back feet and clacked her teeth. Emma’s arm jerked and haphazardly flung the backpack—straight at the cub.

  “The cub,” Frankie’s voice screamed in my ear. “If she thinks you’re endangering her baby, all bets are off.”

  Now towering over us, the bear lowered her head and laid back her ears. Everything in me did freeze then. Everything except the image of my Bathsheba, beside herself with fear and courage, being smacked over the side of the mountain like a plaything in a cruel game. That part of me, that part that could still move, grabbed the gun from my shoulder and shoved it into Emma’s hands.

  “Run,” she said between her teeth. “Run!”

  I would have argued but Frankie’s most urgent words of all screamed in my head. “Run like your life depended on it. Because it would.”

  So I ran, already blanching at the shots I knew were coming.

  Except they didn’t.

  Still stumbling forward I looked over my shoulder. Emma stood in the middle of the path, the rifle poised at her shoulder, aimed at the grizzly’s head. But even from behind I could see that Emma was almost paralyzed. The only thing moving was the tremor that made its way up her arms.