by Gene Stone
“All I want to do is find my den. My mother.”
The black bear pondered this.
“And then what?”
“Then maybe I will understand.”
“Understand what?”
The bear didn’t have an answer to that question.
“Then I will leave and not come back,” was all he could think to say.
The two bears looked hard at each other, adjusting to the sounds of their voices, their own words. Then the bigger and stronger one nodded. He let the bear enter his territory.
“Go and find her. Then leave.” He lumbered off, his black coat thick and glossy.
“Thank you,” the bear said.
The bear remembered the path that was only a few feet from where he was standing. It led to where he’d grown up. Where had this knowledge come from? Had it always been there, resting in his mind? What other maps existed in his head?
He walked from the river to the path that led to the pinnacle of the mountain, the cave. Much had changed. The meadow where he and his older brother had tousled and sparred and fought to be the better cub was overgrown with weeds and saplings. As he walked further, the path still flat, he remembered the three trees beyond which his mother had made it clear that he and his brother could not cross unless she was with them.
The trees had aged. They were still magnificent, but they had grown older. He had never thought about age, but he remembered his brother daring him to step over the line, and he did, but his mother’s roar sent him scampering back to his brother, who laughed. His brother was a year older than he was, and larger, and he was always trying to get him into trouble.
The path started to steepen. The smells had changed. Or was that just because it was summer now, not spring? The scent of wildflowers and thawing ice and beginnings was gone, replaced by staleness. Nothing sweet to savor.
He lumbered up the path. His mother had told him to keep his den as high as he could, and he had lived by those rules ever since. But he’d forgotten how high this was. He was breathing heavily, panting and walking more and more slowly. He saw a large boulder and climbed it, to take a rest, to look at the country above and below.
Perched upon the large slab of granite, he looked past the crest of trees and into the blue sky. Vapors of clouds formed a tufted arrow towards the north. He noticed the hawk still circling just above the tree line. Hawks should circle higher, he thought. How can the hawk see his prey; more importantly, how can the prey not see the hawk? Strange bird, the bear thought. The hawk let out a screech, then another. The sound hurt the bear’s ears, and he suddenly felt that the cry might mean something. Was it a warning? He shook that thought off. Hawks and bears have no interaction.
He looked down at the land below, where he could see the other bear hiding behind a wilting evergreen. The other bear was too large for the tree. The bear climbed down the boulder and began traversing the steep mountain yet again.
All of this climbing had made him hungry, and now he regretted letting that hare go. He decided to forage. He checked for traces of the other bear with his eyes and nose, but found nothing. There was a wild berry patch not too far off where he and his brother used to sneak away to devour the tart fruit. He went into the woods, turned right at the tree his mother had marked. He sniffed for her scent—it wasn’t there.
He was nearing the spot where the berries had been when he smelled something wrong, something lying behind the base of a tree. Curiosity got the better of his hunger. He veered left, away from the berry patch.
A dead bear. Headless. The carcass atrophied, much of it eaten away by rodents and birds. What once was robust and alive was now frail and torn apart. First he remembered the elk, now he had found a bear.
The bear sat down and stroked the stiff carcass. He sniffed. For one quick moment he thought this bear was his mother, but no, the bear was a male. His brother? He felt himself losing his breath at the thought of it.
He turned the dead, headless bear over and inspected what was left of his body. His brother had several black rings just above his paws. How many times had his brother tried to gnaw those rings off, never understanding that they couldn’t be licked or bitten away? No rings on this bear.
Then he looked closely at the bear’s chest and saw three black holes. This was different from the elk, who had had no holes, only grey fur and a worn antler spike. The holes were ugly, crusted over. He looked up to see if the hawk was still trailing him, but the hawk had vanished.
Back on the trail, climbing up and up, he spotted the cave. He sprinted for the opening, now covered with dirt and small rocks, the result of some sort of mudslide. When he reached the cave, he stopped, rising up on his hind legs. He sniffed something, something he hadn’t sniffed before, but he let the strange scent go and tore through the wreckage, his huge paws swiping.
Swipe after swipe, he removed large quantities of the sediment blocking his path. A part of him was aware that his mother and brother wouldn’t be in there. It was summer and the three of them had all lived in the cave so long ago, but he needed certainty. Anyway, even if his family wasn’t there, he wanted to sit in the place they’d all once been.
When he left the cave for the final time, he had never thought he’d be back. His brother had left before him and never returned. The bear knew he’d do the same. He proudly left the cave, left his mother, rumbling down the hill. When he reached the line that his mother had forbidden him to cross, he turned back briefly, out of respect for her authority, and saw his mother watching him go. Her eyes indicated that he needed to move forward. He did.
It took longer than he expected to clear the opening of the cave. The rocks grew bigger and bigger as he dug, his swipes slower.
Finally, using his snout, he nudged his way into the cave.
Silence. He sat down and looked around. It was so much smaller. Or he was bigger. The odors were unfamiliar, with a hint of decay. The damp smell that he wanted to smell again was replaced by other animals’ scents, maybe a fox’s or a wolverine’s. But he was glad to be home. He rested his head against the curved wall and, before he could remember anything else, he was asleep.
He awoke hours later, stomach growling. He felt as though he could have been asleep for a few moments or a day. He stretched his arms and legs. The berry patch was just a short hike from the den. The odors and tastes filled his mind–the sugary smell of the bushes in the summer heat, the syrupy flow of the berries trickling down his throat. He licked his lips with his flat tongue.
He trudged out of the cave, trampling over the shrapnel from his digging. A sharp shard of rock pierced his paw as he attempted to brush it away. The bear was patient but had no tolerance for such petty gripes as a cut paw. He put it to his mouth and licked at the blood. He could still smell the salmon and suddenly the berries didn’t seem appetizing at all. His stomach was sending an unassailable message to his brain. Eat.
He started down the path and came face-to-face with the black bear, a gash over his left eye, patches of his pelt conspicuously missing. He’s an old warrior, the bear thought, and here I am, bemoaning a minor cut.
“Did you find her?” the black bear asked.
“No. I found nothing.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Did you know her?”
“Maybe. Who knows? Who knows anything?”
“I am beginning to know many things.”
“If you know so many things, why were you stupid enough to come into my territory uninvited?”
“My thoughts told me to.”
“What good are thoughts if they put you in danger?”
The bear thought again, and then thought about thinking, and it hurt his head.
“I don’t know.” He felt the way he did when a salmon wiggled its way out of his grip and fled upstream.
“You’re young. You’ll learn.”
“Learn what?”
“To not think so much.”
“But I’ve never really had these kinds of thoughts befor
e.”
The black bear stopped and pondered this. He’d never stopped to ponder before either, but he didn’t want the young one to get the better of him.
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll just learn.”
“I hope so.” The two beasts stared at each other. “I’m starving.”
“The river’s free territory. Go to the big black spruce upwind. The salmon were jumping like fools there. I’ve had my fill. But no foraging. This is my land to forage.”
The bear lowered his head in acquiescence.
“Thank you for letting me see this place.”
“I don’t know why I did it. Now leave, as you promised.”
“I’m leaving. I won’t eat the wild berries.”
The black bear whipped his head around. “What berries?”
“Over past the fallen log and the dead bear.”
“How did you know of that place? That’s my secret spot.”
“I told you. This is where I grew...”
Both bears froze. Overhead, the sky was suddenly dark with fowl. Hawks, ducks, geese, wrens, jays, a blanket of birds pulled west, toward the city. An odd wind blew leaves off the trees. Field mice scurried back and forth, unseen but ceaseless, the forest floor shifting noisily.
“What’s going on?” the black bear asked.
“I don’t know, but I smell something I’ve never, I...” He couldn’t find the word.
“I know. What is it? It’s not food. It’s not a female. It’s something. It reminds me of the dream I had. I know, but I don’t know,” the black bear said.
Three moose charged through the dense forest. Then a family of deer. Hares.
“Should we follow?” the bear asked.
“Bears don’t follow,” the black bear said.
Then the younger bear said quietly, “I know what the smell is.”
“Tell me.”
The bear couldn’t just tell him. The word that came to his mind was complicated. It was about the dead elk dying so differently than the dead bear. It was about the humans, but it was also about the den, and his brother and mother. It was the feeling that he’d lost them forever, his home and his family. And even more, it was about the fear that not only had he lost them, but that they might have been taken from him, stolen.
“It’s the smell of war.”
The bear went off to feed his ravenous stomach, leaving the black bear to wonder why that word smelled so bad.
Elephant
I got a feeling called the blues, oh lord…
The truth was, she knew it was going to happen. She knew before anyone else. She knew because she believed she’d willed it to happen, in her darkest hours, as the trailer lumbered down a back road, her body aching from the journey that never seemed to end. She had lived through so many beginnings and so many middles, and she knew that, at some point, she needed an ending. So when the awareness came to her, she was ready for it.
Since my baby said goodbye…
The yellow light of morning leaked through the slats of the cage that clung to the rig rumbling down the lonely highway. Her big, sad eyes, black with brown flecks around the iris, peered through the emptiness between those silver slats. The land was flat, so flat it almost seemed to be eternal in its yellowness, and then her black eyes with the brown flecks peered up as best as they could and saw the sky. Blue going up forever the same way the yellow went flat forever. She tried to find where the yellowness and the blueness met, but she couldn’t–the metal trailer blocked the connection. She blinked.
The elephant heard voices from inside the truck. The radio was playing.
All I do is sit and cry…
Nancy the elephant (her first trainer had given her the name) knew the scene in the cab all too well. She had listened to these conversations many times before, but today she listened more intently. Today she understood.
Nancy knew the men who were conversing. The one who wasn’t driving liked to spit into the large red cup; the other one disapproved.
“Disgusting habit,” the driver said. Nancy liked him well enough. He had been driving her for years and years. He was big for a human, barn-like; his greying mustache hung below the edges of his lips. But Nancy was wary of this man, and of all the men and women who drove the trucks and fed her and locked her up.
“Come on, Hillbilly Hal.”
“Quit calling me that,” the driver said.
“Hillbilly Hal. Hillbilly Hal.”
“Quit it.”
“Okay.”
A pause. Then, “Hillbilly Hal.”
She had heard this back-and-forth bantering for years and had wondered what it was about. Now, she was disappointed. It was about nothing.
The younger passenger laughed. Nancy heard a shooting sound and knew that the younger passenger had spit the black liquid into that red cup yet again. “I’m hungry. When do we get there?” the spitter asked. His odd, high-pitched voice irritated her, hitting her ears like a whine.
“You sound like my granddaughter, Jake. It’s just a few more miles.”
Unlike Jake, Nancy didn’t want to get to where they were going. Still, she hated being where she was now, and so she listened to the talk, and to the song that played amid the banter, the back-and-forth sounds that helped kill a little bit of her current burden, even as they pressed her forward toward a burdensome future.
Jake didn’t take the bait. “Hillbilly Hal,” he said. “Who the hell is this old man and that goddamn twang? Damn.”
“It’s Hank Williams and it’s my favorite. Anyway, what else we gonna listen to?”
“I don’t know. Anything. Talk. The news.”
“What the hell do you care about the goddamn world?”
“Something,” Jake muttered.
Nancy heard that familiar sound of spit.
Nancy tired of the men’s conversation. She looked along the side of her trailer and saw a gale of dust blow across what had been flat, yellow land. Behind that was another truck, then a semi, then two more vans, then more semis. Nancy knew the formation, the steel caravan moving through the scorching heat of the northern Texas desert. Nancy knew that Hal and Jake, leaders of the caravan, drove straight and slow, the older man quiet now, listening to his song, the younger one looking out the windows the way kids on the verge of manhood do—with equal parts wonder and disgust.
Nancy turned away from the maelstrom behind her and maneuvered her body around the small cage. Her size was majestic, her trunk snakelike, her head a mosaic of tiny grey tiles, a mural of alien beauty. Her ears, which listened intently to her drivers, were sad, like her eyes, and sponge-like. They hung loose, but she could stiffen them in an instant. That was her gift. She could be both loose and solid.
She’d been on the I-27 before, but this was the first time she had felt more than just the hard road; she saw more than the dust clouds. Each bump and divot was a portent of something waiting just down the road. Yes, she knew before anyone: she knew the minute the road ended, the rest would begin. In the back of the truck, amid the stench of hay and feces, she was planning. She was more wary of her surroundings than ever, and she was watching and recording.
“Where are we?” an animal, all nasal squeak, asked.
“On our way to the next destination,” Nancy said. She tried to hide the weariness in her voice. She was tired of destinations that led to nowhere. She felt the awareness was going to be different, she was sure of it, but she also knew that she didn’t know enough to make any promises, to herself or to the goat.
“What?”
“I said, we are approaching our next destination. And we’re almost there. The truck is slowing. Or it will soon. I can tell. The other trucks will slow down. And then the work will begin.”
“The work? I would love to do work.” His voice softened.
“You’re a little goat. Why would you love to do work?”
“Because then they’d all come to see me the way they come to see you. No one cares about me. No one likes a goat.”
>
“I like you. I always have. I see something in you.”
“What?”
“You have a relentless nature.”
“I have nothing.” Something occurred to the goat. “We’ve never done this before.”
“Talk?”
“Is that what it is?”
“Can you understand the song?”
The goat thought about her question. Then, very slowly, the goat shook his head. “I know you mean the sounds coming out of the cab, but I can’t quite understand.”
Nancy guessed that awareness must be different for each mammal, that it might have something to do with how much direct interaction a mammal had with humans. But that was only a guess. She decided to help the goat along.
“Tell me about yourself,” Nancy asked.
Before the goat could answer her question, the trailer stopped.
“Now we get fed, before they put us to work,” the goat said. “Well, you get put to work. I get to eat dried hay in a small pen and wait for children with dirty little hands who just point and stare and laugh.”
And then it was as if an odd light had turned on inside his head. The goat stopped and looked up and out through the slats, the way Nancy had earlier. The awareness was growing stronger. Nancy watched the goat realize it. He sat down and looked first to his right and then to his left.
“They are all so afraid of us,” the goat said of the humans, in wonder. “They fear us now. But not our people, these people here. The war is waging, but they don’t know, do they?”
“So you see it now?”
“I do,” the goat said. “I see. I also see that you see more. Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe in the same way some humans are kinder to us than others. I think it’s different for every mammal,” she said and then paused. She had a friend once; his name was Edgar. They slept, chained to the wall, in adjoining stalls. He was a stubborn bull of an elephant.
“Yes,” Nancy said again.
He paused. “But how come the humans don’t know yet?”
“How could they? While we’ve been back here on the road, in this trailer, the heat too much to bear, stepping in our own feces, they’ve been ignoring the world, they’ve been–”
