Voice Like a Cello & Bear Country

by Kater Cheek

Dylan’s cousin--a fan of bear-hunting, kayaking, mountain climbing, and other fatal hobbies--had suggested the cabin as an artist’s retreat. Dylan, entranced by the idea of a rent-free studio, accepted. He’d hiked for ten hours from the end of the dirt road where the SUV said “no more.” The air felt as clean as surgery, and the rocky soil poured out a profusion of wildflowers manically trying to make the most of a short summer. Dark conifers gathered in clumps, hiding whatever lurked in the forest beyond. Dylan had a frame backpack loaded up with camping gear, food, rolls of paper and a tin of pencils. He was prepared. He had everything except a dog.

  When he was a kid, his family used to go on long camping trips, bringing all their gear packed up in the family station wagon. They even brought their mastiff, Moxie. She was huge, tawny colored, with a sad expression on her black muzzle, even when her tail said she was happy. She followed him everywhere, and stayed within inches of his side as if an invisible tether bound them. He still had moments where he reached down to pt her, convinced she was at his side even though she'd been dead for several years. She would have loved this trip.

  A trail of packed earth, with an occasional log to divert runoff, led from his Ford Expedition to a red X on the bark of a fir. After that, the thin trail had led him through damp woods and across rocky meadows. Dylan’s rusty woodsman skills came back to him, and he found the way as easily as he had once navigated Manhattan in the days before he gave corporate life the finger and decided he was brave enough to live off only his art. Sold his condo, sold his car, deposited it all in an account that would give him just enough to carry him through until his new career picked up.

  The cabin, his own personal Walden Pond, appeared in a clearing just past a pair of sharp boulders. Home sweet home. A cabin in the woods, his cousin had promised him: hardwood floor, great views, kitchen: a little rustic, but everything a starving artist might need. It was a cabin, but only if you stretched the definition to its outer limits. To Dylan, it looked like a lichen-encrusted box. It had a roof shingled with mossy tar paper. He picked up a branch and tapped the edge of the sloping overhang. The structure felt sound enough for his purposes, despite the rain of dry rot.

  The door and windows were hidden under sheets of plywood that had been nailed up as shutters. Dylan looked for a line of rust spots marking where the shutter attached to the frame, and used his latrine spade to wrench the sheet off. The others he pulled off by hand, wood and nails protesting with a horrifying screech that momentarily silenced the birds and squirrels in the trees around. He kept yanking off his makeshift shutters until the box was open on three sides, nothing but mosquito netting and a few widely spaced two-by-fours between the inside and the Wyoming outback.

  He opened the flimsy metal camper-door, swinging it wide enough to allow him to slip through before it banged shut behind him.

  “Hardwood floor,” Dylan said sarcastically, as he let his frame backpack slump off his shoulders. The surface under his feet was unfinished, or perhaps it had been merely worn driftwood-smooth by the elements. The cabin also had green Coleman camp stove occupying the Formica-topped excuse for a kitchen counter. He estimated a hundred and fifty square feet, tops. He opened a cabinet to display cans of Hormel chili next to ant traps and D-con mouse poison.

  “Bear country,” Dylan read off the flyer tacked to the inside of the cabinet. “Wild and unspoiled. Keep it clean.”

  Dylan pulled an army cot down from the rafters and dusted it off, then pulled down a bar stool and set it next to the counter. He unpacked his lantern and one of the propane tanks he’d brought, setting both on the dusty counter which would serve as his drawing table. Pack everything in, pack everything out. Dylan’s cousin had assured him the water in the creek was potable. “Cleanest water you’ll ever drink, in fact,” he’d promised.

  What else did could he possibly need? A decent drafting table. Lisa. Pizza delivery. Good lighting. Cable. His dog. Dylan unpacked his pencils. He’d get used to it.

  The silence deafened him at first, but he learned to like it. No 911 service, but no annoying co-workers pestering him on his cell phone. No hospital nearby, but no manic drivers drinking too much at noon. No television, but no distractions to keep him from pursuing an art career injudiciously set aside ten years earlier.

  In between patching holes in the mosquito netting, applying more DEET than was probably healthy, and making occasional forays outside to mark his territory with recycled tea, Dylan sketched. At first the drawings were crude, misshapen thumbnails of trees and wildflowers. That’s what he got for abandoning his art. That’s what he got for joining the corporate rat race just to impress a woman who, as it turned out, couldn’t be impressed enough to stay with him. He needed this.

  Dylan drew columbines and lichen, warblers and the logo on his hiking boots. He drew trees and people, dogs and cats and elk from memory, and then he drew elk from real life, when the wilderness got used to him. When raccoons came to nose around his camp, he drew them too.

  As the summer wore on, the ache in his hand didn’t seem to matter, because all his art training had come back, a trickle at first, then with a rush like a gashed waterbed. Stubble grew on his face, and the getting-over-Lisa beers melted away from his gut, showing a waist he hadn’t seen since his football days.

  At night, Dylan slept on his army cot, listening to the sounds of wilderness only a sleeping bag and thin mosquito screens between him and the raccoons. He drew trout in the stream, and even caught a few, eating them lightly seared with imaginary wasabi. He threw the bones in the garbage sack, and hung it in the tree outside the cabin, with the food sack as a counterweight.

  He got tired of drawing trees and flowers and birds, and after a few days, he began to draw Moxie, the dog he had as a kid. Nostalgia and loneliness made him sketch pictures of that mastiff until he wore his Koh-i-noor HB down to a nub and had to switch to conte crayon.

  After enough days without a shower, the desire for hygiene overcame his dislike of cold water. Dylan bathed in the stream, which had grown ankle deep in late spring runoff. (They had no summer here, the joke went, only late spring and early fall.) He drank directly from the creek, not minding the Jesus bugs skating on the surface tension, or the tiny fingerlings hoping to become trout someday. He wiped his mouth and kept staring at the water, watching the swaying reflections of trees. He should paint this. Maybe next time he’d bring an easel. The sky had entered that nebulous half-twilight of summer, couching everything in subtle shades of brown and green. Even the mud near the bank held interest for him, a symphony of light and dark, nuances of colors. He watched it as he might watch a nude model, seeing not a beautiful young woman, but merely a landscape of curves and contrast.

  He’d been staring at the muddy bank for several minutes before his left brain told him what that pattern of shadows meant.

  Bear tracks.

  Fresh bear tracks.

  Suddenly he felt fear, intense dry-mouthed hollowness. He’d felt like this only once before, when a crackhead mugged him for his wallet. Bear country. Dylan leaned forward to touch the print, as though his fingers might comfort him with a lie. Even a city boy like him could recognize bear tracks. He placed his hand in the soft depression, extending his fingers to just barely meet the tips of the claw marks. A big one too. Why was it here? He’d taken good care to hang his garbage, and all his food was in sealed packages.

  He quickly washed his hand in the stream and peered around, expecting to see the ursine menace watching him, like the killer in a horror flick. He raced back to the shack, stumbling over familiar tufts of grass in his fear. Furtive blue shapes scattered as he passed by the tree where he’d hung the garbage. The jays had pecked holes in the plastic until the garbage bag ripped open, spilling fish bones and powdered soup wrappers onto the ground below.

  Dylan gathered the garbage as best he could, putting it into a second bag, then got his dinner out and re-hung both sacks from the tree. He shivered as creek water evaporated off the back of his neck. H
ad the bear smelled the garbage? Was he safer here in the cabin with a bear, or out on the trail with a bear? The sky had shifted in the dusky grey of a summer’s twilight. It was too late in the day to hike ten hours over rough terrain, exhausted, with a bear out there. He’d have to wait until the next morning.

  Dylan entered the shack, irrationally locking the door behind him. He climbed up to the rafters, searching around for a gun, a bear trap, anything that might keep the wildness away better than flimsy walls of mosquito netting. He found a packet of water purification tablets, a dead mouse, two full boxes of thumbtacks, the shed skin of a snake, a bottle opener, and a short length of twine. Nothing to defend himself against a bear. Dylan also found a small pamphlet entitled, “Camping in Bear Country.”

  The pamphlet did nothing to encourage him.

  Bears are intelligent, and associate humans with food. Dylan’s belly rumbled. He lit the propane lantern and fumbled for the soup packet one-handed as he read from the pamphlet.

  They have an excellent sense of smell, and are attracted to garbage cans. Or garbage sacks. Dylan pulled out the pan from the bucket of water, used his fingernail to scrape off some of the noodles stuck to the inside, then set the dripping pan on the stove.

  When berries are plentiful, they rarely approach human habitats, preferring instead remote mountain slopes. Preferring instead shacks like the one he was in, Dylan thought. He had to set the pamphlet down to pump up the tank and light the stove, but picked it up again once the wash water sizzled against the hot metal.

  If a bear approaches you, you can hit it in the eyes with pepper spray. Maybe he could make some… Dylan caught himself reaching to open the spice cupboard, then laughed at himself. Pepper spray? Blame himself, for thinking that living in Manhattan among the sharks was experience enough to teach him to pack a weapon in case of predators.

  Dylan heard what he hoped were skunks and raccoons snuffling around outside the tent. He leaned to get a better view, and his spatula dragged the soup pot off the stove, splattering hot brown dinner in an arc across the shack.

  “Damnit!” Dylan scraped at the hot stain on his pant leg, then picked up the pan to see if any of his dinner was salvageable. Not much. Most of it was dripping through the cracks in the floor, seeping into old wood desperate for any kind of oil.

  He ate the rest of the soup, then used the spatula to scrape up the gunk off the floor. The rest of the bucket of water reduced the mess to a brown stain. Dylan flung the water out into the night. Bears would be able to smell food in the shack. Heck, he could smell the food, the meaty scent of doom. Did he dare go down to the stream to get more water?

  The darkness loomed thick around him. The bear’s print was next to the stream.

  He dared not.

  Maybe he should leave the shack, hike away from it, and camp out in the open. Now? Even summer twilight ended eventually, and the gray sky had become tinted with charcoal. He could barely see outside the lantern light’s circumference. He was sure to get lost, or break his leg in the darkness. No, he’d have to wait here. In the morning, he’d come up with a plan, but for that night, he was stuck.

  He’d been hit by a car once, t-boned in an intersection in the middle of the day when a drunk guy ran a red light. He’d seen it coming, that red Volkswagen with the body damage, and the whole world froze for an instant as his brain recognized that the day would not end well. Luck had been on his side. He’d walked away with some stitches and a chiropractic bill, but he never forgot that utter terror he’d felt, that split second before impact. He felt like that now, except that the fear did not end, the looming impact wouldn’t arrive for hours yet. The human mind isn’t meant to tolerate that kind of fear for hours on end. Dylan learned why people whistled in the dark to keep fear away. He wasn’t much of a whistler, so instead, he drew.

  He started drawing raccoons and skunks, but their mischievous whiskery faces no longer seemed charming. Too wild, he thought. Dogs. He’d draw a dog. Dylan drew bull terriers and Dalmatians, poodles and cocker spaniels, then he started to draw the ponderous jaws of a mastiff. Not just any mastiff, he drew Moxie, his own dog from his childhood, who would, if she were still around, protect him with her dying breath. Dylan kept drawing, perfecting his mastiff until Moxie’s face stared at him, rendered in 2B charcoal and sepia conte crayon. What he wouldn’t give to have Moxie here now. He started another sketch, trying to show loyalty in the mastiff’s expression. He drew Moxie bounding after hares, Moxie with her hackles raised at the UPS guy, Moxie looking up at Dylan as they crossed a stream. He filled his sketchbook with pictures of mastiffs, then drew on the back of other drawings. Moxie growled at invisible bears. Moxie stood next to a litter of puppies. He drew Moxie mid-bark, showing the dog’s teeth and black gums against a long tongue.

  When his aching hand let him draw no more, Dylan retrieved the thumbtacks and began to tack the pictures onto the walls of the cabin. He covered each post with drawings, the dogs stretched between the wooden frame like sails. His imaginary mastiff sketches encircled the shack in a paper cocoon. It was as protective as a little-boy’s blanket held overhead to keep the monsters at bay, but it comforted him. He held perfectly still, fear keeping him awake even after night birds and crickets told him all was well. The lantern dimmed, low on fuel, and eventually Dylan slept, still clutching the kitchen knife.

  Dylan dreamed of the whuffling and growling of a bear. He dreamed that he heard barking.

  The next day, he woke late, since the sketches kept out the sun until mid-morning. Light seeped through the paper, showing double images of dogs on either side. Dylan slipped out of his sleeping bag and crossed the soup-stained floor to the makeshift gallery wall. He un-pinned a dog sketch, wondering if it was as good as he’d thought. Too often he created a work of genius, only to find that a good night’s sleep revealed flaws.

  “These are good,” Dylan said aloud, surprised, as he dug his fingernail under another thumb tack. “I should get scared more often.”

  He began to take down his drawings, collating them into a neat pile. Yes, these weren’t half bad. The drawings showed a full spectrum of canine emotions: bravery, loyalty, winsomeness, intelligence, endurance, speed, playfulness. He could almost imagine he heard barking, a mastiff’s baritone, as he took down the drawings. Maybe he could draw dogs on commission for other mastiff owners? He--

  Dylan had been looking at the drawings as he took them down, but he finally caught sight of the screen behind the drawings, and what he saw stopped his heart.

  A long gash split the screen in two, and the tattered edges swayed in the breeze. Bear claws. The bear had come last night. He looked down at the dog drawings. The drawings on the inside were playful, obedient. The back side, slightly damp from morning dew, showed different images. Those mastiffs were the angry ones, the protectors, the bear-killing dogs.

  “Morning!” A man in a forest ranger’s outfit boomed out across the clearing.

  Dylan nodded back, unused to speech.

  “Came to check up on you. We relocated a trouble bear, not too far from here.”

  “Trouble bear?”

  “One of them that’s lost its fear of humans. They start getting into people’s tents, the rescue people bring the bears up here. You been hanging your garbage, right? Seen any spoor?”

  “I saw some tracks.”

  “Most bears don’t bother people, but this one…Well, you’d best clear out. It attacked some campers a few days back. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Right. I’m headed out today.”

  The ranger nodded, tipped his hat, and hiked away.

  When the ranger was gone, Dylan walked around the shack, shading his eyes against glare so he could make out the sketches through the mosquito netting. The pictures showed a story, as clear as illustrations in a comic book. The bear came. The dog barked. The bear reared back. The dog attacked, driving the bear off. He was sure he hadn’t drawn it like that. He certainly hadn’t put it up in any sort of order, ha
d he? Dylan entered the shack again, and took down the rest of the drawings, handling them with reverence.

  The conte and charcoal mastiff had an uncanny realism, emanating a spark of vitality he’d thought was beyond his capabilities. Sometimes art was like that. Sometimes the art took on a life of its own.

  END

  This story is actually a retelling of a Chinese folk tale called “The Boy Who Drew Cats.” In the original tale, he stays at a temple that’s infested by rats, but the drawings of his cats magically come to life and defend him while he’s sleeping. I changed it to something more frightening than rats (a bear) and something more protective (a mastiff).