A Bear Tale
Page 8
A bear was trapped in Gig Harbor on Saturday, six days after the woman walking her dog on Rosedale was attacked. The Save the Bear campaign called Diana with the news. They were acting fast, notifying everyone by phone, because Fish and Wildlife had a legal protocol to euthanize.
Diana agreed to make some calls, and jotted down points for emails: Was the saliva a match, and what was that foolproof science exactly? And, after six days, hadn’t the victim already had the rabies shots?
It had poured rain all day Thursday and Friday, so the potholes on Berry Road grew fast, especially in the grooves recently made by the road grader. Alan was torn. His pothole philosophy – get them when they’re small – conflicted with his neighbor philosophy – lay low and don’t work the road on the weekend. Diana offered to help so it would go faster and Alan accepted.
The truth was that Diana wanted to be outside. She had been thinking about her wildness, or rather lack of it. Her ability to be wild was connected to her ability to love, and loving deeply was the most important thing in life.
Jonah liked to live dangerously, he said when she called and told him about the trapped bear. He said he’d write an email, but then he was going skateboarding. If she wanted to hang out later, they could even watch a movie since his brother hadn’t taken the PlayStation and its DVD player to college as Diana’s had. Diana said that sounded fun.
“Jonah?” she said then. “Did the ceremony work?”
“Who knows?”
“A bear was trapped!”
“After six days,” Jonah said. “And our bear is still free. I’d call that pretty damn good.”
Diana considered the truth of that, and liked that Jonah had said “our bear.”
“One more thing,” she said, “before you go kill yourself on your skateboard?”
“One,” he said.
“Did you know that couples who bungee jump together are doomed to lifelong love, even if they have absolutely nothing else in common?”
Jonah was silent. “I like chic flicks,” he offered.
Diana laughed. “Okay, we’ve got one thing in common then.”
She finished her phone calls and emails, changed into the perfect pothole ensemble -- tight jeans, her faux-fur black jacket, a red beret and matching gloves and scarf, and her mother’s Bogg rubber boots -- and then headed outside with the tractor key.
The bear heard the tractor start up. She had finally settled on a spot to dig her den, and the dirt was flying out behind her. The spot was in a dense thicket far away from humans, but not all human sounds. She paused, and then got back to work.
The sky was cloudy white, it wasn’t raining, and it was in the mid-40s. Crows swept across Berry, squawking loudly as they landed in the trees.
Diana drove the tractor with two shovels in the trailer up the trail, which was a muddy mess after the Fish and Wildlife guys had used it to deliver one of the four-foot diameter, corrugated metal bear traps to the ten acres south and west of the O’Neils. The trap was now a restricted area, located close to where Diana had seen the bear in the tree, back behind Ruby and Jake’s graves. The Wildlife guys were grateful to use the hidden private tractor trail access because the public could be nosy. Diana hoped the honey ceremony’s power was working and the bear wasn’t too sleepy to recognize a crummy deal when she saw it.
Alan met Diana at the gravel pile on the northwest corner of the property and together they filled the trailer with 5/8 minus. Then Diana chose to walk, and Alan drove the tractor to the first bad patch up by Valley.
Several neighbors had put fresh flowers on Jake’s cross. Janie had brought in some earlier bouquets and put them in the living room on the little altar she’d made for Jake’s memory, including a framed close-up of Jake taken just that past June, another one of his tennis balls, and his food bowl. There were also a dozen condolence cards, which Diana found surprisingly helpful to her aching heart. Many people had loved Jake.
A horse had recently been down Berry and Diana averted her boots from the distinctive balls of poop. Diana hated poop, which was a major hardship for her in her chosen profession. Jake had loved it, though.
Only two cars came by in the first ten minutes of work, and those neighbors had just smiled and waved, so Alan and crew made good progress. They were almost back at the O’Neil’s mailbox area where a perfect storm of factors including the recent road grader had opened up long rows of baby holes. Alan parked the tractor just beyond Jake’s cross, which Alan personally hoped would not stay there indefinitely.
The bear had stopped digging momentarily and moved west to investigate the tractor noise, which shut off and on, off and on, inching up the road. She climbed a tree and saw two humans on the road in the distance, ones she’d smelled numerous times, and climbed back down to her business.
“Here comes Greg Harvey,” Alan said. “He never waves, but he had stopped scowling. He might be back to scowling now, though.”
Diana looked and saw a Jeep coming from the dead end. “What is that man’s problem?” she said. “I mean, we’re out here filling these potholes for him, too.”
“He lost,” Alan said. “He’s forever pissed off. Nothing will change that. Your mother says he’ll die mad.”
Diana watched as the unattractive man drove by, his thick neck never turning. Diana thought he was an ass, but she didn’t want to involve herself further. She really did not care about him, unless he was shooting at bears.
“He’s the only one on the road who hasn’t made some peace with it,” Alan said as he dug into the shrinking gravel load with his shovel.
“Does he have a gun?” Diana asked.
“As far as I know, everyone on this road has a gun,” said Alan, and Diana figured he was right.
They were almost finished when the neighbor Ben drove onto the narrow shoulder and stopped. He and his wife had left a card in the O’Neil’s mailbox. Chester was missing his buddy Jake.
“Hey,” Ben said, “thanks for doing this. You, too, Diana.” Chester stayed in the backseat and Diana blew him a kiss through the glass. He always looked sad, though.
“It’s our civic thing,” Alan said.
Diana looked at her bearded, long-haired stepdad. “Mom says you’re working off all your bad lawyering-days karma,” she joked.
“Ha!” Ben laughed, turned off the ignition, and settled back for a chat.
Diana’s heart sank just a little. Not as much as it had in the past, even just last week, when she dreaded all this neighborliness. Maybe she’d even ask Ben about his foot and offer to walk Chester.
The bear was almost finished. A huge rock was in the way and she’d had to leverage herself against a tree and then against the side of the snug den to push it out.
“Did you hear about that Gig Harbor bear?” Ben asked.
Diana’s face flushed. “Yes,” she said. “They caught it.”
Ben nodded. “I’m sorry Diana. I know you were hoping for a happier ending, but I just heard on the car radio that they euthanized it.”
“No!” Diana’s first response to bad news was usually shock and anger and this was not an exception. “They just caught it! Today!”
Ben shook his head.
“How could it already be dead?”
Alan reached out to Diana, but her heart was pounding. God this seemed like an awful lot of dying.
Chapter 8