On Bear Mountain

by Deborah Smith

  I could see memories in his eyes, see his father in a pool of blood. Riconnis had a knack for dying in combat, dying in accidents, putting guns to their own chests in despair. Powells had a knack for fading away. Disappearing, wandering off, daydreaming into nothingness. But not this time — not for him, and not for me. I bent my head to his. “I’m not going to watch you die. You’re not going to die. You’re not.”

  When I drew back he whispered, “Just because I want you to leave me doesn’t mean I want to leave you.”

  I took him by his shirt collar with fierce hands and kissed him as I tugged the collar closed and buttoned it. “Don’t look back and don’t look ahead,” I ordered. “Just stay right here.”

  I put my coat over him then scratched leaves, twigs, and fallen branches into a pile. He fumbled a cigar lighter from his pants pocket and gave it to me. I got a small flame going and rushed around the perimeter of trees, picking up fallen limbs, snapping the smaller branches off trees, gleaning every source of fuel I could find. “I’m going to build the biggest bonfire in ten counties,” I promised. “It’ll warm you up and send a signal. Park rangers will notice before long. You just rest.”

  He shut his eyes. I watched him for a long minute, then looked at the deepening afternoon sky. I calculated it would take Arthur and Esme at least two hours to walk back to the road and the store. Then some time for them to explain to the man playing computer games, and time for him to call for help, and for that help to mobilize. Then another two hours for rescuers to reach us on foot. A total of at least five hours. It would be dark then. Five hours of Quentin bleeding in the cold, maybe bleeding to death.

  And he knew it.

  Memento mori. Remember that you are mortal.

  • • •

  “There are things I have to say,” he whispered. I huddled beside him with my head on his shoulder and one arm over his chest to keep him and myself warm. A part of me wanted to shush him, to ward off doom by not acknowledging the possibility. He turned his head. His lips moved against my face. “I love you,” he said.

  Pearls of cold sunshine, fading on the horizon, clustered in my veins. To have him say that, the promise in those words, was the hardest joy I’d ever known. The world had no fairness in it, if we had come to this point only to end. I tightened my arm over him and pressed my face close to his. “And I love you. I’ve loved you since the day you carried me out of my own barn.”

  “I wish we’d had longer.”

  I lifted my head and looked down at him, begging. “Don’t say that. You’re going to be fine. There are certain things I won’t listen to you say.”

  “I look ahead, I see you there. I look behind me, I see you. You’re inside me, you’re around me. I’ve never had that before, not with anyone.” He paused, searching my eyes. “Would you have married me?”

  “Yes.” Crying hard, I kissed him. “And I will marry you. I will.”

  “Tell my mother I love her. She’s my rock. I never went too far away for her to bring me back. I don’t want her to die over this. You tell her. Tell her to live. To marry Alfonse. Yes. She has to marry Alfonse. My dying wish. He’ll take care of her.”

  “You tell her yourself.”

  “Tell everyone else I loved them. The man I told you about — the old sarge? Popeye. Tell him. Whoever you think ought to hear it. Tell them. Even if you’re not sure I do. Use your own judgment. Take care of Hammer. I want him to stay with you. And treat Arthur like a man. Don’t forget.”

  “I can’t listen to any more of this.” I hunched closer to him.

  “You tell them,” he insisted, kissing my eyes, my nose, my mouth as I moved my face to catch his caress. “How I know what love is, now.”

  • • •

  Several hours later he had almost stopped talking, opening his eyes occasionally only when I insisted, growing paler, his skin so cold, even though I kept the fire going. I was freezing, then sweating, in agony and fear, my clothes splotched with Quentin’s blood, my hands scratched raw, my face singed with careless fervor each time I poked and prodded the bonfire.

  Dusk was falling and I had searched every easy area around us for limbs to burn. Sometime after dark, if no help had come by then, the fire would go out. I lay down beside Quentin again, burrowing under my coat, wrapping my arms around him.

  “Ursula,” he said in a voice so weak I could barely hear it. I leaned over him anxiously. “I’m here,” I promised. “I’m here.” He opened his eyes. The distance in them — seeing too far away, then focusing on me with effort — terrified me. A look of wonder spread over his face. “I understand why he did it.”

  Tears slid down my face. Now he heard his father’s voice whispering to him in the fading light. I didn’t want him to listen, I didn’t want him to follow that voice. “Hold on, Quentin, please. Please don’t give up. Please. He isn’t telling you to stop fighting, the way he did. He wouldn’t do that. He wants you to live.”

  “He thought he . . . set us free. No more loving him. No more pain.”

  I forced back a sob. “He was wrong. The love never ends. Do you hear me? The love never ends. You know that now.”

  He shut his eyes, frowning, then relaxing. I frantically pressed my hand over his heart. My hands had gone numb with cold. I couldn’t feel his heartbeat, or maybe I could. There. No? I can’t be sure. Oh, god. He would die, drift away, and be gone before I even realized.

  Panic began to take over. Fear crawled into my mind and assumed dark shapes, and I began talking out loud to drive those shapes away — promising to embarrass him with peculiar grief rituals if he died, loudly detailing each and every one. Then I began to describe the children that would never be born unless he lived.

  “The first one will be a girl,” I told him. “We’ll name her Angela Grace — no, wait, that sounds like a stripper for Jesus, but I’m trying to use your mother’s name. Our second daughter will be named after my mother — Victoria. Okay, that can be her middle name, although I wouldn’t mind calling her Vick. Vick, not Vicki. Let’s go back to Angela Grace. She’ll have a temper. We’ll have to teach her not to clobber her Tiber cousins. She’ll be smart. I’ll start reading to her right away. And you’ll teach her how to see patterns in people and places and barn roofs. She’ll grow up to be an engineer. But as for Vick, Vick Riconni will be the quiet type, very sensitive, an artist, like her grandfathers. . . .”

  Five children. Ten. Fifteen. My teeth chattered; I was croaking out words in a voice like an old woman’s, and finally sagged to a halt. I touched his icy lips. His face was so peaceful. The sun was setting, the sky splashed with the deepest gold, purple, and pink, the bonfire lifting sparks into the first stars of the night.

  Concentrate, concentrate — hold him there with magnetic obsession, the weight of tears, the force of love, link my pulse to his, be inside him and close the torn place. A thousand ancestors had sacrificed to bring us to this point. Our fathers must be watching, listening, and they could not let it end like this, I wouldn’t let him die. Concentrate.

  I heard something, and lifted my head. I saw two gleaming eyes creep over the rim of the world, parallel and focused on us, on Quentin, in the dusk, and around them a shape, round and earthen, dark, rising against the sunset. A ghost, or real. A spirit we couldn’t escape. Annie searching, still, for her own kind? Life, or death? I shielded Quentin ferociously and looked back over my shoulder with enraged terror, daring the mysterious vision to be real. I won’t let him go. I’ve always known you were out there — and he knows, too. But now it’s different, we’re different together.

  I screamed a challenge, and heard a roar in return. The dark, ursine head and fateful eyes rose higher, swinging up over the horizon, becoming a great, lumbering Iron Bear, my namesake constellation, Ursa Major, coming to life to hunt for life, climbing down from the sunset, hovering, growling, singing deep songs in the firmament of night.

  And then, transformed.

  I realized blades of steel, the whir of a giant en
gine, the slow settling of a machine. The helicopter sank to earth as gently as any butterfly. Arthur had found angels with metal wings.

  Just in time, they said later. Just in time.

  • • •

  I stood like a statue outside the waiting room of the intensive care ward. A nurse had given me a set of green scrubs to replace my bloody clothes, and Liza had brought me a sweater, before hurrying back to the farm to care for Arthur and Esme. They were shaken but all right. Tibers had invaded Bear Creek. Everyone celebrated Arthur and Esme’s intrepid hearts — sweet saints, rescuers, the keepers of all bear-kind. For Quentin, they prayed.

  I heard footsteps coming around the corner from the elevator. Two pairs, moving quickly. A tall, stately, white-haired man in a suit and long coat rounded the corner. He held the arm of a slender yet straight-backed woman with graying brunette hair. Her heavy black coat swung open as she maneuvered a brass-handled cane to assuage her limp. Quentin had told me, once, that his mother never let the leg slow her down.

  I met her desperate, searching eyes as she came to me with one hand outstretched. We knew each other immediately. I grasped her hand in both of mine. “He’s not awake yet. They say it’ll be morning before we can talk to him.”

  “I have to see him.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “I’ll wait here,” the man said with quiet dignity. This must be Alfonse Esposito, I thought. She turned to him. “No, you come, too. You’re family. He needs you. And I . . . I need you, too.”

  A gleam came into his eyes. He accompanied us down the hall and through the double doors of the intensive care ward. One of my Tiber cousins, a nurse who headed the ward, gave me a discreet nod that said visiting hours didn’t apply to one of her own. We eased into the tiny room where Quentin lay, connected to a spiderweb of tubes and machines. He’d been through surgery and slept now in some deep state below dreams.

  He looked terrible, I knew. Ghostly white, with an oxygen canula taped beneath his nose and all those machines recording his life forces as if the technology controlled him. Angele’s small hand clenched mine, then released. She uttered a soft sound of despair. I stood back, with Alfonse.

  She leaned her cane against the bed as she moved to Quentin’s side. Her hands trembling, she touched his face and stroked his hair. “Do you know how much I love you?” she said. “And what a good son you are? No, you don’t know, because I haven’t told you since you were a boy. Forgive me, forgive me.” She kissed his forehead then laid her cheek against it. Her voice faded into a fervent whisper. “You will live. You are your father’s son, and he knows what you’ve been trying to do for him the past few months. He’s so proud of you. And so am I. Quentin.” She lifted her head and, crying, looked down at him. “Your mother and your father love you. We’re a family again.”

  • • •

  “Do you hate me for getting him into this?” I asked her during that long night, as we sat in the waiting room.

  “His papa got him into this,” she answered quietly. Then she reached out and cupped my chin in her hand, turned my face toward her, and added softly, “You got him out.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she smiled. “Hello, Rose.”

  I shut my eyes, and she pulled my head to her shoulder. I curled my feet under me and sat there like a child. A little while later, Mr. John walked into the room. Angele and I straightened, gazing at him in disbelief. He wore only a blue hospital gown, white socks, and a thin robe with a Tiber Poultry logo on it. One of the disconnected wires of his heart monitor trailed over the neck of his gown. Within a minute, frantic nurses would track him down.

  I introduced him to Angele. He clasped her hand and bowed over it gallantly. “How is Quentin doing?” he asked me gently.

  “We’re waiting for him to wake up, and that probably won’t be until sometime tomorrow.”

  “He’ll live. He’s strong. No doubt like his father.” He cleared his throat. “It takes a long time for me to learn anything new. I can’t say that I’m not impressed by the turn our Bear has taken, in terms of money value. But it’s more than that. People are devoted to the thing, and I seem to be on the wrong side of that crowd. I can’t say I’ll ever love the sculpture, but I do love what it represents to the people I care about.” He held out a hand to Angele again. “I sincerely hope you’ll forgive me for any wrong I’ve done to the sculpture and your husband’s memory. And I’m praying that Quentin will be all right.”

  She took his hand in both of hers, raised it a little, and gave it a hard squeeze of acceptance. “I accept for Richard. And for our son.”

  Mr. John turned toward me. “I wish your daddy were here tonight.”

  “Daddy knows what you want to say to him, and so do I.” I got up and hugged him. “It’s all right.” Mr. John looked at me with a pensive smile and tears in his eyes. “I’m getting smarter,” he said. “Some people see the light, but that wasn’t good enough for me.” He paused. “I had to see the bear.”

  I smiled. We heard the cardiac nurses running up the hall. Two of them passed the waiting room door, spotted him, and wheeled around. “Mr. Tiber!” one said sternly. “We’re going to handcuff you to your bed!”

  “You’ve been busted,” I said.

  “Oh, well.” Mr. John looked at me with a trace of jaunty freedom. He chortled when the nurses grabbed him.

  • • •

  When Quentin woke up the next afternoon I was beside him, waiting. I leaned over him, kissing his forehead, his nose, his mouth, and then his mouth again, lightly. He blinked in sleepy confusion, shut his eyes for the next kiss, and opened them with a frown at the confused sensations. I murmured his name, stroked his face, told him where he was, and how he was, and what had happened on the mountain. He never took his eyes off me, but I could see him going back and forth in the channels of memory, trying to rebuild those lost hours. The doctors had warned me that people who came so close to dying could be affected in profound ways.

  “If you’re lost, I’ll help you find your way home,” I promised, frightened but trying to remain calm.

  “Home,” he whispered. The web of confusion cleared from his eyes and suddenly he returned, warm and fully alive, looking up at me as if I’d been gilded with a miracle, too. “People won’t get to gossip,” he murmured. I realized he meant I couldn’t embarrass him, as I’d vowed to do by the fire. He was alive, and he planned to stay that way.

  “Oh, they’ll still talk about you,” I vowed with tearful reproach, then laughed, cried, and kissed him. This time he kissed me back. I saw my reflected devotion in his faint smile, the kindness in his rawboned face and features, so pale and tired, his jaw covered with dark beard stubble, the blue circles under his eyes saying he’d been on a long, hard trip but come back home wiser. He was once again nobody’s beauty but mine, and I’d take him, then and always.

  CHAPTER 25

  It’s a blessing to know who you love, and where you belong, and what you’re willing to die for. Wonderful pieces can be salvaged from damaged hopes, and new foundations can be created from even the saddest memories.

  Quentin dreamed of his father one night, seeing him in Goots’s shop, young and smiling. Richard was alive again in spirit and memory. Quentin had brought him back from the mountaintop.

  I took Angele to the farm, and we walked across the pasture. “Oh, Richard,” she said brokenly, happily, as she looked up at the Iron Bear. “Quentin is recuperating in a hospital room filled with flowers and cards from the people who’ve come to know him here. They’ve brought gifts and food to him. They’ve showered him with love. And they’ve told me how much they’ve come to respect him in such a short period of time. They’ve told me their stories about Bare Wisdom, too — what it means to them. It has a purpose here, Richard. It is a marvel. It represents everything you ever wanted your work to be. It’s changed people’s lives. It’s where it belongs. I’ve decided it must stay here.” She hesitated, then reached over and took my hand. She gave me a look of deep affect
ion before she gazed up at the sculpture again. “And our son will stay here, too. He’s found someone to love, someone very special. And now, this is where he belongs.”

  • • •

  We rested before fireplaces and under deep cover through a cold, beautiful winter spiced with more snow than usual. I put a king-sized bed in my room at the farmhouse, and the bed filled the small room from wall to wall with its snug warmth, its comfort, its love. Quentin’s bullet wounds became pink dimples on his right side, front and back, just below his rib cage. I couldn’t help thinking that some giant animal had taken him in its teeth, tasted him, then let him go.

  He settled into the farmhouse as easily as any Powell ever had, and became as comfortable a sight for visitors. The house loved him, and he loved it back. Like my omelet pan hanging next to my grandmother’s iron skillet, he thrived in the spirit of progress. The old sergeant, Popeye, showed up with suitcases and crates, including the Tiffany window, which we set up on the back porch to admire.

  “What am I supposed to do up in New York without you, Captain?” he asked Quentin. “And have you got any idea what the hell you’re gonna do with yourself down here?”

  “I was thinking of renting a warehouse in the industrial park John Tiber’s building outside town. Maybe collecting a few salvage knicknacks to resell.”

  “You gonna start your business all over?”

  “Not unless I’ve got an assistant to help run it and yell at me when I try to carry too heavy a load.”

  “Rent your warehouse, then, because I’m your man and I’m hired.” Popeye returned to New York to care for the mill building and its tenants for the rest of the winter. Quentin would keep that property and find a manager to handle it for him. He would never leave his struggling tenants, those young artists, with no reasonable place to live and work. He would put a plaque outside the building. Ars gratia artis. Art for the sake of art alone. And beneath those words: In Memoriam, Richard Riconni.

  As he grew strong again, so did I. I unpacked boxes filled with Mama’s old canning jars that had been stacked in the storage room. When I opened a jar of green beans that Daddy had cooked the summer before he died, I dipped my fingers into them and ate a pliable, tender green piece, crying and smiling. Daddy and Mama were still with me, a warm hug in the kitchen, a wise whisper in my ear; they provided food for me again, now that I had finally come home in spirit as well as body.