by Vella Munn
“You’re quiet,” the short, nearly bald man the others called Robert finally said to Dean. “I suppose this is pretty old hat to you.”
“It never becomes old hat,” Dean answered shortly. He’d released Calley’s hand as they made their way over a soggy, sandy area, but now he reached for her again. He glanced at her but didn’t smile.
“I don’t guess it does,” the man mused aloud. His eyes locked on the entwined hands, and he pointed. “I’m glad to see that. When I saw the two of you for the first time yesterday, I thought at least one of you was a fool if there wasn’t any chemistry there.”
Calley blushed, but she thought that her cheeks, already reddened by the wind, wouldn’t give away her emotion. “Are you married?” she asked, turning the conversation in a safer direction.
Robert explained that he’d been married to the same woman for going on twenty-five years. “We have a new grandchild that I haven’t seen yet.”
Calley freed her hand only to wrap her arm around Dean’s waist. It wasn’t hard to picture herself twenty-five years down the road still in love with the same man. “He’s a lucky man,” she whispered as Robert left them.
“He is, isn’t he?” Dean agreed. He pulled her around so Calley could look up at him. “A good marriage takes a lot of work.” With his free hand Dean brushed the hair off Calley’s forehead. “Being honest and open with each other are essential.”
Calley was losing touch with her surroundings. She hadn’t expected Dean to have that much control over her with the others around, but now that it was happening, she accepted it willingly. “I hope we can always be honest with each other,” she whispered.
“What would you say if I told you I’d give anything not to be here today?”
“I’d say that admitting it is half the battle.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to win this battle, Calley. I can’t shake off the memories.” Dean pressed her close to him, the power in his arms a silent reinforcement for his words.
“It doesn’t matter. It just means you’re human,” Calley whispered from her welcomed prison. “I love you, Dean. That’s what matters.”
Dean shuddered but didn’t release her. “I wish it were that easy. But unless I can face certain things about myself, I’m not going to be any good for you.”
“Will you stop that!” Calley didn’t care whether the others heard. She’d listened to Dean say the same thing yesterday. She’d tried everything within her power to convince him that not being able to talk about being attacked by a pair of grizzlies didn’t make him any less of a man in her mind, but he wasn’t listening. He was hung up on attaining some stupid goal he’d set for himself. “I’m scared to death of speaking before a group. Does that make me less a woman in your eyes?”
“It’s not the same thing, and you know it.”
She did know that. The analogy was a poor one, but it was the best she could come up with. “Tell me how I can help you. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. That’s the hell of it. I’m the only one who can do this.”
He was right, of course, but that still didn’t make it any easier. She wanted them to be able to share everything, the entire range of human emotions. Being shut away from him in this way was tearing her apart. “I’m sorry I don’t understand what you went through,” she said. “Maybe if I had I’d know what you’re asking of yourself.”
Dean held on to her with a desperation that frightened her. “I don’t want you to ever go through that. You’re too precious to me.”
Calley’s heart latched on to Dean’s words, but that didn’t keep her from feeling empty when he turned from her to respond to something one of the others was asking. She wanted to take him away from here, but she couldn’t do that. She wanted him to be able to gaze at the scenery without being sucked back in time, but she couldn’t block out his nightmare.
“It’s damn hard for him, isn’t it?” Hawk asked as they started back.
“Hard isn’t the half of it.” Calley’s senses were alert for evidence of a grizzly’s presence. Unless her honed instincts had failed her, they weren’t sharing the river area with anything larger than a fox. “But he’s doing it.” She groaned. “I thought he’d find peace if he came here.”
“That’s the easy part. It’s mentally facing those two young males again that’s tying him in knots.”
“What does he want?” Calley groaned again. “A repeat performance?”
“Maybe. Maybe facing a bear out here is what it’s going to take.”
Calley was silent for a long minute. Finally she faced Dean’s friend with stony eyes. “That’s what you want to have happen, isn’t it?” she accused. “You’ve been thinking about that female and her cub since you asked Dean to come to Alaska.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe nothing.” Calley gripped Hawk’s wrist, not caring whether her nails dug into him. “You’ve been planning this.”
“Yeah, I’ve been planning it.” Hawk sighed heavily. “Look, Calley, I’m the one who carried Dean out of there. Do you think it’s been easy for me? But I’ve been back to the Toklat a lot of times since the accident. I learned that facing something square on is a hell of a lot easier than sitting hundreds of miles away, letting that night continue to eat at me.”
Calley released Hawk and hurried after Dean. She was both angry at Hawk and understood what he had done, but Hawk wasn’t in love with Dean. She was proud of what Dean had accomplished with his life. She didn’t care about the one small flaw he saw in himself.
“What were you and Hawk talking about?” Dean asked when she rejoined him.
“Not much,” Calley sidestepped. “It’s so peaceful out here. But even in summer I can feel winter waiting to descend. It’s in the wind. It doesn’t take much of a storm to make the river overflow its banks, does it?”
The group had retraced a mile of their hike when Dean stopped so quickly that Calley almost ran into him. He pointed ahead of them on the opposite side of the river. “There they are” was all he said.
To the untrained eye the distant brown lumps could have been mistaken for rocks, but Calley had seen too many grizzlies to be fooled. She stared at them through her binoculars. “There’s three of them,” she whispered to the men now gathered around her. “Just before the bend in the river. They’re either drinking or fishing.”
The distant bears seemed to be as interested in sniffing the air as they were in satisfying their need for food and water.
When the largest of the trio rose on his hind legs with his nose extended in the air, the politicians let out a collective gasp. “He’s taller than I am,” Robert whispered. “Look at the size of that creature.”
“That’s at least eight feet of bear,” Calley explained. “They don’t know we’re here because the wind’s blowing in the wrong direction. Maybe they’re picking up the scent of some sheep. Something has their attention.”
“Can’t they see us?” one of the others asked nervously.
Hawk shook his head. “Their eyesight is pretty weak,” he explained. “As long as the wind doesn’t shift and we keep our voices down so the river masks us, they’ll think they’re alone.”
“And if the wind shifts?”
“They’d still have to cross the river, and it’s pretty deep and swift right along there. Here they see enough humans so that most grizzlies leave them alone. However, I would suggest we sit down and wait for them to leave.” Hawk shot Calley a quick glance. She followed his gaze as he turned toward Dean.
Dean hadn’t set down the binoculars since the bears were spotted. Calley was aware of the tension radiating out from him, but she couldn’t detect an increase in his breathing rate. “Two females and an immature male,” Dean said almost conversationally. “They’re well fed.”
“They should be,” Hawk supplied. “Spring came early this year. They’ve gained back most of what they lost during the winter.” Hawk told the politicians a little about the winter behavior of
bears, and Dean added that the average weight of a grizzly born in January was less than a pound. Calley felt heartened because Dean was able to contribute to the conversation, but she was aware that he had yet to take his eyes off the creatures.
A half hour passed before the grizzlies abandoned the river and ambled up a slope until the group finally lost sight of them. The three congressmen were hesitant to continue back toward the road until Calley struck out to lead the way. Dean was in the middle of the group, his attention still on the spot where the bears had last been seen.
“I’m delighted this happened,” Robert admitted. “There really is no way we can understand a bear’s place in the scheme of things until we see them in their natural habitat.”
“Do you believe they have a place there?” Hawk asked.
“I think Dean said it best yesterday,” Robert went on. “The reasons for saving the grizzly are intellectual, esthetic and compassionate. The world will continue to exist without them, but if that happens, I believe we will have lost something of ourselves, as well.”
Tears welled up in Calley’s eyes. For a man who spent his days and nights in smoked-filled rooms, Robert had a realistic grip on the world beyond those walls. “Is that the decision you’re taking back to Washington, D.C.?” she asked.
“You’ve hit the nail on the head, young lady. And unless I don’t know my colleagues as well as I think I do, I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
Calley grinned openly at both Hawk and Dean, but the park superintendent was the only one who returned her smile. Throwing caution to the wind, Calley linked her arm through Dean’s as they walked the short distance back to the minivan. Hawk was taking a poll of the politicians to see if they wanted to continue to the end of the park road when the CB radio in the van sputtered to life. Hawk scrambled into the van. When he reemerged a few minutes later, his face was grim.
“Gentlemen, I’m afraid an emergency has come up. If you’re interested in a hike of less than a mile, I can give you a graphic demonstration of the awesome power of a grizzly.”
Calley heard the explosion of breath coming from Dean but didn’t look at him until he spoke. “Bear attack?” was all he asked.
“She took apart a camp some fool pitched near a sandbar along the lower Toklat. Apparently the people were out hiking when it happened, but they’re upset..”
“She?” Dean repeated. “How do you know it’s a female?”
Hawk met Dean’s question square on. “Because we’ve had trouble with a female and her cub here since spring.”
Dean snorted. His eyes blazed with an anger that frightened Calley. “You knew that before we came in here. I’m not a fool, Hawk. What is this? Reality therapy?”
“Maybe,” Hawk challenged.
Calley was aware that the three other men were taking in every word of the conversation, but she didn’t have time for them. Dean’s reaction to the challenge Hawk was presenting was all that mattered. “What are you going to do?” she asked Hawk when Dean remained silent.
“I’m not sure,” Hawk replied. “I know I’m not going to put her down no matter what those fool hikers want. But we’ve got to get her away from people before she kills someone.”
“North Peak,” Dean said tersely. “You’ve flown rogues there before.”
Hawk nodded. “I’m shorthanded, Dean.”
“Damn,” Dean hissed. “Damn you.” He hoisted himself into the van without looking at Calley.
After a hesitation that lasted no more than five seconds, Calley joined Dean inside. She sat beside him but made no move to touch him. Because she loved him, she understood that this was one time he needed to be alone with his thoughts. The politicians stayed outside with Hawk, asking questions about what they might find when they reached the ravaged camp. At length, Hawk poked his head into the van. “Are you coming?”
Dean was still staring straight ahead. Calley glanced at him, feeling the massive barrier around him. Slowly she rose to her feet. “I’m coming,” she said as she left Dean. As she emerged from the van, she knew she was leaving her heart behind.
“What’d he say?” Hawk whispered.
“Nothing.” Calley stared at the ground and they looked at the bend in the river that would take them to where Hawk was needed. “This has to be his decision.”
“You’re damn right.”
Calley whirled at the anger in Dean’s voice. He was emerging from the minivan, the tranquilizing rifle the van was equipped with cradled in his arms. “You weren’t going to forget this, were you, Hawk?” He tossed the rifle at Hawk.
“Knock it off, Dean,” Hawk shot back. “I have a potential killer to deal with. I can’t wet-nurse you.”
“It’s about time you figured that out. You want your damn bear? Let’s get moving.” Without waiting to see if the others would fall in line, Dean struck off in the opposite direction from where they’d gone earlier. Behind his back Hawk made a gesture to indicate he’d like nothing better than to hit Dean over the head, but when he glanced at Calley, she caught a glimmer of admiration in his eyes.
Calley stayed behind Dean and Hawk so that she could keep an eye on the other men, who might behave unpredictably in an emergency situation. She had no idea what Dean would do when and if they spotted the rogue. She could only go with the gut feeling that his training would win out over fear. If they were able to deal successfully with the grizzly, and that’s what she prayed would happen, she and Dean could get on with their lives.
But if Dean reacted in a way that he couldn’t take pride in, she wasn’t sure there’d be enough pieces of him left to pick up.
When Dean and Hawk pulled a little ahead of the others, Robert asked her what was wrong with Dean. She could have manufactured an excuse, but she didn’t. “He almost lost his life here last year,” she said simply. “Grizzlies got to him.”
“Good God,” Robert whispered. “It takes guts to do what he’s doing.”
“He hasn’t done it yet,” Calley pointed out.
“But he’s here. That has to tell you something.”
What it told Calley was that Dean wasn’t giving up without one last fight, that maybe he was going after the grizzly because he felt he had something to prove to her as well as to himself. You don’t have to do this, she wanted to tell him. It won’t change how I feel.
But maybe it would, because failure would change Dean.
One of the other politicians made the observation that introducing a controversial bill in Congress was a piece of cake compared to what they were doing, but other than that one joke the men remained silent. Calley knew that the chance the large group would be attacked was next to nothing. Not only were they traveling along a wide river flat, which gave them an excellent view of their surroundings, but the chances were that the creature they were seeking had already left the area.
It wasn’t hard to locate the ransacked campsite. Even before they came close enough to be able to identify what the fleeing campers had left behind, they could see litter strewn out over several hundred square feet. As Dean bent over the thick severed pole that had once held a canvas tent in place, Robert whistled. “Would you look at that? She put her teeth clear through some cans. There isn’t enough left of that tent to make a good rag.”
“That’s the other side of the story, gentlemen,” Hawk observed. “Now you have a pretty good idea of what a grizzly thinks of humans.”
To Calley’s relief Robert laughed. “I’ve come across some special-interest groups in my career who would like nothing better than to do this with something of mine. At least your rogue lets you know where you stand with her.”
“That she does,” Hawk agreed as he picked up a metal bucket that looked as if it had been run over by a truck. He kicked at a scattered deck of cards. “I guess she wasn’t interested in games.”
“What was she interested in?” one of the other men asked.
“Food,” Hawk explained, pointing at a shredded cereal box. Calley knew that wasn�
��t the whole story. True, food probably had attracted the grizzly initially, but the complete destruction strewn around was the work of a creature with a chip on her shoulder. Instinctively, Calley moved closer to Dean.
“Did you see the droppings?” he asked.
Calley nodded. “They’re less than a day old.”
“We’d better get these men back on their plane.”
Calley wrapped her arm around Dean’s waist. “And then what?”
“Then we come back after her.”
“We?” she repeated.
Dean sighed. He pulled her close, his eyes on the horizon. “That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?”
“Don’t dump this one on me, Dean,” Calley warned. “Either this is something you have to do, or it isn’t. I can’t make that decision for you.”
“Maybe not. But if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have to make the decision.”
There was no way Calley could hide from what Dean was telling her. She was the catalyst that had brought him back to the Toklat River. Hawk wouldn’t have been able to accomplish it alone. For reasons that were too complex for her to vocalize, Dean was facing his nightmare as much for her as for himself.
“I want to be part of this,” she insisted.
“I don’t want you to.”
“I know that,” she forged on. “But you heard Hawk. He’s shorthanded. I know what I’m doing almost as well as you do.”
Dean turned her to face him so that she had no choice but to look up at him. “What if I asked you not to come back here?”
Calley drank deeply of the crystal clear air. Things were coming to a head between them, but she was who she was. She couldn’t change her nature and be someone either she or Dean could be proud of. “If you love me, Dean, you won’t ask that of me. Here, with you, is where I belong.”
