by Urban Waite
But when the lightning faded away, followed by the boom, the bear was still there, drawn up short, halfway across the field. The first few droplets of rain were coming now, pushed forward on the wind ahead of the storm. The bear seemed to test the air, raising its snout toward the far trees and the coming sheet of rain. When it stood on its two back legs and turned to face the rain, Will could not believe the size of the animal. He saw in it some primordial being that was half man and half beast, which might in days of yesteryear have ruled them all.
The bear stayed just that way, standing on hind legs to face the rain, as the sheet of water broke from the trees and moved in a wall across the field. The water enveloping all it passed across, so thick with droplets that everything behind—mountain, foothill, forest—had all but disappeared. When the rain hit the bear, it was like the bear had never been there at all and Will stood for a second longer, watching as the sheet of water climbed the hill toward him and soon was all around. Wind and water, crashing branches twenty or thirty feet above—no field or forest to be seen and Will turning now, as the water began to soak the blanket, and he went back toward his small cabin, opened the door, and threw himself within.
After an hour of listening to the rain pelt the thin tin of his roof above and the wind rattle the glass within the wood casements of his windows, Will opened the door and stood looking out at the night from within the frame. The moon had appeared again and small silver droplets of rainwater could be seen in places where they hung and then fell from blades of grass and the needles of the pines. Far overhead the blinking navigation lights of a jetliner crossed in the starry darkness like some visitor from another world.
It would take him three days before he caught sign of the bear again.
* * *
THE FIRST SIGN HE FOUND OF THE BIG GRIZZLY WAS A PRINT IN the loose mud of a stream a mile east of his place. Will stood looking down at it for a long while before he brought his eyes up and considered the dense growth of underbrush that lined the far side of the stream. Lush and green and nearly impenetrable.
He had come down toward the stream on a game trail and until this point he had seen no sign of the bear in the surrounding country. Mostly he tracked game and ran a series of trap lines for the church, his time divided between church and remote wilderness. Three weeks of every month spent tracking and hunting, then one week spent at Eden’s Gate. In the three days that had passed since he’d seen the bear he had thought he would chance across some sign—find a tuft of hair, scat, or claw mark in the earth or up high on one of the pine trunks—but he never did.
At sixty-two, Will could not remember seeing a bear of this size ever in his life, and he wondered now what had drawn the big boar down out of the north into this valley. Many of the animals had moved on years before, hunted or chased away as the valley succumbed to farming and herding. Will needed to go farther and farther afield to catch his own game—deer and elk, turkey, beaver, and rabbit.
Wearing the old wide-brimmed hat, stained with his own salt, he was square-jawed beneath his beard. The muscles beneath his shirt still strong from hauling his ass up one hill and down the other on a daily basis. Now, he scanned the surroundings, his eyes roaming over the forest behind and then the underbrush across the stream. Will looked again to the print in the mud. He knelt, feeling the weight of his pack fall across his back as he spread his fingers and placed them atop the print. With his other hand, he held tight to the rifle strap, not wanting the old Remington to swing from his shoulder.
The shape of the print was larger than his spread hand by at least an inch on all sides. Will guessed he was likely looking at the front right paw. The long claw marks visible atop each toe, where they had further punctured the mud a couple inches farther on.
He rose and followed the stream in the direction the paw mark had suggested. When he came to the beaver dam about a quarter mile upstream he knelt out of sight and watched the fat little mammals swimming in the pond beyond.
Not quite in the center of the pond was the lodge they had built for themselves. He watched as one of the beavers emerged from the water and then, using teeth and squat front arms, began to fit a branch over what looked to be a fresh hole dug into the side of the lodge. Many of the old logs showing the telltale claw marks of the bear where it had dug into the meat of the wood.
He saw no more sign of the bear as he went on, following the little stream that flowed down out of the mountains and made its way through the foothills. He set rabbit snares and then circled back around to a separate string he had placed the day before and found three out of six held white-tailed jackrabbits.
He broke their necks quickly with a practiced efficiency that had come from years of experience. Skills and knowledge his own father and grandfather before him had handed down to him. When he had checked and reset all six of the snares he carried the rabbits off to the stream and then gutted them, running the carcasses through the cool water at a place he favored, where bare rock ran flat and wide into the stream.
Many times Will had bathed here, washing his clothes in the stream and then leaving them to dry in the sun while he swam naked in the long, deep pool beyond. His hands and face tanned dark and brown from the spring and summer and the rest of his body—except for a patch of scar tissue across his chest where a tattoo had once been—was white and almost luminescent in the clear glacial melt.
Now he knelt at the water’s edge. He worked the innards from the rabbits until the carcasses were clean. The last trail of blood wafted like smoke in the slow-moving pool, the current pulling the blood along before blending this last strand of red into the greater flow.
When he looked up again the bear was watching him from out of the opposite edge of the forest. Will saw the hump of muscle across the shoulder and the broad powerful forelegs gripping the edge of the bank as it watched him, its dull black eyes and the scooped front barrel of its face turned on him. The nose wet, bits of dirt and grass visible in places from whatever the bear had been scavenging nearby. Will did not move. His rifle, a twenty-year-old bolt-action Remington 700, lay five feet up the rock with his pack and what remained of his snares. He stayed crouched over the water with the rabbit carcasses beside him on the rock, his hunting knife in one hand.
He watched the bear test the air once before it turned, moving down the opposite side of the stream to where the pool ran out into shallow water. Will was up now, holding the rabbits and knife, backing toward the pack and rifle. The bear turned and rose, letting out a growl and then came back down onto its front paws. It came down the opposite side of the stream toward him and then tested the depth of the water with one paw, but finding no bottom it brought the paw back again and Will saw the big front claws and how they dug at the soil, then the animal reversed again, coming even with him. Only the depth of the pool and a hesitancy on the bear’s part kept the big grizzly from Will.
He had the pack now and he brought it up, slipped one arm after the other through the straps. He bent and lifted the rifle. The bear still had not moved, except to raise its nose some more, tasting the air. Even the sight of the rifle did not seem to deter it. It growled again and showed its yellow teeth, strings of saliva now seen suspended from its upper jaw as it held open a mouth that could easily swallow Will’s head whole.
Will bent again, never taking his eyes from the bear, and gathered the rabbits to him. He cleaned the blade of the knife on their fur and then replaced it in the scabbard he kept on his belt. When he was done he came forward to the edge of the water and, still wary of the bear, he separated one of the jackrabbit carcasses and tossed it, spinning end over end, across the pool where it landed in the brush just a few feet from the grizzly.
By the time the bear found the rabbit, Will was already backing up the rock and into the underbrush that lined the stream on all sides. Only when the branches closed around him did he turn and begin to walk up and away from the stream. No sound except that of the water rolling farther down, and even when he had gone anot
her hundred yards or so and turned back, focusing again on the stream and the woods surrounding him, he could hear nothing but the water farther on. For a minute, he kept his eyes fixed on the path he had taken. The far cry of a loggerhead shrike sounded to his right, the bird launched from its perch and dipped through the trees until it broke into open grasslands beyond.
Will followed the bird out, soon moving fast through the grass, pausing to glance back at the belt of wood that followed the stream before he went on again. Not until he had arrived at the small cabin, set the rabbits down, taken the pack from his back and then gone back out to the overlook that faced to the north and the mountains there, did he give himself a little time to pause.
He carried with him the Remington, and looking over the country now, he gathered the strap in his hands, flipped up the scope cover, and brought the rifle to his shoulder, the lens to his eye. He ran the scope along the far edge of the forest to where he knew the stream ran another half mile on. The wind was in the tops of the trees and it worked through the field of Junegrass below, appearing to Will like waves on a great golden lake.
He dropped the rifle from his shoulder and stood looking over the forest and hills, the mountain farther on. He said to himself, “Just ’cause you don’t see him don’t mean he’s not out there.”
Will thought of the big buck he had seen in the lightning storm, he thought of the beaver lodge and the hole dug in the side. He knew what the bear was doing down here. He knew why the bear had come.
* * *
THREE HOURS LATER, AFTER HE HAD FINISHED SKINNING THE rabbits and packing the meat in salt, he came up out of the root cellar and looked toward the distant beating stars above, the waning moon behind the trees. He had eaten and then gone about his work. He would give the rabbits, along with several other critters he had snared or shot in the weeks past, to the people they were owed to, the people he worked for and who in some way had set him up in this life when he’d thought his life had been over.
The skins they would sell, too. Most of the money went to the church, but some of it came back to Will. Money for supplies like snare wire, .308 rifle cartridges, butter, flour, and other supplies Will could not readily take from the woods. He was careful with everything, knowing each and every item, and their exact measure, within his cabin and down in the root cellar, as if each were recorded on a piece of paper and not just stored away in his head.
He looked now around the small camp he kept and the house he had been made ward of in those first years of Eden’s Gate. The fire he had made earlier to cook his meal of biscuits still showed the small red glow of coals at its center. The night now fully upon him as he walked the short distance to the fire, blew the gray ash from atop the beating coals and then piled fresh kindling atop.
For an hour, he sat by the fire and thought about the bear. He thought about how easily the bear could have killed him that day.
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER HE FOUND THE WHITE CHURCH TRUCK WAITING for him when he came up the hill. Will carried behind him a field-dressed buck on a travois he had constructed himself. He stood sweating in place under the gambrel he used for skinning deer and elk. The travois he’d made from two long poles he’d cut from within an aspen growth, lashed crossways with smaller branches and then tied all together with paracord. It had made it easier to bring his kill the two miles from where he’d shot the buck, but it had not made it easy.
He stood watching the truck and looking around at the little clearing his cabin sat within, but he saw nothing other than the truck to suggest anyone else was here. Tired from his efforts he coughed and set down the buck, then he walked to the cold ash of the firepit and spit down among the dead coals. Looking now on the buck behind him, the antlers like a crown of thorns and those black, mirrorlike eyes looking back at him, he was unsure whether he should begin his skinning or go out in search of the owner of the truck.
By the time Will had taken the rifle from his shoulder and placed the pack on the ground, Lonny had come up out of the root cellar with the rabbits. He was beside the truck, lifting the lid on a cooler and then dropping the rabbits inside with the rest of the meat when he saw Will standing there.
“I see you’ve kept busy the last three weeks,” Lonny said, looking down at the coolers and then back up at Will. Lonny wore a trucker’s cap on his head. He was bearded like all members of the church were and his two snake tattoos emerged from the sleeves of his T-shirt and coiled down his forearms to the backs of each hand.
“I thought you’d be here tomorrow,” Will said, glancing around the clearing, wondering if Lonny was alone.
“Something came up.”
“What kind of something?”
“The kind that made me think of you.” Lonny smiled and then walked the ten or so paces from where the truck sat to where Will was standing. “I got you a little job you can do for us.”
“I like the job I got now.”
Lonny circled and looked at the buck. He made a low whistling sound and then clucked his tongue. “He’s a beaut.”
“Should be about seventy-five pounds of usable meat once I get him skinned and bone him out.”
“You going to keep the head?”
“I was thinking about putting it up inside.”
Lonny stared at him. He ran the tip of his tongue across his upper lip and then inside over his gums. He picked something from his teeth and flicked it away. “That rack would make a nice present for John or The Father.”
“I shot him through the heart. Meat should be good still. Just have to get him up on the hook and get to work.”
Lonny smiled. “You have a pretty nice thing going on out here. Don’t go thinking we haven’t forgotten that.”
Will looked Lonny over. The man was six foot, nearly as tall as Will, but skinny and lean. Those two forearms with the snake tattoos were all muscle and sinew and not much else. Will had heard Lonny could use them, too. Though he’d never seen the man hurt anyone, he had heard stories. A few saying how Lonny could strike out with each fist fast as any rattlesnake might bite.
“It’ll take me about twenty minutes to skin and bone out the deer. Then another hour to clean up the sinew and separate the muscle groups. You got that time?”
“Just skin it and throw it in the back of the truck. There’s plenty at Eden’s Gate who can help with the meat. And keep the head on.”
Will brought up his empty canteen and crossed to the house, dipped the canteen into the bucket of water, watching the bubbles come up until it was full. He stood drinking from the canteen and then dipped it again. When he walked back over to Lonny and the buck, Lonny was looking the rifle over.
“You shoot a .308?”
“Yes.”
“That big enough for a grizzly?”
Will waited. He didn’t like the way this was heading.
Lonny took a small pouch from his pocket, pinched some tobacco and started to roll a cigarette with papers he’d taken from the same pouch. “We got us a problem and I think you’re the guy to solve it for us.” He finished the cigarette and placed it between his lips. “You want one?”
Will declined and then walked around to the deer to undo the paracord from where he had tied it to secure the buck. He heard the flick of the lighter, then the exhale of the smoke and by the time the paracord had been taken from the haunches and underbelly of the deer, Will was smelling cigarette smoke and not much else.
“You know the Kershaw place out on two twenty-four?”
“I know the Kershaws. Their place is about twenty miles from here.” He knelt and, taking the knife from his belt, made a small hole between each of the deer’s knees and rear tendons. Next he got the hook from the gambrel and hoisted the deer up so that it was swinging, spraddle-legged, in front of him. “They still raise cattle?”
“You’d likely know this if you came to The Father’s Sunday sermons. Being there as little as you are, you think no one notices when you miss one. But I notice. And I guess now I’ll be
the one to tell you the church took over the operation a few weeks ago.”
“Took over?”
“Made some improvements.” Lonny smoked. He walked off a way and looked down at the field below. When he came back, he said, “I’d like you to hunt and kill a big grizzly that took down a heifer there yesterday.”
Will stopped the careful job he was doing with the skin, working with the knife to bring it down off the haunches. He looked over at Lonny. “You’re asking me to look past a heap of laws and regulations.”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? You think we have you set up here on church land so you can pick and choose?”
Will didn’t like being talked to that way. It was true, maybe he did have it good out here. Fighting with Lonny wasn’t going to do him any favors. “You have a plan?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Grizzlies are scavengers,” Will said. “They’re opportunistic. You’ll never know how to read them, how to understand them. They’ll hunt and kill their own young if they have to. They’re survivors. This bear you want me to kill, he may have just been passing through. He might just have seen the heifer and gone for it. He might be miles away by now.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“We could go to jail for this. You understand that, right?”
“What happens on our land is our business.”
Will sucked at the inside of his cheeks. The bloody knife hung in his hand and he let his eyes roll across the clearing in which his cabin sat. He could see no way out of this. “When I was over in Vietnam there was a tiger that used to hunt and kill the men stationed at my base. They tried damn near everything they could to kill it. But it always came back. No one ever saw it. The animal might as well have been a ghost. We found paw prints, we found blood trails, but we never saw it.”
