The Angels of Our Better Beasts

by Jerome Stueart

  “People just let their dogs run wild,” he said, placing his paw on her back and gently pushing her down the street.

  Neither one of them spoke all the way to his house. He was stiff and quick in his strides. The northern lights did not come out, but the lamps stayed steady on streets to the left and right of them, and they travelled the dark crevice in between.

  >?

  One bright afternoon, near the end of her time in the North, they stayed in to watch The Wolf-Man at Bear’s request. The tv was in his room; they lounged on his bed, snacking popcorn, watching Lon Chaney Jr. struggle.

  In the middle of the movie, she felt a surprise: Bear’s hand caressing her thigh. She wondered where this would go. After the last couple of days, she wasn’t sure if he knew, or what to expect if he got started. She placed her bowl of kernels on the nightstand and turned to kiss him. In the background, you could hear Lon Chaney pleading with his girlfriend not to go out in the night alone. Appropriate dangerous music followed. Bear kissed her with urgency. She lifted his shirt, exposing his pink, human chest, his supple nipples. He pulled off his clothes in advance of her tongue.

  She kissed every inch of his body as if they might lose it at any moment. She had the impression she was making love to someone about to go off to war. The sunlight pushed across the room, up their bodies, and lit the wall behind them. His lovemaking surprised her. He held her breasts gently; pressed his palm on her body, firmly, warmly, slowly. He knew what to do with his tongue. Everything he’d written about in emails he could perform, and this bedroom event, his coming out as a sexual man, seemed to insist that he knew what to do with a human body, though he was uncertain about the other one. Moreover, maybe, he knew what to do with her body. What surprised her was how badly she needed his human body to tell her that. But this was sex on fast forward. The sunlight faded behind them. He finished just as the hunting dogs started to pursue Lon Chaney through the forest. Their bays signalled a change in him, and she wasn’t surprised when he pulled away, covering his face with his hands.

  “I need you to go into the other room for a few minutes. I don’t want you to see this.” He acted like a child hiding himself from her. “I wasn’t thinking about the time.”

  “Bear, it’s okay. I want to see this. This is a part of you.”

  He took his hands down, pulled the covers up over his naked body. “No, this isn’t okay. You have to go now.” She didn’t get off the bed. So he jumped up, pulled on her arms, tried to yank her off it.

  “No,” she said, and dove to the other side of the bed, knocking him off balance, pulling him with her to the bed again. She tried to pin his arms. He was stronger than her, but he was upset, panicked, nearly crying. The same look he’d had on the dance floor. She was going to catch him doing something horrible.

  She got right in his face. “It’s going to be okay.” If he wanted this to work, she had to go back down to Texas knowing everything she was going to be living with. “You closed me out for a year, Bear, but I’m going to see everything.”

  He pushed her up. He obviously didn’t want to hurt her, but the force of his push made her topple into the bookshelf and she steadied herself with her arms. He yelled, “This is my private problem.”

  “You don’t have any private problems. You’re in a relationship,” she yelled back. “That’s the whole point.”

  He got up on his hands and knees on the bed and rushed her, yelling, “You want to see this?”

  “Yeah, I want to see this.” The glow of light receded from the room, as if they were yelling the light out. After a sudden dramatic crescendo, the tv changed to a blue screen. “You’re the same man,” she said.

  “Watching gets people into trouble,” he bellowed from the bed, positioned like a dog barking at her to stay out of his yard. “I should know.”

  “You didn’t become a bear because you saw something bad. A bad woman cursed you. You were innocent—”

  “You weren’t there.”

  Darkness fell hard and sudden. She didn’t know what to expect. He shrank. Or, the human part of him shrank, as if he were falling inside of a great pit, covered in hair. His outline was smudged with charcoal fur, darker and darker as he fell backwards into the body of the bear. Suddenly, in a wavy movement of fur, the bear leapt off the bed and crushed her against the books, his terrible teeth revealed, his breath hot.

  He yelled, “Is this what you wanted to see?”

  It was like a Texas wind—like one of those tornadoes that spiral down suddenly in the middle of a street, tossing everything from in front of you. He was every bit a bear at this moment, moaning and roaring at her, but she didn’t try to move away. She couldn’t really, but she could be terrified if she let herself be. She looked down his throat, past his teeth, to where she thought she might be able to hear the witch telling a boy at his window, “Is this what you wanted to see? This sex? Didja get a good eyeful?”

  “I am not scared of you,” she whispered to him. She said it again, calmly, making it echo off his own throat. He paused for a breath and she repeated herself, firmly. “I am larger than you. You can’t hurt me.”

  His thick hairy body pressed against her. She could feel the shelves across her back.

  He stared at her. “I didn’t want you to get hurt,” he said.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t even change.”

  He stopped yelling. He eased back a little, though she could still feel his body on her. He looked paralyzed between two actions: holding her and letting her go. She reached around and pulled him closer. She stood in a city where everything changed, everything had cycles, and nothing was in a permanent state. The sun left; it came back again. The river froze; it thawed. Fish swam south; they returned north to spawn. The man in front of her, with tears in his small black eyes, was a bear; tomorrow morning, he would be human; but tomorrow night, he would be a bear again. No escaping that cycle with him. To accept Bear was to never be able to stop the night from changing him. But damned if she wasn’t going to show him opportunities from these changes.

  She reached down his naked bear body until she had her hand between his hairy thighs. “There is nothing wrong about this. This is fantastic. This is good, and you, buddy, are good at it.” She looked for some hint of recognition. He blinked; he looked down. “Yes, really.” She rubbed his arms. “We’re two adults. It’s okay to enjoy this. Maybe one day you want to find that witch and sock her in the mouth, but I don’t mind the bear part, Bear. You wanted to know that.” And it was true. She liked the crazy side of it, the adventure that being in love with a man who became a bear at night presented. “I think you’re sexy both ways. But I gotta know one thing: Do you want me?”

  He looked up at her. “Yes,” he said.

  “No, I have to be wanted and valued and respected for all that I am, too—whether I’m conservatively dressed or naked in your arms. Can you do that? Can you love the wild side of me?”

  He looked puzzled. Maybe he’d never considered that someone else might need the bear side of her loved—but, dammit, she did. And if he wasn’t willing to praise that curvy figure she had, well then, she could find another bear to love in a city of a thousand good things.

  “You,” he said, clearing his throat and looking her in the eye, “look wonderful tonight.”

  Any woman of the Klondike worth keeping would have pushed the bear back toward the bed. They were not whores, not prostitutes, not gold-diggers. They came up for a new life, whether or not they found bears. These women got something for themselves. Trees and mountains and bars and friendly people and wildness. These women would have climbed under the covers with a bear, and when he suggested they just cuddle, they would have turned and cozied up to the adventure.

  “I’m as warm as a furnace, aren’t I?” he said behind her, under the covers.

  “You’re as warm as a house,” she told him. And when he pressed his co
ld nose against her back, it sent a chill that melted halfway to her heart.

  The Song of Sasquatch

  ~1~

  Beloved

  My lover pursues me through the thicket with an ardent desire of leaves

  opening to the sun. He leaves

  no footprint I give him untouched. Oh brothers,

  awaken not love until it is ready to be

  found. But when it is ready, shake it till it screams.

  Friends

  We will hide you within the thicket. We will take the lover

  and break him with our hands. No one shall find you!

  Beloved

  Let him find me in the thicket, with the leaves pressed down in the place

  where I saw him first, when he touched the imprint of my toes

  and gathered the hair pinned to the branch.

  Do not hide me, brothers! I want to be seen.

  My coat is winter-bound, my eyes hoarfrost hung, my stride brings

  no one chasing, no one speeding through wild rose, where thorns

  cling, except the Lover.

  Oh, hurry, Lover, or I will be lost.

  Your arms are fragile like the sapling, new to the forest,

  stunted by the shade. Your eyes search for me, like the squirrel

  waits for the sound of wings to come, that last sound. Your glasses

  brass, your instruments brass, and on your wrist, a circle

  of brass. Brass is the sign of my Lover, as he pursues.

  Your footfall, your breath—the smell of coffee, and decay,

  the sweat of your excitement.

  You trace my time; I track your love.

  Friends

  Oh, do not walk on the mud where your feet will be seen. Why do you walk there?

  Why do you leave him any sign? We will drag the sticks across the mud and

  erase you.

  Beloved

  Do not erase the signs of my love in the thicket, in the mud, in the

  soft places,

  oh, brothers. I beg of you. How long should I run from him? He pursues

  because he seeks the mystery; will I run to keep that mystery, or turn

  to reveal it?

  Lover

  My lens never captures him, though I have taped his song. Over and over again,

  I play it. Till I feel I could answer him. The huff and chuff

  and the whistles and growls, and the howl;

  How it chills me in the tent of my pursuit; how it coils around me

  with cold

  hands, and promises love and death. And winter.

  Friends

  He is just a man, smaller than most, a weasel with no brow, built

  more like a bird, hopping along the forest floor, peering down,

  and writing notes—we shall find that notebook! To read him as he

  has read you!

  Lover

  Oh, beloved, how I have smelled you in the thicket, in the dense

  thicket of noon,

  and your scent to me is like simmering stew in a Coleman stove;

  you are peat, raspberry, smoke, cheddar, and sweat.

  I love you with a curious degree-in-large-mammals love,

  with the intricate, discredited studies of cryptozoology,

  and the notes that I take, the notes of notes, the notes of your

  voice, the notes of your love, in the margins of The Field Guide to

  Beasts and Myths. Yellow highlighter is a stroke of desire.

  Beloved

  Let me kiss him with the kisses of my mouth, and bring him the joy of my song,

  in the thicket when the sun streams through the branches of the pines,

  and the poplars; let us lie down beneath the skirt of the spruce.

  I build a bed of spruce boughs. My lover will not be afraid. He has seen me walk;

  he writes of me that I am a man of the woods, that I know the forest, that I am

  never lost. I know each tree as if it were my own arm, my own leg, my soul

  reaching to heaven.

  Let my hand caress his hairless thigh, let his fingers curl around my shaggy

  tresses, a forest of hair for him to hunt me, to search, for clues

  in my chest. Oh, who can find a heart, unless he searches with his?

  ~2~

  Friends

  We have seen his camp! Should we, O Brothers, dash his head on a stone? We see

  his footprints lead to the place of men! Oh, we should seize him, and break

  him, rend him and bury him in the thicket! Even now, he rises from his tent,

  his eyes search to capture you!

  Beloved

  Capture me in the coolness of the morning, before you have wearied yourself

  from running. I will slow down. You can find me. My steps closer together, my footprints a path to where I am waiting in the thicket.

  But I cannot wait forever—the wood rose, the fireweed, the lupine,

  all have their season and they open and then are gone,

  and I cannot wait forever.

  Lover

  Wait for me. I have measured your stride, the depression of your heel.

  Do not walk so fast, your legs like oak trees uprooted from the ground; reveal to me your back, just your back, so that I might see you and be encouraged.

  Beloved

  See me! See me! See me! I am ready to be revealed! I am where the thicket parts,

  where the field begins. Here I have laid down in the sunshine, to bathe

  in the sunshine, where the hands of the sun run across my chest as it does

  the wild barley grass in the meadow, where the wind strokes my stomach

  like the Lover! See me! See me! It is a time for honesty and revelation!

  Friends

  But the Lover will reveal us all! He will bring others to our forests to find us!

  He will take the Beloved from us, and trample our forests

  and unbraid our ways from our hands!

  We have seen him in his tent of destruction—we have seen his cooking pots,

  his soap, his toothbrush and camera—they will blaze a swath like fire

  in our forest, a path like flame!

  Beloved

  How I wish you were like me, so we could walk together

  in the light of the day, past the brothers and the friends, whose eyes

  are haughty now, but who could see you and love you as one of us;

  you could kiss me and they would approve

  This is my Lover! This is my Friend! O Brothers of the Woods, do not harm him!

  Lover

  On Dezadeash Lake, let me find your footprints;

  on the Tatshenshini River I canoe to find you,

  for your stories linger in Kluane and Pine Lakes

  and up the side of Tachäl Dhäl—I will travel

  the Yukon to find you, Beloved;

  I remember, I remember, that night in the woods, when you came to my tent,

  when you stood outside the canvas, the shadow of your body

  like blue water splashed above me; how you listened, with your fingers to your mouth; how I listened, how we heard each other’s heartbeat

  in the silence. I remember! And pursue your love!

  ~3~

  Friends

  Where has your lover gone, most handsome and strong brother? Which way

  did your lover turn—that we may look for him with you?

  Beloved

  O wretched friends, I had a dream! I heard my lover approach, his hiking boots

  crushing the leaves, he called my name, Beloved, Beloved, Beloved

  And I rose to greet him,
but when I came to his voice, he was not there.

  You crouched there instead, your five voices mimicking his, your smiles

  tore across your faces, your eyes blazing like snickiton fires

  that hold to a single twig, to light a forest;

  your mocking, glibbering howls!

  Oh, let not friends rot your love with doubt or shame, even if they threaten

  to leave you; they may spurn you; but alone you choose the hollow where

  your heart rests, the stride by your stride, the voice that follows you.

  Bring love to your hiding place.

  Let not their fears drive away your love.

  Friends

  Man is weak and fragile, breaking easy in the wilderness. It is shameful

  to walk with him; disgusting to share his journey; revolting

  to lead him to our places of peace.

  Beloved

  Oh, under the spruce boughs I shook you, but you would not rouse, Lover.

  Friends

  It is unnatural to walk with man as one would walk with us; unnatural to seek

  his companionship in the meadow, in the forest, in the hidden places.

  See how he noted you, how he wrote about you, how he wanted to

  photograph you.

  Lover

  We stand at the edge of meeting; you wait in the brush of almost ready

  You see me with eyes looking to be found; you trust

  with the hand reaching through the willow.

  Beloved