Sorry, I forgot Sir, Hrolf said. He’d never called the boy “Sir” before, but he felt it was needed in this context.
Why can’t I go too? Dewey asked in his still fumbling form of dogtalk. Dewey wasn’t a mere fawn any more, but a young buck. He was growing up, and before long he’d start sprouting antlers.
Well, I suppose you could, Hrolf allowed.
I can find water as good as any of the rest of you can, Dewey boasted. And I bet I could find a bear even better.
All right, Hrolf said. Let’s go. Adam, Sir, would you explain to Mistress where we went, and that we may be gone more than a day or two. Don’t mention the bear cub.
The expedition set out, the six of them romping abreast across the meadow but changing to single file as they reached the dry beaver pond and the old path that was known as the South Way. I’m real proud of you for doing this, son, Hrolf’s mother said to him.
Ma, we’d all die of thirst if we didn’t.
But they were perishing of thirst by the time they’d gone a mile or so through the forest. They hoped that the creek which fed the waterfall would slake their dehydration, but they discovered it was bone dry, as was the waterfall itself. Peering over the precipice, Hrolf could see a dog’s skeleton in the dry bed of what had been the pool at the base of the waterfall. He realized that must be poor Hrothgar. He nudged his mother aside to keep her from peering over the precipice.
I can’t go another step without a drink, Hroberta declared.
They all sat around panting and moaning in the torture of extreme thirst. And before the sun set on that day of the expedition, Hrolf said apologetically, I’m sorry I brought you’uns out here. But we can’t go back. There’s nothing to drink anywhere.
Woo, Robert said, there’s got to be some way to get off this fucking mountain and find a creek.
Ralgrub said, Whatever creek you found might be dry too.
As night fell, several of them chewed on grass to get just a little moisture.
The next morning, it was Dewey who found the spring. It wasn’t much of a spring, and hard to reach, a trickle seeping out from beneath a rock on the cliff side, but it was genuine water. Each of them had to wait their turn (Hrolf insisted that his mother go first) to dip their tongue into the seep and lap a bit, and then wait a minute for more water to seep out for the next creature. Hrolf was sad to realize that even if he got Mistress to bring her bucket to this place, it would take hours or days for the bucket to fill.
But they’d each had enough water to sustain them through another day of searching. As they traversed the forests of Madewell Mountain, and Ledbetter Mountain too, everywhere they saw the effects of the drought: the carcasses of birds, animals, and reptiles who had perished. They came across the bodies of whole families of mice, squirrel, rabbit, possum, porcupine, skunk and coon. Some of the creatures were sprawled out full length on the ground as if they had used the last of their strength to try to reach water somewhere.
It was Robert who found the bears. There was a cave mouth mostly concealed by leaves and brush, and he burrowed through the camouflage, went into the interior of the earth, and came back in a little while, saying, Come and look! There used to be a little stream of water in there, but it’s dried up now. There’s a dead bear sow lying beside it, with one of her dead cubs. The other cub looks like he’s still alive.
They all went into the cave to investigate. It was much cooler in there, which was a relief, but the cave’s stream of water was nothing but drying mud. There was a stink from the bodies of the dead sow and the cub. The other cub was unable to move, and his eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. He was scrawny and pitiful and his black fur was matted and grungy.
Ma, I’m doubtful that he would be much of a birthday present, Hrolf observed.
We’ll have to take care of him one way or the other, as long as he’s still alive, she said. First we have to figure out how to get him home.
They tried nudging the cub into a walking or crawling posture, but the cub could not keep himself righted. If they could get him out of here at all, the first thing they’d have to do would be get him to that little trickle of a spring and get him to drink as much water as he could.
Hrolf’s mother took charge. Dewey, she said, would you mind lying down on top of the bear sow and rolling around?
For heaven’s sake, why? Dewey wanted to know.
So you’ll get her scent on your own body. So the cub won’t be so afraid of you.
With a look of disgust, Dewey lay atop the dead sow and squirmed around, getting her scent onto his own hide.
Now, Hrolf’s mother said, let’s see if we can’t get the cub up onto Dewey’s back. Lie down, Dewey, and when we’ve got the cub on your back, stand up, but don’t bump the cub on the ceiling of the cave.
They all cooperated in tugging and pushing the cub into position along Dewey’s spine, with the cub’s paws on either flank.
When Dewey stood up, he yelped, Yeoww! He’s sinking his claws into me!
Good, Hrolf’s mother said. He’s trying to hold on. Let’s get out of here.
Hrolf and Hroberta walked on either side of Dewey to make sure the cub wouldn’t topple off, and thus they made their way slowly back to the cliff side where the tiny trickle of springwater had been found. There, Dewey knelt and they gentled the cub off of Dewey’s back and led him to the spring. But he would not drink.
Maybe he was still nursing, Hrolf observed. Maybe he hasn’t learned how to drink.
No, Hrolf’s mother said, he’s too old to be nursing. He’s probably weaned. Let’s hope so. Our next step, if we can get him to drink, is to find something for him to eat.
Hrolf’s mother crept to the spring and lapped up a mouthful of water and put her mouth to the cub’s mouth and spewed or sprayed the water into the cub’s mouth. The cub shook his head in rejection of the dog-smelling water. But Hrolf’s mother kept at it, and finally got the cub to swallow some water. Then she put her paw on the cub’s head and forced his head down to the spring’s trickle, and the cub got the idea and began to lap at the water.
When the cub had drunk all the water he could hold, they each slowly took a drink, and then they got the cub up onto Dewey’s back again and headed out in the direction of home.
Ralgrub, Hrolf’s mother said, what would your cousin like to eat, do you think?
Mast, Ralgrub said.
Come again?
Mast. Acorns and nuts.
Eww! said the dogs.
Okay, gang, let’s round up some mast.
The drought had cut back the trees’ production of fruit, and few of the nuts had yet fallen this early in the fall, but both Ralgrub and Robert were able to climb some trees and knock down a few acorns and nuts. The hickory nuts were hard to crack, but the pecans cracked easily enough in a dog’s powerful jaws, and Hrolf’s mother directed them to masticate enough nut meat to make a mess that might appeal to the cub despite its scent of canine saliva. As it had at the spring, several attempts were required before they could get the cub to eat the masticated nutmeats. And in the process all of them grew powerfully hungry themselves. Ralgrub could eat some of the mast herself, but for the others there was only the carrion of drought-slain animals, which, if they could find a freshly deceased bird or rodent, sufficed. Lucky Dewey could survive on twigs and brush and what little grass had survived the drought.
The food and drink restored the cub’s spirits to the point where he could put up resistance to being abducted. He began to growl in his whiney little voice, and more than once attempted to escape from Dewey’s back, but the vigilant expedition crew kept him in place. Before they reached home they had to stop again to gather mast, masticate it (Hrolf wondered if mast got its name from being masticated), and feed the cub, although no further water was found for any of them. After the second time they fed the cub, instead of resuming his perch on Dewey’s back for the continued journey home, he snarled and climbed a tree. The dogs impulsively barked at him, thei
r instincts being to bark at anything which is treed, and that didn’t help. Ralgrub and Robert had to go up after him, and perhaps Ralgrub knew enough of bear language to assure the cub that they were all his friends and had no intention of eating him, and besides, didn’t he want the comfort of Dewey’s back, which smelled like his mother? Somehow Ralgrub and Robert got him to come back down out of the tree and resume his perch on Dewey.
As they neared home, Hrolf conferred with his lieutenants about how they would keep the cub until it was time to present it to Mistress on her birthday. They didn’t know just when her birthday was, and the exact date didn’t matter, but they did have to decide on a day, and maybe they should wait a few days to give the cub time to fatten up and regain some of his health and strength. While Ralgrub had the manual dexterity to tie a red ribbon around the cub’s neck when it came time to make the presentation, she could not tie a rope around the cub’s neck to restrain him until the birthday. They needed some place to keep him until the presentation.
Hrolf’s mother suggested using the abandoned beaver lodge, a brilliant idea. They coaxed the cub into it, left him with a small but adequate supply of mast, and closed the opening to the lodge with sticks and brush. Ralgrub attempted to have a chat with the cub before they left it, to tell the cub they’d soon be back and would soon be delivering the cub as an offering to a goddess, a beautiful human girl whose twelfth birthday would be greatly enhanced by the cub’s presence. Whether the cub understood any of Ralgrub’s words was doubtful, but he promptly curled himself up and fell asleep in his new temporary home.
The beaver lodge was just outside the haunt of the in-habit, and as soon as they stepped across the line on their way home, the in-habit met them, or at least his voice did. Well, howdy, did you’uns find any water anywheres?
No, but we found a bear cub, Hrolf told him. We’re keeping him in the beaver lodge.
Won’t be ary bit of use, lessen you find some water.
They all sighed. Hrolf was tempted to say to the in-habit, You’re lucky you don’t have to drink anyhow. But that would be catty, and he was a noble dog. Instead he asked, How’s Mistress?
She aint a-bleedin no more, the in-habit said. She’s just fine, aside from being real thirsty, but she’s been missin you’uns something terrible.
They all went home to kiss and lick and be hugged by Mistress. Although she said she was just fine, she was obviously suffering from lack of water. So were they all. There was a nearly tangible or smellable pall in the air, a sense of impending doom. Hrolf decided that if they were all going to perish from the drought, as all those creatures in the forest had perished, he would be noble to the end, and with his last breath he would be guarding the bodies of his mother, Mistress, and the others. Or, come to think of it, probably Dewey and Sheba would be the last ones alive. Sheba didn’t seem to need any water, or at least she could go for a long time without drinking, and Dewey seemed to be able to get the moisture he needed out of bushes and leaves. Hrolf didn’t like the idea of being survived by others, and he would try his best to stay alive. The bear cub was an inspiration to him. If the cub had somehow survived after his mother and his sister died, Hrolf could do likewise.
Knowing that bears are mostly nocturnal, Hrolf went back at night to the beaver lodge to sit outside the closed opening and try to teach his noble language to the cub, so he could tell the cub of the kinship he felt for it as well as the encouragement he’d received from the cub’s example in surviving the passing of his family. But the only dogtalk the cub was interested in learning were swear words, coarse exclamations that sounded like he was trying to say Shoot far! and Up yours! and Your mother! Hrolf shook his head and decided, This is one cantankerous bear.
Hrolf’s mother decided which day would be Mistress’ birthday, possibly in consultation with Mistress herself and that device they used which was called a Ouija Board. Nothing else was planned for the birthday. The supply of flour Robin had ground from her wheat was insufficient for making a birthday cake. Ralgrub went into the storeroom while Mistress wasn’t looking and filched a red ribbon. Ralgrub had already told the cub how handsome he would look with a red ribbon tied around his neck, and all the other promises and expectations that she and Hrolf had bombarded the cub with appeared to be the reasons the cub was willing to leave the beaver lodge readily and walk the distance to the homestead with his canine and feline escorts. Adam joined them when they stopped so that Ralgrub with her dexterous fingers could attempt to tie the red ribbon around the cub’s neck. That sure is a mighty fine bar, Adam complimented Hrolf. Let’s just hope he aint too rambunctious.
Hrolf could see Mistress waiting for them. She was standing on the porch of her house, with Sheba wrapped around her neck and bare chest. She was shading her eyes from the sun and squinting but the squinting wasn’t because of the sun; it was because her eyes were going bad. As they approached across the meadow and into the yard of the house, they were finally close enough for her to recognize them, although she couldn’t recognize the beribboned bear cub they had in tow. Her squinting eyes finally lit up in recognition of the new animal, but then her face darkened, as if a cloud had passed over it. Indeed, Hrolf looked up at the sky and saw the clouds, and then he heard the rumble, and then the boom. Hrolf was the only one of them all, except possibly the in-habit, who was not frightened by the sound of the thunder. The rain began before they reached the porch, so they ran joyfully the last of the way. Shoot far! Hrolf yelled. Water! They all reached the porch, and the cub was very reluctant to climb the porch steps into human company, but the downpour began and prompted him into the porch’s shelter.
Happy birthday, gal! the in-habit spoke for them all, although they were each trying in noble dog language to say the same thing. “Hrolf! Hrolf! Hrolf!” he shouted blissfully, joining his voice to the chorus all around them. He didn’t know which made him happier, the downpour ending the drought, or his accomplishment of his mother’s decree to obtain for Mistress a bear cub for her birthday.
Mistress was beside herself with joy. She held her arms up to the heavens to feel the rain and she splashed it onto her face as it fell and happily drank it. Then she dropped to her knees and attempted to hug the cub, who would have none of it, who said Piss off! and shied away from her.
“Oh, Paddington!” she cried.
Chapter thirty-seven
I had distinctly mixed feelings about that bear cub. While I agreed with the others that the acquisition of a twelfth birthday present for Robin was almost as wonderful as the coming of the rain (which went on and on until the well filled and the spring ran and the beaver pond brought its builders home), I had many reservations about bringing such an obstreperous beast into the menagerie. During the time Adam had lived there, that is, the same number of years Robin had now been alive, he had never seen a bear. I had seen their plantigrade tracks here and there, but I could only imagine, from stories my grandfather told me about them, what they looked like. I had heard plenty of these, such as the tale about the bear hunter who always shot his bear just enough to irritate and not cripple it and then ran for home with the mad bear hot on his heels and waited until they’d reached the cabin before shooting the bear dead; that way, he didn’t have to worry about lugging home a five-hundred pound carcass. I had plenty of respect for and fear of the largest of all local wild creatures, but I had never encountered one. Now the beast that Robin unwisely chose to call by the same name she’d called her little stuffed animal (and she’d told me all about that Paddington) was very young and very cute (“adorable” was her word for his deceptively mild and cuddly appearance) and bore no resemblance to the fearsome hulking monster I’d imagined, but would in time come to lose his cuteness, and become a thoroughly ferocious, virile and lumbering fellow. I was, quite frankly, jealous of what he would become.
In my present maturity I’ve learned a few things apart from the appearance and behavior of adult bears: the name Paddington was cribbed from a mythical (and adorable) bear in
the stories of Michael Bond, who gave the animal that name because he happened to live near Paddington Railway Station in London. And, unlike the other creatures in Robin’s menagerie, this Paddington should not have been made into a pet, because wild bears, being solitary creatures who don’t do mutual grooming of one another, don’t understand the idea of petting. Thus, for a long time Paddington resisted Robin’s efforts to take him to bed with her. She did not know that his assorted screeches and snarls were obscene and hostile in dogtalk, but she was hurt that he refused to snuggle up with her in bed or even on the davenport. And I, at twelve, was at a loss to explain anything to her or to help her.
She, at twelve, had already outgrown me. That in itself was unsettling enough, although of course she didn’t know it, being unable to see that the top of my head came only to her hairline, and I wasn’t going to tell her that she was taller than I. She seemed to be leaving me behind in her growth, not just physically but intellectually and emotionally.
The in-habit, meaning me, was certainly capable of crying, laughing, coughing, sneezing, and, to use that quaint participle created out of the verb, coming (although I preferred Robin’s reaching). This might be the proper place to confess that Adam Madewell as he turned thirteen and then fourteen out there in Rutherford, California may have sometimes remembered the self that he willed himself to leave behind on Madewell Mountain, and in such moments of remembrance or at least in his dreams wondered if the in-habit was having a good time jacking off, as he’d learned to call it in California.
What frustrated me more than the inability to actually have sex with Robin was the inability to do anything physical for her. She needed someone to cut down some trees for her: each winter she had to get her firewood by dragging in limbs of deadwood, usually the result of the ice storms that came nearly every winter. She needed someone to help her spade the garden, although year by year as she grew older and stronger she was able to spade more and more of it by herself. There was so much work to be done around the place, chores that Adam had regularly performed when he lived there but which his puny in-habit could not handle. If I’d been able to lift a finger to help, the first thing I would have done, years earlier, would have been to give Sog Alan’s skeleton a burial, but it was still there now, sitting and grinning in the outhouse, although Robin was old enough and strong enough to dig a hole to bury it if she chose. She had the decency, if that is the word, to put one of Sog’s hats on the skeleton’s head, so he wasn’t completely nude, although the result reminded me of Donatello’s David, that is, it simply called attention to the rest of the skeleton’s nakedness. Sometimes she went and spoke to it, and of course I eavesdropped, as I pricked up my ears at her every word and gawked at her every act. “I hope you’re satisfied,” was something she often said to it, the skeleton. Just the other morning she said to it, “I think that sometime around now I’m supposed to start eighth grade at Harrison Junior High, but I can’t, because you wanted a little girl to fuck, although you never did, or never could.”
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