The Last Neanderthal

by Claire Cameron

  Girl knew this game and that it was in her interest to stay clear. This male bear had satisfied his needs for water, food, and rest. And now he wanted to mate. There was one viable female at the meeting place that day. By killing the cubs, he could hope that the mother would turn her attention to him.

  The mother bear was strong and a good fighter, which only convinced the male bear that his efforts were worth the trouble. The harder she fought, the clearer it was that his potential offspring would stand a good chance under her care, and the more determined he became to win his prize. While he wasn’t mortally injuring the mother, he was hurting her. They both reared up on their hindquarters and pushed against each other’s paws. She swung her large head around and caught him in the jaw. He took advantage of her waver in balance and checked her with a rounded shoulder. They went sprawling across the sand and into the shallows.

  The smells and the sounds thrilled Girl, the mother’s great roars and the male’s snarling growls. There was a huff of milk and the stench of fear and fighting. Soon their coats were matted with spit. Their muscles were tiring and they rolled and stumbled along the shallow shore. There was blood on the teeth of one and sand in the eyes of the other. An ear was torn. A claw split. There would be some kind of resolution soon.

  They rolled into the river with a huge splash. The male came down on top of the mother with all his weight. She was pushed sideways and into the deeper waters. She paddled and pushed, but her body was dragged downriver with the current. The male knew this was his chance. He sprang out of the water and lunged for the cubs. Having anxiously followed their mother into the shallows, they scattered in different directions.

  There was another roar. And it came from the brush.

  At first Girl thought the roar was from another bear—the sound was that well-developed low tone in the throat. She strained forward to see if the mother had made it back already, but she had been swept far down the river by the current. While the sow paddled hard, Girl saw that she had only just made it to an eddy and still struggled to pull herself out. If it wasn’t her roaring in the bushes, then had another bear taken up her cause? It would be the first time Girl had seen such a thing. Bears usually lived solitary lives. One didn’t get caught up in the business of another.

  So what was this in the brush, roaring and disturbing the leaves? Girl squinted and leaned from her branch for a better look. She saw a stick waving and then the bushes were pushed to the side. Out popped Runt.

  Runt waved his stick and yelled at the two cubs. He barked at them as though he were their mother telling them to stay away. And then he lifted his stick and pointed it at the charging male bear. He bared his teeth, and his bulging eyes were open wide. He made a fierce face and waved his arms over his head while marching toward the bear.

  Girl’s heart seemed to fall out of the tree and roll toward the river. She wanted to be right there to grab the boy, but she knew she could never get to him in time. The male bear was charging fast at the cubs. With each stride, Runt screamed and yelled more, as though in a fury. Girl’s first thought was that one of the green plants he had eaten must have turned his mind mad. She wondered if it had given him a deluded belief in his own strength.

  The male bear still had his eyes on the cubs. The two little things had run to separate trees. One got a paw on the bark and the other started to climb, and it was just then that the large bear’s head snapped around and he set his sights on Runt. He lurched in the boy’s direction. With her heart now in the icy waters of the river, Girl watched. If Runt made it through this charge, she would do her best to grab the boy, or what might be left of him. Girl had to force herself to keep looking.

  The male bear charged for another two strides and then stopped dead. His front paws jammed into the mud of the shallows and he halted his momentum with his heavily muscled shoulders. Runt continued to wave and yell. The bear sniffed the air and stood up on his hind legs to look at Runt. He tilted his head and kept his nose to the wind. Then he dropped to all fours, nodded to the wind, and turned.

  Mouth agape, Girl watched as the bear loped into the brush and disappeared. Soon the mother made it back up the bank to her cubs. After she’d finished licking her wounds, the two small bodies curled up to nurse.

  The air settled slowly around the river, but it took Girl longer to do the same. She sat by the hearth and turned the strips of fish that smoked on racks to dry, as she was starting to feel the cooler press of summer’s end on her skin. Runt was gone for some time but later came striding to the hearth like it was any other evening. He had the reed basket on his hip, but it was lined with leaves and filled with hazelnuts instead of fish. The branches were starting to let them go. She had almost forgotten that she had asked him to collect them.

  Runt placed the basket on the ground. Hazelnuts spoiled quickly in the heat. They had to be roasted or the worms would find their way in. She had taught Runt how to do this. When she put the hazelnuts in coals long enough to get hot, she could crack them and pour their hot oil into a turtle shell. This was good to drink or for curing a hide before winter; the pores were closed with a bone tool and oil worked into the hide to repel water. They would also pound the meat of the nuts to make into cakes with fish and berries. Girl looked at Runt long and hard. He avoided her eyes and started to tuck the nuts around the edge of the coals.

  For Runt, it was like many other evenings. For Girl, it was like none before. Maybe the altercation with the bear had ended peacefully this time, but she believed that bears had long memories. A truce was a delicate balance. It had been held for as long as her memories went back; that way their energy wasn’t wasted on needless fights. It kept their numbers up. If there was enough fish for all, the family had no interest in changing anything. The truce wasn’t something that was discussed or debated. It just was.

  And now Runt had gone and tilted it by provoking the male bear. The bear might now see Runt and others like him in a new way and remember the frustration of being unsuccessful when attempting to mate. Though it was hard to know when or where that frustration would spring, it would come with the deepest roar. There had been a disturbance in the order of things.

  Girl had an urge that bubbled up in her throat. She couldn’t just shout at Runt or scold him. She searched for a word that might speak of the delicate equation of fear and respect that went into their truce with the bears, but her lips hung slack. The task felt too difficult; it would be like walking up to a bear cub, tapping him on the shoulder, and trying to explain to him. Runt was young. His behavior was sometimes unpredictable and he was an odd boy.

  For a mother bear, there was no point in trying to convey her wishes to her offspring through subtle means. There was a way to do things and the methods weren’t up for question. She might push him toward food and warn him away from danger. If a cub did something foolish, the mother bear might bat him with a paw. But in the long run, a young cub either learned and did things right or died. And Girl was at a loss about what to do for similar reasons. The gulf that lay between her and the bear felt as vast as that between her and Runt.

  She looked down at the fire. The shells of the hazelnuts were starting to char, and the smells met her as memories. When her sister was still with their family the year before, they had made dough from mush and the meat of nuts when it had hardened just enough. Big Girl handed her berries to stick in the dough. Then they wrapped it around a stick and held it over the fire; the aroma rose up like heat from the flames. Once it was baked, she and her sister ate the bread straight from the stick, the glow of the fire on their skin, basking in the warmth of each other’s companionship.

  With no words to convey the complexity of her thoughts, Girl focused on what she could do. She wanted to eat warm bread by the fire as she had before. She handed Runt a small tool that she had shaped out of a shard of stone. He had proved himself especially good at cracking the nuts with it, making a small puncture first on one side and then the other. Carefully, he poured out the oil without bu
rning his skin. While his thin hands lacked strength, they were very good for this kind of work. She pounded the cooked nuts on a depression in a rock to make a paste while Runt continued making the oil.

  Beside her, Runt started to hum. It was a lower pitch than his usual one and it seemed to flow over her. Soon she joined in. Her nasal sounds were like the rocks that made bumps and turns in the river, while his smooth water flowed over the top. Wildcat ate a nut and listened and let his eyelids fall. They worked the nuts until the basket was empty.

  The dark wrapped in tight around them as the light from the fire lit up their faces. They sang and worked. They didn’t speak of bears and the order of things. There were no words.

  19.

  Girl stood in ankle-deep water in the river. She planted her spear in the soft sand and leaned on it. Her feet were swollen and sore and the water did wonders to cool them. Her belly was heavier. She spent much of her time feeling uncomfortably hot. She had found a favorite spot beside the river under the broad shade of a leafy tree. Runt played with rocks in the shallows for long spells.

  Given how scrawny Runt was, he could throw rocks surprisingly long distances. He was already rivaling some of Big Mother’s best throws, and Girl wished the woman were alive to see. There was something about the way Runt’s arm was hinged onto his body—perhaps the lack of heavy muscle—that let it swing in a wide arc. And his arm was long in relation to his body, which allowed for great force behind each fling. He might turn out to be among the best throwers of the families. She was glad for this, or perhaps relieved. While he was no longer ugly to her, his looks certainly weren’t conventional. He would need to prove himself more than most others did.

  A battered fish nosed around in the shallow water in front of her. Its scaly skin had turned a bright orange, which happened just before they died. This told her that the fish were almost finished with their journey, and it would soon be time for her and Runt to go. The bears would stay on and gorge on the dead fish bodies, as was their way, but the families took their dried fish and turned back toward their lands.

  This spoke of the vital difference in how the two groups weathered the winter. The bears ate the live fish as well as the dead. They ate anything and everything in order to bulk up their bodies. The goal was to get their coats as glossy and full of oil as possible for warmth, with a broad covering of fat underneath. The bears would then dig themselves into a pit and sleep safe and snug through the worst of the storms. All the nourishment they required was right on their own bear backs. They could rest without worry.

  Over the years, the families had developed a different tactic. While they also fattened up during the fish run, their bodies were smaller than the bears’, their hides thinner, and they couldn’t store as much fat. They couldn’t afford to go into a deep, months-long sleep. Their bodies simply couldn’t sustain them in the same way. To compensate, they had to dry fish with smoke during the summer. They carried it back to their camp, and it became their fuel through the autumn bison hunt. They also collected nuts and berries, made pastes, and boiled fat for lamps.

  However, the family did some things the bears did—they hunkered down for the winter. They dug into their huts and used snow for insulation. Their heart rates decreased and their bodies became slow. They called the state they went into wintersleep. That’s how they knew they were in it: when a body could barely slur out the word. Each of them chewed on a piece of meat only once a day and took a few mouthfuls of water. It was just enough to keep things in the body ticking but use very little energy.

  Every now and then, they would wake more fully. The timing was decided by Big Mother and depended on complex factors such as the ferocity of the storms that year, the state of their food supply, and the health of the bodies inside the hut. Many other things were involved—the weight of the clouds, the composition of the snow, and reports through the trees of what was going on elsewhere. When it was time, Big Mother would light a fat lamp and wake everyone to eat a more varied meal, make repairs to the hut as needed, dig out, and clear their bowels.

  Traditionally this was a time when some deliberate mating would take place. If a Big Mother hadn’t got pregnant at the meeting place, she would save face by feeding herself slightly more to stay tuned to her cycle. She would know the right time and wake the man she chose with a nice piece of meat. While the others were sunk into wintersleep, the couple would mate. These were the more private moments to copulate, as opposed to the rather spectacular and often public displays at the meeting grounds.

  Babies conceived during wintersleep were born in late summer. It was considered optimal timing, because the baby could suckle during the autumn hunt while the mother was full of fish. The infant would be big enough to remain alive through the next wintersleep. Similar good timing was a baby conceived at the meeting grounds. A baby would usually be born when spring took hold, food became more abundant, and the dangers of early spring were past. While some babies were born during the height of winter, as Girl’s would be, the older Big Mothers often greeted the news that a baby would arrive in the leanest months of the winter with scowls. It was a risk. The mother, having weathered the worst of wintersleep while pregnant, would then have to enter the starving months of early spring with a newborn baby. Her milk and energy would be low. It could be managed, but the already slim chances of an infant’s survival became even lower.

  Girl’s belly had grown bigger. Her breasts grew, as the flesh of the best fish was now plumping them up. Her body fed on their oil and it spread across her skin like the smoothest scales from the fish’s bellies. Her hair took on the color of their flesh and became the brightest red. The line of freckles across her nose looked like the spots on their fins. She was bursting with the beauty of the fish, but she felt none of it.

  She looked up to the sky. The sun was already staying awake for a shorter time. The clouds overhead gave a rumble. It wasn’t thunder but a small pulse that she could feel on the skin under her lip. She gave the air a sniff. Soon the weather would turn. Lifting a wet foot, leaning more on her spear, she closed her eyes. With the fine bones of her foot, she could feel that the pressure in the air was dropping. The winter storms were a way off, but the first hints of them had already arrived.

  Maybe it was that—a heavy, pressing cloud—that made her look up to where the middle fork of the river split the trees. She hadn’t smelled the scent on the air, but a small movement caught her eye—the twitch of a branch. It rattled just slightly and she knew something was there, high on a rocky perch above the river. It was a known lookout, the best place to see what was happening at the meeting place if approaching from the middle fork of the river.

  Soon fine ripples of heat wafted out from the spot. It was the heat of live meat. From there she was able to define the shape, which clung to the trunk of the tree, using it for cover and peeking around. It watched them. And one more thing: the shape of the body was long and tall. It was upright. That meant it was from one of the families.

  Girl’s heart thumped hard, but she didn’t move. She only watched, not wanting to scare the body. It might be someone who didn’t recognize her with a pregnant belly. Girl waited for the body to catch her scent. A body that belonged to the family would have good eyes and would be able to see her even from such a distance. She lowered her spear. She didn’t want to drop it in the water, so she tucked it between her knees to show the body that she meant no harm. Slowly, she spread the fingers on her left hand. She raised her palm in a greeting.

  She waited like that to make sure the signal was clear. The body seemed to take her in for a moment, then it ducked back behind the tree. She watched as the ripples from its heat faded. She had no doubt that it had marked her and seen her greeting and that it would now come down and find her here. If it was coming from near the middle fork, it was probably someone from the family Big Girl had taken over. Her sister would welcome Girl and Runt.

  Though Girl waited, the body didn’t come to return her greeting. Runt got ti
red of playing and went back to the hearth to stir the fire. He called for her to come, but Girl found her feet unable to move. Much later, she went up to eat and sleep, but she came back to the river early the next morning to keep watch for the body. She did the same thing the next day.

  On that third day, as Girl stood and watched from the same place, a dying fish nosed listlessly in front of her feet. Its skin was punctured and torn. Its eyes, once black, were clouded. The trauma of following its kin up the river had taken its toll. It was almost dead. But still, the broken fish pointed its nose upstream and muscled on with a weary tail. She knew it would continue that way until it died. She didn’t have to ask why. The fish followed an instinct that pushed it to the end. Her instincts did the same.

  By then, she felt the pull of the family. It was so strong that she didn’t need to make a decision. The family was just as powerful for her as the upstream direction was for that fish. If the family did not come down to the meeting place, there must be a reason. She would go and find them.

  20.

  Girl and Runt left the meeting place when they had the largest bundle of dried fish, hackberries, and hazelnuts that they could carry. Runt was stronger after the fish run. His legs had gained length and muscle. He walked with a new, elegant stride. He seemed abruptly older. Girl guessed he had lived to about seven fish runs by then, though his odd size made it hard to say. She plopped his pack, much heavier this time, on his back, and he swayed only slightly with a smile on his face. Girl took a heavier load on her back too, but she carried nothing else. Her rounder belly and breasts were heavy, too, and took up all the room on the front of her body.