around our hut.
Dad smelled like wood smoke and tobacco. So did the air about me. Peace buzzed through the air and landed lightly on us and made me smile. Did we live happily ever after?
I didn’t know what happiness was then, but I lived in it; I breathed it in.
I finish juggling with a high throw. While the third ball is overhead, I clap my right hand to my left, transferring its ball. I catch the high ball with my empty hand, letting only my arms do the work.
Brooks sits before me, eyes tracing each movement.
“Let’s take the day off, Brooks,” I say, packing the balls away for the day.
An idea comes to me as I speak. “We’ll just leave everything here and walk up this draw along the creek. Maybe I’ll see something with the monocle from the ridge.”
I fill Brooks’s pack with cheese and nuts, drop the monocle in a shirt pocket and snap on my waist belt filled with bangers and bear spray and bug dope. We climb a knoll through dwarf birch and look back at my camp. A smudge of campfire smoke still drifts across the tundra. I think about returning to put it out, but the tundra is wet. It shouldn’t burn.
The brush is thick, and I need both arms to push my way through. Brooks gets stuck again and again with his pack. He whines and turns to bite himself free. I haul on his collar.
I haven’t eaten breakfast. I put my hands on my stomach.
It’s sunken in. I’m not hungry, of course. At home I mostly eat in bed at night while I read. Here I can’t do that.
Ahead I see an open patch covered with dried bearberry and blueberry leaves like a splash of spilled red wine. The golden bear is grazing in the berry patch. He is minding his own business, shoveling berries—leaves and all—between his loose black lips. Startled, he glances over at us and shakes his head.
Brooks dashes to the bear and stands by its head, barking his foolish head off. Like a boxer, he dances back and forth. The bear lifts his massive head, crowberry plants trailing out both sides of his mouth.
Brooks nips at its front leg. Like a demented terrier, he grasps the leg between his jaws, his whole body tossing with the effort.
“Brooks!”
No response.
The bear makes a grating sound like he’s grinding his teeth.
“Come!”
I see a paw with claws like hunting knives reach up and swipe through the bright air. Then Brooks is on the ground, lost under a mountain of shaking fur.
“No!” Not my voice. Not my voice at all.
Brooks screams; the bear grunts. Brooks is between the bear’s jaws now, being shaken back and forth like a towel. His ears hang down.
I screw the cylinder of gunpowder into the banger.
I want to run. It’s such an enormous effort not to.
Instead I point the banger into the air and then lower it a fraction so the flare will explode slightly toward me. I don’t want the bear to be scared in my direction. I pull back on the safety and, almost in the same motion, grab my bear spray from its holster and yank off its safety just in case the bear won’t leave.
The flare explodes with an orange tail.
The bear is running low to the ground. I see his yellow stripe rippling from head to tail, shoulder hump pumping as he escapes. Pee dribbles between his back legs. I can smell it, sour and hot.
I screw in another flare and watch it explode.
Willow branches snap back and forth. Behind the bear, bushes shake until gradually they still.
No birds.
Brooks lies on the ground without moving, his green pack ripped open.
The cheese is bloody. So are the nuts. Brooks’s blood blends with the red plants of the tundra.
I pick up the empty gunpowder shells from the earth and stick them in my pocket. I don’t know why; they’re completely useless but I want to hang on to them.
Then someone is screaming. Noises pour from my mouth. I fold my arms around my chest to keep them in.
Everything I love disappears. I’ll never see our cabin again. My father won’t come back. And now, neither will Brooks. There’s just
Dad smelled like wood smoke and tobacco. So did the air about me. Peace buzzed through the air and landed lightly on us and made me smile. Did we live happily ever after?
I didn’t know what happiness was then, but I lived in it; I breathed it in.
I finish juggling with a high throw. While the third ball is overhead, I clap my right hand to my left, transferring its ball. I catch the high ball with my empty hand, letting only my arms do the work.
Brooks sits before me, eyes tracing each movement.
“Let’s take the day off, Brooks,” I say, packing the balls away for the day.
An idea comes to me as I speak. “We’ll just leave everything here and walk up this draw along the creek. Maybe I’ll see something with the monocle from the ridge.”
I fill Brooks’s pack with cheese and nuts, drop the monocle in a shirt pocket and snap on my waist belt filled with bangers and bear spray and bug dope. We climb a knoll through dwarf birch and look back at my camp. A smudge of campfire smoke still drifts across the tundra. I think about returning to put it out, but the tundra is wet. It shouldn’t burn.
The brush is thick, and I need both arms to push my way through. Brooks gets stuck again and again with his pack. He whines and turns to bite himself free. I haul on his collar.
I haven’t eaten breakfast. I put my hands on my stomach.
It’s sunken in. I’m not hungry, of course. At home I mostly eat in bed at night while I read. Here I can’t do that.
Ahead I see an open patch covered with dried bearberry and blueberry leaves like a splash of spilled red wine. The golden bear is grazing in the berry patch. He is minding his own business, shoveling berries—leaves and all—between his loose black lips. Startled, he glances over at us and shakes his head.
Brooks dashes to the bear and stands by its head, barking his foolish head off. Like a boxer, he dances back and forth. The bear lifts his massive head, crowberry plants trailing out both sides of his mouth.
Brooks nips at its front leg. Like a demented terrier, he grasps the leg between his jaws, his whole body tossing with the effort.
“Brooks!”
No response.
The bear makes a grating sound like he’s grinding his teeth.
“Come!”
I see a paw with claws like hunting knives reach up and swipe through the bright air. Then Brooks is on the ground, lost under a mountain of shaking fur.
“No!” Not my voice. Not my voice at all.
Brooks screams; the bear grunts. Brooks is between the bear’s jaws now, being shaken back and forth like a towel. His ears hang down.
I screw the cylinder of gunpowder into the banger.
I want to run. It’s such an enormous effort not to.
Instead I point the banger into the air and then lower it a fraction so the flare will explode slightly toward me. I don’t want the bear to be scared in my direction. I pull back on the safety and, almost in the same motion, grab my bear spray from its holster and yank off its safety just in case the bear won’t leave.
The flare explodes with an orange tail.
The bear is running low to the ground. I see his yellow stripe rippling from head to tail, shoulder hump pumping as he escapes. Pee dribbles between his back legs. I can smell it, sour and hot.
I screw in another flare and watch it explode.
Willow branches snap back and forth. Behind the bear, bushes shake until gradually they still.
No birds.
Brooks lies on the ground without moving, his green pack ripped open.
The cheese is bloody. So are the nuts. Brooks’s blood blends with the red plants of the tundra.
I pick up the empty gunpowder shells from the earth and stick them in my pocket. I don’t know why; they’re completely useless but I want to hang on to them.
Then someone is screaming. Noises pour from my mouth. I fold my arms around my chest to keep them in.
Everything I love disappears. I’ll never see our cabin again. My father won’t come back. And now, neither will Brooks. There’s just
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