Authors: Melanie Jackson
Thomas had to admit that he was feeling grim too. The
thought of a little boy running into a bear was terrifying. He feared for
Butterscotch too though she would have a gun. The talk of bears in the woods hadn’t
frightened him before because he had doubted that any actual threat was nearby.
But now he knew there was at least one bear out there. Thomas was not
completely ignorant of what bears could do. He had read reports and seen
photographs of bear attacks as part of his training to become a biologist. A
small child could be literally ripped to shreds. The town could end up having
another funeral for a hand.
Wendell’s “dogs” ran ahead of them. There were two of them,
the ones he said were the best bear trackers. Their answering wails and yowls raised
the hair on his arms. Wolf hybrids be damned. He hadn’t specialized in mammals,
but these were pure-blooded timber wolves or he would eat his pressed wool hat.
And knowing they were facing the meanest and strongest animal in the forest, he
wasn’t prepared to quibble about anyone in town keeping them, even supposing
there was any kind of ordinance against it, which seemed doubtful.
They were running flat out to keep up with the wolves.
Thomas just hoped he didn’t disgrace himself by passing out from lack of oxygen.
He jogged in the city—three miles every day—but that was nothing like running
through a mountainous forest, thick with undergrowth and hidden ravines that
could maim or kill the unwary. All he could do was pray that Wendell knew what
he was doing and that they got there in time.
* *
*
I know the woods well, but that morning it felt like Linda
and I had wandered into a dangerous fairytale where there could be dragons and
gargoyles and wendigos hiding behind every rock.
Have you ever noticed that some trees—some species of trees—have
identities? That they are individuals, each as different from each other as
people are? They branch oddly and often seem more sinister than friendly. No
one has ever done an estimate of how many trees there are per acre around the
Gulch, but it is a lot of them, and I swear every last one of them thrust up a
root and tried to trip me or clawed at my face with wooden fingers.
My imagination needn’t have tried frightening me with
hideous fairy stories of malevolent trees and supernatural beings. The thought
of Ricky running into a bear was as horrifying as anything my mind or the
Brothers Grimm could think up. After all, adrenaline in homeopathic doses is
good, but not so great if it keeps pumping into the system until the heart
explodes. I needed purpose, will, and energy, not mindless dread. I had to get
on top of the fear though I was damned if I knew how.
The morning was advanced and the trees filled with sun which
became a moving kaleidoscope of light, a distraction I wished would go away.
“There he is!” Linda gasped.
I looked up to see that Max and Sisu had taken up positions
in front of Ricky. They weren’t dancing around in happiness at having won the
game. They were silent and snarling at something in the trees. The crashing
noises were moving away, but they did not relax their guard. If they could
smell a bear then the bear was too close.
* *
*
Thomas and Wendell burst into the clearing right behind Chuck.
Wendell’s wolves had joined Sisu and Max and were standing guard over Ricky—who
was fine, standing still with a pillowcase flung over his back. There wasn’t so
much as a smudge on him. Nor did he look frightened. Chuck almost collapsed in
relief.
Across the glade, Butterscotch and Linda were approaching
slowly, guns ready but not aiming at anything in particular. They were
breathing hard.
“The bear?” Wendell asked as they got close.
“Young female,” Butterscotch answered. “She came for the
berries at the crash site. She’s headed toward the Big Bones.”
She meant what the locals called the assumed Sasquatch
cemetery.
Butterscotch let Wendell put the dogs on a down and reward
them with pets and praise as she slumped against a boulder. She looked
exhausted as she raised her shotgun in the air and let off one round. That was
the standard sign that the lost party had been found.
The Mountie shook off his lethargy, caused by the sudden
drop in adrenaline that follows a life and death situation, and went over to hug
his wife.
“Thank God you’re alright,” he said into her hair which was
full of dead leaves and twigs.
“Mountie, shouldn’t we follow the bear?” Thomas asked.
Chuck exchanged glances with Wendell. The bear was headed
someplace that the locals shunned.
“No. Never follow a bear if you don’t have to,” he answered.
“Not even with four dogs. There is a good chance that she
isn’t alone,” Wendell added. “We could run into a sibling.”
* *
*
The journey out of the woods was a lot slower than the one
leading into it. Aches and pains and minor cuts and abrasions were making
themselves known, and it was after noon when we made it back to town.
There was much relief and an urge to celebrate the averted
disaster, so everyone went back to the inn for a drink. They had also resumed
speaking Gaelic.
“So it was your dogs I heard in the woods. They sure sounded
like wolves. Scared me witless,” Pete said to me as I sipped at my soda and he
gulped his whisky. He had helped Mark down from his bedroom so that he could
join the party and hear the bear stories, and the boy was having a good time
though everyone was speaking a foreign language.
The Flowers and Ricky were the only absentees. I hoped that
the Flowers had stopped crying.
“Probably. They get noisy when they smell bear.” This wasn’t
completely true. They got noisy if I told them to. But no way was I going to
admit that I had terrorized him on purpose.
Chuck took my hand. He was looking as wan as I felt.
“I sure am sorry I didn’t believe you folks about there
being bears out there. I have never, in all my years of survey work, heard of
bears in this part of the country.”
“You aren’t alone in that,” I said. “No one else believes us
either. Until we send them the bodies.”
“No, you aren’t alone in your skepticism,” young Thomas
admitted, taking a seat at our table. “I’m a biologist, did you know? Bears
aren’t my specialty but of course we studied them at school. I hadn’t heard
anything about there being bears here. This is something that needs study.”
A biologist? I looked at Chuck. Why hadn’t he mentioned
this? Or had he? I had been awfully distracted.
“No! No studies,” I said without thinking. “For Godsakes.
Just leave the bears alone. We don’t need any more—” I stopped myself before I
said “any more strangers around here.” “We don’t need anyone else getting hurt.
Every time outsiders go into the woods we end up with someone dead. Just leave
it be. Please.”
“I’m with you. Leave the damn things alone.” Pete nodded and
then got up to go get another drink. If he didn’t slow down he was going to
pass out. But perhaps that would be for the best.
“An enclave of Gaelic speakers is culturally significant
too,” Thomas said and Chuck groaned for both of us.
“Only to the two dozen people on the planet who study dead
languages. Thomas, what you and the surveyors—and the rest of the frickin’
world—don’t get is that we want to be left alone.” Chuck’s eyes got big. I
don’t go around dropping the modified f-bomb very often. “We don’t want to
trade in our freedom of thought and action for television and cellphones. Most
of us have had a good look at the outside world and don’t like it. We don’t
live in this remote place because we are ignorant of what the modern world has
to offer, but because we know it all too well.”
“But surely it would be better to have hospitals and police
and firemen.” I had the feeling he was playing devil’s advocate but answered
anyway.
“We have a doctor. As for police, we have Chuck. Anyway
there is no crime here.” Though almost everything we did and were was
technically illegal according to the rest of the world. “There has never been a
murder here, not in two hundred years.”
At least, no one in the Gulch killing someone from the
Gulch.
“There was a theft,” he said softly.
“No, there was an act of self-defense and everything will be
returned shortly.”
Chuck’s eyes got bigger and bigger. He was thinking that if
I kept on blabbing we would end up having to feed the Mountie to the bears. But
Thomas wasn’t stupid and I thought he could be reasoned with.
“Look, let me explain this another way. Out there, when you
do something good, there is little chance that it will be noticed or rewarded—or
even appreciated, right? Assuming you can even fight the inertia enough to get
something done. And there is a very good chance of recrimination and punishment
if you do something unexpected, or even if you do the right thing but others
don’t approve. Especially if you are a civil servant, eh. I’ve watched Chuck
and I can tell you, I’m not impressed with the forgiveness or fairness of the
police force you work for. And truly, isn’t that why you want to serve in the
outback? For a chance to do your job, to help people, without a lot of red tape?”
I held up my hand to forestall more argument or answers. “We don’t have that
bureaucracy here and we don’t want it. We have self-organized into a society
that thinks of itself as family—because it is mostly family—and it runs itself
that way. We rise together and we fall together. And mostly we just get on with
life. Real life. Not something constructed by the social engineers of
government, or the media, with their latest theories of sociology thought up by
billionaires with too much time on their hands and an urge to interfere by
organizing people according to their monetary convenience and distorted principals.”
I took a breath. “If you want to get on here or anywhere else in the outback,
just respect our choice to live as we do—and I promise that if you can do that,
you will be welcomed. Chuck is part of the town now—loved like family. You can
be too.”
Chuck was looking at me with concern as well as curiosity. I
just had to get to Seven Forks and find out if I was pregnant! The strain of
not knowing was making me crazy.
But Thomas was looking thoughtful after my speech, so maybe
my frankness had paid off. I decided to leave things there.
“Sorry, guys. I’m done. Today was traumatic and I’m not
myself. I’m going to head home and have some lunch and maybe a nap.” I put a
hand on Chuck’s shoulder, urging him to stay with Thomas. “
A-nochd
,” I
said to the rest of the room.
The shortwave radio on public display in the market is an
artifact from an army surplus store. It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It
couldn’t with missing tubes. The real one, which the Braids concealed when
strangers came to town, was kept locked away in an old desk designed for that
purpose. It took only a moment to lift out the partition filled with
pigeonholes that held useless papers. Kept near the dry-goods bins, there was
plenty of room for people to gather around and hear the evening report. Every
folding chair and wooden crate was in use. Latecomers stood in the back or sat
on the floor. Tea and whisky were being passed around. We were all aware of the
benefits of living in the Gulch. No community was tighter. But the greatest
benefit was our nonexistence. If the pipeline went in that would all go away.
Then where would we go, those of us who had already run to the ends of the
earth to escape our old lives?
There hadn’t been an occasion, or so I was told, since the
last Great War when the whole town had gathered to hear a radio broadcast.
Tonight it wasn’t a politician or newscaster who would address us. It was the
survey team led by Whisky Jack and this would be his finest hour.
It just had to be.
I think we were all there, except for the Flowers and Ricky who
were back at the Moose where he was getting a bath and early bed with a pile of
storybooks. Pete too had finally stopped drinking and succumbed to sleep well
before sunset. Seeing the bear and then the hunt for Ricky had been an
eye-opener, a real come-home-to-Jesus moment, and it had exhausted him
physically and mentally. Judy would look after the guests if they woke and head
them off if they tried to visit the market. I was grateful that Chuck was there
with me and hoped there wasn’t any bad news about his father—or anyone else.
Young Thomas had claimed to be exhausted and anxious for bed so Chuck had
abandoned him and come to hear the progress report. We were all feeling
expectation, but it was the kind that looked a lot like nervous dread. We were
all very tired after our day in the woods.
I looked out one of the few windows and saw dark clouds
gathering under the moon. It wouldn’t rain, not that night. But soon. Autumn
was almost upon us.
Every eye turned toward the radio as it crackled to life.
The Braids assumed her place. She was the best at making the thing work.
“McIntyre’s Gulch, this
is Survey One reporting in, over,” we heard Whiskey Jack say.
“We read you, Survey
One,” Big John replied. “How goes the surveying project?”
* *
*
Anatoli sat on a rock at the edge of their camp doing his
best to disguise the fact that he was still shaking like a leaf. Though he
tried to drive the whole experience from his mind, he couldn’t help but return
to the thought of himself dangling by his fingertips from the cliff face too
scared to even scream for help. Then there was the hand that came snaking its
way toward him. It grabbed his wrist moments before he was about to fall to his
death. The hand was incredibly strong and above it was a face, a face that he
recognized but was surprised to see.