Emory's Gift Read online

  “Tomorrow, then. Ice cream tomorrow,” I suggested.

  She gave me a lingering, speculative look. “Okay, Charlie,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

  I picked her up at the Grassy Valley Ranch, where the Shelburtons had built a house and now lived full-time. Mr. Shelburton had bought my dad out of the American bison business and was still selling buffalo meat, which had finally started to catch on with consumers a little bit. Beth and I decided that instead of eating ice cream we felt like walking the horse path that eventually led up to the trickle of water we still called Dead Man’s Falls.

  She told me the man she married was a nice enough guy but that he was a secret drug addict and had nearly bankrupted her and then he got another woman pregnant. So she had divorced him and was taking the summer off after winning a big case for her firm. She needed to “reset,” she said.

  I told her I was studying grizzly bears and how critical they were to the ecosystem. How every year we had to euthanize several who became unafraid of mankind. It was the part of my job that bothered me more than anything. Beth said she could understand that.

  We sat on a log along the path and I told her she was my first love and that I would always cherish the memory of her. She smiled her wonderful smile and said she felt the same way. With no awkwardness at all I leaned forward and kissed her, and it was the same sensation as in eighth grade, the same soft lips, the same loud thumping of my heart.

  I knew in that moment there was love to be found and redemption to be had in the arms of this girl from long ago.

  Her trip to Selkirk River turned into an extended stay and then she decided to open a law office right there, across the street from the Baskin-Robbins where I finally managed to take her on our fifth or sixth date. McHenry shifted all the foundation’s paperwork to her so she had a client on her first day, and her business grew slowly but steadily enough that she managed.

  I decided I wasn’t going to let her get away this time. We were married almost one year to the day after I ran into her on the streets of Selkirk River. We have three children: two boys and a girl. Beth was my first love, and now she’s my forever love.

  I call her the Beth of Both Worlds.

  My dad died not long ago. It was a sudden shock, because he’d only been diagnosed with stomach cancer a few days before. That’s how he would have wanted it, though: after seeing what the chemo did to Mom, after fighting that long, losing battle, he didn’t have it in him to put any of us through it again. The doctors told him he only had a few weeks and they were way long in their estimates.

  He knew I loved him, though, because I told him often, and he knew that when he died I would miss him because I told him that, too. I did not suffer the same awful lack of completeness, closure I think they call it, that I felt when Mom passed away.

  Nichole let me bury him next to Mom and actually bought the plot on the other side of him. “When we all get to heaven we’ll sort it out,” she told me with a laugh. My dad had many more years with Nichole than he’d had with Laura Hall, which gave me a start when I first thought of it. Nichole moved to Pittsburgh because of an ill sister, but she calls and visits frequently.

  It occurred to me that after my dad died there was no one left alive who remembered my mother. Oh, I do know that there were plenty of people in town who could muster up an image of Laura Hall in their minds if they were challenged to do so, but not people who really knew her. I’m the only one who knows what it was like to sit at the dinner table, just the three of us, before she got sick and her illness became the focus of our lives. I’m the only one who remembers her touch and her smell, her kind eyes, the way she loved me and loved my father. I can hear her voice in my head, a gift I can’t share with anyone, not even Beth. She just has to take it on faith.

  I still think about my mom every single day. She was the most wonderful mother a boy could have, and I will always, always miss her.

  Did it really happen? That’s what people ask me about Emory the bear, usually with cautious skepticism in their eyes, wanting to be drawn in, hoping to be convinced by me, but always with the reserved enthusiasm with which people will throw themselves into a magic act, knowing that in the end it’s all just sleight of hand.

  Sure, they all know there was a bear. They all know that for a few weeks in the autumn of 1974 the bear lived in my pole barn. They can drive up and look at the words painted on the wall, and I wrote a book about the events they can buy right there on the spot. But I can’t prove that Emory was anything other than a tame bear, any more than I can prove that my mother was a wonderful, loving person. You either believe me or you don’t; you have faith or you don’t.

  Here’s the question people should be asking: not Did it really happen? but Why?

  Sometimes I will gaze up at Ursa Major in the night sky and reflect on what Nichole J. Singleton told me: no one who is loved is ever truly alone.

  “God Loves All.” Doesn’t that mean that whatever is out there, we’re not facing it on our own?

  Could that be why Emory was sent with his message?

  Most written accounts of the mild hysteria of that time suggest very convincingly that I wrote the words myself. That I, a little boy who had lost his mother, was so starved for attention, and so wanting to believe in life after death, fabricated a backstory for a lost circus bear who had turned to me for shelter. That I came up with the whole story, drawing inspiration from a couple of books I’d read as a kid, and that I cleverly positioned myself so that the words “God Loves All” were secretly written by me, while the sheer bulk of the grizzly bear hid my actions from the rest of the world.

  Hey, could be. If we all accept the theory that I’m crazy, then clearly it’s possible I’ve deluded myself into believing Emory wrote those words. That’s possible, right? And what could be more insane than suggesting God exists and loves all of creation?

  When I start asking these questions of people, Beth always gives me a warning look and I shut up. We’ve long ago decided there’s no point getting involved in this type of conversation. I just sometimes can’t help myself.

  And as for Emory …

  Sometimes I think I see him when I’m out among the bears. They are wondrous creatures, and to see them moving with ponderous grace along the rivers, doing their work, is something that takes my breath away. I’ll catch the eye of a grizzly and for just a moment I’ll believe I see Emory’s warmth, that glint of intelligence.

  In a way, I’m always searching for Emory. And I believe that someday, I don’t know when, I will find him.

  acknowledgments, explanations, and excuses

  If you’re a student of geography, or perhaps just well informed about Northern Idaho, you’re possibly a bit perplexed over the location of the town of Selkirk River. It should be easy enough to find: just head up the highway on the west side of the mountains, going north out of Sandpoint, well east of Priest Lake, and there, stitched into a valley at the foot of the Selkirks, you’ll find a charming town with a movie theater, a junior high school, and its own newspaper.

  Actually, no you won’t. Find it, I mean. I built it in my imagination, using spare parts from around the area. For example, there’s a road heading out of the town of Wallace that tracks a river in just the way that the unnamed stream flows into the fictional town of Selkirk River. The high school in Kellogg offered me the view and the terrain that I imagined for Charlie’s cross-country course. When Charlie went to the movies, it was the Panida Theater in Sandpoint that I pictured him attending—though I placed him in the theater prior to its magnificent restoration. In the end it was just easier to piece together the town in my mind until it exactly fit the story than to struggle to change Charlie’s experiences so they could take place in an existing location.

  And some things I didn’t make up: the courthouse in Bonners Ferry looks, to me anyway, exactly as I described it. I didn’t invent the Missoula Floods or the fact that logging trucks storm up and down the highways all day long.

&n
bsp; Everything I know about how Northern Idaho smells and feels and tastes came from the time I spent at my cousins’ houses in Coeur d’Alene and Priest Lake. Thank you, Cam and Sara, for your hospitality, and for your personal support all these years.

  If you’d like to read those two books whose presence Charlie finds so disquieting—the ones written for young readers entitled General McClellan and the Peninsular Campaign and Native American Stories for Boys—I am sorry to report I fabricated their existence as well. If I made any mistakes about Civil War regiments or battles, I blame the inaccuracies on mistakes contained in the fabricated books.

  The grizzly in this story is, of course, a very special bear, so his behavior was mine to invent. But I did, where possible, stick to what I learned about grizzly bears, depending on the work and generosity of others to assist me. It takes years to become a bear expert, however, so if I made any glaring errors I apologize. I heartily recommend True Grizz, by Douglas H. Chadwick (Sierra Club Books, September 2003), The Grizzly Bear, by Thomas McNamee (The Lyons Press, June 1997), and The Grizzly Almanac, by Robert Busch (The Lyons Press, May 2004) as excellent and entertaining resources for learning more about Ursus arctos horribilis.

  I’m also deeply indebted to Chris Morgan, bear ecologist and conservationist and author of Bears of the Last Frontier (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, April 2011). Chris was kind enough to answer my questions about grizzlies, which I fear were numerous and grounded in ignorance.

  Louis Dorfman gave me tremendous insight as to the behavior of grizzlies who, through no fault of their own, can no longer live in the wild. He is animal behaviorist at International Exotic Animal Sanctuary, Boyd, Texas, (www.bigcat.org) and can be found at www.louisdorfman.com. Louis is the author of Dakar, A Wolf’s Adventure (AuthorHouse, May 2003), Otters on the Loose (Windsor House Publishing, February 1998), and The Fairies’ Quest (1st Books Library, February 2003).

  I never write anything about animals without reading and rereading Temple Grandin’s books Animals in Translation (Scribner, December 2004) and Animals Make Us Human (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 2009). Dr. Grandin is a national treasure.

  Evie Michon turned to her personal archives and found photographs, magazines, articles, and other items from the early 1970s to help me see the look and understand the talk of the times. Before there was Google, there was Evie.

  This novel was something of an artistic risk for me. Thank you to Scott Miller at Trident, and to Linda Quinton and Kristin Sevick at Forge, for encouraging me to think big.

  Thank you, Cathryn Michon, for reading, editing, and advising on early drafts. I’d ask you to marry me, but hey, you just did.

  So much of the life of one novel flows from what happened with the one that came before it. Emory’s Gift was conceived when A Dog’s Purpose was not yet even in galleys, but I imagine that if you are reading these words now it may very well be because my first novel led you to take a chance on picking up the second. In the Acknowledgments of A Dog’s Purpose I did my best to identify everyone who helped me with that novel, but subsequent to publication there were others who I really need to, well, acknowledge.

  Sheryl Johnston, when she’s not terrorizing the streets of Chicago, is simply the best publicist and the best friend anyone could ever want.

  Karen Lovell at Forge ran the publicity fort at that end, and I am delighted that you will be working on Emory’s Gift as well.

  Gavin Polone took A Dog’s Purpose to DreamWorks. Thank you, Gavin, and thank you, Steve Fisher, David Boxerbaum, and Steve Younger, for helping to get the deal done.

  Norma Vela put me in touch with Temple Grandin—I will always be grateful, Norma. Lisa Nash not only helped me with personal insights into life in Northern Idaho, but she introduced me to Dr. Marty Becker, who was such a strong supporter of A Dog’s Purpose. Lisa, I so appreciate everything.

  Bob Bridges has done so much for me in the past and, as I write this, has been in the hospital for months, struggling to recover from H1N1. You are in my prayers, Bob.

  Thank you, Emma Coleman, for being production assistant on the book trailer we made for A Dog’s Purpose.

  Claire LaZebnik serves as a sort of one-person writers support group for me. She’s prolific, talented, funny, and a great writer. She’s at www.clairelazebnik.com.

  Thanks to Hillary Carlip, for her artistic design of www.adogspurpose.com and wbrucecameron.com. And thanks, Max Lapiduss, for agreeing to marry me.

  My own personal rescue squad: Marcia Wallace, Jennifer Altabef, and Julie Cameron. Just like the movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer … and I appreciate it so very much. I simply would not have made it without you.

  A Dog’s Purpose was on the New York Times Best-Sellers List from the first day it was eligible—that was due to a lot of people doing a lot of work to see that the novel got the attention they felt it deserved. Many of those individuals are the owners and managers of the independent booksellers scattered across the country. Visit them by name on the buy-the-book page of www.adogspurpose.com. Geoff Jennings of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kansas, in particular, has been my godfather in the world of books. Thank you, Geoff.

  Finally, though I am not supposed to be in the “Facebook Generation,” I’m a Baby Boomer, so we’re taking it over like we did everything else. The fans on Facebook’s A Dog’s Purpose fan page are the best people in the world, posting pictures of their dogs, supporting each other through hard times, and celebrating the message of A Dog’s Purpose. Come hang out with us at www.facebook.com/adogspurpose.

  W. Bruce Cameron

  February 2011

  ALSO BY W. BRUCE CAMERON FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

  A Dog’s Purpose

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  EMORY’S GIFT

  Copyright © 2011 by W. Bruce Cameron

  All rights reserved.

  A Forge® eBook

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-2781-9

  First Edition: September 2011

  eISBN 978-1-4299-9613-6

  First Forge eBook Edition: August 2011