Emory's Gift Read online

  This internal rant was immediately followed by shame and remorse. My throat tightened, my eyes squeezed shut, and tears tracked down my face. I was so, so sorry—sorry I had gotten angry at her, sorry for what I had done and could never undo. I didn’t hate her. She was my mom. I missed her so much it felt like my insides were torn.

  One Saturday I received my junior-lifesaving certificate—I was now officially qualified to pull seventh graders out of the pool. There was no mention on the diploma of the fact that I was the only student brave enough to put his lips on the instructor.

  She had signed it: Kay Logan. I put my finger on the signature, a bit disappointed that it didn’t give off an electric current.

  Kay Logan. There was only one Logan family listed in the Selkirk River phone book.

  “Hi, Kay; it’s me, Charlie,” I said by way of practice, the phone still safe in the cradle. “Really? Well, I missed you, too.… Now?… Well, I’m grounded, but you could come over here.”

  Despite how well that went, I didn’t immediately pick up the phone. My heart was pounding. Of course I could call her. We’d been to the movies together. I’d blown air into her lungs. We had a relationship.

  I was a boy who fearlessly walked with a grizzly bear.

  That’s what finally gave me the nerve: how many other kids could claim something like that?

  A woman answered the phone, but it wasn’t Kay.

  “Hi, can I talk to Kay?” I asked a little breathlessly.

  “Is this Glenn?” the woman wanted to know.

  “Who?”

  Who was Glenn? Was that Sergeant Lunkhead’s name?

  “I’m sorry; I thought you were someone else. Kay’s not here right now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Would you like to leave a message?”

  Yes; when you see your daughter, would you tell her I love her?

  “Hello?”

  “Yes!” I blurted. “Tell her please that Charlie Hall called and that I got my certificate for Junior Lifesaving.”

  “Okay. Charlie Hall. I will tell her.”

  “Good.”

  “Thank you for calling, Charlie. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye and thank you, good-bye,” I said formally. Then I hung up and reviewed the conversation in my head, wincing.

  Finally October 1st arrived and my house arrest came to an end. That afternoon I blew out of those school bus doors and dashed up the hill and into my house, spreading my arms as if to embrace the glory of it all. At last!

  Then I watched television like I always did.

  After an hour or so, though, I realized I was wasting time and thought of something I could now do that I’d been grounded from doing.

  The bear was not at the creek, and I carried my offering—a fruitcake—back to the freezer. I wasn’t going to leave the food just sitting there, even though it was a fruitcake and therefore of no use to anybody. I wanted the bear to know this gift was coming from me.

  That Friday after school I headed off into the woods, drinking in the strong pine scent as it wafted on October breezes. I didn’t have any food with me—I wasn’t really convinced I was ever going to see the bear again. I did call out, “Hey, bear!” when I got to the creek, but nothing answered but my echo and I kept wandering.

  I did not have a destination in mind, but after a time I found myself working my way up to what I thought of as the Old Cabin. At the rocky outcropping that was the spine of the ridge visible from our house the terrain dipped back down and then flattened for a while before plunging down all the way to the river. In the center of the flat area was an abandoned hut, the windows broken out and the interior sagging from several winters of exposure. I suppose at some time it was a place where hunters took up residence for a few days at a time, but that was before Jules McHenry bought up so much of the land to use as his personal playground.

  McHenry was estimated by the kids at school to be worth a bazillion dollars. He was a rich oil guy from somewhere south, like Texas, I guess, and showed up a few times a year to hunt on the acres and acres of land he’d purchased all over the county. It’s what people did when they had so much money they didn’t know what to spend it on.

  I liked to go inside the cabin and smell the dank, musty air, though it was somewhat creepy. One time a gust of wind blew the front door shut on me and I nearly screamed. The door tended to stick a bit and the thought of getting trapped in there panicked me a little, though there was a big square window in the back, glass long broken out, that I could escape through if I needed.

  The Old Cabin had a long driveway that led up to the paved road, Road 655. There was a junked car on the property where someone had gone flying into the trees after losing an argument about centrifugal force with one of Road 655’s many curves. The driver wound up deciding the vehicle he’d ridden into the woods wasn’t worth the cost to tow it out of there. Mice lived in the car, and boys had pounded the sheet metal with rocks. My loose plan was to go check out the car after messing around at the Old Cabin, but I never got there.

  Years later, when I wrote my book, The Bear from Selkirk River, I sat down with what felt like half the people from town, asking them to tell me their thoughts and recollections about the events that occurred in the fall of 1974. From that I was able to piece together a narrative that included conversations that took place outside of my hearing and to understand the thinking of some of those involved.

  People always answered my questions happily enough; they were cooperative and friendly. And then they had a question for me, and it was nearly always worded exactly the same.

  Did it really happen?

  chapter

  ELEVEN

  I HAD taken just two steps inside the Old Cabin, fumbling my way, unable to adjust to the murky darkness, when the smell hit me. A dank, wild odor, both strong and familiar.

  The bear had been in here.

  Was he in here now? I froze, the bright square of light from the doorway cast on the floor in front of me like a piece of carpet. Gradually the interior images of the cabin worked to resolve themselves: there was the rusty sink, the door-less icebox, the pile of decaying tin cans. I held my hand up to block the light from the big broken-out window in the rear and saw more, including the torn and dirty mattress some unknown person had dragged in a year or two ago and placed against the left wall.

  No bear. I let my breath out slowly. I strode over to the mattress, feeling the boards sag under my feet, the wood gone even more soft than it had been on my last visit. The ceiling, too, looked worse, collapsing in the middle. The elements were working on this place and would soon pull it down.

  I couldn’t imagine a human being lying on the mattress, though it looked like a dog had left some fur on it. Mice had been busy burrowing in from the sides.

  A shadow filled the doorway then. I whipped my head around and it was the bear, on all fours, watching me. I took a deep gulp of air, feeling cornered. I glanced at the big window, set a little high off the floor, but if I was motivated I knew I could dive through it.

  “I didn’t bring you anything. Are you hungry, boy?” I asked unsteadily. I held out my hands to show him they were empty, and they were shaking a little from my heartbeat.

  The bear took a step forward. In the small confines of that place he was enormous, his bulk blotting out the light from the doorway.

  Run! Though I had fed him and he seemed tame, some primordial sense within me was reacting to being this close to such a grand, awe-inspiring beast, urging me to try to bolt for the door.

  “Okay. We’re okay,” I murmured.

  I bit my lip as the bear pushed his head forward, virtually nose-to-nose with me. I shrank involuntarily against the wall. I looked into those eyes; I smelled his breath. His massive head, brown and round, with ears that popped up on either side like cupcakes, no longer looked doglike or cute to me.

  He was far too close for me to try to get away now. If I had made a mistake by trusting him not to hurt me, it would be the
last mistake I’d ever have a chance to make.

  With a small chuffing sound the bear turned and lumbered away, grunting as he forced his way back through the narrow doorway.

  I heaved a deep sigh and followed him outside. He looked over his shoulder at me.

  “You want me to see if there’s anything to eat in my freezer?” I asked him. My voice came out normal and easy. That had been the acid test—if he wanted to eat me he would have done it. I would never be afraid of the bear again. With the simple and uncomplicated trust of an eighth-grade boy I approached him and put my hand on the coarse fur near his spine. “You startled me a little,” I said, feeling I needed to apologize since I’d nearly peed my pants in there.

  There was a sudden squeal from above, up on Road 655, followed by a dull concussion that I felt as much as heard. “Whoa!” I shouted. “Car accident!” Though the bear had whipped his head up at the sound, he didn’t seem particularly excited. I turned and ran up the wide leafy trail that had once been the driveway of the Old Cabin, glancing over my shoulder.

  The bear was still looking at me, but he was making no move to follow.

  When I got to Road 655 I saw a Buick Estate station wagon about twenty yards away, pulled over to the side of the road. The brake lights were on, but then they winked out and the car accelerated away. I doubted that the driver had seen me.

  Twenty feet from where the car had stopped, off on the shoulder, was a thick-limbed mule deer, small, a female. I walked up and looked into her blank, black eyes, the life gone from them. Blood was pooled under her and her legs were twisted—the impact had killed her instantly.

  “Hey, bear!” I shouted. A light breeze made the branches creak over my head, the sound serving to accentuate how otherwise silent the woods were. “Hey, bear, come here!”

  I sighed in frustration. Did the bear even know I was calling him? And though I had a fresh deer carcass for him, why did I think he would come at my command? Was he my pet? No, but what else would you call our relationship? “Friends” didn’t describe it very well, either.

  While I was stewing over all this there was a thrashing sound and the bear appeared, carefully looking up and down the road, his nose up to sniff for intruders. I gestured to the dead animal on the ground. “Look here!” I called.

  It was October 4th, and I now know that the bear was well into hyperphagia—the huge intake of calories to prepare him for the winter’s hibernation. He’d been eating acorns and pine nuts and berries but probably not, based on what I’d seen, fish. As he strolled up the road toward me, his eyes were on the fresh carcass at my feet, though he did glance at me as if to give thanks before diving into his meal.

  Anyone who doubts the grizzly’s position as top predator in the food chain has never done what I did that afternoon: stand by and watch as a bear tore into and devoured an entire mule deer. It was somehow even worse that his bites were almost dainty, using his front teeth like a polite person at a chicken barbeque. It was both awe inspiring and somewhat sickening, and when his energetic claws wound up pulling the deer off the shoulder and down the hill a little bit I didn’t follow. The savagery of nature is sometimes too much for those of us who sleep in a soft bed under a wooden roof.

  When the whole story of that afternoon and everything that followed was made known, my dad asked me what I could have thought I was up to. I was feeding a grizzly bear? Talking to it? Playing with it? What was I thinking?

  The truth was, I wasn’t thinking anything. Did I stop for one second to question the sensibility of my behavior? Absolutely, especially when the bear had me cornered in the Old Cabin. But the world had already lost all sense to me. Things that I knew in my bones could not possibly be true were, nonetheless, inarguable facts. Though it was impossible to believe, my mother was dead and I would not be seeing her again. Once a person tried to live within that inexplicable construct, nothing seemed too outrageous.

  Did it really happen?

  Here’s all I can say to that: after the bear finished the deer carcass, he clambered back up the hill toward me like a dog tracking back to its master. It seemed as natural as anything in the world to put my hand out and touch his thick fur, to pat the huge head, and to say, “Come on.” As the bear obediently followed me, it felt completely reasonable that I would take the bear home with me, maybe feed him a meal directly out of the freezer. That my dad would let me keep a live grizzly.

  Well, okay, that last one didn’t slide so easily into place: I wasn’t able to conjure up a conversation in my head where my father said, Of course you can keep a full-grown grizzly, Charlie.

  I’d have to think of something.

  Rather than climb back up to the rocky ridge and on to my house, the bear and I walked past the Old Cabin, heading toward the river. The cabin was up on a bluff, and below it was a steep bank of heavy sand that ran all the way down to the rushing waters. One of my favorite things to do was leap from the bluff, the soft soil absorbing the impact.

  “Ready?” I said. I launched myself into the air with a hoot, showing off for the bear, who stood up on two legs to watch me slide and tumble down the embankment.

  Then the bear followed suit. I laughed in disbelief as the bear sprang into space, landing on all fours and then rolling down the hill in an explosion of flying sand. He came to rest at the bottom of the hill, lying on his back as if he, too, were laughing.

  The bear took a deep drink at the river. There was, I reflected, time enough for me to grab my rod and see if I could coax a few fish from the water. The bear kept wading deeper into the stream until he was up to his neck, his big head serene in the clear, rapid river. Or maybe we’d just stay here and swim.

  I grinned at the thought of Kay coming upon us just then. I’m just watching my friend swim, in case he needs junior lifesaving, I’d tell her. She’d be amazed. She’d sit with me and hold my hand while the bear frolicked. It would be our secret, something Kay and I would never tell another soul.

  The easiest way back home was to follow the river upstream until the creek joined it, then walk along the creek’s banks to the trail up to our house.

  The bear came out of the water and we strolled side by side as if there were nothing more natural than the two of us together. He got interested in overturning some rocks to take a look at what was underneath: grubs and worms, it turned out, which I thought was pretty disgusting, but the bear slurped them up as if they were made of chocolate.

  The riverbank here was a wide stretch of light, sandy soil, striated from when the waters rose high but otherwise as pristine as a chalkboard on the first day of school. The soil was not as firm as sandstone but was packed solidly enough that when I took a stick and swiped at it I could draw a permanent mark. I made a big letter C.

  “My name is Charlie,” I told the bear. I stuck my tongue out a little as I drew my name in the dirt. When I stepped back, it was pretty easy to read: Charlie.

  “That’s how you spell it,” I told him. “See? Charlie.”

  The bear looked at the marks I’d made as if trying to read them. He lumbered up to the bank, taking a closer look. Then he moved off down the bank a ways, where I hadn’t yet written anything.

  I cocked my head, regarding my artwork. Should I write loves Kay after my name? Or turn it around: Kay loves Charlie. Maybe Sergeant Lunkhead would come across it, think he’d lost her, and abandon Selkirk River forever. Or maybe he’d get in a big fight with Kay, acting all jealous, and then I’d show up to save her. I’d have the bear with me, which would sort of stack the odds in my favor, even if Lunkhead had military training.

  I looked down at my feet and saw a small painted turtle crawling glumly among the rocks. I almost shouted, turtle! at the bear but then bit my lip. The bear would probably just eat the thing, and I didn’t want to have that on my conscience.

  I glanced up, but the bear wasn’t paying attention to me. He was digging at the soft soil of the bank with a single paw, a small trickle of dirt pyramiding at his feet. I frowned. Wha
t was he doing?

  With a huff, the bear backed away from the bank, and now I could clearly see that he’d made his own marks in the smooth soil.

  He’d written his own word, plain as day, easy to read.

  EMORY.

  “Oh boy,” I said.

  chapter

  TWELVE

  THE first psychiatrist I was sent to, the one I never liked, spent very little time getting to know me before he asked, “At what time did you become convinced the bear was trying to communicate with you?”

  That one didn’t take much thought. “When he wrote his name in the sand,” I said simply.

  The psychiatrist gave me a long, frozen, unamused look before speaking. “And then you took the bear to your house.”

  “To the pole barn, yes. Not inside the house or anything.”

  “And what were you thinking at that moment?”

  That question again. Why did everyone expect me to be doing so much thinking all the time? How much thinking did they do at thirteen?

  To this day, I can’t really explain what I felt as I looked at the word “Emory” carved in the riverbank, nor why my only reaction was to say, “Hi, Emory.” You don’t shake hands with an animal with four-inch claws, so we sort of looked at each other for a minute, and then I said, “I’ve got some more food in the freezer.”

  Probably I just thought it was cool that someone had trained him to write his name. I’d heard of a horse who could do simple arithmetic, so why not this? I say “probably” because I can’t look back at my first thoughts without filtering them through all of the events that transpired later. Asking me to isolate one single memory at the start of it all is just asking too much.

  “What would you think?” I challenged the psychiatrist the second or third time he asked me about that day. He didn’t respond, of course, because he didn’t believe any of it happened.

  That day in the woods it seemed as if the birds and all other creatures went quiet at the sight of a thirteen-year-old boy walking alongside a grizzly bear. The breeze died down, even, as if stilled in awe. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face at the sheer mass of him moving next to me. Emory the bear.