Centennial

by James A. Michener

  Her greatest problem would be to find a young male beaver, for there simply were none in that part of the creek. And so she must leave, or in the end her parents would have to kill her because she was mature enough to work for herself and her space inside the lodge was needed for future batches of babies.

  So with apprehension but with instinctive hope, this young female left her family for the last time, turned away from the playful kits and swam down the tunnel leading to the exit. Gingerly, as she had been taught, she surfaced, poked her small brown nose toward shore and sniffed for signs of enemies. Finding none, she gave a strong flip of her webbed hind feet, curling her little paws beneath her chin, and started downstream. There was no use going upstream, for there the building of a dam was easier and all the good locations would be taken.

  One flap of her hind feet was sufficient to send her cruising along the surface for a considerable distance, and as she went she kept moving her head from side to side, looking for three things: saplings in case she needed food, likely spots to build a dam and its accompanying lodge, and any male beaver that might be in the vicinity.

  Her first quest was disappointing, for although she spotted quite a few cottonwoods, which a beaver could eat if need be, she found no aspen or birch or alders, which were her preferred foods. She already knew how to girdle a small tree, strip its bark and fell it so that she could feed on the upper limbs. She also knew how to build a dam and lay the groundwork for a lodge. In fact, she was a skilled housekeeper, and she would be a good mother, too, when the chance presented itself.

  She had gone downstream about a mile when there on the shore, preening himself, she saw a handsome young male. She studied him for a moment without his seeing her, and she judged correctly that he had chosen this spot for his dam. She surveyed the site and knew intuitively that he would have been wiser to build it a little farther upstream, where there were strong banks to which it could be attached. She swam toward him, but she had taken only a few powerful strokes of her hind feet when, from a spot she had not noticed, a young female beaver splashed into the water, slapped her tail twice and came directly at the intruder, intending to do battle. It had taken her a long time to find a mate and she had no intention of allowing anything to disrupt what promised to be a happy family life.

  The male on shore watched disinterestedly as his female approached the stranger, bared her powerful front teeth and prepared to attack. The stranger backed away and returned to the middle of the stream, and the victorious female slapped the water twice with her tail, then swam in triumph back to her unconcerned mate, who continued preening himself and applying oil to his silky coat.

  The wandering beaver saw only one other male that day, a very old fellow who showed no interest in her. She ignored him as he passed, and she kept drifting with no set purpose.

  As late afternoon came on and she faced her first night away from home, she became nervous and hungry. She climbed ashore and started gnawing desultorily at a cottonwood, but her attention was not focused on the food, and this was good, because as she perched there, her scaly tail stretched out behind her, she heard a movement behind a larger tree and looked up in time to spot a bear moving swiftly toward her.

  Running in a broken line, as she had been taught, she evaded the first swipe of the slashing paw, but she knew that if she continued running toward the creek, the bear would intercept her. She therefore surprised him by running parallel to the creek for a short distance, and before he could adjust his lunge to this new direction, she had dived to safety.

  She went deep into the water, and since she could stay submerged for eight or nine minutes, this gave her time to swim far from where the bear waited, because even from the bank a bear could launch a powerful swipe which might lift a beaver right onto the bank. When she surfaced, he was far behind her.

  Night fell, the time when her family had customarily played together and gone on short excursions, and she was lonely. She missed the kits and their noisy frolic, and as night deepened she missed the joy of diving deep into the water and finding the tunnel that would carry her to the warm security of the lodge.

  Where would she sleep? She surveyed both banks and selected a spot which offered some protection, and there she curled up as close to the water as she could. It was a miserable substitute for a proper lodge, and she knew it.

  Three more nights she spent in this wretched condition. The season was passing and she was doing nothing about the building of a dam. This bothered her, as if some great purpose for which she had been bred was going unattended.

  But the next day two wonderful things happened, the second having far more lasting consequences than the first. Early in the morning she ventured into a part of the creek she had not seen before, and as she moved she became aware of a strong and reassuring scent. If it were serious, and not an accident, it would be repeated at the proper intervals, so she swam slowly and in some agitation to the four compass directions, and as she had anticipated, the keen smell was repeated as it should have been. A male beaver, and young at that, had marked out a territory and she was apparently the first female to invade it.

  Moving to the middle of the stream, she slapped her tail, and to her joy a fine-looking young beaver appeared on the bank of the creek and looked down into the water. The slapping could have meant that another male had arrived to contest his territory and he was prepared to fight, but when he saw that his visitor was the kind he had hoped to attract, he gave a little bark of pleasure and dived into the stream to welcome her.

  With strong sweeps of his webbed feet he darted through the water and came up to her, nudging her nose with his. He was highly pleased with what he found and swam twice around her as if appraising her. Then he dived, inviting her to follow him, and she dived after him, deep into the bottom of the creek. He was showing her where he intended building his lodge, once he found a female to help.

  They returned to the surface and he went ashore to fetch some edible bark, which he placed before her. When beavers mated, it was for life, and he was following an established pattern of courtship. The female was eager to indicate her interest, when she noticed that his gaze had left hers and that any fruitful communication had ended.

  He was looking upstream, where one of the most beautiful young beavers he had ever seen was about to enter his territory. This female had a shimmering coat and glowing eyes, and she swam gracefully, one kick sending her to the corners of his areas, where she checked the markers he had left. Contented that she was in the presence of a serious suitor, she moved languidly to the center of the area and signaled with her tail.

  The young male left his first visitor and with lightning strokes sped to this newcomer, who indicated that she was interested in the segment of the creek he had laid out for himself and was willing to move in permanently. In this brief space of time their destiny was determined.

  What now to do with the first visitor? When the new female saw her she apprehended immediately what had happened, so she and the male came to where the young beaver waited and started to shove her out of the delimited area. But she had got there first and intended to stay, so she dived at the intruding female and started to assault her, but the male knew what he wanted. He had no desire to settle for second best, so he joined the newcomer, and together they forced the unwanted intruder downstream, and as she disappeared, chattering in rage, they slapped their tails at her and made joyous noises and prepared to build their dam.

  The outcast drifted aimlessly and wondered whether she would ever find a mate. How could she build a home? How could she have kits of her own? Bitterly she sought the next miserable place to spend a night.

  But as she explored the bank she became aware of a soft sound behind her and was certain it must be an otter, the most fearful of her enemies. She dived deep and headed for any cranny within the bank that might afford protection, and as she flattened herself against the mud she saw flashing through the waters not far distant the sleek, compacted form of an otter on the
prowl.

  She hoped that his first sweep would carry him downstream, but his sharp eye had detected something. It could have been a beaver hiding against the bank, so he turned in a graceful dipping circle and started back. She was trapped, and in her anxiety, fought for any avenue of escape. As she probed along the bottom of the bank she came upon an opening which led upward. It could well be some dead end from which there was no escape. But whatever it was, it could be no worse than what she now faced, for the otter was returning and she could not swim fast enough to escape him.

  She ducked into the tunnel and with one powerful kick sent herself upward. She moved so swiftly that she catapulted through the surface and saw for the first time the secret cave that had formed in the limestone, with a chimney which admitted air and a security that few animals ever found. Soon her eyes became accustomed to the dim light that filtered in from above and she perceived what a marvelous spot this was, safe from otters and bears and prowling wolves. If she built her dam slightly below the cave and constructed her lodge in the body of the creek, attaching it by tunnel to this secret place, and if she then widened the chimney upward and masked its exit so that no stranger could detect it, she would have a perfect home. To complete her delight she found inside the cave and above the water level a comfortable ledge on which she could sleep that night.

  Before dawn she was at work. Moving to all the prominent places on the shore and to the ledges in the creek, she stopped at each and grabbed a handful of mud. With her other hand she reached to the opening of her body where two large sacs protruded and from these she extracted a viscous yellow liquid which would become famous throughout the west as castoreum, one of the most gratifying odors in the natural world.

  Kneading the castoreum into the mud and mixing in a few grasses to make the cake adhere, she placed it carefully so that its odor would penetrate in all directions, and when she had set out nine of these—for this was a spot worth preserving and protecting—she stopped and tested the results of her labor. She swam upstream and down, and wherever she went she got the clear signal that this stretch of water belonged to a beaver who intended holding it.

  She became, that summer, a capable beaver, lively in her pursuit of things she required. The limestone cavern became not only a place of refuge but also a satisfactory home. She built three secret escape hatches, one leading a good twenty feet inland from the bank of the creek, so that if a bear or wolf did take her by surprise, she could dive into it and make her way back to her home before the predator knew where she had gone.

  The cycle of her life, however, was still incomplete. By herself she would not build a dam, nor a lodge either, for they were needed primarily for the rearing of young. She could survive in the limestone cave, but without the act of building a lodge with a mate, she was still an outcast.

  This did not prevent her from attending herself as carefully as ever. Each day, when the sun was low, she perched on the bank overlooking her domain and preened. She did this by using the two peculiar toes on each of her hind legs; the nails on these toes were split so as to form small combs, and these she dragged through her pelt until even the slightest irregularity was removed. Then she took oil from her body and carefully applied it to each part of her coat, combing it in deeply until her fur glistened in shimmering loveliness. No one saw or applauded this grooming, but it was impossible for her to go to bed until she had completed it.

  And then, in early autumn when she had given up hope of finding a mate, a shabby beaver seven years old who had lost his family in some catastrophe, wandered down the river and turned by chance into her creek. He was by no means a handsome creature; indeed, he was not even acceptable, for a long gash ran down the left side of his face and he had lost the two toes on his left hind leg that he needed for cleaning himself, so that his appearance was disreputable.

  As he sashayed up the creek he detected the markers and realized immediately that a mistake had been made. The creek spot looked inviting but any flood from the river would wash it away. He looked about for the family which occupied it to warn them of the danger they faced, and after a while he saw the head of the owner breaking through the surface. She swam out to him cautiously and looked for his mate, while he looked for hers. There was a period of motionless silence. He was tired and winter was at hand.

  They stared at each other for a long time, for a very long time, and each knew all there was to know. There would be no illusions, no chicanery.

  It was he who broke the silence. By the way he looked and moved his tail he indicated that this spot was no place to build a dam.

  With a fierce toss of her head she let him know that this was where she would live. And she led him underwater to the entrance of her secret cave and showed him the escape hatches and how she planned to link it to the lodge and the dam, but still he was not satisfied, and when they surfaced, he started to swim to a much safer spot, and she followed, chattering and slamming her tail and halting in disgust as he left her premises.

  In the morning he swam back and indicated hesitantly that she was welcome to accompany him if she would consent to build their dam at a proper site.

  Again she abused him, protesting furiously and snapping at him, driving him from her water, and that afternoon he came back quietly with a length of aspen in his teeth. Diving to the bottom of the creek, he fastened it to the floor with mud, the first construction in their new home.

  It was then September and they set to work with a passion. They labored all night, dragging trees and branches into the stream, weighting them with mud and gradually building the whole construction high enough to check the flow of water. Again and again as they worked he betrayed his doubt that the dam they were building would hold, but she worked with such fervor that he swallowed his precautions.

  When the two beavers were satisfied that the dam would impound the water necessary for their establishment, she began tying branches and tree lengths into the bottom, weighting them with rocks and mud and other trees, and it was now that she realized that in the building of the dam she had done most of the work. He was great on starting things, and showed considerable enthusiasm during the first days, but when it came time for doing the hard, backbreaking work, he was usually absent.

  She had to acknowledge that she had accepted a lazy mate, one who could not be cured, but instead of infuriating her, this merely spurred her to greater effort. She worked as few beavers, an industrious lot, had ever worked, lugging huge trunks of trees and slapping mud until her paws ached. She did both the planning and the execution, and when the pile from which their lodge would be constructed was nearly finished, and she was eleven pounds lighter than when she started, he indicated for the final time that when the floods came, this would all vanish. She made no response, for she knew that just as she had done most of the building this time, she would have to do it again if floods ever did come.

  When the pile in the middle of the small lake behind the dam was completed, they dived to the bottom and began the gratifying task of cutting entrances into it, and providing sleeping levels above the waterline, and places for kits when they came, and digging connecting runways to the secret chamber, and at this planning he was a master, for he had built lodges before.

  Only a few days remained before the freeze, and this period they spent in a burst of super-energy, stripping bark and storing it for their winter’s food. Where eating was concerned, he was willing to work, and in the end they had a better lodge than any other on the creek, and better provisioned too.

  In the early days of winter, when they were frozen in, they mated, and in spring, after she gave birth to four lovely babies, the river produced a flood which washed away the dam and most of the lodge. He grunted as it was happening, but she rescued the babies and took them to higher ground, where a fox ate one.

  As soon as the floods receded, she began to rebuild the dam, and when it was finished, she taught the babies how to help rebuild the lodge, which took less effort.

  They then
enjoyed four good years in their tight little kingdom, but on the fifth, sixth and seventh years there were floods, the last of such magnitude that the whole establishment was erased. This was enough for him, and he spent considerable time upstream looking for a better site, but when he found one, she refused to move. He found her marking the corners of her estate with castoreum and teaching her children how to start erecting a higher and better dam.

  He halted at the edge of her territory and watched as this stubborn little creature proceeded with her engineering, making the same mistakes, dooming her dam to the same destruction.

  He was now fifteen years old, an advanced age for a beaver, and she treated him with respect, not requiring him to haul logs or do much actual construction on the lodge. He snapped at the kits when they placed branches carelessly, indicating that if he were in charge he would not accept such sloppy workmanship. As he aged, his face grew uglier, with the scar predominating, and he moved with crotchets and limps, and one day while he was helping girdle some cottonwoods, he failed to detect a wolf approaching and would have been snatched had he not been bumped toward the safety tunnel by his mate.

  That year there was no flood.

  Then one day in early autumn when the food was safely in and the lodge never more secure, she happened to wander up the tunnel into the secret place which the family had so much enjoyed, and she found him lying there on the limestone ledge, his life gone. She nudged him gently, thinking that he might be asleep, then nuzzled him with affection to waken him for their evening swim through the lake they had built and rebuilt so many times, but he did not respond, and she stayed with him for a long time, not fully comprehending what death signified, unwilling to accept that it meant the end of their long and necessary companionship.