Dirty Work

by Anna Maxymiw

  Despite having what looks like a cumbersome body, black bears are remarkably expressive, almost elegant in how they communicate using their physicality. I watch this bear assess his situation and environment through his senses, and I’m amazed. He has a demonstrative face: eyebrows that furrow or rise, eyes that narrow or widen. His ears are perked; he’s listening. His nose wiggles seemingly independently of the rest of his body as he tastes the air. He bends, dips his head, and uses the tips of his claws to ease open the plastic wrap on a half-eaten sandwich. He unwraps it.

  Henry looks back at my surprised face and smiles. “Ask the housekeepers about the time a bear unlatched the walk-in fridge and ate all of the sandwiches from the packed lunches,” he whispers. “They were covered in cling wrap. He got ’em out.”

  Suddenly, the bear stops nosing. His head swivels, his structure moving with incredible, frightening grace, as he spots us. He raises up, his body moving in segments like some kind of machine. First his ears prick up, then his face rises, then his chest broadens, and then he’s entirely up on his hind legs, his paws close to his chest. My heart gallops, and my vision silvers over as he turns his full attention to us. He moves his spine eerily, shifting the upper part of his body out to one side to see us better while keeping his hind legs planted on the ground and motionless. He readies himself. He stares us down.

  I’ve never felt fear like this. It’s vestigial, instinctual, powerful; it pulses through me with every panicked beat of my heart. It’s all I can do to focus on breathing, on not running away. The bear looks at me and we stand, locked in the moment.

  * * *

  My fascination with black bears comes from my deep, meaty fear of them. When I was deciding to take this job, the idea of working in close proximity to these bears was a huge red tick in the negatives column, something filed under “this scares the shit out of me,” even more than having to make friends with other young women, even more than spending weeks in close quarters with young men. The spectre of the bear—in my lurid nightmares tall and slavering, towering over a fragile human body with teeth bared and claws out—made my stomach knot up in a jagged way. The fear comes from the same place inside of me where other unadulterated emotions—lust, hunger, frustration—are born and bred. So I tried to learn. I spent hours down the Google rabbit hole; I pulled papers from the UBC library website. Even now I find a battered book in the lodge’s book collection—a sad shelf, mostly full of incongruous romance novels with pulpy covers and titles like Rangoon and This Fiery Splendor that we giggle over while on break—that I fish out and read covertly in my bunk, late at night, when the others are painting their toenails or brushing the snarls out of their hair.

  I might be scared of them, but the consensus is that bears are fascinating, powerful animals, one of those species that has captured human interest and held that interest for millenniums. Black bears are the only type of bear found exclusively in North America; Canada has three species of bears—black, brown (with its intimidating grizzly subspecies), and the ever scary polar. There aren’t any grizzlies in Ontario, and we’re too far south for polar bears (although Cochrane has a polar bear habitat for hapless tourists and a giant replica of a polar bear looming over the information centre). We’re smack in the middle of black bear territory; we’re summer neighbours with these spirits.

  A black bear weighs about the same as an average human male, somewhere between 160 and 220 pounds, although a good-sized black bear can reach anywhere upward of 250 pounds, with some big old boys reaching 500 pounds; the biggest black bear documented in Ontario weighed 760 pounds and was more than six feet long. Despite their brawn, black bears are disarming because of their appearance: they have a droopy backside and wiggle when they walk because they’re pigeon-toed; they move in a strange lope. Their claws are shorter than grizzly bears’ claws, which means they’re much more adept at climbing, but they look funny when they shimmy up tree trunks in a bunching, inchworm movement. I like what I read in the creaky old book I’ve swiped from the lodge library, where the authors tell me that “the bear is like a macho bullfighter whose grace and precision seem to contradict his somewhat portly appearance.”

  And bears are greedy for food and for knowledge, always hungry and always, always curious, so curious that they get themselves into jams. There’s a 1976 article from an Alberta newspaper that describes an incident in which a motorist foolishly stopped by the side of the road on the Banff-to-Jasper highway to get a closer look at a black bear. While he did this, the curious bear moseyed around to the other side of the car, slipped into the driver’s seat, and accidentally nudged the gearshift with its body. The car rolled off the road; the bear made a terrified exit, and the car owner an equally terrified re-entrance and getaway.

  But they’re far from just clowns. They’re the ancient caretakers of this land. It’s easy for us to imagine ourselves invincible, since there’s never been a bear-related incident at the lodge, but we’re not. They’re the gods. The bears have seen hundreds of us come and go; they’ve watched quiet and blinking from their bear paths hidden beyond the lines of the forest. We’re working near important and intimidating animals that know the land better than we do and tolerate us regardless. We’re living among one of the world’s most prolific and misunderstood predators, an animal that has been documented and revered for ages.

  Looking at a bear, it’s easy to understand why they were worshipped; they are like us, but not us. Bears walk plantigrade—with their full weight on the soles of the feet, not on fingers or claws—the same way humans do. They can stand on their hind legs and sometimes even walk upright; they reach and grab with almost the same mannerisms as us; a bear skeleton is said to look like a human skeleton. This could be why bears scare humans so much, why we talk about them so often. As the book in my hands says: “We cannot shake off the impression that behind the long muzzle and beneath the furry coat so unlike our naked skin there is a self not so different from us.”

  * * *

  My fear of bears hasn’t decreased now that I’ve seen one. I think it’s increased, despite the fact that nothing grievous happened at the dump; the bear we were peering at just ignored us and went back to eating garbage. Now I’ve seen, in person, how those animals move—the sheer, luscious muscularity married with devastating grace. Now I know for certain that they’re the top predators on this land, that we would be nothing in the face of an attack if it were to happen. Now I know that they’re meant to be feared and revered, all in one emotional package.

  I’m alone in this feeling; the other staff members mostly wave off my bear concerns.

  “Good lord, Big Rig. Get a grip!”

  “There’s worse to worry about up here. Like how you’re going to serve that annoying party of drunks tonight for dinner.”

  “They’re just big dummies.”

  “We have bear-bangers. Don’t worry.”

  “Man, I hunted one with a broken wine bottle once.”

  An average of fewer than one person a year is killed by black bears across all of North America. And when black bears do kill people, it seems to be either for necessity—feeding on the body—or because they’ve never seen a human before and are taken aback. But sometimes there’s no reason or rhyme to fatal bear attacks: you can do everything right and still fall prey. You can have food in the campfire frying pan and still become dinner. Some things are out of our control.

  Because we’re so far north, and it’s hard for representatives from the Ministry of Natural Resources to get to us in a timely manner, the MNR has given us permission to kill what are deemed “nuisance bears.” Nuisance sounds light-hearted: it would be more prudent to call it a trouble bear, an angry bear, a bear with a brain in which wires have become crossed. Under normal circumstances, when ministry representatives can get to a site quickly, a representative visits and assesses what attracted the bear in the first place. There’s a chain of events and red tape and all efforts are taken to keep the public and the bears safe. All of th
is is fair and valid and important. But up here, where MNR reps can only come in on choppy, preplanned plane rides, we don’t have the luxury of time or space. So instead we’re renegades, operating on our own schedule and land-based laws.

  From what I’ve heard, it seems that a nuisance bear is killed every summer. Henry has his faults, but he’s discerning when it comes to preservation and wildlife, and I trust him when it comes to deciding which bears are safe and which ones aren’t. Throw in Murphy, who makes a living off of hunting, and Pea and Jack, who have seen many bears over the years, and I feel we have a good tribunal. When a bear is killed, its body is taken via boat to one of the islands and left there to decompose. Some of the fishing guests have dubbed this area of the lake Stinky Bay, because of the perpetual smell of decomp. A year or so later, only the skeleton remains. Sometimes, the bear bones are scooped up by guests or guides, and some have been brought back to the lodge. For years, the skulls were kept on the ground by the path leading to the dump, until a group of Cree elders visited and told Henry that keeping bear skulls on the ground was disrespectful and that they needed to be elevated. Now the skulls are nailed to the trees, right where one of the well-worn bear paths intersects with the path to the dump.

  * * *

  For some reason, I thought that after I saw a bear, up close and personal, something would change. But nothing did because of course that’s the way it goes. Our bears ignore us, or do what they want to do without paying much attention. Winnie-the-Pooh was, after all, a black bear, I remind myself. The image is not far off; whenever a housekeeper comes across a bear—on the other side of the laundry field, across the dump, back behind the woodpile at the rear of the lodge—the bear usually toddles off after an exchange of surprised stares from both sides. It’s as if we can hear them sighing—these idiots again. It’s a fair reaction; we’ve expanded into their territory. It’s believed that black bears need up to forty square kilometres of land to live on, if the land is rich and prolific; if not, the bear might need up to one hundred square kilometres. This means we’re in their house. We’re their guests. We’re not good guests, either, but the bears don’t get violent with us.

  They do, however, let us know when we’re irritating them. A little female yearling attaches to the housekeepers and becomes a common fixture around the lodge. One night, she methodically knocks over every single trash can in camp and nothing else. A few days later, the same young bear runs through the laundry field after Sydney has finished hanging all of the guest linens and pulls down every single bedsheet, leaving them in a tangled, dirty pile on the grass. “Come on, man,” Syd yells when she discovers the carnage, but she starts to laugh, because how can you not?

  In Sweden, tradition holds that anyone who encounters a bear at close range need only say, “Bear, you are not baptized from the same font as I am!” and the bear can be expected to then run away in heathen embarrassment. I don’t know about Swedish bears, but I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of this method. Our bobbling, persistent Ontario dump bears seem determined to continue about their daily business regardless of anything we say or do.

  A joke starts in the back girls cabin over whether we should leave our window open at night.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Syd asks.

  “Because of bears,” I say, gesturing to the window like a madwoman.

  Our cabin’s one operational window is a wide swath of chest-level screen that’s covered only by a piece of mouldy plywood held in place with a crude latch. The only way to get a cross-breeze is to unlatch the wood and let it swing open, but when we do this we have no privacy whatsoever because the open window looks right out onto the back path. If a bear were truly curious, it could open up our cabin like a tin of sardines.

  “Do you think a bear,” Syd starts, laughing and barely able to get the words out, “is going to punch through the screen—like this?” She mimics a bear, throwing her head back and making a strangled roar. I can’t help myself; I laugh with the rest of the girls. When she puts it like that, the whole scenario seems ridiculous. So we decide to leave the window open at night, but I know, deep in my gut, that the bears peep in on us, pressing their noses to the screen and sniffing at the flavour of our dreams, and I’m not sure if this scares or reassures me.

  * * *

  A week later—just after Canada Day when we’re all still thinking about the festive red-and-white cake Sam made as a special treat—our hand is forced and the truce is torn up. We have to make a decision about the fate of one of the camp bears. A large male with a red patch of hair on his head starts stalking the housekeepers in the laundry field. He starts hanging around the back girls cabin, watching. Henry has a serious look on his face when he tells me this. I know he doesn’t particularly want to kill the bear, although I wonder if a small part of him, something to do with a sense of masculinity and proprietorship, wants to get the adrenaline flowing, wants to pull the trigger.

  I’m on bar duty; it’s that lull in the day after guests have come off the lake, and the lodge is quiet as fishermen shower and get ready to eat dinner. Henry’s not around, so some of the more brazen dockhands and guides are sitting by one of the fireplaces, warming their hands and feet after a long day on the water. The main building has a beautiful glow to it as the sun dips in the sky, which only serves to illuminate the boys’ faces. They’re cracking their necks, fidgeting with their bibs and knee-high rubber boots, running their hands through their hat-tousled hair. They surround me. They rest their elbows on the bar as I try to clean the Thermoses and lunchboxes from the day. They interrupt my work with the ease of makeshift brothers. I don’t shoo them away. There’s something comforting about having them around—they make me feel less lonely. They smell like lake and outdoors, and it reminds me of what’s beyond the lodge door.

  Sam waltzes out of the kitchen with a plate of muffins. He bakes them fresh and oily throughout the day; he keeps them on the hood of the stove, or balances a plate on the fingertips of one hand and doles them out to the male staff members who pass through his kitchen. Sometimes, if the housekeepers are feeling cocky, we steal a muffin every time we slither by the stovetop, but only if we’re close to completely sure that Sam’s napping in his bunk. He never, ever gives his muffins to the girls.

  The boys lurch forward from where they’ve been huddled around the fireplace. They grab the baking with their dirty hands. Sam grins at me and turns away, retreating back to his kitchen kingdom with the empty plate. I sag a little, hungry for dinner, exhausted by the thought that I haven’t won Sam over, not even after our strange détente. Things have gone right back to where they were before. I watch as the majority of the boys stuff muffins in their faces, talking around the carrot and cinnamon, spraying crumbs onto one another.

  Jack slings his torso onto the bar beside me. He’s talking over his shoulder to Kev about the bear. Without looking at me, without sliding any pity my way, he breaks his little muffin in half. Steam curlicues out and into the space between us. He hands me my portion and then retreats without making eye contact, without ever even having stopped chatting. My heart splits open like it’s been peeled. I pop the muffin in my mouth before Sam can come out and see me, and feel a swell of tenderness. Then I listen in to see if I can glean any more information about our bear.

  Jack and Kev are reminiscing about how one year the dockhands had to crawl belly-down through the underbrush of the forest, armed only with rake handles and glass bottles, advancing on a bear that had been shot and injured. They wanted to make sure it was good and dead, and it became play-war, exciting. They crept toward it, shooting bangers and howling wildly, a makeshift guerrilla force.

  “Shoot a bear dead on,” Jack says, nodding sagely, “and it’s useless. Their skulls are so thick it won’t kill ’em. I seen a guy shoot three times at a black bear and the bullets only just furrowed through the skin, up the ridge of the skull.” He motions with his fingers, and I feel queasy, the muffin turning over in my stomach. “Gotta get it
in the jaw.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know Hank wants to do it tonight, so it doesn’t get you when you leave?” Jack asks, assessing me.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, man,” Jack says.

  I swallow drily. The guides have noticed it prowling around the other women, only the women for some reason, but not me. I haven’t met this trouble bear. Now I feel like I’m responsible for his impending death.

  “I’m gonna help,” Jack continues, finally eating his half of the muffin. I brace myself on the bar, tuck some hair behind my ear. I don’t want to be privy to this, and I don’t want to hear how bears died in previous years. Jack grins, excited for the chase.

  * * *

  Later, only one shot sounds—clear, deep, thick. The noise bounces off of the trees and ricochets through the doorway of the lodge, falling dully to the bottom of my gut.

  When Henry asks me if I want to see the dead bear, I go out of duty. The other housekeepers are already posing for pictures with it. It’s piled into one of our rusty wheelbarrows. It shit itself in its moment of death. Henry nailed it in the jaw, and part of its face has blown away, its jowls covered with gelatinous red blood. I stand beside the wheelbarrow. I don’t want to look down at it. Instead, I stare up at the trees as I burrow one hand into its thick fur, which is coarser than I imagined. Strong-smelling, like musk and fear and wisdom. I dig my fingers in, touching the still-warm body underneath the hide, and wonder why I feel close to crying.

  BEYOND THE VEIL

  Usually, when Wade comes into the staff dining room, we all chant “Wade, Wade-Wade-Wade, Wade-Wade-Wade, Wade-Wade-Waaaaaaaaaaaaaade,” to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger,” a practice that Jack started on a particularly cabin-fevery morning. Wade typically graces us with a small smile and shakes his head, as if he’s trying to switch us off and distract us from our embarrassing show of giddiness; he’ll grab a spoon and the oatmeal ladle, and plunk down next to one of the guys at the far end of the table. But our song peters out as we realize, one by one, that something is wrong today. Wade looks off; he seems distracted, clammy and pale.