Where was she? What if she’d gone into the woods to find water, or to pee, and got lost? Where was Dad? Had he ever made it back to the road? If he hadn’t, where was he?
Then I had the kind of thought that comes to me at dusk when the sky is the color of dirty dishwater. When Dad was experimenting with the GPS at home, he went through two sets of batteries in one day. He thought he’d figured out why, but he hadn’t had a chance to test his theory yet. What if he’d run out of batteries out there? What if he was still walking? If there was one thing Dad was good at, he always said, it was walking.
Leaves crinkled in the undergrowth to the left of me. Something was stepping softly. I felt my heart catch, waiting, and then something let go. All the holding back, all the efforts to keep my mind from rushing to the dark places—it all just let go.
What if Mom was still walking? What if she had not found water? What if she got too tired and stopped walking? What if she had never walked down that road in the first place? What if they were not coming back for me?
Night fell, mild and full of noises. I didn’t expect to sleep at all. I forgot to lock the door. I needed to get up and do it. Mom held out the key. I wanted to tell her I didn’t need a key to lock the door from the inside, but the words wouldn’t come. All the lights had been left on in the living room.
“Look at this place,” Dad said. “It’s like the Milky Way in here.”
I had to lock the door and turn off the lights but I couldn’t wake up. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle in the hall outside my room. I struggled to open my eyes. Hands brushing the wall, the fall of heavy footsteps on the carpet, a snap of twigs.
My eyes blinked open. The buzz of deep sleep fogged my brain. Again the snap and crunch of twigs. I held my breath. Something big was moving in the brush not ten feet away. The fire had died out. My fingers searched for the flashlight and closed around it. I switched it on and shone the light toward the brush.
A flashlight! Someone was shining a light back at me.
“Mom!”
Two of them. Two lights.
“Dad? Mom? Who is it?”
My heart lifted, then thudded into my throat. My flashlight beam illuminated a silhouette and I understood. They were not lights. They were eyes. It was a bear. The two eyes caught in my light gazed back at me.
We stared at each other. The bear raised its head and sniffed the air. My mouth was so dry, my heartbeat a wild roar filling my head.
“No,” I croaked out.
“No.” A little louder. I stood up and made a shooing motion.
“No, bear. Off you go. Off you go, bear.” She turned, and in the light I saw that she wasn’t big.
“This is my spot,” I said, waving again. “Go on now. Leave me alone.”
She exhaled a little puff of air and then ducked her head away. With the arc of light from the flashlight, I followed her shape running away from me through the trees. She made a wide circle around me and up onto the road.
Fear fizzed in my ears. I sank back to the ground, my legs quivering. I took deep breaths. I’d done the right thing. I’d stayed calm and talked to her in a low voice. She’d run away, probably as scared as I was. You might think that the first thing I’d do would be to race to the truck with my sleeping bags and shut myself in to spend the rest of the night in there. I admit it was the first thing I thought of. But I made myself stop.
There are bears out here, I told myself, of course there are. This is the wilderness. This is their home. I’d surprised the bear by being here. I doubted she would come back. I did not want to get back in that cold, uncomfortable truck. The truth was, I was afraid of the truck. If I got back in the truck, I knew I would not get back out. If no one found me, I’d die of fear in there. Out here, I had my fire, and I could hear if anything was coming.
I dug out my matches and quickly put together a pile of kindling, then lit it. The fire threw comforting heat and light. But also, I thought I’d make sure the bear knew that this was my spot now. Maybe I’d built my camp on one of her usual paths. Maybe she’d seen me and gotten curious. Or maybe she was like me, lost and blundering her way along.
My hand found my water bottle, which I’d stowed beside my sleeping bag. I uncapped it and guzzled most of the water. My mouth was so dry.
What time was it anyway? The broad band of the Milky Way blazed across the sky. The Big Dipper poured the sky from its ladle. I guessed it was about two or three in the morning. What was the bear doing wandering at that time? She was a black bear, I was pretty sure of that, and black bears aren’t normally nocturnal.
* * *
The last time I saw a bear was in Wild Horse Canyon, and that time, I barely saw it. That was the year I was nine, the second time things went bad for Mom. I’d been waiting for Mom after school because we were supposed to drive up to Kelowna together, have dinner, and then go to an outdoor store that had backpacks for children. The backpack was my birthday present. It wasn’t cheap—it was more money than Mom and Dad usually spent for birthdays—so Grandpa and Aunt Sissy had pitched in.
While I waited for Mom, I sat on the school step reading a library book, The Railway Children. I guess I’ll always remember that as a sad book, because of that day. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. I’ll never read it again.
I’d just noticed that I was starting to get cold. It was spring, a nice afternoon, the buds starting to show on the maples and poplars, but I’d been sitting on the concrete step for over an hour. Ms. Fineday came out, just strapping on her bike helmet.
“Hi, Francie!” she said, sounding surprised to see me sitting there. “Good book?”
“Yeah. I’m just waiting for my mom. We’re going to Kelowna.”
“I saw your mom leaving through the north doors. She was walking.”
“Walking? The car’s parked out here.”
“Maybe she forgot she drove. I do that sometimes.”
I had a bad feeling, the kind I get when I’m almost certain something has gone wrong. I kept my voice calm. “I just saw her after class. We said we’d meet here.”
Ms. Fineday frowned a little. She wasn’t the type who always pretended to know everything. “Maybe she had to run an errand first?”
Tears welled up and clouded my eyes.
“What can I do to help?” Ms. Fineday said kindly.
“I don’t know. I think I better wait a little longer.”
“Can I wait with you?”
“Sure.”
She told me about the climbing she was planning to do at Skaha Bluffs, how she’d been dreaming about a route she’d failed at many times before and she couldn’t wait to try it again. She said the hike up to the bluffs was part of the fun, the views were so beautiful, and she said once, she’d nearly sat on a snake.
After about an hour, we went inside and I called home. Mom wasn’t there but Dad was. He’d said he’d come and get me and to stay put. Ms. Fineday waited with me until Dad arrived, then Dad and I drove around looking for Mom. We stopped at her favorite cafés and the Indian restaurant where we went for samosas. We drove by the creek where there was a bench she liked to sit on. But she wasn’t in any of those places. At about seven o’clock we went home and Dad called the police.
They asked Dad a lot of questions and when he got off the phone, he said, “They said they’ll keep their eyes open and to call if she comes home.”
At ten o’clock, the phone rang. Dad answered it. It was a teacher from my school, not one of my teachers. He’d seen Mom while he was driving home from badminton and he’d been curious because he noticed her feet were bare. She wouldn’t accept a ride, but he told Dad where he’d seen her.
* * *
“There you are,” she said when we pulled up beside her on Government Street, as if she’d been the one looking for us.
“Where are your shoes?” I said.
; “Well, I had to leave the shoes,” she said, just in her normal voice, like nothing was weird at all. “I realized the shoes were part of the problem.”
“What problem?” I said, but my voice was not normal; it was quivering with all the tears I’d been holding back.
“Never mind, Francie,” Dad said. “Let’s go home. You must be freezing.”
“I’m not too bad,” Mom said, even though she was only wearing a jean jacket and no socks or shoes.
It wasn’t until the next day that Dad took her to the hospital. She stayed there for the next four months.
* * *
I put another branch on the fire. After a few minutes, it caught and flared with warmth. I’d relaxed enough to lie back down, but I kept the sleeping bag away from my face so I could keep my ears open. The sky had begun to lighten a little; I could make out shapes around me, the truck on the road and the trees in the woods on the other side.
My mind had wandered. I’d started to remember the last time I’d seen a bear. Ms. Fineday did an overnight hiking trip every June with ten kids who were twelve and older. At the last minute one of the kids had to cancel and Ms. Fineday managed to convince the principal that I’d be able to keep up with the older kids. Mom was in the hospital then and I knew Ms. Fineday was trying to help out.
It was June and the little creeks were still running. When we crossed the first one, Ms. Fineday said, “We’ll cross a couple more of these on our trail and we can fill our water bottles then. That’s why we didn’t have to carry so much water from home. A liter of water weighs one kilo. Two liters, you’re adding two kilos of weight to your pack. That’s over four pounds.”
The Wild Horse Canyon trail crossed a burned-over area, so it was mostly open, and hot, not a lot of shade. Most of us would go through almost a liter of water in an hour. Even though the temperature was in the high seventies, it felt much hotter out there, with the remains of charred, twisted pines baking in the morning sun.
Another thing I liked about Ms. Fineday was that she didn’t pepper me with pointless questions the way other adults did. You know: How are you doing? How are things at home? Are you and your dad managing okay? (As if we were both babies who didn’t know how to look after ourselves.) And school? How’s school?
Anyhow, Ms. Fineday—whose first name, I found out, is Mary-Jane, not that I’d ever call her that, but that’s what Laila, the other adult on our trip, called her—Ms. Fineday didn’t stare at me with a sad, disappointed face, as if I’d done something embarrassing.
By the time we reached the campsite on the lake, all of the kids, not just me, were worn out and hungry. Some kids dropped their packs and walked right into the lake with their clothes on. Some of the boys stripped down to their underwear; they didn’t care who saw. We were all laughing crazily, so relieved to dive under the silky cool water.
The air, heavy with the smells of sage and pine, stayed warm and inviting even as the sun set. We swam while Ms. Fineday and Laila made the fire. Then those who wanted to sleep in tents set them up. I hadn’t brought a tent, because I didn’t have one small enough to carry.
“You can sleep in my tent,” Ms. Fineday said. “I don’t snore.”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I want to sleep under the stars.”
“It’s a sleep-under-the-stars kind of night,” she agreed.
I had never slept out in the open, without a tent. It felt wonderful to lie there looking out at the moon on the lake. The warm earth soothed my tired muscles.
Sometime near morning, I heard one of the boys call out, “Ms. Fineday!” Not shouting, but short and sharp.
She unzipped her tent. “What’s up, Jeremy?”
“There’s something down by the lake. It’s something big. It just came through here a minute ago.”
My eyes opened. The other kids sleeping outside sat up.
“Yes, I see it. Not to worry. It’s a bear getting a drink. She won’t bother us.”
“There’s a cub, too,” one of the girls said.
From where I was, I could just see through the trees the dark head of the mother bent to the water.
“I’ll just make sure she sees us,” Ms. Fineday said, getting out of her tent. “Hey, bear!” she called, in a calm voice. “See us over here? Get your drink and move along.”
The bear looked over at her. She didn’t seem concerned at all. Laila poked her head out of her tent. “Should I make some noise?”
“We’ll give her a minute. She sees us.”
A minute or two later, the cub galloped off, heading up the hill, away from us. The mother bear turned and followed.
“Nice morning,” Ms. Fineday said. “You can all get some more sleep if you like. I’m going to make coffee.”
I stayed in my sleeping bag, listening to Ms. Fineday and Laila by the fire.
Laila said, “I was worried when I saw that cub. You were as cool as a cucumber.”
“It’s a myth that a black bear with a cub is dangerous,” Ms. Fineday said. “A grizzly, yes. But black bear cubs can climb trees, so the mums don’t worry too much about them. If she feels threatened, she’ll just send her cub up a tree.”
“I didn’t know that,” Laila said.
“There are a lot of myths about bears that people just pass on without knowing if they’re true or not. They’re not cuddly teddy bears, but they’re not vicious killers either. A bear usually wants to stay out of your way as much as you want to stay out of hers.”
The smell of coffee had drifted on the fresh morning air. I don’t even like coffee, but lying by my own fire now, I remembered that smell as rich and delicious. Another thing Ms. Fineday had told us kids later was that bears don’t normally roam the woods at night. Their habits are much like humans, getting up at dawn and bedding down at dusk, unless there are a lot of humans or other disturbances around during the day, which forces them to change their habits. Then they may become nocturnal, looking for food, mostly plants and insects, at night.
That’s why I wondered about this little bear. Did it mean there were humans active nearby? Or could it be that she was trying to avoid an older, bigger bear? I decided she was on her own, and scared, and thinking of her that way let me fall asleep again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I might as well tell you about the shoes. You’re probably wondering why Mom was walking all over Penticton without her shoes. Or maybe you’re not wondering at all and it’s only me who still can’t get it out of my head, even though it happened a long time ago.
Aunt Sissy had come to stay. Most of the time, Dad and Aunt Sissy got along. Dad gets along with everyone, Mom always says, and I think it’s true. He sees the good in people, no matter what. He always says hello to the neighbors who leave beer bottles on their front lawn. When they play their music too loud on the weekends, Dad’ll say, “At least it’s Bob Seger,” or whoever it is that he likes. In the winter, when Dad’s shoveling snow, he shovels in front of their house, too. He says we could have worse neighbors. Mom always smiles at that, and says, “Yes, you’re right, we could have worse.”
Anyway, when Dad and Aunt Sissy did disagree, it was usually about Mom. Or about why Aunt Sissy had come to stay. Usually, after I’d gone to bed, Dad sat in the living room watching TV and Aunt Sissy went to her room, a room we called the den, that was full of a jumble of different-sized bookcases, a saggy old hideaway bed, a kitchen table that was in Mom’s first apartment when she was eighteen and that we used for a desk, and a gooseneck floor lamp. But if Aunt Sissy stayed up to watch the news, I could hear her and Dad talking, because my room was right above the living room.
One of their arguments went like this:
Dad said, “I know you wanted to see Del, but now you’ve seen her, so I think it’s okay for you to go home. Don’t you have a law practice to take care of?”
“I’m just staying until things are a little m
ore settled,” Aunt Sissy said.
“What things? I can certainly take care of things here. You’re the feminist.”
“This is what sisters do. You might as well accept it.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it.” I could hear Dad’s voice softening. “And I know it’s nice for Francie to have someone here after school.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Aunt Sissy said and stopped.
(Have you ever noticed that when someone starts a sentence that way, you’re almost guaranteed to take it the wrong way?)
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said again. “But I don’t think you always get hold of the right end of the stick on this.”
“On what?”
“On Del, on what she’s going through. I think you indulge her too much. Like the shoes, for instance. Did you even ask her why she’d lost her shoes or did you just go out and buy her a new pair?”
“I don’t think she lost them.”
“Left them, whatever.”
“There’s no point in asking that kind of thing.”
“That’s my point!”
I thought to myself that she sounded just like a lawyer then.
Dad was quiet. I could hear the news reporter on TV.
“Well, I asked her,” Aunt Sissy went on. “And do you know what she told me?”
“I think you’re going to tell me whether I want to hear it or not.” Dad laughed a little.
“But why wouldn’t you want to hear it? That’s what I don’t understand.”
“No, we don’t see eye to eye on that point, that’s true, Sis.”
(Dad was the only one who called Aunt Sissy “Sis.” Mom said it was just like him, finding a middle ground between Sissy and Cecilia.)
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