by Gene Stone
“What should we do now?” Jessie asked.
“Let me look around,” Cooper replied. “Are there windows?”
“Just two.” Jessie pointed to a couple of small openings near the ceiling, rectangular windows whose old, dusty glass let in almost no light.
“We need to board them up.”
“I’ll do that,” Jessie said, and almost laughed. Who else was going to do it? “There are some boards over in the corner. And I know somewhere there’s a hammer and nails.”
“I’ll check,” Cooper said. The basement had three rooms. This one was the largest, and lay just under the living room. It was cluttered with decaying boxes and furniture and memories of several generations that had long left this earth. Under the kitchen was the old boiler room; its rancid smell could repel any mammal. Cooper glanced inside and closed the door.
The final room was another storage room; this one looked as if no one had been inside it for decades. Cooper used his nose to pry the half-rotted wooden door open. He sniffed. Odd, he thought. Something was here that didn’t belong. He searched the perimeter. Then he looked up on the various shelves and pegboards. Nothing. He found a closet and pushed open the door with his snout.
There. The unmistakable smell.
Clio.
“Well, would you look at that? You found me.” She jumped from the closet shelf and landed softly on the concrete floor.
“What are you doing here?” Cooper asked.
“I was leaving. But the old woman blocked the door. I came down here, looking for an escape.”
The two animals watched each other, unsure of the other’s motives. A familiar impasse. They had grown up together, in that apartment on Avenue A, and knew each other as well as they knew anyone, anything. They had a fondness for each other. But they did not understand each other.
Cooper’s legs suddenly gave way. The wounds, combined with his fatigue, were too much. He slumped to the floor. The cat, concerned, smelled his nose.
He looked at her questioningly.
“Old habits die hard,” she said. “I guess I could have said, ‘How are you?’”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t go out and I can’t stay in. I knew my place. I understood it. I was good at what I did. And now I have to give everything up, for something I don’t understand, something a part of me doesn’t want to understand.”
“You’ve had it easy. Most animals don’t. Most animals didn’t, I mean.”
“You had it easy too.”
“Yes. But I know what the others have been through. I don’t want that to continue. How selfish of us to rest here because we were the lucky ones who are matched up with kind humans.”
“Most humans are kind. You don’t kill everyone because a few are bad. Anyway, Jessie has been so good to us. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“All that matters is our lives? All that matters is what happens to us? What about everyone else? What about the rest of the world?”
“Leave me alone.” Cooper sighed.
The cat looked into his helpless eyes. She was relentless. “I’m not blind to love. Jessie loves me and I love her. But does that make up for the animals who’ve been mistreated? Does that make up for...”
Cooper barked. He couldn’t help it. A loud, angry bark. Clio jumped aside.
“Leave me alone,” he repeated.
They were both silent. In the background, they could hear Jessie hammering boards over the small windows.
Cooper sighed. “The mammals will be back, won’t they?”
Clio nodded.
“Then I’m staying. I won’t let them kill her.” His eyes traveled from Clio’s to the ceiling. She followed his gaze, and saw a burst of fright. Jessie had been wrong. There was a very small window in this room too, up by the ceiling, nestled between ancient boxes.
Two sets of eyes peered through the glass. Clio and Cooper saw those eyes, shining red in the dim light. The eyes blinked, slowly, then were gone.
Bear
The bear traversed the forest, stepping gingerly. He could hear the rustling of things above, below, and through the trees. The forest wasn’t normally so active. Something was happening, something unusual, but he knew that no animal would be willing to stop and talk to a ravenous bear. The forest was his sovereignty. Being king made him proud, but solitary.
I’m always alone, he thought. He didn’t just feel his loneliness now, he thought it. He expressed it. He kicked a rock. He watched the rock twist and turn through the fallen foliage and dust and dirt. Then he kicked another. He sniffed the air, but the smell of war permeated everything and he couldn’t locate any food. He decided to go back down to the river and hunt for salmon.
He found the river easily and then headed south, as the other bear had told him to do. He trotted alongside the river’s edge, turning his head from the water to the forest and back, watching the water for fish and the forest for something else to eat. Or talk to. He forgot. He was both hungry and curious.
The sun was still high, but fading westward. The bear kept walking and walking until he found what he wanted to find: a ledge above a small waterfall. He went to the ledge and tested it to see if it could handle his weight. Once, when he was young, he had stepped onto such a rocky outgrowth and it had snapped, sending him into the cold river, causing his head to smack against a rock. He had made mistakes, but he never made the same mistake twice.
He walked to the edge and sat down. When the fish made the jump up and over the waterfall, he would be waiting.
Time passed slowly. His mind wandered. He thought of his mother again, the softness of her belly, the tug of her paw, how she was always aware of where he was. She was probably dead. He felt it. He wondered if she’d be proud of him, sitting on this ledge, a competent hunter. He’d mated with three females who had prowess and power.
I have offspring, he realized. Like so many other things rushing through his head, he’d never thought of that before.
He squinted into the water. He couldn’t see anything. Perhaps the river had been overfished. He jumped boldly from the ledge, flopping into the frigid waters below. Normally he would never do this, he would never scare away his prey. But he had to know for sure. He dunked his head below the surface. His intuition was correct.
He waded to the bank. Once out of the water, he shook his body and beads of water whirled around him, a crazy kaleidoscope.
His hunger was becoming a problem. He decided to try his luck in the thicket. Behind the tree line he began to dig and smell and search. He went from bush to tree, back to bush. Anything would do at this point. But the forest was eerily silent. He sharpened his claws on a young pine tree.
At last he heard something.
A shot. It had something to do with war. He decided to investigate. He didn’t know why; his need to understand had nothing to do with food. But knowing mattered.
He heard another shot and lumbered towards the sound.
There they were. Two humans. He thought they might be the same two who’d spilled the oil. Now they were wearing bright orange jackets.
Idiots, he thought. They will be easy to track. He laughed at the thought of an orange hare.
Each man had a gun. They were firing at trees. The bear circumvented them until he stood at their backs. He hid, as best he could, behind the trunk of a large tree.
The men were drinking liquid from cans. Probably that horrible poison, thought the bear. They were laughing, putting bullets into the guns. Then they crouched low on the ground and aimed.
Good technique, thought the bear. He wished he could get that low to the ground.
The shots went off. He was closer to the gunshots and the noise was impressive. They were shooting at a sapling. The first man hit it. The second man hit it. The sapling was left bruised and bent. The bear could smell the smoky residue from the shotguns.
Something rustled. He turned. It was a fawn. She wasn’t paying attention; her eyes were on the gro
und, and she seemed confused. The bear watched her.
What was she doing? He was ten feet from her! The bear had never seen a deer walk so close. What was going on?
She looked up. The bear and the fawn locked eyes.
“Oh,” she said.
“What are you doing?”
“My family is gone. I can’t find them.”
“Get out of here. I’m hungry enough to kill you and eat you.”
“Who cares?” she said. “I’m going to die anyway. All I am is food.” Her ears lay flat against the top of her head. She took a few steps toward the bear. She took a few more. Soon, she was a paw-swipe away. She exposed her neck to him.
“Just get it over with.”
“No. This is not how it works.”
“Nothing works the way it’s supposed to anymore, don’t you understand?”
The men fired off a few more rounds. The fawn’s ears perked up. She dug at the dirt with her front hooves.
The bear looked up at the sky. Dusk was falling, and he could see the stars scattered over the top of the world.
“It’s getting late. It won’t be safe. Go find your family.” The bear thought to himself, after he’d said it, that he wanted the fawn to leave. To find her family the way he wanted to find his mother and brother. He’d let a hare go and now he was letting a fawn go.
“I told you, they left. I don’t know where they went.” She looked at the men in orange suits. “I have something to do. Goodbye.”
The bear watched the fawn walk right into the sight line of the humans.
“What are you doing?” the bear called to her. But she didn’t answer him. He thought perhaps he should stop her, but he didn’t.
The bear heard the orange men gasp and then grow still and quiet. The bear crouched as low as he could, imitating the humans. The fawn just stood there. She didn’t run. She didn’t move. The humans reloaded their guns, aimed, and fired.
The fawn lifted her head just before the shots were fired. She was submitting with dignity.
The shots pummeled her. Her legs buckled, blood splattering the tree behind her. Her black eyes turned blacker. She fell to the forest floor, not fighting death; she took a few last breaths; her ears pricked up, and then they fell. She was dead. The bear felt sadness. Why didn’t she just run, he thought.
The two hunters jumped up and down, overjoyed. They touched hands. They touched the cans together and drank them down. They ran to the dead fawn. One of the men pulled out a saw and began cutting at the animal’s neck. He sawed off her head. The bear couldn’t believe what he was watching.
Have the respect to eat her, he thought. She was there for you. And you take her head? He thought of the bear he had seen before, also missing a head. He shook his own head.
After placing the head into a cooler, the two humans walked into the forest. The bear smelled the air carefully, so that he could track them. Once he had secured their scent, he walked to the fawn’s carcass.
He nudged her with his snout. He circled her, nudged her again. Her golden fur, with those faint black spots, was covered with innards and blood. And with holes, the same holes he’d seen in the bear by his childhood den.
So this was what humans do. Kill and take the head. Leave everything else to rot. The bear needed to learn more. He lifted his nose and found the scent. Before he left, he licked the fawn’s fur, not to taste the meat but to tell her goodbye.
He caught up with the humans easily. They were loud, their voices ran together. He thought of the wolves baying to each other while he slept in his den. He would like to have heard them at that moment. A pack of wolves, together, howling into the night. He thought he might even be envious of them. Of the group and the beautiful songs that rose out of those enchanted creatures.
He wondered who came first, the bear or the wolf? He stayed a hundred yards behind the humans and the head of the dead fawn.
Before too long, he could smell something, something wonderful. It made his stomach ache. The two humans stopped. The bear stopped too, studying the yellow-orange flickering lights of the fire that rose and fell and seemed to be contingent on the wind. Fire, he knew. He had seen it before, once, but then it was frightening, huge, relentless. This fire was subdued; the humans had tamed it and used it.
From the orange flames, dark grey smoke rose up and filtered away, lost to the sky.
The bear heard a loud zip, and two other humans appeared from a flimsy tent. These humans were different. They were smaller. Females. One of the humans wearing that foolish orange jacket grabbed one of the females and pulled her close. They touched their faces together. The other orange human did the same to the other female.
Something was hanging above the fire. Food—the source of the smell. His mouth watered, drool hanging from his clenched jaw.
The two orange humans took the head of the dead fawn out of the box. The females grimaced and turned away. They rejected it. This made the bear happy. Humans with some sense.
Then all the humans sat in chairs and watched the fire, which was dancing. It crackled. It was mesmerizing. One of the humans rose from his seat and rummaged through a container and brought out a box. Each of the humans took something from the box, then passed it to the next. Once they all held whatever had been in that box, they put it to their mouths and ate it.
Interesting, thought the bear. What was in that box?
After passing the box around again, the four humans rose from their seats. Two of them locked hands, then the other two did the same. The two humans in orange carried a light with them, flashing it toward the forest. They made sounds of joy as they walked into the darkness.
The bear could hear the human sounds for a while, but then he couldn’t. Whatever was causing that smell was still hanging precariously over the fire. He rose from his crouch. He stretched his limbs, which had begun to cramp. He was quiet. It always surprised him that he could be so stealthy when he put his mind to it. He sniffed. The smell of war was still present, but he was learning to ignore it.
He walked to the fire. He tried to touch it, but he couldn’t. It was the slipperiest salmon yet. And even though he didn’t touch it, it hurt. It was too hot. Interesting. Something that was there and not there at the same time.
He sniffed the chairs. The odor that was left behind was loud and synthetic. It reminded the bear of some kind of flower but he couldn’t decide which one. Then he found the box. He put his snout in it. When he tried to shake the box off, it wouldn’t come off. Using his paws, he pulled it off; small round discs began falling to the forest floor. He sniffed them. Like the scent of the humans, they smelled vaguely familiar. Tangy and acidic. He ate a few. They were dry. He didn’t hate them, but he didn’t like them.
The humans would leave a perfectly good fawn to rot, but eat these things instead?
He sniffed. That smell again! He was so hungry. He approached the fire, deciding he would just reach over and grab what hung above the flickering. He got on his hind legs, bent over the light and grabbed. He took a bite. Hare. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
He should have taken the meat into the forest and eaten it there, but he was a bear, not used to worrying about anything but other bears. He ate the hare with authority. He was lost in bliss. So much so that he didn’t hear the humans returning.
He took one final bite of the hare, which was slick, but not slick with poison; it was slick and perfect. Then he looked up and saw four sets of staring human eyes. He could smell their fear. They had stopped their human sounds. He watched them watch him. He threw the hare into the forest and made a note of where it fell. He would finish it later. Now he had a chance to get a closer look at these creatures and their odd ways. He moved toward them, and the orange humans put out their limbs in an attempt to protect the females.
The bear wondered what these humans would taste like. One of the orange men was fumbling with his gun, which must have been the same sort of gun that killed the skinned bear near his cave and the fawn
who had wanted to die.
The bear had never thought that these humans would aim that thing at him. But that’s exactly what the human in orange was attempting to do. The bear could still smell the faint stench of the powder from when the orange men had killed the fawn. The two females had tears running down their faces
The man in orange made a clicking noise with his gun, and the bear knew it was time to charge.
The human had no chance. The bear was on him in seconds, his half-ton body dwarfing the tiny frame of his would-be assailant. The bear tore at the orange of the man, ripping it off him. Then he swatted the human’s neck and face. Blood poured. He thought of the river, its rapids and falls. The gun flew out of the human’s hands. The bear stopped his mauling. He turned and saw the other orange man aiming the gun at him.
This one is weaker than the first orange man, the bear thought. Calmly he left the bleeding man, who was groaning and writhing on the dusty earth, to deal with the other human. This one, much to the bear’s surprise, fired the contraption. The bullet jetted by his cheek, causing him to wince in pain. The piercing sound hurt his ears, and the bear rose on his hind legs and bellowed from the deepest part of his body. His bellow echoed through the valley, the cliffs, the caves. The weak orange man shot another bullet but he could not hold the contraption steady.
This bullet grazed the bear’s side. A mistake.
If you are going to put a hole in me, the bear thought, you’d better do it the first time.
The bear was upon the man before either could blink. He was done swatting. He tore into him with his claws and teeth, daggers and swords, over and over. Soon the orange man was lifeless. The bear turned around. The bleeding man, no longer orange, now more crimson, was running away, stumbling and whining. The females were right behind the fleeing man, making horrendous sounds.
The bear didn’t feel like chasing him. He was tired of seeing lifeless things.
He walked back past the fire, which was dimmer and slower now, into the thicket. He sniffed the air until he found his hare. He put it in his mouth, then walked back to the dead human. He watched for signs of life as he finished his dinner. Nothing.