by Gene Stone
He rummaged more through the human camp. He found some food that tasted sweet. Red balls of flesh. He liked these, very much. He found more boxes of the dry discs. He tore open a box and ate some. A novelty meal. He was overcome by how cluttered the camp was, but he had seen enough animals to know each species had its quirks.
He decided it was time to go. He went to the dead orange man and looked at him.
Poor creature, he thought, surprised.
The bear picked up the human’s limp body and began gnawing, lacerating through the skin, the sinew, the veins and arteries, the esophagus. After some time, the head was attached to the body only by a string of bone. The bear raised his paw up and smashed the bones. The head rolled free. The bear gently picked up the head by his teeth and trotted into the dark forest.
He retraced his steps, and before too long, he had found the carcass of the dead fawn. He was surprised she was still in one piece. He placed the head of the orange man where her head should have been. He didn’t know why he did this, but it felt right.
Goodbye, friend.
Then he decided to head back to his den to sleep. He was tired, but sated both in his stomach and his mind. He felt he had done what needed to be done.
It seemed the forest was just as bright now, in the night, as it had been during the day. The white stars shone in uncommon abundance and the large white orb, the king of the white lights, seemed almost touchable. Moon, he said, softly, to himself. Sometimes, when it was this low, the bear would climb a tree and reach out his paw and try his best to grab and feel it and see just what it was.
A swarm of moths rushed by, and he reached his head up and ate as many of them as he could. The bear was beginning to understand how complex everything was. The fawn and the flies and the elk and the wolves and the humans. All doing so many different things at once, but always living and then always dying.
As he neared his den, he smelled the sweet nectar of berries. He went to them, picked a few, sat down and slowly ate. It was rare to be able to savor each bite like this. He thought about the humans, and how they had eaten their food with each other. It might be nice to share a meal, however. He and his brother had done that when they were young.
Just as he was beginning to relax, he heard a far-off gunshot. Humans didn’t belong in the forest, they didn’t know what to do here. Somewhere else, they should go somewhere else. The bear wondered what somewhere else would look like.
He remembered the day he and his brother had stood at the edge of the line, the one his mother had forbade them to cross. But this time his brother did cross it. He moved past the line, then down the rocks, and then, oddly, he kept moving. The bear watched his brother disappear behind some trees. The bear waited for him to return, but he didn’t. So the bear went back to his mother and held onto her tight until she swatted him away, and soon he forgot he ever had a brother at all.
Until today. Why had he forgotten? He wanted to play again now, he wanted those days to come back. He wanted to share a meal. He wanted company.
He lifted his head in the air. He couldn’t smell his brother. Instead, that scent of war.
Something inside told him to run, to run for the lights of the city, though he wasn’t totally sure what a city was. But he decided to trust his instinct.
He took off like a hawk, flying west and into the dense forest. The bear was aware of the ground, its hardness against his weight, its unforgiving resistance. He felt the branches of the trees brush past him and he knew that the trees were smart enough to find a way to burrow into the hardness of the ground.
As he ran, he roared, he bellowed, and pawed through streams and brooks. He felt the earth. He did not stop for fifteen miles. He rested a bit, then took off again, fast as those humans that had rumbled down the snow. He traversed mountain and hill, flatlands and meadows. He had a sense of urgency that was foreign to him. He wasn’t curious about anything as he ran; he had one absolute goal and that was to find the war, the battle that had been lingering in his senses. Then he would know what to do.
The path was worn, strewn with debris. Plants had been flattened, branches strewn, as other animals had smelled the same smell, felt the same need, and rushed to the city.
Finally, the scent was so strong that he knew he was near. He slowed to a walk, exhausted. Most of the stars at the top of the world had burned out. The moon was still present, however. He was high on a ridge now, the scent of war below. He could see a clearing through the trees. As he walked toward it, shouts and screams, both animal and human, rose from below the ridge, wafting upwards like that grey-black nothingness that came out of the fire in front of the humans’ camp. Something told him to be very careful. He walked into the clearing. There before him, sitting calmly, looking down, was the large black bear he’d met earlier. The black bear didn’t turn. He just spoke.
“That word you used before. What was it?”
“War.”
“I think I know what it means now.”
The bear walked over to the black bear and sat next to him. What he saw below was unlike anything he’d ever witnessed: animals of every ilk—bears, moose, deer, hares, wolves, hawks, mice, badgers, raccoons—attacking humans. The humans matched the animals in number; there were thousands on each side, humans shooting their guns and animals tearing with teeth and claw. They were destroying each other.
“Guns,” said the bear.
“Huh?” the black bear said. But then he nodded. “They’re amazing, aren’t they? The humans,” the black bear said.
For a while the two bears just sat, their bodies quiet, their minds restless, remembering the first of their lives, first time siring young, first time a wasp had stung them, the first feed after the winter sleep, until something became obvious.
“It’s time to fight,” the black bear said.
“It is,” the bear replied.
Pig
Outside. A world of new movements, sights, and truths, tickling the skin, irritating it, amusing it. Gusts of cool within the heavy heat. Flits of color. A wayward wind, soft and delicate, then hard and fast. The sun! A yellow ball flung against a brilliant blue backboard. 323 stared at it, and it burned her eyes. She lowered her head, then flipped over so her underbelly could feel that yellow warmth. In a few minutes her belly burned too. Be wary of the sun, she thought.
Other things seemed magical but harmless: green patches of sod and seed that forgave her weight as she trotted upon them, long stretches of field; forests of corn and tobacco stalks; meandering wood fences that portioned one parcel of green from another; the low clouds of a pending storm drifting casually from west to east; the scent of a nearby lake, lazy and tepid; bass hiding among the deeply rooted reeds; ducks calmly commandeering the surface. 323 was among the living. She squinted her eyes and reveled in the glossy veneer of the world. Things teeming and growing, hearts beating.
“Where is the food?” a pig with a brown spot on her snout asked. 323 tore herself away from the world she had just discovered and responded.
“I don’t know. We’ll look for it.”
323 and the others walked along the perimeter of the pen, their old home. Inside the walls were silver, but outside they were the color of dirt. Underneath its eaves, 323 could see where the chutes opened up against large rectangular panels, which were painted beige against the darker brown of the rest of the wall.
“That’s where the food enters,” she said. “Something must attach to those openings, something that carries the food.”
Had she noticed anything out here that might deposit food? She scanned her mind, but came up with nothing.
602 walked up to her with an air of diffidence. “We promised them food if we left the pen.” 602’s backside was dirty. 323 guessed she had been rolling on the ground.
“I know. It must be out here. It has to come from somewhere.”
“I agree. The food must have come down through those slats near the top of the pen.”
They broke into four search
parties. 421 took a group south, toward the trees and whatever lay beyond. 602 went east, toward the lake and the dragonflies and the buzz of life near the water. Another pig, 861, took a group north, where the fields started. At the very least, she and her group might find food among the spoilage of the crops.
323 was surprised at how easily the leaders took their place in front of the rest of the pigs, and how quickly the others fell behind. She looked back at the pen where dozens of dark beady eyes followed her movements. 789 and her followers. 323 wanted to invite them out into the sun, but maybe she didn’t need to. There were fewer of them than before. Slowly they were peeling off, coming outdoors.
She couldn’t muse on this for too long. She needed to take her group west, to follow the sun. That sun! How could something feel so good and so bad at the same time?
She walked west, behind the back of the pen, twenty pigs alongside her. She felt safe with her fellows so close, all of them free and curious and mighty.
Behind the pen 323 found an empty dirt lot crisscrossed chaotically with large, strange tracks. She sniffed the dirt for some clue, but smelled something slightly foul, not animal. The group crossed the lot, planting hoofprints alongside those strange tracks. Beyond the lot was a large expanse of grass dotted with yellow wildflowers bending benignly toward the ground. 323 breathed in their subtle fragrance; it was so much nicer than the stench of struggle that permeated the canals of the pen. She let her hooves drag against the grass. Soon, the pigs had crossed the expanse. Beyond it they saw the source not of their food, but of the marks. Three steel objects waited where the grass ebbed into the hard tar of a road. The pigs stopped their pilgrimage at the gravel.
Something about the loose tar, and the heat that emanated off the blackness, spooked the animals. 323 dipped her hoof into the substance. It was hot. She knew that the sun had acted upon it. But otherwise it was harmless.
“It’s fine. We can cross.”
But the other pigs were engrossed by the steel contraptions, circling them, trying to find signs of life, a scent to trail, something to help them understand what these things might be.
“They look like dead animals,” someone said. 323 agreed—animals made of armor that shined in the light.
The pigs circled the objects, again and again. A few brazen pigs butted their heads against the metal sides, softly at first, but their prodding was useless.
“They must be something else. Some sort of storage unit. Or housing project.”
Again, 323 couldn’t help but form a word. A word she knew the other pigs wouldn’t want to hear, a word that the other pigs would deem false, fictitious, fractious: “Human.”
“We don’t like that word,” a pig said.
“I know. But these things that look like beasts are cars. They’re human vehicles. Humans exist. They live near here.”
“No,” said another pig.
The pigs backed onto the grass, giving their hooves relief from the hot tar. 323 wanted to talk more about the humans. But before she could speak, a scream from somewhere near the pen, stopped her—more than a scream, a chorus of screams, rising up into the air, bonding and curdling.
323 and her pigs turned toward the tumult, then raced across the grassy expanse, over the empty lot, back from behind the walls of the pen, through the courtyard they had entered earlier that afternoon, and back to the red barn that stood to the north. And there, in the middle of a circle of concerned pigs, was a single pig, lying on the ground, panting for air, her skin patched with an odd whiteness, her eyes dull and out of focus, her affect listless, her mind turned inward.
“What’s wrong with her?” 323 asked.
“We don’t know. She was fine. Then she began to breathe heavily. She fell down.”
“The same thing happened to me. Inside the pen,” 323 reminded them.
“No. You went dark. She is still with us. Look,” a pig said.
He was right. The fallen pig was blinking her eye, slowly.
“Maybe she needs water?” 323 suggested.
“We went to the lake and got her some. She hardly lapped at it. She couldn’t seem to get her tongue to work.”
“Hunger?”
“None of us have eaten. Why wouldn’t others have fallen into a similar state?”
The pigs murmured among themselves.
“There has to be a reason for this,” 323 said.
“Of course. There is a reason for everything,” said a new voice. This voice came from outside the circle, which was now five or six pigs deep.
323 looked up. Had the sun spoken? Was that possibile?
“Over here,” the voice said.
323 shifted her eyes from the sky to the window near the apex of the barn. Leaning against the edge of the opened window was a small, two-toned furry mammal, with a pink nose and a long, horizontal body that ended with a furry tail.
“Here!” the animal repeated, so that all the pigs focused their gaze toward the creature. It spoke again in a reedy voice with divergent tones and pitches and inflections.
“Ferret here,” he said.
“Pig,” 323 responded.
The ferret laughed. “I know what you are. In fact, I think I know more about your kind than you do.”
“Why would you say that?”
The ferret stood up and walked out to the middle of the window’s ledge.
“Just a hunch. You’ve been locked in that pen all of your lives. Just about.”
“So?” What did this animal know of the pen? He’d never been in one.
“The awareness produces some interesting correlations.”
323 felt that was the wrong word, “correlation,” but she didn’t correct the animal. So many words were flowing through her head, she didn’t have time to examine each one. A human drives a car to get to somewhere else. A lock keeps the doors securely closed. When you move west, you move like the sun. 323 tried her best to focus on what was at hand. “Interesting correlations?”
“Yes, such as pigs shouldn’t be out in the sun for very long. You don’t have the mettle to withstand the heat.”
323 sputtered. “Mettle? We have mettle.”
The ferret spun around on the ledge. He seemed to be dancing. “You poor tragic beasts. You’ve had it worse than most. And it’s still worse for you, even after awareness. Winners win and losers lose.”
323 wanted to climb up to the upper level of the barn and tear apart this low-slung fleck of aggravation. “What is your point?”
“Take that pig to the lake. Let her cool herself off in the mud along the banks. She’ll be fine. Pigs have done that forever, since before the time of pens.”
“Before the time of pens?” A wave of amazement washed through the pigs. But a few of them helped the fallen pig to her feet. They guided her away from the shadow of the barn and down the path to the lake.
“How do you know so much about us?” 323 asked. She took a few steps towards the barn, distancing herself from the rest of the group.
“Because I’ve been watching pigs for what feels like lifetimes. I’ve been watching all of the comings and goings from up here, in the safety of the hay.” The ferret reached behind him and grabbed a piece of straw, put it in his mouth and twisted it around and around. He danced a bit more. Then he gave out a loud burp.
The sun, sinking, had blurred from yellow to orange. The ferret raised his nose to the rays, enjoying the heat, then continued, commanding the stage that the ledge provided. He recited a brief history lesson to the pigs. The concept of the farm, the animals. He spoke of horses and cows, of milk and honey, of goats and crops, of chickens and eggs. He twirled and pirouetted with both his words and his legs. Now and then, he burped again.
“Why are you telling us all this?” 323 asked him.
“Because you need to know. They have kept you so ignorant, that even the awareness hasn’t brought you understanding.”
Again, 323 felt the need to defend herself.
“Who is this ‘they’ you kee
p speaking of? And how have they kept us from anything?”
The ferret just laughed.
“Quit laughing,” 323 demanded, rage rising within. “I said quit laughing or I will make my way up there and stop your laughter myself.”
The ferret quieted. He looked down into the eyes of 323.
“Humans.”
“I knew it,” 323 said quietly.
Then the ferret disappeared behind the veil of darkness that lay just beyond the window. When he returned center-stage, he had lost the piece of straw but gained a silver thimble, which he balanced awkwardly in his paws. He took a quick sip from some liquid inside it.
“You have water?” 323 asked. “Do you have food too? We are very hungry.”
The ferret laughed again.
“There is food everywhere. Go to the cornfields and muck around. You’ll find enough to satisfy. The humans won’t be feeding you anymore.”
“They didn’t feed us in the first place.”
“Yes they did,” he said.
323 dug her back hoof into the ground. “You seem to know all about humans. Most of us don’t know if we’ve ever seen one.”
“Most of you haven’t. They’ve rigged this place so they have almost no contact with you. At least, those of you who lived in that pen.”
323 thought this over. The ferret watched her think, and then suddenly lurched on his hind legs and danced a little jig.
“Stop that,” 323 said. “This is serious.”
The ferret stopped. He became grave. “All of what you see before you was created by humans.” He spread his paws and waved them, as if they themselves were painting the landscape. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“Then why do we fear them? Why do we pigs have such fear when we think of them?”
Another little jig, this time less confident. The ferret sang to himself, then turned serious. “I don’t like playing the role of teacher.”
“Really? I think you do.”
The ferret stared down 323. Then he took a swig from his silver thimble. He laughed, and gave out another belch, swaying a bit, then dancing again. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”