by Jory Sherman
The family driving up the last steep hill in their station wagon can feel the magic coming on as they look up at the bluffs. With their windows open, they can smell the fragrance of the countryside, see the acres of trees across endless hills. One can almost hear what they are saying. "Will one week be long enough to see everything?" "What shall we do first?" "Why didn't we come here before?" "Why didn't we leave earlier?"
In the back seat, the children make their wishes known. "I want to go horseback riding." "Can we go to White Water first, Daddy?" "I want to stay a whole day in Silver Dollar City." These are just some of the conversations in all those out-of-state cars streaming down from Springfield, or up from Harrison, Arkansas on Highway 65, or along the cross-threading 86 and 13 and 248 and 76 roadways. These are just snatches of private communiques floating on the heady June air.
So, for some of us it is truly summer. The sleds are stacked darkly silent under the back porch, the hunting rifles oiled and put away for the season, tents and camping gear dragged out of the loft or the storage closet, airing out for a trip to one of the campgrounds that border the string of impoundments that form the lakes: Beaver, Table Rock, Taneycomo, Bull Shoals, Norfolk and so on down the line deep into Arkansas.
The summer people flow here, towing their boats, little toy cars behind monster motorhomes, swaying in their pickups campers, driving mere cars with luggage racks loaded with canvas and Coleman stoves. They become part of the permanent Tri Lakes community for a brief time that sometimes seems endless. They come on weekends and stay over extra days. They take their two weeks with pay and come to a place where time doesn't matter, a place with the oldest hills in America, the richest earth, the sweetest air. They take off their ties and their tailored suits, their chic city dresses and nylons and high-heeled shoes, trading them in for shorts and T-shirts and sandals.
It's Mauna Loa time and Acapulco afternoons, Rive Gauche strolls with blossoms scenting the air. It's spectacle, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Fiating over the Pyrenees and through vineyard-laced Italy, catching the bullfights at Pamplona on Sunday at four o'clock in the afternoon, bumping elbows with brown skinned Filipinos along the Escolta in Manila, sipping a Daiquiri in San Juan.
This Ozarks country is a place for summer people. It always was, even for the Indian tribes who swam the creeks and fished the mighty White River that once coursed through this vast green valley.
I was one of the summer people once.
I came here, like you, and heard the whisper of older times, heard the faint talk of pioneers settling in places where the Osage Indians camped in summer over a hundred years ago. I heard the clang of axes ringing through the hardwoods, saw images of the roughhewn cabins going up, glimpsed the cooking fires searing fresh-killed meat, listened to the guitars playing plaintive on clear summer nights, discovered my own heart beating in time to this ancient tugging rhythm.
We stayed here, after being drawn back time after time, for no explainable reason, knowing this was where we wanted to be.
This is a place to stay, all right.
And, if you go away, some of this summer will linger with you all your days. You may find yourself returning again and again, as a visitor or in your thoughts. You may even find yourself trying to explain, as I am, why the summer seems so much richer here in the Ozarks.
You might even become, as we, one of the summer people who stayed on, perhaps destined to spend all the rest of life's seasons here, among these gentle hills.
Comes the Hunter
HE LOOKED down into morning. Looked through a tunnel of trees to see it. Heard it come. Saw it dawn over the bluffs like the soft fire in the complexions of peaches, listened to it sing in the quivering throats of birds, listened to it sigh like a woman loved, like a wind rising from the creek, roam moaning through the valley, carrying with it the echoes of copper-red men and flint arrowheads, of moccasins padding on sandstone bluffs, of pioneers in rattling wooden wagons pulled by brawny oxen, of mules with whip wounds and the blood-scrawls of horseflies and sweat-bees on their hides. Saw it all splash on the tops of green hills and make sounds that only he could hear, because he saw it all and thought of all the times past and the time upon him now in the fine Ozarks morning when spring takes in its breath and just before summer comes through the hollows like a padding visitor surging with heat and the sweat of sun on leaves and skin.
He saw the morning, heard it. Felt it pulse in his veins like 'shine, burning into him, becoming part of him, part of the light in his eyes.
"Jess," she said, "you go easy now. Walk keerful."
"Um," he breathed, turned his head to look at her in the doorway of the cabin. His broad chest filled with the scented air of morning. His face crinkled with smile as he looked at the male and female pecan trees, the black walnuts stretching to the sky, the persimmon, peach, and plum orchard beyond the quarter-acre garden still soaked with the nightdew, destined to steam in the summer boil from a blazing star just rising majestic as a god over the far bluffs.
"Ah," he sighed.
It wasn't only that Katie was beautiful, it was that she still bore the tiny freckled pennies of childhood on her face, and that her long hair was freshly braided, glistening with a bright purple-black sheen, and that her belly was swollen with child. His child. Theirs. Their first-born. She stood, flat-footed, leaning backwards slightly, so that her stomach jutted proud, so that she carried their baby easy as could be, in a mother's intricate sling, a delicate hammock of seawater and blood stretched across the twin bone frames of maternal thighs.
"I mean it, Jess, now you hear. Keerful."
He loved to listen to her talk, to the soft patter of her voice on his ears, like the music in the dulcimer's box she played after supper on evenings when they sat on the porch and watched the land flicker with the falling sun's light and the fireflies wink on, like floating lights of prairie wagons going west through high grasses, in the dark, before the moon rises cold on empty lands.
He loved so many things about her that they all became tangled up in his mind until he felt his mind could not breathe nor sort through them for explanation. There were times when he wanted to explain to her the love in his heart, and when he would open his mouth, she would smile and he would see those white teeth, so perfect, so shining pure that he just choked on the words, felt his neck skin tighten down on his Adam's apple so that his speech was shut off plumb and square.
So he would just reach out with his jumbled thoughts and touch her with his heart and clench his lips in frustration until she frowned and made him want to kiss her and never stop kissing her. Ever.
At such times, he wanted to pray, but could never find words. And, too, he thought that it might be wrong to pray in praise of a woman, but his skin tingled, just the same, and what he couldn't say became a ringing song in his big, jutting jug ears until they turned red as cherries with a kind of simple shame.
"Oh, Katie," he said, "don't go on so. I'll be keerful, ya know."
But the rifle in his hands pulled his arm down so that his shoulder socket hurt. And he could feel her eyes on the rifle, on his veined hand and wrist sticking out of his chambray sleeve. The two brass-cased shells in his shirt pocket burned hot against his breast. There were only three bullets left. One nestled in the chamber of the single-shot rifle, a rifle old enough to have lost its bluing, old enough to be pitted along the barrel, the receiver. A single-shot, bolt-action "thutty ought six," given him by his daddy before he passed on, before "all them shirt-tail relations paw over my things."
Katie's eyes took on a kind of whimpering light and Jess saw it, felt the coldness of morning rise up again, flow through him, jolt his bones like granny's "arthuritis."
He swallowed air to keep the bile in his stomach down, threw a hand in the air.
"See ya 'fore long," he said, knowing the words were wrong. These were not the words he wanted to say, meant to say. Ah, his throat was tight, his chest cloudy still with the nightdamp, fogged in like the
hollows where the wide branch ran, the hills where the rivers flowed beneath the ghostly bluffs, under the haunting trees standing like dumb sentinels, rooted to the earth, scarred with certain parts of its history.
He could almost hear Katie say "be keerful" again, and he knew he could hear her stifled sob.
At the top of the road, where mist still hung in the poke leaves, the berry brambles, he turned, looked at her again. And the sob he heard was his own.
When he turned back to the road, he stepped into his father's footsteps, his grandfather's. He walked over silted footprints left by Osage Indians over a century ago. He thought of the old Lancaster County flintlock back at the house, grandpa's, its wood eaten away by time, its frizzen balled up now with a thick spiderweb he hadn't the heart to ream out, its ramrod frozen against the stock, swollen by moisture, its brass discolored, ravaged by corrosive rust. Heavy as a hickory limb with its long, big bored barrel, its German lock stiffened into a kind of metallic death, its graceful lines marred by the wounds in its maple stock, its patchbox dulled by a hundred years of disuse and neglect.
And the rifle in his hand turned heavy as any Pennsylvania flinter, weighted him down until his shoulder ached.
Jess smelled the scent as he knew he would. A giant paw seemed to wipe away all thoughts of Katie and the babe she carried in her swollen womb.
He stepped off the road, onto a trail where the deer crossed from ridge to ridge, down through the hollow, leaving their rubs on saplings, their musk scrapes in soft loamy earth. Leaving their shadows among the fallen skeletons of leaves, their hoofprints sunk deep in the hillside like cuneiform messages.
But the scent of bear was strong in his nostrils, and the fear too, like a cloying fragrance of deep woods where the blue clay spring eked from the rocks, where the land had not been timbered off and the hardwoods thick on steep slopes that rose to the high bluffs of the valley's ridge.
The bear had murdered both of his beagle hounds the night before. Black bear. Old bear, probably. Mean bear, certainly.
Jess followed scent, down trail and through thin, second-growth woods, above the hollow where last fall he had shot a 6-point buck through the heart, feasted on deer meat all winter. He had smoked haunches and ribs over a slow hickory fire, hung the carcass in the spring house until nothing was left but the skeleton.
The beagle pups, Skipper and Patsy, had chewed bones and sucked marrow until the bear had come, slaying them with mighty paw swipes until there was nothing left of them but the shrill echo of their yelps and their crumpled black and tan hides holding only broken bones and jellied bones.
He still found it hard to believe the dogs were dead. They had been fearless. Many's the time they had chased old man Sisco's prize bull, or Cantwell's pigs, including Lord Randal, the meanest Poland China boar in Taney County. Maybe he should have trained them better. He might have taught them not to attack a full grown bear.
Jess's eyes stung when he thought of the pups and his stomach knotted when he thought of the outlaw bear.
Outlaw? This border country of the Ozarks had known Quantrill, and Montgomery, and Bloody Bill Anderson. The infamous Alf Bolin. There was blood on the land, and it had soaked through time, left its smear on every sunrise and sunset so that the people would never forget the dark riders who had roamed these hills with knife and rifle, the Kansas Jayhawkers, the Unionists, the Rebels, the robbers, the refugees, the neutrals.
The fear built up in him and he wondered if he could do it, could even find the bear, and if, when he found it, kill it without thought of meat or survival, but only for revenge, only for payment in kind for the deaths of two beagle pups.
"Skippoozer," he said to himself, a baby-talk name for Skipper. When he thought of little Patsy, Skip's sister, he choked up, could not say her name.
She had been the bold one, always getting Skipper into trouble. Why, once she even treed a bobcat, and when it finally got fed up with the barking and jumped out of the tree to attack, Patsy skedaddled for her hiding place under the house, leaving Skipper to fight off fifty pounds of clawing cat. More than once, Skipper had wound up with the copperhead bite when he knew that Patsy had started the fight. Maybe she had tackled the bear first this time, too, and hadn't gotten away in time.
He walked very quietly now, the bear smell strong in his nostrils. He stayed downwind, following the contour of the hill. The bear would be below the bluffs, where the spring tumbled into a deep hollow, running off a sheer chunk of rock so that it made a lacy waterfall so pretty he wished sometimes he could freeze it, take it home to Katie.
She had never come here. The climb was too steep in her condition. But, he would bring her here someday. If the bear didn't kill him. That was the trouble with a rogue bear. It had killed two dogs, senselessly. Swiped them with huge claws as if they were gnats or mosquitoes. Such a bear would as soon kill a man. It had come close to home, and that wasn't natural. Maybe it had come for the berries that grew along the fence. He should have checked there for sign.
He heard the crows. But they weren't cawing at him. They were thick in the deep hollow below the bluffs. He moved toward the lower end, where it was open. The brush was thick in there. It would be like going into a box. If the bear got behind him, he would be trapped.
He saw the crows then, dozens of them, flapping like black flags through the trees, perched on saplings above the tangled blackberry bushes. He heard, too, the crashing of a large animal in the underbrush. There had been a fire here once, and the big trees had burned to ashes. Now, second growth fought for dominion in the boxed hollow. Berries grew in profusion and it was here that the bear fed.
Jess moved to the open throat of the hollow, treading softly. Brambles tore at his overalls, scratched at his hands. The crows screamed. Then, as if at a signal, they rose from the ground and from the small trees, filling the air with the sound of their flight.
It was suddenly still. Jess's heart froze. He stopped moving, listened.
He peered intently up the hollow, looking for a black shape.
The silence seeped through him, raised the hackles on the back of his neck. He shivered with a sudden bleak chill.
To his right, the ground rose, a small hog-back of earth that was higher than where he stood. He stepped carefully through the briars, making his way toward higher ground. The steep walls of the bluffs rose above him. He heard the waterfall, saw it glisten like a silver veil in the sun.
On high ground, he saw the trampled path the bear had made. In the center of the hollow, the brush was not so thick, but open, rocky.
The bear rose up, then, its back to Jess. It looked, he thought, like an old woman in a fur coat, its rounded shoulders hunched. He dropped down, his hands shaking, his brain clogged with fear. He eased back the bolt of the rifle. The faint scrape of metal boomed loud against his eardrums. But he knew he had not made much noise. He hoped the little sound would not carry.
The bear grunted as Jess eased himself up out of his crouch. He measured the distance. Fifty yards, perhaps. Less than a hundred.
He brought the rifle to his shoulder, moving like a mime in slow motion. The barrel wavered. Sweat trickled down his face, drenched his eyebrows. Salt stung his eyes, but he dared not brush them.
The barrel steadied as he pulled the rifle hard against his shoulder. He brought the sights into alignment on the bear's back. He took a breath, held it.
It was then that he saw the cubs. They came boiling out of the bushes above the she-bear, hit the open spot like a pair of furry bowling balls. The first one tripped, went tumbling end over end. The one following bumped into its brother and floundered backward.
Jess saw the bloody slashes on their muzzles.
In that instant, a picture flashed in his mind. He saw the beagles, Skipper and Patsy, ragging the little fellows, nipping at them. He saw the cubs fighting back, heard them squealing.
He looked at the bigger bear again.
This was no rogue bear, but a mother, devoted to protecting
her young against all enemies.
A most dangerous bear.
For a long moment, Jess considered following through. His finger caressed the trigger. The she-bear, upwind, had not scented him. Instead, she was intent on watching her cubs. They sat up, engaged in a mock battle, batting each other with their paws. Jess could almost hear them laughing.
He felt badly about the dogs. They had not known about the mother bear. She, seeing her cubs in jeopardy, had probably rushed up with fire in her eyes, swatted them. His heart tugged at the thought of Skippoozer and Patsy locked in combat with the powerful she-bear.
Slowly, Jess brought the rifle down. He drew in a breath. He had stopped shaking. He pushed on the safety.
There was no vengeance in him. Killing the mother bear would not bring back his pups. Rather, such an act would be a subtraction from life. This was the bear's country, not his. They belonged here, more than he did.
He backed down to the mouth of the hollow. Behind him, he heard the three bears thrashing in the berry bushes. Their scent was overpowering.
The cubs had wandered off, of course. Explored new territory. That was their nature. It was too bad the pups had seen them. But, he couldn't change what had happened. It just had.
He backed out of the hollow, hunched over like a mendicant, quiet and careful where he stepped.
The rifle was light in his hands. He put it on his shoulder, walked upright through the woods. He didn't care whether he made noise or not. These were his woods, too. The bears would just have to get used to him, or move on. They would, he knew. The cubs would grow, establish their own territories.
He reached the road, walked to the place where he could see his house. He stood there, for a long time, looking down at it. Smoke from the woodstove lazed from the chimney like a child's charcoal scrawl.