Fell Beasts and Fair

by C. J. Brightley

  His eyes are crinkled up too, though, warm even through the glossy black, like he thinks their busybody shenanigans are silly instead of troubling. I appreciate folk who can laugh at their own situations—like Gramma says, it don’t matter how serious you take life, it’s over eventually anyways. “They can mind their own business,” I tell him, a little belatedly. My cheeks go a little warm.

  He huffs out an amused noise, a little chuffing of warm air, and says, “I don’t know about you, Miss Blanche, but I find that most folk think everything’s their business.” He slides off the stool, standing up on his hind paws, and slides a twenty across the counter to me. God knows where he pulled it out from, he’s not wearing a stitch that isn’t fur or melting snow, but I’m not about to shame him by turning it away. “For your kindness,” he says, ducking his head like a man tipping his hat, and he starts for the door.

  “I don’t let folks pay me for that,” I say, half teasing, half serious. “If you do that, you start losing track of when you mean it.”

  “Fair enough. Call it an advance on my tab, then,” the bear says, and just like that, he’s out the door and into the ice, dropping to all fours as he goes. The door catches the wind and bangs shut behind him, hitting the bell and making it jingle like an omen.

  “What on earth is even going on in that head of yours?” Rosie asks, flicking me with her hand towel as she comes by for a coffee refill. “A bear!”

  I duck my head so she doesn’t see me smile. “He’s quite a gentleman,” I tell her, as prim as I can, sounding as much like Gramma as I can manage.

  “He’s quite a mess, is what he is,” Rosie says, rolling her eyes at the puddles of melted ice and snow under the counter. “I don’t know how you got like this.”

  “Like what?” I ask, not really paying attention to her as I go round to the front of the counter and start in on the puddles with the mop. There’s always something soothing in cleaning, a kind of power over the environment that makes me feel safe. Grounded, kind of, like I can feel my roots again.

  “I don’t even know,” she says, scrubbing a palm over her face. “You’re just weird. You just—he was a bear, Blanche! What were you even thinking, letting him sit in here?”

  “Hmm,” I say, completely disregarding the question in favor of savoring the faint, lingering smell of dark earth and wild things, of trees and honey and rain in the evening.

  “I love you, you know,” Rosie says, sighing a little, “but you’re just impossible.”

  His name is Red Paw. He shows me why—one shaggy brown paw is stained reddish, like old blood, and the claws are cut short, ragged little blackish stubs.

  “What happened?” I ask, serving up his usual cider with honey. I slide an apple cinnamon fritter on the saucer without being asked. I know everybody’s order, every time. Gramma calls it a gift. Rosie calls it being a weirdo, but then, Rosie has a tattoo of her own name and a bunch of roses (real original) in an impolite place to talk about, so I try not to listen when she gets too judgmental. She’s got her own troubles to work through, I think. Red Paw nods his thanks and takes a nibble, more delicate than you’d expect.

  “I had a pack of difficulties with a little man who liked to take things that weren’t his,” Red Paw says slowly, like it was maybe a little more violent than that and he’s trying to spare my sensibilities. Part of me doesn’t like it when folk try to do that, to clean things up just because I’m a lady, but on him, I can kind of understand why he’s worried about scaring me. After all, his teeth are pretty big, and his other claws sure are sharp. He’s real careful with them, though—he hasn’t torn or broken anything yet, not even a napkin. He’s gentler than most men I’ve met, really.

  “What’d he take?” I ask, prying despite myself. I know it’s bad manners, but I can’t help it. He’s got this air about him, like he’s been places far away, like he’s seen things that maybe other folks can’t see at all. He’s got this look like Grampa gets when he talks about the War, like whatever he’s thinking about hurts him in ways that don’t show up when you go looking for scars.

  Red Paw makes a face that might be a grimace, rubbing a paw across his muzzle contemplatively. “I don’t rightly remember, actually,” he admits. “It was a long, long time ago, somewhere else. I know he took my grandmama’s wedding ring off me, but there was—” he stops, rubbing the place between his eyes like his head hurts. “I think there was something else, something important, that I can’t quite wrap my head around, but it’s gone now, either way.”

  My heart hurts for him a little. Losing something is bad enough, but losing something and not even having the memory of it to hold onto? That feels like a whole other kind of stealing, a whole other kind of losing.

  I put a hand on his red paw, running a thumb over the rough edge of a sawed-off claw. It pulls at the skin of my finger a little, like rough sandpaper or the edge of a log. “Does it hurt?” I ask, turning the paw over and looking at the thin white scar that runs down the pad on it.

  “Not exactly,” Red Paw says, paw curling up around my hand. “More like an old bruise or a sore tooth. It’s a bother, up in my head, but it doesn’t hurt in the flesh.”

  “Like when I know I’ve got something to do, but can’t remember what it is, or when I’m avoiding chores and know it’ll be more work tomorrow,” I say, fighting not to smile and losing. “But more, probably.”

  He huffs out one of his little bear laughs. “Something like that. I was different, before, I think, but it’s been so long that I don’t recall what sort of different I even could’ve been.”

  Grampa says the same thing about the War, that hurting people, even for good reasons, that it changes you. It shows, now, in the way his hands shake all the time, even when he’s calm, but the shakes are just the parts of it I can see—Gramma used to say there was an earthquake in him, one he was holding tightly onto, and that having to hold that tight to something that big changes a man. I think maybe it changes a bear, too.

  “You must have other people to be attending to, Miss Blanche,” Red Paw says, ducking his head and pulling his paw back all of a sudden, like he’s just remembered we’re not the only folks here. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten about the other customers myself. There’s something about him that just pulls you in.

  “Rosie’s mostly got it,” I say, but I’m already moving around the counter to go do a quick check of the tables. “Everybody knows she’s the personable one, anyways.” She is, too, to everyone but the family. I think she just talks to people because she thinks one of them will give her a way out of here, out of the mountains and out of Georgia. She thinks she’s some kind of cosmopolitan. I think there’s something chasing her in her own chest, and she just wants to run from it instead of turning to look at it face-on. Everybody’s got some kind of wolf in them, I think, looking to keep them scared of the things that are good for them, that are all wrapped up in destiny. Rosie’s is just maybe bigger than others, or she’s just more inclined to run. Either way, it’s her wolf, not mine.

  “You seem plenty personable to me,” Red Paw says, raising his mug in a sort of salute to me.

  I can feel my cheeks go hot. “Not hardly. I don’t know why Gramma put me in charge—I can hardly talk to folks if I don’t know them.”

  Red Paw cocks his head, looks at me like I’m some kind of strangeness he’s never seen before. “You talk to me just fine, and everyone else is scared to even look me in the eye.”

  “Just cause TV is easier to watch than reading a book doesn’t mean it’s a better way to spend your time,” I tell him, another set of words straight from Gramma. She’s coming out of my mouth more and more these days—I can’t say I mind, but it’s still a little odd to hear her words in my voice.

  He’s bear-smiling again, eyes crinkled up, and I have to turn away so he doesn’t see me go red again. “You’re a complicated lady, Miss Blanche.”

  “I’m not,” I say, pushing my hair out of my face and behind my ear. It’s too
dark, makes my face look waxy and paler than it is. I’d like hair the color of his, a warm brown, but there’s no dyeing it unless I want to pay to keep it up every other week, and I don’t have the money and I can’t stand the smell. “I’m all kinds of uncomplicated, really.” It’s true—there’s not much to me, as Rosie reminds me all the time. I don’t do anything, don’t go anywhere—I live in the kitchen and between pages of books, and there’s not much complicated about that. People are complicated—that’s why I mostly don’t talk to them. I get this kind of fluttery panic in my chest around them, really; I can handle the little stuff, the what can I get you today? and the how’re you doing, how’s your wife? But when it comes to the real stuff, the social aspect, as Rosie puts it, well, I’m not much use.

  Red Paw is different, but he doesn’t feel complicated. Strange, and maybe a little dented up inside, but not complicated. He’s too regal for normal-people-complicated things, for the kind of petty and nitpicky most folks are. It’s a royal sort of thing, the kind of majesty that all the wild things have, the kind of grace you can’t really touch, can’t really imitate. It makes me feel safe, somehow, like I’m alone, but he’s there, still, and that’s—well, it’s just plain nice, is what it is, and I like it.

  “You’ve got to be a little complicated, to talk to me like you do,” he says, and there’s a little bit of Rosie in the way he says it, that same self-consciousness she gets when boys tell her she’s pretty and she doesn’t quite believe it.

  I shake my head, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing. There’s still some flakes of snow caught in his fur—it’s flurrying a little outside, but nothing heavy. March is nearly here, and the snow is on its way to turning into rainstorms. “That’s what I mean,” I say, as gently as I can, like when Grampa has one of his fits and Gramma sits him down and reminds him who he is, where he sleeps now. “Folks make life too complicated. Be kind to the people who’re kind to you, and be kind to the rest, too, when you can manage it. Everybody’s got some kind of troubles, even if they don’t show. It’s that simple.”

  I go, then, before he says anything else—sometimes I can’t bear when people talk to me, especially if I’ve said too much. I make the rounds of the tables, refilling coffees and clearing places where people have already left, and by the time I make my way back around to the counter, Red Paw has cleared out, leaving a neatly folded twenty under the edge of his mug.

  I catch the corner of the bill with two fingers, edging it out from under the cup without tearing it, my other hand full, and slide it into the pocket of my apron with my other tips. There’s not a lot else in there, but winter is always slow.

  I don’t mind the slow so much, with him for company.

  Lou Woodcross is a sour little man who leaves bad tips and stares at me and Rosie’s chests when we take his order. He’s the sort of man who tells you to smile even if you’re already smiling, like he has some kind of right to your feelings or like maybe you’re not smart enough to be allowed to be anything but thrilled by his scraggly, leering face. He’s a turkey hunter with a nasty beard and a nastier attitude, and even Gramma only puts up with him when she’s feeling especially kindly.

  I do my best to be nice to him, even though he’s all kinds of ungrateful—he’s got a bad shoulder and a bad leg from some kind of accident, and I think maybe it’s the pain that makes him mean. Either way, everyone deserves a decent cup of coffee and something sweet now and then, even if they’re terrible.

  He’s right in the middle of telling me that his coffee’s too cold and the muffins are dry when the door opens, the little bell jangling, and Red Paw ambles in, covered in snow and dry leaves, and takes a seat at the counter.

  Woodcross goes stiff, eye twitching a little, and he says, “You let that kind of thing in here, girl?” like he has some kind of problem with bears in general and maybe Red Paw in particular. He’s a crotchety old racist in any case, and even I can’t quite be patient all the time.

  “Drink it or don’t, Woodcross,” I tell him, refilling his coffee and not much caring if I slosh a little on the table in the process. He jerks his hand back from the hot coffee as it hits the wood and splashes, and I see he’s got a ring on his finger that I’ve never noticed before. It’s a lady’s ring, thin silver with a red stone, and it catches the light in a way that makes me stare.

  He harrumphs and ducks low, pulling his cap over his face and ignoring me in favor of the newspaper. “Backtalkin’ and staring. You used to be polite, Blanche,” he says, all petulant. “Hangin’ around the wrong sorts’ll change you, it will.”

  “That what happened to you, Woodcross?” Rosie asks sweetly, hip-checking me out of the way and taking over. “You spend too much time with hillbillies up in the woods, getting all sexist and backwards?” Rosie is always better at dealing with people’s nastiness than I am. She’s got just enough of a sharp edge in her that she gets a little bit of vicious joy, I think, in turning people’s crap back on them.

  Grateful for the rescue, I meet Red Paw at the bar and pour him his cider. He comes in near about every day now, and I can’t pretend that I don’t look forward to it. “And how’re you today?” I ask him, shaking off the weird, uncomfortable smile I use for Woodcross and feeling a real smile tuck up the corners of my mouth. Already I feel better, like going home at the end of the day—I can stretch when he’s there; not my back and my arms and such, but whatever makes me up as a person, it gets to come out and shake all its soreness out and take a deep breath or two. It’s the sort of comfortable you don’t much get as a grownup, the kind I mostly only had as a kid, when I’d get to curl up in Grampa’s arms and cry when I skinned my knee, or when I’d fall asleep while Gramma read me stories, or when I’d tell Rosie all the things I thought, uncensored, when we were too young to understand secrets or boundaries or things like supposed to or ladylike or proper. It’s so nice that I feel greedy and maybe a little selfish, talking to him, like I’m taking something from him, but he seems to like talking to me, too, so I figure he must not mind too much.

  “I’m doing just fine, Miss Blanche,” he says. He takes a sip of his cider—not a sip, really, exactly, but the way cats drink water, his tongue reaching out and scooping some up. It doesn’t seem rude, though, or particularly beastly—it’s somehow elegant, actually, like the way rich folks eat with their forks upside down. “And how are you?”

  The smile on my face is probably too wide to be ladylike when I say, “Well, I’m doing better now.” I don’t feel embarrassed, though; I don’t imagine he’ll judge me overmuch for one reckless smile or too much affection. He doesn’t seem like the type of man who expects ladies to portion out their affection in some kind of Victorian sense of propriety. He seems like he could maybe use to have people give him more real smiles, anyways.

  He cocks his head in that way he has, like he’s studying me, and he says, “Somebody giving you a hard time about having me in here again?”

  “Rosie gives me a hard time about everything,” I say, still mostly smiling. “That’s what sisters are for.” I can’t help but glance at Woodcross, though. He’s still hunched in his seat, taking sips of coffee that are somehow antagonistic. I don’t know how anybody can manage to try to pick a fight by sipping coffee, but if anybody could, it’s that man.

  He cocks his head a little further, then follows my gaze to the seating area and Woodcross. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and it takes me a second to realize he’s growling.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, putting a hand over his scarred paw, making him jerk back around, like he’d just remembered I was there.

  He clears his throat a little and shakes his head, like he’s shaking water off. “I don’t—I don’t rightly know, Miss Blanche. I do apologize.”

  It’s alright, then, and we chat for another while as he drinks his cider and makes his way through an apple fritter and a blackberry tartlet and a piece of blueberry cheesecake. He eats a lot, but he’s not messy about it—it’s just lik
e suddenly the food is gone, and he’s licking a claw clean.

  “Ahem,” someone says, fake-clearing their throat.

  I look up from talking to Red Paw, and Woodcross is standing at the register, looking torn between being twitchy nervous and just plain hateful as he glares at Red Paw. Red Paw is very still, like a dog that catches a scent. I pat his arm absently, crossing over to the register myself.

  “What do I owe you?” Woodcross asks stiffly.

  “Four ninety,” I say promptly. Woodcross always gets the same thing. I don’t know how he doesn’t know his own total by now, but I guess some folks just don’t pay attention to things. He’s too busy ogling the ladies to pay attention to math, most likely.

  Woodcross is fishing it out of his battered wallet when the lady’s ring on his finger catches the light and flashes.

  “Pretty,” I say, so I’m not just staring at it like a freak again. “Where’d you get it?”

  Woodcross clears his throat again, this time for real, and shifts a little, uneasy, glancing fast at Red Paw and away. He thrusts a five over the counter at me, crumpling it up in my hand, says, “Keep the change,” and makes for the door like a rabbit.

  Red Paw makes a low, dangerous noise in his throat and says, “Excuse me, Miss Blanche,” polite as you please, before he tucks a bill under his mug and follows Woodcross out.

  My chest hurts, all of a sudden, like when you watch a sad movie and something heartbreaking happens and you want to cry but you feel stupid about it. I don’t know what’s wrong, exactly, but something is, so I go around the counter and push open the door. The bell jangles, too loud.

  It goes like slow motion, or like funky jump-cut editing or something. My chest aches the whole way through.