Dreaming the Bear

by Mimi Thebo

  It’s the one. I unhook the sled from my belt and position it just right. I kind of half close my eyes and pull hard on the antlers.

  I expected it to slide toward me. I was going to walk backward, and it would fall into the sled.

  But what happens is the spinal cord snaps, and I fall backward and into the sled with an old, dead, half-frozen elk head on top of me. I’m lucky not to be gored by the antlers. I scream and kick it off me and run around in a circle, going, “Yuck, yuck, yuck,” until I can’t breathe and have to lean against a tree, wheezing.

  Finally, I calm down. I take deep breaths and try to feel calm and capable. I get a new idea. I will move the sled to the other side and drag the elk’s back end into it by the ankles.

  It’s grosser grabbing ankles than antlers. They squish a little under my gloves. But it works. I now have half an elk on a sled that’s tied to my belt. It’s the start of grizzly season, and I’m prancing around with a bunch of meat strapped to me. I can’t see far in any direction because of all the trees. And anything could come and eat the elk, and me, at any moment.

  Wonderful.

  I start to shoe back to the cave, and for just a moment, I think I see a black tail swish behind a tree. That’s all I need, wolves. I could pepper spray a bear. I don’t think I could hit a whole pack of wolves.

  I speed up. That was stupid, because I’m soon out of breath and then have to stop. Every noise I hear, I think it is wolves circling me. My mouth is dry, and my heart is pounding. I don’t think I’ve ever been more anxious. It’s a wonder I can breathe at all.

  The thing is, I know it’s stupid to be scared of wolves. I know wolves hardly ever attack humans. But there’s all the pictures in my fairy-tale picture books somewhere in the back of my mind, and those horrible scenes in Beauty and the Beast. And also, with this half an elk behind me…If they were ever going to attack, they’d do it now.

  I have to calm down.

  I stop and breathe. I close my eyes. I picture my bear, well and happy, running through a clearing full of wildflowers.

  Okay. I plodge along in the wet snow. I decide I need a song—not to sing, because that would waste my breath. More like to think, so that I can keep a steady, slow rhythm and not wear myself out and get stuck with a bunch of meat tied to me in the middle of flipping nowhere with wolves and grizzlies and god knows what else….There goes my breath again.

  Calm. Calm.

  And the only thing that I come up with that has the right rhythm is “I’m a Little Teapot.”

  So I am shoeing along to it. “I’m a little teapot/Short and stout”—step—“Here is my handle/Here is my spout”—step. I’m picked up and poured out about thirty times before I’m at the bottom of the cliff.

  I sit down on a rock and gasp for a while. I swear, when I look at the cliff, it is higher than it was the day before. Finally, I stand up and take off my pack. I’ve got all kinds of things in there. I look at the elk’s ankles again and wish ungulates had proper feet. The hooves aren’t all that much thicker than the ankles, and lashing them onto the rope tight enough to stay when I pull up that big rump is going to be tricky.

  Finally, I decide on some of Dad’s woven bands. I try just one big one, but there’s too much give. I use two small ones and hook them to two carabiners, hook those to a big carabiner, and then tie that off to the rope with my very best knot.

  And I know this sounds stupid, but just when everything is fine, and I’m about to start hauling up, I get really grossed out. It’s something about the spine and the way it’s broken off and poking out. I can’t explain it.

  But I have to go off and throw up. And where I go is where I push over the bear poo, and something has stepped in that, and it smells horrible, and I throw up again.

  And then I have to sit back down on my rock because I have black spots. I can’t breathe, and my throat hurts, and my mouth tastes terrible, and I can’t reach my pack to get my water.

  I start feeling sorry for myself. But not for long.

  Nobody asked me to do this stupid thing. I got myself into this situation. If I hadn’t been so angry at Dad, I wouldn’t have gone up the hill in the first place. I wouldn’t have nearly killed myself with stupidity, and I wouldn’t have sheltered with my bear.

  The thought of never knowing her makes me feel grim. I pull off my glove and look at my ring.

  A lot of this has been really horrible. But I still wouldn’t give it away if I could. I wouldn’t rewind and never know her, never understand all I understand now.

  I get some water and sit a bit longer. And then I go to the rope.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I leave my body, I notice something.

  Humans always have a lot of things. We cover ourselves in things; we drag things around with us; we use things for a variety of tasks, which would be incomprehensible to any other animal. When we humans stop anywhere, we immediately increase our territory by spreading out our things.

  There are a lot of things at the base of the cliff. There is me—a slender human girl, and I’m the disk of the daisy. My things are the petals all around me. The petals are a weird collection—climbing gear, plastic pouches, a sled with half a dead elk, a black jacket with red patches…

  “Hey,” I shout. “Hey!”

  I’m answered by the imperative call the bear uses when she wants the girl to come near.

  “No,” I say, and I’m surprised how tart and bossy my own voice sounds. “You come here.”

  The bear grumbles. A few moments later the bear’s head appears over the edge of the ledge. She sniffs the air, excited by the smell of the defrosting winterkill. She is suddenly very quiet and intent.

  “I’m going to haul it up to you,” I say. “It’s your job to get it onto the ledge.”

  The bear watches me closely.

  “Here goes nothing.” I use a bit of metal, and a strap, to make an artificial loop in the rope. I have four or five of these ready on my climbing harness.

  I pull with all my strength on the loop, and the carcass begins to rise off the sled. Panting, I raise my knee and put my foot in the loop, and then I put all my weight on the loop. The legs of the carcass start to rise up, but the large hindquarters stay resolutely attached to the sled.

  I bounce on the loop. I attach another loop at hand height and pull with all my might while I bounce. Nothing happens.

  I say a bad word and step out of the loop. The rope flies up, so that the bottom loop is now hand height, and the top loop is too high to reach, lost.

  I say another bad word.

  I watch myself sit down and have more water. The water nearly brings me back into my body. I can nearly feel myself thinking.

  The bear whines.

  “I know,” I say. “I’m working on it.”

  I get an idea. I sink a bolt into a tree, but when it immediately begins to bleed sap, I feel bad, guilty. I know there’s a million, trillion pine trees in this forest, but the world needs every single one of them.

  I pull off my gloves and work with a rope, some carabiners, and a belay device. I click my harness into the whole contraption. Using my snowshoes and poles to brace myself in the wet snow, I start backing up, and the elk carcass rises.

  I am panting hard, panting words. “Pot…Stout…Handle.” I close my eyes for a moment. My face is pale, and I’m sweating. I’m shaking—my knees threaten to buckle.

  The elk carcass is three-quarters of the way up the cliff face. The bear swipes at it, as if she could reach it.

  Then there is a small cracking noise.

  “Crrrrrrr.” I see myself look to see where the noise is coming from. And then I look up, just in time for the “Rrrrrrrk!”

  The bolt zings out of the tree. The carcass plummets back to earth. I am a little doll, thrown hard by an invisible giant into the snowy cliff. I see myself bounce and crash into it again. It hurts. I hear myself scream.

  And then I’m gone.

  When I come to, I’m back in my body.
And I am, apparently, in the middle of a conversation with myself. I blink a couple of times, hearing myself argue with myself and then shake my head a little bit and manage to stop all that.

  I’m not thinking straight. That’s the problem. I haven’t been thinking straight for ages. My shoulder hurts really, really bad, and one of my knees is on fire, and my bikini line is going to be pretty sore from this harness, which I should have taken time to adjust properly. But I didn’t. Because I’m not thinking straight.

  I’m near the top of the cliff, and the elk half is down at the bottom. I stink of meat. The bear is looking at me, but she’s also smelling me. That is not good. This whole thing is not good at all. This is so not good that I don’t have any words for it.

  And just when I think this, I realize I’m not getting a lot of air and that my black spots have come back. And now it’s not a choice.

  I float away from myself.

  My mother comes out of the cabin and sighs. She opens the door of the garage and sighs. She might even sigh as she starts the snowmobile, but I can’t hear it above the noise of the machine. She settles the helmet on her head, slides down her goggles, and rides away.

  The clearing is absolutely silent after she goes. The first sound is a flutter of wings. Then there is a little, muted birdcall. Then, one by one, all the little sounds of the forest come back. I can even hear the slight breeze agitating the tops of the pines.

  And…I think I might be able to do this because I’m a little bit dead.

  When I’m a little bit dead, I can float away from myself. And the sicker I get, the more hurt I get, the farther away I can float.

  My body is about to be eaten. There’s no sense in staying in it.

  I might as well float away to our cabin and listen to the sounds the forest makes when there’s no humans there to hear. Maybe that’s what I’ll be, after she eats me and I’m dead…something that hears and sees…without ears or eyes…

  Now Jem creeps out and gently clicks shut the door. He peers around the corner at the garage. Then he relaxes—he carries his shoulders lower; he’s much noisier. He puts on his boots and snowshoes. He doesn’t bother with a coat. He knows where I am, and it’s not far away.

  He sees all my things first. He stops and looks at them carefully, like he’s memorizing the scene, like he’ll be tested.

  And then he sees me, hanging limp, and my bear, reaching down for me with her giant claws.

  He nearly falls over the sled’s towline, clambering to the rope. There are two handy loops already attached. He pulls one down, and the elk rises. He puts his foot in the first loop and grabs the second, hauling it down to his foot and standing on it. The elk is now suspended off the sled, and I’m out of the bear’s reach.

  He removes the first loop and uses it to make a third, higher loop. Hauls again and stands on it. Removes the second to make the fourth. Hauls. The third is now the fifth. The fourth is now the sixth.

  The elk is rising. I hear myself say sleepily, “She can get it off the rope if you bring it up.”

  Jem nearly chokes. He says, “I don’t give a damn about the bear.”

  I say, “I’m okay. My shoulder hurts a bit, and I banged my knee. I’m just tired. I feel really far away.”

  Now my body weight is being useful. The elk rises easily, and I come down quickly. Jem sits me up in the snow. He is standing in a loop of the rope, trying to detach my harness when the rope begins to shake. It shakes and pulls, but then it is perfectly still, and there is no longer any weight attached to it.

  I look up and have that weird, sick feeling from looking both in my body and out of my body.

  I close my real eyes and say, “Well, we won’t be using those bands again.” The torn fabric loops flutter at the top of the rope like miniature flags.

  Jem shakes me, hard, by my shoulders. “You little fool,” he says. “You complete idiot.”

  It hurts. I slide down onto the snow.

  Jem sits down on the rock and presses the palms of his hands to his eyes. His arms and legs are shaking.

  I have to go back into my body. I’m scaring my brother.

  “I’m sorry.” I sit up. It’s easier than I thought it was going to be. I hurt, but I can breathe okay. I guess it’s the lying down and resting. I should do that more often…like all the time.

  Jem is furious. “You’ve got a pet bear?” He’s too scared to shout. He kind of whispers hard at me. “You’ve got a pet bear?”

  I get up on my hands and knees and shuffle over to a tree. I’m going to stand. I’m going to pack and get home while I can still hold myself in my body.

  I say, “Do we have to have this conversation right now?”

  “What?” Jem jumps to his feet. For a moment I think he might hit me. He says, “You did not say that. You did not just say that.”

  I sit down on the rock. I say, “Look. I’ve got to clean the blood off the sled and pack up and shoe home and I feel…” He looks at me. I know he can tell how I feel.

  I say, “I’ll talk to you. But I’ve got to get home. Right now.”

  He says, “I’ll clean the blood off the sled. And I’ll haul you home in it. But you’ve got to tell me what in the hell you are doing.”

  As Jem cleans the sled and packs up all my stuff, I tell him everything. Absolutely everything. He is utterly horrified.

  He keeps asking me questions. He runs back to the house, hauling me in the sled with my legs sticking out all untidy.

  I knew he wasn’t sick.

  He puts the sled away and tucks my bag under the canoe (there’s still a bunch of cantaloupe under there) and hangs up our shoes all neatly and everything. Then he runs upstairs and washes without looking like he’s washed, and I do some more laundry, putting the special stain stuff that we’re supposed to use only sparingly, because of the environment, all over the big bloodstain on my powder-blue fleece. My gloves are caked in blood and sap and things I don’t want to identify. I put the washer on the hottest setting and hope for the best.

  Mum will be back any moment. Jem told Mum he had terrible diarrhea and then hid all the Imodium. That’s how he got her to go to Mammoth.

  When Jem comes back down, I manage to put the kettle on. Jem makes me tea and keeps asking me questions. Finally, he sits down and eats four chocolate chip cookies, without saying a word, just looking at me.

  I manage one cookie, dunked into my tea. I’m really dehydrated, and the tea is feeling good.

  He says, “Let me get this absolutely straight. You nearly killed yourself, and to get warm, you crawled in with a hibernating bear.”

  I nod, sucking another dunked cookie.

  “And then you went back. Why?”

  I shrug and then wince. My shoulder isn’t broken or anything. But I’m going to have a big bruise. “She saved my life. And I was really sick and unhappy. I don’t think I was thinking straight.”

  “Were you trying to kill yourself?”

  The question lies between us like an unexploded bomb.

  I can almost see it, almost hear it ticking. And I have to ask myself, Is that what I do, when I leave my body? Do I play with the idea of being dead?

  Would I leave Jem and Mum and Dad? Would I leave Sue? The idea makes my heart hurt.

  Jem says, “Darcy? Were you?”

  I say, “No.” I try to explain. “I think I’m a lot sicker than anyone knows,” I say. “I think I’m kind of…not living really well.”

  Jem looks as if I’ve hurt him.

  “We’ve all been so busy,” he says. “I should have come home earlier more often.”

  I close my eyes and remember how it was, when I first met the bear.

  I say, “It made me feel better…being with her. It made me feel more okay about this place. I already felt kind of dead. She made me feel more alive.”

  I’ve just talked about her in the past tense. Jem being there today has put her in the past tense. I suppose I already knew we couldn’t keep going on the way we were go
ing. Jem has just made me face it.

  Jem opens his mouth to say something else, but Mum walks through the door.

  “Tea?” she says. “Caffeine? And chocolate. More caffeine. And sugar.” She stands over Jem, fuming. She says, “Jem? Do you actually want to go to the hospital? Do you think Darcy’s gotten too much attention or something?”

  “I really wanted it,” Jem says. “I thought I should listen to my body.”

  Mum hands him the Imodium. “Well, now you can listen to your mum. Take one of these. Drink some water. Lie down.”

  She smells him. “Have a shower. And then lie down.”

  I feel like a whole weight has been lifted from me. I’ll ask Jem what to do. I’ll do it as soon as he gets out of the shower.

  But of course, I sit down on the sofa. And of course, by the time I wake up, it’s dinner.

  I forgot to tell Mum that I’m now a vegetarian, but luckily, it’s pasta primavera and salad and garlic bread. I don’t know what I would have done if it was venison or beef. Hurled all over the table, maybe.

  Jem has officially “recovered.” Dad is still disgusted about his illness—and mine and, really, pretty much everything. I can tell I’m going to have a great time in the car tomorrow.

  After dinner I wash and Jem dries. He says to me, “If you don’t come up to my room and talk to me more about this, I’m going to tell Dad.”

  I say, “I actually want to talk to you. I just fell asleep.”

  He says, “You still look pretty wiped out.”

  I say, “Thanks a lot.”

  Just then, Mum says, “I think you should have an early night, Darcy, if you’re going with Dad in the morning. You look tired.”

  Dad looks up from a binder he’s making for the postgraduate. He says, “You do. How long were you out today?”

  I shrug. “I went to look at winterkills.”

  Dad’s face lights up, and he starts to say something, but Mum pushes me toward the stairs, saying, “Oh, good, that’ll give you something to talk about tomorrow.”