On Bear Mountain
Page 33
On a day in March when the weather was clear, Quentin and I drove back to the spring on Bear Mountain, taking Arthur and Esme with us. We saw tracks, but the mother bear and her cub did not find us, or we, them. “You think they’re afraid of people after what happened with that gun?” Quentin asked.
I nodded. “I hope so, for their sake.”
“They’ll be safe because they’re scared of us?” Arthur asked, his face wistful.
I put an arm around him. “They’ll be safe because you and Esme took care of them. And they know what’s best, because of you.”
“Being a man is hard, sometimes,” he said, but then Esme smiled at him, and he was reassured.
We left them pondering a squirrel’s nest high in a white pine. Quentin took my hand, and we walked to the meadow where we’d waited for rescue. He dropped to his heels and prodded traces of the charred logs from my bonfire. “Seems like forever,” he said.
“It was.”
He pulled me down beside him and we sat with our arms around each other, looking out over the mountains. “This was a helluva place for a marriage proposal,” he said. “Why don’t I ask you again?”
I watched the winter sun, dazzled by the day’s brightness, then turned my face toward him and shared that sunshine in my eyes. “I’m waiting.”
“Ursula Powell, will you marry me?”
He got the same answer as before, and this time, he smiled.
• • •
When the first purple crocuses peeked out of the ground in late February Quentin ordered a load of lumber and built a twenty-foot-tall screen around the half-finished Bear Two. “I’m going to finish it, but I don’t want an audience,” he admitted. He put on his welding mask, and began, very slowly and patiently, to work and rework the sculpture, now hidden behind a pale wall of pine board.
Angele hurried down from New York. She and I decided to say nothing, just to wait and see how he progressed. She sported a small engagement ring on her left hand. “Getting engaged at my age,” she said grimly, shaking her head at the enormity of it. “What am I thinking?”
“Someday you’ll be a grandmother,” I promised. “You have to set a good example.”
“I’ll tell my grandchildren their grandpapa would say, Never give up what you love. Any of it. Never give up.”
“It’s a deal,” I said softly.
I spent the last of winter with Angele, Liza, Arthur, and Esme by my side, and all of us watched over Quentin. Most days we sat by the Iron Bear or shivered under the oaks as we listened to the hiss of his welding torch and the clank of metal behind the screen he’d built. On days when I sat out there alone I passed the time reading and making notes on Dr. Washington’s Bear Creek stories.
I sent a copy of those stories to Dr. Washington’s son and daughter in Boston, and one day in April he looked up from his morning coffee to find two airport limos delivering his children and grandchildren to him. He excitedly brought them over to the farm the next afternoon, and they had tea with us.
“What is that?” the grandchildren exclaimed when they saw the Iron Bear in the pasture.
“Come on, Esme and me’ll show you,” Arthur said, and soon he, they, and Esme were playing tag under the Bear’s quiet gaze.
“The Bear’s caught their imagination,” I said to Dr. Washington. “They’ll come back.”
His eyes shone. He nodded.
The tenants and I opened Bear Creek Gallery that spring, in town. Fannie and Bartow volunteered to manage the quiet, colorful shop, with help from the rest of us. Daddy’s vision had a home on Main Street, now. Framed photos of him, the Iron Bear, and Miss Betty decorated the wall behind the sales counter. The shelves were filled with Liza’s glasswork and the Ledbetters’ pottery. A room in back displayed Oswald’s controversial work, but up front, in a small but pleasant corner near the door, were the early samples of his illustrations for Dr. Washington’s book. The first week, he sold five small paintings of the graceful Bear Creek children. I had a feeling his career as an artist was about to take off in a way he’d never expected.
• • •
“It’s done,” Quentin announced one morning in mid-May. He stood in the kitchen covered in sweat and grime, the welding helmet in one hand, a look of painful satisfaction on his face. I ran to him and we kissed, we swayed, he dropped the helmet and lifted me off my feet. I cupped his face between my hands, and hugged him, hard.
“I want a celebration,” I said.
He laughed.
• • •
Quentin knocked down the pine enclosure one night, then draped the sculpture with Arthur’s help. Bear Two was now covered in heavy canvas. Arthur’s eyes glowed with intrigue and pleased secrecy. My brother and I stood between the new and the old, the Iron Bear and its hidden progeny.
“Is Mama Bear still lonely?” I asked.
Arthur took my hand. “She misses Daddy, and she won’t ever stop. But she’s got a friend, now, and she knows sometimes it’s okay to feel lonely. She told me and Esme she’s happy.”
“She’s been talking to you a lot lately, hasn’t she?”
“She always talks. Just sometimes I don’t know how to listen.” He cuddled my hand to his cheek and looked at me without wavering. “I love you, Mama Bear.”
• • •
We opened the gate wide. People flowed into the farm all morning, on that Saturday in May. Angele and Alfonse were there, and Harriet Davies, and there were more Tibers than I’d ever seen before. Mr. John greeted and hosted his kin as if there had never been a time when Tibers did not tread on Powell soil. Dr. Washington had a place of honor under a shade tree, and with him was his eldest grandson, a teenager who planned to visit his grandfather for the summer. They would take a blacksmithing course together at the college. Washingtons would forge iron and renew their anchor to mountain bedrock.
“How do I look?” Quentin asked upstairs in my bedroom, our bedroom. I smoothed the lapel of the fine dark suit he’d bought; I straightened the silk tie he wore. “Wrong,” I said. “You look all fancy and just plain wrong for the spirit of the idea.”
He smiled. “So do you.” I was dressed in a pretty silk dress with hose and matching pumps. We stripped, put on jeans and T-shirts, and then, as we started for the door, he handed me a tiny, beautifully wrapped gift box. The ring inside it glittered with a cluster of diamonds. I leaned against him with my head on his shoulder as he slid the ring on my left hand.
Out in the pasture, a bluegrass band played under a sunny sky, and the crowd — as colorful as the throng at Daddy’s funeral — ate barbecue under a long, catered tent. Arthur and Esme huddled under the oaks, watching like excited children and whispering to each other. On a platform with a microphone we hosted speeches, odes to the Iron Bear, impromptu poetry, songs, Elvis impressions, and tears. Father Roy led a prayer.
“Quentin’s visited his chapel several times,” Angele whispered to Alfonse proudly. “And Ursula goes with him. My grandchildren will have the church in their lives, no doubt.”
Alfonse tucked her arm inside his and smiled pensively at her. For years he had wished that Quentin, whom he’d come to think of as a son, would marry Carla. It was a relief to put that hard, hopeless idea aside. His daughter would marry her banker, and be happy enough. And he, Alfonse, would be happy with Angele Riconni Esposito, with Quentin as a stepson.
Janine stood beside me for a time, watching from the sidelines. “I’ve got so many plans to improve Tiber Poultry. Maybe you should come to work for me.”
I laughed. “Oh, I’ll be working on you, instead.”
“I’m afraid of that.” She gave me a rueful look. “Is Quentin going to build more bears?”
“I don’t think so. He’ll be busy with his salvage company, of course. And we’re planning a house on the ridge overlooking the creek.”
“What will you do with the farmhouse?”
“I’m going to let Liza live there.”
“I see.”
�
��She’ll be the manager of the artists’ studios. We’re going to expand. Build a gallery, and all that. We’ll be doing a lot of building. But not more Iron Bears.”
Janine looked at Daddy’s colorfully painted truck, now sitting in a place of honor in the middle of the garden, near the peach tree. She blanched. “Expand the art projects?”
I laughed. “I’m my father’s daughter.”
When the grand moment came, Quentin stepped to one front corner of the canvas cover over Bear Two. I went to the other front corner. “This is for you, Papa,” he said so low that only I could hear him. “And for you, Daddy,” I whispered. We pulled the canvas back and off, let it fall, then walked to each other and linked hands.
The crowd stared at Bear Two, applauded, gasped, snickered, and shook their heads — all the typical reactions a five-ton work of junk-art sculpture receives. “Goddamn,” Mr. John said, but when Janine draped an arm around him, he sighed with resignation. Standing nearby, Angele pressed her hands to her wet eyes and smiled at the sculpture. “He didn’t build a copy,” she told Alfonse. “He built a son.”
Quentin and I looked up at the soaring ribs of iron rebar, a head made from an engine block, tangled sides of iron fencing and so much else. Inside Bear Two’s see-through shell hung Liza’s gift — a gleaming heart of interwoven glass, fragile yet beautiful, a stark contrast to the hard iron around it, yet utterly protected and hopeful, beating without motion to the rhythm of its future. Bear Two was alive and well — ugly, handsome, awkward, graceful, sweet, appalling, kind, cruel, clearly provocative, and totally bewildering.
“What do you think?” Quentin asked.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
• • •
I walked out to the Iron Bear that evening just after sunset and sat at its feet, alone, surrounded by yellow daffodils and the low, silver mist rising up the hollow from the creek. I finally understood. No one ever said life would be easy. Daddy, Mama, Richard — they’d all made it look that way for a time — the miracle of creation — but life was hard, it demanded sacrifice and faith. “It’s up to me to deal with you,” I said aloud to the Bear, “not for you to deal with me. I don’t hate you anymore.”
I heard the back door open and shut. Quentin stepped out in the yard, looking for me, silhouetted by the golden glow of light from the house. I raised a hand and waved. He walked toward me, his stride peaceful, his path certain in the mist. Happy, he thought. Happy. It was that simple to sum up.
A tiny white butterfly, hurrying somewhere safe, fluttered past me and went inside the Iron Bear, then on to the second sculpture, where it bobbled inside then perched delicately on a slip of iron. It folded its wings for the night. I watched with surprise, then looked at Quentin, and thought of our future. I put a hand to my heart. The message had been received. I had a talent for recognizing small miracles, now.
The news from heaven and earth was good.
I stood, and walked to meet him halfway.