by Gill Lewis
“Dumb bear does that all day,” said the Doctor. “Only stops swinging his head when he eats.”
The Doctor scraped at the dried bear mess on the concrete with his gum boots and wrinkled his nose. He took a wire yard broom and a scraper from Asang and pushed it into my hands. “Your job is to clean these floors. Make sure you do a better job than the last worker here.”
I watched the Doctor walk away, banging his metal bar against the cages. He paused at the sliding doors and spun around. “Asang,” he shouted. “I will be back tomorrow. We will show Mountain Boy how we milk the bears.”
I heard the motorbike rev up in the compound and could see the Doctor ride out through the red gates. The bears seemed to relax and shuffle in their cages.
“This way,” said Asang. It was the first time I heard him speak. He pointed to the yard brooms and a coiled hose. “Come and find me when you’re done.”
I watched him walk away to the office. Despite the heat Asang closed the door, and soon a fog of cigarette smoke screened the office from view.
I stared along the line of bears. Could I really work here? What if the bears escaped? Biter looked as though he wanted to tear me apart. I didn’t want to get in paw’s reach of the bears. I looked along the line of bears and the dried muck beneath them. I would make sure I did a better job at cleaning the bears than the last worker. I pulled the hose out to its full length and turned on the faucet. I’d never used a hose before. It writhed like a live snake on the ground as the water flowed through it from the faucet. The water sprayed with such force that I had to grab the end of the hose with both hands to stop it spraying everywhere. I hosed and scraped the concrete floor. The dirt below the cages was so dry and crusted that I had to let the water soak through to soften it. My arms ached and I was pouring with sweat, but I thought of Ma. I wanted to make the Doctor pleased. I wanted to show that I could do this job. I wanted to make sure Ma received the money.
As the day’s heat rose outside, so did the heat inside. I could feel the sun’s rays press down from the iron roof above. I drank from the hose and sprayed myself with water. I couldn’t see any water in the cages, so I put my finger in the end of the hose and sprayed the bears, too. They seemed to enjoy it, letting the cool water soak through their thick fur and run off onto the ground below. They rolled in their cramped cages and licked the water from their paws and fur.
I noticed that a front paw of some bears was missing. The leg ended in a stump. I thought of the snare traps Noy and I set for forest game. We’d caught a mouse deer once. Where the wire had caught its leg, the flesh was skinned and black by the time we’d found it. We’d killed it quickly and felt bad that we’d let it suffer. I wondered if the bears had been caught in snare traps too.
I didn’t go near Biter. I sprayed him with water, but he shook it off, staring at me all the time. I had to crouch low to scrape the dirt beneath his cage, watching him and keeping out of reach in case he swung a paw down low.
I worked hard all day. I worked until I heard Asang’s footsteps behind me. He looked around the building and scuffed the floor at some invisible piece of dirt. Steam rose from the wet bears and the washed floors.
“Okay,” he said. “We are done here for the day.” He reached up for the light switch, and the building flickered into darkness.
I propped the brooms and scrapers back against the walls. “Do we feed them too?”
Asang dropped his cigarette on the floor and crushed it with his heel. “Not today. We don’t feed them the day before we milk them. It is better that way.”
Asang pulled the sliding gates of the bear barn across. “Go on, go,” he said. He closed the sliding doors, took his bicycle from the wall, and ushered me out, locking the metal gates behind us. I watched him cycle down the road and become lost among the traffic.
The sun had arced across the sky and was sinking toward the rooftops. The day was still hot. Heat hung in the air trapped below the city smog. My head felt light. All I wanted was to eat and lie down in my room.
On the far side of the road I could see Kham with two other boys his age. They leaned against the wire fence of his father’s yard, watching me. I stepped out onto the road. The traffic didn’t stop. It was a steady stream, most of the cars moving out of the city. I took a chance and dashed through the traffic. A motorbike had to swerve to miss me. Kham shook his head, and the other two boys slapped him on the back and laughed. They held out their hands, while Kham put coins into their palms. I walked head down, past them.
“Hey, Tam!”
I turned around.
Kham was running to catch up with me. “How was it today?”
“It was okay,” I said.
“Did you see the bears?”
I kept walking to my room. “Yes,” I said.
“What are they like?”
“Big,” I said. I put my hand out to open the door to my room, but Kham stepped in front of me.
He glanced back to his house and lowered his voice. “You know the last worker was killed by a bear?”
I stared at him.
“Mauled to death,” he said. “That’s why you got the job.”
I kicked off my gum boots and paired them together by the door.
“Are you going to stay? Are you really going to work there?” said Kham.
I reached out for the handle. “What else can I do?”
I left Kham standing in the doorway and stepped inside my room. A bowl of rice and fish and a plate of fruit were laid out on the table. My clothes had been washed and dried, and a clean towel hung on a nail behind the door.
I took the towel. I wanted to wash to take the smell of sweat and bear away.
Kham was watching me from the doorway. “I saw one once,” he said. “Some loggers brought one on their truck. They’d bound it up, but it still managed to get free. It was one crazy bear. It was a good thing the yard gates were closed. We had to stay inside until the Doctor managed to sedate it. Ma said she didn’t want any more bears coming to the yard. She says it’s bad enough knowing they are so near.”
“They’re locked up,” I said.
Kham leaned in to me. “Then tell me,” he said, “just how the last bear got out?”
From across the yard I could hear Kham’s mother calling.
“Your ma wants you,” I said.
Kham reached inside his pocket. “Maybe you would like to buy a small flashlight from me. Maybe you need one in the night?”
I looked down at the three flashlights Kham had pulled out.
“Brand-new,” said Kham. “They all have new batteries.”
“I have no money,” I said.
“Well, maybe you could take one and pay me back.”
I shook my head. “The money I earn is sent to my ma.”
Kham’s mother called again.
Kham shrugged his shoulders. “Ah well. It’s your loss.”
I watched him walk back to his house and sit with his family around the table. Then I stepped into the shower and turned the water on full. I let the water run across me and soak deep into my hair. Maybe I should open the door and walk away. I could keep on walking through the city and somehow find my way back home. But it was an impossible dream. I was just as trapped here as the bears. I stretched out my arms to touch the walls of the shower room. Maybe this was how the bears felt, caged and far from their homes. Maybe they were just as scared too.
I thought about tomorrow and what the Doctor had said. He’d said we’d milk the bears. I’d milked the chief’s buffalo when we lived back in the mountains. I’d filled a pot with rich frothy milk for an orphan calf. But buffalos were gentle creatures.
How, I wondered, do you milk a bear?
“U . . . D . . . C . . . A. Urso . . . deoxy . . . cholic . . . acid.” The Doctor lifted up a small glass bottle to the light and swirled a dark greenish liquid around inside. It clung to the sides of the bottle in a thick sludge. “This is what we milk from the bears. Liquid money.” He smiled, sho
wing his gold tooth. “Bear bile to you.”
I rested the yard broom against the wall and wiped sweat from my forehead. I’d been up early, waiting for Asang to open the red gates at first light. I’d cleaned and scrubbed beneath all the cages and swept the yard before the Doctor had arrived.
I squinted at the bottle he held in his hand. “Bear bile?”
The Doctor pushed his fingers into my stomach, right up underneath my ribs. “It comes from here, from the gall bladder. Do you know what I’m talking about, Mountain Boy?”
I took a step back and nodded. I’d seen the gall bladders of the pigs at slaughter. I’d seen the small round sacks near the liver, filled with greenish liquid. But I couldn’t think how to get bile from a bear.
“Asang!” the Doctor shouted. “It’s time we milked our first bear.”
I watched Asang wheel a large cart into the building. The bears became restless. They turned in their cages, pressing against the far bars. I could see the whites of their eyes. Some panted and made deep hooting sounds. I could feel my own heart thumping deep inside my chest. I could feel their fear too.
The Doctor slammed his metal bar against the cage. “We’ll start with this one.” The bear inside shrieked, its ears flat against his head, its lips pulled back, showing a line of broken teeth. Asang snared the bear with a rope on a pole while the Doctor drew a syringe of clear liquid from a vial and injected it into the flank of the bear.
“There,” said the Doctor. “And now we wait for him to sleep.”
I watched the bear. For a while he stared back at us; then his head began to droop. He stared at the floor, saliva dripping from his mouth. He began to sway, and his front legs trembled.
The Doctor lit a cigarette and breathed deeply, filling his lungs. He puffed the pale gray smoke into the air. “What do you know about bear farming, boy?”
I watched the bear sink onto his forepaws.
The Doctor leaned closer, his face next to mine. I could smell the smoke around his mouth. “He doesn’t know much, does he, Asang? Maybe they don’t teach them anything in the mountains.”
The bear’s hind legs began to buckle.
The Doctor paced around his cage. “In China there are farms with two thousand bears. Imagine that, Mountain Boy.” He took another puff on his cigarette. “One day, I will have two thousand bears. I had forty bears on my farm in Vietnam before it was closed down. They don’t like bile farming there anymore. It is so much easier here in Laos.” He rubbed invisible money between his fingers. “It’s easier to bend the rules.”
The bear’s back legs gave way, and he collapsed on the cage floor, his neck crooked against the corner. Asang poked him with the end of his pole, and when he didn’t move, Asang opened the cage door and hauled the bear out onto the cart.
Asang pushed the cart, and I followed him and the Doctor to a small room beside the office. I hadn’t noticed the room before. It was windowless. A small sink stood in one corner. A table with a machine that looked like a tiny TV screen was pushed against the wall. There were flasks and bottles and tubes scattered on the table. The table had green stains and was crusted with dirt. Asang brought the cart next to it and pulled the bear onto its back, tying its legs to the four corners of the cart.
The Doctor switched on the screen, and a fuzzy black-and-white image appeared. “This is an ultrasound machine,” he said. “And this is the probe.” He held up the round plastic end of a long wire attached to the machine. “It lets me see inside the bear.”
I stared at the screen while the Doctor smeared a clear jelly onto the probe. He ran it across the bear’s belly. The picture on the screen broke up into patterns of white and black.
“This is the liver,” said the Doctor, pointing to white fuzz on the screen. “And this,” he said, pointing to a round black circle in the center, “is the gall bladder.”
Asang handed him a long needle, and I watched the Doctor pierce the skin.
The bear twitched. He grunted. I noticed he licked his lips. I couldn’t help thinking he was feeling all this, even though he couldn’t move. The Doctor guided the needle, and I watched the white line of the needle on the screen enter the gall bladder. The Doctor pushed a fine metal wire along the needle and pulled it out and licked the end. He nodded with satisfaction. “Bear bile.”
Asang attached a long clear tube to the needle and to a pump and watched the sludgy liquid trail up the tube and drip into a glass bottle on the table.
The Doctor leaned back in his chair. “In China they don’t use the ultrasound machines,” he said. “They make a hole in the belly and let the bile drip out. But I use the ultrasound because I am a real doctor.” He looked at me and then at Asang. “You have to be very clever to be a doctor. Isn’t that right, Asang?”
Asang shuffled his feet and nodded.
The Doctor swirled the bottle as if it would encourage more bile to flow. “So I know all about bear bile. It’s good for you. It cures all ills. Sore throat, headaches, sores, bruising, cancer. Maybe even death.” He laughed and looked across at Asang. “Some men think it helps them find a wife.”
Asang pulled his shirt down across his stomach.
When all the bile had drained, The Doctor pulled the needle from the bear and poured the bile into several small bottles. He swilled the sludge at the base with water and swigged it back, finishing it in one gulp. He pulled a bitter face and slammed the bottle on the table.
“Funny thing is,” he said. A smirk rose on one side of his mouth. “There’s no need to take bile from these bears. UDCA can be made in laboratories. But I don’t tell my customers that. Besides, they wouldn’t want to know. They think it’s more potent if it’s from a real bear.”
The Doctor milked four bears that day. When he finished, Asang gave me a mix of rice and water to feed them all. I slid the metal trays into their cages, and they pushed their noses in, slurping up the food as if they hadn’t seen any for weeks.
Only Mama Bear didn’t eat. She lay hunched on the bars of her cage. Her eyes were dull and sunken, and she grunted at the end of every breath. Her fur was matted and stuck in clumps on her skin. She was watching me, following my every move. I stepped closer and crouched beside her. My face was so close to hers, only the cage bars between us. She was a wild animal, but when she looked at me with her dark eyes, it was as if she could see right into me. I felt as if she let me see inside her, too, beyond her pain, into the deep forests and mountains of her soul. She pushed a paw through the bars toward my hand, the toes on her paw outstretched. I took her paw in my hand, and she gently squeezed my fingers.
I couldn’t look at her.
I closed my eyes and turned away.
“Mountain Boy!”
The Doctor was watching me. “This isn’t a petting zoo. I don’t pay you to cuddle the bears.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But this bear is sick.”
The Doctor peered in at Mama Bear. He spat on the ground. “She is lazy. One thing I don’t like is a lazy worker. Make sure you are here tomorrow, and I will show you how we dry out the bile to make pills and powders.”
I watched the Doctor drive from the yard. Asang ushered me out and locked the gates. He turned and handed me the keys. “Open up tomorrow and make sure you clean the bears before I arrive.”
I took the keys and slipped them around my neck. Asang swung his leg across his bike and pedaled away into the slow line of traffic. Across the road I could see Kham and his friends. They stood, backs leaning on the wire fence, their hands pushed deep inside their pockets. They were pretending to be talking, but they were watching me like hawks.
I couldn’t care what they thought of me. I ignored them and stepped between the parked cars, out onto the road. My mind was filled with the image of Mama Bear.
I didn’t see the motorbike. It slammed into my side. Time slowed down. I saw the shocked face of the motorcyclist through the visor of his helmet as he tried to keep control. I saw the world spin and spin and spin as I bo
unced across the hoods of the cars, and the blackness of the tarmac as the road flew up to meet me.
“Tam! Tam! Can you hear me?”
I opened my eyes. I focused on the bare lightbulb above me. I could feel the mattress beneath me press against my back and legs. My whole body ached. I curled my fingers in my palms and breathed in slowly. It even hurt to breathe.
Kham’s ma peered over and looked at me. “Tam, are you okay?”
I nodded and tried to sit up, but she put her hand on my chest to keep me down. “Don’t move,” she said. She turned around. “Kham, stay with him while I fetch some water to clean his wounds.”
I turned my head to look at Kham. He was staring at me, eyes wide. “Ma says you’re lucky to be alive.”
I stretched my arms and then each leg, one at a time. I couldn’t feel any broken bones.
Kham glanced back over his shoulder toward the open door. He leaned forward and whispered, “I owe you, though!”
I pushed myself to sit up. My head ached and I could see cuts across my knees where road grit had been pushed deep into the skin, but otherwise I seemed to be all right. “What d’you mean?” I said.
Kham held up a fist of money in his hand. “I bet my friends you’d be knocked over on the road within the week.”
I blinked and stared at him. “Would you have got more if I’d been killed?”
Kham’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He broke into a grin. “See! You are a better businessman than me.”
I touched my fingers to my head. A huge, sore lump had swelled across my forehead.
Kham slapped me on the shoulder and I winced. “No hard feelings,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small red flashlight. “Have this. Think of it as a thank-you, from me.”
I took the flashlight from him and switched it on and off. “Thank you,” I said, although I wasn’t sure exactly what I was thanking him for.