Some Kind of Courage

by Dan Gemeinhart

  “Pa got her for me when I was four, when she was just a yearling, so’s we could grow up knowing each other. Had me up on her right away. I was riding her bareback by the time I was five, and jumping fences when I was nine.” I looked over at him. “I don’t suppose you ever had a horse?”

  He just swallowed nervously and kept his eyes on the fire.

  I got up to throw another log onto the fire. I stood for a second by the woodpile, looking up at the sky. Stars were glittering here and there, with more sparking up all the time.

  “My little sister said a funny thing about stars,” I said, sitting back down. “She’d heard that some Indians think the stars are the campfires of our ancestors. That once we die, we go up to join ’em and get a fire of our own.” I knew my voice had gotten awful quiet, but since I was talking to a person who didn’t speak a word of English, I figured speaking up wasn’t all that important. “When you die, you ain’t got no matches or nothing with you, so she figured the fires must already all be lit by God, just waiting to welcome folks and give ’em a warm place in heaven to sit. She always wondered which one was for her.” I felt a little smile, just a little one, teasing at the corners of my mouth. But at the same time, I felt a hot wetness in my eyes I tried to blink away. “So we’d—so we’d always look up and pick out ours. We’d pick out which one was our campfire, waiting for us in heaven.”

  My voice broke off and I turned away, ashamed at the tears on my cheeks. But once those words started coming, it was like there was no stopping ’em.

  “It’s funny. Pa and I made it all the way down this pass, with the mud and the switchbacks and the hairpin turns, dragging a log to slow us the whole way and fighting for every foot. And then the hill that kills him up over at Old Mission is plum nothing. Just a little slope, really, wouldn’t hardly take your breath to walk up it. But the wagon just got a little away from us and that wheel got stuck and like that he throws me clear and I’m rolling down the hill and he’s stuck under that cursed wagon.” I sniffed and wiped at my nose. “It ain’t fair. Ain’t fair for him to go like that, after all we’d gone through to get there. Ain’t fair for him to go when I ain’t got nothing or no one else left. Nothing but my horse.” The tears were back and more than I could hold on to. I hid my face but I couldn’t keep my shoulders from shaking, and my breathing was loud and sniffling. I don’t know what it was that got to me right then. Maybe it was just all of it—the cold and the hunger and the all-aloneness, and shot right through it was the feeling of my Sarah getting farther and farther away. I s’pose sadness can sometimes be a storm that’s easy to get lost in.

  I was surprised when I felt something touching my shoulder. I looked through blurry eyes and saw that the boy had slid on over ’til he was right up against me. His face had that same blank expression but I thought I could see, mixed up in it, a little bit of something else. Understanding, maybe. He reached ’round, just once, and gave my back a little pat.

  Then he started talking.

  Quiet, at first. So quiet I could barely hear him. That Chinese talking came on in a scratchy whisper, shy and stumbling as it got started. He talked into the fire, and the flames flickered in his eyes as his voice got more strength to it. His words were like a song I didn’t know the tune of, full of quick turns and drops.

  I just sat and listened, like he had for me. At some point I realized he was crying, but only with his eyes—there weren’t no shake to his voice, no sniffle to his breathing. His tears came down silent like falling snow, and his talking never let up. I figured he must’ve had some words dammed up in him, too. I sure enough didn’t know a word of what he was telling me, but I reckon it had to do with the same kind of stuff stuck inside me: family, and things that were lost, and having no place to call home. Maybe he was talking about his mama, however many thousands of miles away, or dead, even. Maybe he was talking about his pa, buried back in Wenatchee, or about some brother or sister he’d likely never see again.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little carving he’d shown me earlier, that shiny black stone bird. He held it out to me while he kept talking, and I took it careful, turned it over to look at it, then handed it back to him. He slid it back into his pocket and wiped at his cheeks with his sleeve.

  I reached around him, just like he had to me, and patted him on the back. He looked at me with a serious face, then reached over and put his hand to my chest.

  “Joseph,” he said.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Joseph,” he said solemnly, with a little nod. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled it up to his own chest. I could feel his heart beating, just like before, but it weren’t beating scared like a rabbit’s anymore.

  “Ah-Kee,” he said, thumping my hand soft against himself. “Ah-Kee.”

  “Ah-Kee,” I repeated. He nodded and I nodded back, and then I smiled. I pulled my hand from his chest but left it held out in front of him. He looked at it, then understood and took it up in his own. We shook hands, sitting there shivering shoulder to shoulder on the mountainside with the campfires of our ancestors shining down on us.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ah-Kee,” I said.

  When we woke in the morning the world was crisp with thick white frost and our breaths came out as puffy clouds. We’d spent most of the night curled up against each other as close to the fire as we could get. It was too cold to stretch out or lay down, and we kept having to take turns getting up to put more wood on.

  I woulda killed for some bacon or eggs, but we had to make do with another biscuit each and some salt pork that was so hard from the cold that my jaw hurt three chews into it. Ah-Kee didn’t complain, though, and we were back on the road up the mountain before the sun was all the way clear of the horizon.

  We only passed one other set of travelers on the trail that morning. It was a homesteader family, laboring their way down with a brake log tied off the back of their wagon. The man took enough time to tip his hat and give us a howdy, but his wife took one look at Ah-Kee and curled her lip and they went on their way without saying another word. Otherwise the mountain was ours, with its brown fall grass and endless uphill climbing and forever-views of the Columbia laid out like a ribbon way down below us. The higher we got the more pine trees started crowding around us and soon we left the bare sageland behind and were in honest-to-goodness forest.

  ’Round about what felt like noon I stopped at a level spot, my breath coming hard and my forehead sweating in spite of the chill in the air. Ah-Kee was panting, too, and looked just as ready to stop as I was. I dropped my satchel right in the dirt and stood there catching my breath.

  “Lunchtime, Ah-Kee?” I asked. He cocked his head at me. I brought pretend food to my mouth and did some theatrical chewing. Understanding flashed on Ah-Kee’s face. For the first time ever I saw him truly smile, and he nodded eagerly. Your belly knows every language when it’s hungry and there’s food to put in it, I s’pose.

  I smiled, too, then pointed with a thumb back behind me.

  “I gotta, well, relieve myself.” Ah-Kee must’ve got the gist of what I said ’cause he just nodded and made his own way off into the brush in the other direction. Once off the road I kept going farther for privacy’s sake, through the bushes and bunches of grass that grew under the pines. All in the air was the crisp smell of fall blended with pine and sage. The sunlight was a flat pale yellow, not the sharp brightness of summer. It was a fine afternoon, really.

  I was finished with my business and buttoning up my britches when I heard the first growl.

  I froze, hands on my unbuckled belt. Whatever’d made that growl sounded close. And big.

  All the peace I’d felt from the sunlight and sage and scenery dried up like nothing.

  Real slow-like I turned my head toward the sound.

  Standing there, not more than fifty yards away, was the biggest bear I’d ever seen in all my days.

  It was standing, just on the other side of a small draw. And it was looking right a
t me.

  I was glad I’d just done my business, or I reckon I’da ruined my pants right then and there.

  It weren’t just its size that scared me, nor its uncomfortable closeness to me, but its silver-tipped brown color and the hump on its back.

  “Grizzly,” I whispered to myself and any angels close enough to hear and help. I’d heard that all the grizzlies had been hunted out of these hills, but evidence to the contrary was fifty yards away, full of rippling muscle and teeth. There was at least one grizzly left in the Colockum. And I’d found him.

  The monstrous bear chose that moment to stand up, rising high on his back legs to get a better look at me. He was taller than a horse, easy. Heck, he looked taller than me sitting on a horse. If my pounding heart hadn’t been stuck in my chest, I’m pretty sure it would’ve leapt right out and skittered away down the mountain.

  All I could think of was my papa’s pistol, all the way back in my satchel on the road.

  The bear let out another growl that ended in something a lot more like a roar, then dropped to all fours and took a few running steps toward me, down the far slope of the little canyon between us.

  I took right off running, jangling belt and all, stumbling through the brush back toward Ah-Kee and a pistol that suddenly seemed terribly far away and awfully small.

  I could hear the bear crashing behind me, down through the canyon and up the nearer side—it sure enough thundered, grunting and stomping and cracking branches like a train going through those trees. It sounded like a monster was on my tail, and coming fast.

  I wanted to scream in terror, but my lungs were too busy sucking wind.

  Crack! went a limb behind me, then only steps later another snap! and already the second sounded closer to me than the first. That grizzly was a ways back but gaining fast.

  I came ’round the last bend and saw at last the road in front of me, and my satchel lying on it.

  “Ah-Kee!” I finally managed to scream. “Run! There’s a—” My warning was cut off when I fell suddenly, smashing into the ground with a thud that chased the breath right out of my lungs. I tried to jump up but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate. I felt sharp talons scraping at my legs.

  The bear’s got me! The thought stabbed into my heart like a black dagger, and I knew all was lost. I was gonna die there on that mountain and I’d never see my sweet Sarah again. The grizzly had caught me and grabbed hold of my legs and was opening its terrible jaws to tear me into bloody pieces. I flopped over onto my back with my eyes squeezed shut against the horror and hollered out my dying scream.

  There was a split half-breath of a moment—and then I realized I could still hear the bear roaring and raging toward me. Closer … but not on me yet. I looked down and saw the reason for my falling: my unbuckled pants had come down around my ankles. There weren’t no talons—the brush and branches on the ground were scraping and poking at my exposed legs and rear end.

  I cursed, forgetting in my fear how my mama looked upon such language. I yanked my britches up and stumbled to my feet and took off again, holding my pants up with one hand. That grizzly was close enough now for me to hear each and every step it took behind me as I careened frantically through the trees toward my waiting pistol.

  I slipped in a mud patch and took one more tumble but rolled to a stop right beside my satchel, my pants back down around my knees. Panting and bloody from my falls, I looked up and saw Ah-Kee come running out onto the road from the other side, his eyes wide at my fallen britches and his face full of questions.

  “Bear!” I said, pointing and jumping to my feet with satchel in hand. His eyes followed my pointing just as the grizzly came lumbering out of the trees fifty feet away. Ah-Kee’s mouth dropped open and his eyes got even wider. “Come on!” I shouted, yanking my pants up and grabbing him by the shirt as I ran past, dragging him along toward a big craggy boulder a little ways up the road. Behind us a vicious growl came rumbling low out of the bear’s throat. I looked back and saw it charging up the hill behind us. That beast was so big and burly it looked like a raging, toothy stagecoach.

  The boulder was taller than us and perfect for climbing, with cracks and ledges for fingers and toes, and Ah-Kee and I made short work of getting to the top. Just in time, too—when we scrambled up and jumped to our feet, the grizzly was right there, standing at the bottom, looking up at us with its head the size of a whole hog. He roared a ferocious roar that hurt my ears and shook my heart, showing us his mouthful of deadly looking teeth.

  We were far from being out of danger. The top of that boulder was flat enough but small, barely enough for the two of us to stand on. We had to cling to each other to keep from falling off. And it weren’t tall enough, neither; if that bear got it in his mind to stand on his back legs and swing his huge paws, I was pretty sure he’d have no problem shredding our legs to bloody bits from the knees down. It was only a matter of time until Ah-Kee and I were lunch for a bear.

  I yanked the pistol out of my satchel. Its silver barrel flashed in the sunlight like sure-enough salvation. I knew a pistol wasn’t likely to do much more to a grizzly than make it mad, but I didn’t see no other options showing themselves. If I was lucky, from this close, I figured I might be able to get a bullet right into his eye. I hoped that would be enough to kill him, or at least hurt him enough to drive him away.

  The bear circled ’round the boulder, no doubt looking for a way to get us down. Ah-Kee and I spun together, keeping the bear in our sight. I checked the chamber to make sure the pistol was loaded. The brass ends of six .45 caliber bullets gleamed up at me. My hands were shaking something fierce. I’d shot the pistol plenty, but only at rabbits and pheasant and the like; never before had I faced anything like the eight hundred pounds of mean hungry that was prowling below me now.

  Ah-Kee shouted something frantic in Chinese. I looked up quick from the gun and saw the bear had stood up. He snarled his lips and swiped with his knife-blade claws at me. I dodged too slow, and those bear claws raked across my right leg, tearing straight through my pants. A searing hot pain shot up to my brain and I felt hot sticky blood drip down into my boots.

  I cried out and almost lost my balance, but Ah-Kee tightened his grip on my body and kept me from toppling down into the bear’s waiting maw. We scooted as far back as we could on the boulder and the bear dropped to all fours, circling around again to find a way to reach us. Our time on that rock—and our time on Earth, for that matter—was running out quick. I tried to calm my heart and steady my hands as I clicked the pistol closed and wrapped my finger ’round the trigger. Holding that pistol in my hand, I risked closing my eyes for just a moment, feeling its familiar grip tight against my sweaty palm. I remembered the feel of Papa’s strong hands on my shoulders, his voice soft in my ear, as he taught me to shoot it. “Relax your shoulders but keep your arms strong, son. It’s gonna kick at you when you fire, so you best be ready. Hold it steady with both hands. There you go. Breathe straight and easy. And remember you don’t pull the trigger with your finger … You let all your air out slow and soft and then squeeze easy with your whole hand. Tell me when you’re ready, son, then go ahead and shoot.” I felt a queer kind of peace settle into me. With Papa’s voice in my ear, even just the memory of it, I figured I could do just about anything.

  I opened my eyes. The bear had circled and was just off to my side. I turned, almost calm, and brought the gun up, steady in both hands. I relaxed my shoulders but kept both arms strong. I ignored the throbbing pain in my leg and kept my breathing straight and easy.

  The bear rose up again, bringing his head near even with my feet. His two eyes, small on such a huge head, glared up at me, black and cold. His fangs, bared and glistening, shined white and deadly sharp. I sighted down the pistol barrel, lining it up with the bear’s right eye. He roared, a heart-busting fearful sound, but I held on to Papa’s voice, and neither my breathing nor my steady arms faltered.

  “I’m ready, Papa,” I whispered, and let all my air out slow and soft
. The whole world went quiet except for my heart beating in my ears, and my hand tightened ’round the trigger.

  My arms jerked down hard, but it weren’t from the kick of the pistol. There’d been no kick, ’cause there’d been no shot. Just before the trigger had come back that last fatal hair’s width, Ah-Kee had struck out, smacking my arms down.

  “What’re you doing, Ah-Kee?” I shouted. He was hollering, too, tugging on my sleeve and screaming Chinese in my ear. “It’s the only way,” I said roughly, figuring he was worried about making the bear madder than it already was. I jerked my arms free from his grip and raised the gun again. “I think I can get him through the eye.” The bear swiped at us again with those grim black claws, but from where he was, he couldn’t quite reach, and his paw whistled through the air just short of our legs.

  I squared the pistol sights once more on the grizzly’s murderous eye. Ah-Kee was still yammering at me in Chinese, his voice high and frantic. I blocked the sound out of my mind and tried to find my papa’s voice again as I kept that pistol barrel steady on the bear’s eye.

  Again Ah-Kee swept my arms down, stopping my shot, and I turned toward him in anger ’til I saw that he was pointing at something. Something down the road, at the edge of the trees the bear had chased me out of moments before.

  There were two of ’em. Grizzly cubs. They were standing up, looking our way, not much bigger than dogs.

  The grizzly at our heels weren’t a he at all. It was a mama.

  I looked at Ah-Kee, knowing what he meant. He didn’t want me to shoot the bear. Because she was a mama. He didn’t want to make those cubs orphans.

  He stopped shouting and we stood there a moment, looking into each other’s eyes. His were serious, and urgent. We were both breathing hard.

  “I’m sorry, Ah-Kee,” I said finally. “I got to. It’s what’s got to be done.”

  Ah-Kee shook his head. He said a few words, quiet but firm, in his foreign tongue. His wide eyes were full and glistening.