Back to the Garden

by Clara Hume

  In the fall, we'd always come up here to gather nuts, and this year I hoped I could find more. We reached the sub-alpine tree-line, and I let Kristy down so she could help examine fallen cones for their nuts. I explained to her and Cameron what to look for, and it made me proud that they seemed to understand.

  Elena and I had once discussed having children. We had not planned on twins, though they ran in my family. In fact, we hadn't seriously planned on having any kids for a long time. Both Kristy and Cameron's conceptions, and the latest miscarriage, were unplanned. We wanted to stick to the old law on the mountains, where Alejandro and Willy said only so many people could be sustained here—and at the same time we acknowledged that it was probably best to have kids when young and healthy rather than older. We didn't have to get coordinated in careers first. Our career was surviving. Wild Mountain had room for a few more, we always joked.

  Decades ago, when winters began warming in the interior of the Pacific Northwest, pine beetles destroyed over 40,000 million acres of trees in our area and up in Canada. It ended up that some companies used these trees for bio-fuel. One of Elena's uncles had made carved bowls and pens out of the blue-ish wood.

  We found a few nuts, saw evidence that the cones had been pecked into—a good sign that the Clark's nutcracker birds were still around. After having picked enough nuts to fill a burlap sack, which I put in my pack, I gently lifted Kristy into the baby backpack again. I felt colder now, a natural response from being out for a couple hours. Cameron skipped ahead as we were off. We steered back to the frozen stream to keep our bearing as we hiked to the old horse trail.

  Not a moment later, I heard a deep growl from across the stream and jerked my head around to see a black bear raised on its haunches. I was so shocked to see one—hadn't seen any bears in years—that I almost called out. I knew how to handle a black bear out in the wild. When I was a kid we had occasionally run across one, and it would dash away, afraid of us as we were it. We had great respect for animals on the mountain. But the danger of the situation was made immediately when the bear faced us and stood broadside. I noticed a bit of white saliva at its mouth and heard it let out several rasping huffs. Though it had made no moves toward me yet, my life unfolded around me as I thought of it charging and what fate may become of Kristy and Cameron. I lifted up Cameron into my arms as white fear curled through me.

  When the bear began to charge, I figured it was a fake charge and it would just go away. I had a knife on me, but that would be difficult to use without just making her angrier. My eyes darted about, but I saw no cubs. I backed up slowly toward the trees. The bear stopped its charge, and looked almost quizzical at this point. It still seemed angry, if that were possible—as if we'd surprised it. Maybe there were cubs nearby?

  By now I had reached a small grove of Lodgepole pines, but the bear showed no signs of leaving. Its huffs became insistent. I felt it was under great distress, most likely from hunger. I reached a pine with a good base and began to scale it, just as the bear charged. I know that climbing a tree was not hopeful because bears climbed them all the time to get at foliage, but I also knew if I got high enough, it would most likely not follow me.

  Kristy screamed loudly, and Cameron froze. I managed to reach around the trunk and pull myself up the tree with one hand, while my free hand desperately hung on to whatever part of Cameron I could manage. His tiny arms went around my neck. I brought my knees to my chest, and pushed up with my feet, reaching as high as possible to pull the three of us higher. The bear reached the bottom of the tree, hung back, and then began to climb it herself.

  I knew I needed to get up about ten meters before the bear might give up, and I reached the branch-line, which was easier to climb, with footholds. I said, "Kristy and Cam, we're going to be okay."

  Kristy's cries elevated with the deep roars of the bear. The bear was so strong and heavy that its mere weight coming up the tree after us swung the tree about. But I wasn't going to let go with my children's lives in my hands. I had a bad grip on Cameron and asked him to keep holding on tight. Climbing up with both of them was proving tricky.

  Then, suddenly, Cameron began to try to tear away from me. I grabbed on tightly but was losing grip on a branch above me that I wanted to get to. "Cam," I called. "Don't let go!"

  Cameron now started to cry and said, "I climb" between his tears. He pulled away from me even more, out of my firm grasp. I knew what he was trying to do. He wanted to climb up the tree on his own because I was losing him.

  "Cam, hang on tight! Do not let go. Stay with me, Cam."

  Cam had it in his stubborn little blond head, however, that he could climb on his own, and he tore away from my grip, latching on to an adjacent branch.

  But he wasn't strong enough. I could feel and see my arm in slow motion reaching out to catch his fall, but to no avail. Kristy's screams filled my ears as in a blur I saw Cameron fall through the branches to the ground. The branches were cushioning his fall, and I hoped all that would occur would be a broken leg. This loud movement was enough to scare the bear down the tree, and it began to walk away, looking back inquisitively. I heard a gunshot. The bear, more startled now, ran off into the forest. At once, the relief had me shaking and wobbly, but I clamored down the tree to check on Cameron.

  I saw Leo down below, with Fran's rifle.

  "Did you shoot the bear?" I called out.

  "No," Leo yelled.

  Leo knelt down to Cameron and didn't say a word. The bear had not touched my boy. I could feel my heart pounding in fear though.

  Before I was able to reach the ground, Leo soberly stood up away from Cam, in order to lend a hand with Kristy, who now had been reduced to a teary sobbing mess. Leo reached for the pack and pulled her out of my arms. I was shaking so badly I could barely climb down the tree.

  "It's okay, baby," he told my daughter.

  I rushed down to where Cameron lay on the ground. He had no pulse, no movement. I could see that his head had hit a rocky area, and death had been swift. I yelled and cried and shook with terror and wretchedness. I stayed there for a long time and forgot about Leo and my daughter. I simply held my son in my arms until I finally realized that I had to go tell his mother that she had lost a second child.

  Leo—Chapter 7

  Daniel didn't realize it until weeks later that I had gone to find him and his kids up the mountain to warn him of that bear. I had talked more with Caine about it, it being his run-in with the animal, and decided it would be best to find Daniel and let him know about Caine and his meeting with the bear the other night. But I'd been too late.

  Back at Daniel and Elena's cabin, we were all stunned and exhausted. Daniel laid out Cameron on the kitchen table, and Elena, horrified, sunk to the floor moaning and wailing. I had never seen a human so torn apart. Daniel was too, but chose to be silent. Fran was stony too. She washed up the child and covered him in a blanket. I had to leave the scene. I hadn't known Fran's friends for too long and already had witnessed two deaths. The atmosphere was so heavy with grief, I sensed we all felt it on our shoulders—the gravity of it forcing us downward.

  I went out to the small yard, where chickens squawked from their insulated coop, and found the shovel from when Daniel and Elena had buried their miscarried child. I began poking the cold ground with a pickaxe and went inside myself during this physical relief. I could feel my heart tug. I didn't have to remove much soil. But I figured someone else should dig rather than Daniel again. Dig and throw. Dig and throw. Clouds dancing above the snow. The mantra went through my head. Soon, I realized there was no more depth to go to, and I rested the shovel against a tree and went back into the house.

  Back inside, Elena and Daniel were ready to bury their son. Kristy would come with them. This time the little girl understood more about death. She was weeping softly, and I kissed her forehead. Caine decided to head back to Fran's place. In truth, his toes weren't quite healed, and he needed to get off his feet and sit by the fire.

  Fran took
me aside. "I'm going to stay here for Elena for a little while," she told me. "In my basement in one of the trunks with books, there are some pills in a black purse. They're sedatives, and I think Elena may need them. Would you mind looking?"

  "Of course not, babe," I told her.

  Back at the house, Caine was wrapped in a blanket, rocking slowly in a chair, with his feet planted near the hearth.

  "Hey, man," I said.

  "Aye, mate."

  "Let's talk more about that bear soon, huh?"

  He nodded, hugging himself. His face was despondent.

  I searched Fran's cold basement for the pills. It was dark, but a couple windows let in the snow light and I lit a candle. Shadows crept along the walls like ghosts. The basement was not kept up well. It was mostly for storage only. Fran had shown me the place, and I knew where she stashed her wine, but so far had not looked around in-depth.

  Three walls in the basement's main room were lined with wooden shelves as tall as my shoulders. A pair of windows was above the shelves along the east wall. The fourth wall had an old generator and a doorway to a separate set of smaller rooms: one with a half-bath and another with a sump pump, where some of the ranchers had built a water filtration and recycling system. Another musty room contained a sleeping cot and a cedar dresser. The main room's shelves were stocked with books, canned goods, batteries, candles, wicks, propane, wine, photo albums, and canisters filled with grains.

  I was amazed at the number of books. The more popular books of fiction were out on the shelves; a few trunks in front of the shelves were full of reference books. Fran's family had saved books on gardening, horses, art history, poets, and authors from various historical eras. I found a couple outdated medical reference books. I lifted a few books up, startled by the dust that whirled around them as if a spirit of old had come to life.

  These days books were still good references, but oral storytelling had come back into style too. I opened up what looked like a diary—one of several notebooks in one of the trunks, and saw a paper slide out and float to the floor. Inside was a yellowed handwritten note. I carefully unfolded the wrinkled paper, which was one of those ancient notebook papers with lines on it for handwriting. The note was hard to read, since the ink had long faded, so I moved the candle closer and read:

  Pick up flour and vanilla at Wincos, thanks honey.

  It was signed hastily, and I wouldn't have recognized the signature but knew Fran's daddy was Alejandro. A simple grocery note from husband to wife. The thought of it made me feel gloomy. I wondered if Fran's mom had kept the note on purpose, or if it just unwittingly ended up in a book and was forgotten about. I also found an old SLR camera stuck behind some books. I remember Fran mentioning she'd been looking for it. Her newer camera, still from years ago, was broken. Yet, it was hard to find any film these days.

  Below the books I found more notebooks, some of them blank but some with old diary entries. Dusty as the notebooks were, I figured Fran might have forgotten about them, though I'd seen her and her friends writing or doodling on scrap paper from time to time. Fran said it was a way to document their existence, as if their lives may not last very long. It was a kind of self-preservation.

  I sat down and skimmed through the journals. I could have returned to Daniel's much sooner if I hadn't gotten lost in old stories of how the world had been changing before the eyes of people who I guessed to be mostly Fran's and Elena's ancestors. I spent a half hour reading, while fading white light slid in through the basement's dusty windows. I never felt as alone as then when I got lost in old words and worlds.

  Once I started reading, my curiosity piqued. Fran had never mentioned these journals. Maybe she had not really looked through this old stuff.

  ***

  October 16: I watched my favorite horse die recently. No, not simply die but get downright murdered. Shit. I can't talk about it none other than that. So to distract myself I've been watching TV alone in my bedroom, and the growing war over resources has made the top news every evening. Everyone fightin' over oil, or what's left of it, food and water and crops, you name it. I don't know what to think, but Daddy tells me it weren't always this bad.

  -Jimmy Coombs

  August 3: I recall the last time I sailed to Spain. It was to attend my father's funeral. I don't know why he'd ever left the mountain and gone back to Spain, but he retired in what he called his home, Navarre. This was long ago, but even then I found the Spanish countryside and its livelihood suffering from long-term weather changes. The meseta was drier than it had been when I had visited as a boy.

  On the ship back I landed in South Carolina and met a woman named Barbara. I had the guts to woo her, and she returned to Idaho with me to help me run my ranch. She's a treat of blond and blue frenzy, with the energy of a spinning top but the self-appointed permission to be as lazy as a sultry southern afternoon. As soon as she came back with me, Willy and I made the executive decision to quit raising cattle—which had increased the erosion on mountain slopes, streams, and lakes—and elevated sediment yield, which was suffocating fish. I built an anaerobic digester, and we started planting crops and raising a few sheep. We began this season with vegetables, using perennials like asparagus, garlic, rhubarb, bamboo, and bunching onions. Our chickens weed the gardens, and we harvest our rainwater. Not sure Barbara cares much for life on the ranch though.

  -Alejandro Herrera

  December 22: I am glad we still have a mountain, that we have elevation and snow in the winter. People have suffered most everywhere in the world, but in the winter on this mountain, we live. We can see our breath and stomp snow off our feet. Alejandro Junior's ranch is just down the way, and he finally got married to that hot chick.

  Alej is my best friend. Our fathers were among the pioneers who settled the mountain after the older ranchers had nearly ruined the soil. We began to raise a few sheep and had signed on to ideas of permaculture too.

  -Willy Shay

  May 5: With Alejandro being gone, I find it lonely and impossible being a single mother on a mountain full of testosterone, and I long for the old days where we'd drink sweet tea on the back lawn of our grand home in the South, which offered us reprieve in the sweltering heat. I would just die now to get with my sister Reece for a few mint juleps. We used to steal Daddy's whiskey and sip drinks as we watched storms come through the vast landscape out our back porch. I still long for that feeling we got when we would gaze upon the oak trees as they lifted and fell in the wind.

  Reece and I are talking about my return home, but on the other hand, this is my new home and I like the chill of the winter. Plus they have now said that the South is prone to more diseases from mosquitoes as the water further dirties and the heat rises. But still, I want to go. I would have left after Alejandro died but cannot talk Fran into going with me.

  -Barbara Gillet

  ***

  I sat motionless, wondering if the big gulp stranded in my throat would go away or result in a few tears. I hadn't cried in ages. Remembering the pills, I quickly swallowed my emotions and figured I'd deal with these journals later, after mourning. I ended up taking a few blank notebooks with me, along with the camera, but didn't know why, only I felt like maybe we should document our lives more too. Maybe someone would find more about us after we were gone. The thought of passing down history by writing became about as meaningful as passing along stories via acting, like in another stage of my life.

  I finally headed back up the stairs and over to Daniel's with the sedatives. I noticed thick, heavy smoke coming out their chimney, while the day itself began to get even colder. More snow began to spit from the sky. Just what we needed: another storm.

  When I walked inside, Fran emerged from the bedroom, where Elena had retired. She told me, "Thanks, honey." Her voice was suddenly bigger than usual. It echoed things I'd learned about her father and mother, Jimmy, and Elena's dad Willy.

  Fran rubbed Daniel's shoulder as she walked by him. He was sitting near the front room's hear
th like a statue. Any talk would be small talk, I told myself. I didn't know where Kristy was, but I assumed she was in with her mama. Fran returned to the bedroom with a cup of tea and the pills.

  Daniel didn't acknowledge me or look at me, just sat there on the brick of the hearth with his boots still on.

  "Wasn't your fault, man." I said. "Wasn't your fault." I walked over to put my hand on his shoulder, but could see he was finally crying. I wondered how long he would blame himself—there was nothing I could say or do to make it better now. I wasn't good with physical emotion, unless it was with a sexual partner. I felt my face stretch with pity as I simply lightly patted Daniel on the shoulder. It was my fault, more than anyone's, for not having warned him about the bear in time. But who would have guessed a bear would attack? They normally did not. I felt guilty, still, because if Daniel would have known about the bear on the mountain, he would have been prepared instead of taken unaware.

  Fran came back out with Kristy in her arms and said, "Elena will sleep. We'll take Kristy for the night." She held out the small, tired, and cheerless girl to me, and I awkwardly lifted her into my arms.

  Fran went over to Daniel and leaned down to hug him. "Elena has some sedatives. You can take one too," she told him. Fran hugged him for a long time, and told him what I told him. "You can't blame yourself for this, Daniel," she told him gently. "What happened was a freak accident and nobody's fault."

  I finally said, "I'll walk you on home."

  As Fran and I walked outdoors and back to her place, the wind was against us. The snow had picked up just in the last couple of hours. We could hear a howling around us, a soulful and haunting moan, how I imagined the woods of the ancient north would sound before humankind. Back when fairy folk and abstract lights danced in the woods like an eddy of autumn leaves spinning around freely. I sometimes wondered how many of us were left. I figured thousands were still here, maybe millions, though we were all apart from each other and struggling to make it. The cold day's lamentation reflected that lost and frightening feeling.