Bearstone

by Will Hobbs

  In the parlor, Walter sought out his recliner. Cloyd collapsed with a sigh on the sofa. Walter glanced at his new Mining Gazette but set it aside. Something was terribly wrong, and he’d have to get the boy to tell him what it was. What could he say? Maybe he should try a new tack. “Tell me about that letter you got yesterday,” he suggested awkwardly. “What do you hear from home?”

  Cloyd battled the confusion washing over him. He felt angry at the old man, and he didn’t know why. He thought about the letter in his pocket. What should he say?

  “It’s my letter,” he said finally. “It’s none of your business.”

  Walter felt sorry he had chosen the letter to try to talk about. “I didn’t mean to pry, Cloyd,” he apologized.

  “I don’t know what’s in the letter!” Cloyd shouted, standing up. “I can’t read it. I don’t know how. There, are you satisfied?”

  He felt the weight of the old man’s eyes on him.

  Leaning forward, the old man reached out and touched Cloyd’s hand. The dark veins stood out on his forehead. “I’m sorry, Cloyd,” he whispered. “I had no idea. Let me read it for you. Where’s the letter?”

  Cloyd wanted to hear the letter, but he hated his weakness being suddenly out in the open. Now the old man would think that he was stupid.

  “Why, I could maybe help you in the evenings,” Walter was saying. “And I could sure read you these mining papers….”

  “I don’t want your help,” Cloyd said. He had to get away.

  In his confusion he bumped into the table and spilled the old man’s coffee all over the mining newspapers. He had to get to his room and be by himself.

  “Leave me alone,” he shouted at Walter as he ran for the stairs. “Leave me alone!”

  In the morning Cloyd was surprised to find Walter acting as if nothing had happened. “Time to buck them bales out of the field and up into the barn,” the old man said cheerfully. Cloyd didn’t respond. How could things ever be the same between them again? He kept his eyes on his plate and said nothing.

  After breakfast, three pickups pulling horsetrailers drove into the farm. Two of the trucks were loaded heavily with saddles and camping equipment. The third carried at least a dozen barking hound dogs. Six men in blaze-orange vests got out of the trucks as the old man waved and walked down the drive to meet them. Had the old man been expecting them? Cloyd wondered. He hadn’t talked about anyone coming.

  The leader, very tall and sure of himself, stood in front of the rest and made small talk with the old man. Cloyd watched from behind a tractor in the shop. The tall man took off his cowboy hat, revealing a headful of wavy red hair. The wind, blowing in Cloyd’s direction, carried their words to him. The two talked easily about Walter’s new beard and his peaches. Apparently they were good friends.

  The others standing around began to fidget, Cloyd saw. They were strangers. One of them asked in a Texas accent, “Does the wind always blow like this in Colorado?”

  Cloyd saw the tall, red-haired man turn his shoulder and wink to Walter. “A question like that you oughta ask Walter here. Heck, I was just a kid when he invented this whole country. What about this wind, Walter—think it’ll let up?”

  The old man tugged at his cap. “It’s been known to blow, that’s for certain. Just workin’ up to it this morning. Myself, I like to keep track of the wind by hangin’ a chain on a post. If it stands out straight, that’s a breeze, but when it gets to whippin’ around and links snap off, why look out—it’s likely to get windy by sundown.”

  Walter told it straight-faced, but when he finished he held his breath, and his ears turned red. Everyone was laughing. The old man’s cheeks were all puffed out. Finally he blew the air out his nose, his head bobbing, and he stroked the white whiskers on his chin. “Yes sir,” he concluded, “It can blow—not that it does very often.”

  Cloyd was amazed at how easily the old man got on with these people, laughing with them and having a good time. He hadn’t even met some of them before. Who were these people?

  Still laughing, the men turned to their preparations. Cloyd came out of the shed and watched them unload the horses. After they parked their trucks and trailers out of the way, they packed the horses, shouting instructions back and forth. Walter came over to Cloyd and said the tall man was his old friend. Walter was all excited, like the man was really important. “Rusty’s the best outfitter in the San Juans,” he said. “Best outdoorsman I ever saw. More’n likely he’ll scare up a bear.”

  The red-haired man beckoned to Walter from beside the coal pile, where he was rigging the horses. The old man went to him and then into the house, returning with the salt and pepper shakers from the kitchen table. Suddenly Cloyd realized that these men had to have the old man’s permission to hunt on his land, and that he had already given it to them. To hunt for bears?

  With no warning, the old man was bringing the red-haired man over. “Got someone I’d like you to meet, Rusty,” he said to his friend. “This here’s Cloyd.”

  For an instant, before he looked away, Cloyd saw the bear hunter’s eyes. The man thought that meeting Cloyd was a joke. The tall man stuck out his giant hand, and said in his raspy voice, “Glad to meet ’ya. ‘Cloyd,’ is it? Never heard a name like that before.”

  Walter had never tried to shake hands with Cloyd. Cloyd hated shaking hands. But he had no choice but to offer his now.

  The red-haired man didn’t just shake his hand, he crushed it. He didn’t have to do that, Cloyd thought. It hurt really bad. Cloyd tried not to let his face show the pain. He glimpsed the man’s mocking eyes. The eyes said Cloyd was nothing, nothing at all, only an Indian.

  The old man was trying to get them to talk. “Cloyd here’s real good with horses,” Walter said, beaming. “That blue roan of mine has really taken a shine to him.”

  “Is that so?” the outfitter said with a short laugh. “Well, a horse ain’t a dog, Cloyd. It could care less about you. All it cares about is getting fed. A horse is a work animal, not a pet.”

  Cloyd turned away. His hand was still throbbing. The bear hunter turned to his own business and mounted his horse. Cloyd imagined what he could do to the red-haired man’s hand if he were twice the man’s size. Break every bone in it.

  Cloyd watched the riders and their dogs disappear upriver. He was furious, and the old man didn’t even know it. Cloyd was sure now that he meant nothing to the old man. These men were his real friends. And they were bear hunters.

  It was time to bring in the hay. The old man was going to drive the tractor, and he was supposed to buck the bales onto the trailer and afterward stack them up in the barn. The old man, he recalled, liked to brag about how heavy his bales were—eighty pounds. “People get their money’s worth,” he’d said. Eighty pounds was fine for Walter—the old man wasn’t planning on bucking the bales himself. That would be Cloyd’s job.

  The old man was standing by the tractor, waiting, but Cloyd walked off down to the riverbank instead. A few minutes later he heard the tractor’s motor fire. The old man was going to go ahead without him. Let him try, Cloyd thought. It’s his hay, not mine.

  Along the riverbank he saw several magpies and then a raven. They reminded him of the canyons back home, and his sister, and he grew powerfully homesick. He brought the bearstone out of his pocket and tried to make a wish on it that he could go home. But the stone only reminded him of where he was and what the red-haired man was going to do. In a sudden burst of awareness he felt like he was the bear the man was after, and he could feel what it would be like to be chased by barking dogs and men on horses. He knew with awful certainty that the bear would be run down, cornered, and killed. Maybe it would be the mother bear, the one he’d seen with the cub. It was the old man’s fault, he decided bitterly—he’d given his permission. If they killed a bear, the old man would have to pay. The old man never cared about me, he thought, these are his real friends.

  Walter decided to bring in the hay all by himself. Something was wrong with C
loyd, he knew, but he shouldn’t have walked off on him when he was needed most. Well, he would show this boy what Walter Landis was made of. He’d bucked a few bales in his life. Jumping off and back on the tractor, he pitched bale after bale onto the trailer like he was a young man again. His face was flushed bright red, his breathing came louder and louder, but he wouldn’t quit. He brought load after load to the barn, heaving and grunting and dragging the bales into place. He’d work until all the hay was in or his heart burst, whichever came first. He didn’t care which.

  He worked all morning and never came in for a meal. He worked all through the long afternoon, through the dusk, and into the darkness, until the last bale was up in the barn. Then he walked silently into the house, neglecting to take off his boots or his cap. Tracking dirt on the white parlor rug, he disappeared into his room, trailing bits of hay.

  Walter was exhausted. He lay on his bed in his soiled overalls and boots and talked to his wife. “Maude,” he said, “I’m an old fool, but I just don’t know what to do with this boy. I sure wish you were here to help me. Something’s got into him—I don’t know what. He was doing so good. I guess we’ll just hang on and see what happens….”

  The house fell silent. Cloyd was in his room, packing his duffel bag. The old man would get rid of him now. Tomorrow, he’d be back at Eaglewing. That would be all right. He didn’t care anymore.

  At first light, Walter was usually up and cooking sausage and eggs. Cloyd waited awhile for him in the kitchen, then took a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter outside. It was easy to put off seeing the old man.

  Several hours later Walter limped out of the house. Cloyd was surprised to see he had shaved his beard off. “Hay’s in the barn, Cloyd,” he announced cheerfully. “Lucky it didn’t get rained on. Once you’re into July—and today’s the first—you’re pressin’ your luck.”

  Cloyd didn’t know what to say. The old man was acting like nothing had happened.

  “Wouldn’t mind a bit if it rained anytime now,” Walter continued. “Wouldn’t have to irrigate so much. I’d better start the water back in today—the field’s drying out bad. How ’bout you? Got anything in mind? Maybe you’d like to take that roan—”

  “Make some more posts, I guess,” Cloyd mumbled.

  Walter hesitated. “Fine,” he said uncertainly. “That’s just fine.”

  Cloyd trudged across the field with the saw and the gas can. He’d left behind the pint of oil Walter wanted mixed with the gas.

  It was another cloudless day. The last of the night’s lingering cool air was burning off as he angled through the haystubble toward the hillside.

  Before he climbed, he took a good look at his fenceposts, marching stout and straight all the way to the peach orchard. It was a strange feeling; they looked different. They didn’t make him feel proud or good. They weren’t his anymore.

  He’d forgotten to bring along any drinking water. Already he was thirsty, and the sun was blazing. His head was pounding. Why was he still here? He’d expected to be sent on his way back to Durango, and instead he was being sent back to work as if nothing had happened.

  He had to get out of the sun. He veered away from the hillside and followed the posts down to the orchard. He dropped the saw, lay in the grass at the base of the big boulder, and looked up at the trees. He could lie there all day, he thought. Ever since he’d come to the old man, there’d never been time to look at the world this way that he liked.

  Suddenly the bear was back in his thoughts, and he could see it all happening. Men riding hard to keep up with their yapping dogs, the bear exhausted and desperate with no place to hide. He hated the outfitter, that red-haired man, with all his heart.

  His thirst brought him back to the orchard. He swallowed hard and bitterly. The whole orchard was exploding with growth. The countless rock-hard peaches grew larger by the day—he’d been checking on them since the first day he came to the farm. He’d admired them, but now he hated them. These thriving trees of Walter’s with their long, green leaves were so superior to his grandmother’s it made him sick. Hers were pitiful.

  He spat, but nothing came out. He had a bitter taste in his mouth, like poison. His grandmother’s peaches were rare and beautiful only in the way he used to see them, not as they really were. But the old man’s trees could have all the water they wanted, while his grandmother’s, with their misshapen trunks and stunted, yellowed leaves, stood here and there against the sun and depended on the rain. Sometimes the rains didn’t come at all and the peaches shriveled on the trees and there was no moisture to suck out of them.

  All at once he heard dogs barking and men calling—the outfitter and his bear hunters had returned. Cloyd ran up the road toward the house, where the men had dismounted and were showing off their kill to Walter. Everyone talked at once, except for the red-haired man, who was acting like it was all in a day’s work. A bear was heaped atop a nervous horse. It wasn’t as big as Cloyd would have thought. It looked about like a big black dog. The old man was going to let his friend butcher it right there and hang it up in one of his sheds.

  As if he were invisible, he walked among the preoccupied hunters with them taking no notice of him. He approached the bear and stared at it. The bear had nearly bitten its tongue in two. Its mouth was choked with clotted blood. A fly walked on one of its eyes.

  Recounting the hunt, the men poked fun at each other. One man, the one who’d asked the old man about the wind, was especially happy—he was the one who shot it. “Bearskin for the den,” he said proudly.

  “Plenty of good sausage, too, and some for Walter here,” the red-haired man said in his raspy voice. “What don’t make sausage I’ll feed to my dogs.”

  Suddenly Cloyd remembered all the sausage he’d eaten at the old man’s table. It almost made him retch to think it might have been—probably was—bear meat he’d eaten all those mornings. He backed out of the clearing in front of the house, turned and ran back toward the peach orchard. A terrible revenge was taking shape in his mind.

  Cloyd snatched up the saw from the tall grass at the base of the boulder. He filled it with gas, pink instead of its usual purple, the way it looked with the oil added in. Right now he didn’t care how Walter wanted it. The old man was just fussy—he wouldn’t even drive his truck without checking the oil first. Everything Walter did had to be in neat lines, like his windrows and his fences. Everything had to be so clean, like the white rug in his parlor and his tractors, and everything had to be in its place in the house, the sheds, and the barn.

  He grabbed up the saw and yanked the pull-cord with the saw in midair, as Walter had advised him never to do. The engine fired immediately and he gunned it until it screamed.

  Cloyd wondered why he’d liked Walter in the first place, this fussy old white man who had a thousand times more than he needed and still had to have someone else do his work for him so he could get more. Maybe he’d worked for the old man because of finding the bearstone the first day. It was easy enough to see now—there was no connection between the good-luck token and the old man. Cloyd remembered how Walter laughed with the red-haired man and the other bear hunters when they first arrived. Laughs with Bear Hunters should be the old man’s secret name, he thought bitterly.

  He cut through the skin of the nearest tree and winced as he withdrew the saw. Beads of moisture were forming along the edges of the fresh wound. From one to the next he ran with the saw roaring at full throttle, and he cut each of the twenty-two peach trees most of the way through. Each time, as the saw’s teeth bit into the thin bark, he hollered with hurt as if he felt the saw himself. He didn’t want to cut them down, he wanted them to die slowly. Before they died, their leaves would yellow and the peaches shrivel, and they would look just like his grandmother’s peaches.

  Now he knew he was in big trouble, but that made it easier. He was only getting started. This time there wouldn’t be any doubt he was going back to Eaglewing.

  His mind racing and his throat so dry
it seemed jammed with a wad of wool, Cloyd stumbled out of the orchard with the heavy saw. When his fifty-seven posts came into view all standing straight and lined up so perfectly, he pulled up for breath and caught himself admiring them. But what was the fence really for? To keep a man from crossing a field. It was a stupid reason to have worked so hard. At White Mesa he went with the goats wherever he wanted. None of the Utes put up fences or claimed a part of the mesa for their own. The animals went where there was feed, and there were no fences at all until some white men chained the trees out by their roots, dragged them into the arroyos, and fenced the northern end of the mesa for beans.

  Cloyd tried his shoulder against the first post. It wouldn’t budge. He had set them deep, wedging rocks around the posts and packing them with clay soil. They’d set up like concrete. Why should Walter be so concerned about some people hunting deer and elk on his ranch while he thought it was fine for others to hunt bears? He was a fool to have worked for the old man.

  The juniper posts wouldn’t rot in two hundred years, but he didn’t want them there at all. The field looked better without them.

  The saw didn’t want to start. After dozens of attempts Cloyd made it idle erratically, but it cut out as soon as he tried the throttle. Eventually it caught at full throttle, and he discovered it would run if he didn’t let up even a little bit. He walked along the line, sawing down the posts and thinking about people he didn’t like. One post for the reading teacher who tried to make him read aloud, one for the speech teacher who always tried to make him get up in front of the class, and one for the nervous principal who was always saying, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to use the board on you.” One for each of the bear hunters. Two, three, four, five, six, sixteen for Walter and his friend, the red-haired man.