Juggling Fire

by Joanne Bell

  Because that’s the question, I think: at what point should you just give up?

  That night I dream I’m in a blizzard. On the horizon is a yellow light. Sky and earth are invisible. Without my boots planted in the snow, I couldn’t tell earth and sky apart. The air in between is crowded with falling snowflakes. I brush them from my shoulders, take off my hat and bang it against my legs. Dad is on the trail beside me, laughing as always. “Cold enough for you?” he says.

  I wake knowing I have to look for tracks around the cabin, check if the bear has come back. I’ve never heard of a bear stalking a person this way. I’ve had enough, I think, enough of being scared.

  All this time I’ve been frightened not so much of the bear, but of the panic, the horrible surge of terror I felt when he was near. Panic is instant; it can’t be controlled. But the bear’s not a monster; he’s a living creature. I can look at him and see him as just a bear.

  If I look at him long enough and hard enough, I might still be afraid. But maybe he’ll feel like what he really is, a fellow sojourner on this Earth with a perspective all his own.

  Before leaving the cabin, I fry up a huge breakfast of rice and jerky that I’ve marinated for days in water, brown sugar and spices. I’m starving all the time these days.

  Really, I don’t want to shoot him, even after he hurt Brooks. I want that golden bear to dig out his den and hunker down to sleep while the snow drifts around his bed. I want him to grow thin and his heartbeat to slow. Of course, he has to fatten first, though not on me and not on my dog.

  I’m going caribou hunting downriver again tomorrow. And the bear will simply have to stay out of my way.

  18

  In the End

  That day we climb the mountain directly behind the cabin. I scramble, holding on to aspen trunks when it’s steep, up the slope to the ridge and then along it. A white powder from the aspens lingers on my hands, feeling soft like baby powder when I rub it in. Brooks barely limps. As always in high country, the world below is miniaturized. Though I scan thoroughly below us, I see nothing except an eagle and a flock of redpolls still in the trees. Whistling, I start back down, stones scuffling underfoot.

  Directly below me, where Brooks is sniffing, a head shakes. I draw my father’s rifle and shoot over the head.

  The bear was sleeping, hidden under an overhang. Before the echo of the rifle dies, he’s charging.

  He stops before us. This time Brooks shakes behind my legs. I feel them vibrate.

  I chamber another shell. My hands are shaking too. Nah, my whole body is trembling from the inside out.

  “Whoa, bear.”

  How can it be the same bear that Brooks harassed on the mountain, that I’ve glimpsed again and again?

  But it is. I’ve never even heard of another with yellow striping its back.

  Figure out why the bear’s charging, Becky told me, and that will tell you what to do. Is it an offensive or a defensive attack?

  Words have fled from me; they’re streaming off like the wind from the peaks. There’s just panic now and the eyes of the bear and its hot breath and the snow crunching under his paws. He’s walking toward us slowly with head swaying. My eyes go from his mouth to his claws and back again. This time I’d run if I could. Like in a nightmare, my feet won’t work.

  “Whoa, bear.” I say it loudly and clearly. Speak firmly but without yelling.

  Brooks growls.

  “Stay,” I order.

  The bear steps steadily forward, legs slightly bowed out.

  I peer down the barrel and line up the notch and bead. I inhale deeply and hold it in for steadiness. I can only shoot over his head once more. Then it has to be for real. The shot explodes into the autumn air.

  But the bear doesn’t run.

  “Scat,” I shout. My voice is as loud as the rifle it seems. Mom, I think. Please come. Now. Be here behind me.

  Black lips draw back. The bear stands on back legs and snuffles his snout in our direction. Such an unusual hide would be worth a fortune. No one could blame me for shooting. It’s a level playing field here: The bear’s been stalking us. He’s injured my dog. He’s kept me awake at night.

  Now suddenly it’s clear.

  The forest about me is absolutely still.

  I shoot.

  I shoot at the ground before the bear’s massive paws. A scuff of snow flies up. In the next moment I lean the rifle against a tree trunk and grab my bear spray from my coat pocket where I’ve kept it warm. I pull off the safety clip, and this time I walk toward the bear.

  Not away. I’m through with walking away.

  “Stay, Brooks.”

  Brooks stays.

  The bear is still standing on his hind legs, watching me. I hear his teeth clacking.

  “Enough, bear,” I tell him, low and deep. Another step. I’ve never felt so strong, so at peace. Why was I scared? Who has the best defenses here? It isn’t the bear carrying the gun or the gunpowder bangers or the pepper spray. He has teeth and claws and a fierce need to eat before he dens.

  And I have a fierce need too: a need to live my life.

  I step steadily forward, holding the red can of spray at arm’s length. And I have Brooks, wounded already. This time I’ll protect him.

  I depress the nozzle, and capsicum pepper streams into the bear’s eyes and up his nostrils.

  He snorts and tosses his head, dropping to the ground.

  I ease up, not breathing. In this moment, I’m alive. Maybe I won’t be tomorrow, but I don’t care anymore. It’s a fine autumn day, sparkling with sun and fresh snow. Today while the Earth is turning, I get to be alive on it. And I’m glad.

  The bear tears at his eyes with a front paw. His claws are knives ready to slice off my skin.

  I spray again.

  Whimpering like a dog, he lumbers off into the trees. I jump backward to the rifle, chamber a shell and with one motion, I shoot. I aim into the ground behind his fleeing rump, golden stripe metallic in the sunshine.

  “It’s your own bloody fault if it hurts, bear. You could have let us be.”

  He’ll get over it. He’ll be just fine.

  And so will we.

  Brooks presses nervously against my leg the entire walk back to the cabin. I can’t stop laughing out loud.

  “The bear went over the mountain,” I sing…Dad went over the mountain too. I knew all along, I think, that I couldn’t find him or ever really know why he disappeared. All I needed was to know that he wanted to come home.

  There’s not going to be any closure here, so I might as well just believe that he loved me, that he didn’t mean to leave me. So many fathers in this world would die for their children; mine didn’t even bother to stick around.

  I can’t put any of it together. I can’t juggle those particular balls.

  The blue sky today is enormous. We’ve got jerky and plenty of dry food, and tomorrow I’ll try caribou hunting again. Mom will be here—for the life of me I can’t remember how many days more until she comes.

  I’ve written my own version of “The Snow Queen.” I know what happened to Greta, struggling valiantly across the tundra toward her old friend. She started to love the journey: the ice and snow and the troughs of caribou tracks and the endless stars and lights above.

  I don’t know what the ending will be yet, but it will come. And when I finish writing, I’ll move on to the next story. And the next.

  “And what do you think he saw?” I sing. “He saw another mountain, he saw another mountain, he saw another mountain and what do you think he did?”

  Brooks bays along, almost collapsed against me.

  “The bear went over the mountain,” I repeat. I stop. “Guess what, Brooks. I think he actually did.”

  It’s a long carefree life ahead without a bear lying in wait. Mountains beyond mountains are waiting to be explored.

  Suddenly I can hardly wait.

  Back at the cabin I shake the cardboard quote from its book, meaning to tack it back on
the wall.

  A small black notebook, lodged behind the bookshelf all these years, thuds to the floor.

  I recognize it at once. It’s the diary I gave Dad before he left.

  For a long minute I don’t move. Can I live with what he has to say? Can I be happy? Live a good life?

  And when I do pick it up, I turn at once to the last entry.

  Rained all day again. I heard my name on the radio tonight and tried to answer, but something’s wrong. It won’t transmit. I’m starting home tomorrow so they won’t worry. I think it’s time anyway. I feel so much better. And I miss them. I never knew how much I loved them until I left.

  So now I know. He never meant to stay away at all. He tried to keep his word.

  I climb into bed, whistle for Brooks, who can jump up himself now, and blow out the lamp. I’ll read the rest later with Mom and Becky—it’s their story too.

  “Good night, Dad,” I whisper. “Sweet dreams.”

  Epilogue

  That night—my last alone, it turns out—I juggle fire on the gravel bar under the northern lights. Vast curtains of red and green aurora sweep across the starry sky.

  This time I know how to keep the sticks alight. I cut sections of one of Dad’s old leather belts and wrap each piece around the end of one of the three spruce torches I’ve whittled. I douse the ends with kerosene from a five-gallon bucket left in the shed. Then I light a bonfire and hold my homemade torches in the blaze. The shooting flames make me jump but I don’t let go. A skiff of snow dusts the stones around my fire-pit when I begin but soon melts.

  This is what it must be like to be in charge of the universe: juggling all those people who are blazing their courses through the air, juggling planets, galaxies and suns. So what if one burns out? So what if a child’s father doesn’t make it; if, in the course of blazing across his own sky, he just fizzles out and lands somewhere nobody ever finds him?

  Does anyone even notice?

  My torches are true to the center and falling down the sides, like water, like the northern lights, like sand dunes and rock slides, over and over. The same forces act on all flesh, on all pieces of the Earth.

  And now I’ve had enough of fire breathing in my face.

  I let the torches drop, one at a time, and there under the dancing aurora I rest my fire sticks in the bonfire coals and reach for my juggling balls instead.

  It’s bright as day with the lights and the stars and a full moon floating above the river’s ice. The northern lights come from particles streaming through the atmosphere from the sun. Dad told me that.

  I slip the balls under my legs, under each other, slipping and sliding in patterns so fast that even if someone were watching they couldn’t follow. My brain can’t even track the patterns. If I stopped to think, the balls would crash onto stone.

  And now I remember the story I made up before I left Mom and Becky at home. I remember a princess who couldn’t leave her castle, how she circled and turned, again and again. How she found her own magic place outside the castle grounds, but it wasn’t far enough away. Nightingales sang in it. A stream trickled through green, green moss.

  “Go, princess,” I shout, and the balls dance by the flames of my fire. Oh, it’s not so easy leaving the castle. It’s not so easy being free. If I were in charge of this universe, what would I do differently?

  And then one ball falls and then another. I don’t even pick them up. Up the bank and back in the forest along the trail, the cabin is glowing with lamplight: The princess picked her way through the wall of trees and it grew even darker, but still she traveled on, and in the end a hut appeared, glowing softly in the darkness.

  It was her home.

  I’ve changed my own ending.

  I could say it’s the last fairy-tale ending I’ll ever change, but I know it isn’t. My life won’t be long enough to rewrite them all, whichever way I choose. And that’s the magic key that unlocks the gate into the forest. Whichever way I choose.

  Yes, my father is dead. He no longer lives in the forest by a river somewhere. But he tried to come home. He loved me fiercely. That’s the secret I needed to know.

  I miss him. And every morning and every evening I’ll stop whatever I am doing so I can really focus on missing him. I won’t pretend that I don’t, even if it’s embarrassing to still care.

  I’ll stare at the stars at night and I’ll chant while the balls cascade up the middle and down the outside. Until one day maybe I’ll get tired of it. Enough, I’ll say, and I’ll ride away to find my destiny, snatching his baseball cap to wear as I ride. Even then, when I hear a whisper of missing him, I’ll pull on the reins and stay very still and listen to it.

  That’s the only way to mourn someone, to mourn them until the grief flies away. Then hold your hands to catch it when it returns. Don’t flinch even when the flames hover above your face.

  My father never meant to stay away. He wanted to return. Northern lights cascade across the dark dome of sky like a moving river of light.

  Brooks, on the far side of the bonfire, wakes, shakes and wanders over, poking his nose against my leg so I’ll pat him. He makes a sound in his throat like a siren warming up, and I remember leaving the highway with him so long ago. We did it, Brooks and I.

  We came home.

  And that’s as far as the fairy tale ever gets.

  Acknowledgments

  With thanks to my large and rather noisy family, whose presence in this world is my home, especially to Mikin, Elizabeth and Mary, whom I delight in every day. And finally my gratitude to the Dempster Mountains for the stories they tell me when the wind blows.

  Born in Great Britain, Joanne Bell grew up in New Brunswick, Alberta and British Columbia. She visited Dawson City, Yukon, many years ago and fell in love with the nearby Ogilvie Mountains, where she spent years running dogs, hiking, canoeing and living in log cabins. Now married with two daughters, she works as a naturalist in the summers and is a substitute teacher in Dawson City whenever she is not in the mountains. She spends as much time as possible in her log cabin about twenty miles from the Dempster Highway.