The Cage

by Audrey Shulman

  He tried flares next, set them off and rolled them onto the snow. The smoke billowed out. The bears snorted, rubbed their noses in the snow and coughed. They moved upwind of the flares and sat down to wait.

  Standing behind Butler, Beryl heard the bear before she saw it. A displacement in the air, breathing, the thud of snow. She couldn’t see where it was coming from. Butler slammed the door shut. They heard a grunt from outside, some sliding. Silence. Butler swore at them all.

  Jean-Claude finally tried plain noise. The bus had been supplied with several old and calming records: Willie Nelson, Frank Sinatra, the Osmonds. He played an old Osmonds record at the highest volume and broadcast it using the microphone hooked to the outside speakers. The noise rolled out, horrific, with a feedback squeal. It boomed out into the land of shifting silence, of barren winds and the creaking of ice. “AND THEY CALLED IT PUP-PY LO-HA-HA-OVE.” The bears shook their heads, swiveled their ears and laid them down flat. One by one they began to move uneasily away.

  Butler and Jean-Claude dragged the cage to the spot they had picked out forty feet from the bus. They half-ran, breathing raggedly in the cold. The bears stood a hundred yards away, nothing between them and the people. Carrying her camera equipment, Beryl followed the two men. She wore Jean-Claude’s suit again. The fur shifted easily against her skin with each movement. She felt almost nude. The fierce cold startled her lungs each time she inhaled. Still, inside the suit she remained fairly warm.

  The music continued to play. The noise outside felt all wrong—music meant for small rooms, heat and crowds, smoke and confines, thin summer clothing. This place was too large, too white. The words got distorted by the wind. This place was meant for deep silences and the fierce howls of storms a hundred miles wide.

  Jean-Claude and Butler stopped, looked all around and dropped the cage. No difference between this spot and the next. The men ran back. Beryl looked around at the bears. It would take them ten seconds to cover the distance to her, she thought. She pulled hard to open the cage door, then harder, before she realized the latch was turned. She opened it quickly and got in. Closed the door, locked it by twisting the two bars in two different directions at the same time. It took a moment for her gloves to get traction on the steel, to turn the bars correctly. The designers had assured her that this type of lock couldn’t be opened by mistake, couldn’t freeze shut. She hoped her hands would stay warm enough to unlock it.

  She put her cameras with their heaters down in front of her, the extra gloves, the walkie-talkie. She organized the cameras, the Nikon closest, then checked the lock again.

  She swung with all her weight on the lock, testing it just to make sure. Stretched her legs out one last time, then tucked them back in. The music died with a squeal as Jean-Claude closed the bus door.

  She sat in the cage. It fit as she’d imagined.

  The bears sniffed the air and trotted slowly in.

  She could hear their methodical breathing, the thump of their feet approaching through the snow. Their heads held low, they trotted directly toward her. She could feel the cold creeping up her legs and across her buttocks, which pressed against metal. She ignored it. She wanted to stay out here for at least ten minutes.

  She forced herself to put a camera up to her eye, to shoot, saw the thick metal bars of the cage define the approaching bears. The big yellow bear Beryl had spotted last night ran forward ahead of the others, her mouth open. Beryl had never seen the bears from ground level, sitting down. They were huge, as tall as a standing person but wider. They ran easily toward her, their fur rolling loosely, their heavy paws slapping forward. She wanted to stand up, to run away from them. She tasted bile in the back of her mouth. The big female didn’t slow down as she got close. Her shoulder hit the bars. The whole cage rocked back. The bear grunted. Beryl’s skull slapped back against the bars. She felt a reverberation in her head like something wooden hit hard. Beryl pulled herself forward quickly, away from the bars, a high-pitched hum in her ears.

  The bear’s heavy head swung up over the top of the cage and looked down at Beryl. The bear sniffed the metal. She tried to push her snout in. Her massive body filled Beryl’s vision. Seated, Beryl felt even smaller. The thick white fur of the bear’s chest stuck though the bars in front of her. Hesitantly, Beryl reached one hand out to touch the fur, took a picture of her small black glove against the white tufts of the chest. She was in the cage. Her head hurt.

  The bear coughed in shock at her touch. Her breath, animal and warm, brushed Beryl’s face. She brought her head down and looked at Beryl straight on, eye to eye. Beryl could see the bear’s pinkish tear ducts, just like a child’s. Every hair on Beryl’s body stood up with a prickling sweat. Even as it happened, she knew this would be the moment she would remember just before she died. She could feel the cold penetrating slowly from her fingers to her arms. She didn’t care anymore.

  She touched the parka over her collarbone. The skins rustled with each breath she took, the breath on which she could taste the clear frozen air, the warm heat of the bears, the musky smell of wolverine fur, her own body.

  The bear’s nose moved, wet gleaming ebony skin, the curled inner tunnel shimmering a darker red. The black drawn-in smile of her mouth pulled back, opened, the inside dark as velvet, wet. Beryl realized she’d been moving her hand toward the nose. To touch it, to stroke the small slit openings for the eyes. She felt dazed. She pulled her hand back, checked her position again, tried to breathe more evenly. Her knees and elbows in, head down, no cameras within range of their paws. She placed both her hands on her camera, raised it again and looked at the bear through the lens.

  The other bears approached cautiously from the sides and back. They panted, the only sound.

  The large female stuck the front of her paw in between the bars. Only the claws and the first half of the front pad would fit. She fanned her long white claws at Beryl, like fingers gesturing her forward.

  Beryl wanted to kiss each individual claw. She wanted to chew on the meat of the bear’s toes.

  The walkie-talkie crackled. “Hello, Beryl. Do you read me? Over.”

  She was trying to take a picture of a bear stretching his mouth open around two bars of the cage. The mouth filled her camera, black and wet, white curved teeth, long tongue. Her finger wouldn’t work well enough to push the button. It just made aimless motions over the top of the camera. She’d stopped shivering a while ago. The bear’s teeth tentatively touched the metal, a scraping sound. He sneezed, closed his mouth, stepped back. He sneezed again, sniffed at the bars.

  Some of his saliva had already frozen on Beryl’s feet.

  “Beryl. Beryl, hello. Do you read? This is Jean-Claude. You all right? It’s been half an hour. Do you read me? Thirty minutes. Over.”

  She put her camera down, looked back at the bus. It stood out, all wrong—shining green, metal, antenna, black tires. She picked up the walkie-talkie. Some sea ice cracked suddenly behind her on the shore, startling her. She could hear the waves now. They made a crunching sound, grating against the ice.

  One young bear pulled herself onto the top of the cage. Her body blocked out the sun. The cage settled farther into the snow with a slow squeak. The bear moved around on top of the bars, looking down at Beryl, confused, determined. Her claws scraped against the metal, the pads of her feet pushing down around the bars. Beryl sat in the shade of the bear’s body, looking up at the black padded feet the size of her head. She put the walkie-talkie back down, picked the camera up. Her hands fumbled. The camera fell back hard against the metal bars. The lens shattered. Picking up another camera, she watched her hands to make sure they closed. She tried focusing on the bear’s face looking down between her feet.

  “Beryl, don’t worry. Beryl. We’re coming.”

  The music began to play again. Feedback squeals. The bears snorted. The young bear jumped off the cage. They moved away, more slowly this time. Small figures ran toward her from the bus.

  She looked at them curiously.


  She snapped out of it soon enough. Once she was inside and her face had warmed up a bit, she tried to hide her lack of interest in the three men. She folded her face into gratitude. She told them the batteries in the walkie-talkie probably couldn’t take the temperature. Her mouth moved heavy with cold, her words slurred as if she were drunk. Jean-Claude made a heater for the walkie-talkie.

  She watched his hands moving, looked down at her own hands still within the gloves. She knew some of this distance was what Jean-Claude felt, why he moved so slowly and spoke in such short sentences.

  She walked back to her room, stripped slowly. She lay in bed waiting for the feeling to return in her limbs, for the pain, the pulsing tingling itch. The second and third smallest toes on her left foot felt nothing. Soon they would begin to hum, then hurt. If she went out there several times for that long they might blacken, and fall off, like the rotten fruit from a tree. She would be smaller, paring down to her essence, two-toed, only hard calluses where the others had been. She wondered if it was possible to run without any toes at all. In the mirror she saw pale spots on her nose and cheeks.

  She dozed, at peace in the silent emptiness of her room. She saw herself as parts: fingers, hands, feet, arms, facial features, all removable. She saw herself empty and free of them all, a pulsing envelope, organs, rhythmic and warm, unencumbered. She could trace her blood pumping through each section of her body, the beat pulsing differently in her hands and then her feet, as though she had several hearts like a worm.

  Jean-Claude sat on the bed beside her, closed the door behind him. He checked her hands, her toes, her ears. She’d been close to frostbite, he said, on her toes and hands. He looked into her face. He shook her chin. He was telling her she must be more careful. He was telling her the cold came quick sitting still in a cage. No more than ten minutes out there from now on, he insisted. If she got any more frostbite, he would send her back to town. He wouldn’t hesitate. If there were any complications she could get an infection, gangrene. He sounded worried. His hands moved into her shirt. He no longer touched her professionally. She responded languorously, rolling in against him as smoothly as a seal. Nothing remained in her mind but the immediate sensations of her body.

  They heard footsteps approach down the corridor, stop near her door. With her door closed, it was obvious where they both were. The person walked away. A moment later, Butler called from the front room that lunch was ready. Even muffled by the intervening walls, she could still hear the anger in his voice.

  At lunch she felt high, far beyond the tensions of the three men about her. She ate meat and fat, packed it away. She wondered what animal the meat came from. When it had died, where.

  No one talked to anyone. Butler left as soon as he had eaten. Jean-Claude touched her knee under the table. He reached across her for the salt, his nostrils flared near her shoulder.

  After lunch, David got ready to get into the cage. Jean-Claude asked him if he wanted to wear the Inuit suit. David looked at the two simple layers. He said, “I’m sure the Inuit knew what they were doing when they designed that thing, but they just didn’t have access to Thinsulate, you know?”

  Jean-Claude tried to explain the benefits of the two skins, but David said, “Listen, I’ve followed the advice of Natural Photography for fourteen years now without a problem. I wouldn’t want to start thinking things out on my own. Besides,” he added with a grin, “I’m allergic to wolverine musk. It’s not something most people would ever find out, but in my line of work …” He shrugged and zipped up his jacket.

  David looked very small walking to the tiny cage across the massive white landscape. Even David’s cameras seemed bigger than he was. They gleamed in the clarity of the air and the sun.

  After the first three minutes Beryl couldn’t even see David under the white shoulders and haunches of the bears. She wouldn’t have known if the cage had broken open. She remembered scenes of lionesses feasting in the savannah, muted growling, teeth clenched, heads jerking back and forth.

  Within five minutes David, trying hard to control himself, called in on the walkie-talkie. “My feet are fucking frozen.” His voice sounded staticky and distorted over the radio, like a historical recording of a person long dead. “My legs have gone to sleep. I’m going to have to stretch them soon. They’ll bite my toes off and I won’t even feel it. I’m a fucking frozen TV dinner out here.”

  In the background Beryl could hear something rhythmic, heavy, startling. The bears’ breathing.

  “Get me out,” David said. “Now.”

  Jean-Claude put on the music. The bears fidgeted, snarled, turned around as if trapped, and then meandered majestically away. Butler made a joke, something about leaving David out there and frozen flowers.

  Beryl didn’t really listen. She was realizing that they wouldn’t last three weeks out here.

  CHAPTER 20

  That night they played gin rummy. Beryl had problems holding the cards all together and upright. Her fingers tingled and quivered, jerked slightly. The skin of her face tickled as if cold water were running across it. Her mind, however, worked perfectly. Without trying she could remember each card that had been played. She could almost see the faces of the cards the others held. She won hand after hand. Butler’s lip rose higher and higher until his teeth gleamed simple and white. David kidded that after this trip he would take her on the rummy circuit, manage her, train her. They would make millions.

  When David said the words “after this trip,” Beryl knew again that something would go terribly wrong. Things would get bad soon. Her scalp itched, her teeth tingled. She looked at the outside thermometer. It registered twenty-seven below.

  She noticed Jean-Claude’s hands again, knew the softness with which they could move. She saw that Butler’s hair was thinning back in an arrow over each temple and felt how scared he must be of his own body’s changes. Her heart thumped and roared. She began to cry without even putting down her cards, feeling quietly surprised. Only when it was her turn to pick up did the men see. They sat there stupidly, watching her until she found the strength to push herself up on her feet, swaying like an animal, and stagger slowly back to her room.

  Behind her, she heard Jean-Claude say good night and follow her.

  Butler said something softly about women and the outdoors and David said, “Maybe.” The first time, she realized, she’d ever heard them close to agreement.

  That night she cried onto Jean-Claude’s chest and the sharpness of his ribs against her face made her wince with each subterranean thump.

  The next morning she awoke late and went to the bathroom. The door was closed as always but not locked, so she walked in. In front of the mirror stood Butler naked, shaving. He turned quickly. The razor buzzed. He stood white and tall, round-bellied. For a moment she thought, He shaves his whole body and masquerades.

  He sighed soundlessly and moved his hands to cover his nudity. The razor hummed black and metallic at his groin, as though he were about to urinate from it. In shock she barked a short laugh.

  His look turned to pure fury.

  “Oh god,” she said, covering her mouth, “I’m sorry.” She closed the door and walked to where David and Jean-Claude played rummy in the living room. She sat down in a chair and looked out across the huge white plain, her fingers rubbing the polished wooden arms of the chair over and over.

  That afternoon it was her turn to go out again. Halfway to the cage, she had a sudden image of Butler wrecking the outside speakers or breaking the record player. She looked back to the bus.

  By the time she’d closed the cage and locked it, she didn’t care. The bears again. This time she allowed herself to close her eyes and simply listen to them coming for her: the squeak of snow, the swing of their weight. She wished she could take the sounds back with her. No cars, no other people, no other animals or movement, a world empty but for her and the bears and the creaking of a frozen sea.

  A bear slapped hard against the bars beside her head. The
metal twanged. The bear snorted, settled down onto the snow and begin to lick its paw. It sounded like a big dog cleaning itself. Without looking she knew it was the bear who had tried to chew the bars yesterday. He must be young, impatient, certain of his own power.

  Beryl heard the sound of claws working at the snow. She opened her eyes. The big yellow female hunched in front of her, digging. Every few minutes she would push her head into the hole and reach up to touch the bars at the bottom. This worried Beryl. She wouldn’t be able to move her rump and legs off the floor of the cage without putting herself at risk from the top.

  A bear levered patiently at the bars with her teeth. Slowly her tongue moved out to touch the bars. The bear screamed instant and shrill, jumped back five feet, black flesh left on the metal. The other bears sniffed the air suspiciously, looked about.

  The yellow female, bored with digging, wriggled her paw through the cage in front of Beryl again, like a child at the zoo. Beryl leaned forward and smelled the black raspy pad of the paw. She ran her tongue over the claw: cool, salty, clean. The bear pulled it back, sniffed her paw.

  Beryl leaned away, pushed her nose into the weight of the wolverine trim and breathed deeply, moving her tongue against her teeth, tasting the salt.

  Reaching for her camera, she heard a low buzzing, looked about her on the ground. Nothing moving but the bears. She knew they couldn’t make that noise. The hum got louder. She looked up: a bush plane headed into Churchill. It looked all wrong against the empty sky, the silent land, the bears lumbering slowly about beneath. It looked as awkward and fatal as a rock thrown hard. She wondered if the pilot could see her cage.