A bear shuffles up the path to their left, a double lane of dirt with a ridge of grass growing up between, worn down by thousands of years of bear feet plodding to the creek.
He cocks his head, eyes bright. “Sounds like we have a visitor."
"Maybe he'll go away,” she pleads, sensing that the low roar that has been rumbling over the horizon, kept at bay by some miracle, is finally there to lay claim. The day before they leave.
The bear will make us pay. For this happiness.
* * * *
5.
Several months ago at a party in Beverly Hills, he introduced Gillian for the first time to his friends, putting his arm around her to shepherd her from one room to another, yet not letting it linger on her waist, not declaring “coupledom.” He seemed to know everyone. She had been astonished at how easily he moved from one cluster to another, with the social skills of a politician, so confident, slapping backs, smiling, tipping his head to listen, then reacting exuberantly, rocking back and forth and bobbing his head, several friends shouting, “Hey, Bear Man!” and others asking how his grizzly brethren were, and the women, all stunningly beautiful, dressed in tight, sparkling outfits, and made-up as if they were going to the Oscars, all eyeing him over someone's shoulder, as if waiting for a chance to talk with him. “It's the bears,” he'd joked later. “It drives women nuts.” He introduced her to the host of the party, his good friend Randy Lloyd, and Randy's current girlfriend, Zuni Blake, both names obviously made up, and Gillian wondered if anyone in L.A. used the name they were born with, or if anyone was who he said he was, everyone spinning a history that they were sure was more interesting than the one they had.
She had been surprised each time something she had assumed was true about him turned out not to be true. His name wasn't really his name. He wasn't an orphan. He wasn't Australian. Had he really been up for the part of one of the bartenders on Cheers? Had he really been a swim star? Or a beach bum? Or a waiter in Malibu? Did he really live with the bears?
She tried not to worry about it—what was true and what was not. It was clear that he'd had a horrible split from his family, and now that he was sober, he wanted nothing to do with the man he had once been. Why shouldn't he reinvent himself? Every time you met someone new, you reinvented yourself, redefining yourself, editing, exaggerating. Here in L.A. the lies were merely grander. Wasn't she also trying to reinvent herself? Surely that was part of what attracted her to him—that by becoming part of his life, she would be transformed into someone new, someone who was not timid and passive and guilty and reticent, but someone bold and beautiful.
When the Bear Man went to find them bottled water, Randy took her by the elbow to the pool, eager, it seemed, to get to know her. He had a wide, kind face, hair he was letting go gray, and big white teeth. It seemed strange to her that everyone she met in California, even clerks at the supermarket, had big white teeth, as if prepared at any time to do a toothpaste commercial. Randy was famous for a sitcom he had costarred in over a decade ago, and other small parts, but he wasn't so famous that he had to worry about paparazzi. She wondered why he was so interested in her. He obviously cared about the Bear Man, wanting to know how they had met and where she was from, and if she was “into” bears too. He seemed—despite the high spirits and posturing—warm and genuine, and she could imagine him as a sheriff of a small town, a part that he had played in a movie not long ago.
As she talked with Randy, she caught glimpses of the Bear Man in another room. Loose-limbed as a dancing scarecrow, he flounced from one set of people to another, grinning, tossing his blond hair from his forehead. He appeared transformed from backwoodsman to star. Even his black flannel shirt and jeans looked chic, whereas her clothes—she had in fact put on a dress—looked out of place. Her face, her hair—it was all wrong—drab, lifeless, boring.
She wondered how she could ever mean anything to someone who knew so many people, who had known so many women—and if she could ever really know someone with such a long past, a past that he so defiantly refused. Yet every once in a while he would say something so perceptive, so startling, that she fell in love all over again. Perhaps he, like the bear, was waiting to see if he could really trust her; then he would reveal himself.
How careful she'd been not to scare him off, not to ask questions, not to drive him away with “her needs.” Never ask about girlfriends, never ask about the future, never demand commitment. That, she knew, was the fastest way to lose any man. She had to view their “friendship” as a gift and “go with the flow."
Could she do it? It took so much restraint.
From across the room, he caught her eye, a glint of jealousy flaring—merely a nanosecond—then disappearing in a grin. He came bouncing back and grabbed Randy and her by the shoulders in a group hug. “It doesn't get any better than this!"
Randy liked her, approved of her, she could tell. He seemed protective of her, as if standing in for her big brother, and she wondered if it was the nature of actors to assume whatever role they thought was called for, as if life were improvisational theater.
"She might be the one, B-Man,” Randy said, pulling him aside yet within earshot. “You better hold on to her."
The Bear Man jerked back his head, playing at being offended. Or was he? “Bears are opportunists, Randy. They aren't mono-gamists."
"But, my friend—” Randy replied, winking at her a few feet away—"you aren't a bear. Not really."
* * * *
6.
"Hey, get out of here!” He rips open the zipper and jerks his head out. “Get out! Go on! Get, get, get!"
As he stumbles out of the tent, his big toe catches on the bottom zipper, making him swim with his arms to catch his balance. He claps his hands overhead and bellows and roars, the sudden chill of the ground on his bare feet fueling his impersonation of rage. He is not in a hurry; he zips the tent behind him to keep out the rain. “Go on, you beast! Get out of here!"
He charges, jumping into the air, yelling, enjoying the energizing physicality of it, a yell that says, Damn you all! I'm still here with the bears! Damn you to hell!
He is not frightened. Not really. Perhaps he has been around the bears for too long to be cautious. Perhaps he no longer cares. He is confident that the bear will twist away and retreat. That the bear will believe his bluff.
As it has done so many times before.
He knows the bear, a scarred, moth-eaten old boar with broken brown teeth and a droopy lower jaw. He has given him a name, as he anoints all the bears he observes with names. He has confronted this bear before, and the bear has always shimmied away. A bear with little to prove. A bear that wants only to be left alone.
But a bear that needs to be stood up to.
He charges, confident that the bear will gallop off, dragging its belly through the sedge grass. He does not hesitate.
But perhaps the bear is hungry, his metabolism in overdrive, his stomach roiling with insatiable cravings.
Perhaps the bear can see behind the man's bluff. Perhaps it senses the difference between the bluff that can turn serious in an instant, the bluff that demands respect, and the bluff of a man so in love that he no longer has the heart to discipline.
Perhaps the bear can smell a different pheromone. Or can hear a different inflection in his voice. Perhaps he sees a hint of a smile on the man's face.
Perhaps the bear is in a bad mood.
Perhaps it doesn't like the weather.
The man charges, his naked feet slapping in the cold puddles. He stops just short of the beast, waving his arms, growling fiercely.
The bear rears up on its hind legs, looming eleven feet into the sky, saliva dripping from its crooked jaw, and roars.
* * * *
7.
"It's gonna be a bit bumpy at first,” the bush pilot warned on her first visit to the Grizzly Maze. The floatplane lifted and fell with each current, hitting pockets of turbulent air, jolting them. “Once we get out over the ocean, we'll smooth out
.” The clouds swirled around them. They flew through whiteness, then burst into the clear, the houses of Kodiak Island beneath them almost too sharp, too defined, too real.
"We almost never get calm weather like this in September,” the pilot said, trying to put her at ease. “We really lucked out."
They sailed out over the rippling turquoise water. The sun was bright and hot. She began to enjoy herself. The pleasant drone of the plane engine. The pilot singing a tune she knew she was supposed to recognize by the way he winked at her, probably from some popular rock band from before her time.
They passed around the island to the far side so he could land with the northwestern wind behind him. A ring of extinct volcanoes jutted into the air, blue on the bottom fading to lavender at the top. The snowy tops were shrouded in donuts of fog, and their sides were streaked with culverts still filled with snow, giving them the look of wrinkled prunes.
"Pretty, ain't it?” The pilot smiled, dipping the right wing to give her a clear view of the ground below.
The intensity of the blues almost hurt—the sky, the lakes, the mountains. She realized that none of those things—air, water, earth—was actually blue; the blue vanished as they drew nearer, an illusion, a play of light. Blue was the color of things in the distance, the color of longing. She felt a twinge of panic—perhaps it was better not to get too close. Perhaps it was better to keep some things in the realm of desire, beyond attainment, things like love and happiness. In a haze of blue.
The beauty was alluring—like some secret paradise, Shangri-La or Atlantis, an imaginary fantasy island. She got the feeling that she was crossing over into the unknown.
"I'll give you the tour,” the pilot said. “We'll stay up pretty high so we don't bother the bears too much.
He flew between the mountains following a creek that emptied into the ocean. The stream led them to two enormous navy blue lakes surrounded by green hills of spruce and yellowing aspen. The lakes were connected by a roiling creek. “Why is the creek red?” Gillian asked.
"Salmon,” the pilot shouted. “They turn red after they spawn."
Along the shore were fields of golden grass crosshatched with paths. The wider paths led from the water and disappeared into a jungle of alder trees. The shore was dotted with a herd of animals. “Caribou?” asked Gillian.
The pilot smiled widely. “Bear."
"You can't be serious. So many? So close together?"
"Welcome to the Grizzly Maze.” He barked a laugh—her face must have showed her astonishment, her terror. Bear were all over the place. Probably a hundred or more.
The pilot brought the floatplane down on the water and taxied up to the shore. The Bear Man was waving at them, his hair bleached nearly white, skin darkly tanned, dressed in black. He looked like Casanova. He looked like one of the bears.
She was excited. Adrenaline rushed through her, fear amplifying her desire, filling her with anticipation. She yearned for his predatory maleness, just as he yearned for something from the bears.
When they opened the plane doors, the odor of fish and bear scat slapped her in the face. The sexy, salty smell of the marshland filled her lungs and brought a dizzying, voluptuous feeling of surrender.
Whoever she had been, she was no longer. She was alive and she was here.
She ran into his arms, which clamped around her and held her tight. His pungent body odor seared into her brain, and made her pores open and sweat. She found his smell both alarming and reassuring.
This is the way it is. I mustn't be afraid.
* * * *
8.
That first night she lay in the tent, eyes wide open, mortified, her heart racing, listening to the bears snorting beside the tent or shuffling past on the bear path, smelling them, feeling their heat, waiting for one of them to pause to sniff the tent, then rake its claw through the nylon. But no bear was curious about the humans that night, and the shuffling and snorting and plodding continued.
She could not relax. The air in the tent was warm, yet the cold seeped up from the ground as if it were still thawing after three months of summer.
In the middle of the night, the Bear Man sat up, listening. He got out of his bag and took her hand. Without saying a word, he led her out of the tent into the dark. The bright moon astonished her. The light was so stark, so glaring, that it hurt her eyes. As they walked, their figures moved like shadow puppets against a bright white sheet. The still lake was a white plain, and the leaves on the aspen, bellies up, glistened as if lit up with white Christmas lights.
A mound of fur slumbering fifteen feet from the tent raised its head as if to say, Oh, it's you, then lowered it, disinterested, wiggling its butt, returning to its bear dream.
He squeezed her hand hard, as if afraid of losing her in a crowd, and led her down the path. The deep impressions of bear feet, filled with water from the last rain, shined like a path of silver paving stones. Moist warm air rose from the grass, and a cool breeze flowed above. She was astonished at how much more information she seemed to pick up from her naked skin—the shifting air thermals, dank air from a fox den or crevasse, sweet air from the grasses or bear scat. Her sense of smell and hearing seemed heightened as well, as if her whole body was open to sensory reception.
It felt illegal somehow to be stumbling around in the night when they should be in their tent asleep. It felt foolish and dangerous, like running in a thunderstorm.
She felt the same excitement that she had sneaking off to a cemetery late at night as a child, under the full moon, stepping noiselessly around the tombstones that still radiated the day's heat and gleamed in the moonlight, the bare oaks scratching the black sky, and terror seeping into her mind like the moisture from the graves.
She trembled, yet she followed him. His naked skin glowed in the moonlight like a phantom, but his grip was hard. He didn't look back.
He led her down to the creek to a spot where a natural dam of rocks created a shallow pond. This is where they had swum with the bears that afternoon, when she felt the water rise on her chest as the overheated bears jumped into the water, frolicking like cubs, their bodies looking even larger as the water buoyed their thick coats. Don't be afraid. The bears ignored them, swimming past in a graceful dog-paddle with what appeared to be smiles on their faces.
He led her past the bushes where that afternoon she had crammed handfuls of salmonberries into her mouth alongside the bears, who delicately slipped branches of berries into their mouths, savoring them one by one. Don't be afraid.
Why did he go so close? She could sense when they were wary, backing up a little, veering away. As if he were testing just how close he could get. Going so far as to toss a salmon to an injured bear who sat by the creek, which broke all the rules.
He led her to a grassy knoll that looked out over the lakes and the mountains. Bears in furry mounds slept around the field. A pair of adolescent males shambled down a path toward the creek. The air was cooler up here. No doubt that was why the bears chose to sleep there.
He took her into his arms.
There they were. Man, woman, bear.
She loved the feel of his cool skin, all muscles and meat, ribs and hair. It felt so real, so dangerous. She loved the way it hurt, down on her hands and knees. She couldn't see his face. He could be a stranger. Or a bear.
He pulled her onto his lap, and she ran her hands up his back, feeling his muscles expand and contract under his skin. The moon glinted in his eyes. His expression frightened her, a leer of appetite, of violence. Something final. She gave in. Nothing mattered anymore. Only this now.
She thought of the women in myths and folktales who made love to monsters in the dark, to bears and werewolves, to enchanted men or gods in the form of beasts. Women seduced by the beast, who gave up everything for the beast.
And now she was one of them.
* * * *
9.
"Get the camcorder,” he says before unzipping the tent. “We might as well get a shot of him.” T
hen he steps out into the rain.
She knows better than to question him, to second-guess him, knows that he will yell at her if she doesn't follow his instructions exactly. Without getting out of the sleeping bag, she scoots to the side of the tent. She digs beneath their jackets to find the video camera.
She almost laughs, hearing him yell at the bear, “Get out of here, you beast!"—his love of the bears ringing rich in his voice. She imagines him as a child, defending his mother's petunia bed from a neighbor's dog: “Go on, get!"—twirling his arms like a whirligig, and the astonished canine backing up and trotting off. She hears him whoop and holler, his joy unmistakable.
She pushes the audio switch on the camcorder, then freezes, listening. Why doesn't she hear the bear? What is it doing? Is it backing up? Is it staring at him? Are its ears back? Will it attack?
The bear roars.
Then a wallop and a ripping sound and the voice of a man screaming.
In astonishment?
10.
"Maybe we shouldn't pitch our tents so close to the bear path,” she suggested carefully after summoning her courage, knowing she risked his anger.
"It'll be fine. They're used to me here."
She wanted to believe him, so she didn't remind him that these bears were different from the ones he knew, that these were hungry old boar bears, making one final sweep of the salmon grounds before heading into the mountains to their winter dens. These bears had the foul breath of carrion eaters, and she couldn't help but think about the story of the bears that slinked down into Yarrow Creek Canyon in the Alberta Rockies in the early nineteen hundreds, who fed on the corpses of Indians killed by smallpox. Bears that learned to like the taste of human flesh, who preyed on humans who hiked into that valley to this day, a hundred years later.
These were bears attracted by the smell of death. Whose mouths dripped with saliva at the smell of rotting flesh.
EQMM, November 2007 Page 5