by Steve Himmer
“Wish I was surprised you met a bear so close to the road. They used to stay pretty deep in the woods. Used to know they aren’t living in Yellowstone and nobody’s going to feed them. Been showing more of themselves. Getting into trashcans downtown.”
He tests the tension of the bandages with a finger before repacking his tools in the box. “Guess they’ve decided the Pelletier place has been abandoned long enough. It’s part of the forest again. Bear’s probably pissed you were sleeping in his house, Goldilocks. You ruined his morning.”
“But the bear attacked me.”
“What’d y’do, sneak up on him? Spook him?”
“No, nothing! I was sleeping in the fireplace, and it pulled me out. It jumped right on me.”
“You sure that’s how it happened?” Gil’s eyes are tight, he’s trying to get the story to focus. Martin nods.
“Damn.” Gil stands, then pulls off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose so the bulbous tip glows an even rosier shade of red. “Damn,” he says again.
Martin looks up with curious eyes, but remains seated on the edge of the porch. “What? Why does it matter?” He reaches for his ruined shirt but in such rough shape it’s not worth putting on, so he pulls what’s left of his jacket over bare skin. Raising his arms into the sleeves strains his wounds and his ribs, but he tries not to let it show on his face. The holes torn by the bear flap over his chest, revealing the blood-streaked gauze underneath.
“Well, if the bear attacked without being provoked, could be he’s sick. Or felt threatened. Maybe you were too close to her cubs or . . . was it a male or a female?”
“I don’t know. How do you tell?”
“Do I need to explain it? You really do need to spend more time with that Evans girl.”
Martin looks away, his face warm. “Can you tell from the mouth? Or the teeth?”
“Male’s bigger, but any bear’d look big on top of you, I suppose.” Gil pulls a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his green pants. “Used to be bears knew enough to avoid trouble, which is more than I can say for some folks.” His expression lets Martin know some folks is him. “Now we’re not supposed to shoot ‘em unless they’re a threat. They learned to be afraid of us, now they’re learning they don’t have to be. I told you, animals’re getting strange around here. Showing up where they never did.”
“Like a mountain lion?”
Gil gives Martin a look, as insulted as it is annoyed. “Mountain lions don’t live around here.”
“But Elmer said . . .”
“Elmer sees all kinds of things. Hell, he might’ve seen a big cat, but it’d just be passing through. A ranger found some markings a while ago, but no sign of ‘em staying. No, I don’t mean mountain lions. I mean bears in a dumpster. Went to buy tires a few weeks ago and there were sparrows waiting outside the door. They aren’t big enough to set off the door’s electric eye but they live in the rafters. Strange stuff. Who taught birds about automatic doors, Marty? You tell me that.”
Whatever ointment Gil put on the swab, it seems to be easing the sting in Martin’s chest, or else it’s the whiskey. He reaches for the bottle and takes a long drink.
“Of course, could be it wasn’t a bear you saw at all.” Gil smirks on the side of his mouth that isn’t holding a cigarette. “Coulda been Scratch. You were in his neck of the woods, after all.”
The name is familiar somehow—Martin tries to remember where he’s heard it before, but the answer won’t come. “Who’s Scratch?”
“The bearman of the north woods?” Gil laughs, then drops the stump of his cigarette onto the porch and grinds it out with a bare, calloused heel. He slips another cigarette into his mouth but doesn’t light it, then reaches for his coffee cup from the porch railing and sips. He pulls a face and mutters about it being cold then pours in some of the whiskey before drinking again.
“Scratch is nothing but an old legend from the Indians around here. The story’s lasted longer than they did. Supposed to be a bear that was cursed, maybe a man that was cursed. I’ve heard it both ways. Whichever it is wanders the woods stuck in a body that won’t die or get old.”
“People believe that?”
“Doesn’t matter. Scratch has been blamed for so much that he’s real enough. Indians said he stole their babies. Settlers blamed him for stealing women, sheep, whatever went missing. Grabs ‘em, eats ‘em, and tosses the bones in his pile. Loggers used to say he snuck into camp at night to rust up their saw blades and grind down their gears.”
“He has a pile of bones?”
“Who doesn’t? Every so often folks find a gnawed sheep’s leg or a dog that crawled off to die. Tear ass into town hollering they’ve found Scratch’s bones.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Made a good story for me to tell the weekend warriors, anyway. Take ‘em hunting and give ‘em their money’s worth in scares, too. All part of the package. Used to have a couple of caves I kept stocked with bones.”
“Have you seen him?” Martin asks, then tries to backtrack with, “Do you believe it?” instead, but the hunter is already talking.
“Me?” Gil grins and pulls a plastic lighter out of his pocket. It takes three scrapes of the wheel for it to catch, then he ignites the cigarette that hangs from his lip. “Not so far as I know. Seen plenty of bears, but I can’t say any of ‘em was Scratch. Besides, the Indians thought he could change shape, look like a bird or a wolf, whatever he wanted.”
He pulls on his cigarette so the end flares. It occurs to Martin that as much as Gil smokes, he never seems to run out of cigarettes. He imagines a closet full of unopened cartons stashed somewhere in the house.
“Maybe I have seen him,” Gil says. “Who knows? Older folks in town—even older than me, if you can imagine—say they have, out in the woods, a bear that walks funny. Staggers like he can’t find his legs. Or got caught in a trap.”
A pair of gray squirrels approach the foot of the stairs, a few feet away from the men. “Will you look at that,” Gil says. “Even the squirrels are getting brave.” He stands and waves his arms with a bark, scaring the squirrels off into the yard.
Scratch isn’t a bad thing to be called. I’ve had other names, in other languages I don’t hear in these woods anymore, but this one’s as good as any other. I’ve been here longer than I’ve had a name, and I was nameless for a far longer time than I wasn’t. But it’s always scared people more when they have a word for the thing they’re afraid of, so the names have stuck to this place.
They never get the details right, though, what I do and how I do it. Never the why of it all. I didn’t begin as one of your own who was cursed—I was in these woods without form before the first warm-blooded body appeared. I was here before your kind arrived, before any kind arrived, because you needed me here to become what you are. You needed a reason to raise up the walls you hoped would keep me out, and to invent the electric lights and alarms that allow you to sleep through the night. Without me to spur your inventions, what would your kind have become? What would your languages be without the need to give your fear names?
Martin doesn’t know me yet, not exactly, but he’s come across me in his dreams during these recent nights. He knows that since he came to these woods, to the hole in the forest where his trailer stands, his dreams have carried over into waking life more often—and more completely—than ever before. Dreams led him into the woods on his walk, and dreams led the bear to his fireplace bed. Dreams are where I have the most reach, the most power. It’s hard to touch waking lives, in those hours you’re convinced you understand more of the world. But the more your kind come to insist things beyond what you know to be real cannot be, the more willing your dream selves become to believe. The more eager they are to listen, and to remember the other things you used to know.
I pushed Martin toward the bear and the bear toward Martin until their paths crossed. So much depends upon their meeting that it couldn’t be left to chance. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen when the
y came together—I can set events into motion, not control how they occur—but so far it’s worked out. Martin is on the path I was pushing him toward. The bear let him live, but went back to the woods, and his confidence in knowing how the world works has been shaken enough for my needs.
5
BACK IN HIS TRAILER, MARTIN WRAPS A LAYER OF CLING film around the bandages on his chest before squeezing into the small plastic shell of the shower. He doesn’t want to get the gauze or the wounds wet, but his body is sticky with dried sweat and dirt, pungent from yesterday’s walk and a night in the woods.
The water arrives cold, and he stands back as far as he can until it warms up. Then the spray is too hot, and where his skin is bruised it feels even hotter. It rattles against the plastic over his wounds the way rain does on the trailer’s thin windows.
He faces the spray with his forehead against the wall as hot water rolls down the back of his neck and his shoulders, uncoiling muscles one at a time, until his body feels like his body again. He nods off in the steam for a second, then wakes with a jerk as a few trickles creep under the top edge of his plastic wrap and make their way toward the gauze, so he presses the film tighter against his skin.
If it weren’t for the bandages and bruises all over his body, he might think the bear had been an uncomfortable dream. That he spent last night the same as any other, sleeping in his own bed, while his imagination wandered the woods. Even though it has only been a couple of hours since he left the forest, and less than a day since he set out on his walk, it seems a lifetime ago. He’s stung by the shame of getting lost, but it’s more the vicarious embarrassment of watching someone else make mistakes than something that happened to him.
As he winces his way through getting dressed in the main room of the trailer, Martin notices strands of brown fur scattered over his bed. The long shape of a body stretches out on his blankets, and one of his pillows looks kneaded. He lays his hand in the egg-shaped dent on his mattress, annoyed now that he left the door open. The sheets seem warm; either they’re reflecting the heat of his hand or else whatever slept there last night hasn’t been gone very long.
He leans close to the sheets and breathes in the smell of his guest. He’s shocked at how much it smells like the bear, the bear’s breath, but also by the full picture the scent plants in his mind—a flickering image of not one but two creatures curled on his bed. He recoils from the unexpected acuity of his own senses. When the shock has subsided, Martin remembers he hasn’t eaten in nearly a day, with nothing but Gil’s whiskey to drink, and takes comfort in dismissing that sensory overreaction as a result of his deprivations—his imagination running away with the smell, turning it into more than it is. He looks around the trailer, red-faced, as if there might be someone watching.
He doesn’t know how nearly he missed us, slipping out before he slipped in. Or that we haven’t gone far, watching through the window from under the bushes as the day becomes brighter and the final droplets of last night’s dew burn away.
It isn’t Martin we’re hiding from, though. It’s one thing to be spotted by him, as at sea in the woods as he would be at sea, but another to be seen by the men who will build his houses for him, men who have lived near these woods their whole lives. Men who hang guns in their trucks and pull them down as casually as one cigarette follows another into their mouths. Like Gil, they are less patient with the novelty of animals coming up close. None of them would have been lured so easily as Martin was by the tail of a fox. They could be led, too, each in his own way, but Martin is the man for my story.
He lifts his steel watch from a shelf by the bed, and as he buckles it onto his wrist his fingers find the sharp burr to blame for that hole in the sleeve of a jacket ruined now altogether. He’s shocked that despite his already full morning, despite being tired enough for the day to be over, it is only a few minutes past seven o’clock. He opens both kitchenette cabinets and the tiny white fridge tucked into the wall, looking for something to eat. But his stomach has been empty for so many hours it threatens to reject any offer of food, so he plugs in the electric kettle and decides to make do with instant coffee from crystals, and a spoonful of powdered creamer.
When his phone, retrieved from the car, rings with the electronic chirp of a bird underwater, Martin splashes hot coffee all over his hand. He barely avoids dropping the mug and, cursing, sets it down on the counter. The phone rings again, and he walks to the end of the trailer where it rattles and dances across the surface of his drafting table. As he shakes the burnt hand to lessen the pain, he answers the phone with the other.
The connection is crackling and weak, far from the nearest cell tower with tall hills between, and though it’s good for what he usually gets in the trailer he may as well be speaking into a tin can on the end of a string. The number on the screen tells him it’s his partner calling from their office back in the city. They speak every couple of days to touch base, but a signal is so hard to come by they communicate mostly by voicemail, always a few hours out of step with each other. He’s hardly on the phone at all these days, a change from his usual routine of calling suppliers, subcontractors, and building inspectors, sucking up daily to bureaucrats and their factotums.
At first the difficulty of keeping in touch made him feel isolated, as if these woods were an unmapped desert island and everything worth being a part of was happening on the other side of the ocean. But lately he’s felt the opposite, after settling a bit into his trailer home. Some mornings he has awoken concerned with what might be happening in this small town instead of the city he left behind. His first days here he spent constantly driving closer to town where his phone’s signal is stronger, but now he waits to be called and it takes him hours sometimes, the best part of a day, to move to a place from which he can call back.
He doesn’t even bother saying hello before setting the phone down again; his partner on the other end of the line won’t be able to hear Martin’s voice any better than Martin hears his. He’ll check the message and leave one of his own when he comes within range of a signal.
As he sips his coffee, a car rattles off the road onto the rough ground of the site. He spreads the slats of the plastic blinds in his window so he can see through, and watches Alison Evans’ battered red SUV pull toward his trailer. He’s never worked with a forewoman before—he’s never even met a woman who wanted to be one—but so far Alison is working out well, keeping the project on track, as far she’s able. The biggest delays have come from the weather, though after watching her work Martin wouldn’t be surprised to see her whip the elements into line, too.
She climbs from her car with a scarred yellow hardhat, and walks toward the trailer with the graceful lope of a cowgirl. Her hair is spiky and short, blonde laced with gray, and she reminds Martin of female characters he’s seen in science fiction movies, blasting through alien hordes with oversized guns in their arms. He sets down his coffee cup and steps out of the trailer to meet her.
“Good morning,” he says.
She nods. “Mr. Blaskett.”
“Alison. Please. Just call me Martin.”
“I forgot.” She smiles, brightening her face so Martin pictures ice struck by sunlight and the thin web of wrinkles beside each of her eyes expanding cracks in its surface.
“Good weekend?” He crosses his arms across his chest but the stance feels both unfriendly and painful so he slides his hands into back pockets. That position is uncomfortable, too, it feels like a pose, so he lets his hands hang at his sides with nothing to do.
“Not bad,” she says. “Brought Jake, Jr. up to the lake. Painted the bathroom. Nothing special.” She doesn’t ask about his own weekend, but looks at him as if she’s waiting to hear.
“I went for a hike yesterday, out that way.” He points toward where he entered the woods, and hopes he looks like he knows where he’s pointing. Martin doesn’t mention how easily he became lost in the forest. He tries to sound casual as he adds, “I ran into a bear.”
“
Yeah?” Alison leans closer.
“It attacked me, actually.” He traces a finger through the air in front of his chest. “I’ve got cuts here, and bruises all over my ribs.” Martin grabs the front of his shirt, as if he’s going to lift it and show her the bruises, then suddenly stops, embarrassed. He’s afraid his attempt at nonchalance has come across as lunacy, or macho bragging.
“Oh my God! Are you okay?”
“Gil thinks so.”
“Lucky it didn’t kill you,” she says. “Bear attack, that’s something.”
The sound of approaching engines grows louder, and they turn toward the road at the edge of the site.
“Not a lot of folks get attacked by a bear. And live, I mean. Lots of folks get attacked.”
“Really?”
“Maybe you should go to the hospital.”
“I thought so, too, but Gil patched me up. He said the cuts aren’t deep.” Gil’s explanations made sense at the time, but now, as he repeats them out loud, Martin begins second-guessing how easily he was persuaded.
“Well, he would know.”
He’s about to ask Alison about her son or some other part of her life beyond this project, anything to turn the conversation away from himself and to find out more about her. But the half-formed question on the tip of his tongue is interrupted by the rumble of vehicles bumping onto the shoulder between the site and the road.
Members of the crew begin arriving in heavy trucks with doors that don’t match. The bulldozer operator rumbles up on the motorcycle he assembled himself from spare parts, or so Martin has heard. The crew is still small at the moment, just enough men run an excavator, a bulldozer, and a dump truck; this is their first day on the site, replacing the tree crew who finished on Friday.