by Amy Star
They drew closer to the bed as Humbert held out his hand. “The rest of the family isn’t about right now. They’re all tending to the business or supervising work. We’ll have this time to ourselves.” Sherry reached his bedside first, and he clasped her hand warmly in a big hand that was practically bear claw in human form. He smiled more broadly up at her, his face full of whiskers that someone in the family was responsible for keeping perfectly trimmed even when he lay in this state. Humbert Michaels refused to look like an invalid and insisted on looking presentable even in these, his last days.
“Oh, Sherry,” said the old Ursan. “You are still the most beautiful human girl I’ve ever seen. You were a sweet-looking girl then, and you are the loveliest thing now. You are everything my grandson deserves. I always thought so.”
Sherry knew that Humbert was not shining her on or buttering her up. He really meant it. Even back in the day, he’d always told her what a pretty girl she was, and it was never the kind of compliment that a young girl would get from a skeevy and lecherous older man who ought to know better. He always said it with warmth and kindness, and he never, ever laid a hand on her except to shake hands in greeting. He actually liked her. That was a point in his favor.
“Thank you, Mr. Michaels,” said Sherry. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“Wouldn’t you like to call me Humbert now?” asked the grandfather bear. “It’s all right if you call me Humbert.”
“All right…Humbert.” She looked over at Jaxon, who made a little shrugging expression over this.
“There’s a girl.” He brightened a little. “And now you’re a college graduate. All grown up and out of school.”
“Yes,” said Sherry. “And I’ve been starting to make plans.”
“Mmm, yes—plans. We’ve had plans going back a bit, as you know. Back to when you and my grandson were sixteen.”
Taking a breath and preparing her nerves, Sherry said, “Yes, that’s been brought back to my attention since I’ve been back. And really, Humbert, I have to tell you…”
“We should set the date for sometime this summer, to make certain I’ll be here for it,” Humbert interrupted. “And you needn’t worry about the expense, of course. I know it’s the tradition for the father of the bride to cover these things, but under the circumstances, we can overlook that one part of the tradition. I’ll be happy to take care of it.”
Returning to the point, Sherry said, “Um…yes, Humbert, I wanted to talk to you about the, uh, ‘tradition.’ You see, some traditions have a way of…,” she looked over at Jaxon again and saw him looking as awkward as she now felt. “That is, not every tradition really applies to every time. I mean, the world changes, and people change some of the things they do. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“The world may change, Sherry, but a promise means the same thing no matter how many years go by. There was a promise made once, between our two families. The promise is the same thing now as it was then.”
“Granddad,” Jaxon cut in, “we know what a promise means. It’s kind of how you got to be where you are, how our family got to be where we are, by always being as good as what we said. It meant people could trust us; we get that. But what Sherry’s getting at is, there are times when you keep to exactly the thing you said, and sometimes when maybe it’s a little better to let something go.”
“Let it go?” Humbert balked a bit. “Let it go? Jaxon, our family and the McCabes have spent longer than you’ve been alive honoring every word we’ve said to each other, honoring every promise, making good on every deal. And we’ve done it as friends. The promise between you and Sherry is another part of that relationship. Think where we all would have been if our kind and hers hadn’t learned to honor our word to each other. You and Sherry might never have been born. There might not even be a town here. Ursans and humans learned to come together long ago, and part of learning to share this place where we live, which has been so good to us, has been always being as good as our word. That’s what created the peace in this valley, and that’s what has kept the peace.”
“But, Granddad,” Jaxon argued as gently as he knew how, “that’s just it. We are at peace. We’ve been at peace longer than most people here have been alive. Everyone mostly gets along now, and when there’s a problem, we don’t get into a fight about it like back when the first humans and the first Ursans came here. Nobody’s fighting. Everybody just lives and lets everybody else live. There are things we don’t need to do any more—like this thing you’re expecting Sherry and me to do. Granddad, there’s no need for it. People don’t do that now.”
“And the fact that people don’t do that now,” said Humbert, “means we simply forget that it was ever done at all, is that what you’re saying?”
“I shouldn’t have to say this, Granddad,” Jaxon pressed, “but people are supposed to get married because they’re in love and want to spend their lives together.”
“Oh-ho!” Humbert perked up at that. “And weren’t you two kids in love?”
Both Jaxon and Sherry opened their mouths to retort to that—and nothing came out. They exchanged a startled and flummoxed expression before Sherry found her voice again. “You said it yourself. We were in love. We were each other’s first love, when we were kids. And we’ve never forgotten that.”
The nearness of Jaxon when Sherry said that made her feel something, almost like a subtle charge or a magnetic pull. She dismissed it as another memory. She could not afford it now. Her point was made; that was then.
“Exactly, you’ve never forgotten. And what’s remembered…”
“…stays remembered. And then, you move on,” Jaxon said, cutting off his grandfather and finishing for him. And yet, he too could not help but feel a memory between him and Sherry as if it were a physical presence.
“Then let’s talk about things remembered,” said the old bear. “There are things we do because people remember them and hand them down. That’s what I was saying before. That’s what tradition is. In our tradition, when a young human and a young Ursan are promised to each other as children—or teenagers—that promise is kept. When they grow up, it’s honored. The promise becomes a marriage. That’s what was done.”
“Yes, Granddad—was, not is. That’s what we’ve been saying. No one does that anymore. When was the last time you heard of anyone still doing that? They’d stopped by the time Sherry and I were together. Nobody does it. Okay, a lot of the older people remember the tradition like you do. But nobody expects it to be still going on, and nobody does it.”
Humbert was adamant. “We should do it. Because it was a promise. And I do not forget promises.”
“The peace doesn’t depend on it anymore,” argued Jaxon, just as adamant.
“It isn’t about the peace. I know we don’t fight with humans anymore…”
“And nobody is expected to enter into a marriage they don’t want so they can join their families together and stop the feuding,” said Jaxon. “That’s how it was done way back when. ‘Bears don’t fight their mates, kin doesn’t fight kin, blood doesn’t fight blood;’ that’s what they said, and that’s how they stopped killing each other off. But it’s not like that now.”
Humbert would not let go. “And when it stopped being about ending the fighting and the killing, it became about tradition. Ursan families and human families still joined in tradition.”
“A tradition we don’t need,” Sherry insisted. “The only reason a tradition goes away is that people don’t need it any more. When you don’t need to do something anymore, you stop doing it. Our families and your families learned to live together, be friends and have cubs and love each other. That’s what the peace marriages did. Now that we have that, we don’t have to use marriage that way. We can just live together without all that.”
Humbert sighed and shook his old grey, whiskered head. “You’re not understanding, are you? You’re not seeing there are other things tradition does.”
“Tell us, then,” said Sher
ry. “Tell us what else tradition does.”
The old bear looked at the two young people very sincerely, very profoundly. “What else does tradition do? I’ll tell you. Tradition is about continuity. It’s about having a line that runs through life, a line of things you remember and things you believe and things you do; a line that goes from past to present to future. Tradition is about structure, about knowing there’s a way things are going to be that makes life mean something. It brings clarity and order to life. It’s about knowing what to expect from life and what to expect from yourself while you’re living. That’s tradition. That’s what it’s for.”
“But Humbert,” Sherry said, “you don’t need that kind of order and structure for that. People can work out their own purpose and figure out how to put their lives together for themselves. I’ve just finished school, and that’s a kind of tradition. It’s something most people do; it’s a certain part of life that you expect to have. But when it’s over, you go on and go out into the world, and you work out what your life is going to be from there. And you don’t have anyone else deciding what you’ll do and when you’ll do it; you decide that for yourself. And maybe you even work out your own brand-new traditions, just for you. That’s kind of what I saw for myself, now I’ve graduated. I saw myself figuring out my own life and deciding what happens when. I didn’t want anyone laying it out for me; I wanted to go out and find it. You’re trying to tell me I can’t do that because of a promise our families made that doesn’t work in the world anymore. Don’t you understand what you’re asking Jaxon and me to do?”
“I understand,” said Humbert wearily, “that you’re just trying to throw it all away. That’s what it’s become, Sherry: a throwaway world where nothing means anything anymore. And it should. It should mean something.”
Sherry and Jaxon could tell that they were now really at an impasse. Neither they nor the old bear were about to change positions on any of this. A sad, quiet moment fell over the room.
At length, Sherry spoke up again. “Humbert…I know what you decided to do to try to make us go along with this marriage. I know what you’re holding over my family. I don’t think that’s right. And I don’t think that’s fair.”
“Did you think I liked doing that?”
“I think you just did it to try to get what you want, Granddad,” Jaxon argued. “And I don’t think Sherry’s father deserves that, after the kind of relationship he’s always had with us.”
“Neither do I,” Sherry agreed. “I think it’s not fair to the friendship our families have had. I don’t think that’s the way friends treat each other. I’m really hurt that you’d do a thing like that. My parents don’t expect me to go through with something that isn’t right for me, even if it means they’re going to lose money. But you shouldn’t put them in that position.”
The look in Humbert’s eyes showed at least a hint of remorse. “I’m sorry, Sherry. I didn’t know what else to do, because honestly, I know you two kids have your own minds and things you want. But life isn’t always just about what we want. There are things expected of everyone. This is something that I expected. I’m sorry you’re hurt. But I didn’t know any other way of making it clear that I expect to see this happen; I expect to see this tradition honored.”
“If you don’t want to hurt us,” said Sherry, “you can change your will back to the way it was, and we can just forget about this whole thing.”
Humbert smiled a bit, looking up at the two young people from his bed. His face softened, and Sherry and Jaxon felt things turning a bit more hopeful after all. Perhaps they were now about to get the breakthrough they were seeking.
“All right,” said the old bear. “I never meant to hurt anyone. I never meant to abuse the years of friendship between our families. And I am willing to have that stipulation removed from my will…”
Sherry smiled, her face lighting up. She looked over at Jaxon, who wore a relieved expression. Instinctively, unconsciously, they joined hands.
“…if,” Humbert continued, “I can have your personal promise, the two of you, right here and right now, that you will get married in accordance with tradition. Just give me your personal, solemn word, the two of you, and I’ll have that part of the will struck out.”
And as quickly as the smiles had spread across their faces, the smiles fell away in unison. Jaxon lifted his face to the ceiling and groaned as if to call out to ancient bear gods for help. Sherry hung her head and shook it, sifting her fingers through her hair as if to pull out the frustration from her mind.
Humbert simply sat there, propped up against pillows and headboard, studying them. What had he said wrong?
_______________
Downstairs in the kitchen, Jaxon poured himself and Sherry a couple of glasses of juice, and they sat there at the kitchen table, the frustration that they experienced upstairs in the master suite still hanging over them like a dark cloud.
“What are we going to do about him?” Sherry wondered aloud. “I swear, that man is as stubborn as…”
“…a grizzly bear?” Jaxon offered.
“Or an old ox,” said Sherry.
“Yeah, he’s about as hard to budge as either one,” Jaxon said.
“So, what now? Honestly, what now?” Sherry felt at her wits’ end.
“I don’t know,” said Jaxon. “We’ve sure got a lot of different things to think about now than we did when we were in school together. Back then, it seemed like the most we had to worry about was where to go when…” And he caught himself, half-suspecting that he was recalling something that Sherry was not interested in having brought up just now. “That is, what to do when…” And he found himself at a loss for a delicate way to put it. “Aw, hell, you know what I’m talking about.”
Sherry sighed. “If only we could have really kept all that just between us. We might not be in this mess right now.”
“There was no way we could keep a lid on that,” said Jaxon. “Maybe our folks didn’t know, but kids knew at school. And sooner or later, it would have gotten out, because there were all those times when we both weren’t around at the same time. People would have done the math on you and me no matter what.”
He was right, of course, and Sherry knew it. “That’s true,” she said. “All those times. In your attic, or my basement…”
“…or our favorite place, the room over the garage at your house,” he reminded her.
“I thought the place in the forest was your favorite place,” said Sherry.
Jaxon pondered that one. “Well, the ‘me’ that’s a bear liked the spot in the forest. But I wasn’t doing it as a bear. I was doing it as a human guy with a human girlfriend. I liked it best where I had the best time with my girlfriend. That was either the attic here or the room over your garage.”
Sherry gave him a wistful look of young remembrance. “Those were the best places.”
“And the best times,” he agreed. “Remember all the condoms?” And he snickered a bit at bringing it up.
She snickered a bit back at him. “And how you got them all! Those times you went to the cafe where we liked to go, and the kids from the community college went, where they had the fishbowls full of them in the restrooms…”
“And I’d come out of the rest room with my pocket stuffed full of ‘em!” Jaxon chortled. “And that…”
“…was why we called it ‘going fishing’! Our little codeword!”
The two of them laughed out loud at that.
“We ‘fished’ a hell of a lot,” said Jaxon. “And used every last one of those condoms.”
“And got the best use out of them,” Sherry remembered.
“Yeah,” said Jaxon as they quieted down and basked in the memory. “We loved it so much. The only thing better than doing it was doing it again.”
“And you were so good at it,” she said, looking him admiringly up and down again.
“Because of who I was with,” he told her.
They said nothing more for a few minut
es, only sat and drank and remembered. Then, Jaxon spoke up again: “Hey…can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” she said. “What?”
“Back then…did you ever think of you and me…you know, doing what Granddad wants us to do now?”
“What, get married? Did I think about it back then?”
“Yeah. So…did you?”
Sherry did not answer at first, only looked off into space. Then, she replied, “Being that age and in love, you naturally think about wanting it to go on forever, even if you’re not actually thinking about getting married. That first relationship is so special, you don’t want it to end. And I think a part of you really believes it won’t. A part of you thinks nothing that good can just be over.”