Strawberry Hill

by Catherine Anderson

  Swinging her legs over the side of her bed, Vickie sat up. Where am I? That was the first thought that ricocheted around in her foggy brain. Who in the hell is shouting like that? He’ll get a throat rupture. Fighting to come awake and clear her head, Vickie took in her surroundings, but for at least three seconds, she recognized nothing. Then her gaze landed on her duffel bag, and all of it came rushing back to her. Driving over from the coast. Meeting Slade at the trailhead. Riding up the mountain. Being the ungrateful recipient of a nighttime visit from a blond bear that loved ketchup. The memories, coming to her in short blips, fell so far out of the realm of what she accepted as normal that it might all have been part of her dream. Only she liked the aliens better.

  “Son of a bitch! He broke my fucking toilet seat! It’s in three pieces!”

  Vickie leaped to her feet. Pain exploded up the backs of her legs and pooled like molten lava in her butt cheeks. She nearly dropped to her knees. Saddle sore. Placed on a horse when she was a toddler, Vickie had grown up riding. She’d never gotten saddle sore, not even after her first day-long ride each spring. Now she felt a lot more sympathy for all the people she’d known who had been nearly unable to walk after a long trail ride.

  “Where’s my rifle, damn it! He is so gone! I’ll do it this time! Mark my words, he’s a dead son of a bitch.”

  Vickie hobbled to her duffel bag, started grabbing clothes, and whimpered as muscles in her thighs knotted and sent charley-horse spasms knifing down into her calf muscles. The fire in the woodstove had burned out. It was so cold inside her tent that the ground beneath her stocking feet felt frozen, and in the first, faint streaks of daylight, ice crystals sparkled in the air. She jerked on her jeans from the previous day, shoved her feet into her new boots, and pulled a sweatshirt on. Jacket. She needed outerwear. Her fingers grazed something silky and soft. Her puffer coat. She grabbed it and hurried from the tent.

  Seven men stood in a huddle about twenty feet from her door. She recognized Dale, Wyatt, and Kennedy, all the blondies that she’d met already, and the wiry Texan, but she didn’t know the names of the other three. Not that it mattered. No one seemed to notice her. They were all staring off into the trees with blank looks in their eyes. Vickie followed their gazes and saw Slade, stomping around, tossing things, and just generally throwing a temper tantrum.

  “What in the world?”

  “Bear,” Kennedy told her. “Ongoing war now. Slade started it with a pepper bomb, and I don’t think Four Toes will ever forgive him.”

  Tex sent Vickie a mischievous grin. “Moral of that story is, don’t piss off a bear. They got memories like elephants.”

  Slade strode from the woods, looking dangerous, his normally tanned countenance flushed red with anger. Vickie might have felt afraid of him if he’d held something more lethal in his hand than a roll of toilet paper. He walked right past her toward his tent, located at the opposite end of the row and closest to the cookshack. When he emerged again, he’d ditched the bathroom tissue and replaced it with the rifle she’d seen the night before.

  “Yep. Here we go ag’in,” Tex muttered. “Same old rerun. I got ten bucks that says he’ll do it this time.” He held out a hand, palm turned skyward. “Who’s in?”

  “Me!” said a cowboy whose face Vickie only vaguely remembered. “And I’m betting he’ll do it, too. Law of averages. Right? Sooner or later, the cows always come home.”

  Alarm coursed through Vickie’s body as her sleep-numbed brain started to clear. Eating up the ground with yard-long strides, Slade walked to the edge of the woods, brought the rifle butt to his shoulder, and sighted in on something. And, as if on cue, Four Toes reared up onto his hind legs so she could see him. Forefeet spread wide like a man greeting a crowd before delivering an oratory, the bear swayed on his hind feet, yawned, and emitted a roar so loud it seemed to vibrate the air.

  “What in God’s name is he doing?” Vickie cried. “Don’t just stand here, placing bets. Somebody go out there and stop Slade before he does something stupid!”

  Seven pairs of eyes became fixed on Vickie. Seven faces bore the same incredulous expression. Tex was the only one who spoke. “You can have a go if you want. We don’t mess with the boss when he’s that pissed.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “Are all of you chicken?”

  Tex nodded. “When it comes to him and that damn bear, sure as tootin’. Slade ain’t thinkin’ past his mad right now. He’ll either finish it this time or get over it. That’s the fun of it, not knowin’ how it’ll end every time this happens.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Ignoring the white-hot flares of pain that shot from her butt to her ankles, Vickie took off toward the trees. No matter how mad Slade got, she’d never be afraid of him. Her boots found soft dirt layered with moldering pine needles and then roots that trailed like arthritic arms just beneath the soil to trip her. Rocks, too. There were always rocks in these mountains, mostly lava that had spewed over the area centuries ago during an eruption. “Men.” Sometimes Vickie wondered if a dozen of them had a full brain between them. Slade couldn’t shoot that bear. Especially not over the destruction of an outdoor toilet. It was ludicrous. About fifty feet away from Slade, she stopped to admire the bear, who still stood on his hind legs and loomed against the backdrop of trees like a gigantic stuffed toy. It wasn’t often that humans got an opportunity to study a bear out in the wild. They had to visit zoos, sanctuaries, or observatories to even see one.

  “He’s beautiful,” she said to Slade’s back. He’d assumed a firing stance, his left foot forward, right one back, his rangy body angled slightly sideways to his target. “I guess it’s hard for you right now to appreciate how pretty he is, so golden with those dark markings. It would be such a shame to end his life just because you’re in a snit over a toilet seat.”

  Slade lowered the gun and spun toward her. “Did I ask you for your opinion? No. Do I appreciate your commentary? Another no. Just go away and let me shoot the bastard.”

  Vickie saw the pain in his eyes and knew he wouldn’t be able to shoot that bear even if she helped him pull the trigger. “How did you end up with an orphaned cub, Slade? I would think that you would have remembered the mess I got into with Hershey and thought better of interfering. Good intentions and wild animals mix like oil and water.”

  “I remembered how it went with Hershey, so I left him on the mountain behind the ranch. He was tiny, injured, hungry, and alone, and I rode away without looking back. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my whole life!” He strode over to a gray boulder that was wide and smooth on top. Taking care with his gun, he laid it on the ground and sat on the rock beside it. If the picture he presented had been a painting, Vickie would have named it Dejected. He sat with his limp arms resting on his spread knees and bent his head to stare at the ground. “Damned if he didn’t follow me home.”

  Four Toes bellowed again, as if to tell his side of the story.

  Vickie yearned to join Slade on the rock. Just to sit there beside him, as she once would have done without thinking twice. To talk. To listen. To share with each other what they could tell no one else. They’d been such good friends. Best of buddies and soul mates, with a bond that had existed between them since long before their feelings for each other had deepened to a lasting kind of love. Only it hadn’t lasted. Vickie wondered if the truly magical things in life ever did. Maybe they were more like ice cream cones, to be devoured swiftly before they melted into a horrible mess.

  She considered leaning against a pine that grew near him, but at the last moment, she veered toward his rock and lowered herself to sit beside him. She almost moaned with pain. The stone pressed hard against her throbbing butt and legs. She needed to go riding again today. Back in the saddle again, and all that. If she didn’t, she might not be able to walk tomorrow.

  “I should’ve shot him then,” Slade went on. He didn’t seem surprised that she’d s
at beside him. “I knew it wasn’t a wise idea to feed him. Sure as rain is wet, you always end up with a nuisance bear if you do.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Bear rescues rarely go well. I got lucky with Hershey. Daddy found that rescue shelter to take him in. I heard later that Hershey ended up at a wildlife compound, one of those places where wild animals get to live in an environment as close to their natural habitat as possible. He became a favorite with tourists, because he liked people so much.” She angled a questioning look at Slade. “Have you checked into that? Four Toes is a perfect candidate for rescue.” She looked over Slade’s slumped shoulder at the huge animal, which still stood among the trees, waving his front legs like people talked with their hands. It seemed strange to her. “Why is he just standing there?”

  “He’s waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “Breakfast! Damn his rotten hide.”

  The whole story came pouring out of Slade then, about how Four Toes’ mother had been killed, how Slade had ended up bottle-feeding her baby that night, and how Slade had come to love him against all his better judgment. “They’re so cute when they’re little,” he said. “You just can’t help yourself. But then they grow up.”

  Vickie thought of her children and smiled. “Into teenagers, no less, who remind their parents multiple times a day why wild animals eat their young.”

  He let out a startled laugh. “Come to think of it, I do like bear meat if it’s dressed right. Maybe I’ll shoot him and make Four Toe burgers.”

  “With lots of ketchup in honor of his memory.”

  He sighed. Then he gazed off across the clearing with a distant look in his eyes. “It’s always been this way. Even though you hate my guts now and I’m not sure I like you much, either, I can still talk to you like I’ve never felt inclined to talk to anyone else.”

  Vickie wanted to remind him that he’d been the one who destroyed their relationship, but she held her tongue. She’d lied to Slade about burying that hatchet, but she was starting to realize now that she needed to start digging the hole. Life went on, and she didn’t want to live the rest of hers feeling so many negative emotions.

  He resumed speaking. “And to answer your question, no, I haven’t tried to find a shelter that might take him. I broke the law when I took Four Toes in, and if I get caught, my ass will be grass.” He told her about calling ODFW to get help for Four Toes that long-ago afternoon. “The man—Wilson was his name—didn’t mince words. Four Toes needed to stay in his natural habitat. If it comes out now that I ignored the dictates of the state, I could do time. I think the penalties are pretty stiff.”

  Vickie doubted that Slade would face anything as serious as jail, but occasionally she did wonder if judges didn’t get overzealous in their rulings to make an example of people. And messing around with wild creatures, especially making any attempt at all to domesticate them, was a serious offense. “From here on out, it’s only going to get worse, Slade. Bears and people don’t mix. As he ages, he’ll grow bigger, stronger, and bolder. The ending to that story won’t be pretty.”

  “What can I do except shoot him? I tried running him off.” He gestured with an extended thumb toward the bear. “Stopped feeding him. Peppered the ground around him with buckshot to scare him away. Nothing worked. He just kept coming back. Now he’s on a mission to make my life hell. Two weeks ago, I repaired fences. Had all my men helping me. When I got my section finished, Four Toes tore it all apart that very night. No one else’s section, only mine. Last week, I put brand-new tires on my truck for winter. Knobby ones. He punctured every last one of them with his teeth and claws. Fifteen hundred bucks, down the drain. Oh, and he destroyed my grandma’s rocker on the porch, too. Bastard saw me sitting in it of an evening. I love to end a day that way in the summer. Relax. Think. Watch the sun go down. He went after that damned chair because he knew it was a favorite possession of mine. My grandma’s chair, damn it. I’m paying a furniture guy to fix it, and for the cost, I could buy a half dozen just like it with change to spare.”

  Vickie joined him in studying the trees. Four Toes was still chuffing behind them. He made her think of a cranky toddler who needed breakfast and a morning nap. “Sounds like a vendetta to me.”

  “It is a vendetta. I broke his trust, and he’s out to get me.”

  She turned to glance at Four Toes again. “He’s only a bear, Slade. I wouldn’t think he has the mental capacity to reason his way through stuff and hold a grudge for long. What on earth did you do to him?”

  “Pepper bomb.”

  “Tex mentioned that, but I’ve never heard of one. What, exactly, is it?”

  “Jake—he owns and operates a new place in town called the Jake ’n’ Bake—called a friend of his, an Alaskan outfitter, who has to deal with problem bears all the time. When he heard about Four Toes coming in every morning and night for food, he said to wrap a can of bear spray in a pound of bacon and put it in Four Toes’ pile of food.” He sniffed and rubbed his upper lip with the cuff of his shirtsleeve. Vickie wondered if he’d been holding back tears and now had a runny nose. It was one of the things she’d always loved most about Slade, his ability to cry. He was as rugged and strong as any man she’d ever known, but he also had a tender heart. “Every afternoon someone from town brought out two garbage cans of food for Four Toes. That sounds nasty, but the stuff in the cans was fresh stuff, not trash. Jake kept the receptacles clean, set them by the back stoop of his bakery, and every restaurant owner in town brought daily offerings. Leftovers and extra stuff from their kitchens.”

  “So feeding Four Toes became a community effort?”

  “The whole community, no, just a few chosen people we knew we could trust. Well, it was like that at first. But you remember Mystic Creek. There’s no such thing as a secret in that town. Almost everyone knows about him, a lot of people donated food while I was still feeding him, and nobody talked about it. It’s been way over three years, and there’s not a law officer at the department who knows.”

  “A best-kept secret,” Vickie mused. “I’m amazed. In Mystic Creek, everybody knows everything. Maybe more law officers than you realize know about it, and they’ve just decided to look the other way.”

  “Maybe.”

  The sun came up over the treetops, sending triangular beams of diffused yellow through the pine boughs to paint stripes on the wilderness floor. Mist rose around their feet and hovered in cloudlike pillows over the frozen earth. Near the tree line, Vickie spotted a doe and her half-grown fawn. She knew she’d seen things just as beautiful in these mountains countless times, but she couldn’t remember when. It was inarguably a Kodak moment, but she’d forgotten her phone in the tent.

  “So,” she said. “Stop stalling and spit it out. You followed the advice of the Alaskan outfitter and baited Four Toes’ meal with bear spray. Right? So what happened then?”

  “He punctured the can with his teeth, and it exploded in his mouth. Not like a bomb, where it actually hurt him or anything.”

  “I’m sure it felt to him as if a bomb had gone off.”

  He wiped beneath his nose again. The strengthening warmth of the sun bathed their backs. For the first time, she noticed that Slade wasn’t wearing his hat. She treated herself to a long study of his gloriously thick hair, which was threaded with silver now, but still had shine, as shimmery and dark as a freshly poured cup of camp coffee. She wanted to tidy it with her fingertips and feel the heat rising from his scalp. Instead she pressed her hands together as if in prayer and clamped them between her knees.

  Slade took a deep breath and released it. His voice turned gravelly and tight when he said, “I was his surrogate parent. He loved me, trusted me, and came to me for food. It was a habit I knew I had to break. For his sake. You know? I saw it as the equivalent of booting an eighteen-year-old kid out the door and forcing him to make it on his own. Four Toes likes people. If I persist in not feedi
ng him, he’s going to move into town. People will find him on their porches. He’ll rob their garbage cans and strew trash all over their yards. Someone will get fed up and shoot him. Or he’ll get his feathers ruffled and hurt someone. I had to do something. I prayed the bomb would do the trick.”

  Vickie knew that was inarguable. Four Toes might hurt someone unless he was discouraged or prevented from going near people. But she wasn’t sure a pepper bomb had been the answer. “You should pursue a more permanent solution.”

  He sighed. “I know, but—” He turned to look at her. “You’re a good shot. Will you do it for me, Vick? Every time I get him in my sights, I remember rocking him to sleep at night.”

  “You rocked a bear to sleep?” She laughed and added, “Oh, Slade, you’re such a softie sometimes.”

  “Hey, easy on the ego. I haven’t recovered yet from your bald pate comment.”

  She laughed and wondered what it was about Slade Wilder that never failed to disarm her. When she was around him, she felt as if her heart was divided into sections like a department store, one for each of her kids and one for this man, only she couldn’t move from aisle to aisle. When she thought about Brody, she got stuck in his section, and so forth. With Slade, all the other sections fell away, and she could focus on only him.

  “I’d apologize,” she said with a grin, “but I’m long in the tooth and can’t remember saying anything about a pate, bald or otherwise.”

  It was his turn to laugh, but there was no humor in the sound. “I have to destroy him, Vick. Before he harms someone.”

  “No. You need to neutralize him, and by that, I don’t mean kill him. Four Toes has done nothing wrong. Yet. We need to find him a forever home. Maybe have him tranquilized and moved clear out of this area. So far away that he’ll never find his way back. Someplace to hell and gone from people, where he’ll be forced to survive the way God intended. He prefers easy. But don’t we all? As long as he is near people, he’ll seek them out for free meals.”