One Hot Summer

by Heidi McLaughlin

  “How do I get back to town?”

  “One of the cabs doing a drop-off might take you back for cash if they don’t have to be somewhere else. Worse comes to worse, it’s only a five-mile walk along the highway. Just follow the road.”

  Only five miles? God, I can’t remember the last time I walked more than a mile.

  I sigh, paying Jack and thanking him for the ride. Alone a moment later when he kicks up gravel pulling out of the driveway, I notice a large welcome board with pictures and names of the bears in residence and take a moment to get some photos.

  Toby, Lucky, Killisnoo, and Chaik.

  Smokey, Bandit, and Tuliaan.

  Nuka, and Nikiski.

  Ranging in age from two- to ten-years-old, their beautiful brown and black faces are full of mischief and curiosity in the pictures, and I’m fascinated by their stories.

  “Most of their mothers were killed when they wandered into civilization,” says a voice from behind me.

  I turn to find a young woman in khaki shorts and a dark green windbreaker, her hair back in a bun and glasses perched on her nose.

  “Hi.” I smile, holding out my hand. “Are you Heather?”

  She nods. “Heather Haines. And you’re…Amanda?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Thanks so much for seeing me.”

  “No problem. We love it that you’ll be bringing awareness to our project.”

  “I hear it’ll be busy here later.”

  She gives me a half-nod, half-grimace. “The cruise ships are a double-edged sword. We need them, you know? Their admission fees and donations allow us to keep this place running. I’m grateful for that…but…”

  “But maybe it gets to be a little much?” I ask. “All those tourists descending on you en masse?”

  “We have over 20,000 visitors per year,” she says, “and most of them from May to September, so you can imagine it gets a little busy.” She sighs. “Still, like I said, I’m grateful. This place, like a lot of businesses in Sitka, wouldn’t survive without the tourists. We learn to live with them.”

  I hold up my phone. “Is it okay if I record us talking? I know I won’t remember everything you say, and I don’t want to misquote you.”

  Her lips twitch. “Can I approve what you write before you hit publish?”

  “No. I’m…I’m sorry. I can get you copies of my article, of course, but the content and style of the piece comes from me.”

  “Then I don’t—”

  “But, Heather,” I say. “I don’t want to hurt this place. We’re planning a big fundraiser in Seattle so we can raise money and donate to what you’re doing here. All I want to do is bring awareness to the Fortress of the Bear and shed some light on what’s been going on recently in terms of wild bear attacks. I’m not up here to make trouble. I promise.”

  “Like I said, we can’t survive without donations.” Heather gives me a long look, then nods. “I guess I’ll have to trust you.”

  “You won’t regret it,” I promise her.

  As she leads me through an area of new construction, she explains that they’re building a new visitor center, which—despite the chaos outside—is really taking shape from the inside. In fact, I get my first glimpse of the bears through an enormous window already in place.

  “First orcas! Now bears!” I exclaim, looking at two brown bears through the plexiglass window.

  “Those two are Nuka and Nikiski, our newest. They’re twin sisters from Seward.”

  As I watch them scamper around a large enclosure together, I ask Heather some questions. “You said something about most of your bears being abandoned? I read about one set of siblings whose mother was killed in the kitchen of a resort hotel.”

  Heather nods. “You’re talking about Killisnoo and Chaik. But it wasn’t a resort, just a fishing lodge outside of a small village called Angoon on Admiralty Island. Their mother broke into the kitchen looking for food and surprised the chef. He shot her, orphaning them.”

  “And would park rangers have really murdered the cubs if you hadn’t stepped in?”

  Heather’s brows furrow. “We prefer the word “euthanize.” You have to understand: if the mother bear can’t teach her babies how to hunt, they’ll starve. So, yes, it used to be the policy to euthanize orphaned cubs. That’s part of the reason this place is so special. We’re giving abandoned cubs another option: a chance to live.” She gestures for me to follow her. “Come with me.”

  I follow her up a brand-new wooden staircase to a balcony overlooking two enclosures. She leans her elbows on the railing and point to two brown bears bathing in the morning sun side by side.

  “Killisnoo! Chaik! Come on over here! Come on, guys! I want you to meet someone!”

  They look up at the same time, their intelligent eyes focusing on Heather. Lumbering over to us, they stand up on their hind legs and put their paws together as though praying.

  “You’re hungry, huh? How about a snack?” Heather grins at me. “We teach them a bit of sign language so they can communicate with us. Praying hands means they want food.”

  If seeing orcas suddenly come up for air twenty minutes ago shocked me, this information knocks the wind out of me. “Are you kidding me? They’re—they’re speaking to you?”

  “Uh-huh,” she says, pulling out a bucket of apples and lettuce heads from under a display table. “Bears are very smart.”

  “When Chaik came to us, he was just over a hundred pounds. Now, he’s over a thousand.” She throws an apple to Killisnoo and gives the other to me. “Want to feed Chaik?”

  “Yes!”

  I take the apple and throw it into the enclosure, watching the massive, majestic animal fall to all fours, reach for the apple with one mitt-like paw and lift it to his mouth to take a big bite.

  Maybe a trip to Alaska is just what the doctor ordered.

  Leigh’s words slide through my head, and for the first time since Bryce dumped me, I take a deep breath and breathe easier. As Toby-from-the-airport pointed out, my life in Seattle isn’t perfect. But I saw whales in the wild this morning and just fed a bear out of my hand. It’s almost enough to make a girl start believing in magic again.

  I think you might be right, Leigh and Toby, I think, following Heather to another enclosure where she wants to introduce me to three black bears. I think this trip is exactly what I needed.

  Jack was right about the tourists.

  At nine o’clock on the dot, they start arriving in droves and Heather bids me a hasty goodbye, encouraging me to stay a while longer on my own or come again. I promise I will, and then make my way through the hordes of humans like a salmon swimming upstream.

  I try to get one of the cabbies doing a drop-off to take me back to my apartment downtown, but they are all rushing off to pick-up pre-arranged fares all over Sitka. After trying for half an hour, I conceded defeat and set off for my apartment on foot.

  About twenty minutes into the walk I feel blisters developing on both of my heels and between the toes intersected by the thong on my right foot. Short of saying it’s agony, I’m increasingly uncomfortable as I continue my trek along the roadside. My only solace is the sometimes-unobstructed view of the bay to my left, though no whales surface to pick up my waning spirits. Instead, the sky opens up and out of nowhere, I’m walking in the middle of a monsoon, which douses the last of my positive energy.

  I haven’t cried much about Bryce’s swift and humiliating departure from my life. I’m not a crier by nature, one, and two, I’ve never really seen the point of crying. My sister has always claimed it was cathartic to “have a good cry,” but I think it’s just a waste of salt and water. It doesn’t change anything. In the end, you’re just left with burning eyes and a heavier heart.

  So it surprises me that the rain is not the only thing wetting my cheeks. Tears rivulet down my face, hotter and faster than the cooling rain. I hiccup and choke on my sobs, leaning against a metal barrier on the side of the road, clothes soaked and feet bleeding.

&nb
sp; I really thought that Bryce and I were “forever” material—the sort of couple for whom the passion had burned out, but for whom companionship and comfort would be enough to build a decent life together. We’d have a couple of kids, get a house in the suburbs of Seattle, and even though we’d never win an award for being the most amorous couple of all time, we’d be…content.

  Suddenly dumping me for twenty-something Ruby wasn’t something I saw coming. But after the shock wore off, I kept waiting for it to hurt, for losing Bryce to hurt, and it didn’t. Losing my life’s plan? Ouch. Losing someone to marry and have kids with? Disappointing. The prospect of starting all over with someone new? Terrifying.

  But losing Bryce K.Morton, the person? It didn’t hurt, didn’t devastate me the way it should have...which forced me to acknowledge what I’d probably known all along deep down: that Bryce wasn’t the one, that the last five years were wasted time, and that I had contented myself with “good enough” because I didn’t have the fucking courage to start over with someone new, someone better, someone who would—

  “Miss? Excuse me, miss?”

  My head jerks up and I gasp in surprise to find a car pulled up next to me, the driver’s window open, and his face not three feet from me.

  I straighten up, trying to step away, but the backs of my knees hit the guardrail I was just leaning on.

  “I’m fine,” I say, still sniffling through my stupid, fucking useless tears. “I don’t need any help. I’m okay. You can—”

  “You don’t look okay,” he says.

  “I am. I was just at the b-bears, and now…um, I’m w-walking hoooooooome…”

  I start crying again.

  What the fuck? Why am I crying?

  Because Bryce dumped me? Or because I wasted five years of my life on the possibility of a mediocre outcome because I was too chickenshit to find something better? Does something better even exist? Or is every rom-com I ever watched or read just a big, fat lie?

  “Where’s home?” he asks.

  “S-Seattle.”

  “You’re walking to Seattle?” he asks. “Long way.”

  “I’m not…I’m not walking to Seattle!” I say, starting to feel annoyed. I didn’t ask this person to stop. I don’t need help. I just need…fuck, I don’t even know what I need, but I don’t need to be bothered right now.

  “Well, where are you walking to?”

  I wipe my snotty nose on the sleeve of my jacket, leaving a glistening trail of boogers, and then cross my arms over my chest. “None of your business. Please just…leave me alone.”

  I sniffle pathetically and start walking again.

  To my intense annoyance, he drives slowly beside me. We continue like this for about thirty seconds with my tears still flowing—they have a life of their own at this point, and there’s nothing I can do about it—and my hackles rising with every painful, squishy step.

  “What? What do you want?” I finally yell, stopping to face him. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

  He brakes beside me. “You’re clearly in distress. I can’t leave you out here alone.”

  “Why not?” I demand. “Are you the distress police?”

  “Nope. Regular police.”

  He reaches for his wallet on the dashboard and flashes me a badge. It looks official, but I barely have time to read it.

  “How do I know if that’s real? Maybe you drive around bothering vulnerable, emotional females for shits and giggles.”

  “Said you’re from Seattle, right? Yep,” he mutters, shaking his head slightly. “You’re definitely a city girl.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand as I start walking again.

  “Suspicious of everyone.” He shifts into drive and continues to crawl along beside me. “It might comfort you to know that the crime rate in Sitka is well below the national average and we’re the fourth safest city in Alaska.”

  “Only fourth?”

  “Numbers one and two—Cordova and Haines—are also located in the Inside Passage.”

  “We’re missing someone. Where’s number three?”

  “Unalaska. It’s south of here.”

  “You live in Alaska. Everything’s south.”

  “In the Aleutian Islands,” he clarifies.

  “You lost third place to a town called UNAlaska?” I ask. “That’s rich.”

  “We have the tenth largest population,” he informs me. “Twice as many folks as Unalaska, but directly behind them in safety.”

  I can hear the pride in his voice, and for some reason it makes me want to be bitchy. “A hundred here to their fifty?”

  He shrugs. “I guess Sitka looks small to a city girl, but we’ve got almost nine thousand people here.”

  He’s still driving slowly beside me and I’ve still got my arms crossed over my chest, but at some point, I stopped crying, and I notice the rain’s letting up a little too. The day’s getting brighter.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let me give you a lift home. I’m headed into town, and besides, it’s my civic duty.”

  I frown at him for a long minute before checking out the words Public Safety Training Academy on the side of the car. I guess he’s telling the truth. I open the back door and plop down behind him.

  “Where we goin’, Miss Daisy?” he asks, and it’s so absurd that I can’t help but crack a smile.

  “Lookee there!” he exclaims, grinning at me in the rearview mirror. “Is that a smile?”

  He wears a pretty full beard, but it can’t hide his dimples. They’re deep and playful, and make him look boyish despite the fact that he’s—if I had to guess—about thirty.

  “No,” I say, pursing my lips and looking away from him.

  “I do actually need to know where I’m taking you,” he says.

  For all that he flashed a badge at me, I don’t know him. I’d rather he not know exactly where I’m staying. “The library, please.”

  “You live in the library?”

  “Nearby.”

  “Okay,” he says. “The library it is.”

  I know from my drive to the Fortress of the Bear, it’ll take about ten minutes to get back to town, and for the first five minutes, we drive in silence. Then it occurs to me that if he really is in law enforcement, perhaps he could tell me a little bit about the recent bear attacks around town. May as well use my time with him productively.

  I clear my throat. “Um…are you with Fish and Wildlife by any chance?”

  He shakes his head. “Nope. State employee, not federal.”

  “Do you know anything about the recent bear attacks in Sitka?”

  He nods, shifting slightly in his seat. As a reporter, I try to be in tune with my subjects’ body language, and seat-shifting is often a sign of discomfort with the topic at hand.

  “Can you tell me anything about them?”

  “Sandra Stutz’s dog got mauled on the Indian River Trail last month. Good dog,” he adds. “Jester. Husky-retriever mix. Got between Sandra and a brown bear. Usually the bear will retreat, but this one charged. Killed the dog.”

  “Any other incidents?”

  “Family hiking down the Mt. Verstovia trail ran into some trouble two weeks ago. They did everything right. Backed away slowly. Clapped their hands. Bear kept coming. Luckily the kid was holding a granola bar. He threw it to the bear and the family ran.”

  “Both of these incidents were in May?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh. Mother’s Day weekend and Memorial Day weekend.”

  “Are bear attacks common in the fourth safest city in Alaska? Would you say that this represents an increase in bear aggression?”

  “Uh…hey, are you a reporter or something?”

  Shoot. People sometimes clam up when they find out I work for a newspaper, but it’s unethical not to admit it when asked directly. “I work for the Seattle Sentinel. I’m doing a story on—”

  “That stuff was off-the-record.” He turns into the Sitka Library parking lot, parks his car and turns around in
his seat to look at me. His dimples are gone. “I mean it.”

  “Could it be…on the record?” I ask, trying for a flirty smile.

  “No,” he says, the warmth gone from his voice. “You should have told me you were a reporter.”

  “I did,” I say. “As soon as you asked.”

  He clenches his jaw for a second, then lets it go. It’s a strong jaw, I think. It shouldn’t be covered by all those bristles.

  “Well, we’re here at the library,” he says. “Safe and sound, as promised.”

  “Could we just talk a little more? I just want to understand—”

  “My lunch break’s over,” he says. “Sorry.”

  I feel bad now, and I hate feeling bad, especially when I haven’t done anything wrong. So what if I asked him a few questions? I don’t even know his name. He would have been an anonymous source.

  “I won’t print your words,” I say. A peace offering.

  “Thanks,” he says, “and I won’t sue you for libel.”

  “Wow,” I say, opening my door. “Pretty big threat for a friendly conversation. Now who’s suspicious?”

  “Have a good day, miss. Enjoy your time in Sitka.”

  I slip out of the door and slam it shut behind me, standing all alone as he drives away without looking back. And for no good reason at all, I feel like something potentially important just slipped through my cold, wet fingers.

  5

  Luke

  A reporter?

  Dang it.

  I’m not authorized to talk about what’s been going on with the bears in Sitka, and we sure as heck can’t afford to lose the tourists by creating a panic.

  Lord, that’s just what I need: LOCAL STATE TROOPER DESTROYS SITKA’S CRUISE REVENUE BLABBING ABOUT BEAR ATTACKS.

  I shake my head as I put my car in gear and head back to the training center.

  She better not print anything I said. It’s not like I actually have a lawyer lined up to deal with it if she does, but hopefully my threat scared her enough to shelve my comments.