Claire first saw the brown, barren-shaped shabby old female bear when the builder were laying out the dimensions of her new house, small enough to spare the pines that circled the site, big enough, Claire thought, so that as she aged—she was seventy-six—she could expand to fill every corner, immerse herself in every mountain view, lay her footsteps in a weaving mesh across the hardwood floors.
While they were talking, the bear passed behind them. Claire caught an odor, a crease in the chill air. She turned. The bear was departing in a leisurely way up the hill, rolling along, her massive shoulders and forearms oaring her great mossy body. An old bear, one that had survived in the mountains—Claire’s mountains—for a long time.
And showed no sign of departing. And must not be driven out,
The builder was afraid, and headed for his pick-up. Claire did not feel threatened; she seldom did, even on dark side streets in nighttime cities, a staunchness she took no credit for, attributing it to her height, her physical strength, and the unusual fact that she had never been assaulted.
She knew her passion for the bear did not spring from the generalized love of animals provided for in the local animal shelter with its bevy of middle-aged female volunteers. She did not wince when she saw a dog run over on the road. Her passion was for this bear, which luck or some even more mysterious power had put in her path. She needed the bear, not for protection in the dark woods, but for risk.
But there were other people living on the mountain road, city people who would be frightened by the bear, especially after she overturned their garbage cans. Claire imagined they might tell their children exaggerated tales of the bear’s menace. Not that the bear was without menace; that was her chief charm.
For Claire, menace granted the glamour of living alone. Without menace, her life was flat, bare, merely a failure to make a less demanding arrangement.
Perhaps no one else had seen the bear, although her leisurely ramble across the hillside implied mastery of the neighborhood. But Claire was aware of the bear trap, a massive iron cage Fish and Wildlife provided when homeowners were frightened. She thought no self-respecting bear would enter a cage.
But it was baited. Due to the long drought, the bear probably hadn’t found enough to eat during the summer and fall to go into hibernation. She was still foraging in mid-winter; her hunger might betray her into the cage.
She thought of sending a petition to her neighbors but suspected that they would ignore or deride it. Her best chance lay in keeping the bear close at hand. She would not put out food that might corrupt her into dependency, like all the other animals, dogs, cats, even goldfish, that would limited by their need for human help. The bear, like the twisted and gnarled pinion trees Claire loved, survived alone.
One midnight the bear paid a closer visit. The dog woke Claire, barking furiously, rushing from one big window to another. The barking seemed at first to come from some distance, but eventually the clacking of the dog’s nails on the floor roused her. She turned on the light, then turned it off again. The full moon shed a dense impenetrable glare. She lurched out of bed and went, shivering and clasping her arms, to the nearest window.
The bear was sitting on the porch three feet from the window. She’d torn the bird feeder down and was disassembling it, removing the top from the bottom as though expert at the task. Then she upended it and began to scoop seed into her mouth. She moved slowly, with intent, while Claire stood mesmerized and her dog lunged and roared.
And then the bear turned.
First, she threw the feeder aside as if dissatisfied. Then she revolved slowly on her massive hindquarters until her long yellow bottlenose pointed at Claire’s window. Then she simply stared.
Claire stared back. The animal’s eyes were small and yellow under furrowed brows. She seemed to recognize the woman shivering in her nightgown. There was only a thin layer of glass between them and a few feet of porch, which the bear claimed by sitting on it.
They stared at each other for a time, unmoving.
Claire remembered her first years in the mountains when she had worn a Colt revolver strapped to her belt in its big leather holster. She’d never learned how to shoot it, although she carried it loaded. Packing a firearm concealed or unconcealed was legal in that state, yet people walking their dogs on the hiking trails pulled aside to let her pass. She had expected admiration, or at least respect—a woman taking care of herself! But the fear in those strangers’ faces eventually shamed her.
She’d decided to return the revolver to the man who had given it to her, a recluse who lived in a stone hut in a remote valley. He was the first man she’d met after her move West. She asked him to meet her in the coffee shop in town.
As he crossed the room toward her, she’d read the way he had aged in his carved face. Yet they were pleased to see each other, as though the anger and disappointment of previous relationships had finally washed away.
She laid the revolver on the low plastic table between them. He slipped it hastily into his backpack along with the box of ammunition.
“I gave it to you because you were living alone in the mountains,” he explained.
“I don’t need it,” she said. “Now I have the bear.”
He did not ask her what she meant.
The bear returned the next midnight after a heavy snow. Claire had not filled the birdfeeder, which the arrogant handsome Pinion Jays had emptied, and so the bear did not linger; she passed rapidly. In the morning, Claire looked at her footprints in the snow, big as pots, deeply indented.
So the bear was huge, larger than she’d noticed before.
Or was this a second bear?
It did not seem likely. Wild life was disappearing from the mountains; even the coyotes had fled, or were poisoned. Claire knew that she was contributing to the destruction—another escaped city dweller pushing her new house into the edge of the woods, without concern or even knowledge of the intricate life she was displacing. There was nothing she could do about that, but she could preserve the bear close at hand.
She kept her birdfeeder filled from then on but the bear did not reappear. Perhaps she had finally satisfied herself and rambled into hibernation.
The winter was long, and very cold. Shortly after the solstice, on one of the first lengthening nights, the bear reappeared along with a faded, crooked moon.
At once Claire felt the need to approach her, to draw her within the circle of her protection.
Not in a reckless way; she would always keep a pane of glass between them, but perhaps the animal would recognize her presence as acknowledgement, even respect.
The bear emptied the bird feeder in her methodical way and passed along.
On the day after Christmas when her grandchildren had left, Claire decided to set up a feeding station for the bear. She would not put out enough food to corrupt her—only a snack, an invitation.
First, she placed a hunk of suet on the porch, and waited. As though lured by the meaty smell, the bear lurched into view that same night. She nosed the suet, then scooped it up with her paw and jammed it between her jaws. She chewed heartily. Her back was turned to Claire in her nightgown at the window but certainly she knew her benefactor was there.
Next Claire added nuts and bits of leftovers, but the mixture seemed less pleasing.
After nuzzling it, the beat flung it aside with the back of her paw. It was suet she wanted, fat, gross and sweet.
By now Claire’s dog had grown accustomed to the bear. She only growled, low and deep, sitting with her ears pricked a good ten feet from the window.
In January, the bear disappeared again. Claire felt forlorn. She was afraid some hunter had trapped or driven her off.
She began to wait for spring.
To fill the long, cold months, she allowed a man she’d met at the ranch where she took roping lessons to visit her in the evenings, after the angry orange winter sun went down. They were short visits at first, but then they lengthened. For a long time, Jason had only wanted what he called a romantic friendship. The winter nights were featureless without the bear, Claire’s bed was cold, and Jason had the warmest, dearest little feet. His small feet made him seem harmless, a bit of comfort offered with no consequences.
He was a cowboy, miniature, though his small size did not diminish his swagger. In his worn boots, he came clumping to her door every now and then, counting on her to be there and to let him in. She was, and she did. His eagerness for what Claire knew she could provide was endearing. In March, she realized she was falling in love. The friendship was no longer casual and attained the necessity and intensity of romance.
By late March, Claire had almost forgotten the bear. Then one moonless night, the bear lumbered up again and sat on her porch, waiting expectantly. Claire had not put out any suet; she’d stopped buying it, thinking that phase was over.
She felt ashamed, having failed to fulfill the animal’s legitimate expectations. Now it would disappear for good. Tormented by the thought, Claire opened the door and pushed her dog out. It whimpered and clawed to get back in. The bear pricked her small ears. Then, as the dog fled, she lumbered onto all fours and sped around the house.
The dog screamed once. And Claire screamed too. Later, when she opened the curtains just an inch and peered out, she saw something battered and dark lying at the edge of the woods. She spared herself a close examination. By daylight the corpse was gone.
“I sacrificed my dog,” she told Jason when he came that evening. “The bear was hungry and I didn’t have any suet.”
Jason was pulling off his boots. He didn’t seem particularly shocked; the dog had never accepted him. “I guess if you love the bear, you have to love everything she does,” he said, and Claire remembered watching Jason’s horse buck him off with a single lurching leap. He’d been laughing when he got up off the ground. He hadn’t blamed the horse for being a horse, irritated and determined.
The nights were quiet after that. The bear kept away. Then the first pale crocus prized its way through the snow and out of the blue Jason asked her to marry him. After considering a long while, and although she loved him, she turned him down.
“You would civilize me,” she explained. “That’s what marriage does.” She knew this from experience.
He couldn’t deny it.
Ranny says
Love this
Kevin says
Claire was loaded for bear…
But as she bear witness to the beauty
And knew she had something to bring to bear
Then only did she she was better than the average bear ..