Juggling Fire (15 page)
Nothing. Maybe humans had hunter noses at one time, but we haven’t needed them for centuries.
Do blind people develop a more acute sense of smell as well as hearing?
I walk on, noting where the river still flows some places in an open channel and some places over top of ice that is surging beneath the surface. Details are sharper in the cold air today; spruce needles on boughs and leftover birds’ nests in the crotch of willow branches stand out as if seen through my monocle. Back home, both stoves are full and the cache ladder is leaning against a nearby spruce tree so I can lift it easily back into place, but no passing creatures can climb into the cache. A kettle of water is hissing at the far edge of the cookstove so it will stay hot but not boil. A box of wooden matches, decorated with an eagle in flight, lies on the table where I can grope for it even after dark.
Loose matches are in my coat pocket too. At the point where we decide to return, I pull one out and strike the sulfur tip against a rock on a gravel bar where we once camped. I break off old-man’s beard and crumple it into a heap, hold the match to the pile and blow. Flames catch the lichen and then twigs and branches.
I pick the roundest rocks and juggle. In gloves, the rocks feel different. I need to concentrate more. I keep up a regular cascade until the fire is burning smoothly with driftwood. I try the “snatching from above” trick and the “behind the back.” Not enough flexibility with a coat so I shrug it off, stoking the fire even higher.
Before leaving, I push three straight sticks into the flames so only the ends catch fire. I pull them out, fire licking down the wood, and throw the torches toward the sky. I hear the
whoosh
of flame each time a stick flies. There’s a second when the fire is directly above my face. I force myself not to blink, and then their fire goes out.
I keep juggling with the charred sticks—obviously there must be a better way to keep them lit. Brooks curls by the fire and sleeps. I juggle until my feet, stuck in home position, begin to stab from cold. Then I chuck my torches on the bonfire. No need to douse the flames on a gravel bar with the snow falling.
Snow is falling in fat soft flakes that fill the sky, dancing like dust motes through a window.
On the way home I notice them.
Over my tracks, over Brooks’s tracks is another set of bear prints. The bear followed us downriver. He must have been standing in the shadows while I juggled. He was watching from the snow and Brooks didn’t even catch his scent. I cup my hands around my mouth and yodel loudly in the direction the tracks have taken. “Leave us alone, bear,” I say. “That’s enough.”
I’m starving when I get back to the cabin. I devour a spoonful of brown sugar, grain by grain, while I wait for porridge to boil: dry flakes turning to mush and spluttering to the surface only to be dragged down again into the bowels of the pot. I share with Brooks, even though I’d rather not. Hunger tears at my stomach. I drink cup after cup of black tea and read “The Snow Queen
”
out loud to make it last.
I’ve been forgetting about fairy tales. I read a page and lick my finger to turn it over, holding the book close to my face. I smell faint traces of must from the years the book lay in the cache while the winds from the passes blew through the open spaces between its log walls.
“The Snow Queen” is about a young girl, Greta, whose dearest friend, a boy named Kay, wanders off with the Snow Queen because he has a magic sliver of ice in his heart that makes him hard and cruel. None of this is his fault, Greta is sure. It’s the Snow Queen’s way of casting a spell.
Greta, of course, goes taking off in pursuit of Kay.
An old woman in a wooden cottage built into a hillside writes directions for Greta on a fish skin.
Back in the cabin I smell the paper again, and this time it smells like dry fish in a cold underground house. Of course, it could be just the general smell in the air from all the fish I’ve boiled here. I grab a stack of moldy paper and a pencil from a shelf. I know what this story says already. This time I’m going to write my own.
“For whom do you wander?” asks the bent old crone. “For whom
do you search?”
And then Greta, who’s taken leave of her senses in the warmth
of the buried home, remembers her sweet friend and the ice that
had lodged in his heart. It is time to be gone, to be searching once
again. She knows that’s what she came for, though she no longer
understands why. Maybe, since her friend left, she should accept
his decision and believe that’s what it is. After all, she has no proof
otherwise.
But in the end, she begs forgiveness from the old woman for
being unable to tarry. That very morning, before the moon sinks
below the horizon, Greta will journey, she’s decided, to the Castle
of the Snow Queen, far away toward the gray line of horizon.
As she shuts the old woman’s door, the wind grabs it and rips
the handle from her hands. Smoke from the chimney blows flat,
in a sheet, along the ground. Snowflakes, however, are not falling
but jump about like popcorn on a hot stove. Greta laughs and
catches several with her tongue before moving away from the
safety of the now invisible shelter onto the white trackless plain.
But as Greta ventures out from the mound containing the old
woman’s home, she finds caribou tracks, a sign that other creatures
have wandered this way. At first she sees only a few, then troughs
through the snow where great wild herds have trotted. Greta can
stay on these trails by the feel of hard-packed snow under her feet.
And as she wends her way down the invisible route, her thoughts
fly to her friend and his frozen heart and the wickedness of the
Queen who led him so far astray. As the night passes, creatures of
the taiga stare out from the storm so Greta sees only the shining
of their eyes for a moment through the swirling flakes of snow;
then darkness breaks about them.
Greta is cold but she is also content. There’s nowhere on
this Earth she’d rather be. Something in her heart answers the
wildness of the storm. How unfortunate, she thinks, that I am
seeking a friend who perhaps doesn’t even care to be sought. How
lacking in good fortune that this fierce beauty cannot penetrate
my own heart, that the fate of the old crone in need of a helper
cannot move me as does the fate of my long-departed friend.
Because that’s the question, I think: at what point should you just give up?
That night I dream I’m in a blizzard. On the horizon is a yellow light. Sky and earth are invisible. Without my boots planted in the snow, I couldn’t tell earth and sky apart. The air in between is crowded with falling snowflakes. I brush them from my shoulders, take off my hat and bang it against my legs. Dad is on the trail beside me, laughing as always. “Cold enough for you?” he says.
I wake knowing I have to look for tracks around the cabin, check if the bear has come back. I’ve never heard of a bear stalking a person this way. I’ve had enough, I think, enough of being scared.
All this time I’ve been frightened not so much of the bear, but of the panic, the horrible surge of terror I felt when he was near. Panic is instant; it can’t be controlled. But the bear’s not a monster; he’s a living creature. I can look at him and see him as just a bear.
If I look at him long enough and hard enough, I might still be afraid. But maybe he’ll feel like what he really is, a fellow sojourner on this Earth with a perspective all his own.
Before leaving the cabin, I fry up a huge breakfast of rice and jerky that I’ve marinated for days in water, brown sugar and spices. I’m starving all the time these days.
Really, I don’t want to shoot him, even after he hurt Brooks. I want that golden bear to dig out his den and hunker down to sleep while the snow drifts around his bed. I want him to grow thin and his heartbeat to slow. Of course, he has to fatten first, though not on me and not on my dog.
I’m going caribou hunting downriver again tomorrow. And the bear will simply have to stay out of my way.
That day we climb the mountain directly behind the cabin. I scramble, holding on to aspen trunks when it’s steep, up the slope to the ridge and then along it. A white powder from the aspens lingers on my hands, feeling soft like baby powder when I rub it in. Brooks barely limps. As always in high country, the world below is miniaturized. Though I scan thoroughly below us, I see nothing except an eagle and a flock of redpolls still in the trees. Whistling, I start back down, stones scuffling underfoot.
Directly below me, where Brooks is sniffing, a head shakes. I draw my father’s rifle and shoot over the head.
The bear was sleeping, hidden under an overhang. Before the echo of the rifle dies, he’s charging.
He stops before us. This time Brooks shakes behind my legs. I feel them vibrate.
I chamber another shell. My hands are shaking too. Nah, my whole body is trembling from the inside out.
“Whoa, bear.”
How can it be the same bear that Brooks harassed on the mountain, that I’ve glimpsed again and again?
But it is. I’ve never even heard of another with yellow striping its back.
Figure out why the bear’s charging, Becky told me, and that will tell you what to do. Is it an offensive or a defensive attack?
Words have fled from me; they’re streaming off like the wind from the peaks. There’s just panic now and the eyes of the bear and its hot breath and the snow crunching under his paws. He’s walking toward us slowly with head swaying. My eyes go from his mouth to his claws and back again. This time I’d run if I could. Like in a nightmare, my feet won’t work.
“Whoa, bear.” I say it loudly and clearly. Speak firmly but without yelling.
Brooks growls.
“Stay,” I order.
The bear steps steadily forward, legs slightly bowed out.
I peer down the barrel and line up the notch and bead. I inhale deeply and hold it in for steadiness. I can only shoot over his head once more. Then it has to be for real. The shot explodes into the autumn air.
But the bear doesn’t run.
“Scat,” I shout. My voice is as loud as the rifle it seems. Mom, I think. Please come. Now. Be here behind me.
Black lips draw back. The bear stands on back legs and snuffles his snout in our direction. Such an unusual hide would be worth a fortune. No one could blame me for shooting. It’s a level playing field here: The bear’s been stalking us. He’s injured my dog. He’s kept me awake at night.
Now suddenly it’s clear.
The forest about me is absolutely still.
I shoot.
I shoot at the ground before the bear’s massive paws. A scuff of snow flies up. In the next moment I lean the rifle against a tree trunk and grab my bear spray from my coat pocket where I’ve kept it warm. I pull off the safety clip, and this time I walk toward the bear.
Not away. I’m through with walking away.
“Stay, Brooks.”
Brooks stays.
The bear is still standing on his hind legs, watching me. I hear his teeth clacking.
“Enough, bear,” I tell him, low and deep. Another step. I’ve never felt so strong, so at peace. Why was I scared? Who has the best defenses here? It isn’t the bear carrying the gun or the gunpowder bangers or the pepper spray. He has teeth and claws and a fierce need to eat before he dens.
And I have a fierce need too: a need to live my life.
I step steadily forward, holding the red can of spray at arm’s length. And I have Brooks, wounded already. This time I’ll protect him.
I depress the nozzle, and capsicum pepper streams into the bear’s eyes and up his nostrils.
He snorts and tosses his head, dropping to the ground.
I ease up, not breathing. In this moment, I’m alive. Maybe I won’t be tomorrow, but I don’t care anymore. It’s a fine autumn day, sparkling with sun and fresh snow. Today while the Earth is turning, I get to be alive on it. And I’m glad.
The bear tears at his eyes with a front paw. His claws are knives ready to slice off my skin.
I spray again.
Whimpering like a dog, he lumbers off into the trees. I jump backward to the rifle, chamber a shell and with one motion, I shoot. I aim into the ground behind his fleeing rump, golden stripe metallic in the sunshine.
“It’s your own bloody fault if it hurts, bear. You could have let us be.”
He’ll get over it. He’ll be just fine.
And so will we.
Brooks presses nervously against my leg the entire walk back to the cabin. I can’t stop laughing out loud.
“The bear went over the mountain,” I sing…Dad went over the mountain too. I knew all along, I think, that I couldn’t find him or ever really know why he disappeared. All I needed was to know that he wanted to come home.
There’s not going to be any closure here, so I might as well just believe that he loved me, that he didn’t mean to leave me. So many fathers in this world would die for their children; mine didn’t even bother to stick around.
I can’t put any of it together. I can’t juggle those particular balls.
The blue sky today is enormous. We’ve got jerky and plenty of dry food, and tomorrow I’ll try caribou hunting again. Mom will be here—for the life of me I can’t remember how many days more until she comes.
I’ve written my own version of “The Snow Queen.” I know what happened to Greta, struggling valiantly across the tundra toward her old friend. She started to love the journey: the ice and snow and the troughs of caribou tracks and the endless stars and lights above.
I don’t know what the ending will be yet, but it will come. And when I finish writing, I’ll move on to the next story. And the next.
“And what do you think he saw?” I sing. “He saw another mountain, he saw another mountain, he saw another mountain and what do you think he did?”
Brooks bays along, almost collapsed against me.
“The bear went over the mountain,” I repeat. I stop. “Guess what, Brooks. I think he actually did.”