Hey, don’t mind me, Bill said to that retreating shape. I’m not talking or anything.
But the bear was gone from view now. All at once Bill was gripped with the sudden and impossibly strong desire to call out to him, to pull him back to the fence wire, but instead he simply stood there watching the rock-strewn space that was the grizzly’s home, his voice talking into the emptiness that remained.
THE SNOW kept on and the power finally failed just before noon, an event heralded only by the electric drill going silent and Bobby calling, There goes the power. He again listened for the ring of the phone but the sound did not come and did not come. At one point he checked for a dial tone and was relieved to hear that familiar buzzing and he hung up the receiver and waited, his mind wandering over the possibilities with a rapacity that made it hard to focus on any of the myriad tasks at hand.
It was Tuesday and he was scheduled to take the truck back out to Bonners Ferry to collect the expired produce from the two grocery stores there, both the Safeway downtown and the new grocery on the South Hill. He knew that he should send one of the boys as soon as possible, but when he saw the parking lot he wondered instead if he should tell the boys and Bess to leave for their own homes. At least six inches of snow covered the gravel road down to the highway. He would need to get the studded tires onto the truck if anyone was going to get all the way to Bonners and back up the mountain again and there was still so much work to do clearing and cleaning and getting all the enclosures ready for the winter months. He had taken to salting the fence lines to keep them clear of snow and had dug drains to channel the runoff but every year they needed to be cleaned and redug and he had not even done that yet. And then there was supposed to be a run to Sandpoint later in the week to pick up expired meat. Each trip would take a half-day to complete and all while the snow continued to fall.
Nonetheless, he dismissed Bess and the two boys shortly after one and stood at the end of the path by the mountain lion enclosure watching them spin and slide out of the parking lot and into a haze of snow so thick that it had become like watching a television station fade into and out of range. Then he turned and walked back up the path, first to the office, where the phone was still silent, and then up through the birches to the trailer, no path now but a scattering of black and white trunks jutting up everywhere from the snow, no other vegetation visible at all. Everything white, blank, and empty.
When he reached the trailer he was shivering with cold. He turned the gas heater on full blast and stood before it shaking and holding his hands out before its feeble blowing heat. His pants were soaked through and after a few moments he sat on the edge of the bed and peeled them off and then stood again before the heater, turning slowly, his hands cold and the flesh of his legs pink and blotchy like chicken flesh, his entire body trembling. At some point he reached into a drawer and removed his long underwear and a dry pair of jeans and pulled them both on.
The shivering slowed and finally stopped and in the stillness he turned on the radio and broke two eggs into a pan and scrambled them and then sat at the foldout table and ate, listening to the news broadcast and flipping through a day-old paper. The weather report in the paper said nothing of an impending storm but on the radio it was the only news, a dark and endless swirl of clouds spinning down from Alaska and over Washington and on across the North Idaho panhandle. Get ready folks, the radioman said. It’s a big one. From the tiny window the open field behind the trailer was a haze of white through which he could occasionally see a glimpse of the granite boulders a few dozen yards away and from which, on a clear day, he could have seen the ridgelines extending out through the trees to the north and east.
There had been moments during the day when he convinced himself that everything would be fine, that Rick would simply dissolve back into his memory, that the Fish and Game would change their minds about the rescue, that he and Grace and Jude would form a family in the forest with Majer and the animals all around them and that they would be happy in their lives. But this was not such a moment. In the snow he saw only terror: his own and that of the people and the animals he loved.
He told Majer all of this when he returned to the rescue after lunch, talking to him softly and asking him to present various body parts to the gap they had welded into the cage door. A paw. An ear. His grizzled mouth. Each time Bill told him, Good job, buddy, and passed a marshmallow through the bars to his waiting lips. He told the bear about Grace, about how she had found him, how she had been the one to ask him out on that first date and how he had been so surprised that he had coughed out a fine spray of coffee against the snow.
That’s an interesting response, she had said.
Dang, he said. That really took me off guard.
Apparently.
Um, yeah, he said. I’d love to.
Good. I’ll pick you up.
Really?
Yeah. Is that a problem?
Not at all. Are you going to pay for it too?
I draw the line there.
Sounds good, he said.
They had both been smiling, standing not far from where he now sat next to Majer. Do you remember that? he asked the bear. Right about where that jack pine’s coming up through the snow.
She had come out to replace the previous mobile veterinarian, a dour old man Bill had little relationship with outside of the animals, had visited the facility four or five times in that first month. After the first visit Bill found himself already looking forward to her return.
Within a few months they were dating regularly and she introduced him to Jude, four years old at the time. Grace told Bill that the boy’s father was essentially gone from their lives, living in Spokane, a man who had had repeated affairs and essentially abandoned all interest in Jude once she divorced him and moved to Idaho.
I don’t know what to say about that, Bill told her.
Just don’t ever cheat on me and we’ll be fine.
Deal, he said.
He had felt lucky. That was the word for it. As if something had changed for him, and indeed something had. He had awakened one day into the life he was supposed to lead all along, a life to which every bad decision he ever made had led him without his realizing it, an idea that he did not even believe in, that he would have thought ludicrous had it been spoken by someone else. And then Rick had returned and with it everything had scattered into unknowable and unanswerable questions. He did not even know if Grace would want to see him again. Maybe she would call later to tell him that it was over. Maybe that was how it would end.
Seems like I just figured out what I was supposed to do. You know? And here I am. The bear looked at him with longing. He slid another marshmallow through the gate and the bear took it with gentle distended lips. Well, buddy, Bill said, I don’t know what’s gonna happen now but I gotta tell you, you’ve been a good friend all these years.
The bear looked at him and to Bill’s surprise a wave of sadness and concern seemed to pass over the animal’s face.
Oh don’t give me that look. You’ve gotten all the marshmallows I’m gonna give you today, he said. The bear put his ear up to the window and Bill scratched it through the gap in the bars. Good bear, he said. Good good bear.
When the muffled sound of the phone came, he leaped off the stump and went careening through the snow and into the dark office, crashing into the desk and lifting the receiver. Hello? Hello? he said.
Well, it’s done, Grace said.
What’s done?
Let’s just say it’s good to be friends with the sheriff.