Chapter 4 #2
The bear comes at eleven.
I’m in the cabin. Not sleeping. Not even close.
I’m lying on my bed staring at the ceiling and thinking about her waist under my hands.
The sound of her laugh against my chest. How long it would take to walk to the tent.
What I would say when I got there, which is nothing, because I would say nothing, because this is a professional arrangement between two adults who have a three-day agreement that expires tomorrow.
I am not walking to the tent.
Then I hear it. Something heavy in the tree line. Branches cracking. The distinctive huff of a large animal moving without urgency.
I’m up. Rifle from the rack above the door. Flashlight. Boots on, not laced. I know the sound. Black bear, following the creek down from the ridge. They come through once or twice a summer. Usually they pass through.
I open the cabin door and she’s already there.
Standing on my porch in a tank top and sleep shorts. Camera bag in one hand. Boots in the other. She didn’t freeze. She didn’t scream. She heard something large outside her tent in the dark and she grabbed the two things that mattered and she moved.
Her hands are shaking. Adrenaline, not fear.
“Stay here.”
I go out. Flashlight sweeps the tree line. The tracks are near the creek, fresh, heading north. The tent is untouched. I scan the perimeter twice. Nothing. It’s moved on.
I come back. She’s inside the cabin now, by the woodstove, arms crossed over her chest. Her legs are bare and she’s cold. The temperature has dropped twenty degrees since sunset and she left the tent in what she was sleeping in.
“Black bear most likely. It’s gone.”
She nods. Her hands are still shaking. She grips her own elbows.
“You’re not sleeping out there tonight.”
She doesn’t argue. She argued about the bed.
She argued about the three days. She argued about the farrier call.
She doesn’t argue about this. I watch her not argue and I understand something about this woman that Marissa was trying to tell me: she won’t ask for help.
She’ll stand in my cabin in a tank top and shorts with shaking hands and she will not ask.
One bed.
I’m not sleeping on the porch because whatever was out there might circle back. She can’t sleep on the porch for the same reason. There’s one bed and two people and I’m going to handle this like an adult.
“Take the wall side.”
She takes the wall side without comment. I take the outside. I don’t get under the blanket. I lie on top of it, boots off, flannel still on. A layer of quilt between my body and hers. Some boundaries need architecture.
The cabin is dark. The woodstove ticks. Outside, nothing. No bear. No wind. Just the silence of a mountain at midnight.
She’s on her side, facing the wall. I’m on my back, staring at the ceiling. There are fourteen inches between us. I know because I’ve measured it with my eyes. That is the kind of thing a man does at midnight when he’s lying next to a woman who smells like camp soap and pine needles.
Fourteen inches is reasonable. Fourteen inches is plenty of space. Fourteen inches is a professional distance between two adults sharing a bed because of a bear.
Because of a bear. I am in this situation because of a bear.
She shifts. Half an inch toward the center. She might be asleep. She might not. I don’t know which is worse. If she’s asleep, she moved toward me without knowing. If she’s awake, she moved toward me on purpose.
Twelve inches.
My hand is at my side on top of the blanket.
Her back is right there. If I moved my hand to the left, my knuckles would brush her spine.
I’m not going to do that. I’m going to lie here and think about the fence post on the east line.
The Morgan mare’s hooves. Whether I need to re-season the cast iron skillet.
The skillet is not helping.
She breathes. Slow and even. I can feel the warmth of her body across the gap like heat from the woodstove. It shouldn’t be possible at twelve inches. It is.
I don’t sleep.
Dawn comes slow. The window goes from black to gray.
The first birds start. She’s still on her side but she’s shifted in the night and her shoulder is bare where the tank top strap has slipped.
I’m staring at the curve of her shoulder like it contains information I need, which it doesn’t.
No shoulder has ever contained critical information. I’m looking anyway.
The last day. The deal is almost over. Neither of us has mentioned it.
I’m not going to mention it. If she mentions it, I’ll say fine.
If she doesn’t mention it, I’ll say nothing.
This is a reasonable plan. This is the plan of a reasonable man who did not just spend seven hours memorizing the breathing pattern of a woman he met days ago.
I hear her breathing change. She’s waking up.
I close my eyes. I pretend to be asleep. I have not pretended anything in six years. But a photographer with a wide mouth and mud on her boots is waking up in my bed and I’m not ready for her to know I’ve been awake all night.
I hate this.
And I have also never hated anything less.