Chapter 2 - Bear’s Emergency
Chapter 2
Bear’s Emergency
Monday
Bart “Bear” Buchanan locked his repair shop on Main and headed out before his two daughters showed up to take him to lunch. Whenever his oldest, Katherine, wanted money, or needed anything from him, she always fed him first. His youngest, Cora, got dragged along for the event just like he did, because if there was anything Katherine loved it was an audience. While Katherine insisted on pretending she was concerned about his health, what she was really concerned about was his bank account, and right now he cared more about finding a very large cheeseburger than listening to her whine.
“Morning, Bear,” Noah shouted from the bookshop entry as he stepped toward the tiny tables. The bookshop owner set little bud vases with a bit of lavender on each table. “You headed out for an early lunch or would you like a cup of coffee this morning?”
Bart, who everyone in town called Bear, growled at the question, but he managed a one-sided smile. He knew he was a size bigger than most folks, with hands rough and scarred and more powerful than a man half his age. Some said his hands should be registered as weapons, but Bear just grinned as he waved at Noah O’Brien. The bookworm might be shy and a few months overdue for a haircut, but Bear saw him as an old soul. He was interesting, yet cautious. As if he wanted to sink into the woodwork rather than be noticed.
Bear slowed to talk to the kid and no matter how busy he was, he put in the effort to connect on some level. He’d learned years ago if you take the time to talk about nothing, a neighbor will be around when you need him.
“Nope, no coffee, Noah. Not even an early lunch. I’ve got to go pick up a broken refrigerator out on West Road. May take a while. I’ll try to fix it out at the farm so I won’t have to haul it in. If anyone needs me, have them leave a note and I’ll call them when I can.”
“Will do, Bear,” Noah said as he stepped back into the bookshop.
Bear frowned at the young man’s back. Someday he’d tell Noah to stop calling him Bear. That had been his nickname when he was a mechanic in the Army overseas. He had figured he’d go back to his rightful name once he mustered out, but somehow “Bear” stuck.
He growled again. That first year home, he’d lost his real name and his wife. Oh, she didn’t die, she just ran back to Germany and never returned. Bear had been in his early thirties like Noah was now, only he had two girls to raise. He wanted to work on engines, and his parents wanted him to farm. The only answer was to do both.
Three years ago, Noah O’Brien moved in next door to him. He was renting both the bookshop and one of the apartments upstairs. While Bear thought Noah was a nice guy, they had nothing in common. Most days they couldn’t keep a conversation going long enough to finish a cup of coffee. Bear was now in his late fifties, had served eight years in the Army, then came home a changed man, somehow broken, a loner.
Noah was the opposite. He had run away from home somewhere back east. Noah might be in his early thirties and talk a bit funny, but to Bear he was still wet behind the ears. A quiet man who seemed afraid to dive into life.
Between his farm and the repair shop, Bear worked most days somewhere, while Noah was just reading books every time Bear saw him.
“Maybe that’s his work.” He shrugged.
Noah rushed back to the doorway. “If your daughters ask where you are, what should I say?”
Bear fought down a few cusswords that were hanging on his tongue. “I’ll be out at Holly Rim.”
Noah said what everyone always said: “Holly Rim. Don’t get lost. I hear folks who go too close to the valley’s rim on that farm, get turned around and never make it back.”
Before Bear answered, the kid disappeared back inside like a cuckoo clock. For once Bear had told the truth—a truth that would even hold his daughters at bay. He rushed to his pickup, suddenly in a hurry to leave town. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He just wanted to drive to Holly Rim, where legends moved among the trees.
Deep in the rocky hills that formed the rim of the valley lay a rugged plot of land that one family had owned since the first settlers came to this part of Texas. A tale was told by the Apache, who’d traveled through the valley from their winter campsite to their summer hunting grounds. They said that sorrow walked among the uneven paths, and thorny holly grew as tall as trees on the west rim. Rain washed away the paths, and winds cut more trails as if to confuse strangers. Several tried to climb to the rim in the early days, but few did today. And some who went in, never came out. Forever lost in the winding paths and rocky cliffs.
He drove ten miles over the speed limit to get to one of the oldest homesteads in the county and he planned to take his time fixing anything Eliza Dosela needed fixing.
Bear Buchanan knew the legend well. His people had settled just below Eliza’s place near the ridge. All below Holly Rim was farmland as tranquil as the rim was wild. At the break in between the two landscapes, one lonely house stood.
He was in his teens when he first saw her. She was running near the fence. Her midnight hair flew in the wind like a cape. She was so small he thought she was a fairy for a moment.
Over time, Bear watched for her just so he could wave. It took weeks but finally one day, she waved back.
Eliza wasn’t yet in high school when he left for the Army. To his surprise, she was sitting on her gate by the road when he drove past on his way to boot camp. Both skinny arms were waving wildly as he slowed and yelled, “I’ll be back.”
Bear remembered feeling a loss for something he’d never really had as he watched her run on the other side of the fence. He liked to think she’d been waiting to wave goodbye.
He’d remembered her as more fairy than girl. When Bear had been in the Army, the thought of her kept him going when there was danger. His imagined his very own fairy watched over him from Texas. He’d never said her name out loud but she meant something to him.
One house a mile from his farm he knew nothing about. One girl innocent and free as he so longed to be. One memory that carried him through the worst the Army had to offer and brought him back to a place both mysterious and wild in his imagination.
Bear didn’t talk to her when he came home, but he waved when he passed her place and she waved back. For a while she was nothing more than a mystery. He heard her folks died while he’d been gone, but he probably wouldn’t have been welcome at the graveside funeral. Folks said she stood alone by her parents’ graves.
When Bear’s life had weathered to endless days of only work, she’d finally talked to him.
By that time, his wife had been gone for years, his daughters were away at school, and everyone in town either avoided him or started giving him advice on how he needed to live. Then, one day, she was standing by the west road tying a white tea towel on the fence.
He knew the signal for help and stopped.
They spent hours fighting together to get a tractor out of a ditch. They laughed at first at how hard the chore was, then they both yelled orders and cussed. When she tossed a dirt clod to get his attention, the fight was on. Two adults turned into children for a few minutes. Years seemed to melt away along with their worries.
As the day cooled, they ate sandwiches with mud caked on their faces. Then they lay in the grass to watch the sun go down in silence. His big hand took her small one. Neither said a word, but in that one moment both knew they’d never really let go.
He felt ageless that day and happy for the first time in years. Bear thought of that time as he drove toward her now.
No, he thought, I feel like I am still alive. When I’m with her I’m all ages. I’m a kid watching a fairy run. I’m going off to the Army with a girl crying as she waves goodbye. I’m a man helping a woman and loving that she’d allow me to. He took a deep breath and said, “A lifetime of short snapshots of living with her, loving her, of being hers.”
The day he finally touched her, mud and all, the bond became clean. He thought back to that little girl with black hair flying around her as she ran, and then of the fairy waving him goodbye from the fence with tears running down her cheeks. He should have stopped and held her before he left home. Now, he realized, he’d loved her even then.
In the war when he was afraid, he swore he felt her freedom and presence encouraging him to make it home. He promised when he finally got back, he’d tell her “thank you” for being with him.
But he hadn’t.
And today, whether they’d have a few minutes alone or hours, he’d make another memory and store it away in his heart.
He’d been with a few women, but none like her. She rested easy in his heart and his thoughts.