Chapter 7 - Bear’s Break
Chapter 7
Bear’s Break
Friday
Bear Buchanan went into his shop an hour earlier than usual. The lights weren’t even on at the bookshop but Bear had work to do. Funny thing about broken washers or toasters, or even printers, customers seemed to think that no matter what day they brought them in all shattered, he should have the machine fixed by closing time on Friday.
When he turned the light on, he always smiled. His projects were lined up waiting to be reborn.
First up today was Nancy Tyler’s old mixer whose beaters wouldn’t beat together. The mixer was yellow, telling Bear that Nancy had had the thing thirty years or more. Bear would clean the motor up and put new beaters in, then charge her five dollars.
Next on the operating table was old man Adams’s lawn mower. He mowed his grass year-round, and in the summer heat mowed well after dark with only a headlamp for light. Because of that, he decapitated at least one sprinkler head a month. Bear thought about charging Adams double. Half for replacing at least one blade and half for having to listen to Adams complain about his wife.
Mrs. Adams only came in once. Sweet lady. She asked if he fixed hearing aids. When he said no, she giggled and turned around. He watched her walk to the old Ford her husband was sitting in. All the way she was shaking her head and smiling.
Bear worked through lunch but stopped long enough to pick up a few books from Noah. Then, like every Friday, he locked up at four and disappeared. Everyone knew he turned off his phone once he left town. Bear let everyone assume that he farmed on weekends, or rested, or read.
In fact, Bear didn’t care what folks thought he did. Whenever his daughters left for school or traveled with aunts every summer, he was a ghost on weekends.
People gave up asking questions. After all, they’d reasoned, if it was interesting, he would have talked about it.
As he headed out of town, toward not his place but Eliza’s Holly Rim, he grinned. The clouds might promise rain, but he didn’t care; it was Friday, his favorite day.
A few hours later Eliza laughed when he relayed the secret to the Adams couple’s perfect marriage. She never heard a harsh word from him thanks to her broken hearing aids.
Bear opened the loft doors so they could see the autumn sunset. He loved lying on their blanket in the loft. As the sun dropped slowly, so did the temperature. He knew she’d cuddle in beside him. He might be a foot taller, but somehow they fit together. He generally liked folks for the most part, but she went to town only when she had to. They’d never had a date. No dinners out. No movies. No county fairs. No town meetings. No weekends in a big city.
Neither cared. They had each other.
“I love you,” he whispered as he kissed her head.
“I know.”
Bear pulled her closer. She was already his, just like he was hers. He sometimes wished they would be together all the time, but, like a wild animal, she resisted being tamed. She couldn’t be forced into a life she didn’t want and he couldn’t leave his herd. He rolled on his side so he could see her face. “Tell me one of your family’s stories.”
Once, she told him her great-grandfather, a full-blood Apache, wrote down on paper all the legends and myths about her land. The Secrets of Holly Rim, he named the little book. He wrote down things like how they farmed in the moon’s light and how he slept on the rim the night he took a wife so he could show all the stars what a lucky man he was.
Bear didn’t care much about the stories; he just loved her whispering in his ear as lovers did.
Her grandfather inherited the handwritten book and made copies for the next generation.
But years later one of the traveling preachers declared it “the devil’s work,” so his little books of stories about the rim were destroyed.
In the darkness of night, Eliza told a few of the tales as if they were great secrets passed down in the silence of midnight. Bear wished she remembered more. Like where the tribe disappeared at the turn of the century, but the few elders who remembered took the secret with them, and Eliza had been a little girl when the stories were passed to her.
Gently he picked his precious love up and carried her as he left the loft. Once he reached the ground, she cuddled into his arms and rested her head on his chest. There was no need to talk; they both knew what was about to happen. They’d eat dinner by a low fireplace in her log home, then she’d read what she’d written in her newest children’s book. Her stories were not dark like the Apache legends. Her tales were poems about nature or gentle myths about talking animals for children she’d never meet.
Bear always smiled when Cora Lee bought one of Eliza’s books. His teacher-daughter was reading her first-graders the stories written by his forever-lover.
Every Friday when Bear and Eliza were alone, they’d talk about everything and nothing. She knew about nature, and history, and the stars. Bear said little, but her stories calmed his soul. When he was with her, all the world was right.
Rain tapped on the metal roof as he mentally walked through their life together. No one knew how much she meant to him. The little girl who, in his mind, had followed him to war. The woman who came to him without a word. A lover, a friend, the only one who would ever hold his heart, all wrapped up in Eliza.
When the fire died, she’d take him by the hand and pull him toward her bed. Like everything surrounding Eliza there were no games or teasing, just a gentle coupling.
Friday night was heaven and he lived for that one night. One night. Twice would have been too much in a week. Less would be starvation. Once in a while, when the desire built to a burning need, they shared the dawn together.
He’d usually slip away before she woke. She’d remain in his thoughts, but he couldn’t return. The rules had been set the first night years ago.
All Saturday and Sunday Bear worked his farm. He had to be exhausted so he wouldn’t be tempted to return to paradise.
He asked her to marry him every time he touched her. His way of telling her that she was his world.