Chapter 9 #2
Only a minute from the shelter, Zach paused. There was something on the snow ahead. He shielded his eyes from the early evening light cutting low through the trees.
About seventy-five feet away, below a swirl of a dozen shrieking crows, a figure bounded over the snow, long and dark and low.
As it wove through the trees it somehow remained vague even in patches of sun, reminding Zach of a sea monster drawn on an old map, serpentine and only half visible.
Its progress was too smooth to be the lumbering gait of a bear or a coyote’s trot, too undulating to be the feline advance of a mountain lion.
Too large to be a raccoon or pine marten.
The creature went brown to black to gold, slinking into the light, out of it, yet always indistinct as it floated swiftly atop the snow, growing ever more distant.
It stretched tall and—where was it? Had it really gone up, could anything climb a tree so swiftly, or had it flown, lifted into the sky, the—
“What’s up?” Russ said from behind, startling him.
“I thought I saw something. A…porcupine maybe? Only bigger. Faster. I dunno. I’m not sure. But I can’t see it now.”
Russ’s head tipped up to where the crows now roosted in the top of a tall pine. “You think whatever you saw spooked the birds?”
“Maybe. Or the birds spooked it?” The hairs on the back of Zach’s neck itched with sensitive certainty there were eyes on him, that the creature watched from the trees.
“Check it out!” Russ pointed a pole. “Tracks.”
A line of prints led through the snow in the direction Zach had seen the creature.
He squatted down. Each stretched nearly two inches beyond Zach’s mittened hand, oddly elongated.
Five short, knobbed, and tapering fingers extended, crowned by puncture marks left behind by what had to have been thick, pointed claws.
“Looks like hands, kind of.” Russ’s eyes searched the forest. “Weird. What could’ve made these?”
On their hikes, camping trips, hut trips, even looking down at animal tracks from chairlifts, Zach’s mother had familiarized him with the signs left by Rocky Mountain animals.
But he’d never seen anything like these.
The shape, the way the claws must have curved up above the snow before penetrating it, traced a creeping quiver up his spine.
“I don’t know,” Zach said.
Russ spread a hand next to a paw print. “They’re pretty big, bro. I bet it was a bear.”
“They’re hibernating. And bear tracks are bigger than this. Wider? And rounder. And whatever I saw? It wasn’t a bear.”
“How do you know? It could’ve been a little bear. Like a baby one.”
“It moved…differently. Smoother. And the color was different.”
“You’ve seen a bear before?”
“Of course!”
Russ’s laugh sounded nervous. “You know that’s not, like, normal?”
Zach shrugged. Everyone he knew had seen bears. They stalked through town regularly searching for food and garbage, lolled on haunches along mountain trails stripping sarvisberries from bushes.
“Bears are everywhere here in the summer.”
“Are they mean?”
“Mostly, no? Like one time a bear fell asleep in a tree right on Main Street! Everyone was down below taking selfies all day. She looked more scared than any of us. But, yeah, sometimes they can be scary? Like last summer, my sister was ahead of us on the trail and surprised a bear.”
“Whoa! What happened?”
As Zach described the scene, described the bear, he breathed deep to try to still his heart as the memory of Bonnie’s scream pierced him.
He’d been teasing Bonnie, calling her a puppy because she kept sprinting up the trail then back down to let them know what lay in store before taking off again, whole body wiggling like she was wagging a tail.
And then that scream. His mother moving so fast uphill it was as if she simply vaporized from beside him.
Zach turning the bend to find Bonnie in her arms and slowly backing away, eyes on an enormous bear ten feet ahead that swiped a pigeon-toed paw at the ground before charging toward mother and daughter.
Existence chiseled down to a pinpoint that was Bonnie, their mother, and that charging bear, Zach certain he was about to witness the bloody annihilation of everything that mattered to him. His own impotence to arrest the scene, to help, opened a chasm of hopelessness.
But the bear stopped a few feet short, then strained its neck toward his mother and sister and released a disorienting yawn-like yowl.
His mother carefully picked her way backward down the trail, repeating in a low, loud voice: “I am human. My name is Grace. I am a person.”
Bonnie wrapped around their mother so tight the two melded into a larger being. The bear’s dark eyes, gone tiny and vicious, tracked them. The paw swatted up more dust, and the thing made a snuffling, huffing sound as the group disappeared around the bend.
Grace kept Bonnie in her arms, checking over her shoulder as they descended to be sure the bear didn’t change its mind and come after them.
Finally safe enough to think, Bonnie wept when her mother at last set her down. “I’m sorry, Mama! I didn’t do it right. I didn’t do the rules.”
Generally, Zach knew, bears were skittish or indifferent toward humans, preferring to avoid them altogether.
But if you surprised one, came upon it close and unaware, it might lash out.
If you surprised a bear, you were supposed to back away, speak deep but loud.
Make yourself big by lifting your arms, especially if you were little.
You didn’t scream, collapse, or run. Those things, when it came to a black bear, were most likely to provoke it.
Grace kneeled on the dirt and pulled Bonnie into a hug.
“It’s okay, Bon-Bon.” Her fingers were white at the knuckles where her hands gripped Bonnie, eyes vacant as if picturing what could have happened.
“Sometimes when we’re scared our bodies just react.
Think of this as practice. Now you’ve practiced.
So if there’s a next time, you’ll do better, I promise.
And there are worse reactions than calling for your mama, little one. ”
“A mountain lion would’ve been even scarier,” Bonnie snuffled, as if reassuring herself that it all could have been worse.
“Yes.” Grace released Bonnie and they continued toward home. “Or a moose. Moose hurt more people than bears and mountain lions combined.”
“Moose don’t look as scary,” Zach said, his breathing at last beginning to slow, the world around him finally beginning to expand again.
Their mother shrugged. “You can’t judge anything by looks.”
“Was that the scariest animal you’ve ever seen, Mama?” Bonnie asked.
“No.”
“What was?”
“People,” Grace said flatly.
Zach laughed. “People don’t count!”
“Sure they do.”
Zach and Bonnie exchanged an eye roll, and catching it, their mother said, “I’m serious. We talk about nature being cruel, but it isn’t, not really, because nature isn’t aware. Animals are driven by instinct. People, though? We make choices. Which means there’s nothing as scary as people.”