'A blog about living close to the earth as experienced by one girl.'='viewport'/> Francesca Whyte - mothersisterloverme -: October 2014

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The Bear

We walked past the greenhouses to where Raleigh was waiting. The three of us climbed through the fence and began the steep climb down to the river. At the bottom of the hill lay a little bear. A small one. A baby. We looked down at him, curled up, maggots were burrowing away at a sore on his head, his eyes were closed. 
‘Ahhh, he’s still alive,’ I breathed out.
He was, his small chest was almost imperceptibly moving, and as we watched his eyes flickered.
Jacob bent down, looking at the bear closely. 
‘He has to die. He can’t be left like this. And look at his teeth! His awesome canines!’
‘What? Raleigh? Do you think so? He might just die on his own. It doesn’t seem like he is in much pain....?Jacob? Wait a second!'
Jacob was already scrambling back up the steep hill, and as I watched he began pulling at one of the fallen steel fence posts. It wouldn’t budge. He yanked and yanked, suddenly a small man on a big hill, slipping and sliding in the mud.
‘Raleigh! I could use some help!’ 
Raleigh sighed and without looking at me, heaved himself up the slope. After working the post back and forth, they soon had it free. Jacob slid back down the muddy slope dragging it behind him. 
I stood upstream from the bear, my feet sinking again and again into the sandy bottom, the current tugging at my ankles. As I stepped out of the river onto a flat rock I saw the bear stir. The soft water was running over his legs and I had a sense that he could be carried down stream at any moment, and be free of us, of us who had disturbed his last few moments, as he lay under his empty sky. And I looked at the little bear, his eyes flickering, staying silent, nearly dead, with almost a sense of peace, and yet here we came.
‘This bear’s fine Jacob, he’s calm now, he is almost dead. Let him be.’
‘You,' he panted as he reached the bottom and began dragging the post over the rocks towards me and the bear, ‘you don’t understand. He is not fine. It is more humane for me to kill him now...'
He began to position his weight in order to swing the post back over his head. I grabbed his arm.
‘No, Jacob. Jesus. Stop, let him be, let him die, and in a few days, come back and get your goddamn teeth.’
‘Yeah Jacob, I don’t think you should do this’, muttered Raleigh.
‘Get off me’. He shook off my arm.
I suddenly filled with fury, for it all, for not listening to me, for believing in himself at the exclusion of all else, of everyone else. I reveled in the true and undeniable sense of my soul finally bursting out of my long apathetic state. I yanked the post from him, staggering from the weight, he yanked back, and we pulled back and forth, until I couldn’t hold it, and he fell, sitting into the shallow stream.
‘Leave it Jacob.’ A smile traced across my face. 
Furious now, he stood, and picking up the post, he swung it long and back over his head, landing it smack on the crown of the bear’s head. I stood for a  moment, entranced by the violence, and by how much I completely hated him at that moment. A cracking sound rang out over the forest, and the bear’s body jerked, before it let out a horrible bawl of pain and surprise. I shuddered as Jacob swung back for one more.
I turned and looked back up the steep path to the house.
Jacob, now sure the bear was dead, tied his bandana over his mouth and nose, and bent over and began wrenching and cutting at the bear’s mouth. 
I had to get away from this person hacking into the bear’s jaw. I couldn’t see where Raleigh was and didn’t care. I started scrabbling up the hill, holding onto tufts of grass, my feet trying to grip in the mud. I could still hear sound of knife on bone as I crested the ravine and ran back to the house.
Afterwards, he lay the four teeth carefully in the sun, saying nothing, and I drove into town for food with some of the others. I got back late, and found out he'd gone to bed. 
Later in the night, I stood outside the fly, breathing in the cool, wet air of the Californian forest, I could hear him stirring, waiting for me.  
We lay in our old tent, with the familiar smell of salty bodies and warm plastic, and I did hesitate, it is so easy to stay, to stay. But only I knew all my hours, of wanting this, of wanting these moments of mine to finally come to me. And I knew I was free to do it now. He was warm as he always was and we shared our last sleep in the small tent.