"Pheasants rarely turn on you."
"I mean, did you ever get lost or anything?" she said.
"Me? Pathfinder?" I said. "No, I didn't. I'd been in the woods all my life. Besides, the dog always knew how to get home."
"Did you shoot anything else?" Susan said.
"Sure, antelope, elk, deer, nothing dangerous unless it fell on you."
"Never anything dangerous?" Susan said.
"Ran into a bear once," I said.
"A grizzly?"
"No, a black bear, big enough, 150 pounds maybe, bigger than I was, for sure."
Chapter 10
We were bird hunting, my father, and me, and the dog, in an old apple orchard that hadn't been farmed in maybe fifty years. You had to go through bad cover to get there: brambles and small alder that were clumped together and tangled. My father was about thirty yards off to the right, and the dog was out ahead, ranging the way they do and coming back with her tongue lolling out and her tail erect, checking in, and then swinging back out.
All of a sudden I heard the dog barkâhalf bark, half growl, kind of hystericalâand she came loping back, stopping and turning every few yards to make her hysterical bark/growl, and then she reached me and stood with her front legs stiff and her tail down and her ears flattened back as much as long ears can flatten. She stood there and growled and the hair along her spine stood up. Must be a hell of pheasant, I thought. And then I saw what had spooked her. It was a black bear and he had been eating the fallen apples in the abandoned orchard. The apples had probably fermented in his stomach. Because he was clearly drunk. He was standing upright, swaying a little. The dog was going crazy, growling and whining, and the bear was grunting. I had bird shot in my shotgun. It might have annoyed the bear. But it certainly wouldn't have stopped him. But I didn't have anything else, and I was pretty sure if we ran, the bear would chase us. And bears can run much faster than people. And I didn't know what the dog would do.
So I stood with my shotgun leveled, hoping that maybe, if he charged and I hit him in the face, it would make him turn. The dog was going crazy, dashing out a few feet and barking and snarling and running back to lean hard against my leg. Everything seemed to move very slowly.
And then my father was beside me. He hadn't made any noise coming. Later he told me he heard the dog and from the way she sounded, he was pretty sure it was a bear. He had a shotgun too, but it was no better than what I had. But he also had a big old .45 hog leg of a revolver that he always carried in the woods. He took it out and cocked it and we stood. The bear dropped to all fours and snorted and grunted and dipped its head and stared at us awhile. Then it turned around and left.
Chapter 11
"My God," Susan said. "What did your father say?"
"He said, âDog's no good for birds for the rest of the day and we probably ain't either.' So we went home."
"And he never said what a brave boy or anything?"
"He said I was smart because I'd lived to hunt another day. Then we went home and sat at the kitchen table with Patrick and Cash and I told them about what happened. Cash got up and got a bottle of scotch from the kitchen cabinet and four glasses. Then my father poured scotch in three of them and some Coke in the fourth. And we drank together."
"You'd acted like a man," Susan said. "So he treated you like a man."
"In his way," I said.
Susan smiled.
"âThat brown liquor,'" she said, "âwhich not women, not boys and children, but only hunters drank.'"
"William Faulkner," I said.
"Very good," Susan said. "For a man with an eighteen-inch neck."
"I told you they read to me a lot."
She said it again, "âNot women, not boys and children.'"
"Sounds sort of sexist, doesn't it?" I said. "Ageist too."
"Maybe we can have his Nobel Prize revoked," Susan said.
"Good thing was, that whenever I was in trouble, I'd think about that bear and it helped."
"Because you were brave then?" Susan said.
"I guess, although to tell you the truth, I really think more about sitting around the table drinking soda while my father and my uncles drank their scotch."
"The ritual," she said. "More than the event."
"I guess," I said. "I thought a lot about it when I was in the woods with Jeannie."
"Jeannie?" Susan said. "In the woods?"
"It wasn't what you think," I said.
Chapter 12
I was hanging outside the variety store with Pearl and some guys when Luke Haden's car pulled up at the stoplight, with Jeannie in the front seat. I had never seen her riding with her father before. She saw me through the rolled-up window and mouthed the word HELP at me. HELP. HELP. I started toward the car and the light changed and the car moved forward.
There was a trash truck behind it, much slower to move.
"Pearl," I said. "Go home."
Then I stepped up onto the back of the trash truck. There were plenty of places to stand and plenty of places to hang on. We used to ride the trucks a lot. See which of us could get the furthest before some cop spotted us and pulled the truck over and made us get off. I knew from experience that the drivers normally had the right-hand rear-view mirror set wider so they could see the next lane, and, therefore, they never saw us. I stayed on the right-hand side of the truck, peering ahead at Luke Haden's car. It wasn't much of a car, a big old Ford sedan, with cardboard taped over the back where the rear window got smashed in. It had been maroon, maybe, when it was new. But what with dirt and rust and stuff it was a little hard to say what color it was now.
The car turned right, onto River Street. I knew that River Street was short, and as the truck slowed at the intersection, I jumped off and ran downhill after the car. When I got to the end, the Ford was parked on the side of the road, empty. There was a path that led to the river. I went down it, moving slower, being more careful. At the end of the muddy path was a little jetty with a couple of rowboats tied to it. I heard the sound of an outboard motor. I stepped out onto the jetty and looked. Jeannie and her father were in a bass boat with her father in back at the motor and Jeannie sitting sort of hunched up in the front.
I stared after them as they disappeared around the bend. I felt something nudge at my leg. It was Pearl; she must have followed the trash truck and tracked me down River Street.
"Okay," I said. "I can't leave you here."
I got into one of the rowboats and gestured Pearl in after me. She sat up front, and we pushed off after them.
There was a single oar in the boat and it was broken, so I had only a short handle with a blade. It wasn't much use, but I was able to get the rowboat out into the middle of the river, where the current took over. Pretty soon, the sound of the motor faded. I used the broken oar to steer. I wasn't going to catch them at this rate, but maybe I could find where they went. Besides, I didn't know what else to do. And if I found them, then what? All I had was a jackknife. I didn't know what to do about that either. So I just drifted, following Jeannie down the big river, under the dark arch of trees that grew out from both shorelines. I felt like I was in a tunnel, without much choice about where I was going. And with no clear idea of what to do when I got there.
Chapter 13
"How old were you?" Susan said.
"Maybe fourteen," I said.
"Weren't you scared?"
"I was terrified," I said.
"You couldn't tell the police or your father?"