I took a few quick steps and then turned abruptly around to catch him off guard.
He was still approximately the same distance away. When he noticed that I was facing him, he did an almost graceful 360-degree turn.
Hard to explain what got into me, but the bear’s antics amused me unreasonably — perhaps it was the release of tension — and I broke into a near-hysterical laugh, which he mimicked in his bearish way almost to perfection.
I decided not to be afraid of him — he had probably wandered off from a traveling circus — and I invited him, gesturing my intent, to join me. To my surprise, he refused and we continued walking in single file as we had before.
Weary of my long-running private dialogue, I tilted my head to the right and talked to the bear over my shoulder. I told him that after losing Molly, a loss that seemed to recapitulate itself, I had found it difficult to respond to other women. He acknowledged my lugubrious remarks with the occasional grunt.
Eventually we reached a clearing. Ahead in what seemed like a stage set for a town was a compound made up of institutional brick buildings. There was no immediate sign of life, but I thought I noticed a machine gun emplacement on the roof of one of the two-story buildings.
Though I had never seen the place from the outside before in daylight, I had no doubts as to where I was.
Clapping me on the shoulder as he went by, the bear scampered into the deserted clearing. I called to him to come back moments before a machine gun serenade welcomed him to the neighborhood.
I watched him lurch awkwardly into the woods, a howl of surprise preceding him. There was nothing I could do for him. Aggrieved at the loss of my companion, I veered off in the direction I had come, seeking other options.
97th Night
The world teetered on the brink of light when I woke. The others were already going about their morning routines, Bobby chopping firewood in the yard, Mina boiling water, wrestling with encroaching nature in the kitchen. I felt imprisoned in their routines.
I dressed in a black t-shirt and faded jeans, the clothes alongside the bed, and put on my old New Balance running shoes, which were showing signs of erosion.
I had a crust of bread with honey and a cup of herbal tea before announcing to Mina that I was going for a run. She said nothing, wore a ragged smile.
It was a partial lie for which I felt the barest whiff of guilt. I was going for a run, but I had, you see, no intention of returning.
I took the southern path this time, the one Mina had warned me against, noting that it could be dangerous while making a point of offering no particulars.
“How do you mean dangerous?” I asked.
Her answer was to roll her eyes.
“No, please,” I said, “tell me what you mean. What’s so dangerous about the southern path?”
“I’ve only heard rumors,” she said. “It’s the way things are, you know that. The world wherever you go, it’s a dangerous place.”
We kissed goodbye. I took Bobby’s broomstick with me as protection against the unspeakable.
The sun came through the scrim of leaves, dappling the path making it all but impossible at times to see directly in front of me. When blinded by the sunlight, I tended to slow my pace until visibility returned.
Despite these periodic slowdowns, I felt I was making good time as if some kind of standard needed to be met. The only worry I had was that I was not the least bit worried. I knew from a history of such experience that exhilaration carried with it promises of comeuppance.
Sometimes it seemed to me that during my periodic moments of blindness there had been something or someone there, haloed by the light, standing in my way, though when the glare passed whatever I had sensed was gone.
I put it down to a susceptibility to delusion perhaps set off by Mina’s warning.
But this time when the sun receded there was clearly someone there, a smallish woman in a black dress, perhaps a nun’s outfit, standing in the center of the path some ten feet away.
I was pleased to see another human being and I greeted her in a friendly manner and asked her where she had come from.
At first she said nothing, smiled nervously, then frowned. Then she mouthed the word “food,” though it could just as easily been the word “fool.”
I had some food and water with me in a ratty backpack, but hardly enough to satisfy my own burgeoning hunger. As a way of changing the subject, I asked her if she lived nearby. Perhaps she was actually some kind of nun and there was a monastery not far from here.
She smiled slyly, pointed again to her mouth, meaning whatever it meant, that she was hungry, had taken a vow of silence, was unable to speak.
I tore off a crust from the chunk of bread in my pack and held it out to the woman, who made no response.
“It’s good bread,” I said. “I assumed when you pointed to your mouth you were telling me you were hungry.”
When I least expected it, she grabbed the crust from my hand and shoved it in her mouth.
In seconds, the crust, which she disposed of as if she were grinding mortar, was a memory and she pointed to her mouth again.
So I broke off another piece of bread and handed it to her and then another after she obliterated the second piece with even greater dispatch than the first.
In short order, she had consumed the sizable chunk of bread I had been saving for my lunch but she seemed unsatisfied, pointing once again to her mouth, her gloved hand, which she held out toward me, trembling with expectation.
“That’s all there is,” I said, holding out empty hands.
“You’ve been so kind to an old woman,” she seemed to say. “Still, I know there’s more.”
Reluctantly, I produced the hardboiled egg which had been nesting at the bottom of my pack, pretending to be surprised at its presence. She disposed of the egg without removing the shell.
And still she was unsatisfied, her hand pointing again to her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking out the pack to show her there was no more food.
She picked up one of the books that had tumbled out and squeezed it into her mouth, disposing of it in three chomping bites.
The other, which was one of mine, she sniffed at, nibbled at the edges and then returned.
“Didn’t we once dance together?” I asked her.
“That was my sister,” she seemed to say.
Licking her lips, her tongue black with ink, she studied me for a protracted moment and then in apparent slow motion pirouetted. I didn’t see her disappear. One moment she was there and the next she was gone.
I had a carrot in the pocket of my jeans, but I hesitated reaching for it. It seemed to move about restively as if it had a life of its own.
I had the path to myself again, but I hesitated moving on.
My first impulse after the hungry woman had disappeared was to return to Mina and Bobby, whom I suddenly missed or imagined I missed, abruptly aware of being alone in the world.
As a matter of will, I continued in the direction I had been going.
I made a point of shortening my stride so if I decided to return, which I promised myself was not going to happen, there would be a less demanding trip back.
I hadn’t gotten much further when I arrived at the southern path’s end, came to a crossroads in the woods. Having no basis for choosing right over left or left over right, I stood in place for the longest time, weighing the pros and cons of my next move, glancing one way then the other.
98th Night
“What do you think you’re doing, honcho?” a voice called to me from behind a bush. “Didn’t you see the signs? There’s a dress rehearsal of a war going on at this site.”