Charlie was gazing down the old path up on the left side of the hollow that wound its way to the bottom of the cliff and then up to the Taylor place, parts of the pathway remarkably intact despite the flood, when he saw the bear rise out of the brush and gallop up the path. Brown or black, he couldn’t tell from this distance. It looked kind of gray, and out of focus. Larger than the norm, a good eight hundred pounds, and well over four feet at the shoulder.
Then the bear appeared to rear on its hind legs, leaning forward as it ran. Charlie squinted but couldn’t see any better. He’d never seen a bear do that before. Running almost like a man.
It took Charlie a good hour to get back to his truck and on his way again. For a while all he could think of was how hungry Buck was going to be. He didn’t want to think about a bear around Simpson Creeks.
When Charlie Simpson was driving into town that morning, still shaken by his experience in the woods near the Taylor place, he saw Hector Pierce wandering across the field behind Inez Pierce’s rooming house. The old man was feebleminded certainly, ever since the big cave-in in ‘53. Four men had been buried alive in that, and Pierce the only one to survive—intact, except for a piece of brain missing, left somewhere back down in the mine. But even a man as feebleminded as that deserved a little freedom now and then, not being cooped up in that third-story room all the time like his sister Inez seemed to want. So seeing Hector Pierce out in that field, staggering around, hairless scalp and baby like skin shiny as metal in the morning light, arms out and touching everything he passed, seemed to Charlie something perfectly right and proper, a kind of righting of past wrongs. He found himself waving to Hector, smiling when Hector waved back, and driving on to the store feeling just a little better.
Chapter 4
Alicia and Michael were playing down by Sloan’s Lake with the family’s two dogs: Ben, an Irish setter, and Josef, an unusually small German shepherd. Reed watched them for a long time, taken with the progress the two children had made in getting along. When Michael first came, he wouldn’t have anything to do with Alicia—she was just a little kid who cried all the time, got in his way, and frequently got him into trouble. Both Reed and Carol knew that jealousy was operating at full force here. In Michael’s eyes Alicia was both the “real” child and the baby who got most of the attention. And since Michael obviously hadn’t gotten enough attention when he was a baby, that must have really hurt.
They’d worked with Michael for a long time on the jealousy, letting him be younger than he actually was if that was what he needed, trying to give him the attention he had missed as a baby, holding him as much as possible, reading him bedtime stories even when most of his friends thought they were too old for that. Reed had participated fully in all of that, and in fact enjoyed few things more than reading to Michael in the evenings. It was something Reed felt very proud of; he had made a real difference in his son’s life.
Michael was playing catch with Alicia now, being careful not to throw the bright red ball too hard, saying encouraging words when she did anything even vaguely accomplished. Reed smiled. Michael was growing up fast. He looked at his wife.
Carol leaned against a pine tree, her arms folded across her chest. She was smiling, too, until she glanced over at Reed and noticed that he was watching her. She turned to him with a worried look on her face and walked over to where he was sitting.
She sat down in front of him, blocking his view of the kids. “Enough being the proud daddy, admiring his kids…” She smiled. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I love you.”
She grinned and grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him to her lips. “I love you, too,” she mumbled into his neck. Then she pushed herself away, holding onto his shoulders so that he had to look at her directly. “But you’re avoiding me. Something’s bothering you, or there’s something you want to tell me. What is it?”
He grabbed her around the waist and twisted her around so that she was facing the children too, his chin resting on the back of her right shoulder. “Look at our children, wife,” he said with mock gruffness. “Look at Michael; see how he takes care of his little sister.” Michael was holding Alicia up so that she could see a sea gull on one of the trees more clearly. Both children wore red Windbreakers of the same shade. Alicia’s had a down-filled hood. “Aren’t you proud of him?”
“I sure am… I’m also proud of the proud daddy, Reed.” Then she twisted out of his arms and stared at him again, examining his face. “Tell me. It’s that phone call you got, isn’t it? I heard the phone ringing from the office, but I was too mad at you to answer it, even if it did wake you up. Was it the phone call? Is that what’s bothering you?”
“Yeah…”
“I should have answered it, Reed. I’m sorry…”
“The phone call was for me, Carol. Stop feeling bad about something that you had nothing to do with. You always..,” He stopped, looked at her, and grinned. “Sorry. But there’s nothing you could, or can, do. My problem.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
He found himself looking at his children again. His children. His wife. The core of normalcy, the one thing solid in his life. “It was a call from back home. There’s some trouble; I… I probably need to go back there for a week or so and take care of things.” He looked up at her. “Some problems with my father’s estate.”
She held his hand. “Who was it that called?”
He stared at her. “My… Uncle Ben.”
“Oh… you haven’t seen him in a long time. That’ll be good for you to see him. And it’ll be good for you to see where you grew up; it’s time.”
“Yeah… I think it is. Seeing Uncle Ben, Charlie Simpson… it’ll be nice.”
“Reed… can we go with you? I’d like to see where you grew up.”
“No.” He looked at her quickly. “Sorry… but I think I’d probably better do this by myself. I won’t be there long. A week at the most, I guess.”
“I understand. Of course.”
But Reed knew that of course she didn’t. He’d never told her about his past. About his father. About his family. She just knew they’d been killed in a flood while Reed was somewhere else. He hadn’t even told her he’d been running away from home at the time. He just couldn’t bring himself to tell her the story.
“You be careful, okay?”
Reed looked at her, at the tightness around her mouth, and wondered if she knew, if she sensed something. But that was impossible. “I will,” he said automatically, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions. “I promise.”
“Is there anything more you want to tell me, Reed?” Her eyes were bright, intense.
“I could be better… at having a family…” he began.
“You do fine.”
He raised his hand. “I know, I know. But I’m not always good at being an adult. I think maybe going back there, seeing where I grew up, trying to dig out why I am the way I am… I think I’ll be a better adult. Things’ll be better for all of us.” What he could not say was that he was afraid not to go back. That if he didn’t go back, his childishness might foul things up so badly between them there’d be no fixing it. If he didn’t go back, he might not have his solid family anymore. His security.