He stood there for a time, puffing at the cigarette, a habit he had quit many times but could not master. Before him, the enclosures lay arrayed in their wide curving loop on the slope of the mountain. From the gate he could see nearly all of it: the cages shining with silver light, the jagged silhouettes of giant pines and furs rising everywhere against a night sky in which the Milky Way appeared as a clear bright spillage of clustering stars. Across from him stood the office trailer, inside which he had slept for many years before his uncle moved in with his girlfriend and left him the travel trailer, and uphill, on his right, he could just make out the edge of the big shed that housed the refrigerators and freezers, the tools, the snowmobile.
It was Majer he wanted to see most of all but the bear was asleep in his den at the center of that great loop of cages, as he knew he would be, and so he snuffed the cigarette and dropped the butt into his coat pocket and then walked a slow circuit among the other enclosures, pausing to look in on each animal as he passed: Napoleon and Foster, their quilled bodies trundling slowly across the expanse of their cage, noses sniffing the air at his approach; Baker in his den, napping, only the raked claws of one forepaw visible; the twin martens swirling along the branches that crisscrossed their enclosure. The remainder of the animals asleep or awake, depending on their species and activity level, but all safe and secure. The two bald eagles silent. The turkey vulture as well. Of the raptors, only Elsie was awake. She hooted from her enclosure, swiveling her head as he approached, her great round eyes examining him with some mixture of interest and boredom, waiting until he passed before starting up her call once more.
These he had saved, had brought back from whatever deprivations had been enacted upon them, most often, like the moose he had lost, the result of collision with the various blunt and sharpened instruments of the human world — vehicles, firearms, fences, traps, poisons — and whatever sense of unease he had carried back from Ponderay, back from Muletown Road and that single rifle shot, back from the dream, dissolved slowly in their presence, his feet moving along the fence lines and those animals nocturnal and active running their noses along the wire in investigation of his scent. He stood by each and spoke in low, quiet tones, telling himself what he already knew: that the promise he made was a false one. There are times when you must become the instrument, when you must deliver a living, breathing thing to whatever heaven exists for such a creature. To the heaven of the moose. And the fox and the badger and the bobcat all watching him with their eyes bright and shining under the shadows of the black trees, watching him without comprehension, but he did not ask for such a thing. He only needed them to be there, and there they were.
When he came to Zeke’s enclosure, he stood at its edge, watching the darkness for a long time until the wolf appeared, drifting forth from the shadows of the trees like a silver ghost and pausing only to squat and urinate and then to sniff the sticks that lay strewn upon the ground, rocks and dry pine needles, after which the animal dissolved again into the shadows from which it had come, its three-legged motion like the flow of some hobbled ghost.
He spoke now into the absence that the wolf had left behind, telling him that he knew which side of the fence he was supposed to stay on and thanking him for the reminder. The palm of his hand against the chain link. He told him that they were still looking for a companion wolf, a female, but that they had been unable to find one suitable. Then he told him that he would not give up, that they would find a mate, a partner, that he would no longer be alone. Words into a vacancy, the wolf somewhere much deeper in the enclosure, perhaps watching him; perhaps not.
He did not know how long he stood there, but after a time he unzipped his jeans and urinated a long, steaming stripe a few inches from the outer edge of the fence. Then he turned and walked back up the path through the birches to the trailer and, at last, to sleep.
HE RETURNED to the rescue just past dawn. Majer had not been out of his den when Bill first walked the enclosures but the bear was awake now and stood upon the big rock over his swimming pool, staring down at the water as if a fish might materialize from its depths.
Hey there, Bill said. I came down to see you last night but you were snoozing.
The bear looked at him with its pale eyes and then walked heavily to the zookeeper door and lay its head against the small opening there.
Is that how it is? Bill said, but he walked to the door and put his hand through the opening and scratched the bear’s rough fur, the skull underneath a hard uneven shape. How we doin’, buddy? he said, repeating those words and words like them as he scratched, the bear shifting so that Bill’s hand scratched the top of his head and then behind his ears and then the thick fur of his neck, Majer’s breath coming short and loud with the pleasure of it.
Don’t get too excited, Bill said, smiling. He patted the bear twice on the head and pulled his hand from the opening, stepping back from the door. You ready for breakfast?
Majer looked up at him, still panting, his lips curled in a wide grin.
Dang, you’re a cheap date, Bill said. I’ll go get it. We got salmon from BTC.
He walked to the barn and opened the big sliding door. Straw dust circling in beams of light. He went to the bank of refrigerators and freezers and opened one and extracted a whole salmon and two heads of lettuce and dropped them both into a bucket and then returned to Majer’s enclosure and slid all of it into his metal feed box. Majer stood and watched him all the while, or seemed to, his blind eyes following as he moved, standing in his great silver-tipped bulk beyond the fence until Bill pulled the heavy counterweight so that the second gate slid up along its track. Breakfast time, Bill said, and the bear stepped through to eat, his bulk rocking slowly from side to side with the motion of his body.
The air’s chill was deep and sharp. Winter was coming. In the mornings along the birch path: bubbles flowing under shells of November ice. They would need to pull the water into the heated sections of the enclosures soon, for already the first task of the morning was breaking loose the bright clear windows that encased each animal’s drinking trough. How those sharp-edged shields glowed in the morning sunlight. Rime ice curling the office windows. Hoarfrost boxing the fence wires. By late morning the bunched needles would drip sunlight onto dark soggy earth, but there would be fewer such days now. He knew it. The animals knew it. All of them, in their ways, preparing for the snow. Bedding for the martens and for Zeke. The raptors scratching about in their nests, lining them with rags and tufts of cotton and dry leaves. Even Majer, despite his age, swelling in size, putting on the fat-weight that would get him through the four or five months of his hibernation. Soon he would disappear into the cave at the back of his enclosure. Months in the snowdark, not moving, his heartbeat and body temperature slipping down and down until it was nearly indistinguishable from death, silent in that darkness of hibernation for the months of the heaviest snows.
The lesson is that we all go to ground. Some by slowing. Some by quickening. Some by consuming more and doing less. Some by curling into their own dark interior places. Dying into the winter’s cold and clambering out of our dens when the snowstorms break and spring begins. Thin green seed leaves from black earth. Dwarf shoots. Spiral scales. The fascicles curl from the bud, and we clamber out of our dens sniffing the air for the scent of a meal.