Emory’s Gift (20 page)

“Oh
my,
” she said, laughing.

I carried that laughter with me the rest of the day; it rang in my ears like the tinkle of a small bell.

That night at dinner my father stopped his fork on its way to his mouth and blinked at me.

“What is it, Charlie?” he asked me.

“What?”

“Why are you grinning like that?”

I hadn’t realized I was grinning, but I knew why. I was still hearing Beth’s voice in my head.

Oh
my.

My dad was pretty fidgety during the meal. “Charlie…,” he said at one point.

“Yeah?”

He looked out the window toward the pole barn. “We need to talk soon.”

And though I’d spent the past year craving conversation with my father, what I felt at that moment was only a sense of relief that he’d grown so unaccustomed to talking to me he could only feint at it. I didn’t
want
to talk. Emory was safe and Beth had forgiven me. My world was coming together perfectly, without analysis or commentary, and I didn’t want to jinx it.

The rain started up again. I was doing dishes when I saw a large black shadow lumber across the yard: Emory was coming in out of the storm. Across the creek, garlands of white steamlike fog rose in stark contrast to the dark evergreen trees—it looked like we were witnessing the birth of clouds. Emory seemed to regard the phenomenon with real appreciation for a few minutes before he turned and walked through the side door of the pole barn.

I felt truly happy.

Later that evening I fed Emory a nice frozen pot roast, just like a normal boy giving his dog a dinner, except that nobody had a dog that big. I didn’t imagine my father would be thrilled to see the pot roast go, either, but what was important was that Emory liked it and seemed to want to live with us in our pole barn now.

I crawled into bed when my dad told me to, but I wouldn’t have bet on my ability to sleep—my brain was just buzzing with everything that was happening. But almost as soon as I turned off the lights I winked out. The fatigue that had settled into my bones from the day’s physical toils had a marvelous, narcotic feeling to it.

A sharp crack of thunder broke me out of my sleep an hour or so later. The wind had kicked up and the rain was hitting the windows so loud it could have been popcorn popping in a metal pan. I drowsily lay in bed and watched the white light flare on my ceiling, not bothering to count the seconds for the thunder, though I could tell it was getting closer.

Then one of the strobes of white light caused me to sit upright in bed. Lightning flickered or burst, but it did not, not ever, trace a quick path across my ceiling in a tight white ball like a searchlight probing for enemy aircraft. Something entirely different had just happened.

I sat there holding my breath, waiting for the dancing ball of light to appear on my ceiling a second time, but there was no repeat. I slid out of bed and silently padded down the hallway and into the living room.

I felt more than saw my way across the floor and peered out the back window. There was nothing to see. I turned and went to the kitchen and looked out the side window over the sink, and that’s when I saw three beams of light, man high, bobbing along as a trio of flashlights ran across the yard to the pole barn.

McHenry.

chapter

TWENTY-ONE

I SHIVERED then, but I wasn’t cold. I knew I should do something but wasn’t sure what. I leaned forward and peered through the wet glass, watching as the flashlights converged on the side door of the pole barn. Their beams bounced off the wet metal sides of the barn and reflected back on the people wielding them, and I saw I was wrong. It wasn’t McHenry.

Dan Alderton, and his buddies Jerry and Gregg.

A flash of lightning illuminated them and I could see by their huddled postures that they were cold and terrified. They were four feet from the door and creeping toward it at what appeared to be about an inch an hour. Dan had his palm out to twist the knob, but at the rate he was going he wasn’t going to have it in his hand until sunrise.

Still unsure what I should do, I just watched. The flashlights were all aimed at the square of new glass in the upper half of the door, and from where I stood I could see that the combined beams were illuminating the other side of the pole barn, a blank, newly painted white wall. If they wanted to see Emory, they’d have to open that door, and it didn’t look to me as if they had the nerve.

I found myself smirking a little. I had never seen three such petrified people in my whole life. The thunderstorm, the rain, the wind in the trees, and their flashlights all combined to give them the spooks—and it couldn’t help that they were convinced that on the other side of the door was a creature who could catch and eat all three of them.

Finally Dan straightened, overcoming his fear. He took a bold step forward, and the other boys joined him. Okay, he could reach the knob now, if he wanted. They kept their flashlights aimed at the window.

Bang!
A flash of lightning came with a loud crack of thunder and as it did Emory suddenly appeared in the window, his huge face filling the space, his lips pulled back in a terrible snarl.

Dan dropped his flashlight, Gregg fell down, and even with all the rain I could hear the boys yelling as they backed away from that door as fast as humanly possible. Their torches swinging in the night, they took off in a dead run, scampering past where I stood with looks of abject terror on their faces.

After a minute or so my dad came into the kitchen to ask me why I was standing at the sink and laughing. I told him and he smiled at my description, but then he stood behind me and stared at Dan’s flashlight lying on the ground, its rays vanishing into the night, drops of rain flaring briefly as they fell through the beam.

“This could be big trouble, Charlie,” he told me.

I didn’t really see how, though, and fell asleep still smiling over how Dan and his buddies collapsed in dead terror in the rain. What could we have to fear from
them
?

We’d been back to school for more than a month now, and I guess the teachers found the whole experience so demoralizing they needed a day to themselves, so we had “in-service.” I didn’t care what it meant; for me it just meant “Sleep In Friday.” So I was surprised when I felt my father’s hand shaking my foot.

“I don’t have school today,” I mumbled at him, fighting desperately to stay asleep.

“I know. I took the day off work.”

I pulled the covers off my eyes and peered blearily at him. He was already dressed. My senses came alive one by one and I could hear rain falling on the roof and bacon sizzling in the kitchen. He gazed at me to make sure I was not going to wink back out on him and then turned and left the room.

After breakfast he told me we needed to go into town. We dashed out in the rain and jumped into the Jeep. I buckled in and gave him a questioning look.

“We need to get some food for your bear. I figure dog food’ll work if we get the kind that has some real meat in it.”

“Okay.” I liked the sound of it.
Your bear.

“Charlie.” My dad scratched his chin. I waited for him, the wipers squeaking a little as they rattled back and forth.

“I don’t know what this is, Charlie. I can’t explain about the bear. I guess he could be tame. Raised by, I don’t know. A circus?” He glanced at me, then stared back out at the road. “But that doesn’t account for what was written on the wall. It said he was a private in the Civil War. That he got shot, or wounded somehow, and then, and then he
died.
” My father’s eyes were fierce when they flickered at me again. “And now he’s back. From the dead.”

Cool.
That’s what I thought and that’s almost what I said, but my father’s expression was so grim I strangled the word in my mouth.

“With a message,” I reminded him.

He sighed and was silent for more than a minute. “Yes. Someone is trying to get us to believe that a bear wrote those words, that he is a Civil War soldier who has been reincarnated as a grizzly bear and has a message for us, or you, or somebody. A message from…” He frowned, not liking where his thoughts were taking him.

We pulled into the grocery store parking lot and stopped. Dad twisted in the seat and looked at me. “But Charlie, someone else had to have painted those words on the wall.”

“How?” It seemed ridiculous; who would do such a thing?

“We’ve never locked the pole barn. Anyone could just waltz right in if they felt like it.”

“His footprints were all over in the paint, Dad.”

He cocked his head at me. “You’re saying that if someone went into the pole barn, he did so while the bear was inside. A full-grown grizzly bear.”

Contrary to my dread expectations, I loved that we were having this conversation, I suddenly realized. I loved that I had Dad’s full attention and that we were working the problem out
together.
To be truthful, I’d actually just meant that the presence of bear tracks on the cement floor implied, to me, that Emory had been there when the paint can was opened, but I immediately saw Dad’s point. You’d have to be more than a little crazy to go into a pole barn with a live, trapped grizzly bear waiting for you inside.

“But, Charlie, a bear can’t hold a paintbrush. Those letters weren’t painted with paws; they’re too neat.”

“Okay.”

“What we’re probably dealing with here, the only thing that makes sense, is that the bear is owned by someone, his trainer, and his trainer wrote the words. His trainer wouldn’t be afraid to go inside the pole barn.” My dad was looking inward, nodding slightly, testing the theory and finding that it worked for him. “That’s it. There just isn’t any other explanation. It’s a hoax, and not a funny one. I catch the guy I’m going to have him prosecuted for trespassing and vandalism.”

There was still a little doubt in his mind, though; I could see it in his eyes. “We haven’t seen anybody around,” I objected. I didn’t like the idea that Emory belonged to some bear trainer; I wanted him to belong to
me.

The difference between my dad and me was that to him, the writing on the wall was the most important and perplexing of all of the developments, whereas to me, the point was that I had the coolest pet ever. I even was beginning to regret I’d ever shown my dad the Polaroid—those words on the wall felt like they were going to be nothing but trouble. I decided it was critical I never mention what I had witnessed in person, which was Emory etching his name into the riverbank with his paw, something else his “trainer” could have taught him to do, I supposed. “If he did have a trainer, it’s like he’s abandoned his bear, right? He couldn’t turn up and claim him now.”

My dad picked up on my tone and gave me a direct look. “There’s something else. Whether Emory’s tame or not, he’s foraging like any grizzly would this time of year. It won’t be long before he needs to return to the mountains to hibernate.”

“No,”
I protested.

“Yes, Charlie. That’s what they do.”

“Why can’t he hibernate in the pole barn?”

“That’s not what he needs. He needs a burrow and he’ll be leaving soon to find one. All we can do is fatten him up.”

I turned away from my dad and faced the grocery store. I did not like this conversation anymore.

“I’m just telling you the truth, so you’ll be ready. You need to hear this.”

The anger that flowed through me then was cold and ugly.
I needed to hear it. I needed to be ready.
But when my mom was sick, neither one of them told me the truth. Neither one of them said she was dying, that she would one day slip into a coma and die with my father pressing his face into her blankets and making sounds as if he was breaking apart. No, they lied to me; they hid it from me; they said she was going to be okay. They let me live in denial until my father’s howls of anguish rang down the hospital corridor and I rushed in from the room where some well-meaning adults had kept me playing inane card games, shielding me from the truth even with the final seconds ticking off the clock. The shock of it all, the betrayal, the deceit, blindsided me when I saw her skeletal body motionless under those thin blankets and witnessed my father’s explosive,
selfish
grief. Never a thought for what was happening to me; that I had lost my mom. As he grieved, he grieved alone, shutting me out.

I jumped out of the Jeep and slammed the door in fury and ran to the grocery store, my feet making wet slapping noises on the pavement. The doors slid open and admitted me with a calm, oiled ease, not at all intimidated by my anger.

Naturally my father misinterpreted my expression and thought I was just petulant because I couldn’t keep the bear. He grabbed a cart and followed me down to the dog food aisle and did what he always did when the emotions ran high between us: he removed himself from the equation, turning away, making himself busy by carefully reading the ingredients on the dog food bag.

“Meat by-products,” he muttered. Eventually he heaved several twenty-five-pound bags of the most expensive brand into the cart and then added stuff we needed, like milk and eggs.

When my mother grocery-shopped she kept me by her side and we snaked up and down the aisles together and I would be bored out of my mind. My dad, though, sent me on missions. “Bacon,” he’d say, and I’d fly off like a missile for bacon.

What I would give, though, for one more shopping trip with my mom. One more earnest discussion about how I needed to eat something besides sugar pops with sugar on them. One more argument about why it was fair that she buy a square of dark, bitter chocolate for herself for when she “needed it” but that I didn’t “need” a bag of Mars bars.

The grocery store looked exactly the same as when my mom was alive. Sometimes I resented that things could remain untouched by her death, hated that the walls didn’t crumble and fall in the outside world to match what was happening to me inside. And sometimes I was grateful for the gift of being able to stand and gaze at something so unchanged it was easy to believe my mother was just around the corner, that if I just stood there she would walk up to me, smiling.