The Bear: A Novel (18 page)

 

 

 

Epilogue

Algonquin Park, 2011

I can
hear my brother breathing. I step out of the canoe and look to the island. In the slanted August sun, it is just as I remember—a mat of needles on the ground, the warm scent of pine, and the sound of a lake licking the rocks. There are worn patches where tents have stood. Inside a ring of stones, the fire pit holds the remains of a burned marshmallow. I expect them to be sitting there, waiting.

“Alex?”

This was his idea. Sometime after Grandpa’s funeral, he said he wanted to build a cairn for our parents on the island where they died. It must be easier for him, as he doesn’t have any memories from our lost days in Algonquin Park, only the things he’s learned and been told. Still, I couldn’t let him come alone.

“Yeah, Anna?”

“Quit hogging all the air.”

Alex reaches down, a large, veined hand, my dad’s size. His hair is cut short and streaked with white, like Mom’s used to be, from a summer spent climbing in the mountains. Blond eyelashes, blue eyes; he picks up a stick, and I’m glad we are here together. I want him close. I’ve had the same nightmare about this island ever since I can remember. It starts when the attack is almost over. I am lying in the plants, the place where my mother must have died. The bear stands over me with a cruel look in his eyes. I know he wants me dead. I try to move, but I can’t. He ducks his head to my chest. Jaws rip at my skin; they crack my bones, and he tugs the guts out of my body. He scoops my heart up into his mouth and chews. The blood drains from my veins. Soon the world goes black. I am not scared to die, but what terrifies me is that I won’t be around for him. For Alex.

Alex pulls the canoe up and we walk to the clearing where our tent was pitched.

“This is where you last saw Mom?” he asks.

“No, not here,” I say, looking away. “I’m not sure.”

“You can’t remember?”

My parents were talking. I stuck my head out of the tent and heard Mom laugh. Her ponytail hung down in a silhouette against the water. White teeth. Tanned skin. Alex was rolled up in his sleeping bag, a warm little thing with fluffy blond hair and dimpled cheeks. We were four. A family of four.

“No—I know,” I say.

“Where was I?”

“Beside me, asleep in the tent.”

“You remember that?”

“Yeah. You were snoring.”

“I snored?”

“Some things haven’t changed.”

“So what did Mom say?”

“I’ve told you that part a hundred times.”

“Tell me again.”

“She lay with her arms and legs spread out like an angel. Her skin was as pale as the moon, like she had swallowed it whole. She told me to get you into the canoe.”

“Was she hurt?”

“She said she loved us.”

I turn away from Alex and toward the beach. The lake breathes in its bed of rock. I look out and the sky reaches out over a stand of trees on the mainland and something on the other shore catches my eye. It’s a mound of grass and sticks about one hundred meters across. An old beaver dam in what must be the exact spot where our canoe landed after we paddled out.

“Remember how we were found by the warden?”

“Yeah?”

“Somewhere there.” I point. “On the mainland.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“It’s a beaver dam. We were found near a dam.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Overgrown? I’m sure that’s it.”

“I always thought it was really far away. Just right there?”

“Just there.”

Alex studies the mound. “Explains a few things.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve always wondered: Why them and not us? We were little kids and would have been the easier prey.”

“We will never know exactly why.”

“That’s what I mean. ‘Why’ is missing the point. The bear could’ve just swam across and got us, but he didn’t.”

“He spared us.”

“No.” He tilts his head and whispers. “He was full.”

Alex breaks the long silence by wading into the shallow water and picking up a rock. He inspects it, throws it away, and picks up another. This one he keeps, and I realize he is building the cairn. The next rock he tucks into the crook of his arm. Soon he has too many to hold.

“Come help.” He passes me the armful. “Where should we build it?”

I look over at the green plants. She might whisper my name.

“There?” Alex is watching me. “That’s where she died?”

“Yes.” I can barely say it.

“How much more haven’t you told me?”

I stack the rocks. He hands me a chunk of granite. I roll it over in my hand and look for a smooth side to make sure the pyramid will be sturdy. I make a base first and then start piling rocks to get the height. One rock has a pink hue, like the blush of a cheek. Another has a white seam, a tooth. We work in silence. Soon we have a small cairn of granite and quartz. It’s just a foot high, but it will hold firm through the winter. I hand a smaller rock, the size of an egg, to Alex. It has flecks of silver. He puts it in his palm and holds it tight. He uncurls his fingers and lets it catch the sun and places it on top.

I want to tell my parents everything, starting from the day I woke up in the hospital to the moment today when we pulled up to the island in the canoe. I want to tell her about my recent heartbreak, the scar on my knee, and about how I was the one who taught Alex to ride a bike. I want to tell about my nightmares, but I don’t say anything. I wrap my arms around my shins and put my eyes down. My eye sockets make a perfect cup for each knee. Alex is the one who speaks.

“Mom? Dad? I love you.”

I stay silent.

Finally Alex stands up. “We should get going.”

I hear him scrape the canoe against the pebbles and push it out. He’s right. It’s time to go. The afternoon is getting on, and we don’t have any camping gear. Alex sleeps out in the wild all the time, but I never do. I grab my paddle and wade in. After a second the water finds the mesh of my running shoe and seeps through. Alex is in the back of the canoe.

“Get in the front,” I say.

“I’ll paddle you home.”

“No way. I’m your big sister. I steer.”

“My turn.”

“Nope.”

“Fine. See ya.” He uses the tip of his paddle to push the canoe away from the shore. One stroke from a long arm and the boat is moving fast, pulling something in my gut. He is leaving. I am one.

I feel the heat from the sun, the branches of the pines wave, the needles crunch underfoot, and the island tilts to make the water sway. I can smell the bear.

“You okay?” Alex says, turning back, the joke over. He gets out, pulls up the canoe, and puts a hand on my arm to steady me. “You are not okay, are you?”

“I might need a minute.”

“It’s my fault you came.”

“Just wait?”

“Okay.” He nods. “What are you going to do?”

I don’t answer, because I don’t know. He reluctantly gets back into the canoe. He dips the long paddle in and sculls his paddle to keep the boat in place.

I walk to the cairn and the spot in the plants where I last saw my mom. It’s where all my nightmares take place. I lie down and put my foot to the edge of the rise, just like hers was. It feels as though I’m lying in her outline. I stay perfectly still. I can see the branches from a tree nodding quietly in the breeze. The sky is a deep blue with only a small wisp of cloud making its lazy way south. I close my eyes, and I can hear the soft rustle of the branches, the water licking at the shore. A small animal scurries farther away. The afternoon sun warms me. And then it is silent.

The bear is standing over me. There is no expression in his eyes other than a vague interest in food. He tugs at my chest and pulls his head up with my heart in his mouth. I feel the beats slow. The blood drains from my veins, but he only rolls my heart around on his tongue, looking bored. He spits and it falls back into my chest. And I know that he’s just a dream I made up. I remember everything as it was—the stench of bear from inside the cooler, claws raking at the metal sides; Dad’s severed foot with his shoe still on the end, and the thin red veins shot through my mom’s eyes. Snarls of memories rise to my chest and feel like they might devour me, but then I hear a hollow thump.

My eyes pop open, and I slide them to look to the side. I am awake. I see Alex in the canoe. The shaft of his paddle knocks against the aluminum loud enough to sound like a drum. Head turned the other way, he dips the paddle into the water and steers the canoe in a lazy drift. Lying on the rise in the ground, I can see him. And that’s when I know that Mom could see us. If she was still conscious when she was lying here, and if her eyes were open, she would have seen me luring Alex into the canoe. She would have heard the clang when I threw the cookie tin into the boat. She would have caught sight of Stick’s small body wriggling into the canoe. Maybe she saw that I got into the canoe after him and started to paddle with my hands. Maybe she knew that we got away.

I would like to send a heartfelt thank-you to my editor, Sarah Murphy. Also to Reagan Arthur, Amanda Lang, Karen Landry, Allison Warner, Kristin Cochrane, Nita Pronovost, Nicola Makoway, Liz Foley, Michal Shavit, and Denise Bukowski for bringing this book to life. And to my family and friends Wendy Cameron, Susannah Cameron, Amy Fisher, Jim and Mary Fisher, Dany Chiasson, Sarah Wright, Olivia and Max Wright Sinclair, Jim Bull, Emily Sewell, and Erin Mulligan.

Claire Cameron’s first novel,
The Line Painter,
was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime first novel and won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service. Cameron’s work has appeared in the
New York Times,
the
Globe and Mail,
and
The Millions.
She worked as a wilderness instructor in Ontario’s Algonquin Park and for Outward Bound. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.

The Line Painter

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