[A short story for you today. New residents in an old, well-established neighborhood must observe the customs of the place. If they want to be accepted, that is. — FWP]
Andrew stepped out of the dense thicket of trees and into a clearing of sorts. About ten yards ahead stood a row of willows, regularly spaced. The intervening space was clear of any other woody vegetation. He approached cautiously and found that the willows lined the bank of a small river.
He strode to the bank and gazed down at the stream.
The river was about ten yards wide. It flowed westward through a respectably deep gorge. In the dry September weather, its flow was serenely quiet. Its opposite bank was lined by a similar row of willows. The trees stretched eastward and westward to the limits of his vision.
The uncanny orderliness of the scene, amid such untamed woodland, made him smile.
Nice.
He sat by the bank, pulled his notebook and pen out of his backpack, and made notes.
Andrew had inherited the land a few weeks earlier. It was only the third time he’d set out to explore it. It would take a while before he could feel that he knew it well, for there was a lot of it: more than a square mile of wooded New York wilderness. He’d resolved to cover it all, to familiarize himself with all of it, and to make a record of its salient features. The river certainly qualified as such.
It’s as pristine and gorgeous as the rest of this place. No wonder they fought so hard to keep it out of the state’s clutches.
He still lacked an explanation for why his parents had purchased the land in the first place. They’d bought it when he was a teen. Three years before their deaths, they’d paid to have a patch cleared and a large rustic cabin built on it. It had to have been a considerable expense. Yet he could not remember either of them ever announcing that they were headed to the cabin for a weekend, or even a day. Certainly they’d never brought him there.
Neither his brother Devin nor his sister Rachel had ever said anything about it. Though the will had made it their joint property, Andrew’s siblings had swiftly deeded it to him. The use and management of it were on his shoulders. It had made him wonder what they knew that he didn’t. Yet they’d said nothing more to him, whatever they might have said to one another.
His acquaintance with the land and the cabin had brought about changes he could not yet explain.
His decision to retire from wage labor at only thirty-eight came as a surprise to his supervisors, but even more so to him. The decision to terminate his lease and make the cabin his home had seemed to follow from it. Yet both decisions had come altogether naturally, as if they had been made by God and were only being announced to him on the spot.
I won’t starve without a salary. What I’ll do to fill my days, apart from writing a bit more, I still don’t know. Read, think. Wander around out here, I suppose.
There’s a lot of peace here. Maybe I can borrow a little of it.
Peace had come hard to him, ever since his adolescence. He’d tried to smother his disquiet with activity. His creativity and his gift for electronics had made him wealthy, but had done little to soothe his inner disquiet. Throughout his waking hours he remained acutely aware that he was a fugitive from his proper vocation.
What’s done is done. The priesthood is no longer open to me. I’ll come to terms with it, or not. Maybe it’ll be easier now, away from people.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out the paper bag, that held his lunch. He’d taken his first bite of a ham and cheese sandwich, lamenting that yet again he’d forgotten to add mustard, when the bear appeared.
#
The bear was typical for the New York woods: about two hundred pounds and shaggy black with a long tan snout. It walked on all fours to the riverbank in no particular hurry. Andrew laid his sandwich in his lap and sat as still as he could manage, acutely aware that he had left the cabin without a weapon. Should the bear prove aggressive, he would be maimed if not killed.
To his surprise, the bear merely sidled up to a spot beside him, just a few feet away, and lowered itself onto its haunches. It did not face him nor give another indication of having noticed him. It stared into the distance, as if it could see something beyond the river worthy of ursine contemplation.
After about a minute Andrew cautiously picked up his sandwich and took a bite. The bear turned to look directly at him, and he froze.
There was no suggestion of hostility in those brown eyes. The animal merely regarded him soberly. It was a gaze of the sort one might receive from a stranger in a tavern, the sort that silently inquires whether there’s any conversation to be had.
If we were at the Black Grape, he might make a comment about politics or sports. Bears must not take much interest in those things. Not that I know much about them either.
The bear’s gaze dipped to the sandwich in Andrew’s hand.
Oh, right.
He slowly extended his arm, intending to deposit it on the ground between them. The bear edged toward the movement, which caused him a frisson of fear. To his surprise, rather than snatch the sandwich out of his hand with its claws, the bear simply lowered its paws and waited.
It was an invitation that could not be misinterpreted.
Andrew laid the sandwich delicately on the ground before the bear. It reached for the gift with one paw, brought it to its snout and sniffed at it, then proceeded to nibble at it daintily. It took its time consuming the thing. When it had finished, it let its paws fall to its sides and gazed once more into the forest beyond the river. Andrew’s nerves began to subside.
Probably for the best that I forgot the mustard.
Perhaps ten minutes had elapsed when the bear rose and jumped into the river. Andrew recoiled from the splash the animal made, but otherwise remained as he was. Presently the bear clambered up the bank toward him, a large fish in its jaws. It laid the fish a couple of feet from where Andrew sat and resumed its seat. Its eyes were on Andrew. There was still no hint of aggression in its demeanor.
Andrew strove to lock eyes with the bear.
“For me?” he murmured.
The bear met his gaze. It didn’t move.
Andrew leaned forward and scooped the fish into his hands. The bear continued to watch him solemnly. He rose awkwardly, faced the bear, and bowed.
The bear remained seated. It turned to gaze into the forest once again.
Andrew departed.
#
The fish was good. Though he lacked experience, Andrew succeeded in gutting and cleaning it. He fried it on his Franklin stove. Salted and peppered and with some corn alongside it, it made a tasty meal. From the cleaning of the fish through his washing-up after dinner, his thoughts remained on the exchange with the bear. He strove unsuccessfully to fit it into some familiar model of animal behavior.
It defied understanding. Bears are predators. Even the relatively peaceable Northeastern black bear, the subspecies most common in New York’s forests, could not have been expected to wait for Andrew to surrender his sandwich willingly. It would have viewed it as as something to be taken from him willy-nilly. Resistance would have brought an attack on Andrew’s person.
The bear’s gift of the fish made the whole business incomprehensible. Predators simply didn’t do such things. Surrendering freshly harvested food to another predator would express submission. A male bear, an apex land predator and a member of the most solitary of all predatory species, would never surrender food to another bear. They’d fight to the death first.
Yet it had happened just that way. Entirely without violence, other than the bear’s capture of the fish.
Maybe it was a sport. An exception to its species. There are exceptions among humans, so why not among bears?
Because this is the wild, idiot. Pacifist bears wouldn’t last long among others of their kind. Probably not even long enough to reproduce.
Still, it happened. I was there. I may go crazy after a few years living here, but I’m not crazy yet.
Andrew knew himself to be a sport. Brilliant, from his youth deeply religious, and solitary by choice. Entirely uninterested in the things that made other men’s eyes light and glands pulse. Even his friend and colleague Louis, a polymathic genius, a world-class athlete, and a tower of rectitude, shared more with the common run of men than he did.
Well, I probably won’t reproduce either.
He put it aside for another time and dried the last of the dishes. Once his hands were dry and the dishes and utensils were back in the cupboard, he seated himself in his armchair, recorded the events of the day in his journal, then picked up the book he’d been reading and read until he fell asleep in his chair.
#
Two days elapsed without incident. Andrew ate, slept, read, wrote in his journal, and ambled around the forest near to his cabin. The fright he’d taken from the approach of the bear had taught him always to take a rifle with him, though he was still lax about having it immediately to hand. He refrained from going back to the riverbank.
Near noon on the third day after his encounter with the bear, he was building an outdoor fire, intending to heat water in which to wash his laundry and after that, himself. He’d rigged a grate to set over the wood from discarded fireplace andirons. The vessel for the water was a steel tub he’d salvaged from an old washing machine, easily large enough for the task.
A brief rustling to the west of his cabin drew his attention. A black bear emerged from the thicket.
Andrew’s rifle lay against the side of the cabin, more than thirty feet away. The bear was closer than that.
It held a fish in its jaws.
The same bear?
Andrew could not tell.
He stood still as the animal approached. When it had closed to within about six feet, it halted, dropped the fish on the ground, retreated a few feet and sat, eyes fixed upon Andrew.
What are we doing?
He still had no idea. Yet it was plain what the bear expected of him. He held up a hand, palm toward the bear, and trotted into the cabin. He found the remains of the ham he’d been eating and weighed it in his hands. There was at least a pound of meat left.
This should do.
He returned to where the bear waited and stopped a few feet away as the bear had. He lowered himself to one knee, laid the ham on the ground next to the fish, straightened and stepped back.
The bear watched, unmoving.
“For you,” Andrew murmured.
The bear seemed to understand. It approached, sniffed at the ham, and closed its eyes briefly. Andrew waited.
A few seconds later the bear straightened and shuffled toward the cabin. It made directly for the rifle Andrew had left there. It sniffed at the weapon, turned toward Andrew, and rose onto its hind legs.
Andrew felt a fresh thrill of fear.
The bear did not attack. It held its paws out to its sides, claws plainly visible, and looked directly into Andrew’s eyes. After a moment, its head moved slowly up and down. Twice.
Unsure of what he was saying by doing so, Andrew nodded back.
The bear dropped back onto all fours, ambled back to the paired gifts, and took the ham in its jaws. It regarded Andrew once more briefly before dashing back into the forest.
Andrew felt all his muscles soften at once. It took him some time to master himself. Presently he picked up the fish and his rifle and returned to the cabin.
#
Rachel debarked from her car as Andrew stepped through the cabin door. He spread his arms as she approached, and they embraced.
“I see you were serious about living here,” she said.
Andrew grinned. “What’s the giveaway?”
She nodded toward the large pile of wood Andrew had cut into stove lengths. “That must have taken you a while.”
He nodded. “Gave me a few blisters, too.”
“Think it’s enough for an Onteora winter?”
“I think so. That’s a bit more than three cords, and the cabin isn’t all that big. Besides, I can always cut more. There are a lot of dead trees out there.”
She hugged him again and kissed him, then stepped back and regarded him soberly.
“You’re looking good, Drew,” she said. “You’ve gained weight in the chest and shoulders.”
“Yeah. Chalk it up to a lot of exercise and a protein-heavy diet.”
“It’s deliberate, then?”
“Very much so.” He waved toward the interior of the cabin. “Come on in. I’ll put up water for tea.”
“Hang on a sec, I brought something for later.” She trotted back to her car, extracted a bottle of Dry Riesling, and presented it to him.
“I doubt you see much of this in here.”
He chuckled and took it from her. “Right you are. The wildlife prefers Chardonnay. Come on in.”
They were seated at his dinette table over mugs of hot tea before their conversation resumed.
“How’s Devin?” he said.
“I can’t really say, Drew.” She sipped at her tea. “He keeps to himself even more than before Mom died. I’ve talked to him a few times, but he doesn’t say much. At least not about himself.”
“Did you tell him you were headed up this way?”
She nodded.
“And?”
“He didn’t react.”
Andrew grunted.
“Don’t expect too much of him, Drew. He’s better off not having a lot of contact with either of us.”
“I suppose. Still, do you think we might be able to get him here for a family dinner next July fifteenth?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why that date?”
His face twitched. “I shouldn’t call it a celebration, but… it’s for a celebration. That’s the day we were finally liberated from our tormentors. Don’t you think that’s a good enough reason?”
She studied him for a long moment.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I suppose now that both of them are dead and buried, it’s safe to think of them as what they really were. No more need to pretend we miss them or mourn their loss.”
“Then it’s on,” he said. “I’ll make preparations.” He rose, stoked the fire in the fireplace, and returned to his seat. They passed an interval in silence.
The two episodes with the bear rose to the front of his thoughts.
I can tell her. Anyway, I ought to tell someone, and she’s close to my only choice. Maybe she’ll make sense of it.
He hunched forward, folded his hands and laid them in his lap, and grinned at his sister.
“Want to hear a weird story, sis?”
Her expression became acute. She smiled.
“Let’s have it, Drew.”
And he told her.
#
Rachel nodded as he ran down.
“How long ago, Drew?”
“About two months. Shortly after I moved here. I’ve been trying to make sense out of it ever since.”
She frowned. “You have?”
“Oh yeah. Bears are top of the land food chain. They take what they want. And they certainly don’t surrender food to other animals. Not even to other bears. Not without a fight.”
“Hm.” She pursed her lips. “It makes perfect sense to me.”
He peered at her. “It does?”
“Oh yes. I’m surprised it isn’t clear to you, but then you’ve never been much for social stuff.”
“Well,” he said, “do you plan to enlighten me?”
She grinned wickedly.
“Rach!”
“Oh, all right.” She sat back. “I’ll tell you a story.”
She closed her eyes and steepled her fingers before her.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a traveler who was looking for a home. He’d never had a true home, and he’d looked for a long while for a place where he might make one. He hoped for privacy, and peace, and if he were to have neighbors, that they would accept him for what he was rather than insist that he become something else.
“After a long and tiring search, he stumbled upon a place that looked favorable. It promised privacy and peace. Since it looked as if there would be a comfortable amount of space around him, he decided to settle and take his chances.
“It didn’t occur to him that the place he’d chosen might already have tenants. He couldn’t have imagined that they’d regard him as a guest in their home. But that’s the way it was. And one day, one of the neighbors looked him up and clued him in.
“The traveler was momentarily confused. For a while he had no idea what was going on. But the neighbor—more of a representative of the district, really—gave him enough of a hint that he got the message. And as has always been the custom when one visits another’s home, he presented the neighbor with a guest gift. Food, the offering that says I wish you well in the universal language.
“The neighbor accepted the gift and offered the traveler a matching gift: food the neighbor himself had prepared. It was about like the traveler had gone to dinner at someone else’s house, except for the absence of a table, plates, and silverware. The traveler accepted the gift, and he and the neighbor parted on good terms. The traveler continued to make the place into a home, the home he’d sought lifelong.
“Three days later, in keeping with the prevailing custom in the neighborhood, the neighbor came to the traveler’s house with a gift of food. The traveler did as the neighbor had done: he reciprocated with food he had prepared. The two exchanged gifts and parted once more, and the traveler knew by those signs that he had been accepted into the neighborhood. He’d become a neighbor himself. And so his residency in his new home, the home he had sought for so long, began at last.”
She opened her eyes and smiled. Andrew sat dumbfounded.
“The bear was the… welcome wagon?”
“No! Not at all, Drew. You’d entered his home. Without his invitation at that, though it appears he was willing to let you get away with it. As long as you followed the rest of the guest customs before making yourself too comfortable.” She slid forward on her seat. “Do you know the word ‘propitiate?’”
“Of course.”
“That’s the point of a guest gift. You’re propitiating the host, letting him know that you come in peace and friendship. A robber or a raider wouldn’t do that. He’d plunder the place, take whatever he wanted and use as much violence to do so as he needed.”
“Oh.” In that moment Andrew MacLachlan could actually feel his mind expanding. “And the second time, when the bear brought a fish here?”
“Same thing, Drew. Plus an acknowledgement that you’d made a home here and are now a resident of the community.”
“I get it,” he murmured. “I get it! But… what about the bit with the rifle?”
“The way you described it,” Rachel said, “sounded like that was one predator accepting another on equal terms. Also, I think that bear might have been putting you on notice. Telling you to use your claws judiciously, maybe. And maybe he was giving you a friendly warning that it’s not all sweetness and light here. A reminder that even the nicest neighborhood can have a few bad apples in it.”
So I should keep it with me. That way I maintain my status as someone dangerous enough to be respected, and always ready to do what I must. For the neighborhood.
“And I used to think I was a bright guy,” he muttered.
“Oh, you are,” she said. “About technical stuff. But you might want to leave the people stuff to Devin and me.”
“Yeah.” A laugh burst from him, unbidden. “Well, welcome to the neighborhood, sis.”
“Just visiting,” she said. “But congratulations on having found your home,” she replied.
“Think so?”
“I know so.” She stood and waved in a gesture that clearly meant to encompass the forest beyond them. “The area’s certainly nice enough, but it did lack something before you got here.”
“Hm? What?”
She smiled.
“A chapel,” she said. “And a priest.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
“Okay,” he said at last. He rose and stretched. “Join me for dinner?”
“Sure. As long it’s not something you shot.”
He chuckled. “I was going to take you to the diner. It’s that or eat from cans.”
“The diner will do.”
He offered her his arm, and she took it.
“The neighborhood could use a few more restaurants,” he said.
“Give it time.” She handed him the keys to her car. “You drive.”
==<O>==
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