Emory’s Gift (29 page)

“And there’s nothing in Scripture about a talking bear,” Pastor Jamie said. The tone in his voice was so close to being a sneer I was surprised his lips didn’t curl. I looked at him, startled. He sounded so mean, but his face was so handsome and nice, I had trouble reconciling the two.

Pastor Klausen was still looking at my dad, but his eyes flickered a little in what I thought was amusement. “Well, Numbers Twenty-two,” he said to the youth minister. Jamie looked away in disgust. “In Numbers,” the older minister elaborated to my father, “Balaam has a donkey who speaks to him.”

“Not the same thing at all,” Pastor Jamie said.

I had to agree with him on that one. I didn’t know who Balaam was, but a donkey was not a bear.

Pastor Jamie leaned in toward my dad. “The point is that you’ve got half the town believing in this, this superstition, that a soldier has been reincarnated as a bear,” he said.

My dad gave Jamie a very cold look but didn’t say anything.

“George. It’s our job to help people understand things by way of the Word of our Lord,” Pastor Klausen said gently. “Even things that defy explanation, if we look hard enough, we see that God provides an answer.” He gestured with a slight hand motion toward the Bible that I only now noticed that Pastor Jamie held. We all respectfully turned and looked at it, and a long, long moment passed before I spoke.

“Like my mom?” I asked quietly.

Pastor Klausen’s watery blue eyes turned sad. “Charlie. I wish I could say I understood why things like that happen. Why our Lord chose the course for her He did—maybe it is something we’ll never understand in this lifetime. Your mother was called home at a very young age, and we all miss her terribly. You, especially, I know you miss her.”

I nodded, swallowing. Some part of me, I now realize, just wanted to hear this, to hear that someone knew how much I missed my mom. Yes, it happened to our family, to her, to my dad, and I was part of all that, but it separately happened to me, all alone with it, and I had long craved recognition of that sad fact.

“It must have been so, so hard for you,” Pastor Klausen continued. “A terrible shock.”

I nodded again.

“And if maybe it seemed like a good idea, when this tame bear showed up, to write some words on the wall in paint,” Jamie interjected eagerly. “That would be perfectly understandable.”

Pastor Klausen shut him up with a look.

My father cleared his throat. “Then let’s get to it. Charlie, did you write those words on the wall?”

“No, sir.”

“You see who did?”

“No.”

“You think Emory did it? The bear?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So do I. There’s not much I understand, but I do believe that’s exactly what happened. Gentlemen, thanks for stopping by; I do appreciate your concern,” my father said, not sounding appreciative at all.

Pastor Klausen shook my hand with what looked like real regret in his eyes, like things hadn’t gone as planned. Pastor Jamie shook hands, too, but his eyes were scornful and displeased, like I was the boy who hit a baseball through the church window but was standing by my story of innocence. If he ever decided to give up being a preacher, Pastor Jamie had a good future in him as a junior high school principal.

As the two men walked out the door, I turned to face my father. “Dad, there’s something else.”

I couldn’t blame him for the wary look in his eyes—I’d been throwing a lot at him lately.

“I knew Emory’s name before he wrote it in the pole barn. His first name, I mean.”

My father regarded me patiently. I explained about the names Emory and I had etched in the riverbank, now washed away. I kept talking faster and faster, as if I could run right past the question I knew was coming.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

I bit my lip. Withholding facts from my father was such an inveterate habit that I often wasn’t sure
why
I felt such a compulsion to control the flow of information.

“I don’t know,” I said miserably. I felt pretty guilty about it now.

And, of course, there was something else I hadn’t told him, either. I opened my mouth to advise him about finding the tomato cage by the river, but before I could say anything we heard footsteps on the porch. There was a knock on the open door, and then McHenry was standing there.

“Come on in, Jules,” my dad said, surprising me. Despite the food shipment, McHenry was, to me, the
enemy
.

McHenry came in carrying a briefcase. We didn’t see many of them in Selkirk River. He set the briefcase on the table.

“What’d you find out?” my dad asked him.

“They’re coming at midnight,” McHenry said.

chapter

THIRTY

MY dad looked grim faced at the news, while I’m sure I just appeared mystified. Dad peered past McHenry out the window at the campers, who were standing in a tight ring, listening to Pastor Klausen and Pastor Jamie, who were talking and shaking their heads. Drawn together like that, it didn’t look like much of a defensive force against the Fish and Game, and even as I watched two of them deserted, heading up to where their cars were parked on Hidden Creek Road.

“Who is that in the truck?” my dad asked. I looked up on the road and could see a white pickup parked near McHenry’s truck, a man sitting behind the wheel.

“His name’s Ransburg. He’s the one I told you about,” McHenry said.

“He can come in, if he’d like. No need to wait out there,” my dad said.

“He’s supposed to remain neutral, he says.” McHenry shrugged.

I followed this exchange with my comprehension running on empty and my anxiety on full. I was liking it less and less that my dad was talking to McHenry as if they were buddies. The man shot Emory!

“How’s the bear?” McHenry asked. Meaning “How’s the bear I tried to kill in the woods?”

“He seems to be able to move around just fine, but all he’s interested in is the food you sent. Odd thing is, he goes straight for the berries and only eats the apples and the salmon when they’re all gone. I guess I thought that given the choice he’d gorge himself on fish.”

McHenry smiled in delight. “I guess I’d better call in another order of berries.”

“We do appreciate it,” my father replied.

“Dad!” I said. I meant it to sound casual, planning on communicating my distress with my expression, but my call came out more like a hiss of alarm. The two adults turned to gaze at me. My dad read me instantly and met eyes with McHenry.

“You need to tell Charlie what you told me, Jules,” my father said softly.

“Why don’t we all sit down,” McHenry suggested.

We arranged ourselves in the living room. I took what was normally my dad’s big soft chair, the one that swiveled, and turned it so I could see them both on the couch. My dad’s expression was, as usual, frustratingly unrevealing. McHenry just appeared uncomfortable.

“Charlie,” he said. He wrestled in his mind a minute and then nodded at me as if we’d both agreed on something. “Well, first, I’m really sorry I shot the bear, that I hunted him with dogs, all of it.”

I gave him the cold stare my father gave me whenever I did something boneheaded and my first attempt at an apology was too halfhearted.

McHenry sighed. “This isn’t easy to talk about because I’m not sure how to explain it. I mean, that bear’s teeth were practically on my throat. I could feel his breath.” McHenry agitatedly stood up. “I thought I was going to die; I
knew
I was going to die. But that bear, he not only didn’t kill me, he looked me in the eye, and he … he
forgave
me.” McHenry said these last words in a whisper. Now he was staring out the back window into the night as if we were no longer in the room with him.

“I’m not the best man, Charlie; I’ve done some things in my life … well, I don’t need to go into that. I’m not, I mean, I have sinned. I believe … anyway, I, I just … despite everything, the bear, he … my God, it was…”

This was starting to sound like a conversation McHenry was having with himself.

“And then he pushed your rifle down, pushed it away from my face. He
saved
me.” McHenry turned back to look at me. I was avoiding my father’s glare, so I kept my gaze locked on McHenry’s, and I saw an odd, intense light in his eyes. “I don’t believe in reincarnation. I don’t believe in God. But I do believe everything happens for a reason. I realized there had to be a reason I was spared. I’m meant to do something, and my fate is tied up with that bear. He saved me, and now I need to do whatever I can to save him. We
cannot
allow him to be killed. He’s here for a reason, too.”

McHenry seemed to sense that he was coming on a bit strong and sort of got control of himself. He relaxed his shoulders. “It was almost a religious experience for me,” he said, sounding apologetic.

My father and I didn’t say anything for a long moment, out of respect for McHenry or maybe just because we were worried he’d crank up again. Eventually he shook himself out of it and explained what he meant when he said they were coming at midnight.

Just as I’d always suspected, a man of means like McHenry was able to curry favor, and he’d managed to find out that the sheriff and the Fish and Game Department would be returning that very night.

So naturally, my father wanted me to go to bed.

I was outraged. In less than two hours we’d be under armed assault and my father wanted me to
sleep
? I thought I should be up with them, loading weapons to repel the invasion. But you don’t disobey my father when he gives you a direct order. Fuming, I did as I was told, but I made sure I banged cupboard doors and brushed my teeth loudly in protest against his unfair directives.

“Good night, Charlie,” McHenry said.

“Night, Charlie,” my dad echoed.

I punished them by remaining brutally silent. I slid into bed and stared at the ceiling, still steaming. They were treating me like a child. Obviously there was a plan in place to resist the sheriff. My father and McHenry both carried themselves with a grave resolve, committed to some action from which there would be no turning back. And I, the person who found the bear in the first place, was being excluded from the operation.

As it would turn out, I was betrayed not only by my father but by my own body. My eyes were wedged open by an iron willpower, my brain a fully engaged sentry, wakeful, alert, tense. That I dozed off was unforgivable, and I was furious with myself when I opened my eyes and my room was dancing with reflected red lights.

They were here.

I dressed hurriedly. It had gotten much colder in the short time I’d been asleep, so that I shivered a little as I yanked on socks. I was bent over my shoes when I heard a squeal from a megaphone.

“Anyone interfering with police business will be arrested,” Sheriff Nunnick’s voice announced through a bullhorn.

I ran to the front window. The popular Save the Bear uprising had dwindled to four of Kay’s friends, who were blinking in the strong glare from the headlights. Thoroughly cowed, they meekly began assembling their camping gear, hastily rolling up the sleeping bags. Nobody said anything as they trudged up the driveway, slipping into the deep pool of blackness beyond the vehicles.

My dad and McHenry were standing on the front porch. Sheriff Nunnick lowered his bullhorn, cocking his head in a
is that all you got?
sort of way. I saw the dome light in the white pickup truck come on up there on Hidden Creek Road as McHenry’s mysterious friend opened his door. Ransburg, McHenry had called him. I’d completely forgotten he was there. Several flashlights from sheriff’s deputies swiveled and found the man, who squinted at them.

“You should let that man through, Sheriff. He’s involved in this,” McHenry called. Two deputies cautiously moved toward the stranger, who raised his hands for them to see.

I slipped out the front door then. My father turned at the sound of my footfalls and nodded at me, thankfully not insisting that I return to bed. The three of us left the porch and walked up to the sheriff, our breaths all coming out as gusts of steam.

“Now, George,” Sheriff Nunnick warned as we stopped in front of him. He handed his megaphone to a deputy without looking and pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket. “This thing has gotten out of hand and it’s my duty to see to it that we get back on track with the law. I’m here to ensure that the Department of Fish and Game executes a valid court order unimpeded and I mean to do so even if I have to arrest you in front of your son.” He pointed his cigarette pack like a weapon.

Mr. Hessler stepped forward from behind the sheriff, joining us. He looked a little sheepish.

“Hello there, George.”

“Herman.”

“McHenry,” Mr. Hessler greeted.

“Herman.”

It was like a Western, except we didn’t have any six-guns.

“He’s a cop!” someone called from the pack of people surrounding the guy named Ransburg. Sheriff Nunnick accepted this news with a tilt of his head, eyeing us.

“Let him through!” the sheriff called over his shoulder.

Ransburg trudged down to join us. He was tall and thin, with a scary scar drawn across his left cheek in a straight white line. He reached into his jacket pocket.

“Evening. I’m Marshal Richard Ransburg,” he said dryly.

The sheriff and Mr. Hessler glanced at each other. “I’m Sheriff John Nunnick,” the sheriff finally said, sticking his cigarette pack back into his pocket so he could offer a hand to shake. The marshal dropped an envelope into the sheriff’s open palm.

“You’ve been served,” the marshal said in the same inflectionless tone. He turned to Mr. Hessler.

“Are you Herman Hessler?”

Mr. Hessler nodded, swallowing.

“You’ve been served,” the marshal said. He held out a piece of paper that Mr. Hessler accepted with great reluctance.

A third and fourth envelope came out. “These court orders were issued today by Judge Raymond McNichols and are directed to your respective departments. You accept service on their behalf?”

Sheriff Nunnick looked angry, but Mr. Hessler was reading his sheet of paper and appeared almost ready to cry. The sheriff nodded curtly and took another piece of paper from the marshal.