Emory’s Gift (30 page)

“Herman?” my dad said gently to get his attention. Mr. Hessler looked up, blinking.

“You accept service for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game?” the marshal asked.

“Um … yeah,” Mr. Hessler finally said. He took the paper.

I had the sense that at this point we were winning the war, but I was absolutely in the dark as to how. Fortunately, Mr. Hessler was as confused as I was.

“What’s this all about, George?” Mr. Hessler asked plaintively.

McHenry answered. “The court order is an injunction against any further action against the bear by your department or the Boundary County sheriff pending a hearing in court in five days’ time—Monday. And then I am suing you and Sheriff Nunnick personally.”

“For what?” Mr. Hessler protested.

McHenry shrugged. “Trespass. Endangering wildlife. Endangering a child. False testimony. Causing damage to property.”

“It’s a load of manure, Herman,” the sheriff snorted contemptuously. “He can’t sue us for doing our jobs.”

“You’d better get a good attorney. I’ve got one,” McHenry said simply.

Everyone stood looking at each other for a long, tense moment, and again, it felt just like a Western. Then Marshal Ransburg nodded. “Good evening, gentlemen.” He turned and walked back up the driveway, got in his truck, and drove off, carrying a lot of the confrontational feeling with him.

Within fifteen minutes the entire posse was gone, Mr. Hessler shooting us one last betrayed look. We trooped victoriously into the house, where my dad built a fire in the fireplace and we sat and watched him do it, the two men drinking whiskey in celebration. I had warm milk, the only beverage made available to me by the house bartender.

The warmth from the milk and the familiar snap of the fire filled me with good feeling. Emory was saved by subpoena. The courts had given him a stay of execution. He could spend the winter in the barn, and in the spring we’d go fishing together.

“So basically, we’ve got five days,” my dad said as he settled down with his drink.

That took the grin off my face.

“We might be able to file for a delay, but I doubt it. The sheriff’s angry and he’ll get government resources on his side. I won’t be able to ambush him again,” McHenry said heavily. “Monday morning my attorney is going to be taking a lot of heat and I don’t think the judge is going to be too happy.”

I sifted through these words carefully. “I thought we were suing,” I finally objected.

McHenry gave me a steady look. I liked how he held me with his eyes, including me in the conversation. “The lawsuits against the sheriff and Hessler are junk. They’ll get thrown out. And the injunction—do you know what an injunction is, Charlie? Okay, good. The injunction is based on a lot of allegations I wouldn’t want to actually defend in court. My lawyers are creative, but they can’t work miracles.”

I was crushed and I guess my face showed it.

McHenry’s smile was sad. “We couldn’t really argue that the bear is a reincarnated man. No judge would ever rule in our favor on that; he’d be impeached. We’ve made the issue that Emory is a tame bear, but it’s pretty clear from historical precedent that they won’t let Emory stay.”

“So in five days the whole thing will happen again,” my dad concluded.

“Today’s, well, it’s technically Wednesday morning,” McHenry said, looking at his watch. “But yes, five days until Monday.” He looked at me. “We’ve got to get the bear to go up into the mountains. He’s fat enough to make it through the winter, and it’s getting cold. He should have left under his own volition by now.”

“He’s no ordinary bear,” my dad reminded McHenry.

“No.” McHenry pursed his lips. “But if he doesn’t behave like one soon, we don’t have a hope of saving him.”

“He’s eating like crazy,” my dad said. “So in that way, he’s acting like a normal bear.”

“Right. That’s what I’m thinking, that the rest of his instincts will kick in and he’ll go find himself a den.”

I watched the fire leaping up, gloomily reflecting on what I’d just heard. When my mother had been sick there had been so many days like this: good news, then bad news, then good news. She’s getting better; she’s not getting better; she’s not as sick as we thought; she’s not dying; she’s dead.

With Emory, there was at least a chance he might get through this, but only if he left. My fantasy of him hibernating in the pole barn was childish and silly.

I fell asleep in front of the fireplace and awoke in my own bed well past my normal waking time. My dad had gone to work, but McHenry was in the kitchen, talking on the phone. I ate Puffa Puffa Rice with sugar on it and went outside. Emory was not in the barn.

It was too cold for anyone to hang out in the front yard, though a lot of traffic streamed by all day, the people of Selkirk River driving up to spend some time staring at our open pole barn. The folks I knew personally sometimes came down to talk to me and to verify with their own eyes what they could see for themselves, which was that there was no bear in there. A lot of them asked me if I believed the bear wrote words on the wall, and I said I did, and they asked how, and I said I didn’t know. It was the truth; I didn’t
for sure
know. I was splitting hairs again, my chief testimonial talent.

Sat Siri told me one time that keeping secrets and hoarding even trivial bits of information was classic behavior of the children of alcoholics, who feel compelled to exert what control they can over their chaotic family lives.

“My dad was never a drinker,” I responded.

She gave me a patient, serene look, like she always did when I pretended not to understand her point.

Roughly translated from Sanskrit, “Sat Siri” means “Great Truth.”

I went off to find Emory and came across him right away—he was standing on two legs, leaning on the split-rail fence that bordered the edge of our property nearest the pole barn. He didn’t hear me approach, and for a minute I stood there looking at him. The expression on his face, the way he was resting his head on his front paws, seemed wistful, pensive, even sad. Did he know what was coming? When I remember Emory, I often think of him the way I found him there that day, so humanlike in his posture and expression. He turned when I walked up to him.

“You need to leave, Emory,” I told him intently. “You need to go up to the mountains and hibernate.”

My voice caught in my throat, but Emory didn’t react at all. His eyes lifted to mine and there was that warmth in them, that human quality I’d noticed from the very first day I’d seen him, but I could not say for sure he knew what I was saying or understood how hard it was for me to say it.

“You could come back, though, next spring,” I said softly, looking back at the house to make sure my father and McHenry were not within earshot.

Again, no reaction. My heart hurt so much I had to hug my arms across my chest.

We went back to the barn together, and Emory ate more of McHenry’s food plus a freezer-burned casserole I had thawed for him for old times’ sake.

At that point, I thought our biggest problem was looming five days away, when the judge would pass down another ruling. But I was mistaken; the threat was much closer to hand.

chapter

THIRTY-ONE

WHEN things started to go wrong, it happened so gradually and with such little fanfare I wasn’t in any way alarmed. The next morning, Thursday, a car stopped on Hidden Creek Road and a man I’d never seen before got out and there was just something odd about him. He had long hair and a beard, which wasn’t unusual, but it was wildly unkempt, and his face was deeply tanned and kind of dirty. He walked down our driveway and stopped in front of me.

“I’m here to see the bear,” he told me. He looked at me with eyes that were tired and bloodshot.

I stuck out my hand like I’d been raised to do. “My name is Charlie Hall.”

He shook my hand. “I drove all day and all night, Mr. Hall, from San Francisco, California. My car broke down in the town of Kennewick, state of Washington. I have come to join my brother.”

The first part of what he said sounded so normal that I didn’t initially catch the last part. “I’m sorry, sir?”

“I served in the Army of the Potomac alongside Emory Bain. He saved my life at the Battle of Gettysburg. We are brothers in arms, he and I. I have served under General John Pershing and General George S. Patton and I was most recently an enlisted man in the United States Army from 1964 through 1966, honorably discharged. Medically. Though I was well qualified, I did not see battle during my last enlistment.”

“Okay,” I responded.

“War is a terrible thing.”

“Yessir.”

“My actual driving time was twenty-one hours and eleven minutes.”

“The bear’s not home right now, sir,” I told him.

He gazed with empty eyes at the hills around us, then looked at me. “I’ll just lie down in my car, then,” he told me.

I went in and told McHenry about the conversation I’d had with the guy now sleeping in his Oldsmobile. McHenry listened to me, his frown deepening. Frankly, I was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt because he sure seemed to have his facts down, but McHenry thanked me and picked up the phone with a grim expression on his face.

The soldier in the car was by far not the first out-of-towner to show up that day. My father came home from work at noon, looking stunned at the number of automobiles that were parked on both sides of Hidden Creek Road. The license plates were from California, Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Utah. Some of the people wore strange outfits and some of them sang songs. One man carried a sign saying: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Another man wore a Daniel Boone raccoon hat and seemed to be totally intoxicated, because he kept falling down and laughing at himself.

Two motorcycles blasted up the road as if announcing a battle, but the guys who got off the bikes were so fat and old they intimidated no one.

My father turned people away when they asked to use the bathroom and rather firmly instructed them to leave his property, which they pretty much ignored.

My dad went in and reluctantly called the sheriff’s department. As he dialed, I heard a loud insistent honking, experience telling me that it was coming from where Hidden Creek Road turned off the paved county road and was getting closer.

As my dad later related it to me, the sheriff thought it was ironic to get the phone call. That was the word he used, “ironic,” as in “It’s ironic for you to call me, George, since not too long ago you were serving me with a court order to vacate the property.”

My dad explained that the situation was rapidly deteriorating. This wasn’t the county fair atmosphere we’d seen when the locals had turned out; this was carload after carload of strangers.

“And good luck,” Sheriff Nunnick replied with a cackle that I could hear all the way across the kitchen.

My dad hung up and looked at McHenry. They both appeared worried.

“I called a security firm. I can get some Pinkertons up here, but it’s going to take more than a day,” McHenry said.

“Not sure what this place will look like in a day,” my dad muttered.

The honking ceased as a big white van with a TV logo on the side wheeled into our driveway. My dad shook his head.

“Now what,” he said.

The side door of the van slid open and a woman and a man got out, stretching their legs and arms. The man was short and muscular, with dark, oiled hair. He wore a brown suit with a light blue shirt and a tie with the same brown and blue in it, pretty much the fanciest clothes I’d ever seen on a man. What I noticed about the woman was that her hair was soft and blond and that she was trim and, when she turned to the house, pretty. She had on a vivid green dress with a big collar. The driver of the van got out and handed her a microphone on a cord and pulled a huge video camera out of the van, hoisting it up on his shoulder. The woman shook her head, tossing her hair, and began speaking to the camera, looking over her shoulder at the pole barn as she did so.

“We need to get them out of here,” McHenry said.

I went outside with McHenry. People being the way they are, they were clustered around the camera, the ones behind the woman waving and grinning. The man with the black hair said something to the cameraman, and he dropped the camera off his shoulder and the woman let her arm fall to her side, still holding the microphone.

“Excuse me; can I help you?” McHenry asked coldly.

The woman smiled at him and held out her hand. “My name is Nichole J. Singleton, KHQ Channel Six, Spokane. I am so very pleased to meet you, Mr. Hall?”

“Name’s McHenry,” he said gruffly. “You people need to leave.”

The woman’s smile didn’t falter. She seemed so friendly I just had to speak up. “My dad’s inside,” I told her. The last I’d seen of him, he’d been heading back to his bathroom, but I didn’t think that was a topic for the evening news.

“You’re Charlie!” she exclaimed. I found myself grinning with pleasure at her reaction, but my smile dropped when I caught sight of McHenry, who was still giving her a cold stare.

“This the kid?” the man with the black hair asked. He had very dark eyes and a good tan, and he was handsome in sort of a movie star way, with a strong jaw. He didn’t look very friendly, though, sizing me up and down like I was a piece of furniture he was thinking of buying. He chewed gum, his jaw pulsing.

“This is private property,” McHenry said.

“Yeah?” The guy stopped chewing and gave the growing assembly of trespassers an appraising look. When he turned his cold eyes back to McHenry, they were mocking.

“This is Tony Alecci, our producer,” the woman said smoothly. Tony Alecci didn’t offer to shake hands.

“And that’s Wally Goetz, my cameraman.” Wally was a folksy guy in jeans.

“Call me Wally. I’m just the driver,” Wally Goetz said from inside the van, where he was working on the equipment. “The driver, and everything else.”

Nichole laughed even though I had the feeling she and Alecci had heard the joke a few times before.

You didn’t have to know Jules McHenry very long to realize he was pretty much accustomed to people paying attention to what he said, so there was no surprise that the expression on his face was one of slow burn. He elected, though, to try logical persuasion. “Look,” he said, stepping forward and lowering his voice. Most of the crowd had lost interest and had gone back to their activities, which from my point of view seemed to consist mainly of littering. The backings from several Polaroid pictures were curled up on the lawn, like fallen leaves from a black plastic tree. More than one beverage can had been tossed in our bushes, and, astoundingly, a group of four people had set up a camping stove on our property, not a hundred feet from our front door!