Gloryland (33 page)

Now we were looking at each other eye to eye. The sow, eyes dark with glints of silver, glared at me. I slowly realized that it was moonlight reflecting in her eyes. I could feel that she was considering. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what she was doing, considering. And her cubs were still running cross the trail, but everything was happening so slow, it seemed to take forever for those cubs to cross the trail and disappear into the bushes.

Still she was staring into me with those eyes, and I could almost hear her say, “Should I kill you, or let you live? I just don’t know.” She seemed to sway as she thought this, at least she never fully stopped moving but was standing and walking to the side at the same time. Like she wanted to stop to consider if I needed to die, but also wanted to stay at all times with her cubs. And her cubs weren’t the cute, sweet-looking black bear cubs I remember seeing before, no, they were bigger than the biggest dog I’d ever seen, and I wouldn’t be calling them “cubs” if I hadn’t seen Mama.

All in the same moment, and this was only seconds, mind you, she dropped down to all fours again, and there was no sound in it, no sound at all of any of them moving or running, but suddenly she was gone into the place her cubs had gone.

I was still standing there bleeding from my hands, and there was a tightness in my chest that I couldn’t figure out till I realized I wasn’t breathing at all. So I took a breath, lots of breaths, feeling the coldness rushing into my lungs, the ache in my busted hands, feeling a warmth spreading outward from my crotch and down my thighs.

Then I really was irritated. In less than one minute I got bucked off Satan, busted up my hands, tore up my uniform, got charged by a grizzly, and pissed on myself. It took another minute or so for me
to realize that I was lucky. I could’ve been dead. That grizzly had me cold. But she seemed torn between staying with her cubs and taking me out. I guess she decided to run off with her cubs. But it might’ve been otherwise.

What bothered me most was that I got lucky only because I was bucked off here and not up there, where they ran out of the brush. If Satan hadn’t dumped me on
this
cold, hard, ground, we would’ve been alongside those bears just as they were crossing the trail. Satan saved my life.

Mama always taught me that Jesus was my savior, and I believed her and the deacon too. How could I ever let her know that when salvation finally came, Jesus was nowhere in sight, and Satan could take credit for me being round long enough to write these words? I’ll tell you one thing. Being saved by the grace of a mule hurts deeper than you can imagine.

Then I considered something else. That grizzly could’ve killed me but didn’t. Lieutenant Resnick said that people round here had shot all those bears, that none were left. Maybe this was the last mother grizzly? Maybe she’d seen all her kind get killed one by one, the adults and their children. I’d be angry at any person I ran into if I was a bear. You hurt me and mine, I’ll hurt you! But when she had a chance to do that, she let me go.

When you’re in front of a grizzly bear, you’re bout as close to the heart of these mountains as you can get without dying. The Ahwahneechee call the grizzly
Uzumati
, and I got close to it, right up to the edge, and was let go. It wasn’t death that had me in its grip that night, it was life. I never felt more alive than in those few seconds when Yosemite itself rose up on its haunches and looked me in the eye, and I was foolish enough to look back.

I can’t forget that as long as I live.

And no, I’m not going to thank that mule. He didn’t have to buck me off, he could’ve just stopped on the trail. There was no reason to throw me to the ground. I started getting angry again when I felt
something behind me, something close. I turned and drew my Colt out of its holster, quickly raised it chest high, and nearly shot Satan in the head. Now that would’ve required some explaining. That mule had walked up while I was thinking, and I hadn’t heard a thing.

Satan just looked at me, then lowered his head to nuzzle his left front leg. I could see the white of his teeth as he bit at whatever was irritating him. I knew the feeling.