I'm With the Bears (7 page)

After that sleep was part of the routine, and sleeping he surrendered—it was up to the animals what happened. He was not protected anymore by the city and its installations. Lying down in the exhibits with them, awkward, uncomfortable, and finally overcome; creeping out before the keepers appeared for the morning feeding. While he slept, as far as he knew, the animals did not mean to approach him. But when he woke up they were sometimes near him by happenstance. In this way he saw a ringtail nosing her young down into the entry of her den and a hyena tearing hungrily at the breast of a pigeon.

Every summer Charlie Quibler flew back to California to spend a week in the Sierra Nevada, backpacking with a group of old friends. Most of them knew each other from high school, and some of them had gone to UC San Diego together, many years before. That they and Charlie's D.C. friend Frank Vanderwal had been undergraduates at UCSD at the same time had come up at dinner one night at the Quiblers' the previous winter, causing a moment of surprise, then a shrug. Possibly they had been in classes together—they couldn't remember. The subject had been dropped, as just one of those coincidences that often cropped up in the capital; so many people came from somewhere else that sometimes the elsewheres were the same.

This coincidence, however, was certainly a factor in Charlie inviting Frank to join the group for this summer's trip. Perhaps it played a part in Frank's acceptance as well; it was hard for Charlie to tell. Frank's usual reticence had recently scaled new heights.

The invitation had been Anna's idea. Frank was having an operation on an area behind his nose, which he described as “No big deal.” But Anna just shook her head at that; “It's right next to his brain,” she told Charlie. Frank had recently changed jobs, and did not particularly like the move from the National Science Foundation to his advisory position at the White House, she felt, but he certainly worked very long hours there. She felt her former colleague led a lonely existence at a time when he needed support.

This was all news to Charlie, despite the kayaking expeditions the two men had been on together. Frank normally seemed unas-sailably independent, and it was always a shock to see a person one regarded as unemotional suddenly become distraught.

So, soon after Frank had the surgery they visited him in the hospital, and he said he was fine, that it had gone well, he had been told. And yes, he would like to join the backpacking trip, thanks. It would be good to get away. Would he be okay to go to high altitude? Charlie wondered. He said he would be.

After that everyone was busy, with summer daycamp and swim lessons for their eldest son, Nick, policy papers for Charlie, daycare for Joe, and NSF for Anna; and they did not see Frank again for a couple weeks, until suddenly the time for the Sierra trip was upon them.

Charlie's California friends were fine with the idea of adding a member to the trip, which they had done from time to time before, and they were looking forward to meeting him.

“He's kind of quiet,” Charlie warned them.

This annual trek had been problematized for Charlie on the home front ever since Nick's birth, him being the stay-at-home parent; and Joe's arrival had made things more than twice as bad. Two consecutive summers had passed without Charlie being able to make the trip. Anna had seen how despondent he had gotten on the days when his friends were hiking in the high Sierra without him, and she was the one who had suggested he just make whatever kid coverage arrangement it would take, and go. Gratefully Charlie had jumped up and kissed her, and between some logistical help on the Nick summer day camp front from an old Gymboree friend, and extended daycare for Joe, he found they had coverage for both boys for the same several hours a day, which meant Anna could continue to work almost full-time. This was crucial; the loss of even a couple of hours of work a day caused her brow to furrow vertically and her mouth to set in a this-is-not-good expression very particular to work delays.

Charlie knew the look well, but tried not to see it as the departure time approached.

“This will be good for Frank,” he would say. “That was a good idea you had.”

“It'll be good for you too,” Anna would reply; or not reply at all and just give him a look.

Actually she would have been completely fine with him going, Charlie thought, if it were not that she still seemed to have some residual worries about Joe's health. When Charlie realized this by hearing her make some non sequitur that skipped from the one subject to the other, he was surprised; he had thought he was the only one still worrying about Joe. He had assumed Anna would have had her mind put fully at ease by the disappearance of the fever. That had always been the focus of her concern, as opposed to the matters of mood and behavior which had been bothering Charlie.

Now, however, as the time for the mountain trip got closer and closer, he could see on Anna's face all her expressions of worry, visible in quick flashes when they discussed things, or when she was tired. Charlie could read a great deal on Anna's face; he didn't know if this was just the ordinary result of long familiarity or if she were particularly expressive, but certainly her worried looks were very nuanced, and, he had to say, beautiful. Perhaps it was just because they were so legible to him. You could see that life
meant something
when she was worrying over it; her thoughts flickered over her face like flames over burning coals, as if one were watching some dreamily fine silent screen actress, able to express anything with looks alone. To read her was to love her. She might be, as Charlie thought she was, slightly crazy about work, but even that was part of what he loved, as just another manifestation of how much she cared about things. One could not care more and remain sane. Mostly sane.

But Anna had never admitted, or even apparently seen, the connections Charlie had spotted between external events and the various changes in Joe. To her there was no such thing as a metaphysical illness, because there was no such thing as metaphysics. And there was no such thing as psychosomatic illness in a two-year-old, because a toddler was not old enough to have problems, as another Gymboree friend had put it.

So it had to be a fever. Or so she must have been subconsciously reasoning. Charlie had to intuit or deduce most of this from the kinds of apprehension he saw in her. He wondered what would happen if Anna were the one on hand when Joe went into one of his little trances. He wondered if she knew Joe's daytime behavior well enough to notice the myriad tiny shifts that had recently occurred in his daily moods.

Well, of course she did; but whether she would admit that some of these changes might indicate some special sensitivity in their son was another matter.

Maybe it was better that she couldn't be convinced. Charlie himself did not want to think there was anything real to this line of thought. It was one of his own forms of worry, perhaps—trying to find some explanation other than undiagnosed disease or mental problem. Even if the alternative explanation might in some ways be worse. Because it disturbed him, even occasionally freaked him out. He could only think about it glancingly, in brief bursts, and then quickly jump to something else. It was too weird to be true.

But there were more things in heaven and earth, etc.; and without question there were very intelligent people in his life who believed in this stuff, and acted on those beliefs. That in itself made it real, or something with real effects.

In any case, the trouble would not come to a head while he was out in the Sierras. He would only be gone a week, and Joe had been much the same, week to week, all that winter and spring and through the summer so far.

So Charlie made his preparations for the trip without talking openly to Anna about Joe, and without meeting her eye when she was tired. She too avoided the topic.

It was harder with Joe: “When you going Dad?” he would shout on occasion. “How long? What you gonna do? Hiking? Can I go?” And then when Charlie explained that he couldn't, he would shrug. “Oh well. See you when you get back Dad.”

It was heartbreaking.

On the morning of Charlie's departure, Joe patted him on the arm. “Bye Da. Be
care
ful,” saying it just like Charlie always said it, as a half-exasperated reminder, just as Charlie's father had always said it to him, as if the default plan were to do something reckless, so that one had to be reminded.

Anna clutched him to her. “Be careful. Have fun.”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you too. Be careful.”

Charlie and Frank flew from Dulles to Ontario together, making a plane change in Dallas.

Frank had had his operation eighteen days before, he said. “So what was it like?” Charlie asked him.

“Oh, you know. They put you out.”

“For how long?”

“A few hours I think.”

“And after that?”

“Felt fine.”

Although, Charlie saw, he seemed to have even less to say than before. So on the second leg of the trip, with Frank sitting beside him looking out the window of the plane, and every page of that day's
Post
read, Charlie fell asleep.

It was too bad about the operation. Charlie was in an agony of apprehension about it, but as Joe lay there on the hospital bed he looked up at his father and tried to reassure him. “It be all right Da.” They had attached wires to his skull, connecting him to a bulky machine by the bed, but most of his hair was still unshaved, and under the mesh cap his expression was resolute. He squeezed Charlie's hand, then let go and clenched his fists by his sides, preparing himself, mouth pursed. The doctor on the far side of the bed nodded; time for delivery of the treatment. Joe saw this, and to give himself courage began to sing one of his wordless marching tunes, “Da, da da da, da!” The doctor flicked a switch on the machine and instantaneously Joe sizzled to a small black crisp on the bed.

Charlie jerked upright with a gasp.

“You okay?” Frank said.

Charlie shuddered, fought to dispel the image. He was clutching the seat arms hard.

“Bad dream,” he got out. He hauled himself up in his seat and took some deep breaths. “Just a little nightmare. I'm fine.”

But the image stuck with him, like the taste of poison. Very obvious symbolism, of course, in the crass way dreams sometimes had—image of a fear he had in him, expressed visually, sure—but so brutal, so ugly! He felt betrayed by his own mind. He could hardly believe himself capable of imagining such a thing. Where did such monsters come from?

He recalled a friend who had once mentioned he was taking St. John's wort in order to combat nightmares. At the time Charlie had thought it a bit silly; the moment you woke up from dreams you knew they were not real, so how bad could a nightmare be?

Now he knew, and finally he felt for his old friend.

So when his old friends and roommates Dave and Vince picked them up at the Ontario airport and they drove north in Dave's van, Charlie and Frank were both a bit subdued. They sat in the middle seats of the van and let Dave and Vince do most of the talking up front. These two were more than willing to fill the hours of the drive with tales of the previous year's work in criminal defense and urology. Occasionally Vince would turn around in the passenger seat and demand some words from Charlie, and Charlie would reply, working to shake off the trauma of the dream and get into the good mood that he knew he should be experiencing. They were off to the mountains—the southern end of the Sierra Nevada was appearing ahead to their left already, the weird desert ranges above Death Valley were off to their right. They were entering Owens Valley, one of the greatest mountain valleys on the planet! It was typically one of the high points of their trips; but this time he wasn't quite into it yet.

In Independence they met the van bringing down the two northern members of their group, Jeff and Troy, and they all wandered the little grocery store there, buying forgotten necessities or delicacies, happy at the sudden reunion of all these companions from their shared youth—a reunion with their own youthful selves, it seemed. Even Charlie felt that, and slowly managed to push the horrible dream away from his conscious awareness and his mood, to forget it. It was, in the end, only a dream.

Frank meanwhile was an easy presence, cruising the tight aisles of the rustic store peering at things, comfortable with all their talk of gear and food and trailhead firewood. Charlie was pleased to see that although he was still very quiet, a tiny little smile was creasing his features as he looked at displays of beef jerky and cigarette lighters and postcards. He looked relaxed. He knew this place.

Out in the parking lot the mountains to east and west hemmed in the evening sky, and told them they were already in the Sierras—or, to be more precise, in the space the Sierras defined, which very much included Owens Valley. To the east the dry White Mountains were dusty orange in the sunset; to the west, the huge escarpment of the Sierra loomed over them like a stupendous serrated wall. Together the two ranges created a sense of the valley as a great roofless room.