Gary Paulsen - Brian's Return

‘‘I saw a deer today, walking here. It stood and looked at me, then away, then back. I could have shot it. .’’ Brian didn’t know why he said this, only that it seemed the right thing to do.

‘‘Did it look the way you are going when it looked away?’’

Brian thought about it. ‘‘Yes. North, up the portage.’’

Billy nodded. ‘‘It was your medicine deer, telling you the right way to go.’’

‘‘Medicine deer?’’

Billy pointed at the sky. ‘‘From there. I have a medicine crow that points for me. You have a deer to help you. Always listen to the deer.’’

‘‘So. . it’s not right to hunt them then?’’

‘‘They will tell you when it is right. Listen and they will show you, like today.’’

Brian nodded and they were silent again for a long time. Brian thought about the grouse and the rabbits he had almost shot. But they hadn’t seemed the same. The deer stood out. He realized he was tired. His leg had stiffened a bit — though much less than this morning when he’d started — but he’d paddled against the wind much of the day, then portaged, then hunted. He felt a bit stiff and his belly was full and the fire was warm.

‘‘Time to make sleep,’’ Billy said.

He moved to his canoe and crawled under it. From one of the thwarts he pulled an old blanket, wrapped himself in it and was asleep before Brian could finish setting up his tent. Brian unzipped the opening, pulled his bag in and was sound asleep before his head was all the way down.

Dear Caleb: I found today that you don’t always have to do a thing as long as you’re ready to do it.

Brian awakened gradually. The stiffness in his body from paddling hard all day was gone, replaced with an easy looseness that made him feel almost light.

He unzipped the bag and stepped out of the tent and was surprised to see that Billy was gone. Canoe, old cooking pot, all of it gone and he hadn’t heard a thing. Brian moved away from the campsite and relieved himself and came back and saw something tied to the thwart of his canoe. He went closer. It was a short piece of a whitetail deer tail — tan and white hair on a bit of leather — with a crow feather tied next to it and both on a rawhide loop.

It was medicine, he thought. Billy had left it for him. He slipped the loop over his head. His medicine, a deer, and Billy’s, the crow feather, hung around his neck. He had two ways to see things now, two ways to know. .

He would think on Billy later, think on him and how he had come to be, and he would wonder where Billy was going, just as he thought Billy might wonder where Brian was going. But for now it was enough that they had had stew and sat by the fire, and Brian felt himself looking out as he packed the canoe, looking out of himself ahead at the horizon, the sky; not thinking of himself or what he was about but just seeing the world as he moved through it, and that came from Billy, watching Billy’s hands as he spoke, listening to the music of his words.

There was no wind and he paddled hard that day. By the map he judged he’d come more than thirty miles, leaving only perhaps sixty-odd miles to Williams Lake.

He caught fish for dinner again that night — this time the bare hook didn’t work and he had to get some worms from a rotten log — and had rice and fish. The grouse stew the night before had been delicious but the potatoes seemed heavy in his gut. The rice tasted good.

He set up camp with practiced skill and that night when it rained — not hard or long but enough to make everything wet and new looking — the water ran off the tent and into the ditch and flowed away down to the lake and he slept dry and comfortable. He awakened and listened to the rain on the tent for a time, then went back to sleep and did not awaken again until the sun was on the tent in the morning.

That day he paddled on three short lakes with small creeks between them. At the end of the last lake the creek leading to the next one was so shallow it would not take the canoe with Brian’s weight in it so he stepped out barefoot and began to pull the canoe along with just his gear in it, and he was wading along the creek in the late afternoon, when he ran into the bear.

He had seen bear before, had been attacked or at least rolled around by one, and knew that usually they didn’t bother people, wanted only to be left alone.

It was a young bear, not terribly big, perhaps two hundred and twenty pounds, and it was alongside the creek when Brian came around a turn, pulling the canoe. It had been rolling logs over along the side of the creek, looking for grubs.

‘‘Woof!’’ It made a sound exactly like a dog’s bark would be written. A clean woof , and stood up.

It was a ticklish moment. Brian knew that bear rarely attacked. But he also knew it wasn’t particularly good when they stood up and didn’t run away, and this bear was standing not ten feet from him.

Brian had left his bow on top of the pack with an arrow nocked to the string but it was a field point, not a broadhead, and a field point would do almost no damage to a bear, probably just make it angry. By the time he got a broadhead out of the quiver and got a shot the bear would be on him.

He looked down and to the side to avoid eye contact (which sometimes angered them) and — still holding the rope to the canoe so that it angled roughly between them — he slowly backed away.

The bear dropped to all fours and lunged toward him.

Brian jumped off to the left.

The bear stopped, watched, then lunged to its right, Brian’s left, heading off Brian’s movement in that direction.

Brian moved back to his right, trying to get back across the stream.

The bear lunged out into the water, this time to its left, forcing Brian back the other way.

It’s pushing me, Brian thought. It’s making me go back on the bank. It wants me.

The bear feinted again to the right, pushing Brian back, left, then right, the area getting smaller all the time; Brian kept moving back, pulling the canoe, keeping the canoe between them, zigging and zagging, always back, across the shallow stream and close to the bank on the far side.

The bear was teasing him, playing with him, maybe the way a cat plays with a mouse, back and forth, cutting him off, tightening down on him. Brian felt it rise in him then; he had been afraid, the way the bear was working him, like prey, and that changed to full-blown anger.

‘‘No!’’

His voice almost made Brian jump. The bear stopped dead, startled, and stood up again.

‘‘Not with me. .’’ Brian took the half beat to reach into the canoe and grab his bow, another half second to get a broadhead out of the quiver, nock it to the string, raise the bow and stand.

They weren’t twenty feet apart and now there was eye contact. The bear was close to the same height as Brian and there was no fear in its eyes and there was no fear in Brian’s. Just two sets of eyes looking at each other across the top of a razor-sharp MA-3 broadhead.

‘‘Go away.’’ Brian said it quietly but as he spoke he looked down from the bear’s eyes to the center of the bear’s chest, looked where the heart was beating, looked, and the point of the arrow dropped to where his eyes were looking and he drew the bow halfway back, then full, tucked the arrow under his chin and said again, softly, ‘‘Go away now.’’

There was nothing else for Brian then but the arrow and the bowstring trembling slightly in his fingers and the broadhead that he would send into the bear’s heart and the bear standing there, looking at him — no birds singing, no ripple of water past the canoe, no other thing in the world but one man and one bear in a moment perhaps older than time, a bear, a man and quiet death. Had the bear moved toward him again, or snarled, or lunged — any wrong start or any wrong motion — Brian would have released the arrow.