John Gardner: October Light

He’d come to pick her up in the buggy. It was a bright, bright day. He had no thought then of marrying; it would be years before he could afford to support a family — his father was at that time still running the farm, or his father and his uncle. And if he had thought of marrying, it would probably not have been Ariah he’d have thought of getting married to, supposing someone should have asked him, that moment, to make his choice. She was his good, delightful friend, from a family much better off than his, better educated, richer. There was no way on earth he could have asked her to marry him — except the way he did. She came running toward the buggy, smiling, glad to see him as she always was — it was a curious thing, what fun they’d had together all their lives, though of course they’d had their spats, mostly, he knew now, because of his excessive Yankee pride in workmanship, his greed, his refusal to stop and simply look, the way Ed Thomas had looked, or play — and he’d dropped the lines over the thill to get down from the buggy and help her. She’d stopped abruptly, four feet from the wheel, and said, “James Page you’ve got a mighty funny look on you. Tell me what you were thinking right then.” Before he knew he’d say it — from the pure, benighted habit of absolute honesty (when he heard himself saying it, it was as if it was coming from the sun above his head, or from God Himself, tricking him to happiness): “I was thinking I wish we could get married,” he said. She tipped her head sideways, smiling, showing her dimples, and said, “Let’s!” Three years later, they did.

So the unlocking of his heart continued. He remembered the death of his younger son — that had been the first death — remembered Sally’s horror and indignation when Ginny got engaged to that strange looking Lewis Hicks. “He don’t seem a bad sort,” James had said. Sally had said, “She’s selling herself cheap. Our Ginny’s a wonderful and intelligent girl. Have you noticed that boy’s eyes?” “You don’t like him,” James had said smugly, “because he’s pot Indian.” That had pleased him — pleased him still, thinking back to it.

While he was savoring his memories, by this time standing there motionless as a frog, snowy head bowed, something came up behind him or materialized from invisibility and draped its shadow over him. His blood ran cold — there was a smell of wildness — and slowly, expecting God knows what, he turned to look. Five feet away from him, between him and the gun, there stood what must’ve been — judging by the tracks when he examined them later — a six hundred pound black bear. Perhaps it had not realized the old man was here; perhaps it was sick, or paying no attention … It was an old bear, that much he knew at once, observing dispassionately even as his knees banged together. Around the bear’s muzzle the hair had all turned gray, and it seemed to James Page that there was something not quite right about the eyes.

The two ancient creatures stared at one another, both of them standing more or less upright — the bear considerably more upright than the man — the old man unable to do a thing to defend himself, too weak-kneed to try running or even jump for the gun, his heart so hammering at the root of his throat that he could not even make a sound. He often thought, going over it later, how that Britisher must have felt when he looked up at the top of the wall by the cliff, there at Fort Ticonderoga, and beheld that stone man Ethan Allen towering against the stars and gray dawn, filling the sky with his obscenities. He, the Britisher, had been an ordinary man, as James Page, here among his hives, was only an ordinary man. Ethan Allen had been put upon the earth like Hercules, to show an impression of things beyond it. So it was with this enormous old bear that stood sniffing at the wind and studying him, uncertain what heaven had in mind. A full minute passed, and still the bear stood considering, as if baffled by where the old man had come from and what his purpose could be, creeping up on him. Then at last the bear went down on all fours again, turned to where the containers for the honeycombs sat, and began — as if he had all day and had forgotten James’ existence — to eat. James made for the gun and, despite the weakness of his legs, reached it. The bear turned, a low growl coming from low in his throat, then went back calmly to his business. James with wildly trembling hands raised the gun to his shoulder and aimed it at the back of the bear’s head. What happened then he could not clearly remember afterward. As he was about to pull the trigger, something jerked the gun straight up — possibly, of course, his own arm. He fired at the sky, as if warning a burglar. The bear jumped three feet into the air and began shaking exactly as the old man was doing, snatched up an armload of honeycombs, and began to back off.

“And you didn’t shoot at him?” Lewis said, looking thoughtfully past him with that one blue eye, one brown eye.

“I fahgot!” James said, squeezing his lower lip between his right-hand finger and thumb.

“It theemed like—” He broke off, realizing he must have, for an instant, fallen into a dream. It had seemed to the old man that the bear had said something, had said to him distinctly, reproachfully, Oh James, James!