Mrs. Shelburton and Beth arrived so soon after school I knew they had driven right over. My mouth went dry when I saw Beth, and my heart hammered at my rib cage. She was wearing a simple blue dress with a belt and long white socks, and her hair was tied in a ribbon. I just couldn’t believe how pretty she was. I wondered briefly if I should tell her that, then dismissed the notion because I thought it would make me seem unmanly.
Mrs. Shelburton sat on the deck to talk to my dad while Beth and I went for a walk through the back property line. I guided her to where the path conveniently dipped down out of view of the house as it aimed for the creek. My scheme to get her alone and out of sight was working perfectly, but I was immensely nervous because this time my kissing would be premeditated, with no cheering crowds to provide inspiration. How, I wondered, does somebody go from having a conversation to having a kiss? I kept slowing down, thinking Beth would get the hint that I had more on my mind than a mere stroll, but she maintained her pace and then I’d have to jog to catch up.
She informed me that Benny H. Junior High was absolutely abuzz with conversation about the bear and that despite the fact that everyone knew about the Polaroid, there was a substantial number of students who maintained that my father and I claimed the bear could actually talk. Everyone also knew that Dan Alderton and I had been ejected from school and were serving out a weeklong suspension, with the consensus being that the fight had erupted because of what Dan had said about my mother and that I had beaten the crap out of him. In truth, I’m not sure that’s how a fight referee would score it, but it seemed my schoolmates didn’t feel I had lost, which was the important thing.
All of this was interesting, but the reason I was watching Beth’s mouth had less to do with the words coming out of it and more about my intent to home in on it with my own, moving target or not. In fact, I was so fixated on her lips I felt sure she’d notice and understand what I was intending, but if she did she gave no sign whatsoever.
At the creek she turned downstream and I followed, though I felt an instant stab of guilt when the creek joined the river and I pictured us coming to where Emory and I had etched our names in the riverbank. Charlie loves Kay. I knew I hadn’t written those words, but I’d been contemplating doing so, and that made me flush with consternation even though it was ridiculous.
I needn’t have worried. The recent rains had erased all signs of both “Charlie” and “Emory.”
Beth was still talking and walking, oblivious to my inner turmoil, and I despaired that I would ever get her to shut up long enough to romance her any.
“Oh, and Mike Kappas says hi,” she said breezily.
That one stopped me—it felt like ice landing in my stomach. Mike Kappas? If Mike Kappas was interested in Beth, she wouldn’t be my girl for very long. Maybe I’d already lost her! Maybe she’d kissed him.
“Mike?” I repeated with forced casualness.
“I went over and talked to him at lunch.”
“Why did you do that?”
She seemed surprised. “He’s your friend, isn’t he? I thought he’d want to hear about what was going on.”
“So you went over to talk to Mike because he’s my friend.” I tried, but I couldn’t quite keep the flat disbelief out of my voice.
“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”
“He’s not my friend. He’s, like, one of the most popular kids in eighth grade.”
“Right,” she said slowly.
I found myself getting a little angry at her now, mainly because I’d promised myself all day that the second we saw each other we’d make out like fiends and instead we were talking about another boy. “How can you just walk up to a guy like Mike Kappas? You’re a seventh grader.”
“I know.” She was searching my eyes with her own, trying to puzzle it out.
“It’s just … it must be because you are so pretty.”
“You think I’m pretty?” she responded softly. Had I been a little better at it I might have picked up on the vulnerability in her tone, but I was chasing a different thought entirely.
“I mean, God, it’s so easy for you.”
“What do you mean, easy? What’s easy?”
“The whole thing. Benny H.”
“No, what, you mean junior high?”
“Yeah, the way you just…” I trailed off.
“Easy? It’s horrible. I hate it,” she declared.
“But you just, I mean, you walk up to people and start talking. You’re not scared or anything.”
“How can you say that? I’m scared to death. I feel like if I do something wrong everyone will despise me.”
This was so out of keeping with my image of her that I stopped walking and stared. She stopped, too, which meant that I now had a shot at kissing her, except the mood felt all wrong.
“Really?” I asked. It was exactly the way I felt. I couldn’t imagine her having the same issues.
“Sure. What do you think?”
“I just think you’re the most confident person I’ve ever met.”
Her eyes danced across mine, flattered and speculative. Now. I should kiss her now.
What I did instead was turn and start walking. I’d lost my nerve again. This whole kissing process was turning out to be far more complicated and stressful than I’d thought it would be.
“I just thought you would want me to tell Mike what was going on, Charlie.”
Great, now we were back to talking about Mike Kappas.
“Hey, what’s that?” Beth asked me, pulling on my arm.
I didn’t see where she was pointing at first, but then gradually out of the carpet of pine needles and yellowing grasses a shape resolved itself that wasn’t supposed to be there, something man-made. I stepped forward, peering at it.
“Oh!” I exclaimed when I figured it out. It was a wire-framed, triangular structure that, when I stood it on its broad base, looked a little like an oil rig. This particular one had a thick wad at the top where a homemade flag had been wound and carefully taped in place, like shoving a cork on top of the point of the oil rig.
It was one of Mom’s tomato cages. What was it doing here?
“It looks like a tomato cage,” Beth said.
“Yeah, from our garden.” On closer inspection, this one was different from the others that I had locked in the cabinet in the pole barn. At the end, where the taped-up flag made a tightly wound lump, it was covered in dried paint.
Red paint.
It all came together for me in a flash. I picked up the tomato cage and slid the big end over my arm. It came all the way to my shoulder and still stuck out several feet. At the tip, the rolled-up flag would make a pretty fair paintbrush. At its base the cage was as big around as a basketball.
Wide enough for a bear to stick his paw in, if he wanted.
A very smart bear.
I stared at her. Her expression was non-comprehending. We were standing close to each other, so close that she heard me clearly, even though my voice was a murmur. “That’s how he did it, Beth,” I said simply.
And it was with those words and with the stupid tomato cage still hanging off my shoulders like a giant robot arm that I pulled her to me and kissed her.
chapter
TWENTY-NINE
MAYBE Beth had known what I’d been planning all along, because she didn’t scream or flinch, just sort of focused on my mouth as it was closing in for the kill. I got about 80 percent lip involvement, but I was a little high and to the right. Then I dropped the tomato cage and did it again, and this time, with this kiss, I was filled with a warm sensation that spread through my body, a wonderful feeling that combined the way Beth fit in my arms with the smell of her hair and, of course, with the soft touch of her lips against mine, a melting of our mouths that was a vast improvement over the last one. When we finally parted our faces remained close—I just wanted to stand there and hold her forever.
“You’re the first boy I’ve ever done this with. I mean, kissed like this,” she
whispered.
I nodded. “Me, too,” I confessed.
“I knew you would be. That day I saw you from the barn window,” I thought to myself, ‘That’s Charlie Hall, and one day I’m going to let him kiss me for real, like lovers, so I’m going to save myself for that moment.’”
What could I say to that? Beth always left me speechless.
The air was chilly and Beth was trembling a bit, so I picked up the tomato cage and we headed back to the house, holding hands. We didn’t talk much—I felt too good to put anything into words, and Beth was just smiling, her face turned up to an October sun that was losing potency as the afternoon waned.
My American Sikh therapist, Sat Siri, rather gently asked me in one of our sessions if I thought I should “take a look” at the fact that I had “come to believe” that the bear was communicating with me using an object that I revered as one of the last normal things my mother ever touched. I nodded as if I were pondering it, but what I was thinking, as Sat Siri waited patiently for me to respond, was that at the time I didn’t really register what an epiphany I’d had over how the bear had written the words on the wall. I had just kissed Beth Shelburton; my whole body was singing with it. I didn’t have room in my field of vision to be “looking at” anything else.
For an adult, a kiss is often part exploration and part negotiation. It’s sort of like two people resting their hands on a Ouija board pointer and waiting to see if it will drift up to “no” or “yes.” But for me, as an eighth-grade boy, kissing Beth was everything, the whole package, complete and joyfully romantic.
When we got back to the house I saw that the changing weather was having a dampening effect on the crowd. I imagined the novelty of hanging around waiting for something to happen was wearing off and my dad was keeping the pole barn shut to ensure Emory’s privacy. I locked the tomato cage in the cabinet with the others, noting that Emory was sound asleep on the couch.
Mrs. Shelburton had been looking for Beth and briskly motioned that it was time to go. Beth turned her face up to me and I thought maybe it was an invitation for a good-bye kiss, but I just wasn’t sure I could muster up any technique with that many people watching.
As Beth left with her mom Kay came up to me. “Is that your girlfriend?” she asked.
“Yes. I mean, we’re not going together officially. No,” I said.
Kay laughed at me. “Well, you better make up your mind before someone else claims her. She’s very pretty.”
“Yeah.” I could feel my face flushing.
Kay’s dark eyes traced around my face, easily reading all my secrets, giving me a small, affectionate smile. “I have to leave, but there will still be some people here, and I think a friend of mine’s coming back tonight. You’ll be okay,” Kay told me.
“Thanks,” I said inadequately.
I was pretty surprised to see whom my father was sitting with at the kitchen table when I walked inside the house: Pastor Klausen, the minister, and his new youth minister, who always told us to call him Pastor Jamie, so I didn’t know his last name.
Pastor Klausen was one of those guys who didn’t have much hair, and what was left of it seemed to have taken up residence mostly in his ears. He smiled at me now, his spotted skin a waxy pale color, crisscrossed with wrinkles, like paper that’s been read and folded many times.
The youth minister was fresh faced and attractive, with clear skin and brown eyes and lots of dark hair that touched his shoulders. As he nodded at me the gulf between the two holy men looked like a thousand years. The plan was for Call Me Pastor Jamie to take over running things when Pastor Klausen retired, which would be quite a change for the congregation to get used to, in my opinion. Pastor Jamie was pretty new out of minister school and knew a lot of stuff about the rules in the Bible, while Pastor Klausen had lived in Selkirk River for most of the century and knew a lot about his neighbors.
Pastor Klausen was saying that he just wanted to make sure things didn’t get all stirred up.
“You’ve introduced a lot of troubling notions,” Pastor Jamie interrupted.
My father raised a mild eyebrow, which I knew from lifelong experience meant he was getting irritated.
“I’ve introduced?”
“The idea that the bear is human,” Jamie said scornfully.
“I never said that,” my father replied.
“I think the issue, George, is this idea that he’s somehow got the soul of a man in him,” Pastor Klausen explained.
Jamie snorted, and Pastor Klausen cut a quick look in his direction before turning back to my father. “Do you believe this to be true?”
My father fished around inside himself for the most honest answer he had at that moment. “I don’t know what I believe about that. I guess I do believe the bear believes it, though.”
That made me grin.
“But think of what that implies,” Pastor Klausen urged. “And how could a bear do such a thing, anyway?”
I knew, but I wasn’t going to say anything until I’d figured out if it would be good or bad for Emory.
“I’m not sure why you’re here,” my father said after a long moment.
The older minister’s face was kind but a little concerned, like maybe my father and I were getting ourselves into some kind of trouble and he wanted to help us out of it. “Because, George, people look to us for an explanation about all of this,” he said.
“And there’s nothing in Scripture about a talking bear,” Pastor Jamie said. The tone in his voice was so close to being a sneer I was surprised his lips didn’t curl. I looked at him, startled. He sounded so mean, but his face was so handsome and nice, I had trouble reconciling the two.
Pastor Klausen was still looking at my dad, but his eyes flickered a little in what I thought was amusement. “Well, Numbers Twenty-two,” he said to the youth minister. Jamie looked away in disgust. “In Numbers,” the older minister elaborated to my father, “Balaam has a donkey who speaks to him.”
“Not the same thing at all,” Pastor Jamie said.
I had to agree with him on that one. I didn’t know who Balaam was, but a donkey was not a bear.
Pastor Jamie leaned in toward my dad. “The point is that you’ve got half the town believing in this, this superstition, that a soldier has been reincarnated as a bear,” he said.
My dad gave Jamie a very cold look but didn’t say anything.
“George. It’s our job to help people understand things by way of the Word of our Lord,” Pastor Klausen said gently. “Even things that defy explanation, if we look hard enough, we see that God provides an answer.” He gestured with a slight hand motion toward the Bible that I only now noticed that Pastor Jamie held. We all respectfully turned and looked at it, and a long, long moment passed before I spoke.
“Like my mom?” I asked quietly.
Pastor Klausen’s watery blue eyes turned sad. “Charlie. I wish I could say I understood why things like that happen. Why our Lord chose the course for her He did—maybe it is something we’ll never understand in this lifetime. Your mother was called home at a very young age, and we all miss her terribly. You, especially, I know you miss her.”
I nodded, swallowing. Some part of me, I now realize, just wanted to hear this, to hear that someone knew how much I missed my mom. Yes, it happened to our family, to her, to my dad, and I was part of all that, but it separately happened to me, all alone with it, and I had long craved recognition of that sad fact.
“It must have been so, so hard for you,” Pastor Klausen continued. “A terrible shock.”
I nodded again.
“And if maybe it seemed like a good idea, when this tame bear showed up, to write some words on the wall in paint,” Jamie interjected eagerly. “That would be perfectly understandable.”
Pastor Klausen shut him up with a look.
My father cleared his throat. “Then let’s get to it. Charlie, did you write those words on the wall?”
“No, sir.”
“You see who d
id?”
“No.”
“You think Emory did it? The bear?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So do I. There’s not much I understand, but I do believe that’s exactly what happened. Gentlemen, thanks for stopping by; I do appreciate your concern,” my father said, not sounding appreciative at all.
Pastor Klausen shook my hand with what looked like real regret in his eyes, like things hadn’t gone as planned. Pastor Jamie shook hands, too, but his eyes were scornful and displeased, like I was the boy who hit a baseball through the church window but was standing by my story of innocence. If he ever decided to give up being a preacher, Pastor Jamie had a good future in him as a junior high school principal.
As the two men walked out the door, I turned to face my father. “Dad, there’s something else.”
I couldn’t blame him for the wary look in his eyes—I’d been throwing a lot at him lately.
“I knew Emory’s name before he wrote it in the pole barn. His first name, I mean.”
My father regarded me patiently. I explained about the names Emory and I had etched in the riverbank, now washed away. I kept talking faster and faster, as if I could run right past the question I knew was coming.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
I bit my lip. Withholding facts from my father was such an inveterate habit that I often wasn’t sure why I felt such a compulsion to control the flow of information.
“I don’t know,” I said miserably. I felt pretty guilty about it now.
And, of course, there was something else I hadn’t told him, either. I opened my mouth to advise him about finding the tomato cage by the river, but before I could say anything we heard footsteps on the porch. There was a knock on the open door, and then McHenry was standing there.
“Come on in, Jules,” my dad said, surprising me. Despite the food shipment, McHenry was, to me, the enemy.
McHenry came in carrying a briefcase. We didn’t see many of them in Selkirk River. He set the briefcase on the table.