Emory's Gift

  “But…”

  McHenry snorted, shaking his head, his ponytail flapping as he did so.

  It took some working out, but eventually it was decided that I would go into the barn and get things ready and then Mr. Thorpe would stand inside by the side door, which would be cracked open enough to allow Wally to have a view.

  I didn’t know what good it was to have a bear expert who was afraid of bears, but no one asked me my opinion.

  I opened the back door and stuck my head in. “Emory?” I said tentatively. “You okay?”

  The bear just stared at me, implacable as always.

  “You need to give your message,” I told him. “We’re out of time.”

  I went to the paint cans and selected a deep blue. I popped open the lid and stirred it up real well. I considered turning on the lights, but as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I decided to stick with the ambient illumination. I unlocked the back cabinet and pulled out a tomato cage.

  “Are you ready, Emory?” I asked quietly.

  chapter

  THIRTY-SIX

  EMORY was ready. He rose up on his rear legs. I stuck out the tomato cage, and he slipped his paw into it.

  There it was: proof that he had written the words on the wall.

  I went to the back door and opened it a little. A wedge of bright light leaped across the floor. “You ready, Mr. Thorpe?”

  He gave a trembling nod. Behind him my dad smiled at me. He was standing close to Nichole and I could somehow tell that he wanted to hold her hand but lacked the nerve. Thorpe edged into the pole barn, standing as close as he could to the exit.

  I picked up the paint can and set it down close to the blank expanse of white wall directly across from the door. Then I guided the wrapped, taped flag into the paint, and when I pulled it out it dribbled a little like a marshmallow on a stick when you pour chocolate syrup on it.

  Emory had trouble with the thing—no wonder there’d been so much paint spatter the first time; it really was unwieldy. I helped him get the tip of the tomato cage up and pointed at the wall, then held my breath. Emory touched the wet end of his tomato cage paintbrush against the white surface and began to write his message.

  I was pretty astonished at the words that flowed out from under his brush. It must have shown on my face, because Thorpe hissed at me, “I can’t see; he’s blocking my view!”

  Emory turned and looked at our bear expert and I thought the man was going to faint dead away. He’d already been hanging half out the door and as he reflexively retreated the rest of the way he jerked sharply on the tarp over the window and it fell away, blasting the room with light.

  Wally had his camera on his shoulder and he rushed forward even as Mr. Thorpe fell back, so that the two collided. I’ve seen the footage and it’s pretty funny, with Mr. Thorpe’s out-of-focus head swimming past, big as a blimp, and then the sky and the ground and the door all flashing into frame.

  Finally Wally got focus. Emory had dropped to all fours and beaten a retreat to the corner when he saw Wally—maybe he did think it was a gun, or a weapon of some kind. The tomato cage was at my feet and I picked it up.

  Wally’s camera caught me standing there with my mouth open, the tomato cage in my hands, dripping blue, and the words on the wall next to me:

  God Loves

  “It’s okay, Emory,” I told him. For some reason, my heart was pounding. I went back over to the window and rehung the tarp. To help calm him down, I shut the door behind me when I walked outside. Everyone was standing in a tight knot in the backyard, still processing what they had seen.

  “You get it, Wally?” Alecci asked.

  “What I got was Thorpe here blocking the whole thing with his fat ass, then a few seconds of graffiti,” Wally replied laconically. “No action, unless you count our bear expert falling over his own feet.”

  “I guess we should have expected something like this,” Nichole was saying.

  “So you believe…,” my father started to respond.

  “Yes!” McHenry said.

  “So you got nothing?” Alecci demanded incredulously.

  “What did you want me to do: say something, get my voice on tape? You’re the damn producer,” Wally spat. “You were hiding behind me like a scared rabbit instead of doing your job.”

  “What, what do you believe?” Nichole asked McHenry.

  “It’s a message from God!” McHenry said exultantly. He raised his fists up into the air like he’d just scored a touchdown. I thought it was an odd statement from someone who said he didn’t believe in God.

  “Or maybe just a message from a reincarnated soldier who believes in God,” my father speculated. “Or a bear who…” He trailed off, unsure.

  “It’s a direct message, clear as anything,” McHenry insisted. It seemed pretty important to him that we agree.

  “So we didn’t get the bear writing anything. All we got is some words that are already on the wall,” Alecci said angrily.

  “‘God Loves,’” Nichole mused.

  None of this really mattered to me—not at that moment, anyway. I was just feeling deflated. It was over. Emory had done the thing he’d come to do, and now he would be leaving.

  “Great, just great,” Alecci muttered, rubbing his hand through his hair.

  “What’s the problem?” Nichole asked him. “It’s the message that’s important.”

  “The message? This isn’t the story people want,” Alecci said scornfully.

  “But we saw—,” she objected.

  “What did we actually see?” Alecci turned to Mr. Thorpe. “What did you see, Phillip? Since you were standing directly in front of my camera.”

  We all gazed at our bear expert expectantly. The truth was, I’m not sure he could see anything, there was so much of him that had been poised for retreat. But he was, after all, the man with experience in unique situations like this. He gathered himself, straightening his tie.

  “I need to reflect on this for a bit. Go back to the hotel. I’ll have an announcement in the morning,” he responded.

  Alecci stared at him in disbelief. “What? We’re not electing the Pope here, Phillip. We need to get you on camera now.”

  He shook his head stubbornly. I figured I knew why he was being intransigent. We’d all heard Alecci say Sunday was a slow news day.

  “All right. Okay,” Alecci said, as if some huge emergency were under way and only he could save us. “Those padres still here? Let’s get their reaction. We need something, for crissakes.”

  It occurred to Nichole that our bear expert was stuck without a ride, so McHenry gave him a lift back to the hotel just to get rid of him. My dad allowed Nichole to use our house for the interview, and Pastor Jamie was delighted to be on camera, while Pastor Klausen refused, saying no one would be interested in what an old man like him had to say.

  “He really wrote that, Charlie?” my dad asked me. I gave him a solemn nod. He looked over to where Nichole was applying makeup to Pastor Jamie’s face. “I have to say, I thought it would be something about bears. Or war, maybe. Not to fight any more Vietnams.”

  We regarded each other, just like a normal father with his normal boy.

  I wandered over to where Nichole was finishing up her makeup job on Pastor Jamie. Pastor Klausen stood with his arms folded. “I’m just observing that it is ironic that we of all people should cast doubt on a message of God’s love simply because we don’t like the messenger,” Pastor Klausen was saying.

  “We of all people,” Jamie repeated. “Come on, Mark.”

  “What would be wrong with leaving the door open for a little doubt, a little hope?”

  “It’s not Scripture,” Pastor Jamie said stubbornly.

  “All done,” Nichole said.

  Pastor Jamie pulled the paper bib off from around his neck and stood, turning to Pastor Klausen. “Mark,” Pastor Jamie said in low tones, “tomorrow morning they’re going to come up here and euthanize that bear. Can you imagine the uproar if people beli
eve he’s a messenger of God? And can you imagine what would happen to our faith if people start comparing that bear to our Savior? Another life sacrificed, they’ll say. A bear. An animal. And then what? You’re not seeing the big picture, Mark. This is a crisis.”

  It was hard for me to care about any of this. For me the only pressing issues were that I had to get Beth back and that Emory needed to be kept safe. Compared to that, what else mattered?

  Nichole interviewed Pastor Jamie and he patiently explained why it was simply impossible that the bear was really a person or that he had really been reincarnated to bring a message about the Lord. “There’s only one man who has risen from the dead in the history of the world,” Pastor Jamie gravely reminded the camera.

  Alecci and Wally left after the taping, and McHenry followed shortly after. New security men came out to replace the ones who had been on duty all day. The number of gawkers was small enough that when they were told by the guards to get off the property they went, walking down the road with the slow gait of people who know they’ve got a big hike ahead of them.

  Nichole cooked dinner, and it was chicken parts fried up in a lemon sauce with spaghetti noodles and spinach, which sounded dreadful but tasted absolutely wonderful. It was pretty comfortable, sitting there at the table, the three of us. The phone rang and it was for Nichole, who talked quietly and then turned to us with a troubled look on her face.

  “Tony was right. Our news director doesn’t want to run the story the way it is right now. He said we need to wait until we hear from Phillip and then we’ll see.”

  “Really? It seems like a pretty big deal to me,” my father observed. “Maybe the biggest deal, if you consider the implications.”

  Nichole shrugged. “Tony said they said it looked staged; I don’t know. And, um, hokey.”

  “Hokey,” my father repeated, turning the word over on his tongue.

  After dinner I went out to check on Emory. My throat tightened a little as I approached the side door of the pole barn—I knew he’d be leaving now, probably first thing in the morning. He’d delivered his message.

  I opened the door. Emory eased off the couch and went out into the night.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “You coming back?”

  He looked at me a moment, then turned and walked down toward the creek. If this was the last time I would ever see him, he’d done nothing to mark the occasion or give me any sense that I meant anything to him at all. I felt bitter and empty over the possibility.

  I turned on the light in the barn to see if there was anything I needed to clean up. I stopped in my tracks when I saw that Emory had written more words on the wall.

  chapter

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  WHILE we were eating dinner, Emory had apparently put the tomato cage back on his arm and finished the sentence. Now it read,

  God Loves All

  I have to confess that my initial reaction was that the additional word didn’t change much. What was the difference between “God Loves” and “God Loves All”? But then a few days later, pondering it, I applied it to myself. If I just said, Charlie Hall loves, it meant that I was capable of loving and did love somebody, but if I said, Charlie Hall loves all, it said I loved everybody. So that was it; that was why Emory was here; that was his message. God loves everybody.

  Again, to my thirteen-year-old mind it wasn’t very controversial—but I was missing the big picture, wasn’t I? Suppose for a moment you believed in God and, further, that you believed Emory when he said he was here with a message and the message was that God loves all. Did that mean God loved atheists? Buddhists? Muslims? Was this the Christian God I’d been raised to believe in? Or maybe some other God, a bear God, even.

  And, as I said, I didn’t really give it much thought at the time, because there were other words on the wall, written below and to the side of the central statement, almost like an afterthought.

  Now this bear will be bear once more.

  I ran to the house, bursting in the front door. “Dad!”

  I stopped. Nichole looked very sad, my father sitting really close to her on the couch. They were obviously having an intent conversation that I had interrupted. Nichole abruptly stood and turned away from me, facing out the back window and wiping her eyes.

  “What is it, Son?”

  “Emory’s written more stuff on the wall.”

  Nichole turned at that. Her eyes were red and I glanced away from her, a little embarrassed. My dad cocked his head at me in a way that left me cold—for just a second, I saw doubt there, like maybe I was lying. But then his vision cleared as he apparently reminded himself that he had already made his choice to believe me.

  My dad and I went out to the pole barn, and Nichole arrived shortly after, her face glowing with fresh makeup. She gave me the same odd look as my father had as she contemplated the new words, a look I would become more and more accustomed to over the course of my life. No one but me and Phillip T. Thorpe had seen Emory write anything, and even the bear expert admitted he hadn’t seen much. Now, after Emory had been unsupervised in the pole barn, there were more words on the wall.

  Did it really happen?

  Now this bear will be bear once more.

  My dad, of course, was able to translate. “He’s saying he’s leaving. Emory’s leaving, and the bear will go back to being a bear.”

  Dad went inside to call McHenry. Soon our core group—McHenry, Nichole, my dad, and me—stood in a huddle, looking at each other in the harsh light from the overhead bulbs in the pole barn. McHenry had no doubt in his eyes at all—if anything, he was ecstatic, ebullient. For some odd reason this immediate acceptance made me uneasy, as if having him so solidly on my side only served to cast further doubt on my story.

  There was, however, reason to treasure McHenry as an ally. “I called my attorney and told him to request an emergency extension of the injunction, make up whatever reason he has to,” he said.

  “I thought you said that wasn’t likely to happen,” my father objected.

  McHenry nodded. “I know that’s what I said, and that’s what I was told. But we have to do it, don’t you think, George? We need more time. The bear’s still here.”

  “Unless he’s already left,” my father suggested, gazing meaningfully out into the tenebrous forest where Emory had gone.

  I gave my dad a wild look. Could that be true? Again I thought of Emory passing by me without so much as a second glance. I couldn’t believe my last glimpse of him would be so bereft of any personal recognition.

  Nichole gave me a comforting smile. “I don’t think so, Charlie. I think he’ll be back. You’ll get a chance to say good-bye.”

  “We don’t know that,” my dad objected. Then he sort of blinked when Nichole gave him a narrow look, and, after a second, he got it and looked at me. “But we don’t know he won’t come back, either, Charlie,” he said reassuringly. “We just don’t know.”

  The whole exchange reminded me of when my dad would say something harsh to me and then completely reverse himself after a single glance from my mom.

  I felt pretty good about what McHenry said about his lawyer. When everything had been at their most bleak, he’d served the sheriff and Mr. Hessler some papers and they’d had to completely back off. It seemed pretty clear to me that Emory and I would have more time.

  When Emory came plodding back up the path from the creek an hour or so later he headed toward the food I’d set out for him in a clear indication that he wasn’t yet ready to go be a bear once more. He gave me a look as he passed inside. “I read it,” I told him. I put my hands on my hips like a disappointed parent. “So you’re going to become a bear again, a wild bear? Like, live in the woods?”

  No reaction. It didn’t really sound right when I said it out loud—Emory already was a bear.

  That night I was conscious, as I slept on the couch, of a lot of moving around and whispering, but I was too tired to open my eyes to see what was going on. I figured my father and Nicho
le were having trouble sleeping, with everything that was happening.

  I guess it was a few years later when it occurred to me what they were really up to.

  We were awake at dawn again. The news van showed up early, too. Everyone looked grumpy as we assembled in the chill morning air. It was bitterly cold. Good hibernating weather, I thought to myself.

  No spectators had yet arrived, so it was just us. Nichole had been up for more than an hour and looked beautiful, ready to go on camera. While Wally and Alecci discussed what they wanted to shoot, she sat with me on the front porch.

  “So you’re off to school pretty soon?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Bus will be here in about an hour.” The conflict was making my stomach cramp—I needed to see Beth, but I wanted to be here, with Emory. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Beth, though, and if being here with Emory meant watching him leave, I wasn’t much looking forward to that, either.

  Nichole’s eyes were sympathetic, as if she could read my inner turmoil. “Remember what I told you about when you see Beth. Girls like apologies; I promise.”

  “I was really stupid,” I said.

  “Tell her that,” Nichole said with a smile. She started to stand up.

  “Nichole?” My voice cracked a little, surprising me.

  “Yes, Charlie.”

  I started to talk, but nothing came out. It must have appeared really peculiar, my stare intense and my mouth working soundlessly, but Nichole just put her hand on my arm and gave me a patient look.

  “Take your time,” she said quietly.

  I took a deep breath. I had no idea why I wanted to confide in her, but the urge was as strong as it had been in the Jeep when I was headed to court with my dad. It was like the current in the river, pulling me along irresistibly. With no plan at all, I opened my mouth and said it: “When my mom slipped into her coma, I wasn’t in the room. I was supposed to sit with her, but I got bored and went into the living room to mess around with my dad’s guns. When she, I mean, in her final moments, she was all alone by herself.” I stared up at Nichole, my eyes filling.

  “Oh, Charlie,” she whispered. She pulled me to her, my face against her soft shoulder. “When you’re loved by other people, you’re never truly alone; you know that.”