I fired my rifle in the air. Birds shook the trees, but the dog barely moved. It panted in front of my cabin, cooling itself in the pawed-up dirt. My cabin was clean-swept and pine-smelling. I did not want a dog. Next day it came back, studying me with dull eyes, digging the same shallow hole and lying down in it. November blew orange leaves from the oaks. It was a good year for acorns, and the woods thundered with their falling.
One day I got back from a hunt and there was a hole under the wall of my cabin. I lay down to look, striking a match for light, and saw the wet glint of noses.
Five noses. Five pups. One died, first frost. When I picked it up it was frozen stiff like a glove. I buried it in the rhododendrons by the stream. Something dug it up. Of the surviving pups, one was speckled like a hog. Another was slender and greedy, with a black stripe flowing down his back. The other two were identical, oily brown like their mother.
I could hear them scratching and whining under my feet. I was determined not to intervene. It was a natural thing. I had my small square of human warmth. All I did was move the stove above their den.
By February the cabin quivered with their strength. Some mornings they startled me awake by wrestling under the floor. If I put my bare feet on the floorboards I could feel their backs bumping against the wood. I liked their company, but I did not allow them inside the cabin. Then, for whatever reason, the mother died.
The pups whined at my door until I threw a wedge of cornbread into the woods. They came back, expectant.
Sam, the slender greedy one, showed a talent for hunting. His nose was powerful. Two years old he was the best dog I ever hunted. Standing at the top of a mountain he could smell a bear browsing the hollow, and he would be off, weaving through trees, his brothers tumbling after, yipping their horrible yips, calling my gun down the mountain.
The two brown dogs, Daisy and Pete, died before turning three. One got tangled in the antlers of a deer. The other got snakebit in a rocky place. His face swelled up. I sat down and pet him until his breaths got shallow.
Now I had two dogs, Sam, the slender greedy one, and Hamilton, the hog-speckled.
Sam was more intelligent. If I petted Hamilton first thing in the morning Sam got hurt feelings and sulked. Cold mornings he would tear around the cabin, diving off logs, scattering leaves, hurling sticks in the air. Hamilton was a quiet dog. Sometimes on uneasy nights he fixed his gaze on a spot of perfect darkness and growled. He had fits a couple times, late at night, thrashing and hammering the floorboards.
They became a fast and muscular team. Sam, though small, surprised bears with his recklessness. By the time they understood he meant business, his teeth were in. Hamilton was the bruiser. He fought slow and methodical, and he was nearly strong as a bear himself. I believe he once suffocated a bear.
For three winters we hunted the hills and hollows. Jars of bear grease filled my shelves. The smell stayed on my clothes. It was a good season of life, the best I have known. I skinned three bears that last autumn, big ones, the ones that stand on two legs. Killing them was not easy but I did it, and the dogs never got hurt because they knew what to do. Sam rushed forward, surprising the bear. Hamilton went for the loose skin between the shoulder blades, pulling the bear over backwards. Then I would shoot. Once a big bear roared in disbelief, and the sound stayed behind, making me thoughtful.
*
It happened on a gray morning, bland as boiled acorns, and steel cold. It was the winter after our greatest fall. Sam went tearing around the cabin, doing somersaults, crunching sticks with his back teeth. Hamilton seemed uneasy and stiff. He smelled his breakfast for a long time. He jumped at small sounds. I kidded him and pulled his tail. He was never scared. Not like that.
Hard rain had stripped all color from the trees. Everything was brown and black, stained and runny. Our progress was slow. My boots sucked mud. Does dotted a ridgeline, nosing for nuts, but we were not after does. The sun fought through the clouds and shot a weak fishbelly light across the world. We went on. It was a cold, wet, indoor sort of morning, full of mushrooms.
Suddenly Hamilton pointed his snout downhill. This was peculiar. Sam was always first to gain the scent. But this time Hamilton did, and by the tone of his whine, I knew the scent had hooked him deep in the brain.
I let him go. He tore off like a cannonball, big-bellying through the leaves. Sam followed in his brother’s tracks.
*
I followed my dogs into a rhododendron jungle. I should not have let them go.
In a jungle like that, a bear is better off than a dog. He can maneuver. He knows the tubes and tunnels. He knows how to pass through the clotted branches like water. A dog needs space.
I heard them working the rhododendrons. Branches clacked, leaves rattled, and paws chopped up thick mud. Woods had gone dead quiet. Squirrels froze halfway up trees. Birds bobbed on bare legs. All you could hear was the dogs working that jungle.
The explosion was quieter than I expected. After the first massive shifting of fur and flank, the only audible sound was the rhythmic crash of Hamilton trying to get an angle. I couldn’t guess what they had. It was a bear, else the scent wouldn’t’ve sucked them in, but what kind of bear? There are many kinds of bear, just as there are many kinds of man. There are bears like hogs, bears like birds, and bears that once inspired human worship and deserved it. I could not tell from the quietness of the fight whether it was a bird bear or a worship bear.
*
I went into the chaos of branches with my gun up.
I saw a black boulder rippling in rhythm, and when it moved away I saw my dog, Hamilton, my patient friend, still moving, still fighting, but the bottom half of him gone. I looked away and did not look again until I buried him.
Deeper in the woods, I heard crash, snarl, and whine. I followed it. My feet slogged in mud. Without Hamilton, Sam was no fighter. Sam was smart. He relied on Hamilton’s strength, and Hamilton was gone.
When I saw him, he was trying to get away from the bear, and half-succeeding, sprinting a few steps and then whipping around to snap at its ears, preventing the bear from flipping him over. The bear had flipped Hamilton over. Sam had seen and smelled what had happened.
I fired three times. Ripples spread on the boulder. The bear looked back at me, eyes crusted with sleep. It paused, seeming to consider me. During that pause Sam wriggled into a root-hole. The bear gazed at me for another moment, then turned and scooped Sam out of the earth and broke his neck. I fired again. A back leg slumped. The bear retreated on three legs, dragging Sam in his mouth, cracking branches, going deep into the rhododendrons where I could not follow.
Then I had no dogs.
*
When the bear looked at me, I saw something moving in its eyes.
I have often pondered that look, late at night, with logs crackling in the fire and wind hissing in the hickories. The bear gave me a look that will not let me alone, not till I try to tell it, which is what I am trying to do now, tell it, get it out of me, which is why I need you to listen, listen about the look it gave me, the look that lunged across the earth and tore my peace away.
To give the look a name would be a lie, and I don’t want to lie to you, but I have to say something. I have to lie my way to the truth. So here you go. Here is what I think.
The bear knew it was going to die. That was what the look said. He was a wily old boar who had killed dogs and seen guns go off. We had surprised him in his sleep. He saw my gun. He knew I was going to kill him. But that was not the thing in the look that chased away my peace. Not the knowledge of death. Not fear. It was this: there are things worse than dying. He knew it. He said it with his eyes. He had gone deep in the rhododendrons to get away from it, this awful thing that was not death, this thing I carried with me.
*
No more noise in the cabin. No scratching, no metallic ring of Sam clawing his water dish. No dream-whine. No satisfied sigh. A strange feeling seeped through the cabin-cracks. After a while I knew what it was. Giving it a name helped ease it off a little. Loneliness. It was like a patch of numb skin somewhere had woken up and started itching like crazy. That kind of loneliness.
I decided to go down the mountain. Into town. It had been a long time since I had visited people. They would be surprised. All I took was an old backpack and a tin bottle. Stream gurgled the bottle full. Near the place where my dogs were buried, I took the trail with yellow blazes.
I walked and walked. Pretty soon it was getting dark. I saw no people, but around dusk, I smelled a bear. The smell brought my dogs back, and I walked with them for a while.
As I walked with them, the loneliness stopped itching, and I looked around like a newborn child. The yellow blazes were green at night. Stars trickled down the big leaves. Frogs thumped. Coyotes yipped in the hollows. I walked and walked. The smell of moss rose from the earth. Bear-smell leaked from the hollows. I kept at it. Going and going.
If I met my dogs in heaven, would they forgive me?
I hope not. If they did, they would not be my dogs. When I meet my dogs in heaven I hope they come after me. Like they used to go after bears. Blank eyes and snapping teeth and slobber on their front legs. That is what I hope. It keeps alive the wildness in them. I want that wildness kept alive, because wildness is the last love to go.
