Not All Bears [Story #2]

On the night Grizzly killed my family the sky was the color of wet coal. The moon had hunched her shoulders and was looking away from the tundra, muttering to herself about the November chill. Wind gusted across the rugged land, dancing across dry prairie grasses and making them rattle like my little brother’s favorite toy.

Many people were already asleep in our village that night, but my family was not. We were having a celebration. Just three days earlier, my mother had given birth to a baby girl. My sister. I loved her immediately—her shock of dark hair, her tiny mouth and fingers, even her screaming lungs were beautiful to me.

“She’s got a lot to say,” my father had laughed. “You would too if you were cooped up for nine months with no one to talk to.”

I remember smiling and stroking my sister’s belly. “We’ll go on lots of adventures, won’t we, father?”

“Just don’t leave out your brother. He likes adventures too, you know.”

On the night Grizzly killed my family, I was thinking about my future adventures with my sister. We would travel across the jungles of South America and the great Australian dessert. We would make friends with a zebra in Africa and ride on yaks in the mountainous parts of Asia. We would spend years away from the Arctic tundra.

But we would always come back. This was home.

As I was day dreaming, Grizzly stalked and my family sang. Everyone was in our little home that night—two uncles, three aunts, a cousin, Grandma and Grandpa, mother, father, brother, and my brand new sister. We sang our favorite songs and clapped to the rhythm. My aunts and uncles had cooked a feast that night and the house smelled of bannock and caribou stew and pan-fried ptarmigan.

I remember inhaling the fragrances and exhaling a smile. We were cozy, despite the whipping wind. I shivered as I thought about stepping out into the cold. That’s where the outhouse was and I had had three glasses of water so far that night.

On my way out the door, I passed my sister, who was wrapped in furs and held firmly in my mother’s arms. I paused and kissed her pink forehead. Her skin was soft and smelled like new snow. “Grow up quickly,” I urged. “Then we can have our adventures.”

The waiting wind shot down my back and screeched across my ears as I hustled to the outhouse. As I opened the door, Grizzly stormed into my family’s home. I can picture the music halting, my family clinging to each other as the enraged bear burst through our wooden door and began slaughtering my family.

One by one by one. Even my sister.

It’s hard for me to imagine the rage that was boiling within the bear’s heart. It was hot enough to melt the permafrost.

After the horrible tragedy, the people in my village speculated about the bear’s motives. “It was the November wind,” some said. “Its cold fingers tickled Grizzly’s hide in just the wrong spots and sent him into a fury.”

“No,” said others, “it was the heartless new moon. Her absence reminded the bear of his runaway lover and slaughtered cubs.”

Still others—the superstitious lot—said it was the date: an unlucky Friday the 13^th. But the elders took no stock in that theory; that was a white man’s invention, they said with a wave of their hands.

Me? I offer no excuses. Grizzly knew precisely what he was doing when he tore down my family’s door and murdered twelve people. Thankfully, it was over quickly. By the time I returned from the outhouse, the floorboards were soaked with blood, the neighbors were crying and wringing their hands, and Grizzly was gone. I could hear him snorting as he ran across the tundra, feet flying beneath his thick body.

The best hunters in the village wasted no time in tracking the bear and killing him. The next day, after a hasty funeral, the hunters stretched out Grizzly’s massive hide and strung it between two poles in the center of town. I looked at it and felt no closure. This wasn’t the end of my grief. My family—my world—disappeared in an instant under that monster’s claws. I would no longer feel my mother’s kiss brush my cheek or hear my father’s voice as we sat, side-by-side, ice fishing on Amaruq Lake.

I approached Grizzly’s outstretched hide; it glowed copper in the chilly sunlight. His massive head dipped toward the ground and I stooped near it. “This isn’t finished,” I whispered into his ear. “I will travel across the world. I will find members of your family and slaughter them without blinking. Your kin will suffer at my hand and I will show no mercy. This I vow to you, bear.”

Five years after I said the words, I set out to make good on my promise.

I left without much fanfare. The villagers were quiet when they gathered in the town square to watch me leave. A few of them grasped my gloved hand or patted me on the back and wished me well. I nodded at them and climbed astride Ila, the dun-colored pony that once belonged to my uncle. As Ila and I set off southward, I could feel the heavy weight of the villagers’ eyes.

I didn’t share their concern. I had been planning, preparing, training for this journey for five years.  I poured over biology and ecology books that I had had mailed to the village. Whenever I found pages that related to bears or their habitats, I ripped them out of the books and kept them in a folder I’d made from caribou leather. “One of every species,” I’d mutter to myself as I flipped through the pages. “I want the whole family to suffer.”

When I set out, I took my leather folder with me, along with provisions, a traveling cloak, and a whole heap of money from my late family. The money conjured images of limp bodies and floor boards painted with human organs; I avoided touching it and used a gloved hand whenever I made a transaction. This habit earned me the nickname Gloves and I adopted the name readily, eager to drop my past life into the dust behind my feet.

The pony, the provisions, the money, and I traveled south for a long time. The tussocks spread their wild heads across the tundra, making footing difficult; we didn’t travel above a careful walk for several days. Near the end of the tenth day, the harsh tundra grasses grew softer and the ground transformed into a moss and dirt covered flatland. From the flatland, scrubby trees and bushes sprouted up haphazardly, thickening and growing taller and straighter the further south we traveled.

The pony could trot now and she carefully picked her way through fragrant pine forests and along rocky riverbanks. The land grew rugged and mountains loomed to our right. I’m not certain when we stepped across the Canadian border and into America, but eventually I noticed a subtle shift in scenery, an opening up of the land. There were prairies now, coated with a dusting of winter’s first snow. And there were forests too—pine blended with maple, oak, birch, quaking aspen. We passed a few farm houses and were making our way across the tail end of a corn field when I spotted them.

Tracks.

I yanked Ila to a halt, dismounted, and ran a gloved hand over a fresh bear track.

“You’re a big one, aren’t you?” I said to the footprint. “We’ll find you soon. Soon.”

Black Bear was easy to spot. She had nestled herself in the thick of an old butternut squash patch and was sitting down like a human, gnawing at a gourd between her paws. I tied Ila to a tree and drew my knife. With coyote footsteps I approached Black Bear; her munching halted.

“I know you’re there,” she said, swallowing a mouthful of squash and keeping her back squarely toward me. “You don’t have to kill me.”

I scoffed and took another footstep. “But I do, Mother Black Bear. It’s an act of justice.”

“Justice?” she said, turning toward me. “What justice is there in killing an innocent life?”

“Grizzly murdered my family, so I vowed I would kill his.”

“I am not Grizzly,” she said. “I avoid humans at all costs; they bring too much trouble. I’d rather spend my days eating butternut squash and raising cubs and taking naps in the ferns.”

Black Bear’s eyes brimmed with tears and I lowered my knife an inch or two.

“Please,” said the bear, “spare me, young human. I am sorry about your family, but you have to realize, that was one bear. Not all bears.”

My knife lowered another inch. But then I pictured my family and their lifeless bodies. I saw Grandfather’s face and the way his cheeks folded into a thousand lines when he laughed. “I can’t do that,” I said. “I dedicate your life to Grandfather.”

I sprang on the bear’s back and slit her throat open in one, smooth motion. Blood coated the new snow and Black Bear slumped to the side, brown eyes wide and still glossy from tears.

I wiped the knife and began carving off her hide. I cut a long strip and sewed it, crosswise, along the top of my traveling cloak. A stripe of black fur.

 Ila and I continued south. We crossed long prairies and miles of rolling hills. We went through a few small towns and always stopped to spend the night indoors, away from the chill. It was easy going and it wasn’t long before the snow disappeared and the air grew humid and warm. The breeze carried an unfamiliar aroma and I breathed it in, wondering at its spice.

It was the scent of the ocean. We crested a hill and saw the gray water spread out in front of us, an endless, swaying forest. I felt my breath catch in my throat. “Ila,” I whispered to my pony, “did you ever think you’d see that, old girl?”

We didn’t pause for long. Our journey continued along the ocean’s shores, down the coast of Mexico, and into Central America. We crossed ranges of volcanoes, thick with broad-leafed plants and orchids. We slept among coffee plants and plantain trees, on powder-sand beaches, alongside thatched roof houses, and, once, underneath a covered bridge to escape the rain. When we reached Panama, people buzzed with talk of the groundbreaking of a new canal. I didn’t listen much, just asked for directions to the border.

Once we crossed into Colombia, my skin began to tingle; the hairs on my arms jumped to alert. Our quarry was close. Back in the village, I had studied Spectacled Bear and his habitat. I knew what kind of forest he liked, his favorite fruits and seeds, where he was likely to sleep.

We were traveling in the thick of a cloud forest when we spotted tracks.

I squealed; Ila tossed her head. I studied the tracks. Fresh. Huge. Leading toward a grove of palm nut trees.

When I found Spectacled Bear, he was shuffling across the forest floor, picking up palm nuts with his lips and eating them. Though I was quiet as a jaguar, he heard me coming and shimmied up the nearest tree. It bent from his weight and he clung desperately to the trunk.

“What do you want, human?”

“I’ve come here to kill you, Spectacle Bear. It’s a matter of justice.”

“There is no justice in killing the innocent. I do not understand.”

“It was Grizzly,” I said. “He slaughtered my family. And now I am on a mission to make all bears suffer.”

“But that was Grizzly acting alone,” Spectacled Bear said, craning his golden face toward me. “That was not all bears.”

I took a deep breath and held out my knife. “My mind is made up, bear. Now, come down or I will wait for you to fall.”

Spectacled Bear looked at me sadly. “Can’t you understand, human? I want the same things you want—to raise cubs, to eat cactus and bark, to nap in the branches of trees.”

My knife shook in my hand and I took a deep breath to steady it. “This one’s for Grandma,” I whispered, picturing Grandma’s warm brown eyes shining out of a fur-lined hood. I took a step back, cocked my arm back, and snapped the bowie knife forward. It cartwheeled through the air once, twice, then stuck in Spectacled Bear’s throat.

He gasped and lost his grip. When he hit the ground, the fall broke his back. A twitch, a moan. Nothing.

I skinned a strip of black and gold fur from under the bear’s throat and sewed it to my traveling cloak underneath Black Bear’s stripe. Two bears dead, but I did not pause to congratulate myself. I pressed on.

From a port city on the coast of Colombia, Ila and I found a ship bound for Australia. I paid the ticket person with a gloved hand and boarded the ship. The thought of an ocean crossing made me excited and I skipped up the ship’s gangplank, my face drowning in a smile. But as soon as the ship gathered speed and the open ocean began to rock and bash itself against the hull, my smile dropped and my insides turned to jelly. I spent most of the month-long ocean journey clutching my stomach and wishing for my mother’s strong-armed embrace.

When we docked in the Melbourne harbor, I stumbled onto land, knelt, and clutched handfuls of soil, sobbing as I picked up the dirt and dropped it again. Picked it up, dropped it. Someone brought Ila and my pack to me. I stood, brushed the dirt from my clothes, and kissed my pony’s muzzle. We rode on.

Into a eucalyptus forest this time. When I found Koala, he protested, saying, “I’m not really a bear, you know. I’m a marsupial. There’s no need to kill me in the name of revenge.”

“Then why are you called bear?” I challenged, my knife poised at his throat.

“People are careless,” he shrugged. “You mislabel things and don’t bother to fix them. You make assumptions about all bears when you’ve had a bad experience with one of them. I’ll have you know,” Koala met my stare, “Grizzly acted on his own. He is not all bears.”

“Enough from you, Koala!” I said. “Until the day humans stop calling you a bear, I will treat you as one.”

I ran my blade across Koala’s throat. His neck dropped; the eucalyptus leaf he held in his paw fluttered to the ground. “For my uncles and aunts,” I whispered.

I added a gray stripe to my traveling cloak.

It was difficult for me to return to the harbor and board another ocean-bound ship, but I knew I had no choice. My next victim lived in a string of islands, north of the Australian continent. Sun Bear.

I pulled Sun Bear’s pages out of my leather folder and ran my pointer finger along her image. She was big and mean looking, with a huge head and prehistoric claws. An orange patch of fur swooped across her chest, resembling a necklace—a silly decoration for such a fierce-looking monster.

I pulled out the rest of the pages and leafed through until I found Koala. My heart fluttered when I read the word “marsupial.” Koala had been telling the truth. How had I overlooked this detail?

The voice rose, unbidden, into my ears. I batted it away. “No,” I said aloud. “I believe what is true.”

The voice again. I crossed my arms and willed it to go away.

I found Sun Bear in the Philippines, snacking on termites. Like the other bears, she protested and pleaded. She told me Grizzly was deranged, that he was out of his mind that night, that he didn’t represent all bears.

I killed her in the name of my cousin and carved her orange necklace off her body. I sewed it to my cloak and realized for the first time that the cloak was getting heavy. I stubbornly continued to wear it, despite the tropical heat, and continued on my journey.

Next was Panda. He was difficult to find in China’s dense bamboo forests.

When Panda saw me emerge from my hiding place, brandishing the bowie knife above his plush head, his eyes grew wide and he began to sob. “My family,” he said. “Think of them. My cubs didn’t kill your family. That was an act of lunacy—a crazed bear acting alone. Grizzly is not all bears.”

It was difficult to kill Panda. I thought of his cubs tumbling across the hillsides. I thought of his mate searching the bamboo forests, calling out his name. I closed my eyes when I did it; I didn’t want to see the splash of red against his white throat.

I dedicated Panda’s life to my brother and added a black and white stripe to my cloak.

Brown Bear was even more difficult than Panda. And Polar was more difficult than Brown. I knew what they would say before I slaughtered them in the name of my mother and father; I had heard it before: Not all bears.

Their final words echoed through my head as I made my way back to the Canadian tundra. Polar Bear’s slaying took place just north of my homeland and I didn’t have far to go. “Just one more bear to kill,” I said to Ila, patting her shoulder. “Grizzly’s runaway lover.”

Ila barely responded to my touch. She was thin now, weary from travel. And the traveling cloak was slowing her down. I wasn’t certain how much it weighed, but it felt like a musk ox pressing down on my shoulders.

Ila struggled onward. Her footsteps slowed; her breathing became labored and punctuated by coughing fits. Finally, she stopped and refused to move forward.

“Ila,” I said, “this is the last leg of our journey. We only have to find Grizzly’s lover and kill her in the name of my sister. Then, we’ll go home. I promise, Ila…”

But Ila would not move.

I dismounted, removed the pack that was strapped to Ila’s back, and put it on under the heavy traveling cloak. “I’ll carry everything, Ila. Let’s go.”

We stepped gingerly across the tundra. I could feel the weight of the cloak with every footfall. It pressed down, down.

I began to think about the cloak and what it meant. At the beginning of my journey, it was my symbol of bravery and justice. The fur pelts were stripes of honor that I carried on my back.

But now? Now the cloak’s meaning had changed for me. It felt heavy and wrathful. It reminded me of extinguished lives, of the pleading eyes of bears who only wanted to eat berries and nibble on leaves and raise their cubs. As I thought of the lives I took, the cloak dragged me down further.

It was soaked in hate and vitriol. It brought me no closure. No comfort.

I collapsed under its weight and fell, face-first, into the crusty snow. I started to sob. I hardly knew myself anymore. My revenge mission had eaten a hole in my soul and it felt ragged, hollow. With every bear I killed, the rent widened. No, there was no closure. Only an opening, a broadening of my hate.

I couldn’t go on like this.

With a deep inhale, I rose to my feet. I grabbed my bowie knife, held it to my throat, and cut the strings of my traveling cloak. It crumpled to the ground.

Lightness.

I was free. With the weight of my revenge mission gone, I saw the atrocities I had committed with clear eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said to the air. “I’m sorry for killing you, Black, Spectacled, Koala, Sun, Panda, Brown, Polar. You were right.” I spread my arms to the gray sky. “Grizzly did not represent all bears. I’m done killing now.” I lowered my arms and placed my gloved hands on my heart. “I am ready to forgive.”

“Are you?”

A voice at my back made me jump, wheel around.

Standing behind me was a tawny-furred bear, thickly-built, with a head the size of a boulder. She straightened her shoulders and looked down at me from her impressive height.

“Grizzly’s lover,” I said, meeting her eyes.

“Yes,” she replied. “I was.”

“I’m sorry about Grizzly,” I said.

The bear shot me a skeptical look. “Are you? He killed your family.”

“I know. But he was yourfamily, and I know what it’s like to lose loved ones.”

The bear nodded. “It’s the most difficult thing in the world. Grizzly knew. Our first set of cubs were murdered by wolves.”

I bit my lip. “I’m sorry to hear that. That would make anyone crazy.”

“Yes,” she said, “but it was no excuse. Grizzly’s actions were senseless and extreme. He released his anger on a group of innocent people. His actions were his own, they do not reflect all bears. But I think you understand that now.”

We stood facing each other, an arm’s length apart. I could count the golden hairs around her eyes; I could see the wetness of her black snout and feel the heat of her breath. I’m not certain how much time slipped by, but I could feel centuries of wisdom pass between our eyes.

A blink, a backward step. The female Grizzly turned around. Without looking back, she ambled away from me across the snow-covered tundra. I watched until she was the size of a copper penny on the horizon, then I turned to Ila.

“Let’s go home, friend,” I said. “It’s time to carry the lessons I’ve learned back to the village and leave my hatred behind.”

I grabbed Ila’s reins and patted her sandy face. We walked together, side-by-side. At our backs, the fur-decorated traveling cloak stared up at us from the cold ground. It started its slow decay into the earth.

TL;DR

Just because one bear commits a senseless act of violence, doesn’t mean all bears should be blamed. Shed your cloak of hatred and hasty judgment. Aim for understanding, not revenge.

#NotAllBears  #NotAllMuslims