Bears Discover Fire

The brush by the roadside was thick, but after I got into the woods things opened up a little. It was mostly oak, gum, and hickory. I made my way down the slope toward the pond, walking quietly so I could listen. I could tell by the barking when the dogs hit the water. I could tell when the cage stopped, and when it started up again. It was all in the dogs’ voices. Through them, I could almost feel the coon’s terror when the cage stopped and his foolish arrogance when it started moving again.

Halfway down the hill I stopped in a little clearing at the foot of a big hollow beech. All around me were thick bushes, tangles of fallen limbs, and brush. The barking got louder and wilder and I knew the cage was reaching the cable’s end. There was a howl of rage, and I knew the coon was in the woods. I stood perfectly still. Soon I heard a sharp slithering sound and, without a warning, without stirring a leaf, the coon ran out of the bushes and straight at me. I was too startled to move. He ran almost right across my feet—a black and white blur—and was gone up the hill, into the bushes again. For a second I almost felt sorry for the dogs: how could they ever hope to catch such a creature?

Then I heard the dogs again. Pitiless is the word for them. If they had looked all jaws in the water, they sounded all claws and slobber in the woods. Their barking got louder and wilder as they got closer, at least six of them, hot on the coon’s trail. Then I heard a crashing in the brush down the hill. Then I saw the bushes shaking, like a storm coming up low to the ground. Then I heard the rattle of claws on dry leaves, getting closer and closer. Then I saw a yellow blur as the dogs bolted from the bushes and across the clearing straight at me. I stepped back in horror.

That’s when I realized, or I guess remembered is the word, that I had my coon suit on.

GEORGE

The summer before George was born, Katie and I lived in a house on a high hill. The hill sloped up gently on three sides, covered with thick grass kept short by the wind; but in the back, behind the house, it fell off sharply, down a high, rocky cliff, to the sea. The house was right at the top, about thirty yards from the edge of the cliff, and all we could see of the ocean from there was its top edge, where it tilted up against the sky. The cliff was so high and the wind from the sea was so noisy that usually we couldn’t hear the surf, even from the edge of the cliff. I would go there sometimes and peer down; there was no sound except the wind; and the surf moved in and out like great wings, beating against the wind and rock that pinned them down.

On the other side of the house, at the bottom of the hill, there was a highway, and the house was turned inland toward it, away from the wind. Often Katie and I would sit here, on the porch steps, and watch the cars passing and the gulls riding over on the wind. It was nicest in the evening right before dark. Sometimes, just as the sun went down, the wind would quit all of a sudden; the gulls would catch and tremble in the air and wait; Katie and I would almost hold our breaths; and then, finally, the noise of the sea would come in, low, to fill the air.

It was at such a time that the baby first moved—the quickening, they call it. The noise of the surf was just breaking in on the quiet; the wings of the gulls began to stir, ever so slightly; Katie started, caught herself, and then turned to me. She said that the baby had moved—just a quick flutter, like a tiny bird beating against her womb.

Then the summer was gone, and it was too cold for the house on the hill. We moved to a small town about thirty miles inland where I got a job and we settled down to wait. Katie had never made friends easily before, but now she had something in common with all of the ladies in the neighborhood; we were heaped with baby clothes, good wishes, and advice. The minister called on us several times and we joined the church. We were sure that the baby would be a boy; we decided to call him George.

Finally, in December, the time came. I couldn’t stay in Katie’s room at the hospital, so I sat out in the waiting room. It was a nice waiting room, with new leather chairs and lots of ashtrays and a gaily colored picture on the wall of bathers at Donaldson Beach.

In the picture, it was summer again. The surf was gentle, and it must have been warm, for there were children playing in it. Their mothers were gathered in little groups up on the beach, talking and sunbathing. Far off in the distance you could see the cliffs where the high land broke out into the sea, where we had lived during the summer.

Here, though, in the picture, the land sloped down gently, and the beach was broad and even and covered with people.