Issue 19

Karin Wraley Barbee

The first time I sat in the armchair by the fire, whiskey and biscuits on a silver plate, the housekeeper removed my shoes, gestured to the window with her aged brown hand at the moonlit garden, at a grizzly circling the pool, nosing the black water then lapping at it and lumbering into the cold. You take, she said, handing me a salmon—pink and gasping—then tugged the straps of my dress down into a pile of silk at my feet. She pointed again toward the pool, then wrapped me in the fur of a seal. It was late October when I opened the wide door.

The grizzly, tranquilized and sprawled on the driveway, is fitted with a thick black band across his forehead, a video camera, and a mic. The housekeeper in her mukluks and parka leans down, her cracked lips near his thick, brown brow. Check Check, she says and sticks her tongue out for the camera. The camera jumps and jars, records five minutes of a bear in a dimly lit library, sleet driving against the windows. He sniffs and paws at shelf after shelf of books, rises up on his hind legs to nibble a leather-bound history of geology, then sneezes. The camera catches his indecision: to shuffle this way or that, to smack the papers from a desk or topple a trashcan, to swat at a globe with his wet paw, sending it spinning on its axis. And then he appears to notice the portrait of a much older bear hanging over the desk. The bear in the painting sits behind the very desk his portrait now hangs over, his paw resting gently atop a great atlas. For a moment, the camera is still and focused on a bear dry and calm. Then the camera tilts slightly, still focused on the portrait, then down, to the carpet, to the aged hardwood of the hallway, to the tile of the entryway, to the snow.

In winter, there were no guests. Was no small talk. In the mornings, when I reached across the table for butter or salt, there was only a neglected setting in his place: a plate of raw salmon, a large mug of cool water. As always, I’d watch the thawing and freezing from the back window. Pop toast into my mouth and sip my black coffee. During that hour, I watched the morning show: the housekeeper emerging, yanking up the hood of her parka and tugging a cow from behind the house. She’d lead it off somewhere. Or she’d take it for a walk around the pool, then back. Or she’d leave the house, and return. Or she’d go outside, stare into the sky, smoke a duck with her father’s rifle and return, swinging its blood in the snow. Or she’d wander off alone, into the deep woods, past the pool. Or, in the dark days, carry her lantern out, sit down on a log, smoke a dried-up cigar.

One day, she stayed in. I waited and waited for the back door to open, to see her knee-deep in snow, hauling something here or there. But she never left. Bored and hungry, I tore off a piece of his salmon. It would be another hour before he would wander home from the thick row of pines, drag himself through the snow, through the back door, his wet paws scratching along the hall. I slipped out the side door into the library, found her there, sitting on the rug by the fire, eating chunks of pale meat with her hands. She scooped up a handful from the tin plate and smiled. I did not see his reaction when he finally settled himself at the table, only to find his salmon and water gone, tossed into a snow drift. But I heard it, the snapping of chairs and collapsing of the table. It was a distant destruction by the time I closed my bedroom door.

Have you seen the one where the old woman speaks in riddles? The boy sweeping popcorn between shows stops me on the theatre stairs, motions to the screen. She’s magical, you know. He’s right. On the screen a wrinkled woman hovers over a campfire. The audience gasps when she pulls the powder from her pocket, tosses it into the fire. Her eyes blaze. What is the bearded man’s keep? she coughs into the darkness. All the young pale girls in the theatre weep.

I once shared this with a friend I should not have trusted. When I was four, my mother left a note. It read: Here, this cold hand, this bite-mark face, dirt road. Dark rain. Wind. This bird. Dead head. Rose. Pool. Moon. We’ve left. Long. Gone. Burn.

The bear, sprawled on his belly, is tranquilized again, this time with bad sap and whiskey. The tattoo artist snips off chunks of thick fur and then shaves a rough oval on the bear’s right shoulder. Only minutes before, the bear had smacked a Sailor Jerry from the wall of the parlor. A bright red heart pierced and dripping. A dagger. A space for her name. The bear shifts and grunts. The tattooist straddling his back tugs the cord of her gun. We start with black, she says. He blinks, and closes his eyes. Into the bear’s pale hide, she draws the first thick line. The heart. Then the dagger. Then the girl.

Outside on the white lake, men and boys drill into the ice, their augers turning slowly, the youngest slipping and scratching their way to moving water. Lines are baited and dropped. Makeshift shacks dot the surface. A boy gets down on all fours, eyes the black water. I thought there would be more to see.

On a Yukon steamer (my dad’s old Civic) I left. Took a pocketful of gold (my debit card, twenty dollars cash) and my best dress from the line (jeans, T-shirt, cardigan). It was spring. The holes on the ice had spread. The whole of it (my blood) was moving again.