Part 4
“Yes.” I kept my eyes on Tom while the cub leaned harder against my boot. He wrote down the answer and stood. I had made promises before when I thought I knew what they would cost; this one had a date I could not yet see.
Once the officers had gone, the cabin seemed crowded by the promise I had made. The cub had no such concern. He stole the end of a loaf, tugged it under the stove, and complained when I took it from him. Then he found a split in the lining of my father’s hunting coat and pulled out a ribbon of padding. I hung the coat high on its peg. For years it had survived because I scarcely wore it. The cub had done more damage than eight winters.
Beth came to check the wound as often as she and the road allowed. She first watched him cross the floor, then looked at the leg, then asked to see him move again. During that second walk I learned to keep my mouth shut. He was putting more weight on the foot; I was already calculating how many additional days a limp might buy me.
“You can ask,” she said after one examination. “I won’t give you a week because you’re lonely.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.” She wrapped the used dressing for disposal. “You could have asked Tom to take him to the center. You’ve insisted on keeping him where the mother can find him.”
I looked toward the creek. “She’s been there every night.”
“I know.” Beth closed her bag. “When he’s ready, she deserves the chance.”
Day twenty began with a white strip beneath the door and an empty bed beside the stove. I went outside in bare feet, hardly feeling the cold. The cub was at the edge of the melting snow, digging furiously at exposed dirt.
He had worked up the loose latch.
At my voice he charged back, bumped both my knees, and tried to examine my toes. I checked his leg with my hands before I could believe what I was seeing. He pushed against me with a strength he had not possessed the night before.
Beth saw him at her next visit, assessed the closed wound and his gait, and called Tom. There might always be a little stiffness; there was no longer a medical reason to keep him inside. Tom and Beth arranged the attempt while the mother was still regularly visible in the clearing. Beth explained what they would do if she failed to return, and I made her go over it twice. A backup procedure was easier to think about than the one we expected to use.
That night I fixed the latch. I stitched at the loose lining of my father’s coat while the cub slept on the pillow he had claimed, his injured foot resting clear of the blanket. For three weeks I had listened for each breath because I was afraid it would end. Now I lay awake hearing him breathe and understanding what recovery required.
At first light I carried him to a grassy place beyond the cabin, near the pines. I laid down his familiar blanket and set him on it. He followed when I stepped away. I returned him to the cloth, waited for him to settle into its folds, and withdrew to a tree where I could still see him. The handset bumped my hip. Beth expected word through Hank if the sow failed to show.
The cub called.
I nearly crossed the clearing. He called again, searched the tree line, and sat down. Sun reached the damp grass while I kept one hand on the trunk and made myself stay there. I had been willing to carry him nine miles while he was sick. Walking thirty yards to bring him back now would undo what those miles had been for.
Close to an hour passed. He was curled on the blanket when the mother appeared, her pale muzzle angled toward him. He stood so quickly he almost stumbled. Then he ran, not evenly but fast enough, into the space beneath her head. She turned him with her nose, groomed his face, and examined the leg that had once hung useless from the torn sack. I gripped the bark as though the inspection were a verdict I could hear.
She looked toward my tree for a while. Perhaps she’d smelled me there from the beginning. At last she lowered her head and walked into the timber. The cub started after her, paused at the edge, and turned once toward the clearing. I raised a hand without expecting an answer.
Both black shapes passed between the trunks and vanished.
Nothing moved in the grass when they were gone. I waited for a second glimpse, a sound in the undergrowth, some confirmation that the smaller shape had kept up. There was none. The blanket was still in the clearing, and that was the only thing I could carry back.
I fetched the blanket, folding it with one corner trailing across my boot. Hank had come from the station after my call; he sat on a stump near the porch with his pipe unlit. He asked whether both had gone. I nodded, and he shifted to give me room. We sat facing the empty tree line until the cold sent us indoors.
Beth arrived at dusk with an apple pie. I kept glancing at the spot beside the stove while she cut it. She served me a slice and sat through several minutes of my pretending to be interested in a clump of fur beneath the cot.
“I could clean that up,” I said.
“It’ll be there tomorrow.” She sat down. “I need help at the clinic. Feeding, cleaning, holding patients when it’s safe. There’d be a room over the office, if you’d consider coming to town.”
The pay was modest. She didn’t dress the offer up as charity, and she didn’t ask me to give an answer with my first bite of pie. I told her I would think about it. After she left, I fell asleep on the cot and dreamed Lily was walking beside the little bear through the trees. She turned, impatient for me to catch up, and told me I had done well.
I woke to the same empty cabin. There was no dream that could give me Sarah or Lily back. When Hank answered the radio, I passed my answer along for Beth: I would come to town and work at her clinic.
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