LITMIR.BIZ

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against the lobby wall, waiting for her.

      “What was that about?” he asked with a scowl.

      After the silent treatment he’d given her all the way into town, she wasn’t inclined to answer him. “Nothing much.”

      “You’re letting Letson take you to dinner.”

      If he already knew, why had he asked her? “As a matter of fact, I am,” she returned, and enjoyed the rush of satisfaction she felt at letting him know she had a date.

Four

      It felt good sitting on the porch, rocking and whittling, Walt Wheaton mused. Molly’s boys sat on the top step, sanding a couple of carvings he’d fashioned from canary wood. The yellowish wood was one of his favorites. He hadn’t worked on his carvings for at least six months. Molly and the boys had renewed his energy. Gladdened his heart. He might not always remember what day of the week it was anymore, but that didn’t matter. Not now, with Molly and the boys here where they belonged.

      It wouldn’t take much to imagine it was his own Adam sitting on that step, forty or so years back, with a school friend. Or to imagine his Molly in the kitchen getting dinner ready to put on the table.

      Walt’s fingers skillfully moved the sharp knife over the wood, removing a sliver at a time, cutting away everything that wasn’t the bear. He’d chosen oak for this piece, and the black bear would stand about ten inches high on his hind legs. He’d give it to Tom. The boy reminded him of a young bear, struggling to prove his manhood, all legs and arms and feet. He remembered himself at that age, when his voice had danced between two octaves. He’d been tall and thin like Tom, with legs like beanpoles and no chest to speak of.

      Walt toyed with the idea of saying something to his great-grandson. He wanted to assure Tom he’d fill out soon enough, but he didn’t want to embarrass the boy.

      The three worked in comfortable silence. Walt yearned to share stories of his youth with the two brothers, but talking drained his energy. The hell with it, he decided. God had given him the opportunity to spend time with these young ones and he was going to use it.

      “Bears eat trees, you know,” he stated matter-of-factly.

      Tom glanced up. “Trees? Are you sure, Gramps?”

      The older of Molly’s two boys had a skeptical nature; Walt approved. He didn’t like the idea of his kin accepting anyone or anything at face value. He suspected his granddaughter might be more easily swayed, but her son wouldn’t be. It reassured him that the boy revealed some good old-fashioned common sense, a virtue in shockingly short supply these days. Take that local militia group, for example. He’d butted heads with them more than once in the past few years. While Walt didn’t necessarily agree with everything the government did, he sure didn’t believe the militia’s wild claims of foreign troops planning to invade the country with the assistance of the federal government. That was as ludicrous as their other ideas, like computer chips surgically implanted in people’s brains so the government could control their activities. He’d never heard such nonsense in all his days and cringed every time he thought about decent folks believing such craziness.

      “Gramps?”

      Tom’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. He had trouble keeping his mind on track these days.

      “What is it, son?”

      “Is that true?”

      He frowned. What was the boy talking about? The militia’s paranoid ideas, he guessed. Wasn’t that what they’d been discussing? “Of course it’s not true,” he barked. This computer-chip nonsense was as asinine as the supposed sightings of black helicopters swooping down and spraying bullets from the sky. “Question everything, son, you hear me?”

      Tom nodded and returned to his sanding.

      With his heart as weak as it was, Walt didn’t know how much longer he’d be around on this earth. He liked to think there’d be time to tell Tom and Clay about life during the Great Depression. And the war. Children these days didn’t know the meaning of hardship, not like his generation.

      “Gramps?” Clay stared at him expectantly. “But you said bears ate trees. So don’t they really?”

      Oh, yeah. That was it—that was what he’d said. About bears. “They eat the bark,” he explained, his mind traveling the winding twisting byways of time long since passed. He shelved the depression stories in order to explain what he knew of bears. “They scrape off the bark with their claws. Without the bark, the tree dies. So, yeah, you could say bears eat trees. Next time you’re in the forest, take a gander at a dying tree. If it isn’t some disease, my guess is that a bear’s been clawing on it.”

      “Is that why you’re carving a bear?” the older boy asked. “Because they eat trees?” He ran the sandpaper lightly over the carving of the owl. Watching him reminded Walt that he didn’t see many of the northern saw-whet owls these days. The saw-whet was small as owls went, only seven inches high, and weighed less than four ounces.

      He didn’t get much opportunity to study nature the way he once had. He missed his walks, missed a lot of things, but that was all part of growing old.

      “Gramps?” It was Tom again.

      “What is it, son?”

      “Clay asked you about the bear. Why you’re carving it.”

      “Oh, yes...the bear. It nearly got me, it did at that.”

      Both boys stared up at him, and he grinned, recalling the adventures of his youth. “I happened upon her clawing up a conifer. I was just a kid at the time, but old enough to know better than to do something stupid—like get too close to a bear,” he added, muttering to himself. “Neither my horse nor I saw her until it was too late. The mama bear had two cubs and she was in no mood for company. She reared onto her hind legs and scared my horse so badly he tossed me clean off. I thought I was a goner for sure.”

      Both boys listened intently. “What happened next?” Tom asked.

      “Happened?” Walt chuckled, remembering the incident as vividly now as that day almost seventy years ago. He smiled and continued whittling as his mind filled with the details of that fateful afternoon. “Once I recovered enough to stand, I took off running, screaming at the top of my lungs.” He shook his head, grinning again.

      “How old were you, Gramps?”

      “Ten or so,” Walt answered. “My legs were good and strong.”

      “So you ran?” Clay’s hands went idle.

      “I didn’t figure on hanging around there and letting that bear eat me for dinner.” This reminded him of another lesson Molly’s boys needed, a lesson only a man would think to teach them. Women didn’t take to fighting much; they didn’t understand a man’s need for confrontation. What was important, however, was knowing when to fight and why. Knowing what was worth fighting for. And yet there were times when all the questions might have the right answers and still the best thing to do was walk away. He’d turned his back on a fight or two, and it had taken far more courage to back down than it had to stand his ground.

      “She didn’t catch you, did she?” Clay asked.

      “Damn near, but my pappy saved me.” To this day Walt remembered the surge of relief he’d experienced when his father burst into the clearing, his horse at full gallop. He’d raced toward Walt and it was hard to figure who’d reach him first, his father or the bear.

      “My pappy saved me,” he said again. “He galloped up, grabbed me by the arm and swung me over his horse’s back.”

      Even with his eyes so tired and faded, Walt saw the awe in the boys’ faces. He nodded slowly. It did his heart good to spend time with Adam’s grandsons. They needed a man in their lives, someone to take the place of their useless father. He wanted to teach these boys,

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