Red Room Where the Writers Are

Highway To Oblivion

  Patina saw the bear before the bear saw Patina.

      Oh, m’God.  Do I back up or run?  No, not run.  Could never outrun it.  Her brain itself was racing.  Her feet had not moved, yet in her mind she was fleeing down the long driveway at Olympian speed.  Where was the dog? 

      She could back away slowly, maybe even soundlessly, but if Sam came she would attack the  bear to protect Her Person, and the bear would surely maul the dog.  Stay away, Sam.  Dear God, please stay away.  Patina placed her feet gently, tenderly, carefully on the gravel drive.

 She thanked herself for keeping the road so compulsively neat.  No errant twigs to snap under her boots.  Step.  Breathe.  Step.  Breathe.  She absently noted the sky, a rich cloudless cobalt that signals September in Maine.  The words of an elderly Sioux chief from some black and white Western came unbidden.  (Iron Eyes Cody?  Sitting Bull?)  Today is a good day to die.  She shivered.  Un, uh.  No way.  Not if I can help it, Chief.  Step.  Breathe.  Step.

     SNAP!  Her foot crunched the one twig on the path.  The bear’s head jerked up spontaneously and beady eyes bore directly at her and in an instant her world became a combat zone, but Patina wouldn’t see it.  That treacherous twig had not only snapped, but had rolled under her and she toppled backwards, seeing only that clear, clear sky. 

       A ferocious roar came from the bear, topped by the deep-throated battlecry of the furious Doberman as she attacked.  It can’t be Sam.  I’ve never heard her growl like that.  Patina crawled, panicked, scrambling, grabbing a tree to right herself over her twisted ankle, flailing for something, anything, to combat the bear.

     Fear was suspended.  The air crackled with adrenaline.  Two sets of white flashing teeth.  Two black swirling shapes.  As bears go, this was a small one.  Still, he more than tripled the Dobe’s weight and although Sam’s jaws were lethal, the bear’s long curving claws were an added weapon the dog lacked.  With courage born from her overwhelming love for Patina, Sam fought for a neck-hold.  How dare he come near My Person!  How dare he!Snarling spittle flew and the sounds of the battle silenced everything else in the forest.  Not only was the dog outweaponed by the bear and outsized, but her sleek coat offered no protection from the vicious raking claws. 

     Bloody streaks on the Dobe’s side.  The claws had indeed found their mark.  Patina screeched like a vengeful eagle to make old Iron Eyes proud and the bear was distracted for a heartbeat.  Sam seized advantage and found her opening, leaped atop his back and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

     He bellowed in pain and surprise.  Only a few minutes ago he had been idly snuffling blackberries and ruminating about the female denning a few miles to the south when this hound from hell attacked him.  Now she was riding his back causing him great pain, and this human was yelling and waving a Longthing.  He knew about humans and their Longthings and avoided them at all costs.  They had shot at him numerous times and, in a twist on the age-old Bambi saga, he had watched his mother die helplessly in a trap.  At this particular moment in his long, wise life, all he wanted was a hasty retreat.

     The dog was actually cupping her claws into his fur, willing herself to hang on, but despite her determination, the bear’s autumn coat was so thick that she couldn’t penetrate very far into the skin.  With a roar of righteous indignation three hundred pounds of annoyed black bear shrugged his shoulders and the Dobe slid off, and as she rolled, he ran.

     Patina’s heart lurched as Sam went down and she raced over with her pitiful branch held high, ready to battle for her dog.  Sam the ever valiant, the always noble, flipped to her feet in one easy motion and trotted to Her Person with a small sliver of bearhide in her grinning jaws.                                                                    *                                               

 In life there are seminal moments so important that we remember every facet.  The date of course, but also the hour, the activity, the seasonal smells, what we were wearing, who was or was not with us and most of all, the extent of our emotions when the news hit.  For elderly Americans it was Pearl Harbor; for the Japanese a few years later it must have been Hiroshima and Nagasaki; for the Baby Boomers it was the assassinations of the Kennedys and Dr King; and now for the world of the present, the horror of the Trade Center.  Yet there are private moments of change that become even more indelibly relegated as time capsules of our individual memories:  births and deaths, weddings and funerals, marriage proposals and that telegram from the war department, rites de passage for the centuries of human hopes and fears.  Patina had been youthfully affected by the assassinations and had experienced more than her share of personally-decisive and grief-stricken milestones since.   Still, nothing in her poetry-writing, nature-loving, antique-restoring, introspective life prepared her for this next step.

 Sam’s wounds from the bear were superficial scratches and a liberal application of antiseptic and Vetalog eased Patina’s concerns.  Understandably famished after her adventure, Sam snacked on a lavish buffet of everything doggie-wonderful from the bowels of the old Kenmore. 

      “Go for it girl.  You deserve it.  Eat up.  Enjoy.  Mangia, mangia.”  Patina herself was considerably more shaken and poured the dregs of an inexpensive but satisfactory Cabernet into a Baccarat stem and toasted her elegant rescuer, now drooling greedily over week-old macaroni and cheese.  “To you, my brave girl.  To you.  You da best, baby.  You da best.” 

Whenever rattled or nervous, Patina sometimes combined dialects from her past into a Robin Williamsesque patois --- often funny, more usually disconcerting.  Adrenaline flowing fast and freely from their narrow escape, she prattled on to the dog in a mélange ranging from Yiddish to The Hood.  Sam looked up adoringly between gulps, catching enough meaningful words here and there to recognize that Her Person was indeed pleased with her.  “Oi, Samala.  Oi.  I tell you I never saw such a brave bubala.”

      It was seven-thirty that evening in September.  The air was still and the late summer sun traced ever-lengthening shadows over the lawns of Oblivion and the gnarled dead branches of last winter’s ice storm were black against its glare.  The half-open bedroom window filtered a background chorus of crickets and frogs and the occasional crow, and from the kitchen came the sounds of hungry dog slurps.  As Patina crossed the threshold into the bedroom she sniffed the light fragrance of the last Mr. Lincoln rose dying in an Orrefors vase on the grain-painted dresser.  She had finished the wine and felt calmer.  This was her world with her familiar beloved things and she noticed a fly buzzing against the west window, trying for another day in the sun.

       For their walk up the driveway she had thrown on her father’s buffalo-plaid flannel shirt against the slight chill.  Now she was overheated from the excitement and the wine and as she started to slip it off, she felt something hard in the right front pocket.  She checked for the usual intruding dog biscuit and found the pocket was empty.  The fly was still buzzing at the window.  The sun was still streaming.  The dog was still slurping and she could still smell the rose, but her world had changed forever.  The hard place was inside her breast, not in her clothing, not on the skin, but large and hard and very definitely inside her body.  She sat down suddenly and instinctively knew what it was.               

      The fly was still buzzing.