Setting Free the Bears

'Siggy,' I said. 'It's time we moved.'

'Gently, Graff,' he said. 'I'm watching them. They're stepping out of their cages, free as us.'

So I let him watch awhile, and I watched the sun flattening the meadow out red, and the river running out of sun. I had a look upstream, but there was no peeking the mountains yet.

Going Nowhere

OUT OF THE valley and the night bugs, the road turned to tar, then back to dirt, and always now the river was hidden from us in the thick tunnel of firs. The heavy gargle of the motorcycle beat against the forest, and our echo crashed alongside - as if other riders paced themselves to us and moved unseen through the woods.

Then we climbed out of the firs too, and the night was sharp enough to breathe in careful bits. We were aware of space again, and the sudden, looming things to fill it - a rocking black barn with great wind-swung doors, and triangular pieces of window casting a severed headlight back to us; something shuffling off the road, throwing its fierce eyes over its shoulder, hunched like a bear - or a bush; a farmhouse shuddering in its sleep, and a yapping dog who sprinted alongside us - over my shoulder, its eyes getting smaller and blinking out of the dancing-red tail-light. And on the valley side, dropping below us, the little peaks of treetops were pitched like tents along the road.

'I think we've lost the river,' said Siggy. He was shifting down to the upgrade; he went third to second and gave us a full throttle. We tossed a wake of soft dark dirt behind, and I leaned forward with my chest up on his back; I could feel him begin to lean before the bike would lay over, and I could lean through the corners - as perfectly with him as a rucksack on his back.

Then the road dropped out from under us, and our headlight darted straight out into the night, with the momentum of the motorcycle bearing us levelly into the sky; when the front wheel touched the road again, we were carried madly downhill to a wooden bridge. Siggy hit first gear, but he still had to brake, and the rear wheel moved up beside us; we skipped across the bridge planks like a crab.

'It's the river,' said Siggy, and we went back to peek.

He wrenched down the headlight and slanted the beam to the river, but there wasn't any river. He pressed the kill button on the engine, and we heard a river - we heard the wind making the bridge planks groan - and we felt how the bridge rails were damp from a rising spray. But in the light's beam there was only a gorge falling into darkness; and the tilted firs, holding to the gorge walls, reached for help and didn't dare look down.

The river had taken a shortcut; it sawed the mountain in two. We peered into the blank awhile. There'd be no fish in the morning unless we dared some horrible pendency before breakfast.

So we found a spot flat enough for the groundcloth, and set back enough from the edge of the great gorge. It was so cold we made a rumpus of undressing in our bags.

'Graff,' said Siggy. 'If you get up to pee, don't walk the wrong way.'

And later, our bladders must have remembered what he said - or else, must have been listening too long to the river-gush. Because we both had to get up. And oh, it was cold, stepping naked and fearful across the field.

'How does the oryx keep his warm?' said Siggy.

'I've been thinking,' I said. 'Don't you think all of that might have been a disease?'

'Oh, Graff!' said Siggy. 'It's surely a case of over-health.'

'He must feel quite vulnerable,' I said.

And we did a clutching, vulnerable dance back to our bags. The bags had stayed warm for us; we curled, and felt the mouseful field scurry. The night was so chilly I think the mice crept up and slept warm against us.

'Graff,' said Siggy. 'I've been thinking too.'

'Very good, Sig.'

'No, really thinking, Graff.'

'What, then?' I said.

'Do you think there's a nightwatchman at the Hietzinger Zoo - inside the grounds all night? Just peeking around?'

'Communing with the oryx?' I said. 'Asking him his secret?'

'No, just in there,' said Siggy. 'Do you think someone's in there at night?'

'Sure,' I said.

'I think so too,' he said.

I saw the guard muttering to the bears, waking up the oryx to ask the potent question; by the early dawn hours the guard walked hunched like an ape, swung from cage to cage, baiting the animals in their own languages.

'Graff?' said Siggy. 'Do you remember any closed doors in the Small Mammal House? Was there anything that looked like a closet?'