Short Stories

Facing It

by Kim Nolywaika
12/09/24
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It had burrowed deep. Pete could feel it lodged beneath his ribcage. It was dark and heavy and threatening. Sometimes it would claw its way up to his throat and he would begin to shake. It was hard not to run.

His boy was sick. Only four years old and he was taking it like a little man. Tests and more tests. It didn’t look good. Pete’s wife went to all the appointments. Pete worked a lot of overtime and convinced himself it was a financial decision.

He needed to get away and be alone. Just for a couple of days. His wife said nothing. She just held him close and then packed him some sandwiches. On homemade bread. And a thermos of hot coffee.

It was an old cabin on a small lake, a shack really; he and his cousin went there summers when they were in high school. Pete arrived just before sundown, ate the last sandwich, looked around some, gave the old rowboat a kick, then went inside.

He swept up the inevitable mouse droppings and threw his gear in a corner. The plywood shutters on the windows could wait until morning. He unrolled his sleeping bag on the bunk, kicked off his shoes and stretched out. He slept.

The blackness, the silence, awakened him during the night. Something bad was near; he could feel it. He could feel it in the usual place below his ribcage, deep and menacing as always. This badness was wild, heartless, advancing, closing in. A shuffling on the front porch. Then nothing. He lay back again and listened. Porcupine maybe or a fox. Go to sleep, you need it.

The door flew inward, torn from its hinges, and crashed flat to the floor. No back door, no windows, no gun. Trapped. No escape. He waited. He thought of his family in their beds at home. Alone–without him. He crouched on the bunk like an animal, frozen, trying not to breathe, trying not to make a sound or give off a scent. Trying not to be there.

It filled the doorway, breathing death with a wet, open mouth. Pete could smell it, as innocence can smell villainy. He thought of the soft curve of his boy’s face and of the vicious disease ravishing his childhood. The hulking creature coughed its uncertainty; it was totally the bear’s call. One minute, two. Nothing. Total darkness hid them from each other. Another minute. It retreated and was gone.

Beside the bunk was a stash of birchbark and kindling in a wooden crate. He felt for the matches on the shelf above his head, lit one, and tossed it into the crate. It caught and flared. He slid the burning box across the floor toward the gaping doorway. Nothing happened.

He shoved the crate onto the porch. Its light revealed–nothing. He dragged it a few yards from the cabin and piled deadfall branches on it until he had a decent fire. He climbed onto the roof of the cabin and waited until he was more concerned about the fire going out than he was about the bear returning.

The moon came up. He slid from the roof, ran to the lakeshore and, forgetting that bears are very good swimmers, pushed the rowboat into the water. He got in and pulled hard until he reached the middle of the lake. Out here it cannot get me. Out here, I am safe. He believed he had reduced the problems of his life to only one—finding a way to spend several uncomfortable hours in a boat in the middle of a lake in the dark. This, I can do.

An hour passed. He felt stupid. And then he was ashamed. Pete had convinced himself he was safe in the boat in the middle of the lake. But as he thought of his wife and son out there with the bear, all alone without him, his feeling of safety dissipated with the hovering mist.

Pete rowed to shore, threw water on the remains of his fire, grabbed his gear and drove home. A light was burning in an upstairs window. Their window. They would face the bear—together.