Lavender

The cabin’s not in great shape—windows jammed, ceiling cracked, wood floor a patchwork of scars—but it’s clean enough and secluded, tucked deep in the woods. And it’ll keep you dry, which is more than you can say about the old Eureka! tent you would use if you went on your own.

You picked up your buddy Chris after work and have almost completed the four-and-a-half-hour drive north. You’ve been making this fishing trip with Chris every summer since your freshman year of college. He lived down the hall in the same dorm, and the two of you hit it off right away. That was sixteen years ago now, but you don’t like to think about how long it’s been. It makes you feel old, even though most of the time you still feel like you’re just a kid. Like you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Which, you think, is mostly true. You suspect that nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. But you have a steady job as a caretaker at the zoo, and a kid who’s doing all right, and people seem to think you’re a well-adjusted adult.

The world is wild and open up at the cabin. Overgrown fir trees, hundreds of years old, stand with their boughs stretched and sagging like men crucified. A stand of tall straight pines, naked halfway up and coated in flaky red bark, tower above a forest floor covered with a silky coat of brown needles. Wolves track deer through the dirt paths in those woods, owls screech past the windows at night. You’ve seen bear tracks torn into the mud, though you’ve never seen one up close.

Chris talks to you about work and fishing rods and types of bait as you drive. You don’t talk much but listen and daydream until you reach the cabin. You pull up in your Jeep Durango after dark and carry your bags into the little building. The cabin looks like it could be the set of a slasher film. You make this same joke every year, but Chris still gives a laugh—a laugh that is, you notice with satisfaction, robust and genuine—then gives his glib response: the hot chick always dies first in those movies, so I guess I’m safe.

You laugh for the sake of camaraderie, but note to yourself the superior qualities of your own joke. On top of being misogynistic and unfunny, Chris’s joke has the unpleasant effect of making you think about your wife, Jess.

Things haven’t been going well with Jess for quite a few years now. When you married her, you knew the two of you weren’t perfect communicators, that she had goals that didn’t include you, that she’d had bad relationships in her past, but things have gotten worse than you expected. She has all but neglected you and your son, whom she insisted you name Ethan Allen even though you don’t like the name. She treats Ethan as an accessory—poses him for pictures, uses him for likes and comments and praise, then leaves him alone with you.

Because Jess is always busy, doing important things, making important connections, standing up for important causes. And you don’t say anything about it, can’t, because they are good causes. She is busy. On top of her work writing grants for nonprofits, she’s organized a homeless encampment on the steps of city hall to demand affordable housing. She leads bus groups to the state capitol to call for racial justice. You don’t even know how many hours she spends each week at the humane society.

So, you feel that you can’t complain. And you love her, you do, even though you’ve seen her change and pull away from you. You still love the smell of her skin and her soft thick brown curls. You love the light in her eyes when she’s worked into a passion, which makes it burn all the more that you’re no longer able to ignite that fire, that you can only watch as that flame is fanned by other people, other causes. But she’s your wife. You love her. You made a vow.

For this trip you had to ask your mother to watch Ethan because Jess is at the capitol supporting an animal rights bill. You felt guilty asking your mom to help, even though she said she was happy to do it. She always says that, and you believe that she is. Still, you feel guilty, because you know she’s passing judgment on your marriage and on your wife and on the way Jess should be the one watching Ethan this weekend, the one weekend each year you go anywhere on your own. And you feel even worse because you have bitterly passed the same judgment as well.

But you felt sick when Chris told his joke about the hot chick dying first in slasher films not because it’s a bad joke—although it is a bad joke—and not just because it made you think of Jess, but because you have fantasized about Jess dying. Choking, hemorrhaging, sliding off the icy freeway through the guardrail—dying and freeing you to live life with Ethan, without the guilt of explaining his absent mother. You love her, yes, but if she were gone—

You don’t want to fantasize about it. When the thoughts come up, as they often do, you try to dismiss them. You feel awful about them, wish you never did it, but still you fantasize about Jess being dead and gone so that you could date again without any feelings of guilt, so you could have a second chance at marrying a woman who would wrap her arms around you at night, who would hold you tightly and let you cry into her hair that would smell of lavender.

Suddenly you realize that Chris has been talking about football while you’ve been feeling guilty about Jess. You catch part of what he’s saying and make a vague comment that seems to convince him you’ve been listening. He resumes speaking while he hands you a beer and keeps talking until you both go to bed.

The fishing is good, and you each catch your limit by Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening, you pull out the sixteen-inch cast iron pan and cook fresh filets over an open fire. After supper you sit with Chris by the fire, listening to it hiss and crack. Its orange light dances, casts flickering shadows against the trees. Glowing cinders pop and spit at your feet. One lands on Chris’s pant leg and burns a hole there, and you laugh as he howls and hops up and down, brushing it off. He grabs two more beers and hands one to you, then stretches his arms and sternum in a way that you know means he has something to say and is thinking up the best way to say it.

There’s a woman in the small town a few miles down the road—you remember that he met her there during the fishing trip last year—and he tells you they’ve been talking to each other now and then ever since. He’d like to go see her, if you don’t mind. You think about Jess and you don’t want to be alone, but you say of course not, you don’t mind, and he politely asks again, are you sure? He doesn’t want to ditch you—you don’t mind? And you say no, go have a good time, you’ll stay behind and watch the fire. Chris smiles, winks, tells you you’re a good guy. You don’t think that’s true and you don’t think Chris means anything by it, but you nod as he sets down his beer. You toss him the keys to the Jeep, and he climbs in.

As you stare into the heart of the fire, you hear the engine rev up and are blinded by the sudden brightness of the headlights. Slowly, engine and headlights both fade as Chris rolls down the gravel road, and you watch a log burn through and collapse into the shimmering coals.

Left alone in the immense seclusion of the woods, you realize how much life and noise surrounds you. An owl calls, close, overhead. You hear a loon song from farther off, followed a moment later by three or four others. Even the light breeze is enough to brush and scrape the tops of the birch and white pines together. The sky is clear, the stars as bright as you’ve ever seen them. You try to find Orion, to remember and place together the other constellations you learned when you were young. The glowing Milky Way is vast, more immense and unimaginable than you’ve ever realized.

A rustle in the woods pulls your attention down. Probably a raccoon, you think, coming to dig for scraps. Maybe a skunk. As the sound gets closer, though, you see a shape taking form, and it’s too loud and too large to be a raccoon. The broad black shadow heaves in the night. It seems to shudder as it approaches the cabin. Finally, you make out its outline in the darkness and realize it must be a bear. A black bear, you think, and though they’re not aggressive, you don’t want to meet one face to face. You rise and hurry into the cabin. Sliding the door closed behind you, you flip on the porch light and look out through the door’s glass panel. The animal ambles into the clearing, toward the fire pit. It reaches Chris’s oversized cooler, and you see that the creature is much larger than you realized at first. It’s a brown bear, massive, eight feet tall.

You stare, wide-eyed, as the bear reaches the cooler and bats it over with an immense paw. With a second swing, it breaks the lid off and rummages through the cooler’s contents with its muzzle. There’s no food inside, only ice and bottles of beer. Convinced after a moment that there’s nothing for it to eat, the bear abandons the cooler and lumbers toward the house. It mounts the porch and heaves toward the door.

Still watching through the glass, you find yourself staring straight into the bear’s eyes. As you gaze, frozen, the bear stops and stares back. The eyes are black, glinting, and empty. Each the size of a child’s heart. For a long moment you stare into each other’s eyes, until you see yourself in the shimmering blackness and aren’t aware of any time passing.

Eventually, the bear breaks off staring and lifts one of its paws. The paw is, you estimate, twice the width of your face. Without a growl, without any sign of anger or malice or even hunger, it swats at the sliding door that stands between you. The glass cracks but doesn’t break. You stand, unflinching, watching as the bear prepares to hit the glass a second time.

The second hit breaks through, and shattered glass fans out on the floor around you. The glass hitting the wood floor sounds like a thunderstorm, then all goes quiet. The bear shakes its tawny head but makes no sound. Still frozen, you think about running. You know it will catch you. You think about fighting. You know it will kill you. You don’t think about Chris being gone or wish it would happen to Jess instead or wonder what Ethan will do without you. Staring into the bear’s empty eyes, you only see yourself dying.

So, you take a step forward. The bear stands on its hind legs—her hind legs, you see now—stretched up to her full height, shaggy head nearly scraping the ceiling. You take another step toward her and stretch out your arms. Evenly, you walk into the warmth of the bear’s chest, and she wraps her arms around you. You press your cheek against her body and cry silently into her thick, matted fur, which smells faintly of lavender.

Photo by Janine Joles on Unsplash.