Andrew R. Clark
A bear lived in a cave
Sleeping winterlong
And like a shoot
In warming spring
Emerged out of the ground
Then people found the cave
And waited for the bear
They killed it
And they ate it
Now people shelter there
#
Pushing through a few inches of fresh‑fallen snow, Omer open his front door. Skis waxed and gear packed, he headed west out of town and, by mid‑morning, reached his destination, thousands of acres of county park. Foundations of old farmsteads dotted the landscape. Here and there, waiting for tractor or horse to return, antique equipment squatted—a rusty hay rake, a planter with upright cylinders that once held seeds—and long ago, beside a tamarack swamp, a car had been pushed down a hillside and now sat in a hollow edged by a dense tangle of dogwood bushes.
Some years ago, while out exploring, Omer discovered the hulk, its rounded contours settled into hummocks of grass. All the windows were intact, and a little oil and persuasion got one of the doors open. There were no seats in the interior, so it was relatively easy to clean out. The hood’s release mechanism presented a puzzle, but when he figured it out the compartment proved empty. The car was a shell, stripped of engine, transmission, and gas tank. The trunk lid was half open, missing its handle, in need of some wire. He found an iron barrel in an old garbage tip, fashioned it into a furnace, and its stove pipe now protruded from a side window.
Zigzagging between knots of brush, he located the car. After clearing the windows, he pushed the button on the door handle and swung it open, the hinges squeaking only a little. Omer tidied up and shifted firewood from the trunk to what had been the back seat. Sleeping bag and supplies arranged, he opened the stove and lit a little blaze, feeling quite at home. Adding a couple larger sticks to the fire, he shut the stove and climbed out of the cab.
Kicking around in the snow to find it, he stubbed his toe on the ring of stones. In gathering darkness, after locating the folding lawn chair, he roasted sausages and peppers over the campfire. Retreating to his snug cabin, the troll stoked the stove and cracked a window before falling off to sleep.
#
Glad he’d remembered his sunglasses, Omer skied north in brilliant morning light. In a patch of gnarled oaks overlooking the boat landing, he settled down for lunch. Kids charged back and forth on snowmobiles on the far side of the lake. Nearer, hunched figures sat on buckets next to holes in the ice, trying to coax dwellers below into the upper realm. In the warm sunshine, with a full belly and propped against a big tree, Omer dozed off.
He awoke with a start. The snowmobilers must have left and all was quiet, but something near him had moved. A few paces away, a fallen log lifted itself erect, a ruff of quills flaring near its top. Above this corona stared the black, slitted eyes of a frost dragon. There were no appendages to the beast, save perhaps its long, scarlet tongue. What could he do? It was near enough to strike him if it wished, and he doubted he would be able to avoid the thrust.
“It’s long since I fed on your race, long since I’ve even seen one of you.” Omer tried to move but couldn’t, nor could he remove his eyes from the serpent’s gaze. “Don’t you have illusions and ways of hiding? Yet here you sit plain as day.”
Though otherwise immobile, he could work his mouth. “It’s the Little Folk. I had trouble with them a while back. I suspected my concealments were somehow drawing them to me. But to tell the truth,” Omer found he was having to, “I’ve been practically tripping over magic creatures ever since I unmasked things. I suppose it’ll be unicorns next. That would be dinner and a toothpick to you.”
“Luck has always followed your kind. A few days past, I happened upon a cow.”
Still stuck in place, Omer relaxed a bit. “How do you come to be here? I didn’t know your venerable species inhabited this half of the world.”
“Same as you, I expect. My sires crossed the icy north when seas were lower.”
“That’s not how I got here. I took a boat.”
His captor continued. “It’s not flesh I hunger for. What I desire, what I request of you are those,” it hissed, looking into the boughs. High above flashes of color danced, mylar balloons, two vibrant blue and one silver, snared by trailing ribbons. “They’re out of reach, and I cannot climb trees.”
Omer had to laugh, able to move again, apparently released from the spell. Near the top of the oak, he broke off a dead branch and tied on the ribbons, letting it drop. Grasping the stick in its mouth, the white‑scaled monster slithered away. It would soon have been invisible to any but the keenest eyes, but above it followed the gay balloons, marking its passage.
Not having a library card didn’t stop him from reading, only from taking books home. Near the window Omer scooched down into an armchair as Ishmael met Queequeg for the first time, finding out they would be roommates. He slid deeper, trying not to laugh out loud and get people looking.
At a nearby table, Jonathan had several books laid out in front of him. It was Saturday, and because he’d been procrastinating on his report, he’d called Omer instead of friends his own age. Deep down, Jonathon understood a bunch of twelve‑year old boys are worthless if you’re actually trying to get anything done. “Have you ever thought about dinosaurs and dragons?”
Putting a slip of paper between the pages to mark his place, Omer got up and seated himself across from the boy. “How’s that?” One of the books on the table was open to a picture of a Spinosaurus, a large carnivorous dinosaur with a fin on its back. Another book read Paleozoic to Today on its spine.
“Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago,” Jonathon continued his thought, “before anybody was around. And people didn’t figure out dinosaur bones till maybe a hundred years ago. But dragon stories go back way farther than that.”
“Hmm …” Omer scratched his head. “There’s evidence the Black Sea was created in a catastrophic flood, and many cultures in that part of the world have Great Flood stories like Noah’s Ark. Maybe a real event started them all. But nobody ever saw a dinosaur, yet people dreamt up giant flying lizards all the same. Is that what you mean? Setting aside the fire breathing, it is quite a coincidence. No, you must be right, it couldn’t have been dinosaurs that got us to dragons.”
“Doesn’t there have to be a connection?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, not sure where to go next. “Have you ever thought about humans and Neanderthals? It’s sort of the opposite. There were thousands of years between when Homo sapiens moved out of Africa and when people think Neanderthals went extinct. Scientists even say most humans have a little bit of Neanderthal genes in them, so obviously they knew each other. It was a long time ago, but wouldn’t there still be stories about it?”
“You mean about different people besides regular ones?”
“It’s just a thought.”
Circling clay pits from the old brickworks, a hawk joined warm air currents rising at the face of the bluff. Gaining altitude, it glided over the upper part of town, the smallest detail below revealed—houses and roads, children scurrying about on playground equipment, a straight line of train tracks dissecting a woods scattered with ponds.
The smell of loamy earth filling him with encouragement, Omer walked to town. Reaching the bottom of the hill, he heard someone speak from a bench near the millpond. “I have an opportunity for you, and a non‑opportunity, if you will?”
The man had a gray, neatly trimmed beard and curled mustaches. Leather patches on the elbows of his suit suggested more of the outdoors than the office. His hands rested atop a thin white cane with red stripes; it seemed he was blind.
“Do we know each other, sir? My memory is so bad.”
“I know you, friend. In fact, I’ve been looking for you. It’s my specialty you see, finding people.”
“Why would anyone want to find me?”
“All sorts of reasons. Scientific research, commerce,” he paused a beat, “even vendettas. But not everyone I find gets found, if you see what I mean? Sometimes they make … arrangements.”
He stood up from the bench, sweeping his cane in tapping arcs back and forth across the path, departing without another word. Omer watched the man make his way to the street, stop at the curb, and navigate the crosswalk. He had an urge to call out and demand an explanation, but he sensed he’d only get one at a time of the blind man’s choosing.
“I might have a problem.” Molly came out from behind the counter and led him to an empty booth.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, seating herself beside him.
“I met someone just now who says he knows me, though I’m sure I don’t know him. I think he threatened me.”
“Whatever for?”
“That’s the thing. I can’t imagine.”
The hawk pitched down toward a clearing in the woods. Beating its wings to slow itself, it landed on the blind man’s outstretched arm. With a gloved hand, he pulled a gobbet of meat from his pocket and fed it to the sharp beak. “There now, my eyes, you’ve done a good day’s work.”
#
A troll knows how to hide—otherwise he’d never get anything done—but that’s just reasonable precaution. Who would actually pay to know about him? Anyone who might hold a grudge already knew where he lived. Having decided to leave town for a while, Omer talked to Molly. She was concerned, but he made light of it, saying he was going fishing. Leaving home, he let out Sam the cat, asking him to keep an eye on their friends while he was gone.
Crossing fields long fallow, he approached the swamp and followed a deer path down to the old car, the ground underfoot spongy but dry, green shoots poking through last year’s dead growth. By the time he had camp set up, shadows were lengthening. Taking to bed soon after supper, he awoke in the night, tossing and turning the remainder of darkness.
In the morning he decided to go fishing. A lake lay on the other side of the hill, and if he stayed awhile, any food he could find would cut down on having to hike for groceries. In some places cattails formed an impenetrable barrier at the shore, but he knew an open spot with a sandy bottom.
Pulling a two‑piece casting rig from his daypack, he slipped the middle ends together, making sure they were properly aligned. After stringing line through the guides, he tied on a pink jig with a spinner, attaching a small bobber and setting the depth. On his third or fourth cast, the bobber went down, and in half an hour he had a couple nice perch.
He hadn’t seen any morels in the woods but did find a patch of ramps. Once the fire burned down, he set an iron skillet onto the grate, adding a chunk of butter. Slicing an apple, he put in the wedges, the oniony ramp leaves, and when things began to sizzle, a little water. When all came to a bubble, he slid the pan to the edge of the coals, nestled the fillets into the stew, and added a few pinches of salt and pepper and a squeeze of sun‑dried tomato paste from a tube. In a minute lunch was done.
A long afternoon walk tired his body but did little to calm his mind. Evening brought a breeze and the smell of rain. Sometime in the night, big drops began a percussion solo on the car’s steel roof.
#
A buck broke cover, lunging across a county highway, narrowly avoiding being hit by speeding cars, seemingly oblivious of the near catastrophe. Trucks and trailers launched boats at a landing. People unloaded dogs from vehicles, herding them into a fence. And beside a lake stood a figure, throwing something into the water. The hawk turned, circling back toward town, soaring over new‑planted fields.
#
First to the bike trail, then past the dog park, and finally to the little town on the south side of the lake, Omer went shopping. At the grocery store across from the old creamery, he purchased a loaf of bread, a jar of capers—because you always forget something—more butter, a bunch of carrots, and some small potatoes. Strolling down Main Street, looking into the big windows, he stopped in front of a gift shop. In ten minutes he walked out with a large, flat, rectangular package, wrapped in brown paper.
#
Thinking he’d try for something bigger today, Omer snapped a spool of heavy line onto his reel and headed for the culvert. Between the two nearest lakes, a paved bike path ran out atop a causeway. Embedded near its middle, a large steel pipe allowed water to pass, cutting a channel through the shoreline vegetation.
Seated on the earthwork’s grassy bank, digging through his pack, he removed a small tackle box and flipped open its lid. Selecting a lure with two treble hooks on its belly, he tied it to his line and cast along the edge of the cattails. Concentric rings dispersing outward, he let the brightly painted lure rest a moment before yanking. It plunged below the surface, bobbing back up when he gave the line slack.
On the path two women sped by on bicycles, loudly calling back and forth. Plucking a frog from the plastic tackle box, he switched it with the bass plug. Looking to see no one was coming, he cast it near a patch of lily pads. On retrieval the lure wobbled back and forth as though it were swimming.
“Anything biting?”
“Nothing yet,” Omer didn’t need to look to know who stood behind him.
The man lifted his cane, telescoping it until he had a long pole. Sitting down near Omer, he took a wriggling worm directly from his pocket, skewering it onto the hook dangling from the pole’s end, swinging bobber and bait out with a plop.
“It seems to me there are two kinds of people,” the blind man said in an avuncular tone, “the sensible type and the unreasonable. In my experience, the first group is much happier than the second.”
“What do you want, scavenger? Money?”
“Sir, you read me entirely wrong. I believe it was the Brothers Grimm who first recorded the tradition, and I do love the classics. You’ll give me your first‑born child, or bottles filled with formaldehyde could be in your future. Maybe a cage and experiments? A hunt and a trophy on the wall? I have many customers with varying tastes.”
“You’re a right bastard, aren’t you?”
“Now you’re getting it!”
“I don’t have any children, fool.”
“These things are done contractually, of course, and there’s plenty of time.” A few moments passed in deadly silence.
“Hey!” the blind man shouted, his bobber disappearing below the surface. Hoisting the pole, he swung a flailing carp onshore, bringing the large specimen up to his empty eyes. “Only rough fish these days. It’s all I catch.” He took a knife from his belt and cut the animal through at the gills. Its body flopped down the embankment, mouth still gasping on the end of the line. Using the back of the blade, he knocked the remains of the head free from the hook.
“I suppose you’ve already located my camp?”
“Most certainly.”
“Then meet me there tomorrow at noon,” Omer said, packing up his fishing gear, “and I’ll sign your contract.”
#
In the stone ring, he built a little stack of sticks around a wad of paper, carefully inserting a lit match. After breakfast he walked into the tamarack swamp. No trail marred the uneven ground, alternating between tangles of sedge and stands of tall, straight trunks, naked branches sprouting spring needles. Judging himself near the center of the labyrinth, he sat down on a gnarled root.
A red squirrel with tufted ears leaped from the undergrowth. Using dexterous, sharp‑clawed paws, it pried a banana yellow mushroom out of the moss. Only then did it notice Omer quietly sitting there. In two hops it was gone, prize clamped between long front teeth. After an hour of contemplation, he headed back to his rendezvous.
The blind man came clacking through the dogwoods. Seating himself near the fire on a log opposite the troll’s lawn chair, he said, “Cold morning.”
“So this is how you make your living, scaring people?” Omer replied.
“Part living part passion.” Pulling a pipe out of his breast pocket, clenching it between his teeth, the man extended his cane toward the campfire. A lick of flame leapt to its end, swirling in a ball as he brought it up to his pipe. “What do you pay for your air with?” he asked, exhaling a billow of smoke. “Considering yourself better than others can’t be very lucrative.”
“I suppose I was put here like anybody, and I do my best.”
“Yes, yes,” the blind man said, done with preliminaries, “about that contract.” He again reached into his coat, this time extracting a roll of parchment and a pen.
Low clouds scuttling over the treetops, Omer accepted the proffered indenture. “Yesterday you said there were only two kinds of people. I’ve been thinking, and I suppose it’s true. But the way I see it, the difference is between those sitting in chairs and those sitting on dragons.”
The man’s head snapped up. He stood, trying to move, but the cuff of his pants was snagged on the log. He struck it with his cane, but to no avail. Omer got up and tossed the scroll onto the flames. Examining the fancy fountain pen a moment before pocketing it, he walked away, screams mingling with the wind.
When all was quiet, he returned to camp. Near the fire the serpent rose up, a bulge at its middle. “I’ve kept my word and taken care of your wizard.”
“That was a wizard? I’ve never met one before.”
“Con‑men, swindlers, wizards—they all taste the same. And the rest of our bargain?”
Opening the car trunk, Omer removed the package and stripped off the paper wrapping. He walked to a nearby tree, raising a mirror in a carved gilt frame to a nail in its trunk. The dragon approached. Sure the fire was out, the troll packed his camping things and started home. In the glade the creature rocked back and forth before the mirror, its long body shifting through changes of color, bright and strange. From the hill overlooking the swamp, the hawk flew away—perhaps set free, perhaps already seeking a new master.
#
After trying to call Molly but having to leave a message, Omer went into town. The bell over the door ringing above his head, he entered the coffee shop. Customers politely pretended not to notice as she ran around the counter and planted a big kiss on him. Seated across from each other in a booth near the big front window, she reached for his hand. “How was fishing?”
“Mostly nibbles. But I was thinking, do you have anything we need to talk about?”
Molly blushed. “I meant to tell you. I’m going to have a baby.” She lifted her eyes, looking straight into his.
“Me happy? Of course, and only a little terrified. I guess we have a lot to talk about.” He gave her hands a squeeze. “I’ve never lied to you, but maybe I didn’t tell exactly everything.”
#
Puffy clouds dotted the sky, dollops of whipped cream floating in blueberry sauce. Occasionally one passed overhead, casting a cool shadow. Saturday at Jonathan’s house meant breakfast for lunch, so it had been decided that waffles would be served with the champagne, pick your toppings. If you’re a troll, it’s a little like being an illegal immigrant. You’re here, but it’s hard to prove you belong when you need a library card or a driver’s license or a marriage certificate. Omer got around this the usual way. He bought a fake ID.
An accordion player with tuba accompaniment struck up a waltz. He spotted Jonathan’s parents, who were supervising things in the backyard. “Howard, Becky, I can’t thank you enough for all of this.” The three of them looked around at the scene. There had always been an arbor with a vine growing on it, but now it was wrapped and wound with crepe paper streamers. Folding chairs were filled with family and friends.
“We love doing it,” Becky replied, both she and Howard beaming smiles. They still believed he was the father of one of their son’s classmates; some spells can’t easily be undone.
The band switched to a familiar tune, and as everyone turned toward the patio, Becky grasped Omer’s elbow, walking him up to the arbor. The glass door slid open and Molly stepped out, met by small sounds of pleasure and nods of approval. Her simple gown, gathered above the little bulge at her middle, complimented wildflowers woven into her dark hair.
Just for the occasion, Becky had taken an online course to officiate weddings, and she began. When it was time for the rings, Jonathan and Tilly delivered them in a pouch on her collar. When Omer was told to kiss his bride, he almost fainted—it seems he’d been holding his breath—but she steadied him, her lips tasting like all he wanted in the world.