Scratch. Steve Himmer
pinches the bridge of his nose so the bulbous tip glows an even rosier shade of red. “Damn,” he says again.
Martin looks up with curious eyes, but remains seated on the edge of the porch. “What? Why does it matter?” He reaches for his ruined shirt but in such rough shape it’s not worth putting on, so he pulls what’s left of his jacket over bare skin. Raising his arms into the sleeves strains his wounds and his ribs, but he tries not to let it show on his face. The holes torn by the bear flap over his chest, revealing the blood-streaked gauze underneath.
“Well, if the bear attacked without being provoked, could be he’s sick. Or felt threatened. Maybe you were too close to her cubs or . . . was it a male or a female?”
“I don’t know. How do you tell?”
“Do I need to explain it? You really do need to spend more time with that Evans girl.”
Martin looks away, his face warm. “Can you tell from the mouth? Or the teeth?”
“Male’s bigger, but any bear’d look big on top of you, I suppose.” Gil pulls a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his green pants. “Used to be bears knew enough to avoid trouble, which is more than I can say for some folks.” His expression lets Martin know some folks is him. “Now we’re not supposed to shoot ‘em unless they’re a threat. They learned to be afraid of us, now they’re learning they don’t have to be. I told you, animals’re getting strange around here. Showing up where they never did.”
“Like a mountain lion?”
Gil gives Martin a look, as insulted as it is annoyed. “Mountain lions don’t live around here.”
“But Elmer said . . .”
“Elmer sees all kinds of things. Hell, he might’ve seen a big cat, but it’d just be passing through. A ranger found some markings a while ago, but no sign of ‘em staying. No, I don’t mean mountain lions. I mean bears in a dumpster. Went to buy tires a few weeks ago and there were sparrows waiting outside the door. They aren’t big enough to set off the door’s electric eye but they live in the rafters. Strange stuff. Who taught birds about automatic doors, Marty? You tell me that.”
Whatever ointment Gil put on the swab, it seems to be easing the sting in Martin’s chest, or else it’s the whiskey. He reaches for the bottle and takes a long drink.
“Of course, could be it wasn’t a bear you saw at all.” Gil smirks on the side of his mouth that isn’t holding a cigarette. “Coulda been Scratch. You were in his neck of the woods, after all.”
The name is familiar somehow—Martin tries to remember where he’s heard it before, but the answer won’t come. “Who’s Scratch?”
“The bearman of the north woods?” Gil laughs, then drops the stump of his cigarette onto the porch and grinds it out with a bare, calloused heel. He slips another cigarette into his mouth but doesn’t light it, then reaches for his coffee cup from the porch railing and sips. He pulls a face and mutters about it being cold then pours in some of the whiskey before drinking again.
“Scratch is nothing but an old legend from the Indians around here. The story’s lasted longer than they did. Supposed to be a bear that was cursed, maybe a man that was cursed. I’ve heard it both ways. Whichever it is wanders the woods stuck in a body that won’t die or get old.”
“People believe that?”
“Doesn’t matter. Scratch has been blamed for so much that he’s real enough. Indians said he stole their babies. Settlers blamed him for stealing women, sheep, whatever went missing. Grabs ‘em, eats ‘em, and tosses the bones in his pile. Loggers used to say he snuck into camp at night to rust up their saw blades and grind down their gears.”
“He has a pile of bones?”
“Who doesn’t? Every so often folks find a gnawed sheep’s leg or a dog that crawled off to die. Tear ass into town hollering they’ve found Scratch’s bones.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Made a good story for me to tell the weekend warriors, anyway. Take ‘em hunting and give ‘em their money’s worth in scares, too. All part of the package. Used to have a couple of caves I kept stocked with bones.”
“Have you seen him?” Martin asks, then tries to backtrack with, “Do you believe it?” instead, but the hunter is already talking.
“Me?” Gil grins and pulls a plastic lighter out of his pocket. It takes three scrapes of the wheel for it to catch, then he ignites the cigarette that hangs from his lip. “Not so far as I know. Seen plenty of bears, but I can’t say any of ‘em was Scratch. Besides, the Indians thought he could change shape, look like a bird or a wolf, whatever he wanted.”
He pulls on his cigarette so the end flares. It occurs to Martin that as much as Gil smokes, he never seems to run out of cigarettes. He imagines a closet full of unopened cartons stashed somewhere in the house.
“Maybe I have seen him,” Gil says. “Who knows? Older folks in town—even older than me, if you can imagine—say they have, out in the woods, a bear that walks funny. Staggers like he can’t find his legs. Or got caught in a trap.”
A pair of gray squirrels approach the foot of the stairs, a few feet away from the men. “Will you look at that,” Gil says. “Even the squirrels are getting brave.” He stands and waves his arms with a bark, scaring the squirrels off into the yard.
Scratch isn’t a bad thing to be called. I’ve had other names, in other languages I don’t hear in these woods anymore, but this one’s as good as any other. I’ve been here longer than I’ve had a name, and I was nameless for a far longer time than I wasn’t. But it’s always scared people more when they have a word for the thing they’re afraid of, so the names have stuck to this place.
They never get the details right, though, what I do and how I do it. Never the why of it all. I didn’t begin as one of your own who was cursed—I was in these woods without form before the first warm-blooded body appeared. I was here before your kind arrived, before any kind arrived, because you needed me here to become what you are. You needed a reason to raise up the walls you hoped would keep me out, and to invent the electric lights and alarms that allow you to sleep through the night. Without me to spur your inventions, what would your kind have become? What would your languages be without the need to give your fear names?
Martin doesn’t know me yet, not exactly, but he’s come across me in his dreams during these recent nights. He knows that since he came to these woods, to the hole in the forest where his trailer stands, his dreams have carried over into waking life more often—and more completely—than ever before. Dreams led him into the woods on his walk, and dreams led the bear to his fireplace bed. Dreams are where I have the most reach, the most power. It’s hard to touch waking lives, in those hours you’re convinced you understand more of the world. But the more your kind come to insist things beyond what you know to be real cannot be, the more willing your dream selves become to believe. The more eager they are to listen, and to remember the other things you used to know.
I pushed Martin toward the bear and the bear toward Martin until their paths crossed. So much depends upon their meeting that it couldn’t be left to chance. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen when they came together—I can set events into motion, not control how they occur—but so far it’s worked out. Martin is on the path I was pushing him toward. The bear let him live, but went back to the woods, and his confidence in knowing how the world works has been shaken enough for my needs.
BACK IN HIS TRAILER, MARTIN WRAPS A LAYER OF CLING film around the bandages on his chest before squeezing into the small plastic shell of the shower. He doesn’t want to get the gauze or the wounds wet, but his body is sticky with dried sweat and dirt, pungent from yesterday’s walk and a night in the woods.
The water arrives cold, and he stands back as far as he can until it warms up. Then the spray is too hot, and where his