A girl was crushed by a falling tree. Her father dug her out, saved her. She grew up, but unevenly.

Mostly she stayed indoors, rolling around in a wheelchair made out of the tree. Her father was a mountaineer, was never around.

The cottage had a fireplace, two beds, a spool of rope, a knife, and one book, Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy.

The girl couldn't read Clear and Present Danger any more. She needed to make the trek to the village, finally see its public library. She set off, pulled on a sled by a strong dog.

But the dog was attacked by a wolf.

The wolf didn't attack the girl. It was full from eating the strong dog.

She dragged herself through the snow back to the cottage.

The father came around a month later, with a crate of food, another book, The Hunt for Red October, and two dogs, even stronger. Within a month, both of those strong dogs were eaten. This time it was wolves that got them, plural.

The girl set a trap. Partly for revenge. Partly because there was nothing else to do.


One evening—a wolf in the pit! She gazed down, the lantern light flickering on the frozen walls. The wolf howled. And howled. Tried to jump out, but the walls were too steep.


She lowered a branch. The wolf, surprised by its freedom, sat on its haunches, staring at the girl, panting, pink tongue visible.

"Hi, wolf," the girl said.

"Hi, food," the wolf said, in wolf.

The wolf ran back into the snowstorm. But in the bottom of the pit were three wolf pups.


These wolf pups grew up, but unevenly. She fed them Carnation Instant Breakfast. They loved her. Licked her face. Friendly wolves.

She readied the sled. A quarter mile from the cottage they were attacked by a bear thundering out from behind a boulder. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

The girl escaped, dragging herself away, the bear too full from eating those friendly wolves.


The mountaineer came back with two rifles. He leaned one rifle on the wall next to the stove and said, "The world has gotten worse. Stay put." He left behind Patriot Games.


When that bear got hungry again it came to the cottage, smashed in the door. The girl pulled the trigger. Again. Again.

But the bear was only wounded.

And it moaned in the snow as it died—slowly—saddest sound she'd ever heard.

And of course the bear was pregnant. All the wild things in this story are pregnant.


She cut a cub from the womb of the dying bear.

And that was that.

The cub grew up, though unevenly. She shot deer from the doorway, the fireplace raging. They ate together. Soon the girl was carried by her bear. She burnt the wheelchair made from the tree that crushed her. They left that place forever. Carried through the snow. Carried down the mountain.


When they got to the village there wasn't a library. There wasn't a village. Rubble, black ash. A large wooden sign in the middle. 500 names. The names of the villagers who were buried in a mass grave the girl and the bear had no idea they were standing on. The sign had 499 names the girl didn't know. One name she did know. Her father's.


As she wept, the bear carried her farther, the scene repeating over and over. The next village, rubble and ash, a sign for the dead. The next. The next. The next.

Days later, where the desolation stopped, so did the borders of her country. Down a gentle slope, she saw glowing houses.

Voices called out. "Don't come any closer."

Men in arctic camouflage. White machine guns.

"Turn back."

The girl said, "My country has been destroyed."

"Turn back."

The bear charged at the camouflaged men, who fired their guns in fear, and missed far and wide, in fear. They barely fled into a bunker below. Securing their hatch.


In this new country, bears lived in zoos, unless they were service animals. So the girl got the bear a large blue vest that said SERVICE.

That became the bear's name. Service.

They went to the town's library. At first the tiny room was a utopia. But the more she read, the smaller the town shrunk. The rest of the world bloomed out with eucalyptus trees, and Eiffel towers, and paradise tigers, and the Metropolitan Opera houses, and black sand beaches.

She acquired illegal passports.

Up in an airplane. Over the frozen sea, until the sea thawed, until the sea was surrounded by green places. Until there were rainbows, and baseball diamonds.

The other passengers didn't complain about the massive bear sitting in the exit row. Things were often eaten in this story. These people didn't want to be the next things eaten.

When the plane landed, they were led through a gray maze until they reached a little man in a bullet proof booth, who denied them entry.

The man said, "There's a right way and a wrong way to try to get into this country."

She explained what they'd endured. The man grinned, stamped the papers DENIED.

Service set her down and flattened the booth. The man dashing out just in time.


They rented a blue van, drove through electrified cities; past moo cow farmland; into lush swaying grassland, where silver trout leapt from the silver rivers at dawn; across a desert where the moon was strawberry all the time; to the cobblestone town where the idyllic university stood; a castle. The girl was carried across campus, through the student center, until she entered the crowded lecture hall, where the professor, with his tweed suit and wild hair, stopped his talking talking talking and looked up from his podium. 

"Yes?"

"Where can we sit?" she said.

"How much does that bear weigh?"

"900 pounds."

The professor said, "Have a seat wherever you'd like."


.

Bud Smith is the author of the novel Teenager, the memoir WORK, and the short story collection Double Bird, among others. He works heavy construction, and lives in Jersey City, NJ.

Read his postcard.

Read Sawyer Wood's 2½ Questions interview with Bud.

Read more of Bud Smith's work in the archive.





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