The pot reached boiling and I threw in a handful of teabags. We were quiet as we watched the chamomile essence diffusing into the water.
“I have something to say to you,” I said finally.
He seemed alarmed at the prospect. “You know, it’s late and maybe—”
“It’s about when I told you and Erik about the bears.”
“Yes.”
“You told me to go up to the Goslants’ on my own. Will offered to do it, Erik said he’d go up and kill Johnnie—”
“Really? He said that? Good man!”
“Well, he admitted he was exaggerating.”
Earnest enjoyed that. I poked the fire with a stick so that a crazy flurry of sparks spun up.
“Meanwhile, the toughest guy east of the Mississippi said I should go up there on my own. By myself. To get into a fight with a screw-loose kid who kills things.”
He shrugged. I waited him out. He knew I would wait him out. The tea diffused.
“Those bears. I don’t know the story, but the way you were …” He looked at me straight-on. “You couldn’t see yourself, but when somebody’s vibrating like a tuning fork and their eyes look like, what, a samurai’s eyes … When it’s that important, one thing I know, you have to deal with it yourself. You can’t duck it or delegate it.”
I nodded.
“Tell me about the bears.” He was very serious, and the power of Earnest’s command to honesty was not something I could resist. “What happened that was so important.”
So I told him. I told him everything, about the inexplicable call of the darkness, the silly pointless noise I made, the bears and me together in the darkness, and how I felt afterward. The magic of that night came back to me in all its irrationality and mystery, and sharing it with someone was blissful.
When I finished, Earnest didn’t say anything, just let the story hang in the air of my dimming glade, respecting it. The tea was ready by then. I had replaced my tin cups with some big plastic mugs, and poured it steaming into two of them. We each squeezed some honey from a plastic honey-bear and then cupped our hands around the mugs and contemplated them as if they could tell us something. It was quiet except for the fire’s small, busy noises and the occasional fat drops of water falling from leaves that had cupped them since yesterday’s storm.
“You were strong enough,” he said finally. “You are strong enough. I thought you should know that.”
That was good tea. We each savored two whole mugs full and both had to head off in the dimming light to pee, I at my outhouse, Earnest somewhere in the woods at a respectable distance.
When we got back I said without thinking, “You have been melancholy, and I want to know why.”
“It’s not something I can go into with you right now.” He picked up his empty mug and stared into it.
“Are you angry with me?”
That startled him: “No! Why would I be? Why do you say that?”
“You’ve … you’re, like, cautious when we talk. You’re too polite! I hate it when you’re polite with me, Earnest!”
“I’m just going through my own shit. I need a real change, a major change. Maybe move off the farm. Get my own place up where my work is, not come down so much.”
I rocked back a bit, taking it like a punch.
“It’s okay for a guy to move on in life! Sometimes you get to a place where”—he gripped the air, fists full of tension—“something’s got to give.” He looked at me, asking for understanding. “Something’s just got to change.”
In my head I came up with a dozen arguments against his moving: What will Jim do? You’re his dearest friend, he’s not over Diz yet, he needs your company! And who will fix the equipment? He can’t afford to pay anyone! What, you’d live in Chittenden County, with the malls and parking lots? You hate it up there!
But all I said was, “Whatever it is, moving won’t help. It’ll come with you. Trust me.”
He bobbed his head as he thought that over. “Probably true.”
We sat there staring at the fire. If somebody had come upon us, they would have seen a large man in work-sweated, wood-dust-covered clothes, and a smaller female figure in manure-smeared coveralls, sitting on opposite sides of a campfire with their elbows on their knees. If the two had been closer to each other, you’d think they were leaning over a chessboard, utterly still as they pondered their next moves.
But there was no calculation going on. We just hung in a stasis of irresolution.
After a while, pressure grew in me, just as it had in Earnest: “See, where I’m at,” I blurted, “I’ve been trying … this whole thing”—I gestured around me, at the woods—“is me trying to be who I am and accepting who I am. Really accepting who I am. But I don’t feel like I’m getting there these days. It’s like I’m keeping secrets from myself.”
He nodded deeply.
Another long silence. Then he said, “Show me your tree before it gets too dark.”
We bushwhacked to the big birch. Its main trunk remained intact, but the age-rotted stumps of its branches had broken off when it fell. Earnest stroked its bark, inspected the various animals’ holes, walked along it to the broken forks so he could look at the branches. At the breaks, its wood had the strength and texture of stale bread.
“I hate to see these go,” he said. “Habitat trees. Where are all these critters going to find another home before winter?”
We talked about how to cut it and move it and where to put its pieces. I wondered aloud whether maybe some of its residents could return to their homes if we set the pieces nearby, but Earnest said that if they lived too close to the ground, they’d become little snacks, canapés, for bigger creatures. We figured we’d bring the Ford up with the
