“I’ll shut up,” he said. “Baiting just gets me steamed. I know the state’s got to manage the bear population, but still-”
“Charley.”
“I’m finished.” He took a sip of iced tea.
We gazed out through the porch screen at the lake’s dark chop, the lights of Flagstaff burning like yellow and red stars in the far distance. The purr of a motorboat carried across the water, a fisherman returning late to shore.
Then Ora said, “Mike, I’m sorry about your father. This must be very difficult for you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Have you talked to anyone about this? A minister or counselor?”
“Ora,” said Charley.
She leaned forward and touched the arm of my rocking chair with two fingers. “You can’t save him, dear. Whatever happens is up to him. I hope you’ll remember that.”
“Ora, that’s enough.” Charley rose to his feet. “My God, what a busybody you are. She loves to ask questions she has no business asking.”
She looked up at her husband, leaning back in her chair. “Charley’s right,” she said.
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“Oh, yes she does.” He took hold of the rubber handles on the back of her wheelchair and pivoted her toward the door. “We’ll check on supper and let you finish your beer in peace.”
They left me alone on the porch.
Dinner was the best I’d had in ages. The roast was lean and tender with a stronger flavor than beef. There were new potatoes and onions from the Stevenses’ big garden, and Ora steamed some sort of greens Charley plucked from the yard. On the table was a Mason jar of wild mushrooms pickled in cider vinegar and a crusty loaf of home-baked bread wrapped in a warm napkin.
It was the kind of meal my mother never made. I remembered all the nights I’d spent as a kid staring down at an orange lump of boxed macaroni and cheese. Even when my dad brought home deer meat she managed to burn all the taste out of it. She just never put any effort into cooking. And, of course, the TV was always going, background chatter to their arguments.
Charley and Ora drank glasses of cold milk they poured from a pitcher. But I stuck with beer. There were four empty bottles in front of me, and I was feeling woozy by the time Ora brought out the blackberry pie.
“Charley gathered these berries along the dirt road that leads out here from town,” she said. “We grow or gather most of what we eat. Always have.”
“On a warden’s pitiful salary, what else could we do?” he said. “We’re like that Ewell Gibbons feller from those old TV commercials? ‘Did you ever eat a pine tree?’ There’s just so much to eat out there if you know what to look for-fiddleheads and frog’s legs and mushrooms. Then there’s the usual game: moose, deer, rabbits, squirrels.”
Ora patted his hand. “Charley has a stronger stomach than I do. I can do without rodents,” she said. “I do love fish, though. Trout and salmon. Pan-fried perch and bullheads.”
“Of course, these days you can’t eat fish like you used to,” said Charley. “On account of the mercury. All that damned acid rain from the Midwest dropping down into our lakes and rivers, poisoning our fish and birds. That’s another sad development from when I was a lad. But I guess every old fart says the world has gone to hell in his lifetime.”
“I think it really has,” I said.
Ora looked at me with concern. “Why do you say that?”
“There’s no wilderness left. There are roads everywhere now, and GPS receivers if you do get lost. You can make a cell-phone call from the top of a mountain or the bottom of a cave. You can go to the ends of the earth and if you look up, you’ll still see a plane flying overhead.”
I hadn’t realized how crocked I was until I’d opened my mouth. But the more time I spent with Ora and Charley, the angrier I became at Wendigo for threatening to take away this beautiful house and this life of theirs. I thought of that heated meeting at the Dead River Inn, and part of me felt a little murderous.
“It’s just change,” said Charley with a big grin.
“Change for the worse.”
“Son,” he said, shaking his head with mock sadness, “you are the youngest old fart I’ve ever made the acquaintance of.”
After Charley had washed the dishes, he said, “Let’s call some owls.”
Outside it was dark. When we looked out through the windows all we could see were our reflections floating like ghosts on the glass. Charley lifted his green cap from its peg and put it on his head, and then Ora turned off the lights in the house, and we all went outside. In the darkness I could smell the lake and hear a rustle of breeze in the treetops. Crickets were chirping under the cabin.
“Do you speak Owl?” Charley asked me.
“Not fluently.” I could taste the beer on my breath.
“I’ll teach you, then.”
He cupped his hands around his mouth and made a shrieking noise that sounded like “
“Barred owl,” I said.
“It’s good to know they’re teaching you something in warden school.” He repeated the noise again and then we waited.
Through the branches overhead stars were salted across the night sky.
Far away I heard a noise:
“There he is,” said Charley. “Let’s see if I can draw him in.”
Back and forth Charley and the owl called to each other, the bird moving closer and closer until finally the answering hoots were coming from a tall evergreen directly overhead.
“Do you feel him watching us?” Charley whispered.
“Yes.”
“He’s up there in that big spruce looking down at us wondering, ‘Where’s that son-of-a-gun owl who’s poaching on my territory?’
“Charley, don’t torture the poor bird,” said Ora.
“We’re just having a conversation. Why don’t you give it a try?”
I cupped my hands around my mouth and made a loud attempt.
No response.
“You get an A for effort,” said Charley softly, “but an F for pronunciation. Try it again but garble the sounds together more. You’re talking to an owl, not a person.”
“Charley’s a regular Dr. Dolittle of the Maine woods,” said Ora.
I gave the call another attempt, focusing on the actual sounds the bird was making, not the human words they reminded me of.
This time the owl answered.
Charley clapped me on the back. “There you go. You want to try some coyotes?” He pronounced the word
“No, thanks,” she said. “I want to get back to that book I’m reading. You two go.”
“We’ll miss you.” Charley knelt down and kissed her on the lips. Then in the near dark we watched Ora wheel herself back up the ramp and into the house. A moment later the light flickered on in the hall window, and we saw her smiling face shining back at us.
We were riding along over a dirt logging road in Charley’s pickup truck, the headlights cutting a path for us through the dark.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
He laughed. “You sound like my wife. Whenever she says those words, I get the hell out of the room. But go ahead.”
“Why is Ora in a wheelchair?”
