Word Count: 346
The lady next door has made friends with a black bear. It came through our backyards one spring day and she started to feed it. Now it eats from her hand.
Every summer I’ve watched her sitting out on the steps of her porch as it cautiously sneaks through the woods. It comes up to her and feeds from the plate at her feet. She waits until it has eaten before petting its head. It snuggles up to her then, and sometimes will doze with its head in her lap while she scratches its belly. I’ve heard her talk to it and some days she’ll sing a soft song.
In winter she sleeps in its den. She’s asked me to keep an eye on the house, leaves me a checkbook to pay four months’ bills. Like the electric–she’ll leave the lights on a timer–and the oil delivery which is surprisingly low, though I know she’s set the thermostat to its lowest. The telephone she’ll pay in advance since it’s always the same.
The lady next door had been lonely; her children married and gone. Her husband had died a decade ago and I tried to make up for the loss. But I never seemed to have time, as time went along, to just sit and talk over coffee. I see that now, but now is too late. She made friends with a bear. I guessed that the bear was a mother as well, mourning her own loss of her cubs.
I kept an eye out for her every spring, and she’d emerge, sleepy-eyed, hungry, and worn. We’d have lunch and I’d tell her about winter. Give her the news of the world. We spent less and less time together over the summer, and I saw that she spent more and more with the bear.
Then last spring she didn’t come back.
Sometimes in the early dawns I’d think I saw shadows slipping through the grey light of the mornings. One large and black, one dressed in paisley, and one smaller version of each.
