by John Brantingham
Clare’s in the bus on the way to Randolph High School along with the rest of the cross country team when she hears the bus slow down, hears the bus driver laugh in surprise, and sees the bear ahead loping in a run down the middle of the road chased by the yellow school bus now on a yellow day in autumn with a yellow tag clipped in his ear, by scientists who must have sedated him and tagged him.
She imagines that fear now, the fear of this bus chasing her down, the fear of waking up out of sedation confused as to what happened, and what all these people want anyway. The driver is pacing him. The man says, “The bear’s running at 27 miles an hour.” His voice is full of a cruel music of wonder.
Clare says, “Stop it,” but her voice is swallowed by the noise of the rest of the team, boys and girls who are marvelling at the bear’s speed, down the road.
Coach Bret stands and walks to the front of the bus to watch it run. He says, “Why doesn’t it just run into the woods?”
Clare knows. She can feel it. It’s the unrelenting fear that closes off thought and stops action. It’s the fear where all you do is run and keep running. It’s the fear that drives all movement. She’s never been afraid like that bear is now she thinks. Maybe she will never be as scared as a bear in these few weeks before hunting season opens and the leaves are raining yellow and the bus is full of 30 people cheering on the terror that keeps you loping ahead, so Clare clears her voice and yells, “Stop it!”
She yells as loudly as she can, but the whole team is yelling, and she stands because she needs this to stop. She starts to walk ahead, imagining that she’s going to yank the steering wheel so they go into one of the maples that line the road, but the bear veers off into the woods and the team cheers for it, and she sits down.
It was stupid, she knows, to think that she could or might crash the school bus. She’s stupid for caring about the bear she thinks. She’s stupid because she felt one way and the other 30 people on the bus felt something completely different from what she did, but she knows she’s done with the team.
She thinks that she will quit once this meet is over. She thinks that races are stupid. She was stupid for joining in the first place and everyone here is stupid too. The only one who knows what it means to run is the bear, now disappeared into the maple forest.
John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com.
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