Bear on the Road

Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash

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.

 

Grandfrogs

by John Brantingham

Travis is there for his grandfather, who can’t get around fast any more, there for him in the old man’s backyard when he notices that his grandfather is watching a frog waddling slowly across the backyard.

There’s a memory, something way back from that time when he might have been four years old or so and not in the surreal haze of early childhood when he knows that his grandfather caught a frog for him, gave it to him like a gift. He’s lost in that memory when he feels someone staring at him and turns to find his grandfather’s knowing face.

They’re not close enough to have a psychic connection, but his grandfather says, “I gave it to you because you were having a bad day.”

Travis can feel himself smile and blush. He’d never let the kids down at the high school see that, but it’s funny. People can just be themselves around their grandparents. “What was wrong with me?”

“Your father was deployed back to Korea, and you were scared.” His grandfather points at the frog. “The animal was there to protect you like a talisman.”

Travis gets up and takes this frog in his hands and offers it to his grandfather, who waves it off. He says, “I’ll tell you a secret. Even when I was grown up I’d go out and find frogs when I was nervous.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. I wasn’t lying to you that day. Frogs are talismans. They keep away the fear. Stick it in your jacket pocket. Feel it wiggle around and try to be anxious.” Travis does and the frog moves around, settling in and it’s true. He can feel high school slipping away, all the tests both in the classroom and out. They’re gone, replaced by the frog. His grandpa says, “I don’t have a lot of money, Travis.”

“I know that.”

He points to Travis’s pocket. “That right there is my legacy.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
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.