I’m hunting in the middle of December, after a cold snap. There’s land in my family name, not too far away from the river, untouched earth never plotted, all oak and pine and such. I never did learn the name of every tree. I’ve hunted here since I was knee-high, when the weight of the gun was a struggle on the shoulder, but some trees are still just trees, nameless, them and the brush that creeps under and the way the ground runs beneath. All nameless but it is love to be among them, surely, even in the middle of December, after a cold snap, breath white, numbness running like sap down your toes, as if your feet are moving away from you, as if you end at the ankles then the shins and on it goes. Something my brother could make a joke out of, if he was still with us. Something my father could make wise, if he was still with us. But all I have is me and my simple way of speaking which is—I am hunting in the woods one middle of December, our woods, and I’ve chosen a tree stand my brother and I put up ten years or so back, in a tree whose name I have never learned, and once I’m sitting up there in that tree stand, some—what? Some thirty feet off the ground, I imagine, strapped in like seatbelt to the trunk of it. Once there I reach behind and put my hand on that nameless bark digging into the small of my back from time to time and look down over the cold forest floor and the weak sunlight dying into evening. But this time, this time I’m telling, this cold December in the evening hours I am in the deer stand and through the silhouettes of trees what comes lumbering but a bear, a black bear, massive, male or female I can’t say, only the name the creature is, only a massive black bear sniffing, pausing to lean its snout into the game trail. And me, breathing thirty feet up above, strapped to the nameless tree, oak or pine or such, wondering what I’ll do if it takes to my tree and comes to see if I’m worth knowing, me beginning to sweat, even in the middle of December in a cold snap. But the bear finds itself a nice trunk and sits pretty-as-you-please, its rear on the ground, its back against the tree, looking so like a person it makes me doubt my own eyes, makes me wonder if I’m not just in a dream someone else is having but no, there the bear sits and evening comes and the bear shifts now and then, getting comfortable, dozing, I suppose, when cold as it is, shouldn’t it be in a burrow or some such secret earth? Shouldn’t the creature be escaped of a cold snap in the month of December? Sitting as it is, pretty-as-you-please, in defiance of all my knowledge. It’s been sitting here about, I’d say, thirty minutes or so—it has stopped being a bear and become a bear-shaped shadow, such that if I had been walking up then to the deer stand I would have passed it without notice save a fretful tug from the good angel on my shoulder—when I hear scratching sounds, the swish and crackle of leaf litter. And what comes down the game trail? Not a deer, no, but an armadillo, its belly dragging along the ground, its snout in the trail, sniffing, searching and coming upon the clearing, coming upon the bear-shaped shadow and then, with no warning, is swiftly and totally seized by two paws on either side of its armored back and lifted so that, I swear on my father’s gravestone, on my brother’s, its legs aren’t even seized in panic but simply still walking along the air, as if life were still ahead of it. And the bear, no longer a shadow, leaning down, the maw of it open, its teeth a terrible white, biting into the creature’s plated back side. A sound now, a hard crack, as the armadillo is broken, and pried apart. Squealing in a child’s whine, a fretful naysaying, as its legs pumped in panic, its tail swinging. Oh, it seems a dream sneaking up on me in the middle of December, after a cold snap, my feet a stranger in my boots, belted to a tree watching an armadillo being pried open as the bear works its teeth point by point, patiently, with no account for the squealing, struggling creature in its grip, its own claws deep within and there is no stopping it. There is no stopping it. Those teeth are absolute and then—it comes as a frozen branch snaps—silence from the armadillo. And the bear devours him. How long does it take, listening to the bear eat that armadillo? Long enough to consider the gun in my lap, what I might do. What I could have done. Fired a shot into the air and saved the armadillo, in those first few moments of its capture, but it did not occur to me. Nor did shooting to end its misery or else killing the bear for this ordinary bloodshed. I don’t think any of these thoughts because it does not seem real, it cannot be real—even in telling I wonder whose dream this is—but when at last the bear is finished it drops the used carcass and lumbers back the way it came. And I sit here with my gun in my lap. There is no one to realize I should have been home by now. How long would it take the world to search for me? And who would find me, pried open and frozen, still strapped to this nameless tree, my gun escaped of my grip, lying on the forest floor? My back to this nameless tree, waiting for these thoughts to finish and go lumbering on their way.
Night falls.
There is no stopping it.