Centuries of June by Keith Donohue Read Free Book Online Page A

stay among them.
    “I remember,” little Yeikoo.shk’ said, and led them back to the den where it had happened. S’ee could barely stand to be on the hill where her husband had lain, but they had no choice but to winter intheir old home. Her son was the first to leave, stealing away one night in the middle of a snowstorm, mad with hunger and confinement. Word came later that he had headed north and inland to be away from man, and some say Yeikoo.shk’, the grizzly, terrorized the Yukon, fierce and smart as any Tlingit, had many cubs with many bears, and could not be tracked. Her daughter Yaan.uwaháa lasted that first winter and into spring when the cubs born that February emerged with their mothers, and the maternal pull forced her slow independence from her own mother. She was gone for good three years later, the victim of another party of hunters who, mistaking her for a true bear, shot her dead just above the headwaters of the river. One of her two orphan cubs survived, and three years later found one of the hunters sleeping in a grove and dispatched him into the next world with a swipe to the neck.
    S’ee lived a long time above the valley of the brown bears. In warm months, she moved among them freely in an uneasy truce, teaching herself their ways, but they gave her wide berth. No custom or commerce would be shared. She could only watch their new families from a distance. The fragrance of foamflower and coralroot every June reminded her of the husband she had loved and lost, and in the long, cold months of winter, she dreamt of him, clinging to his skin, straining for his disappearing scent in the shabby fur. She felt as if she was becoming a bear herself as she aged. At twenty-five years, she could no longer stomach the sight of her own reflection in the water, and at thirty, she felt as if she had lived forever in the purest silence, bereft of all language she had once known. When the spirit came upon her to sing out her sorrows, the sound of her voice frightened her. On cold clear nights with the blanket draped across her shoulders and hooded over her head, she huddled on the rocks to count the stars, constellations strung like roe against the northern sky, though their names were long forgotten, praying that their lights would go away, waiting for the world to end.



L ost in her story, and feeling strangely responsible for its outcome, I averted my gaze from her shining face and studied her toes, which heretofore I had failed to fully appreciate. Her feet were beautiful and soft, as if newly sculpted, and I scrutinized their graceful lines, imagining all kinds of sensual activities, with a devout attention.
    “Bup-bup-bup-bup.” The old man sang out a warning, and I looked up at the war club poised in her two hands lifted over her head and the mad glee in Dolly’s eyes as she prepared to smash my bean. With startling alacrity, he jumped next to her and shot out his right arm like a piston and clamped his fingers around her wrist. For all his ostensible frailty, the old bugger displayed an iron grip, and the club did not budge an inch.
    “Vengeance is mine,” she hissed between her teeth.
    “Sayeth the Lord,” he corrected her, nose to nose. “You are excluding one-half of the quotation, which utterly destroys its intent. Partial quoters are the scourge of debate, and selective citation is the refuge of manipulators and charlatans. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeththe Lord.’ Leviticus, I believe. Not your place, surely, to seek revenge, and I encourage you to surrender this shillelagh of yours before it accidentally goes off. Honestly, Dolly.”
    Locked in immortal struggle, the two figures bristled with tightly wound energy, like two locomotives butting on the same track. Whispers of steam escaped from the corners of their clamped lips and the curlicues of their ears. Had I the slightest reflexes, I would have joined him in the fray, but some flaw of courage or instinct kept me stationary,