Having Everything Right by Robert Michael; Kim; Pyle Stafford Read Free Book Online

wind trailed out. Not in haste but not wasting daylight, she turned away, head swung down, and she ambled away over the open slope of sage, climbing toward the bluffs at the crest of my sight.
    The afternoon still: a wisp of wind-whistle in sage, and the little rattle of stone where the bear’s paws swung along. I felt history receding with the click and scatter of her steps, as if I saw the last run of a river trail away down the geologic trough of its bed. What made seeing not enough? What made me want to meet that shaggy woman, not merely see her sip the wind over her shoulder and turn away?
    In the car I stared at the choke, the odometer, the radio. The paltry pleasures of speed and distance were mine. How had exhilaration evaporated so fast? The dwindling hummock of the bear was approaching the ridge as I turned the key and swung out, cruised a half mile out of sight around the bend, killed the engine and coasted to a stop, left the white car’s pod, the road’s gray vine, and climbed on foot toward the ridge. A need for quiet now—now that the bear’s scent would follow the wind toward me as her path met mine. She would not know I was there. Now she would come close enough with her poor eyes to see my shape rise up.
    At the brow of the ridge, along her natural way, I crouched breathless among sage scrub abuzz with insect tremor and sound. The groundfell away to my left toward the river’s long curve. To my right stretched miles of open sage. The only hidden ground lay before me, toward the afternoon sun. There, I had seen the bear aim straight this way. There was no alternative for her but to come up over the hump of ground to meet me. If she turned, I would see her on the open ground to either side. From here, I would see first the black hackles of her back like a ruffled wave over the sage horizon, then the bobbing rims of her ears, then her small, close-set eyes, her lips pulled back to pant—and then I would stand up slowly.
    My fear brightened the hillside as with sweat. Every tongue of sage leaf glittered, and the sand before me was exact with sunlight. I faced west, where the breeze at my face trembled cool with rumor and scent: the smoky scent of bruised stone, the thin sweet fragrance of crushed grass. Soon, it would be bear. Soon my heart would stop its percussive haste. I would stand, and speak. Some compliment. Some respectful word.
    Wind rattled the dry sticks of the sage. My bones held an old juniper’s arthritic stance. The sun moved, and an ant came toward me, crossed a fathom of epic sand, and disappeared into the shade I cast. Blank wind chilled my face. Somehow, the bear slipped past my vision by some private tunnel of her own power.
    The risk I took to meet the bear was a responsibility greater than being husband, father, or son. But it was not enough. I was no true citizen of wisdom, but spent all I had on being afraid. So busy with fear, I had not enough hospitality for danger and change. There was only dwindling light on the place itself.
    I stood up dizzy with regret, stumbled back to the car, slid in the key, drove on, drove two hundred miles east by a path of dash-lined curves, of skid marks and guard rails dented with rust, of gas-stop exits numbered monotonous, of passing and being passed by wind-tailed trucks made brazen by their size, drove miles of signs promising greater distances to Bozeman than Butte, to Billings than Bozeman, and miles of travelwithout change. And Change was my sworn brother—that we would die the same day, as Five Wounds swore to Rainbow, and fulfilled.
    The day ended in Billings, where the librarians were meeting. They had come by air and car from Missoula, Boise, Seattle, Portland. They talked about change, and tradition. After the banquet, I stood at the podium, the microphone one breath’s distance from my lips, and spoke: The Role of the Humanist in a Technological Age. I was not able to tell what I was learning, only what I