Zora Grizz

There’s a thumping…a rattling…near the door.

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I open my eyes and listen in the dark.

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I learned a long time ago that listening to what you

can hear is the key. You can learn a lot just from that.

Especially when whatever is making the noise can’t

hear you. A few moments go by. I wonder if I’m falling back asleep. Then the thumping and rattling happen again, only this time it’s not at the door but by the far wall, at the only large window near the ground. I listen again, my heart hammering in my chest, actively trying not to think too much about what this could be and failing. I glance at my phone, the screen much too bright on my eyes in the steeped blackness. It’s 1:07 am.

 

Now I’m awake. And just like every other night that I hear a strange noise in the dark, I wonder if this is it: if he’s found me again…if this is how I die. Because make no mistake, when he finds me next, that will be his intent. I know this. Before…well that was all theatrics on his part. He thought he could take his time, as he enjoyed tormenting me so much. Like a cat playing with a mouse it intends to eat.

 

I was able to slip through his fingers and I disappeared then. I went to ground but good. I know that the next time he finds me, it will be final. It will have purpose. And it will be certain. …The flashbacks have been especially bad lately, culminating in my sobbing in the shower last night, desperately trying to drag myself out of the places the flashbacks were struggling so hard to take me. It was like trying to come up for air in a sea of molasses. The thick goop trying so hard not to let me go, to drag me back down.

​

Is this part of it? I wonder. Am I dreaming?

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There’s a loud sound in the driveway now, something very obviously being moved around. Metal scraping on concrete. More thumps. The sounds of things being pushed around. Slowly, slowly, feeling like I’m underwater, I get up. I live in the small apartment above the garage, across the driveway from the house where my relatives live. My open window by the bed looks right out over the driveway that separates me from everyone else, which is generally how I prefer it. I’d left the window open tonight since the weather was nice outside. I’d been listening to a nearby owl hooting quietly under the moon when I’d fallen asleep a few hours before. I move the corner of the blackout curtains, and then of the drawn shade, to cautiously peer out at the driveway from behind them. As my eyes adjust, I see the trailer the work crew is using to store scrap parts in while they rebuild my relatives’ rotted deck. There is a large shape moving inside of it. I strain my eyes in the dark to try and see what it is.

 

There’s quite a few possibilities, living way out here. Mountain lions are the ones we have to watch out for. We had to relocate a dead deer that one cached outside my door two winters ago. Before that, a lion used the roof of the house as a hunting tool. One night it stood on the front door’s overhang, then pounced on a passing deer in the dark, killing it in the driveway, right outside of the laundry room window. But there’s also bobcats, coyotes, bears, and bull elk during the rut. Once even a moose. Once wolf tracks through the dirt.

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The orange October moon is shining brightly onto the driveway. In it’s light I see a dark, solid, shape sitting in the trailer, a snout pushing through bags and old boards. A bear then. I watch for a few moments, my heart aching quietly. I know that bears who learn how to get into people’s trash are likely to be labeled a “nuisance”, then caught and euthanized by parks and wildlife.

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There’s an ancient maglight I keep hidden in the clutter of my bedside table, more for it’s solid, clublike, qualities than for any potential light-bearing capabilities. I honestly don’t even know if it works anymore. I pick it up and shine the weak beam through the window screen at the bear, hoping this will scare it off. I don’t like ruining the bears’ night, or scaring it, but unfortunately it’s the best way to protect it. The bear seems startled but not overly concerned at the light, and goes back to rooting around through the trash. “Dammit”, I whisper, and take a deep breath. Okay.

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I shine the light on and off in rapid succession at the bear’s eyes, like a strobe light. Not wanting to wake the neighbors, on the off chance they’d decide to call parks and wildlife themselves and endanger my clever friend, I whisper loudly, “Hey! Hey bear! Stop it!” The bear pauses and looks up at me and my strobe light.

​

I hiss, “Ya gotta scoot, bay-bee! Hey hey! Hey!” After about a minute of this undignified treatment, the bear picks up a white trash bag in its mouth, like a dog with a toy, turns around, and runs out the low end of the trailer, jumping the three or four feet to the ground like it’s nothing at all. The bear runs out the back end of the driveway, over the rocks and on up the hill, into the scrub brush and the rocks and the pine trees. I keep the soft beam of light on the form of the running bear until I can’t see them anymore. I know I’m pretty safe, but my heart still flutters rapidly in my chest, like a butterfly flapping trapped wings.

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As the bear disappears into the black I sigh sadly, hoping that for its sake it doesn’t come back or get into anyone else’ trash. I don’t remember putting the maglight down, and I fall back asleep minutes later, dreaming of thick brown fur running away in a beam of light that is cutting through the darkness.

​

#

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The sun has just made its appearance, the world still shadowy and silent: soft with a thick, gray, blanket of clouds resting just above it.

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It’s cold outside and I’m ridiculously grateful for it. I love the way the air feels, crisp and clear. In the autumn and winter months, it’s hard to keep me indoors for any length of time. It’s as if I need to let that beautiful, cold, clean, air fill me up: my lungs, my brain, my heart, my limbs. As if only then do I truly feel alive.

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It’s the heat that’s dangerous, that’s oppressive: smothering and relentless. I text my relatives to let them know to be careful when letting their dogs out this morning, because of the bear a few hours before. My dad immediately wants to know which way the bear went but I pretend not to see that text. I don’t tell him where the bear was until I’ve taken my own dog out, fed him, and finally put on my boots, coat, and gloves and am halfway out the back of the driveway myself. My dad’s not trustworthy with animals and safety. Last year he saw two mountain lions walking by the fence’s perimeter one night, only a few yards away from the driveway and heading towards it, and my dad proceeded to run outside, across the driveway in the dark, to try and get a picture of them. I don’t tell him where the bear went until I can go with him.

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Mornings are not my strong suit, but before my clock has even hit 7:30, I tell him I’m going to go try and find the trash the bear ran off with. It’s already a windy day and I don’t want other animals getting into it, or trash blowing all over the mountain and causing problems for the wildlife. I basically just make sure that he can’t go without me is what I’m doing. Because he will go chasing a bear by himself across the mountain, untrustworthy old man that he is.

 

He and I climb over the rocks and towards the trees, me carefully watching his steps so that I’ll be able to catch him if he slips and falls.

 

We find the remains of the white trash bag full of food stuffs exactly where I lost the bear with the flashlight’s beam last night.

 

We spend the next half hour picking up the carnage from the bear’s late-night party on the hillside. There’s old tissues, cheetos bags, McDonald’s fries, cans of tuna. “Hey boo boo”, I think to myself, picturing a pic-a-nic basket.

 

As we’re walking and looking for the trash, dad tells me he went to the coffee shop yesterday and got a drink called an “Americano”, had I ever heard of it? It was really good.

 

I’ve had a good handful of gigs over the years that have required me to learn barista skills. I’ve basically been making Americanos since I was in high school. But instead, I tell him that’s cool and that an Americano does sound good. I think it’s espresso and hot water, yeah? I’m not sure.

 

He explains it to me, thrilled to be providing helpful information.

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I grin quietly under my hoodie, and continue to carefully watch his feet on the rocks. We get all the trash that we can find and then head back towards the house. As we get to the driveway, we realize that there’s probably more food-trash still in the trailer, which will keep attracting animals like our bear friend. Before I can stop him, my dad starts to climb into the trailer.

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“Hey, no, stop. I’ll do that,” I say.

​

But he just ignores me and somehow manages to get himself in.

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I climb up on the outside of the trailer’s front end and hold the trash bag open as he loads other foodstuffs into it. Jalapeños. More Mcdonalds bags. Half empty cans of Red Bull. He lasts maybe a minute before his muscles start to shake and freeze up. Then he realizes he can’t move his back much, in order for him to stand up straight.

​

“Here, why don’t we go ahead and switch out?” I say.

​

“…Yeah, alright,” he allows. As he shifts his legs to try and climb back down out of the trailer, I try to tell him an easier route but he doesn’t hear me (or doesn’t acknowledge it more likely) and he finally heaves himself over the side of the trailer. I hop down off the front nimbly, and deftly move to the ground on his side so that I can spot him as he makes his stumbling way off of the trailer’s edge. His left leg freezes up and he can’t move it off of the big tire once he’s almost to the ground. With one hand reaching back behind him to support his frame and help him not fall backwards, I reach out with the other hand and gently move his foot off of the tire so that he can stand again.

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Then I climb up into the high end of the trailer, which the bear had been rooting through the most (my sturdy boots hopping easily onto tires, lighting on the side rails, my mass of hair yanked into a bun to try and keep most of it out of the wind, my arms hefting my small frame over and onto old boards, in powerful, controlled movements, stepping lightly onto rusty old gates) while dad holds the trash bag open and I pull any old food I can find out of the trailer. We didn’t know that the work crew had been putting trash and food waste into the trailer as well as scrap parts. The crew wasn’t from up here so they didn’t know that food stuff can’t be left out because of the animals. I help dad lock the trash in the garage in our bear proof trash can when we’re done.

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As I climb the crumbling wooden beams set into the hillside that serve as the stairs leading up to my apartment, a few scattered, lonely, snowflakes drift down around me, catching in my hair and I smile, ready for winter.

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I’m already limping by the time I reach the top of the crude stairs. The familiar knives of pain jolt like lightning bolts through my right foot, but my face remains impassive, unchanging. My boots, socks, and black moto-leggings are covered in grass seeds and thorns from wandering through the hillside scrub brush picking up trash, and my mittens are probably never going to be the same after picking up all of that soggy garbage. I go inside and wash my hands three times under scalding water, then carefully pick all of the grass-seeds out of my boots and my clothes, carefully washing them down the sink so that they won’t get into my dog where they could cause harmful blockages or boils.

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I pour myself a giant glass of cold, vanilla, coffee (my morning savior) and lay down on the bed. I stare out of the same window that I watched the bear from earlier as a thick fog climbs slowly over the deep blue mountains. The temperature continues to plummet and I snuggle my old, sweet, dog who was totally unphased by the morning’s events. I’m pretty sure that as long as he gets his snuggles, he could care less if the whole world burned. Snuggles are key.

 

It’s only then, safe and in the light of day, that I grudgingly ruminate on the different things that strange sounds in the night can be. Because this is the thought I’ve been trying desperately to keep at bay since I woke up at 1:07 this morning to thumps outside of my apartment…It’s like trying frantically to keep a mental door shut by pushing as hard as you can against that door, trying to keep it closed with all your might when the door just wants to open. Like leaning into it with your shoulder and planting your boots firmly against the ground, but what’s on the other side of that door is the ocean and it wants to come through.

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But do you remember that weird, kitchen science experiment that you do when you’re a kid…mixing cornstarch and water and food coloring to make a strange liquid that turns almost solid when you apply pressure with your hand, but is just liquid without any pressure? It’s like that. The more effort I put into keeping that door closed, the more resistance I get. I know what’s on the other side. Fear.

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I shut it down. It does no good, that door, only harm. That door and it’s deep ocean full of molasses will only drown me.

 

I walk away from it. The door stays closed, the ocean eyeing me curiously from the other side.

 

I instead think of how adorable that bear was, it’s fur rippling in the wind, and a soft ache, as if someone was gently wringing my heart the way they would a towel they were tenderly hanging outside on a line to dry, moves through my chest like a silent, knife-wielding, ghost.