GRISLY
by Gretchen Bassier
There are no grizzly bears in Michigan.
I used to tell myself this when I was out alone, bringing the horses in from the pasture.
Sometimes, it helped.
When the moon was bright, and the animals quiet, it helped.
But whenever the herd was shifting and restless, fixated on something I couldn't see…
Those times, it didn't help so much.
The trouble started with a TV show. A couple of documentary filmmakers, up in Alaska, studying grizzlies. Learning where the bears travel, how they behave, what they eat.
Turns out, grizzly bears eat documentary filmmakers.
On camera.
Mom wouldn't change the channel.
Three rooms away, I still heard every moan, every growl, every… crunch.
Big, hulking brown beast, chowing down on human ribcage.
Not the best image to have on the way out to dark pastures.
No surprise then that every rustle in the trees, every creak, every crackle became the certain approach of giant paws. That the massive, bristling brush pile was suddenly a man-eating monster.
Shadows shifted inexplicably. Horses spooked. A leaping barn cat nearly caused heart failure.
Night chores aren't hard: fill the buckets, feed the mares, dump the wheelbarrow, spread the manure. It only takes an hour.
That first night, it took four.
No singing to pass the time, either —
If Grizzly was out there, I needed to hear him coming.
No horror like being eaten alive.
"What took so long?" Mom asked, when I finally trudged in.
I didn't answer. She would have laughed.
Six more nights followed, all the same. Secret, phobic misery.
On the seventh, I sat alone while the rest of the family ate Sunday dinner.
Uncle Jake came late, as usual. He glanced into the kitchen, where the others were clinking and laughing, then spotted me on the couch. He came and sat next to me.
"What's eatin' ya, kiddo?"
His eyes were soft, watching me.
Uncle Jake, who put a real snake in my brother's bed, after my brother put a fake one in mine.
