The third morning, we came to a cleared place where several small houses, roughly fashioned of logs, clustered at the end of the road. I had never seen such houses, their only windows being places where the logs had been cut, and covered with shutters. I would be gone when the winter snow blew into those holes. The Haskens’ goats went into a fenced yard. The settlement house was luxurious compared to what they had before, though it held no upper floor. Everyone was to sleep together on the floor.
No sooner had we gotten a few things put inside than I heard one of the girls scream as if she had been torn limb from limb. The air filled with the odor of a bear. I knew it from the skin under my bed, only this was earthier, potent, sharp as a foaming horse. I rushed out the door in curiosity to see Christine and Lonnie standing at the edge of the forest. Christine sank to the ground as if the heart had gone out of her and her knees could not hold her. Master ran toward them, carrying a pickaxe. Lonnie came running past me and flew into Mistress’s arms while he ran to Christine, threw down his axe, and scooped her up in his arms. He carried her to the house and laid her before the fireplace. Mistress made a pallet on the floor and they laid Christine on it. She breathed with her mouth wide open. Mistress crooned and said, “Poor little thing. Poor thing. Birgitta? Is there water in the house?”
I got a bucket, saying, “Here it is, Mistress.” I almost added “you old spider,” but stopped myself.
Mistress dipped a rag in the bucket and wiped Christine’s face over and over again. She sang to her and murmured things I could not hear. I stepped back. This was the first time I had seen her care for anyone. Still, I thought, with all those stories about wolves tearing people limb from limb, why would the girl not fear so to see a bear? People in the settlement came and many had opinions about whether the girls had in fact seen an animal or were simply overwrought from the traveling. Neither of them could give witness to what had happened, so it was decided that they’d only had a moment of hysteria. No one asked me if I smelled any bears about, so I said nothing. It would serve them all right, I thought, were the whole family to be eaten alive by a single bear and there in its great stomach they could bewail their circumstances as I had in the hold of a slave ship.
That evening Birgitta and I helped Mistress prepare supper. Lonnie went back to braiding her hair though Christine continued entranced. She wet herself. Everyone had to sleep upon the floor, but they made me sleep next to her and I squirmed there in the dark, trying in the crush of bodies to make room between us in case she wet again.
The banging and pounding of building another house began almost before the sun was up. After the day of seeing the bear, while Christine stayed quiet, Lonnie became talkative and rambled about, getting into things, poking sticks in a hornet’s nest, putting her bonnet on a dog, dumping out the neighbors’ milk jug. She was made my charge to lead and watch over just like the goats.
*
Before we had been there a month, life found its routine. We worked in the kitchen. Mistress kneaded bread. Lonnie braided Christine’s hair. Christine knitted stockings. I did my chores happily wearing a new pair nearly every week. She stopped now and then and counted them over and over, trying, I suppose, to make sense of why she kept knitting but the stack never grew. There were still a dozen pairs in her basket. Yesterday I had gone through the pile of them, turning them all about, sticking one inside another at the toe and tying two in a knot, just to frustrate her. Then I felt guilty about such a mean trick on a girl who had lost her mind, so I offered to help her straighten them, carefully untying the ones I had tied. Christine smiled at me, and Mistress herself patted my head and said, “Good girl, Mary.” Birgitta saw her doing it and rushed to me, copying the words and patting, so that she could claim my goodness, I believed.
One day as I came from fetching water, a great roaring, so close I felt the hairs on my head stand forward, made all of us jump as one. I smelled the bear the moment the roar stopped echoing through the house. Goats bleated, and the growling rose. I raced to the window overlooking the goat pen. The bear had already killed two! It was eating one goat and growled at another live one. I slammed the shutter closed with such a bang that cups flew off the shelf inside. The bear left its meal and came toward the window. I shall never forget the sound of its huge paws crashing and clawing at that shutter, wrenching it from its straps. The bear’s foreleg and claws swept in through the hole, sending candlesticks and bread pans flying about the room. Its huge body lunged against the house and the wall itself swayed under the weight. Mistress and Birgitta screamed. Christine whimpered. Lonnie just sang merrily and kept on braiding, holding Christine in her chair by the hair.
Mistress said, “Mary! Fetch Master and the other men!”
“Out the door?” I asked.