I don’t know what to do.
Well, your uncle says, you’re gonna need a new name for one.
A new name?
Am I whispering or something?
No.
Good. There is no Nathaniel Reed. I don’t know anyone by that name and neither do you. So what do you want to go by? Jack or Tom or something?
You sit there saying nothing for a long time. It somehow feels as if the two of you are merely camping up in the mountains. The sounds of birds everywhere. And then you say it: Bill.
Bill? He nods. That’s actually a real good idea. We can get a birth certificate with that name.
I guess so.
I’m gonna need to talk to your mom some.
Are you gonna call the police?
Why would I do that?
I don’t know. Because you’re harboring a criminal.
Your uncle laughs then. Bill, you’re a regular comedian, he says. Yes, you are.
The feeling of being called by that name is like a fire inside your chest. Each time it burns. You realize that your brother is the best person you have ever known and that had he been alive, had he survived Battle Mountain, you would never be in this situation at all. And because of this fact, you know you have failed him. He gave you a red-tailed hawk to hold in your hands and in the memory of it you can sometimes feel the heat of that great bird arcing up through your fingers.
You do not see the animals that first day, the few animals that your uncle is keeping in small, cramped cages. Instead he takes you to Spokane, a round trip of four hours, where you sell the Datsun to a used car lot for two hundred dollars because your uncle reasons that the car is the only concrete way anyone might be able to track you down.
That first night you sleep on the tiny couch in the trailer and in the morning your uncle takes you down through the birches and shows you the animals. Coyote and bobcat and one lumbering and slow-witted porcupine. You watch them all but when you reach the bear’s cage something changes for you. It is a jolt. Like a wire of electricity that burns in the air between. You will remember, all your life, looking into those eyes, that conduit connecting you to the boy you were so many years ago when your father died and you came to visit your uncle for the first and only time.
Majer likes you, your uncle says.
How do you know?
He doesn’t usually just stare like that. Maybe you smell funny to him.
Maybe, you say.
Majer, your uncle says. Meet Bill. He’ll be staying with us for a while, so best get used to him.
I remember him from when I was a kid.
I expect he remembers you too.
Can he remember that long?
Oh sure, your uncle says. Time’s different for these critters. Sometimes I think he can remember stuff that hasn’t even happened yet.
You smile at the absurdity of the statement and yet in those eyes you can see snow and forests and your own eyes mirrored back at you, afraid, confused, and just stumbling forward into the life that would be yours. Your uncle calls you Bill and that is the life you will claim.
YOUR UNCLE receives disability checks for reasons he never clearly explains and that seems enough to pay whatever bills there are, or at least it was enough before you arrived. There is a little sign on the highway indicating North Idaho’s Only Zoo, and occasionally tourists stop to look at the animals and your uncle acts the tour guide, talking about each animal in great detail, telling their stories, where they came from and in what situation he found them. Except for the great bear, all of them have been injured in some way and only the raccoons are allowed outside their cages. David tells you that he once entered the bear’s cage regularly and they played catch with a Wiffle ball but then he was thrown against the back wall in a moment of excitement, breaking his arm and his collarbone, and he has not entered the cage since.
Most days you simply do not know what to do with your time. You consider applying for a job, either in Bonners Ferry to the north or in Sandpoint to the south, but your uncle tells you that you will need to wait a year or more just to make sure there are no agencies actively looking for you.
And so you are patient. Or try to be. You sit out in the sunlight and read whatever books your uncle has lying around—spy novels mostly—and then head down to the library in Sandpoint. At first you look at books on animals, mostly because you do not know what else to do and at least this is information applicable to the world in which you have found yourself, information physical and imperative. Later you spend those same hours reading through magazines and newspapers, taking notes: Indy Car Racing and Wrestling and Sports Illustrated and, always a day late, the sports pages of the New York Times.
When winter comes, it is like nothing you have ever experienced. It snowed in Battle Mountain, of course, and it snowed in Reno, but in North Idaho the snow is fierce and deep and covers everything. The roads become flumes, the sides of which are lined with huge berms like white walls, fences and gates and mailboxes hidden somewhere within. You find that you love the contrast: the wet black trees, the snow sparkling in the sunlight, everything so alive, and you standing there in that old forest breathing in the frozen bite of the air.