In Sight of the Sun

Long ago they say...

It was not for fear–the appearance of the brown bear–that the boy decided never to disobey his grandfather again. Rather, it was the way the old man stood with his emptied quiver in the sage. It was because the boy thought he was alone: so enraptured in the blood and sanctity of the kill that he disregarded the presence of the white pine tree and, consequently, failed to notice the approaching bear.

The boy lifted the buck’s hair with one hand and with a flake of white chert in the other, sliced the web of fascia under the animal’s skin and peeled back the hide.

He saw the bear’s shadow and rose to defend himself. He could not find his bow and had only the bloody knife in his hand and understood immediately the consequence of his impudence. The brown bear stood. The boy thought the scent of the deer’s death at his feet profound. He recognized the angry song of the bear and acknowledged it in his prayer. Without considering which of them would die, he understood one would stoop over the carcass of the other.

Slowly, as if in a dream, he came to know that it was not the brown bear singing. The challenge was coming from his grandfather.

The brown bear abruptly wheeled and charged the roaring old man, who after emptying his quiver threw aside his bow and waited in the sage with his sotol lance.

Finding his own bow, the boy chased the brown bear and watched her writhe and die at his grandfather’s feet. So it was, in the end, because of the old man’s grace that the boy never laid aside his wisdom again.

Regarding the brown bear as poisonous, they left it and wrapped the meat of the black-tailed deer in its own skin. Sharing the burden of food, they walked together in silence.

The old man takes his grandson on his first raid into Mexico; they come home to the massacre of their people.

Benjamin Dancer