bear.
I scampered away from it, but tried to avoid making sudden moves. I read that these could trigger their hunter instinct. Then it dawned on me that Nat — he insisted I call him that now — had been able to see the animal the entire time as he was facing me. I turned to him in disbelief. He did not laugh at me but his eyes were saying, Well that is what you get for waving a sandwich in front of a bear.
"Is he yours?"
He shook his head. "She is mine. Or, if you like, we share a shelter whenever I come here." Then he pointed at my shopping bags for the third time that day and said, "I wouldn't leave these here goodies around her if I were you. That's why I got me this box." He took the liberty of putting my bags in a large metal box and locked it and gave me the key as a sign of trust.
I observed the bear. She was not much bigger than Nat himself. There was no malice in her eyes and she seemed far less interested in me than in the now-locked box that contained the goodies. I asked if he had named her.
"'course I did. How can you share a cave with someone who ain't got no name? She answers to Makwa."
"What does Makwa do other than eat my food?"
"She's in the same line of business as me: foraging for food and goodies. Except I trained her to recognize value when she sees it. She used to ignore objects like good pairs of shoes with many miles still left in 'em, discarded camping equipment and the such. I showed her how stupid that was. Now she brings it to me and in return I share my bread with her. We got ourselves a better partnership than most married couples."
My mood must have improved since that morning, because I asked if Makwa had suitors, to which he answered that she did, but that he scared them away with pepper spray and by firing in the air.
Now that my eyes were more accustomed to the dark I took a look around and found little in the covered space under the rock besides the metal box and a pile of old clothes and boots. There did not seem to be any remains of animal carcasses. There were no traces of charcoal or anything else that would hint at cooking or the consumption of meat. "Don't you hunt?" I asked him.
He twisted his lips uneasily. "Can't no more. I done seen people die that I shot. Took 'em hours. I can't kill nothing no more, not even for food. I get some locally-grown stuff from the farmers live around here. I also got some vegetable patches all over the place. That's for times when I know I shouldn't be venturin' out of the woods. When the VC is near."
"I understand," I said.
I stayed with Makwa and Nat for two days, building up confidence that no one would be able to track me down there. Makwa snored like a freight train and kept me up half the night. To think that just a few days earlier I was worried about poor agent Peterson's snoring. But survival makes people adjust quickly to extreme conditions — even someone as set in their ways as I am, who is besides not a great fan of wildlife. At first I was concerned that Makwa would eat me in my sleep, but she turned out to be better behaved than my labradoodle, who now lived with Jane and the boy and Jane's new fiancé Josh.
On the second day I went foraging with Nat, and found a titanium multi tool. Nat said he could easily get fifty bucks for it but offered it to me for free if I needed it, which I declined politely to the relief of us both. Then I told him a little more about my problem. He seemed shocked, which I took as a great compliment as he must have seen a lot in his day. "Why would anyone want to whack sixty seven people with nothing in common just 'cause they was on the same flight two years ago?"
"That's what I'd like to know."
When we were back at the cave he kept to himself for a while, even wandering off into the woods for a good hour. When he came back he shook his head. "That's no good. Crazy, even. There must be somptin' very sinister behind this. Maybe even a political thing."
"Looks like I have to spend the rest of my life like you." I tried to chuckle but it came out a gasp.
He shook his head again. "I know why they after me, so it ain't bothering me none and I can focus my energy on giving them the slip. But it ain't the same for you, Al. If you don't find out why they after you, you'll be going nuts. Your energy, it will go inwards and choke you. Worse, you won't know what to defend yourself against. A duck needs to know if he's running away from a fox, a shark, or an eagle. Catch my drift?"
"I understand, but how do I find out? I can’t go to the law."
He made a disparaging hand gesture. "I wasn't gonna suggest nothing like that. You in a crazy situation; you need someone just as crazy. Someone who fights fire with fire." He reminded me of a character from a 1950's movie now. But I knew he was right.
"You mean you?"
He shook his head. "No, no, I ain't no good outside this wood and I know it." He squatted down and pulled open the tools in his new possession one by one as he spoke. A ray of sun that had managed to find its way through the treetops deflected off the multi tool, blinding me for a moment. "It's someone I served with. The only person who understands me."
I was not sure if I wanted to put my fate in the hands of someone who understood Nat, but I was desperate enough to try anything. I nodded for him to continue.
"His name is Doc Minus Two. That's on the count of he's missing two fingers in his left hand."
"Is he a good man?"
"He's the worst character you'll ever meet. But with him on your side, even God would lay off you."
"Is he smart at least?"
"Sharp as a tack that can pierce an ant's ass."
Then I got the full story from Nat about my would-be savior. Nat spoke for an hour and his tale was convoluted, but not uninformative. Doc Minus Two, according to Nat, was not a great financial success. He lived in a 19th century Gatlinburg cabin that was repainted so many times it was no longer considered a free-standing structure without the layers of paint that held it together. Nat thought that it used to be a barn at some point. And even that was difficult for Doc Minus Two to get a lease for because of his reputation in town. That, Nat said, should tell me something about the man. The landlord, who inherited it from some dead aunt, took six months to get a certificate of occupancy for the property, and when he received it he was so pleasantly surprised that he walked into a local bar and ordered a round of drinks for everyone. He knew even then that no one who could afford a better place would want to move into that dump, and that he would have to be very accepting. But even so, he was not accepting enough to have Doc Minus Two as his tenant, who until then lived in twenty-dollars-a-night hotel rooms from which he was often kicked out for attracting the wrong kind of visitors, mostly criminals and bums of all sorts. Instead, the landlord rented the cabin out to a fortune teller named Mathias. A month later Mathias had to leave town when one dissatisfied customer, who had taken out an expensive life insurance policy on a wife who did not get struck by lightning as Mathias had predicted, held him in a Half-Nelson and poured contact cement on his head so that they had to shave it clean to get the stuff out.
The landlord still did not want to do business with Doc Minus Two — so bad was his reputation in town — and so Amelia Ruth Perkins moved in next. Amelia’s only companion was a pit bull named Killer. Killer was kind and housebroken and gentle except that occasionally he would run away and whenever Killer ran away he would get into a fight with another dog and whenever Killer got into a fight with another dog the other dog would lose an ear. When half the dogs in the neighborhood were missing an ear, the law rapped on Amelia’s door and said she had to hand Killer over and pay a fine. Amelia agreed but skipped town the next day.
After Amelia, no one else wanted to occupy the barn-house, and so the landlord finally relented and let Doc Minus Two move in. Being welcome did not make Doc Minus Two as grateful as the landlord had hoped. When he asked him if he would try to keep his felon friends off the property, Doc Minus Two replied that at best he could keep them from setting the place on fire, and even that took all of his energy. Asked what he did for a living, he said that he was a medical doctor and a dentist and a tree surgeon and a private eye and a
lawyer. That multi talent did not translate into a steady flow of income for Doc Minus Two, and he was often behind on his rent. The folks at Gatlinburg did not want to trust him with their health or their teeth or their trees, and so the only work he ever did manage to get in town was in the practice of law or as a private eye. He made his living fighting off traffic tickets and representing landlords who wanted to evict paying tenants who prevented them from renting the house to better paying tenants, and by doing all sorts of investigations on behalf of strange, often shady clients. Sometimes those clients would visit him at the cabin, and then the neighbors could swear that they heard gunshots.
Even the town's children hated Doc Minus Two. It was not that his appearance was scary – it was just a bit disheveled -- or that they set out to hate him because he was an outsider. No, it only took one act to make all the children in town hate him, and that act he did not direct at the children themselves. It was what he did to the man who spat out lizards.
The man who spat out lizards, Nat said, was a Gatlinburg fixture. He lived with his parents even though he was already forty. He always wore a red cap that looked as if a tractor had run over it repeatedly. He did not have a job, and so he would hit the pavement getting into friendly conversations with