Bears Discover Fire

Bears Discover Fire

By Terry Bisson

I was wary of approaching the bears at night. If we stayed on the path, we might run into one in the dark, but if we went through the bushes we might be seen as intruders. I wondered if maybe we shouldn’t have brought the gun.

We stayed on the path. The light seemed to drip down from the canopy of the woods like rain. The going was easy, especially if didn’t like to look at the path but let our feet find their own way.

Then through the trees we saw the fire.

The fire was mostly of sycamore and beech branches, the kind of fire that puts out very little heat or light and lots of smoke. The bears hadn’t learned the ins and outs of wood yet. They did ok at tending it, though. A large cinnamon brown northern-looking bear was poking a fire with a stick, adding a branch now and then from a pile at his side. The others sat around in a loose circle on the logs. Most were smaller black or honey bears, one was a mother with cubs. Some were eating berries from a hubcup. Not eating, but just watching the fire, my mother sat among them with the bedspread from the Home around her shoulders.

If the bears noticed us, they didn’t let on. Mother patted a spot right next to her on the log and I sat down. A bear moved over to let Wallace Jr. site on her other side.

The bear smell is rank, but not unpleasant, once you get used to it. It’s not like a barn smell, but wider. I leaned over to whisper to Mother, and she shook her head. It would be rude to whisper around these creatures that don’t possess the power of speech, she let me know without speaking. Wallace J. was silent too. Mother shared the bedspread with us and we sat for what seemed hours, looking into the fire.

Bears discover fire. Photo by Elena

The big bear tended the fire, breaking up the dry branches by holding one end and stepping on them, like people do. He was good at keeping it going at the same level. Another bear poked the fire from time to time, but the others left it alone. It looked like only a few of the bears knew how to use fire, and were carrying the others along. But isn’t that how it is with everything? Every once in a while, a smaller bear walked into the circle of firelight with an armload of wood and dropped it onto the pile. Median wood has a silvery cast, like driftwood.

Wallace Jr. isn’t fidgety like a lot of kids. I was it pleasant to sit and stare into the fire. I took a little piece of Mother’s Red Man, though I don’t generally chew. It was not different from visiting her at the Home, only more interesting because of the bears. There were about eight or ten of them. Inside the fire itself, things weren’t so dull, either little dramas were being played out as fiery chambers were created and then destroyed in a crashing of sparks. My imagination ran wild. I looked around the circle at the bears and wondered what they saw. Some had their eyes closed. Though they were gathered together, their spirits still seemed solitary, as if each bear was sitting alone in front of its own fire.

The hubcub came around and we all took some newberries. I don’t know about Mother, but I just pretended to eat mine.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)