It was Saturday afternoon and Shay was still at the breakfast table when she heard something scratching at the back door. She never used to do crossword puzzles and she never imagined spending the whole morning completing one, but could hardly tear herself away now. Retirement changes a person, she supposed. When she went into the hall, she could see through the window the furry bulk of a bear that had gotten onto the screened porch. It was snuffling and scratching at the door to the house tracking some human smell. She took her newspaper and coffee out to the other side of the house, onto the front porch, and locked the door behind her. She redoubled her effort to complete the crossword and tried to put the scratching out of her mind.
Eliot was terrible with animals. Shay would not let him get any cats or dogs. They were already on call with the grandkids and neighbors any time they went out of town. Rabbits, birds, cats, dogs — Eliot loved all of them, but most of all he loved bears. He fed them scraps from his car window and got way too close to them on hikes. Shay could not deter him. She suspected that he took finger sandwiches from the country club to feed any bears he might meet on the golf course.
The bear had no doubt torn through the screen door to reach the porch. She listened to its grumbling with a certain calm that comes out of twenty years of marriage. It would never get through a locked door, but the windows to the porch were open — Eliot insisted on fresh air even though it gave any wandering bears easy access to devour his wife. If the bear ransacked the house, maybe he would learn. If he pulled up after his game of golf and found her strewn across the lawn in little pieces, perhaps he would get the message.
Shay finished her coffee and whittled the puzzle down. She was trapped in one last corner of the puzzle, which was impossible now that the only words she could think of were ursine: “claw” and “bear” and “ maul.” When she tiptoed back inside the house, she could see a fuzzy head peer at her through the back window. The bear sat waiting for a hand to dispense a slice of ham or some other midnight morsel. Shay waved the bear away with her paper. It watched her with doleful eyes, big and dumb and childlike.
Shay yanked the door open and shouted, “You big lump, get off my goddamn porch!” The bear stumbled to its feet and forced itself back through the hole it had torn through the screen. Its black fur shook as it bounded across the lawn. It stopped at the treeline to look back over the round of its shoulder.
The bears were too much to deal with after retirement. Things were supposed to be simpler. She went to the basement for the ten pound bag of cayenne pepper and drew a wider line around the house. She thought about drawing a line around the front lawn to keep Eliot out, too.
