Samantha's Talent (2 page)

Saturday was the day when the families of the little village of Wikluk normally did their weekly shopping at the combination general store and post office. It was located on the unpaved road named Main Street, which in fact was the only street in the village. The Douglas family was just carrying their last bundles out to their car when the shouts began.

"Good God, it's a bear!"

"Quick! Somebody bring a gun!"

Samantha stopped abruptly. She cocked her head like an alert bird listening for worms, then dropped her package of groceries and began running pell-mell down the street. She didn't have far to go since there were only two other commercial buildings and a couple of dozen houses in Wikluk.

"Sammie, come back!" Ronald called desperately, already knowing what his daughter must be up to. He discarded his bags and took off after her, followed by his wife, who had an agonized look on her face to match that of her husband.

Samantha paid not the least bit of attention to their shouts, not after she heard mention of a gun. She whizzed along and disappeared around the corner of the last house. She outdistanced Jeff Wesley, who was just coming outside with a rifle in his hands. The scruffy looking man always had a weapon handy.

Wesley, the Douglas couple and several other residents followed in Samantha's wake, spurred on by the sounds of horrendous screams coming from behind the house. As the band of townspeople ran past the yard and veered to the right, they all stopped abruptly, almost causing a pileup. The screams were coming from a young woman who had been out gardening. They cut off abruptly as she caught sight of the people following Samantha, then resumed even more shrilly as she saw the Douglas girl run full tilt, right into the bear.

Whoofluff ignored the hubbub and pretended the impact of Samantha hitting his bulk was sufficient to knock him over, even though he had barely felt the thump of her ten-year old body. Samantha immediately jumped onto his amply padded belly, swollen from hungry feeding after the long winter. She laughed, then rolled off. She ran around in front of him and put her arms around his neck as he turned onto his side and raised his head. Whoofluff was so big they would barely reach. She hugged him and faced the crowd.

"Sammie! Move out of the way so he can shoot!" Ronald shouted at his daughter.

"No! He just wants to play! Don't shoot, Mr. Wesley! He won't hurt anybody!" The big bear got to its feet, causing Samantha to lose her hold on its neck, but she stood in front of it and spread her arms wide in a protective gesture. "Please don't shoot!"

The very idea of the small girl trying to protect a huge grizzly bear with her body was so incongruous that Mr. Wesley lowered the barrel of his weapon, even though he would have loved to kill the bear. Seeing Mr. Douglas beside him, he said, "What about it Ron? Should I risk a shot?"

"No. I think she'll be all right. She... " he hesitated for a moment, not wanting to admit publicly that his daughter thought bears could talk. "She sort of has a way with animals. Sammie!"

"Dad, it's
okay
. Whoofluff was just lonely and wanted to come play with me."

"Well, tell him to go away before someone shoots him."

"Yes, sir," Samantha said. She reached way up to hug the bear's neck while he lowered it to accommodate her.

Gasps came from the watching throng as she ruffled its thick fur. By then the ones watching the scene included almost every person who lived in Wikluk as well as the Saturday shoppers from the outback. Samantha tugged at Whoofluff's good ear and began talking to him. She spoke so softly that her words were indecipherable to anyone else. Ronald began edging closer, intending to snatch Samantha away if he got a chance. Jeff Wesley began circling around in order to get a clear shot.
The hell with Douglas
, he thought.

Samantha saw them coming closer and spoke louder. "Dad, can we buy Mrs. Mobley's strawberries? He really just came to play with me, but he got distracted by their smell. Please?"

He looked toward the garden and saw an overturned straw basket. Samantha didn't seem to be in quite as much danger as he had thought, but it was still bad enough.
Anything to get that bear away from her!

"Yes, yes, Sammie! I'll buy the strawberries. Now for goodness sake, see if you can get him to go away!"

"I will, but please, Dad, make everyone promise not to shoot him. He won't hurt anyone if they leave him alone."

Ronald hesitated.

"Please, Dad?" she pleaded. "I couldn't stand it if someone hurt Whoofluff." Just the thought caused a tear to escape and trickle down her face, weaving a streaked path. No fair maid on the ramparts of a castle crying for a knight to save her from the evil Baron could have made a more appealing plea for help. Ronald turned around to face his friends and neighbors.

"Sammie says the bear will leave, but she wants everyone to promise not to harm him. Is that okay?"

A subdued muttering greeted his entreaty, but despite some dour faces, they all agreed not to hurt the bear if it would leave.

Jeff Wesley looked disgusted, but he nodded.
Damn bear, coming right into town, threatening people. I see him again I'll take care of that problem right quick, no matter what that silly little Douglas girl thinks!

"Do they promise? They have to promise," Samantha said. She rubbed her face in Whoofluff's fur to wipe away the tears then looked back at the crowd.

Red-faced, and wondering what his friends and neighbors were thinking, Ronald relayed the request.

This time he heard a few nervous chuckles, but nods of heads and spoken answers indicated everyone agreed.

Promises to a bear! Next thing you know she'll be wanting us to stop catching salmon,
Wesley thought, clutching his rifle.
Damn foolishness is what it is.

"They all promise."

Samantha's face broke into a wide happy grin. She tugged affectionately at Whoofluff's pelt and said a few words to him, again too low to be heard.

The bear gobbled the remaining strawberries then walked away, not getting in a hurry but still covering the ground at a remarkably fast pace.

Mr. and Mrs. Douglas rushed forward and claimed their daughter.

***

All the time during the drive home, Samantha was unnaturally silent, where normally she was a chatterbox. For the first time since she discovered that animals could talk to her with their few sounds that she heard as abbreviated speech, she was wondering why no one else could understand them. The problem was absorbing all her attention. When she spoke to them she usually voiced whole words and sentences but she suddenly realized that at other times she spoke only a few words and sort of
thought
the rest, but that was with animals she knew well. Or maybe she was saying the words, but not audibly. It all occurred so naturally that she'd never really considered the mechanics of it. Now she did and knew that the reason Mom and Dad didn't believe her was just that simple. They didn't hear either her thoughts or the thoughts of animals talking to her but she did! No wonder they thought she was pretending! But after today she wondered how they could possibly doubt her. No one else in the whole town had dared face friendly old Whoofluff except her and that was because she and the bear could talk to each other. Now she knew, but what she didn't know was how to convince anyone else that she could talk to animals!

Once back home, Elaine took her daughter aside for a heart to heart talk, an encounter she had been unconsciously avoiding, hoping Samantha would grow out of her imaginary conversations with animals.

"Sammie, what has gotten into you with this animal business? You have to stop it, do you hear? You know good and well that animals can't talk. It's time for you to drop this nonsense and begin growing up. You're not going to be a little girl much longer. You'll be a young lady. Ladies do not go around imagining they can talk to animals. "

"But Mom... "

"No, I don't want to hear excuses or stories about how animals talk to you. It's time to put that aside. Besides, didn't you see how frightened your father and I were?"

"You didn't have to be scared, Mom. Whoofluff just wanted to play. Honest."

"I don't care if he wanted to dance a jig with you. Either you put a stop to fraternizing with animals or I'm going to take away your library card. Is that clear?"

Fraternizing.
That meant hanging around with. Samantha couldn't bear the thought of not being able to borrow books from the general store's library to read, especially since the area still didn't have the internet. She sighed.
Grownups just don't understand
, she thought. Out loud, she said "Yes, ma'am. I won't play with Whoofluff anymore." She held her breath, hoping her mother wouldn't notice she wasn't promising not to
talk
to Whoofluff. That wasn't playing.

"All right then, that's the end of it. Now let's get the groceries put away and you can help me make us a pie for dinner."

While helping to prepare and cook of the pie Samantha's thoughts turned to the used encyclopedias her mother had ordered for her the previous year. She had already read them all and was going through them a second time but concentrating on the more interesting articles. She loved to read even more than she loved animals.

***

Jeff Wesley spent a lot of time in the forest. He didn't pay much attention to the game laws. When he needed meat for his family he took it. If an animal showed the least sign of threatening behavior, he shot it. Sometimes it didn't even have to be threatening him. He liked to kill animals. It gave him a feeling of superiority, a feeling of power.

Several days after Whoofluff appearance in town, Wesley was just completing the dressing of a young caribou that had become separated from its herd. It had wandered too close to his little house located on the road leading to Wikluk and naturally he had killed it. He was in a hurry to finish the job and get his meat inside and in the freezer. He didn't want to be caught with a caribou after the season was closed in this area.

At the same time Wesley was beginning to cut the caribou meat into sections, Whoofluff was headed in the general direction of Wikluk. He was driven by a vague yearning to see the little human cub again when he crossed the path of Jeff Wesley. He sniffed, scenting the smell of fresh meat. Bears are never adverse to a bite to eat during the summer. A tremendous amount of food was necessary to store up fat to sustain them while they hibernated during the extreme cold of northern Alaska. As he got closer to the meat smell, another odor told him that one of the humans from the herd the girl cub belonged to was present.

Whoofluff's memory was directed almost exclusively toward food and drink and where and how to find it, but his mind had made room for the human cub who could talk to him. He also retained a few other odd bits of lore about humans.

Ordinarily Whoofluff was wary of the species. One of his other morsels of knowledge was the memory of seeing how easily humans could take the life force from animals. They did it by making loud noises from the odd smelling sticks some of them carried. But the girl cub had told him no one from her herd would hurt him. And she had quieted the hubbub over him eating some of the tasty berries the last time he saw her. Maybe this male human would be willing to share some of its kill, too. Confidently, sure that he would come to no harm, he waddled through the underbrush toward the man.

Wesley smelled the bear at the same time he heard it-and it was very near. His rifle was leaning against a tree several yards away. He cursed under his breath for being so careless, but Wesley never went anywhere without his pistol too, just to be on the safe side. He drew it from its holster and scanned the nearby brush. His eyes widened as he saw the bear, only a few short steps away. It was much nearer than he had thought. Then he noticed the scarred notched ear.
It's the same damned bear that crazy little Douglas brat kept me from killing in town!

Whoofluff rumbled a greeting to the human and came closer. Wesley would have been fine if he had ignored the bear and simply left the caribou for him, but giving his kill to a bear was simply unthinkable. Besides, he purposely interpreted Whoofluff's deep-throated greeting as a threat so he would have an excuse to shoot, despite that silly promise to the stupid Douglas girl.

Wesley was a knowledgeable woodsman and ordinarily wouldn't have dreamed of trying to kill a grizzly with a pistol, but this one was so close he couldn't miss, and the heavy .45 with the high powered loads made him overconfident. Remembering how he had been thwarted before, he raised his gun, aiming at a spot between its eyes.

Just as he fired, the bear dipped his head to sniff at some of the caribou offal he had discarded. The bullet plowed a furrow across the pelt and underlying fat of Whoofluff's shoulder. Startled and hurt, Whoofluff roared into action and reared up, faster than Wesley imagined possible. He slapped the gun away with one huge paw just as Wesley fired a second shot, causing him to miss completely. The blow flung the weapon into the brush.

Wesley screamed and ran for his rifle, but he got no farther than a couple of steps before Whoofluff was on him.

***

The Douglas family lived a couple of miles from Wikluk. Ronald Douglas worked as an environmental specialist for the state of Alaska, exploring the possibility of both mining and recreation in the northern reaches of the state, but he had applied for several jobs in the lower forty eight. Samantha was nearing the age when she needed better schooling and an environment with more opportunities to stretch her mind. She was a very bright girl and loved to read. It was nearing noon and Ronald and his daughter were outside, waiting on the mail jeep. He was hoping for an offer on one of the new jobs. She was waiting on a book her mother had ordered for her. When the jeep arrived, the driver honked.

"Must be that book your mother ordered," he said, then had second thoughts when the honking became urgent and the jeep turned into their driveway. He and Samantha met it at the front gate.

"Ron, you better get Sammie inside, then come on into town. Bring your rifle," the mail carrier said with some urgency.