Fear No Evil

Ah … dimly do I recall

A tiny shape I built longst back

—It perished surely? …

Davey turned and looked at her, then he ended:

And the man cries out:

Lord, it existeth still!

She was staring at him. She remembered the poem, from Professor Joad’s book, God and Evil

‘So God’s forgotten about us, has He? And you’re going to recreate the Garden of Eden? You’re His instrument?’

He looked away, embarrassed.

‘I’m not God’s instrument, Dr. Johnson. I’m just doing what is right. Setting free the animals. Where they’ll be happy at last.’

Then he got up quietly and started walking down the glen, with Mama padding behind him in the dappled sunshine.

Sultan took the opportunity to come scrambling down out of his tree.

Little Smoky was only little in comparison to the great grizzly bears he performed with in the circus, and when he wore his dungarees and scout hat and danced behind them with his fire extinguisher, and held paws, he did look little and awfully cute. When he squirted his fire extinguisher on cue, messed up Winnie’s pinafore and knocked off Pooh’s hat, and they whacked him, he did look just like their baby grizzly bear. But he was really a fully grown black bear, and he weighed nearly five hundred pounds; he stood five feet tall on his hindlegs; he could swipe eight feet high with his clawed paws, and he could run faster than the best man can sprint.

Smoky did not remember the forests of his cubhood, nor his mother, with her big, furry, grunting, dangerous protection; all he remembered about those days was the sudden deafening bang, the terror of being suddenly alone and running for his life, then the terror of being caught. They had put him in a cage and fed him milk from a bottle. The cage had become smaller and smaller until he could hardly turn around in it; then one day they’d sold him to the circus. He had not seen another black bear since the day of the terrifying bang.

Now, indeed, Smoky thought he was a grizzly bear, just as the public did. But he thought he was a puny grizzly, and he had an inferiority complex. But he did his job well enough in the circus because bears like to show off once they understand how. The trouble for Smoky had been in understanding how. It had taken a long time to understand what the man wanted him to do, and he’d suffered lots of electric prods and was terrified of the cracking whip. When he’d finally understood what he had to do to earn the reward, the fearsome man started teaching him something new and incomprehensible. It was very confusing and frightening, and he did not know, each time he was taken out of his cage, what was going to be expected of him. Only when he saw the crowds around the ring did he know that it was an old trick he had to do, one he understood. He dreaded the man with the whip, and he was nervous of Winnie and Pooh because of the authority their great size bestowed. The only friend he had was his keeper, and he was devoted to him. His keeper fed and groomed him; he sat in his cage with him and played with him. Smoky would have done anything for him, as long as he understood how.

Elizabeth, watching Smoky, was frightened of him—and terrified of Winnie and Pooh with their huge, expressionless, powerful presences. But her harried heart went out to them all.

From her readings she knew of the Americans’ mentality about the wilderness and their natural heritage, and that no other animal so filled the American mind with dread as did the legendary grizzly bear, even though, once tamed, grizzlies become absolutely devoted to their keepers. Almost certainly the bears would come down out of the forests wherever Davey abandoned them, in search of familiar human protection and food; they would set the fear of God into Americans and have the whole town out to blast them off the face of the earth.

Watching them, her fears were confirmed. They were rooting around, but they were staying within sight of Davey. Every few minutes one of them would look back at him to make sure he was still there.

But, as the afternoon went on, little by little they ventured farther; and finally they were out of sight, grubbing and grunting through the undergrowth, snuffling under fallen logs, nudging over stones. There were lots of things that bears like to eat—roots, berries, fungi, sprouts and grasses—and there were many exciting smells.

For the first time in his life, Smoky found that he was not trundling after Winnie and Pooh. They were not shoving him aside and nudging him away from the food; there was enough to share, with so much space to lumber and huff and bustle through. Slowly, Smoky began to feel like a real bear.

It was a wonderful feeling, of being strong, of bulldozing importantly, shoving aside bushes, flattening shrubs, rolling over logs and burrowing into the rich earth, with no Winnie or Pooh to boss him around. Then Smoky discovered something else: that black bears can climb trees, and grizzlies cannot. And something else: that bears like honey, that he was just naturally good at getting it, and that grizzlies are not.

Suddenly, as he was rooting around, his snout full of earth, he smelled something delicious. He eagerly followed his nose, and saw Winnie and Pooh standing on their hindlegs, swiping up into a tree with their forepaws. Bees buzzed angrily about their heads; in a fork in the tree was a hive.

But the hive was well out of the big bears’ reach. Pooh was trying to climb the tree. He lunged at it, chest first, and flung his forelegs around it. He jumped, and for an agonizing instant he clung there, hairy and bulbous, his hind claws frantically trying to find purchase. Then he slid down with a thump. Winnie tried, taking a lumbering run at the tree trunk, hind paws massively scrabbling. Then, crash, down she came too. Smoky looked at all this hirsute activity, and he just knew what to do.

He knew nothing about trees and nothing about honey; but he knew that he could climb a tree to get it. Smoky lumbered around Winnie and Pooh, giving them a wide berth, looking up into the tree, sizing it up; then he bounded.

His claws sank into the bark, and up he went, effortlessly. He was halfway up before Winnie and Pooh realized it, and was into the beehive snout-first, long tongue licking, claws clinging tight. The bees went berserk, swarming about his furry head in a cloud. The smell of honey flooded down to Pooh and Winnie, and they were beside themselves. Smoky was getting stuck into what they couldn’t reach, and Pooh hurled himself at the tree trunk with anguish and came crashing down again, grunting and thumping. Pooh tried to paw Smoky down out of the tree by jumping and swiping. Winnie joined in, and they bumped into each other in their agitation, but their paws whistled harmlessly beneath Smoky’s rump. The bees were zapping furiously into his nose, his ears and his deep shaggy fur, but it would have taken strong machinery to pry Smoky out of that tree.

He clung tight, his heart thumping joyfully, his eyes screwed up and his snout stretched out, his pink tongue slurping in and out of the beehive. There was honey all over his chops and face and drooling down his neck, and it was absolutely delicious. His nose was a big black sticky swollen mass of stings, he had swallowed scores of bees, but Smoky did not care. Now honey was running down the tree in thick long drools, and Winnie and Pooh were pawing at the trunk, their long pink tongues gratefully licking the bark.

None of them had ever been happier.

sixteen (#ulink_441072a1-2fc0-5190-bf74-4fd5cb7973cb)

Elizabeth jerked, eyes wide, hand to her throat.

‘Oh! Hello …’

‘Hi.’ Big Charlie squatted self-consciously five paces away. ‘Sorry.’

‘How do you move so quietly?’

‘Sorry. Where’s Davey?’

She pointed down the glen, her heart still palpitating. ‘He went down there about an hour ago. I think I offended him.’

Big Charlie shook his head slightly. She did not know whether it was in denial, in regret, or even perhaps in sympathy. But right now, the less said the better. She had shot her mouth off with that impetuous remark about God’s instrument—she’d had him talking, and she had blown it. She found herself nursing the hope that if she shut up and stuck with them long enough they would simply not have the heart to reject her. Then she could do some good, when she had won their confidence. O God, she wished it would get dark quickly.

‘Did you find anything up there?

Big Charlie shook his head. ‘No, Dr. Johnson.’

‘Please call me Elizabeth.’ Big Charlie looked embarrassed. She added, ‘We’re all in this together.’

Charlie looked uneasy. He picked up a twig and fiddled with it; then said, ‘We’re going soon, Dr. Johnson. You won’t be able to keep up with us.’

She took a big breath and closed her eyes.

‘Let me worry about that. I’m a big strong girl, haven’t you noticed?’ She tried to make a brittle joke: ‘Maybe too big, you think, hmm?’

Big Charlie smiled, and blushed. ‘I didn’t mean you’re too big.’

She had him talking.

‘Yes, you did—too fat.’

‘You’re not too fat, Dr. Johnson.’

‘Just fat, huh?’

Big Charlie squirmed in smiling embarrassment. ‘You’re just right for me.’ Then he looked horrified, as if he wanted to slap his hand over his mouth. ‘I mean—for my liking.’ He floundered. ‘I mean … I think you’re great like you are,’ he ended, covered in confusion.

She smiled and felt tears burn for a moment.

‘Thank you, Charlie.’

Big Charlie looked desperately down the glen for Davey. But there was no rescue in sight; he pulled himself together and crumbled the twig.