Smart House

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Smart House Kathryn Milam (bio) Maxine knows there'll be trouble the minute she sees the black bear roaming her front yard, a shadow in the drab morning light. It's small, a youngster, with a chest blaze, and it munches from an ash bush still laden with late fall berries. Thirty-six years on this earth, in these mountains, and she can count on one hand [End Page 77] the number of occasions bears have crossed her path. And every time, something bad has happened. She cinches her robe tighter. That cold front promised by the weather forecast slipped in overnight from Tennessee. Snow stipples the hemlocks and the curled leaves of the rhododendrons. Flurries frisk in the wind, sprinkle the bear like confetti. Fall and winter are Maxine's least favorite seasons. The sadness of short days diminishes her. She stokes the wood stove in the living room and starts the coffee pot. ________ When she was six-years-old, living here in the cabin her grandpa built, tucked away in a hollow twenty minutes outside of Boone, a female bear with two cubs circled the house before heading to Phipps's Creek, down the far property line in the back. She watched from the screened porch as they splashed in the pools below the rocky falls and thought they were the cutest things. That afternoon at school, she fell off the jungle gym during recess and broke her right arm in two places. The pink cast, speckled with glitter, stretched from her wrist to her shoulder. "Pink for a girl," the doctor said, though Maxine had asked for purple. When she was twelve, another bear, his face aged to a sterling sheen, came right up on the deck while Mama cooked supper, pressed his nose to the kitchen's sliding glass door. He stared with moist, brown eyes, swung his shaggy head back and forth, then, after a while, lumbered on up the mountain. Maxine thought he seemed hungry and lonely, but Mama told her it was dangerous to feed wild animals. "He can take care of himself," Mama said. The next day, her daddy packed his old green duffle bag and left home for good, taking with him [End Page 78] the two-toned F-100 Ford pick-up Maxine loved as well as her young heart. Then, when she was fifteen-and-a-half, almost sixteen, and supposed to be working at McDonald's, saving for the college education Mama was determined she'd have, she went out riding with Henry Barclay instead. Henry was twenty-two, and he knew things she didn't. They came up on a huge male right in the middle of Shulls Mill Road, and they would've hit him if Henry hadn't veered onto the shoulder toward a steep incline that sloped toward the Hound Ears Golf Course. Maxine figured they were goners for sure, shouted "Jesus," felt a jolt of prayer coming on that God would forgive her sins and that she'd see her grandma in heaven. But Henry was a good driver. He swerved back in his lane at the last second and cruised on down the road like they were out for a Sunday drive. Maxine let her prayers slide away. A couple of days later, she told Henry she was six weeks late and that a baby was surely on the way. She imagined they'd marry, set up an apartment in town. She could add shifts at work until Henry could get a job of his own. Mama wouldn't like it, sure. Still, Maxine daydreamed about blue-flowered dishes and a yellow couch, a nursery papered with Disney characters. But she never saw Henry again. He up and joined the Army that next week and was killed on his second tour in Afghanistan when little Ethan was not quite two years old. Yes, bear sightings mean tribulation, no question. ________ Maxine keeps her eye on the bear, glances out one window then another. She pulls on khaki pants and the white shirt with Maxine embroidered in red across the pocket. The bear saunters toward the house, stops near her blue work...