Tracks
Nina Schuyler
Tracks
A family holiday up in Canada at Shuswap Lake, that’s how Nate had pitched it, the girls would love it, a beautiful place he went to as a boy to swim and fish and do nothing. But as they drove up here, Gretta saw lots of bear warning signs. Watch out, and now, in the morning, the wet dirt in front of the cabin was covered in bear tracks, more than a dozen, as if the animal spent the night pacing and plotting and planning. Tracks the size of a big man’s hand.
Charlotte, who was seven, stood next to Nate, bug-eyed, but Little Bella, bold and unflinching and innocent, bent down and poked her pudgy finger into a print, making a divot in the dirt.
“Don’t,” said Nate. “They’re going to get your smell and come find you and eat you all up.”
He said that last part in a playful voice, but he could never fully erase that thumped-up authority. One day here, his face was stubbled, and his curly black hair was frizzy because of the hard water. Gretta thought that resounding authority was built into the male voice, and Nate got an extra dose. Bella, with her two pigtails jetting out and her big baby belly, clung to Gretta’s shorts. Tall, skinny Charlotte was working hard to keep her big girl face. Their vacation stood in the long shadow of bears, hungry bears, big bears, bears that mauled. Look, a pile of bear scat, which resembled people poop, only black.
Tears streamed down two-year-old Bella’s chubby baby cheeks as if she was imagining a bear hunting her down and gobbling her up.
“Oh, come on, now,” said Nate. “Be a big girl.”
Gretta whispered in her ear not to worry, she’d watch for the bears.
“Why don’t you go down to the lake and look for minnows,” she said. Because they were supposed to be on vacation and all this talk of bears, well, it was frightening Gretta, too. She was always the one who had to provide the counterbalance to Nate’s gruffness. She was the one who smoothed things over and calmed everyone down with light and levity. Lately, she’d grown tired of it.
Bella’s eyes brightened and she made a waddling beeline for the lake. Yesterday, she had happily scooped up fish in a cup and poured them out again, mesmerized by the waterfall dotted with tiny sparkling silver. Gretta had gone to the lake with Bella and tried to read her book—though most of the time she watched Bella to make sure she didn’t fall in or get mauled by a bear. Nate sat on the deck and taught Charlotte how to whittle, first a stick, then a block of balsa wood. Not long after that, Gretta found herself pounding nails into the wobbly picnic table—Nate’s latest project. He had Bella and Charlotte use sandpaper to smooth out the tabletop. By late afternoon, it was warm enough to swim, and Nate lifted squealing Charlotte and tossed her in the water, her head popping up like a seal in the dark lake, shouting, “Do it again, Daddy!” Gretta stayed near Bella, who wore floaties and kicked her chubby legs, chasing luminescent blue dragonflies.
Gretta went to the front porch and stretched out on a lawn chair. Perfect weather, the sun burning off the mist and light falling all over the tree branches. She needed some time for herself. When she packed for this vacation, in a fit of silly delusion, she brought four books. If she read a page today, she’d be lucky. She moved her bare legs, so they were in the sun, hoping to tan them. George had called them delicious. They’d all gone out after work to Hal’s Bar, all the reporters, and she was included, though she was only a part-timer. Her work was nearly meaningless, writing little stories about a store closing, a wedding, or an event at the town hall, but she loved it, and who knew she might have a future there. All that excitement in the newsroom, the clatter of the keyboards, phones ringing, interviews, sharp exchanges. George had had a little too much to drink and got friendly in that talkative way. She’d laughed and that encouraged him to say more. She didn’t mind. How easily he laughed, how she laughed so easily.
There went Nate, marching down to the lake with an armful of chopped wood, Charlotte following behind him like an obedient puppy. Oh, how much she wanted his attention and love, it was heartbreaking. He was a man who had a purpose. He could not, for the life of him, be idle. She’d once loved that about him; his bottomless energy, his drive; he planned outings and vacations, and he’d always be a good provider. But he’d promised on this vacation, everyone would relax. But then again, she reminded herself, he also said he wanted to teach everyone practical things. He wanted his daughters to be capable and confident, not flimsy sidekicks that the world battered around. You can be anything, he’d tell them, but it was baffling to Gretta because he had a different attitude toward her. Why did she have to get a job? Running around town as a reporter, my god. He made more than enough money, and what she earned went straight to the babysitter. How did that make any sense? “Let me answer that,” he said. “No.”
“Come on down here,” Nate shouted to Gretta. He’d taken the wood to the lake and piled it on the rocks. Today’s lesson was about building a fire. Gretta sighed, glanced at the woods, where she was sure a bear or whatever wild animals were out there would emerge. It seemed like, given all the warnings, someone should stand watch. In truth—how terrible to acknowledge—she’d like to finish this chapter, a story about two runaways on a train, but she found herself her book down and going to the lake, her legs warm from the sun.
They set to work collecting small sticks, Bella, too, and she put them in her cup. “They’re called kindling,” said Nate, then he had Charlotte repeat it, which irritated Gretta. Talking down to the girls and to her, as if they and she knew nothing, as if she and the girls were empty vessels, and his purpose, his job was to fill them up. The big wood goes on top of the kindling, he said. Gretta bit the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t say when all his little quirks and ways became so exasperating to her. At the bar, when George had reached over and moved a strand of hair from her cheek, a warm little thrill ran through her. He playfully, drunkenly said she should change her name to something more glamorous. Genevieve, maybe. He rattled on, saying they should start a magazine, something wild, bizarre, crazy.
Light the match to the kindling, Nate told them. The fire refused to obey. Only one stick glowed, smoldered, and sputtered out. He had to light another match, another, all the while muttering profanity, but finally, one stick caught, then a big log sparked and flamed, and the girls shrieked with delight.
Dusk came drifting in and the last light turned pink and peach. The girls stood beside her, watching the astonishing light and the ducks. “It’s so beautiful,” said Gretta. When the wind picked up, rippling the surface of the lake, they went inside. Gretta told the girls that tomorrow they’d bake a chocolate cake.
“And then we’ll eat it all up,” said Charlotte, sneakily glancing at Nate. Gretta smiled at her, her smart Charlotte with her jab at Nate, turning his words back on him. He didn’t hear her, or pretended not to hear.
In bed that night, Gretta pictured a bear stalking the cabin, trying to find a way in. If it could smell as well as Nate said it did, it would smell the food in the kitchen. The house was sleeping, Nate was snoring, but Gretta couldn’t slip into a dream. She got up and checked the doors and windows. When she peeked outside, she thought she saw the glow of two orange eyes the size of marbles right at the edge of the woods. They seemed to be looking right at her. And then they vanished as if she wasn’t supposed to see them, as if it was a rip in the seam of the possible that wasn’t meant for her.
In the morning, Nate announced today was the big day, fishing day. They’d learn to fly fish. The girls said in a sing-song voice they wanted to fish for flies, and Gretta laughed, so the girls kept singing it. Happiness floated through the air, and the sun was out again. Nate left for the town to buy bait and came back with a container full of red wiggling worms that, to Gretta, looked like a seething ball of anger. Bella asked if she could pretty please have one, and before Nate could answer, Gretta said of course. Bella gently picked one up and, holding it in her palm, took it outside, talking to it the whole time.
They went down to the lake, a parade, Nate leading the way with the fishing poles and Charlotte carrying the bait as if it was an offering. They stood in a row in the lake on either side of Nate, who showed them how to take the pole behind their heads and then forward again, quickly, rapidly, like throwing a ball. Bella tried and accidentally threw the pole in the water. When she did it again, Gretta told her it was fine, don’t worry, but Bella didn’t want to do it anymore. She went over to the other side of the dock with her cup.
They practiced without fishing line or bait, and soon, the girls were hungry. Gretta went up to make sandwiches and lemonade. She scanned her phone, looking at the headlines of the Times Beacon, and saw George had written about the Board of Supervisors and the six-hour budget negotiations, which meant he was up all night. When she checked her texts, there was one from George: when r u coming back???? She smiled and remembered how, after he’d moved the strand of hair from her face, he'd stood, and when he didn’t come back right away, she followed his path and found him outside in the back. He kissed her hard. He was her height and wore black glasses and had a master’s degree in literature. In the newsroom, she heard him speak to his mother in Czech. She read his text again, feeling her face turn hot, then quickly deleted it.
Suddenly shouting, Charlotte was shouting for her, “Mommy!” and Gretta raced outside, picturing a bear lunging for her daughter.
“We saw a bear!” she said, pointing to the shore. A black bear had ambled down to the water to get a drink. “I saw it! It was big!”
Nate looked like he’d won an argument. Bella whined that it wasn’t fair because she didn’t see it and wanted to.
“It might come back, you wait,” said Nate.
As Nate added fishing lines and hooks to the pole, Gretta sat on the warm rocks, knees drawn up to her chin, and listened to the lapping water. They’d leave soon, she thought, and as she picked up her book, wondering if George might text her again, something sharp stung her cheek and it all seemed to happen at once, the sting yanked her up from the ground, hauled her toward the water, dragged her into the water, and the pain in her cheek, and the girls were screaming and she was screaming, the lake tossing the high alarm into the blue air. Something dripping down her face, the sting took her straight to Nate, who rushed toward her and yanked out the hook.
The girls solemnly took her hand, and they walked back to the cabin, which was so dark and dank, like entering a cave. Gretta could barely see. They led her to the couch and sat beside her, so close as if to protect her. Charlotte put her hand on Gretta’s leg, telling her she’d be alright.
The hook went in a quarter inch below her right eye. Nate insisted they go to the hospital for stitches. On the way back, he said in that low voice. “I told everyone, never stand behind someone who is fly fishing. Never never never.”
That was a long time ago, and so was the marriage, which ended for many reasons. Gretta lives in an apartment in San Francisco and works for The Guardian, covering art, film, and books. Her daughters are young women, confident and capable, who hold only wispy vestiges of that trip: bear tracks, bear sightings, the smell of bear scat. Though they know it’s not true, it couldn’t be, but when they see the scar on their mother’s cheek, their first thought is that a bear did it. When they were girls, that’s what they told their friends.
“I was so worried a bear would come into the cabin,” says Charlotte.
“Me, too,” says Bella.
When the light hits Gretta’s cheek at a certain slant, the scar shines brightly and looks like a tear, as if she’s crying. Sometimes, someone asks if she’s OK, and she tells them, “I tangled with a bear.” She’s fine, she assures them, absolutely fine.
Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and was published in July 2024. Her novel, Afterword, won the 2024 PenCraft Book of the Year in Fiction, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary, and the PenCraft Spring Seasonal Book Award for Literary and Science Fiction. Her short stories have been published by Zyzzyva, Chicago Quarterly Review, Nashville Review, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies and Book Passage.