The café sits on the corner of the town square, its back to the woods and its face to the other shops around the town. The windows are stained glass, a hodgepodge of color and shadow, not really depicting anything, just rioting shades of light spilling their reflections onto the sidewalk. There’s no real sign, no name, just a square wooden shingle, anachronistic, hung above the door, reading CAFÉ in letters that are just a little lopsided, maybe. My Grampa carved that sign with his own hands, back before the War, before they started to shake.
It’s during the ice storm in February that the bear first comes by.
“I hate to be a bother, but it’s mighty cold out,” he rumbles apologetically, hugging his ice-crusted coat tight around his shoulders as he ducks through the doorway.
“It is, that,” I admit, smiling a little crookedly and pouring a hot mug of apple cider. I reckon that’s the sort of thing a bear could drink—it’s something warm, at any rate. I set it on the counter as the bear lumbers up and takes a seat on the stool across from me, gingerly testing it against his weight before he settles properly.
Rosie nudges me, elbow bordering on painful against my ribs. “He’s a bear,” she grits out through clenched teeth.
I lift a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s cold out there.” My Gramma, who raised me, is a little old lady who believes in real Southern hospitality, in making everybody welcome and looking after them all the same. When she opened this place, it was the only joint on the street that didn’t have a sign in the window that said whites only, and she never looked twice at anybody, not for their color or their war wounds or their piercings or tattoos. She doesn’t like my tattoos much, but she loves me, with or without them, and I’m not gonna shame her by turning anybody away in this weather.
“A freaking bear,” Rosie repeats, a little louder, a little shrill, and I can feel my mouth go tight around a cringe. The bear flinches.
“That’s no call to be impolite,” I say, trying not to be rude in my own turn. Smiling, I ignore the now actively painful elbow in my side and turn to the bear, putting a hand over his shaggy paw. “This one’s on the house, sir.” His fur is clouded with little ice crystals that crunch and melt a little under my palm.
He makes a face that might be a smile, but is mostly a baring of teeth and a huff of breath. “Mighty kind of you,” he says, nodding his head in acknowledgement. He has manners—real manners, ingrained, like my Grampa—you can see it in everything, in the way he holds himself straight and sits like somebody’s paying attention. To be fair, people are; the smattering of folks that came out in weather or were too dumb to leave before the ice really started coming down are all pretending not to stare and doing a thoroughly poor job of it. The bear is ignoring it with more dignity than I know I’d manage. Gramma would say he’s a real Southern gentleman.
He drains the cider and asks for another, polite as you please, and I tell Rosie to go look after the folks at the tables, that I’ve got this one. She makes a noise that might be annoyance that I’m serving the bear or might be relief that I’m not making her stick around and do it with me. Knowing her, it’s a little bit of both. I don’t know how she’s got so little of Gramma’s lessons stuck to her bones, but she’s always been a little prickly, a little wild. She’ll talk your ear off, she’ll drag you on all kinds of craziness, but god forbid the craziness comes from somewhere other than her. She just wants to go her own way, Grampa always says, if only she could be bothered to find it. It’s hard to rebel, though, in a family like ours, where they’ll love you no matter what kind of crap you pull. Rosie’s always given it a college try, though, that’s for sure. I’ve always been too shy for that kind of thing—or not even shy, I guess, but maybe just a little strange. It’s quieter in me, I think, than it is inside other folks.
I serve up the cider, stirring in a spoonful of honey for good measure. That earns me another smile and a grateful nod, and I get a little warm feeling in the middle of my chest the way I always do when I do a little something to make somebody smile.
“Much obliged for the hospitality, ma’am,” the bear says, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath of the steam coming up from the cider.
“Blanche,” I say, “and it’s no trouble, really.” I give the counter a quick wipe down and start rearranging the muffins on their stand, filling in the gaps from where people have picked from the middle.
“Blanche,” the bear repeats, the ch sound sticking to his teeth a little, like butterscotch. I kind of like the way it sounds, coming from him. “Well, Miss Blanche, trouble or not, you’ve been very kind. I’ll get out of your way now, let your customers get back to their meals in peace.” He hasn’t glanced round the café even once, but his words make all the nosy folks in the room jerk their rubbernecks around and pretend to pay attention to their own business again. I laugh a little without meaning to, reaching up to cover it before he thinks I’m laughing at him.
His eyes are crinkled up too, though, warm even through the glossy black, like he thinks their busybody shenanigans are silly instead of troubling. I appreciate folk who can laugh at their own situations—like Gramma says, it don’t matter how serious you take life, it’s over eventually anyways. “They can mind their own business,” I tell him, a little belatedly. My cheeks go a little warm.
He huffs out an amused noise, a little chuffing of warm air, and says, “I don’t know about you, Miss Blanche, but I find that most folk think everything’s their business.” He slides off the stool, standing up on his hind paws, and slides a twenty across the counter to me. God knows where he pulled it out from, he’s not wearing a stitch that isn’t fur or melting snow, but I’m not about to shame him by turning it away. “For your kindness,” he says, ducking his head like a man tipping his hat, and he starts for the door.
“I don’t let folks pay me for that,” I say, half teasing, half serious. “If you do that, you start losing track of when you mean it.”
“Fair enough. Call it an advance on my tab, then,” the bear says, and just like that, he’s out the door and into the ice, dropping to all fours as he goes. The door catches the wind and bangs shut behind him, hitting the bell and making it jingle like an omen.
“What on earth is even going on in that head of yours?” Rosie asks, flicking me with her hand towel as she comes by for a coffee refill. “A bear!”
I duck my head so she doesn’t see me smile. “He’s quite a gentleman,” I tell her, as prim as I can, sounding as much like Gramma as I can manage.
“He’s quite a mess, is what he is,” Rosie says, rolling her eyes at the puddles of melted ice and snow under the counter. “I don’t know how you got like this.”
“Like what?” I ask, not really paying attention to her as I go round to the front of the counter and start in on the puddles with the mop. There’s always something soothing in cleaning, a kind of power over the environment that makes me feel safe. Grounded, kind of, like I can feel my roots again.
“I don’t even know,” she says, scrubbing a palm over her face. “You’re just weird. You just—he was a bear, Blanche! What were you even thinking, letting him sit in here?”
“Hmm,” I say, completely disregarding the question in favor of savoring the faint, lingering smell of dark earth and wild things, of trees and honey and rain in the evening.
“I love you, you know,” Rosie says, sighing a little, “but you’re just impossible.”
His name is Red Paw. He shows me why—one shaggy brown paw is stained reddish, like old blood, and the claws are cut short, ragged little blackish stubs.
“What happened?” I ask, serving up his usual cider with honey. I slide an apple cinnamon fritter on the saucer without being asked. I know everybody’s order, every time. Gramma calls it a gift. Rosie calls it being a weirdo, but then, Rosie has a tattoo of her own name and a bunch of roses (real original) in an impolite place to talk about, so I try not to listen when she gets too judgmental. She’s got her own troubles to work through, I think. Red Paw nods his thanks and takes a nibble, more delicate than you’d expect.
“I had a pack of difficulties with a little man who liked to take things that weren’t his,” Red Paw says slowly, like it was maybe a little more violent than that and he’s trying to spare my sensibilities. Part of me doesn’t like it when folk try to do that, to clean things up just because I’m a lady, but on him, I can kind of understand why he’s worried about scaring me. After all, his teeth are pretty big, and his other claws sure are sharp. He’s real careful with them, though—he hasn’t torn or broken anything yet, not even a napkin. He’s gentler than most men I’ve met, really.
“What’d he take?” I ask, prying despite myself. I know it’s bad manners, but I can’t help it. He’s got this air about him, like he’s been places far away, like he’s seen things that maybe other folks can’t see at all. He’s got this look like Grampa gets when he talks about the War, like whatever he’s thinking about hurts him in ways that don’t show up when you go looking for scars.
Red Paw makes a face that might be a grimace, rubbing a paw across his muzzle contemplatively. “I don’t rightly remember, actually,” he admits. “It was a long, long time ago, somewhere else. I know he took my grandmama’s wedding ring off me, but there was—” he stops, rubbing the place between his eyes like his head hurts. “I think there was something else, something important, that I can’t quite wrap my head around, but it’s gone now, either way.”
My heart hurts for him a little. Losing something is bad enough, but losing something and not even having the memory of it to hold onto? That feels like a whole other kind of stealing, a whole other kind of losing.
I put a hand on his red paw, running a thumb over the rough edge of a sawed-off claw. It pulls at the skin of my finger a little, like rough sandpaper or the edge of a log. “Does it hurt?” I ask, turning the paw over and looking at the thin white scar that runs down the pad on it.
“Not exactly,” Red Paw says, paw curling up around my hand. “More like an old bruise or a sore tooth. It’s a bother, up in my head, but it doesn’t hurt in the flesh.”
“Like when I know I’ve got something to do, but can’t remember what it is, or when I’m avoiding chores and know it’ll be more work tomorrow,” I say, fighting not to smile and losing. “But more, probably.”
He huffs out one of his little bear laughs. “Something like that. I was different, before, I think, but it’s been so long that I don’t recall what sort of different I even could’ve been.”
Grampa says the same thing about the War, that hurting people, even for good reasons, that it changes you. It shows, now, in the way his hands shake all the time, even when he’s calm, but the shakes are just the parts of it I can see—Gramma used to say there was an earthquake in him, one he was holding tightly onto, and that having to hold that tight to something that big changes a man. I think maybe it changes a bear, too.
“You must have other people to be attending to, Miss Blanche,” Red Paw says, ducking his head and pulling his paw back all of a sudden, like he’s just remembered we’re not the only folks here. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten about the other customers myself. There’s something about him that just pulls you in.
“Rosie’s mostly got it,” I say, but I’m already moving around the counter to go do a quick check of the tables. “Everybody knows she’s the personable one, anyways.” She is, too, to everyone but the family. I think she just talks to people because she thinks one of them will give her a way out of here, out of the mountains and out of Georgia. She thinks she’s some kind of cosmopolitan. I think there’s something chasing her in her own chest, and she just wants to run from it instead of turning to look at it face-on. Everybody’s got some kind of wolf in them, I think, looking to keep them scared of the things that are good for them, that are all wrapped up in destiny. Rosie’s is just maybe bigger than others, or she’s just more inclined to run. Either way, it’s her wolf, not mine.
“You seem plenty personable to me,” Red Paw says, raising his mug in a sort of salute to me.
I can feel my cheeks go hot. “Not hardly. I don’t know why Gramma put me in charge—I can hardly talk to folks if I don’t know them.”
Red Paw cocks his head, looks at me like I’m some kind of strangeness he’s never seen before. “You talk to me just fine, and everyone else is scared to even look me in the eye.”
“Just cause TV is easier to watch than reading a book doesn’t mean it’s a better way to spend your time,” I tell him, another set of words straight from Gramma. She’s coming out of my mouth more and more these days—I can’t say I mind, but it’s still a little odd to hear her words in my voice.
He’s bear-smiling again, eyes crinkled up, and I have to turn away so he doesn’t see me go red again. “You’re a complicated lady, Miss Blanche.”
“I’m not,” I say, pushing my hair out of my face and behind my ear. It’s too dark, makes my face look waxy and paler than it is. I’d like hair the color of his, a warm brown, but there’s no dyeing it unless I want to pay to keep it up every other week, and I don’t have the money and I can’t stand the smell. “I’m all kinds of uncomplicated, really.” It’s true—there’s not much to me, as Rosie reminds me all the time. I don’t do anything, don’t go anywhere—I live in the kitchen and between pages of books, and there’s not much complicated about that. People are complicated—that’s why I mostly don’t talk to them. I get this kind of fluttery panic in my chest around them, really; I can handle the little stuff, the what can I get you today? and the how’re you doing, how’s your wife? But when it comes to the real stuff, the social aspect, as Rosie puts it, well, I’m not much use.
Red Paw is different, but he doesn’t feel complicated. Strange, and maybe a little dented up inside, but not complicated. He’s too regal for normal-people-complicated things, for the kind of petty and nitpicky most folks are. It’s a royal sort of thing, the kind of majesty that all the wild things have, the kind of grace you can’t really touch, can’t really imitate. It makes me feel safe, somehow, like I’m alone, but he’s there, still, and that’s—well, it’s just plain nice, is what it is, and I like it.
“You’ve got to be a little complicated, to talk to me like you do,” he says, and there’s a little bit of Rosie in the way he says it, that same self-consciousness she gets when boys tell her she’s pretty and she doesn’t quite believe it.
I shake my head, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing. There’s still some flakes of snow caught in his fur—it’s flurrying a little outside, but nothing heavy. March is nearly here, and the snow is on its way to turning into rainstorms. “That’s what I mean,” I say, as gently as I can, like when Grampa has one of his fits and Gramma sits him down and reminds him who he is, where he sleeps now. “Folks make life too complicated. Be kind to the people who’re kind to you, and be kind to the rest, too, when you can manage it. Everybody’s got some kind of troubles, even if they don’t show. It’s that simple.”
I go, then, before he says anything else—sometimes I can’t bear when people talk to me, especially if I’ve said too much. I make the rounds of the tables, refilling coffees and clearing places where people have already left, and by the time I make my way back around to the counter, Red Paw has cleared out, leaving a neatly folded twenty under the edge of his mug.
I catch the corner of the bill with two fingers, edging it out from under the cup without tearing it, my other hand full, and slide it into the pocket of my apron with my other tips. There’s not a lot else in there, but winter is always slow.
I don’t mind the slow so much, with him for company.
Lou Woodcross is a sour little man who leaves bad tips and stares at me and Rosie’s chests when we take his order. He’s the sort of man who tells you to smile even if you’re already smiling, like he has some kind of right to your feelings or like maybe you’re not smart enough to be allowed to be anything but thrilled by his scraggly, leering face. He’s a turkey hunter with a nasty beard and a nastier attitude, and even Gramma only puts up with him when she’s feeling especially kindly.
I do my best to be nice to him, even though he’s all kinds of ungrateful—he’s got a bad shoulder and a bad leg from some kind of accident, and I think maybe it’s the pain that makes him mean. Either way, everyone deserves a decent cup of coffee and something sweet now and then, even if they’re terrible.
He’s right in the middle of telling me that his coffee’s too cold and the muffins are dry when the door opens, the little bell jangling, and Red Paw ambles in, covered in snow and dry leaves, and takes a seat at the counter.
Woodcross goes stiff, eye twitching a little, and he says, “You let that kind of thing in here, girl?” like he has some kind of problem with bears in general and maybe Red Paw in particular. He’s a crotchety old racist in any case, and even I can’t quite be patient all the time.
“Drink it or don’t, Woodcross,” I tell him, refilling his coffee and not much caring if I slosh a little on the table in the process. He jerks his hand back from the hot coffee as it hits the wood and splashes, and I see he’s got a ring on his finger that I’ve never noticed before. It’s a lady’s ring, thin silver with a red stone, and it catches the light in a way that makes me stare.
He harrumphs and ducks low, pulling his cap over his face and ignoring me in favor of the newspaper. “Backtalkin’ and staring. You used to be polite, Blanche,” he says, all petulant. “Hangin’ around the wrong sorts’ll change you, it will.”
“That what happened to you, Woodcross?” Rosie asks sweetly, hip-checking me out of the way and taking over. “You spend too much time with hillbillies up in the woods, getting all sexist and backwards?” Rosie is always better at dealing with people’s nastiness than I am. She’s got just enough of a sharp edge in her that she gets a little bit of vicious joy, I think, in turning people’s crap back on them.
Grateful for the rescue, I meet Red Paw at the bar and pour him his cider. He comes in near about every day now, and I can’t pretend that I don’t look forward to it. “And how’re you today?” I ask him, shaking off the weird, uncomfortable smile I use for Woodcross and feeling a real smile tuck up the corners of my mouth. Already I feel better, like going home at the end of the day—I can stretch when he’s there; not my back and my arms and such, but whatever makes me up as a person, it gets to come out and shake all its soreness out and take a deep breath or two. It’s the sort of comfortable you don’t much get as a grownup, the kind I mostly only had as a kid, when I’d get to curl up in Grampa’s arms and cry when I skinned my knee, or when I’d fall asleep while Gramma read me stories, or when I’d tell Rosie all the things I thought, uncensored, when we were too young to understand secrets or boundaries or things like supposed to or ladylike or proper. It’s so nice that I feel greedy and maybe a little selfish, talking to him, like I’m taking something from him, but he seems to like talking to me, too, so I figure he must not mind too much.
“I’m doing just fine, Miss Blanche,” he says. He takes a sip of his cider—not a sip, really, exactly, but the way cats drink water, his tongue reaching out and scooping some up. It doesn’t seem rude, though, or particularly beastly—it’s somehow elegant, actually, like the way rich folks eat with their forks upside down. “And how are you?”
The smile on my face is probably too wide to be ladylike when I say, “Well, I’m doing better now.” I don’t feel embarrassed, though; I don’t imagine he’ll judge me overmuch for one reckless smile or too much affection. He doesn’t seem like the type of man who expects ladies to portion out their affection in some kind of Victorian sense of propriety. He seems like he could maybe use to have people give him more real smiles, anyways.
He cocks his head in that way he has, like he’s studying me, and he says, “Somebody giving you a hard time about having me in here again?”
“Rosie gives me a hard time about everything,” I say, still mostly smiling. “That’s what sisters are for.” I can’t help but glance at Woodcross, though. He’s still hunched in his seat, taking sips of coffee that are somehow antagonistic. I don’t know how anybody can manage to try to pick a fight by sipping coffee, but if anybody could, it’s that man.
He cocks his head a little further, then follows my gaze to the seating area and Woodcross. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and it takes me a second to realize he’s growling.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, putting a hand over his scarred paw, making him jerk back around, like he’d just remembered I was there.
He clears his throat a little and shakes his head, like he’s shaking water off. “I don’t—I don’t rightly know, Miss Blanche. I do apologize.”
It’s alright, then, and we chat for another while as he drinks his cider and makes his way through an apple fritter and a blackberry tartlet and a piece of blueberry cheesecake. He eats a lot, but he’s not messy about it—it’s just like suddenly the food is gone, and he’s licking a claw clean.
“Ahem,” someone says, fake-clearing their throat.
I look up from talking to Red Paw, and Woodcross is standing at the register, looking torn between being twitchy nervous and just plain hateful as he glares at Red Paw. Red Paw is very still, like a dog that catches a scent. I pat his arm absently, crossing over to the register myself.
“What do I owe you?” Woodcross asks stiffly.
“Four ninety,” I say promptly. Woodcross always gets the same thing. I don’t know how he doesn’t know his own total by now, but I guess some folks just don’t pay attention to things. He’s too busy ogling the ladies to pay attention to math, most likely.
Woodcross is fishing it out of his battered wallet when the lady’s ring on his finger catches the light and flashes.
“Pretty,” I say, so I’m not just staring at it like a freak again. “Where’d you get it?”
Woodcross clears his throat again, this time for real, and shifts a little, uneasy, glancing fast at Red Paw and away. He thrusts a five over the counter at me, crumpling it up in my hand, says, “Keep the change,” and makes for the door like a rabbit.
Red Paw makes a low, dangerous noise in his throat and says, “Excuse me, Miss Blanche,” polite as you please, before he tucks a bill under his mug and follows Woodcross out.
My chest hurts, all of a sudden, like when you watch a sad movie and something heartbreaking happens and you want to cry but you feel stupid about it. I don’t know what’s wrong, exactly, but something is, so I go around the counter and push open the door. The bell jangles, too loud.
It goes like slow motion, or like funky jump-cut editing or something. My chest aches the whole way through.
Red Paw is standing there, teeth wrapped around Woodcross’s left hand, the one wearing the ring. Woodcross has his other hand up, and his fingers are sparkling with something red and green at the same time, shimmering like an oil slick and crackling like electricity. He makes a grab for Red Paw’s scarred paw with that hand, and I smell burning hair and flesh and hear an almighty crack all at once, and just like that, Red Paw is gone.
Woodcross is laying on the ground, clutching his arm where his hand used to be, and Red Paw, or what used to be Red Paw, is standing there, stark naked, holding the red and silver ring in his hand.
I’m pretty sure I scream—that must be what makes him turn to me, ring dropping out of his fingers and hitting the snow like another drop of blood. He crosses over to me, suddenly-human face aghast at frightening me, at the violence.
Looking up into his human face, I can’t judge Rosie for wanting to run from the wolf in her chest—mine is right here, is staring me down, and it’s terrifying. Not because of Woodcross or the blood, but because he’s not him, all of a sudden, he’s—he’s just somebody, and I can’t handle this kind of thing from just somebody. I can’t handle people hardly at all, let alone—let alone this.
“Are you alright?” he asks, cupping my face in his hand, thumb running across my cheekbone. “Miss Blanche, what’s wrong? Did I frighten you? Talk to me.”
I bite my lip hard, feel it wobble, and I squeeze my eyes shut so the tears don’t fall out. Hard as I try, I can’t get any words to come up out of my throat—they’re all just stuck in the back of it, a hard knot of horrible that I can’t spit out. He’s not Red Paw anymore, he’s not—he’s not mine, he’s all of a sudden people. He’s a complicated thing, he’s company, and the smell of dark earth and silence is gone. I could talk to him, maybe, if he was just ordering up a coffee or a slice of pie, but talk to him?
“I can’t,” I say, raw and ragged like my mouth is bleeding. I think of all those stories, things like The Frog Prince and Beauty and the Beast, and I wonder if those girls felt the same—if they could talk to the forest creatures but not the men, because men are—you’re supposed to be something for men, supposed to have the right words and the right little gestures and all those sorts of things, but before they’re men, they’re pieces of forest, of solitude and quiet observation. It feels like a betrayal, somehow, and I know that isn’t fair of me, it’s not, because Red Paw—but he must have another name, a man’s name, now, or even always—wasn’t really a bear, was cursed to wear that shaggy coat, and he must feel free now. I should be happy for him, I know I should, and I’d be properly polite and tell him so, I would, but I can’t get my mouth to open again. This is the other thing, the thing Woodcross stole, however long ago—his humanity—and it’s as jarring and out of place on him as the ring was on Woodcross.
He’s still looking at me, brow furrowed, mouth half-open in confusion, when Rosie takes my hand and pulls me away, out of the doorway and down the street.
I don’t even manage to say anything until Rosie has us halfway to the creek down below the churchyard, her hand tight around mine. Even then, all I manage to get out is, “What?”
She just shakes her head and keeps towing me along until we get to the rocks by the creek, the big ones that stick out across the water like some kind of pier made by giants. She pulls me out across the biggest one, the one we used to play on as kids, and she tugs me down at the edge of it, sitting us down side by side with our legs dangling out over the water.
We’re silent for a minute, me frozen and her thoughtful. When she does talk, she makes a couple false starts, clearing her throat like a smoker before she manages to say things properly.
“It’s how happy endings are supposed to go,” she says, smiling a little lopsidedly and looking out over the water. “You know, true love and beasts turning into men and everything.”
“I—” I start to say, but my throat catches again and she puts a quelling hand on my knee. My apron, coffee-stained and ancient, rumples under her hand, dingy white against the bright red paint on her nails.
“But you’re weird, you know?” she goes on. She doesn’t say it unkindly—more like saying you’ve got black hair than some sort of judgment. “You’re—you’re all quiet, inside.”
It startles me a little, because I don’t know that I’ve ever caught Rosie paying that much attention to things outside her own self.
“Me, I’m like—like out here, how the creek never really shuts up, never stops going? It’s like that in my head, all the time, you know? But you’re like a rock, you know, like you’re solid all the way through, and the edges of you maybe get warm when the sun comes out, but never the middle. There’s always something in you that’s secret, kind of, that’s curled up and quiet.” She stops, gnawing on her lip, and I watch with a sort of distant fascination as she chews half her lipstick off. “But around him—and don’t get me wrong, I still think it’s plumb crazy that you talked to him in the first place, let alone let him stick around and keep chatting you up, alright, but—around him, it’s like whatever that thing is, that quietness? It’s like maybe it stuck its nose out into the light for a minute. Like I could finally see you, you know?”
I do know. That’s why it hurts so much, why the hazel of his eyes is so spooky, because I’m used to the black. It’s like how now, if Rosie weren’t here, I’d be alone, even if there are frogs and squirrels and fish and deer and things—they’re not judging me on the standards that human folks do, they’ve got their own little rituals and things, and they’re uncomplicated. There’s something beautiful and quiet in that, and in the way he was—the kind of simple grace that people never have. It’s not quite the same as the quiet that I’ve got in me, but it makes me feel like maybe my quiet could be safe next to his. And looking at him, seeing that gone—
“I think,” I say, my throat scratching horribly with the tears I haven’t let go yet, “I think maybe my heart’s broken.”
Rosie rests her head on my shoulder, her fat auburn curls tumbling down my arm and getting in my face a little. “I want to say that you’re an idiot, but it also kind of makes sense, so I don’t think I can blame you for it.” She kicks her feet a little, idly, and we both watch them swing.
I think about saying something else, about trying to explain to her the whole of what’s going on in my head, like I would when we were kids, but she’s too human for that now. Children are wild things in a way that people who have to move in the real world can’t be, and there’s too much in between us now, too many crushes on boys and rides in cars and lessons about manners and Sundays in church and mornings spent doing hair and makeup and evenings spent watching TV or reading books.
I think the silence works, too, though. Rosie kicks my ankle now and then, and I kick back, and we sit on the big rock, feet dangling, and we don’t say another word.
Somehow, it helps, just a little, knowing that even Rosie has this much quiet in her, even under all those thorns.
He’s waiting when I come in for my shift the day after the ruckus. I take a minute to look over him, on the other side of the glass door, before I open it and the bell rings and he notices me. Now, just for a moment, it’s still quiet, inside me and around me, and I can really look.
He’s got a scruffy beard that almost looks like his old coat, shaggy and brown, and his hair curls down over his ears and his forehead in rough little tangles. His shirt hugs his shoulders like some kind of plaid skin, and it pouches out a little with his round stomach. He still looks a little like a bear, if I squint—it’s in the way he holds himself, the way he’s curled around his mug and the counter. He still holds the mug carefully, like he’s minding his claws, and his right hand is still strange—there’s a white scar running across it, all the way up under his shirtsleeve, and the tips of two fingers are missing, and all the skin on the right side of his hand is reddish and patchy, like it’s been burnt. Woodcross’s magic, I suppose, but it looks stranger on human flesh than it did on his paw.
He cocks his head, then, and the gesture is so familiar my breath catches in my chest. He turns to the door like maybe he heard me, or smelled me, or something, and, caught out, I push it open. The bell jangles faintly, like it’s ashamed to interrupt.
“Miss Blanche,” he says, ducking his head and rubbing a bashful hand over the back of his neck.
I swallow and open my mouth, but no words come out. I don’t even know what to call him anymore—there’s no way I’m supposed to keep on calling him Red Paw; he doesn’t even have paws. I can feel the shuddery panic I get when I try to talk to people for too long start up in my chest, something way past butterflies, and I feel bad again for passing any kind of judgment on Rosie for wanting to run from the wolf in hers. Some things are just terrifying.
He smiles tentatively, a crooked hitch of his lips, and his eyes crinkle in the way they always have. In the low light, they could maybe be black instead of that strange hazel, and the shine in them is the same. “Could I trouble you for a cup of cider, maybe?” he asks, low and soft, like I’m a wild animal, skittish and ready to bolt. Maybe I am. I nearly choke on the hysterical laughter that bubbles up under my breastbone.
I move on autopilot to the counter, taking up my apron and tying it around my waist like I have nearly every day of my life. I gather all my hair up in my hands and tie it back with Grampa’s old bandana, and then, well, I’m out of ways to stall, so I pull out a mug and pour the cider.
My hand shakes when I hand it to him, and I think about Grampa’s hands, about his earthquake, and about men changing. He takes the mug from me, wrapping his scarred hand around mine and holding on for just a second or two longer than he really needs to. It makes my chest hurt. I wonder, looking at my shaking hand, if maybe any kind of war changes you, if maybe I could be a different woman if I fought the panic people bring out in me.
I think Grampa would probably want me to try. He’d never tell me so, would never put that kind of thing on me, but—but there was something so nice about getting to spend time with another somebody without being scared the whole way through, and that makes me think that maybe it’d be worth trying.
Swallowing hard against the tremble that’s hovering in my throat, I say, more awkward and stilted than usual, “And how’re—how’re you today, sir?”
His face cracks open on a smile, eyes crinkling up until I can barely see them. “It’s Joe,” he says, stretching out his hand across the counter. He puts his gnarled fingers on the back of my hand, waiting, and it takes me a minute, but I manage to turn my hand over, just enough to let him take it. “And I’m doing better now.” His hand squeezes mine, strong but careful, and my eyes drop shut. Like that, I can almost relax enough to like it, like holding his hand—with my eyes shut, I can forget he’s a person and remember that he’s him. I open my eyes, because that feels too cheap to stomach, and he says, gentle as can be, “And how’re you, Miss Blanche?”
I choke a little on the panicked laugh that comes out of me then, but I manage to say, “I could be better,” without throwing up or running for the hills, so I give myself a little mental pat on the back. Learning to read wasn’t easy, either, but it was worth it for the books. Red Paw—Joe—he’s maybe worth a little of that, too.
“You really couldn’t be,” he says, squeezing my hand a little again and smiling right into my eyes.
Rosie whistles as she comes round the counter, tray on her shoulder. “You’re mighty smooth for somebody as didn’t have thumbs or eyebrows yesterday,” she says, raising her eyebrows at him and patting my hip as she goes by. It’s somehow reassuring, in that weird way that folks acting like themselves somehow always is.
Joe laughs, and it’s the same little huff of air that he laughed when he was a bear. “Sorry.” He looks at me again, more serious, and he says, “Miss Blanche, I know I had no right to go upsetting you like I did, but—” he clears his throat a little, ducking his head, “—but I hope you’ll let me make it up to you.”
A proper gentleman, Gramma would call him. And rightly, too. I feel like a heel, treating him like he’s just somebody, after all the days he’s made nice just by being around, after how kind he is, even when I’m this much of a gibbering idiot.
“I, um,” I say, tugging my hand back to cover the red I can feel rising on my cheeks. “I think I’d—I think I’d maybe like that.” It comes out quiet, barely a whisper, but Joe catches it anyways, and the width of his smile tugs a little one out of me in response.
“Well, then,” he says, standing up and sliding a neatly folded bill under the edge of his cup, “I guess I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, Miss Blanche.” Still beaming at me, he nods that precise little nod, like he’s tipping a hat he doesn’t have, and then he’s out the door, the bell jingling in his wake.
My hands are still shaking and my chest still hurts, but there’s something nice in it now, too, a kind of cool sunshine-y feeling, like the creek in summer or a really good apple. The air smells, familiarly, wonderfully, like dark earth and trees.
“There you are,” Rosie says, soft and satisfied, from behind me. Her hand squeezes my shoulder, once, briefly.
I smile, too widely for it to be pretty or polite, and it feels good. “Here I am,” I agree. I let the quiet places in me stretch, just a little, let them be more than quiet. Shaky hands or not, it’s worth it.
About the Author
Alena Sullivan is a graduate student in the Stonecoast MFA program for Creative Writing. Her speculative fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Urban Fantasy, Expanded Horizons, and elsewhere. One of her stories is in Rich Horton's Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, published by Prime Books. Her speculative poetry has been included in Goblin Fruit, Star*Line, Illumen, and elsewhere. Her website is alenasullivan.wordpress.com.