THE NORTHWEST corner of the state was mostly hardwood and granite, and the cold water from the rocks moved fast and splintered east, and in the trees beside the swift water, mills broke cotton to cloth and bent steel red into girder and joist and brace. Near the town rocks bore up gray in the woods, and some had water run over them, and spots worn smooth, and moss in patches, loud green, and some had old Indian words scratched at their faces. In spring, bears stirred the woods and sunned on the rocks.

Late June and fourteen he wandered among them and put his small rough hands for a long time against the old letters carved on the rocks, and they were more like pictures, birds and wolves and people mixed together, and he twisted the ends of his fingers raw in the grained divots, and went farther this time, kept when his boots sank ankle deep in the old leaf blown drifts in the birch and the laurel and the sapgum.

From the thick growth he came to an outcrop; for a moment the full light pinched his eyes; he looked through cotton, dime spots fuzzed pink flowerheads at his eyelids. He blinked hard on the rock face; naked, wide, a slow grade. The light then sharp and clear edged, the bear focused twenty feet past. It was small, and sat hind legs like a person, black hair stuck to wet licks, face tilted at what seemed a pondering of the light. He saw end days, a monster in the woods. He held, lock still, swallowed low breath, waited for the bear to get his smell then gallop; open mouth, white teeth.

He remembered two; a bear on the television toppled trashcans and stood up and batted the air and mad spit in its bawl and charged a man back turned and running. The other one, in the museum downtown, rifle shot at the kidney and head when it lost the woods, lumbered at the sidewalk near the jewelry store and gutted a couple leaving through the glass door; four small bells, like ones collared to a sheep’s neck, were tied at the push handle with a red bow from winter holiday; they rang when the door flapped; the county packed the bear once dead with cotton and wood shaving, wheeled it to a spot in the center of the dusty collections room below the frayed white war flag with the rattlesnake coiled on its face, and fixed it in a high standing pose, one arm raised chin level, a warning swipe, jaw stretched a yell, claws glued black keys. His grandfather’s spotted right hand was gripped to the red felt theater rope that squared it off, his index finger, thumb to the first knuckle, shot off in the second big war. A heavy brushed silver band took up most of the stub; he tapped the ring against a joint on the brass pole, pondered up at the stuffed bear for a long time, didn’t speak, squeezed his tack-hard fingers on the rope and then let go.

The bear on the rock turned its head, the rest of it kept still, and calm. He stayed fixed to its eyes, leather brown muzzle dipped like a push swing, and held the first step, the run he felt winding bed springs at his forefeet; the small water in the woods behind him gurgled; the trees clapped. The bear stood to all fours and huffed, shifted front weight from one shoulder flank to the other and swiped at the rock. His left boot twitched; the bear lumbered ten feet his way and stopped quick, backed a foot and swatted the air this time, like an underhand pitch, a chin jab. The fingers on his right hand tapped his belt at the hip; he wished to pull a gun. The bear panted, stayed looking at him. Then it sat down to its rear again, fell its head back to the light stretched warm over the rock face. A cloudrack grew dark rain in the south. His outer thighs clenched, fine hair stood on his forearms; he felt weather changing.

Branches slapped his forearms held face level and bare, and some split and broke off, and he ran fast in the woods, legs and feet scaled fell trees; horses might feel like this, dogs maybe, heart in the eyes, busted from a screaming hand.

His father, the foreman, the widower, the tired man, forty-two years his senior, told him black bears ran forty miles an hour, flat out, and he thought of this. But the bear he left on the rock, drunk on light and warm half sleep, would not come after; still, it felt like a pardon, and he didn’t stop until the trees walled, turned a row tilled corner field, moss gray and wet, rain three days past still there, but drying quickly, didn’t stop until he saw the back of the house, red shutters at the windows, and that was far enough.