She looked at him, stunned. After all this time and he still didn’t understand — still could bring that up! Sorrowfully she got up from the rocker, snapped off the lamp, and started up the stairs. At the top she shut the door quietly but firmly on his pleadings. After all these years he still didn’t understand that you don’t let wild beasts loose. No matter how sorry you feel for the lions and tigers in the zoos and no matter how tame they seem, you just don’t go around letting them loose on society.
Soon there were long newsy letters from Bobby, which she read to the Bear at night. (He had apparently learned his lesson after his last outburst and had become more docile and quiet than ever.) It didn’t seem long at all before Bobby was home on his first leave, healthy, bronzed, wonderful to look at. Miriam wished the Bear could see him.
Bobby used his leave to good advantage, too, by painting the house and making other repairs that were needed. The morning before he left he stood staring out the kitchen window. Miriam went over to him, and he looked down at her thoughtfully. “Mom, I noticed some kids cutting across the back lot yesterday. The fencing must be down back there.”
Miriam nodded. “I dare say. After all, it’s pretty old fencing.”
Bobby shifted his weight and frowned. “I don’t like it — kids cutting across the property. I’m going to town today and get some new posts and barbed wire.”
He worked all that day and until it was time for him to leave the next evening. He came in hot and sweaty, but looking satisfied. “I put ‘No Trespassing’ signs up and strung the fencing real tight. I’d like to see any kid get through all those strands of barbed wire.” He came over and put his arm around his mother. “It’ll be good for years, Mom. Long after I come back...”
But he didn’t come back. She was at the library when the telegram arrived. Everyone was terribly kind. There were offers of lifts home, but she refused them all, preferring to walk the two miles by herself — the last mile over the now overgrown private road that led to her house. She did not break down until she had sought out the Bear, and then she slumped down on the cold cement outside his cage and sobbed over and over, “Bobby’s gone, Bear. Bobby’s gone.” Through the heavy wire mesh the claw-like fingers with the unclipped nails pushed, as if trying to stroke her. Tears rolled down the shaggy beard, but whether the Bear was shedding tears over the loss of his son or over the futility of his own life is not known.
Life goes on. By spring Miriam had come to accept with a kind of dull resignation Bobby’s passing. She continued her job at the library, of course, for without Bobby’s allotment check she was again the sole support of herself and the Bear. Bobby’s insurance money she did not touch. Someday she might be unable to work and would need it.
The days in the old house at the end of the overgrown road established themselves in a seldom-varying pattern. The Bear had become quite trustworthy, and on weekends when the weather was nice Miriam even dared open from the outside the small window over his cage. It gave her much pleasure to see him rouse himself from his usual slump on the wooden platform and stand directly under the open window, inhaling great breaths of fresh air. Sometimes he would suddenly fling his arms up but then as suddenly drop them as they contacted the meshing on the top of his cage. Sometimes he rose on tiptoes as if straining to see out, but of course he could not. Often she brought him bouquets of flowers picked from the meadow, and he seemed to like that, burying his face in the blooms and sniffing hungrily. She was glad to do these things, for she had become quite fond of him, really, and more and more her prime concern in life became his comfort and contentment.
The years, one by one, passed slowly, quietly by. There were a few times of crisis, of course — the time the Bear was so sick, for instance. It was sheer torture for Miriam to listen to him call out hoarsely for a doctor and know that she could not possibly get one. She could do nothing but pray, and eventually her prayers were answered. The Bear stopped sweating and moaning, finally, and began to get better. Then there was the time she herself was sick. It was one summer during her vacation. She was too ill to go to the doctor and had no way to summon him to the house, nor would it have been advisable for her to do so even if she could for, as keeper, she was in a sense as much a prisoner as the Bear. The fever raged through her for several days and the only thing that kept her from succumbing was the distant sound of the Bear’s plaintive calls. It would be so easy just to let go and die, but she could not. The Bear was hungry — needed her... So she fought, and lived to see the Bear fall upon the food she finally weakly brought to him. It was worth the fight.
