PROLOGUE

His father came toward him with the rifle. From where Justin sat at his desk—his homework spread before him—both his father and the gun appeared to be growing, so that when handed the weapon, he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to carry it. Around his father, Justin had always felt that way, as if everything were bigger than he was.

His father said he wanted to show him something, but he wouldn’t say what. He only said for Justin to follow him. This happened outside of Bend, Oregon, where they lived in a cabin surrounded by ten acres of woods.

The moment they stepped off the porch, as if on cue, a sound rose from the forest, as slow as smoke. It sounded like a woman crying. Justin—who was twelve at the time—felt his veins constrict with alarm. “What’s that?” he said. “What the hell is that?”

“Don’t be a pantywaist,” his father said over his shoulder. By now he was several steps ahead of Justin and moving across the lawn, a browned patch of grass choked with pine needles. “And don’t say hell.” When he reached the place where the grass met the trees, he perceived Justin had not followed him, and turned. “Come on,” he said.

There followed a moment of silence where he motioned Justin forward with his hand and Justin clutched his rifle a little closer to his chest. Then the noise began again, sharper and louder now than before, reminding Justin of metal rasping across a file. Even his father—who was a big man with a mossy beard and a keg-of-beer belly—cringed.

This was that in-between time of day, not quite afternoon and not quite night, when the air begins to purple and thicken. Once they entered the forest the pines put a black color on things, and through their branches dropped a wet wind that carried with it the smell of the nearby mountains, the Cascades.

They walked for some time along a well-worn path, one of many that coiled through the property like snakes without end. The screaming sound continued, sometimes loud and sometimes soft, like some siren signaling the end of the world. It overwhelmed Justin’s every thought and sensation so that he felt he was stuck in some box with only this horrible noise to keep him company. Everything seemed to tremble as it dragged its way through the air.

They hurried along as fast as they could, less out of wonder or sympathy than the urgent need to silence. They hated the noise—its mournful mixed-up music—as much as they feared it.

Then, between the trees, Justin saw it. The inky gleam of its eyes, and its huge ears drawn flat against its triangular skull, and then its bulky body. Blood trails oozed along it, dampening its black fur and the soil beneath it.

“Man alive,” his father said.

It was a bear—maybe a year old, no longer a cub, big enough to do some damage—and it was tangled in a barbed-wire fence, the barbed wire crisscrossing its body. To this day Justin remembers the blood so clearly. It was the perfect shade of red. To this day he wants an old-time car—say a Mustang or one of those James Bond Aston Martins—the color of it.

The bear, bewildered, now let its head droop and took short nervous breaths before letting loose another wail, a high-pitched sound that lowered into a baritone moan, like pulling in a trombone. A tongue hung from its mouth. Its muscles jerked and rolled beneath its pelt.

Justin stood behind a clump of rabbitbrush as if to guard himself from the animal. The bush smelled great. It smelled sugary. It smelled like the color yellow ought to smell. By concentrating on it so deeply, he removed himself from the forest and was thereby able to contain the tears crowding his eyes.

Then his father said, “I want you to kill it.”

Just like that. Like killing was throwing a knuckleball or fixing a carburetor.

That happened a long time ago. Thirty years ago. And still, Justin feels weighed down with the memory of it. When he lectures his students or when he feels the baby moving around in his wife’s belly or when he lies in bed in a half dream, the bear sometimes emerges from the shadows, snapping its teeth, retreating back into shadow as quickly as it appeared.

Thirty years—and during this time little changed between Justin and his father, even as Oregon changed all around them.