The Last Glacial Bear

An excerpt from the novel Solar Storms -By Linda Hogan

When he saw the bear he trapped it and took it captive. At first he used it to fight dogs. The men made bets on who would win. They kept it awake all year. That’s against bear nature. Its poor mind was no longer sane. And its diet was bad, so it went weak, its teeth rotted out, and some of its fur fell out in patches. Then they tried to make money by letting men wrestle the poor creature. Finally, they charged people money just to come and see it. The last one. The last glacial bear. The last. They always loved the last of anything, those men, even the last people. I guess they felt safe then, when it was all gone.

Agnes was only twelve when they brought the blue bear here. And from the first minute she saw that bear, she loved it. It was a special thing, her and that bear. Every day she went to look at it. For a penny they let her see it. A minute a penny. Some days she took thirty pennies.

When Beauregard saw how good she was with it, he hired her to feed it. He was afraid of it, you know. The other men, too. Afraid of that poor broken thing. When they went in the small cage, they kicked it away and pushed at it with their rifles. But Agnes was not afraid. She was a gentle girl. The bear liked this. It knew her, in a way. Through her eyes, I think. She stole good food for it, too, and its fur grew back. In the afternoons, young boys would go around and poke sticks through the cage and Agnes would fight with the boys and come home crying.

Looking back on it, the boys, I think they were jealous of what’s wild and strong. If the bear fought back, it was hated; if it didn’t, they hated it for being weak. The bear was ruined in its heart. Even with Agnes’ love. It sat with its back to the boys and let them poke it and call it names. Finally, they came to it with guns full of corn and they shot that poor bear to see if it had any fight left in its thick skin. Agnes cried and kicked at them. She chased after them. They called her crazy. “I’ll shoot you,” she said. “That’s how crazy I am.” She took a gun one day to keep them away.

One chilly day alone, she went to the bear. She lifted her shirt and showed the bear her round full breasts. Oh, it understood already. It knew that she was a woman. It knew she had compassion.

Before she left the house that day I saw her crying. I had a bad feeling. I followed her. I watched how she entered the cage. She didn’t even fear for her own life. She didn’t have the gun. She only had a knife, so all the poor girl could do was cut the bear's neck and let it bleed. The warm blood poured into the ground. It was a chilly day. You could see the steam rise from the wounds. Its eyes were grateful. I saw that. That bear put a paw on Agnes and stroked her in return. It touched her. It comforted her. I have never seen such a thing as that. I cried, too.

The last bear in Germany