The Cage by Audrey Shulman Page B

with a sunroof and no windows along the sides. Already five or six cars were parked by the garbage, no one dumping anything. People in the cars drank coffee and waited, watching for the bears, their windows closed tight. David stood up as soon as the van stopped, got his camera out and began to crank the handle to open the sunroof.
    Beryl felt surprise, but said nothing. Here there would be no cage around them. The other two men weren’t even looking out the windows for bears. They were pulling out the coffee thermos and donuts. Cautiously, she peered out the front and back windows. Nothing to see but garbage, stripped bodies of cars, old fridges, sea gulls pecking. David stuck his head and camera out of the roof.
    He quickly jerked back inside. “You know, I hate when people throw away perfectly good couches. This one’s even a sleeper.” He saw her expression, smiled over at her. “Come on up,” he boomed. “No bears in sight.”
    She collected her camera and film and slowly stood up next to him, putting her head out of the hole. She lookedaround. The garbage lay in piles all about like hills. She didn’t know if she could capture the clarity of the air on film. She found herself staring up at the sky. It shone as blue and hard as a lid. She thought if she had a long enough arm she could reach up and push that arctic sky off and behind would be her own sky, cloudy, soft and insubstantial.
    David was filming already. He moved quietly and carefully, his body twisting around as smoothly as a camera dolly, panning across the garbage. His face hung motionless behind the camera, blank. The only tension showed in his left eye, which he squinched closed to see better out the right. As she looked at him now she couldn’t imagine him talking loudly in his booming voice or caring about others as he touched their hands.
    A car tire burned hazy black smoke off to her left. She began to photograph the people waiting in the cars. At first they looked curiously at her and David, then they lost interest. She assumed that a lot of camera crews came up here. At the hotel this morning she’d seen a small notice board with WELCOME NATURAL PHOTOGRAPHY TEAM on it, their names spelled out below. Butler still didn’t have a first name. She wondered if he’d told the hotel staff to write it that way or if he’d crept down last night under the cover of darkness and popped out the letters of his first name one by one.
    Her name on a public board startled her. She hadn’t yet realized what a small town this was. One thousand people lived in Churchill, the largest human outpost for several hundred miles. It took such effort to live here. In the winterpeople kept engine block heaters plugged into outlets so the cars would start. The small town was perched on the sea; everything in it smelled of salt.
    She was getting some good background pictures in spite of the awkwardness of the gloves she had to wear against the cold. The people all looked off slightly to the left. They talked, sipped coffee and ignored her.
    As Beryl shifted the camera, she saw something white to the left of her. She thought it was a refrigerator. She continued to snap photos. After another three pictures, she realized the people were watching the fridge. She turned toward it. Two yards away from her stood a large white bear. Even with the two feet of van added to her own height, the bear towered over her. She’d never seen such a large animal so close. It breathed her smell in, no noise, but she saw its nostrils open and its chest expand. She felt her mind still like the water of a pond.
    She remembered her dream, dove down into the van, hitting the back of David’s knees and taking him with her. His camera cracked against the roof as it came through. Looking up she saw a large paw questing about the hole in the roof, black pads, yellow nails. Claws scratched against the metal of the van. From the front seat Butler