Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner Page A

usually in early morning when everyone was asleep and we tiptoed away, not wanting to stir the Mad Bears.
    Today was the first time we were there when the family was stirring. Mad Bear was sometimes seen in town at a bar, but his wife was never off the reservation. (At least, I’d never seen any of the family before.) Mad Bear was known to “tie one on,” as my father termed it, and when he took to kicking fire hydrants and yelling, Constable Lombardy stuffed him in a cruiser and drove him home. Roy told me it took the whole Lewiston force of three, plus volunteers, to get him in the car.
    Roy went to the door and I stayed outside to explore their yard. It was a museum of rust, littered with the intestines of old machines, which I found interesting. I liked to put stones in the old cement mixer and twirl them. I also found the old cars and parts on the lawn a remarkable ancient element of the landscape, especially since some had weeds growing out of them. I knew that Mad Bear had a lot of kids and I hoped that one was a girl my age who would see me out of the window and come running out to play Fox and Geese with me.
    Roy had remained inside a long time. Getting bored and feeling lonely, I went around to the side of the house and saw a deer hanging up with parts of its body cut out. It looked as though someone had just been hungry and ripped off the occasional limb. Most of the windows were broken in the back of the house and were stuffed with oily rags to keep out the cold.
    Mad Bear had the kind of house that never quite gets finished. It was covered in large squares of black paper which were boundto the house with giant silver staples and each sheet said “Bethlehem Steel” in silver lettering. I thought how perfect the name was for the holiday season.
    Roy called me to the front door. Mad Bear seemed to have burned out before building a front porch so I stretched my Santa-mitten-tipped arms up and Roy had to hoist me into the house through the windowless storm door. As I was still in his arms, he looked into my eyes and said in a tone of quiet nonchalance that he needed me to be a big girl and do just what he said. I had never heard him pull rank before so I knew his insouciant tone was an act.
    Inside their home, which had curling linoleum set on top of unfinished wooden planks, I saw an exhausted Mad Bear sitting in a kitchen chair breathing heavily with his spent arms dangling at his side. As I blinked the snowflakes from my lids, I noticed he had a deep gash on his arm. It was so lacerated you could see a shiny twisted white muscle that was still trying to hold things together, but a large slice of the red tissue was coming out like a crinkled Christmas ribbon. I thought a human arm had only a bone and blood, and was simultaneously fascinated and repulsed to see all of the different tissues — I realized the human arm looked no different from a flank cut of meat at Helms’s grocery.
    Mad Bear’s teenage son, also named Mad Bear, was standing at the entrance of the bedroom door with his arms outstretched on each side of the door frame. One hand held a bloody knife. He was not yet as tall as his dad but he was already wider, sturdier. His father’s eyes were set far apart and looked like a black cat’s-eye marble, and his own were the same except the size of aggies. He hung his head and his thick ducktailed hair hung forward,covering one side of his scratched face. He had stretched brown skin over broad cheekbones and a high forehead. His dusky thick lips looked like they were outlined in grey velvet. In my mind he looked more like an Indian than his father, who was no longer taut and had even lost his facial definition. They both looked as though they’d been fighting, but the elder Mad Bear looked defeated.
    The room was hot with the heavy breath of the two men. The teenager pounded the door sill with his swollen fingers, saying to no one in particular, “That’s the