When I was a little kid, Poppy and I hiked up the mountain every spring, before the black flies came out and after the snow melted and ran down to feed the hungry lake. At the top, we rested, ate peanut butter sandwiches with the crust cut off and drank cold water from a thermos as we sat under the rusting fire tower and scanned the grayskinned trees not yet filled out by leaves.
Once, on our way back down, we saw a big black dog standing in the middle of the trail below us. I wanted to run ahead and touch it, but Poppy stopped me. “That’s a bear, Paula.” Poppy took my hand in his and bent down next to me, leaned in close, and whispered as we watched the bear snuffing at the ground. I tilted my head up to Poppy’s face—the skin of his cheek next to my nose smelled like the roadside on a hot August day when the rain starts—tender wild roses and dusty leaves, hot tar and sweet clover. What he told me was about bears. Not the little kid stories I knew about honey pots and beds being too hard or too soft. What he told me was the truth.
“You hold onto this, Kid,” Poppy said. “You never know when you might need it.” The bear went back through the woods without even noticing that we watched him, but I never forgot what Poppy told me: Take your time. Observe. Once you’ve figured out what you’re dealing with, you’re safe to move on down the path.
Usually Jeannie was allowed to take the boat out by herself but when she brought me into her kitchen, both of us in bikinis and cutoffs, and said to her dad, “I’m teaching Paula to ski,” he turned from where he was leaning against the counter eating a grilled cheese and looked at us and shook his head. He looked at me. It was quick, the way he looked, but I felt it. I was in a new suit—silver and shiny—that I had bought with the money Aunt May had given me for my fifteenth birthday.
“No, you ain’t,” he said and popped the crust of his sandwich in his mouth, wiped his hands on his barn jeans. “I’ll teach you.”