A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Author:Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2020-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

8

THE CARETAKER CONFINED

Nothing moved amid the solemn vistas of stupendous trunks, fading away into the darkness which held us in. Once some bandy-legged, lurching creature, an ant-eater or a bear, scuttled clumsily amid the shadows. It was the only sign of earth life which I saw in this great Amazonian forest.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World, 1912

When the Unification Church left Grafton, Jessica Soule stayed behind; she had grown to love driving through Bungtown in her truck, bumping over stones in the road with windows down and sunshine in her hair. The farmhouse she’d purchased had two separate heating systems that covered different zones of the house, and a woodstove to boot, one of several quirky marks of the previous owner. Another was the back porch—it had a kitchen sink, enough space for two picnic tables, and a hole cut into the wall of the main house so that food and plates could be passed directly from the kitchen to the porch.

After the bear snatched her kittens in 1999, that direct access to the back porch became important for Amber and the other cats, because Soule no longer allowed them to go outside. There was a countertop on the porch that could be folded up and locked into place to cover the hole, but Soule left it open during the warmer months, so that the felines could wander in and out at will to enjoy the breeze of the screened-in porch.

For a while, Soule maintained strong ties to the church. In 2000, Reverend Moon helped pay for Soule to meet him in Seoul, South Korea, where he was opening a medical center that blended Eastern and Western medicinal practices. But by then, Moon was getting on in years and his children were exerting their own influence on the church. As the power structures changed, Soule’s daily involvement with church activities waned.

By 2003, she was also experiencing severe medical problems. She’d always suffered from seizures, which had caused nerve damage to her legs when she was younger; she’d been able to maintain her ability to walk after an intense self-prescribed course of physical therapy. Now she felt her legs weakening again. She began relying on a cane to get around, particularly on the uneven footing of the ground outside the house. The bear-on-kitten attack had left her nervous about lingering outdoors on her shaky legs, so Soule now indulged her love of the outdoors by opening her screened windows and doors. Each breeze felt like a spring cleaning as it swept through the traditional New England mudroom at the front of the house, then whisked through her living room and on out the back porch.

When it was warm enough, she ate supper on the back porch, thinking about old friends at the church and the little tasks around the house that might keep her busy. From there, she could see the deer and moose passing through to visit the little brook out back. The cats joined her or not, using the

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