Canada Moose's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

By morning, the story had run ahead of Canada Moose. The porcupine had told the rabbits. The cougar had told no one, but her silence was its own kind of proof. The rabbits had told the squirrels, and the squirrels told everyone. When Canada Moose came down the path from his bedding ground, a chipmunk was already waiting at the bend. The chipmunk bowed. Canada Moose did not know what to do with a bow, so he nodded back and kept walking. Two deer stepped aside to let him pass. He felt the mud print on his jacket like a badge he had not earned. They took him to the clearing where he had once knelt to free his antlers. The animals had been busy. A low lodge of stacked logs stood at the far edge, roofed with cedar boughs and a chimney of river stones. Smoke curled from the top. Inside, a long table ran the length of the room, piled with berries, cattail roots, and a comb of honey the bees had donated under protest. Outside, animals filled the grass in a loose ring around a young oak. An owl perched on a branch. A fox sat with a squirrel. Rabbits pressed close to the trunk. They had built him a hall and a crowd, and both were waiting. The porcupine climbed onto a stump and told the story again. He told it louder this time, with the bear growing bigger and the moose growing braver. Canada Moose stood at the edge and listened. He could feel the correction sitting behind his teeth. The bear had walked away because it did not care. He had dropped a pack and startled it. He had not stared it down. He opened his mouth. He looked at the rabbits, and at the chipmunk who had bowed, and at the cougar, who was watching him and not the porcupine. She already knew what he would do. He closed his mouth. He let the story finish. At the edge of the clearing, near the path where the grizzly's trail cut north, the beavers had dragged up a flat slab of grey stone and set it upright in the dirt. A squirrel had scratched two shapes into the face of it with a sharp flint — a moose head with wide antlers, and a bear on its hind legs, facing each other. Below the shapes, a shallow line marked the ground between them. The animals called it the standoff stone. Canada Moose walked over to it after the speeches. He put one hoof against the base. He thought about the real clearing, months ago, when he and the grizzly had stood without moving and he had counted it as a tie. That, at least, had been true. He decided the stone could stand for that day instead. No one else needed to know which standoff it marked. He went into the lodge and took the seat they had built for him at the head of the table. The animals came in after him and filled the benches. The porcupine sat close. The cougar lay by the fire and watched the flames. Canada Moose ate a little honey and listened to them talk about him as if he were not there. He was the second greatest animal in the forest now. The grizzly was still first, and the grizzly did not care, and that was the shape of things. He had not beaten the bear. He had outlived the story of kneeling. For a moose who had spent twenty minutes climbing out of a snowbank and two hours walking in circles, that was enough. He pulled his red and white scarf straight, leaned back against the log wall, and let the room be warm around him.