Read Online The Cage by Audrey Shulman - Free Book Online

and Jean-Claude looked back dumbfounded, still holding their coffee.
    Beryl jumped up and, keeping her head back, turned the little handle to close the roof. From the half-closed sunroof she heard her first polar bear sound, a small irritated chuff. Then the muffled
whump
of weight hit the side of the van,knocking Beryl down. She watched out the windshield as the bear stalked slowly away with the fat-bottomed pride of a senator. People in the other cars were laughing.
    In that first moment as Beryl had faced the bear, she’d thought it was going to move its paw toward her and they would again begin to dance.
    â€œShit shit shit,” David said as the bear walked away. “I didn’t get it on film.” He ran to the front of the van and filmed what he could of the bear’s retreat.
    Butler began to guess excitedly at the bear’s size. He offered out each of the numbers with pride and possession, as though in guessing the animal’s height or weight, he laid claim to it. “Standing—nine feet tall,” he said. “A thousand pounds. Paws—twelve inches wide. Medium-size one.”
    Jean-Claude kept his face turned from the rest of the group while they talked about the bear. So far he hadn’t talked much with any of them. He looked out over the trash in the direction the bear had gone, to where the tundra ran, interrupted only by oceans, for the width of the world.

CHAPTER 10
    That second night in the Arctic Beryl dreamed again of the bear. This time they were sitting across from each other at a candlelit table where two large silver domes covered the plates in front of them. Beryl’s date sat with the natural grace of the active. His fur gleamed with health. His body was too large for the table and his legs and feet pressed over into her side of the table. She tried to keep her feet decorously tucked under her chair, but he needed even that area, and his heavy weight leaned against her no matter which way she moved. She pitied him for the depths of his need. She wondered if he would be offended if she removed her plate from the table and ate her food off the ground. His black nose wrinkled slightly at the smell of the food, and the corners of his mouth were wet. The waiter’s hands reached smoothly forward to pull the covers off the food.
    The next day they saw thirteen bears. The garbage dump was thirty miles from where the animals gathered in greatest density, and Beryl knew that their migration to this area had only begun. The bears would continue to arrive for another month. Still, at least one bear was visible at all times, snuffling through the garbage, gnawing on a tire or walking purposefully toward the van.
    The bears seemed to be willing to give anything a try as food, eating the foam rubber out of couches, tugging the seats off snowmobiles, chewing on vinyl car roofs. Standing up in the van Beryl saw one bear sniffing a closed can of paint, putting his teeth to each edge, curling his lips back, then turning the can over to try again. Each time the bears found something they considered edible, they looked content, chewing hard, strings of drool rolling from their mouths.
    One bear found a deflated plastic clown with a bell in the bottom, the type little kids punch. Each time the bear chewed on it, the bell rattled. The bear swiveled her ears toward the bell, slapped at it halfheartedly with a paw. Beryl dropped her head back down through the sunroof, told Jean-Claude to drive closer, to a spot up sun of the bear.
    As she zoomed in on the bear’s half-closed eyes and exposed black lips, the bear chewed gingerly through the clown’s red button vest. The plastic squeaked.
    Butler spoke from the front of the van. “Up here in the Arctic there’s almost nothing that’s naturally poisonous. The plants are all edible. No poisonous snakes or insects. Polarbears are born curious. No caution in them. They explore just about anything new, chew on it. With