His Name was Allen

Consciousness swirled into Bertrand’s head. He kept his eyes shut tight, but the awareness of wakefulness washed down through his body, and thoughts began to stir in his mind. The consciousness washing past his arms brought a sudden awareness of the aching spots where his shoulder was now in contact with the damp cave floor, the grass and leaves he had packed there having shifted away while he slept. As this involuntary endeavor of waking up continued, he wondered how long he had been asleep. In the stillness and unbroken darkness of the cave, it could have been any amount of time. In fact, the only clues that any time had passed at all were the relative warmth he felt even when he realized his tattered sleeping bag had been shoved off of him while he slept and the damp humid heaviness that now hung in the air of the cave.

Bertrand slowly and carefully stretched his small sinewy body. He would have been a small statured young man even if he hadn’t endured the wilderness last autumn and faced malnutrition and near certain death. Again, thoughts stirred, memories this time, of his life before he renamed himself Bertrand in the fall. The autumn and winter in the mountain forest had nearly killed him, and he barely held on to memories of his life as Allen now. He thought it fitting that Allen had died, and Bertrand had taken his place for two reasons, not the least of which was that Allen had deserved to die after what he had done (Bertrand shoved that memory and judgement out of his mind as hard and quickly as he could) and also because Bertrand reminded him more of a bear, and he had, as the coolness of winter descended upon this deep forest, lucked upon an empty cave with a small entrance and a larger inner chamber. He thought of himself as part bear now, having overwintered in the cave’s large chamber after gathering all the potential foodstuffs he could in the autumn before the snow fell. His stomach groaned to remind him that it had barely been enough of a cache for him to survive.

He sat up on his pile of now-brown leaves and grass and listened to the sounds of the cave, and noticed a new sound, one he hadn’t heard in some time. Water was dripping off the entrance to the cave, indicating that it was now raining outside. He almost smiled. Rain meant that the seasons were turning and that Bertrand was alive. He had gathered seeds from the fruits he had eaten during the autumn and winter and saved them, so now he felt ready to plant the seeds and see what food he could grow for himself near the cave. He also planned to gather fallen wood as soon as possible to create a fire pit outside the cave’s entrance to deter predators that might otherwise stumble upon his cave and think of it as a good winter home for themselves. It would take a lot of wood to supply both an inner and outer cave fire, and there was a nice little overhang of rock near the cave’s entrance that could host a pile of fallen branches, sticks and logs and allow them to dry out during the summer months.

For a moment, that childlike part of Bertrand’s mind wondered why he didn’t return to civilization, why he couldn’t return to Allen’s life and pick up where he had left off. The fearful adult part of his mind quickly admonished this other internal self and perished the thought. No, Allen was dead, as dead as his mother, whom he had, by his inaction and childishness, murdered.

Bertrand the Bear-Man (though no one would consider his hairless, small, and skinny body bearlike) slowly and painfully stood up, groaning like a man much older than he was. Bertrand realized then that, in the confusing stillness and heterogeneity of winter in the cave, he had slept through his 21st birthday. He didn’t care much about that, since it was actually Allen’s birthday and Bertrand had been born in the early autumn of last year, the day his mother had perished.

For some reason, when he stood up in the large chamber, the childlike part of him was able to overtake his mind and he gasped aloud from the shock and pain when the memory of that day crashed into him completely.

Allen smiled as he delivered the cherry pie to his mother. There was no special occasion on this late September day, but he wanted to do something special and feel a little more like an adult by giving his mom this pie as a way to say thank you. He wanted to thank her for being his mom, for taking care of him and his two siblings all these years, and being a darn good mother, caregiver, and friend to her children, even now that they were grown. Allen was the youngest, his sister, Clary, the eldest, and his brother, Tom, the middle child. Clary and Tom were both slightly taller and bigger-boned than average, while Allen had trended the opposite direction on the spectrum of size.

He wore his backpack with some provisions prepared for the hike he had planned for that afternoon, which he intended to invite his mother to attend with him, and he smiled again as he knocked on the door of his childhood home.

“Allen!” His mother greeted him with an exuberant welcome and hug, swinging the door open wide and ushering her baby into the foyer. “What a truly lovely surprise!”

After explaining his presence and offering his invitation, Allen’s mother had excitedly agreed, and they decided to each have a piece of pie before she would change into hiking attire and they could set off together for a pleasant afternoon adventure. They both sat at the kitchen island, chatting, laughing, smiling, and eating cherry pie. His mother had laughed at a particularly funny joke Allen told her, inhaled while still having sticky, sugary sweet cherry pie in her mouth, and then she got quiet.

It took Allen a moment to notice that she wasn’t laughing anymore, and when he looked at her and said, “Mom?” her dilating pupils alerted him to the problem. Allen didn’t know what to do. Mom stood up and smacked the countertop on the island. Her face pleading with Allen, begging him to save her. She started turning red as Allen stood, thinking hard about what to do. He didn’t know the Heimlich Maneuver or CPR, and his job as a clerk at the local supermarket had not prepared him for saving a victim of choking. As Mom frantically slapped the counter and tried to cough, her face started turning purple, and Allen’s brain exploded with panicked shock. He was already down the street and running toward the dirt road and hiking trail before he realized he had even moved.

Bertrand breathed heavily, a grungier, skinnier, and dirtier version of Allen in a cave the following spring. He had no idea what the date was or how much time had passed, but the flashback had hit him like a ton of boulders, and he had to steady himself on the cave wall to keep from falling over or passing out. Bertrand shed a tear for Allen’s mother, whom he had unintentionally murdered some months ago, and then swallowed hard to put Allen back into the box in his mind where he locked up his traumatic memories.

Bertrand shook his head to regain himself and noticed that the sound of rain had lessened and the cave had become significantly brighter. Now the water running off the cave door was just the rainfall from up the mountain still sliding down the rocky surface to the ground below. Bertrand took a deep breath, ready to create his new life in the wilderness, and stepped through the door of rainwater beads into the bright spring sun.