Bear Bob's Story as told to Edward Summer

Chapter Five
On The Branch
 

The snake’s eyes were level with my eyes when it stopped slithering toward me.  We stared at each other. We stared. I did not move. The snake did not move. Only its tongue flickered, back and forth in the moonlight.

    There was no sound now, not even my breathing. I was holding my breath. If I breathed, it would disturb the snake.  In my mind I saw my home and my family and my bed on the ground and the cooking fires and heard my sisters laughing, laughing, playing with their dolls. Playing.

    But I opened my eyes and the snake was still there. Now it raised its head. Higher. Higher. It knew where I was, and it was ready to strike. Higher went the head. I tried to crawl back, but the eyes of the snake held me still.

     It was so still, so still as the snake's fangs came down, dripping toward me. Dripping poison.

    Whoosh! Something swept by me! I felt the wind from its wings. Whoosh! It flew by me. Then a squawk, loud and sharp. Then, snap! The snake's neck broke! Snap! It was held tight in a beak that twisted and shook the silent, twitching snake body. Snap! The neck cracked again. Dark wings beat in the air. They flapped in my face. Then the snake fell down, down into the darkness.

     The bird landed just in front of me. In the dark I could not see much, just the shape, just the eyes, just the beak.  A yellow beak. A yellow beak that seemed to smile at me. The bird turned and flicked its tail in my face and strutted away down the branch.

    Follow me! the bird seemed to say. I crawled along the branch after the bird, following the flicking of its tail.

    The bird stopped at a place with strange sounds. Cheerip! Cheerip! What made these sounds? I looked and there I saw a shadow of a nest tucked next to a branch. A nest full of open mouths, full of tiny beaks snapping at the moonlit air!

    Cheerip! Chee-ree! Feed us! said the little mouths. The mother bird bent over them and coughed food into their hungry mouths. All the while, she flapped her wings and flipped and flicked her tail feathers in front of my blinking eyes. And from time to time, she turned and flashed a yellow smile at me as if to say, thank you. Thank you for my chicks, for the rock the boy threw would have killed not just me, but them, too. Thank you for my chicks!

    And I smiled back and held on with my arms wrapped around the branch. While I smiled, I realized that my hands clutched something round. Something round and smooth.

    The fruit. The baobab fruit. Snap! I broke a twig of fruit off the big branch.. It was heavy! I put the twig in my mouth and began inch backward along the big branch.

    Cheerip! Chee-ree! The mother bird had turned to me. The chicks cried and she looked at me and smiled and smiled her yellow beak smile one more time to me in the moonlight. I would have smiled back, but my mouth was full of fruited twigs and I could not. So I smiled at her with my heart. I thanked her with no words, for the fruit, and for my life.  It is nothing, she told my heart, It is nothing at all. We only pass life along, she said to me. We only pass love along, heart to heart to heart to heart. Remember, she said silently. Remember in the daytime to send out the love. Remember when the nighttime returns, the love will always come back.

    Cheerip! Cheerip! Cheeeeeee-reeeeeeeeeee! Then the chirping stopped, for the mother was feeding them again.

    I backed along the branch until my feet touched the trunk. Oh, how would I get down, mouth full of twigs and fruit? I reached and found a handhold. My foot found a place to stand in the darkness. One step, two steps, three steps, four steps. Handhold here. Foothold there. Another step, then another. One more step and down. Slipping. Catching. Hanging on tightly! Waiting until my heart beat calmed down. Waiting until the shaking in my arms stopped. All the time, biting down with all my might into the twig full of fruits so that they would not fall, so I would not lose them. Then slowly, one step down, two steps down, and suddenly I was on the ground.

    My arms gave out, my legs gave out, and I fell, flat, into the red dust. Red. The night was running away. The red of dawn slid silently across the dust, painting it as red as the blood that pounded in my ears, pounded through my tired arms and legs as I lay upon my back looking up into the last of the black sky.

     As the sun rose, I could finally see the tree up close in the light. It was crawling with life! Crawling! But not one single demon. Not one single monster. Not one. There were insects and mice. There swooped a fruit bat flying home to sleep. There fluttered a small bird back to a nest hidden in a crack in the trunk.  A bush baby with huge eyes stared, chattering, from a hole in the trunk. Each animal spoke its own language, its own strange sound. Chattering, chattering as the new day swept away the shadows.

    Cheerip! Cheerip! I heard far above. Cheerip! The prickle point stars disappeared. Cheerip! I opened my mouth to take a deep breath. The twig with the fruits fell on the ground. I took another breath! The morning air was cool in my lungs. It cooled my body, cooled my beating heart. Cheerip! said the baby birds high in the tree. Chee-reee! they said. My tired lips whispered, "Thank you." And I smiled up toward the branch, up toward the bird, up toward the sky and up toward the gods who had gotten me back onto the ground once again.

This page 02/20/99