Bearstone

Cloyd hates school in Durango, Colorado, and gets into trouble at his group home. He dreams of visiting his grandmother back in White Mesa, Utah. She lets him disappear into the canyons or hitchhike all over. His housemother, Susan James, says Cloyd can’t visit her because she’s too lenient. Instead, he must spend the summer with a rancher friend of hers, Walter Landis.

They drive east from Durango and up a pine-forest canyon where the Landis ranch lies with its orchard, fields, barn, sheds, and house. Cloyd gets out to open the ranch gate, then dashes off into the orchard, hoping to escape.

Susan quickly gives up the chase. She talks to Walter while Cloyd listens to them from atop a nearby boulder. Walter wears overalls; he’s old and short—Cloyd, at 14, already is bigger—and sounds aged and tired. Susan tells Walter how Cloyd has managed to flunk all his classes. He missed four years’ worth of school while a truant in the White Mesa hills, herding goats for his grandmother. She says, “I just thought being out here and working with you might be good for him” (8); she adds that the boy is “half-wild.” Walter chuckles, and Cloyd likes that.

Walter asks about Cloyd’s parents. Susan says his mother was Ute but died in childbirth, and his father, a Navajo, disappeared. Cloyd grew up with his mom’s family.

Susan asks Walter how he’s doing. He admits that, except for the peach orchard that his late wife loved, he hasn’t kept up the ranch and sold the last of the cattle. Cloyd gazes around at the lush peach trees, heavy with fruit: They’re much better than the ones he and his grandmother nurtured back at White Mesa. Walter says he still owns the “Pride of the West” gold mine up in the mountains (9), but he doubts he’ll ever get back to it.

Cloyd looks up at the red-and-white canyon walls. They remind him of desert cliffs. He notices a notch on the cliff that fits the boulder on which he lies, and he prides himself on figuring out where the boulder came from. He decides this ranch, with its likable owner, is a place he’ll enjoy. He can always run away later if he needs to.

He slips off the rock and climbs up the steep hills.

Cloyd climbs quickly past pines. He looks back: The ranch already appears small below. He notices horses in a pasture. He loves horses.

He reaches the top of the cliffs. Beyond lie huge mountains like none he’d ever seen, “so sharp and rugged, so fierce and splendid” (12). An eagle soars nearby; he takes that as a good omen.

His grandmother told him Durango was close to his people’s original home in the mountains, where they hunted and fished until white settlers pushed them out. Gazing at the mountains, Cloyd feels pride for his ancestors. He wants to stay here and climb to the top of the peaks.

He leaps onto a ledge and climbs down toward the cave where the orchard boulder once had been. The ledge narrows away, and he must move across the cliff face using hand- and footholds. He’s used to this type of climb, but the cliff angles outward until he’s just barely hanging on, legs shaking with the exhausting effort. Forcing down panic, he summons more strength, edges forward, and drops onto the cave floor.

Something sticks out from a crevice. He pulls from it a blanket that contains a mummified baby. It’s a burial of one of the Ancient Ones. Also in the crevice is an unbroken jar that contains a piece of turquoise stone in the shape of a bear. He recalls his grandmother’s stories of how their people used to live in harmony with bears and how, if a bear became someone’s guardian, that person would be strong and lucky.

Cloyd decides to keep the bearstone. He asks the dead child to lend him the stone to help him on his life journey. He also gives himself a secret name, something usually known only to one other person: “I don’t need a father; I don’t need anyone. […] My name is Lone Bear” (16).

Newly confident, Cloyd climbs back up the cliff the way he came. This time, he feels strong, and his legs don’t shake. He dashes down the hill, now and then, checking his pocket to make sure the bearstone is still there. With that stone, he feels fearless and hopeful.