The Wild Inside (35 page)

The article said that the attack happened in the night near a lake about a mile and a quarter in from one of the main roads. The two men were each in their own tent on opposite ends of the site. With the first victim, the grizzly had torn open the tent while he slept, took him out of it, and dragged him about fifty feet away from his campsite, where his remains were found. Apparently, there were some screams, but judging by the tent, there didn’t appear to be much of a struggle.

The second victim heard some of the commotion and screams off in the distance and wasn’t sure what to do. By the time the grizzly came for him, he was still in his tent, and when the bear went for him, he screamed and thrashed. And the louder he cried out, the harder the bear bit down. He could hear his bones breaking. Then, as I can only imagine when one undergoes a traumatic event—his adrenaline pumping, his mind slowing down and putting things in some strange, perhaps logical perspective, he decided not to fight it. He mentioned
that it took all his strength to go completely limp, but when he did, the bear loosened his bite and left him there, injured. Luckily, there were two other people camping at the site: two male college-age students who helped him. One stayed with him and one ran back to their car to get help.

• • •

Mom didn’t ask about the park or about Ford anymore after that evening at Natalie’s, which surprised me, given her nature to dive right into things without beating around the bush. I’d caught up with her on the phone a few times since dinner, and she’d simply ask, “How’s the case going?” I’d usually give a one-word answer, like fine or good, and she’d get off the subject and go into details about her job or the grandkids. On our most recent chat when I returned back from Heather’s place, she asked about the cabin and if I was comfortable there. I said it was fine.

“Do you ever go out?”

I assumed she meant for dinner. “Pretty much for all meals. Once in a while I cook, which in fact, I’m just about to do.” I had picked up a steak and some fresh mushrooms at the grocery store in Columbia Falls on my way back from Heather’s.

“I mean,” she said, “on a date?”

I got off the subject as quickly as I could. I was pretty certain that Nat and she discussed my lack of a love life on a regular basis, but she wouldn’t let it go, so I told her that I dated someone two months ago, but that it didn’t work out.

“Why not?

“She was still hooked on her ex.” I took the frying pan I’d used once before to make some eggs out of the drying rack by the sink and opened the old fridge and grabbed the butter I’d bought earlier in the week.

Ma went silent.

I found a colander, threw the mushrooms in, and turned the faucet on to wash them. I knew there was nothing she could say since it wasn’t my doing that it had ended. I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. “Ma.” I turned the water off. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I’m your mother; that’s my job.”

“I know. But I’m fine with or without someone in my life.”

“I know you are,” she said. “It’s just that . . .” She trailed off.

I waited for her to say more, but didn’t push for it. When she didn’t, I promised her I’d come by soon.

• • •

While I was eating my steak and sautéed mushrooms, the worry in my mother’s voice started to needle me. I chewed my steak too long until it felt thick and hard to swallow. I had no appetite and pushed my plate aside. I began pacing the cabin, unable to sit and relax. I poured myself a whiskey but didn’t drink it. I tried to sit and read but couldn’t focus on the words.

I pictured Aubrey, the last woman I’d dated, with her dark bobbed hair and round eyes. I had brought her to my apartment after dinner, put on some tunes, and poured some Cabernet. We talked for some time, laughed a bit, although probably not enough in retrospect, and when I kissed her it was nice. No sparks really, but nice. When I tried to go further with her—ran my hands under her shirt along her spine and eventually circled the butt of my hands so they were touching the sides of her breasts—she started to weep. I kissed a tear away and asked what was wrong. She poured it out then, that she’d been badly hurt by her last and still missed him.

That was pretty much the end of it. She called me three or four times after that wanting to go out again, saying she was better and that she regretted ruining things between us, but by then I’d thrown sturdy walls up. Decided I didn’t need it in my life, and because of my
traveling, she didn’t need it either. I thought of Monty.
Marriages are hard. They’re really hard. . . .
Even when you watch your own parents go through their shit, you think it will be different for you. . . .

From what I remembered, my parents made it look easy, but maybe I just was remembering our family history incorrectly. The thought of my memories being imperfect, that time morphs all events in our minds, stabbed at me more than usual.

I thought of Heather. A good-looking woman who seemed to be my age, living alone, not remarrying. Embarrassment over the fact that I wanted to have another beer with her, ask her about what went wrong for her, prickled me. I thought of Monty and how he seemed to pop right out of his sorrow over his separation and to light up around her. All men are such fools around attractive women, I thought.

I lay in bed for over an hour, restless and unable to drift off. I got up and paced some more, my mind or heart aching with some nameless want or need. The wind was picking up again outside, making the cabin creak. I opened the door and stepped out into the dark to take a deep breath. The cloud cover had broken and the stars shone above like billions of false promises. I went back in and threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and went back out to look at the night sky. Instead, I found myself walking up the driveway from my cabin’s light and onto the dark road, where the night consumed me, enveloped me.

I could feel my breathing quicken and my sternum clench stronger. Maybe it was just the conversation with my mother getting to me, but suddenly I felt a wave of anxiety crash over me: me telling Monty about Shelly’s miscarriage, Lou’s confession about Elena, the caged grizzly with his beady eyes out there less than a mile from where I stood, Ford and our dislike of one another, Aubrey weeping under my kiss, Shelly divorced after two children. . . . All of these unrelated things pressed in on me from every direction, looking for cracks to leak into and gain momentum. I wanted to scream into the
cold air, to scare every living thing out there in the brush and trees behind the cabin away.

I strode back into the cabin, determined, even though I had no specific goal. I grabbed my flashlight and went back out and started walking, a deliberate stroll, heading for headquarters while the forest vibrated around me.

About halfway there I began to hear a moaning, a low-pitched and eerie part-groan, part-whine sound that rippled through the woods. As I rounded the last cabin on the block, I could see a reddish glow in the darkness: the heat lights from the bear’s cage. Someone had left them on. Surely, I considered, they were supposed to be off at night. The bear’s whining seemed to grow louder, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I was getting closer or if he was actually moaning more intensely.

I kept walking, slower and with more trepidation than I had been, but onward. My limbs felt as if they were on autopilot, carrying me through the dark toward a grizzly cage I could scarcely approach in the light of day with all sorts of park employees around. I barely noticed the leaves rustling or pebbles crunching under my feet on the gravel road that bypassed headquarters and led to the path to the cage.

When I reached the trail, the red glow and the moaning became more surreal—and for a moment I thought I was in one of my strange dreams. I walked down it—the one Ford and I had walked, past where I had stood frozen earlier in the week, and up to the cage. The wild smell of grizzly filled my senses, seemed to enter my pores, my eyes, my nose. My heart pounded in my chest. The bear had been pacing the length of the enclosure, and now that I stood before him, he paused only for a second to hold his snout to the air, then returned to his pacing and moaning as if he didn’t care anymore who turned up beside his cage. One step—turn, one step back—turn, one step—turn, one step back—turn. Wailing the entire time.

I stood and looked at him. I could see his hot breath in the cold air. I wanted to run, but everything felt like it was slowing and speeding up at the same time. My scalp felt like I was in the middle of an electric storm, but my mind went sluggish, like molasses was leaking into it, my vision going tunnel-like and dark on me with the red glow on the outer edges. My legs went limp, my knees buckled, and I fell to the hard ground to a kneeling position. Grotesque images tumbled through my mind and unheeded voices whispered in my ears. I thought I heard something loud in the distance, a train or a truck, and then the grizzly made an even higher-pitched wail, blocking all other noises out.

Except my father’s voice. His screaming.
Oh my God, a bear, he’s got me.
I hear the rustling of his sleeping bag and screaming.
Get out of your sleeping bag, Ted. Get out of the tent.
I try to move, but I can’t. I’m a block of cement.

If he comes for you, don’t move, Ted, play dead.
I hear more screaming and I’m still frozen, my heart exploding in my chest.
Don’t move, Ted, play dead. Go limp if it goes for you.

Something is being dragged. I hear the breaking of branches, underbrush, bushes, and brambles suddenly as loud as a Mack truck barreling through the forest, and I think it can’t be him, but somehow I know it is. And still my father’s orders between screams, now from fifteen or twenty yards off to the side of the campground:
Ted—if—
He gets only part of what he’s trying to say out between ragged cries
. If—
there’s more screaming and I just lie there.
If . . . if he comes for you—go limp.

I try to answer. I try to say,
I will, Dad, don’t worry, I will,
but I’m frozen. I can’t speak. I’m tangled in something wet. I try to get out of my wet bag, kicking and frantically fighting it, my arms and legs flailing and finally I break out, stagger into the unspeakable night toward the sounds: the crunching, the ravens screeching like blades being
sharpened, the unbearable shrieking. Then it all goes quiet.
Dad?
I manage.
Dad?
But there is no answer.
Please, Dad, please, go limp. You play dead. Please, Dad, stop talking. You play dead.

My lips are moving, I’m sure, but I’m not certain that sounds are escaping. I look frantically around, but it’s so dark and all I see are millions of stars in an inky sky and shadowy phantom, twisted and gnarled objects that I somehow figure are trees even though everything is all wrong and all order is lost. There are too many levels for order: frigid air, water gently lapping by the lake, bright stars, stunted trees, the soft flutter of a bat’s wings, no human voices . . . and the horrible snap of bones.

The hollow moaning yanked me back, along with someone’s hands pulling at me by the arm, shaking me, the smell of bear still in my nostrils. “Ted? Are you all right? Are you all right?”

I tried to stand, but my legs kept giving.

“Jesus, Ted, are you all right? Are you drunk? What the hell’s going on here? Just stay seated.”

I fell back hard on the cold, wet ground and put my head between my knees and breathed, gulping in the dank air sodden with the musty smell of earth.

“Just stay seated, will ya? I’m going to call an ambulance.”

I managed a loud “
no
.”

“Well, stay there. I’m going to turn these lights off. I’ll be right back.”

In I don’t know how long—a minute, five, ten—Joe returned and crouched by my side. “Do I need to call a doctor?”

“No,” I said, my vision sharpening, my breathing trying to slow. “No, I’m fine, really.”

“Fine is not how I’d describe this.”

“I just want to get back to the cabin for some rest.”

“All right, then, let me help you.” Joe grabbed my arm as I stood, and after a few steps away from the cage, I felt sturdier. I turned and
looked back. The red glow was extinguished, and the bear’s moaning had subsided. The forest surrounding us felt still. I turned back and kept walking.

“My car’s in the lot.”

“The walk,” I managed. “It’ll be better for me.”

Joe stopped and looked at me, his face etched with deep concern. “I think I should drive you.”

“No, really. I want to walk.”

“You sure?”

I started down the path.

“The lights,” he said. “Kurtis called me since I’m closest and he’s in Kalispell. He told one of his men to turn them off, but the guy forgot and remembered about an hour ago, so Kurtis called me and asked me if I could come out and turn ’em off. Not good for the guy to have lights on him all stinkin’ night.”

“I guess not,” I said.

“Did you hear him moaning from your cabin?”

“Not from the cabin, but I was out for a walk. Couldn’t sleep. I heard him when I got closer and came over to see what the deal was. I could see the lights were still . . .” I quit talking because I felt it begin to rise, the same damn drill, the nausea building, breaking through the clench in my sternum. I broke away from Joe and made my way to the side of the road.

• • •

After Joe got me some water and I sat on the couch, he sat in a chair kitty-corner to me. I could feel that my butt was damp from being on the ground. He wore an old pair of jeans and a thick red-and-gray-checked flannel shirt. Razor stubble covered his pointy jaw and his thinned white hair stuck straight up in a fuzzy mess. I thought of the tufted hair on a baby duck. He had poured himself a glass of whiskey.

“I see you found the good stuff.” I looked at my glass of water. “I could use one of those.”

He cocked his head to the side and eyed me for a moment. “I’d hop right up to grab you one, but I’m trying to figure out if you’ve already had too much, and I’m thinking you haven’t since I don’t smell alcohol on you.”