The Last of the Lumbermen (27 page)

It's a bigger bear
than I first thought, almost certainly a male, although it's
hard to tell for sure in the poor
light. What I can see is that it is drooling
foam from both corners of its jaws. I don't need Klieg lights to hear what language
it's speaking. This is a very pissed-off animal we're dealing with.

The bear's
size is a help: the bigger the bear, the
less likely it is to climb a tree. This one's
rage makes it try, but the weight of
it simply pulls down the branch I used to lever
myself and snaps it off. Every instinct I have,
meanwhile, is telling me to climb higher, but I'm
aware that if I do it could be fatal.
If I climb too high,
my
weight will become the issue.

That it's winter helps me,
too. If this little party were taking place in the
summer, the bear might have already toppled the
tree and be chewing on my butt. But
in these conditions my tree's roots are encased
in ice, and the snow pack is firmly cradling mo
re than a metre of its trunk. Still,
if I get too high the bear will be able to snap the tr
unk and bring me down.

Now that I'm clear of his range, the bear settles
at the base of the spruce and begins,
noisily but without much enthusiasm, to tear out the tree's
roots. I'm safe from that, but it's small
consolation. James is up one tree, me up
another, Bozo lying somewhere below the crest
of the slope injured — or worse, injured
and
trying to figure out a way to take another
run at the bear. Or, goddamn the fucking
bear, dead. I unstrap one snowshoe, pull it o
ff, and, leaning down, bounce it off the bear's broad skull.

More stupidity. The
bear whirls about and cuffs the snowshoe into the
darkness. The second shoe I pull up into the branches beside
me. If the motherfucker does manage to climb into the
tree, it'll be my only weapon.

“James,” I holler across the darkness. “You okay?”

I hear Bozo bark, and
then a quavery voice from the tree at
the top of the hill answers. “I'm okay so far. Who is it?”

“It's Andy. Don't come out of that tree.”

“You think I'm nuts?”

That tells me
his mouth is okay, at least. “Just stay ther
e,” I tell him. “Your father is coming from the other direction. Try to keep an eye out for him. If you see him coming, warn him.”

“Okay. Now what?”

I don't have an answer, nor anything that
remotely resembles a plan. This is a bear
that shouldn't be where it is, or when. Whatever
kind of den it had built down in that boneyar
d of abandoned machinery must have collapsed under the weight
of the melting snow, and that's what woke it
up. But a normal bear would simply redig the
den and go back to sleep. So, this bear is seriously
screwed up to begin with. Hard to say
what it'll do next.

The bear seems to have some ideas about
that. It leaves off trying to push my tr
ee over and goes to the flashlight, which I dropped
— still on — in the middle of the snowmobile
trail. I see the bear, in silhouette, paw at
the light. His head dips, there is an audible crunch, and the flashlight goes out.

For a very brief moment, silence reigns. I can't see
the bear through the branches, and I can't see
the tree James is in until I snap o
ff several small twigs and let them fall. Even then,
it's my ears that tell me where the
bear is and what he's up to. The sonofabitch has gone
back to the tree James is in, and he's
having another go at pushing that one down. About the
only good thing about the situation is that Bozo hasn't r
eappeared. And depending on how badly she's hurt, even that may not be for the good.

“Andy,” I hear James's voice
calling. “He's coming up after me!”

Shit. “Try crawling up higher.”

“I can't,” James yells. “I'm stuck.”

The next
sound is confusing. It's a distinct thud, followed by a bloodcu
rdling yowl that, if I didn't understand the range of
sounds a bear can make, I'd have thought was human.
I hear James's voice yell “Dad,” then my name, and I'm
out of the tree and scrambling in the
snow for the axe, which I was lucky enough to drop next to the trail.

The
racket from the hilltop is eerie, but I'm dead
certain about what's happening: my father arrived as the bear was climbing into the tree after James, and
he did what he had to — he attacked it with
whatever he was carrying. Judging from the yowl, he's
done some damage.

I won't ever know how long it takes me to
cross the fifty metres between my tree
and the one James is in. Faster than I'm capable of
— and not fast enough. But I know that the
bear is mauling my father, and maybe James as well.

Ten metres away
, I can see I'm partly right: the bear is
straddling my father, tearing at his arms and
elbows, snapping at his face. Without breaking stride I
turn the axe backward and aim a crossing blow
at the bear's shoulder with the blunt edge. I'm
hoping to distract it, and if I'm lucky break
its shoulder blade. I can't use the sharp end or swing
downward at it because my father is underneath, and
the bear can move faster than either of us.

Once again,
I get lucky. The axe head slams hard
into the bear's right shoulder, and as it turns
to confront me I twist the axe head
over my left shoulder, turning the cutting blade and using
my own momentum to position my body. I plant
my left leg and propel the axe downwar
d from the left side with every ounce of my
strength at the arc of the bear's
neck where the vertebrae are most vulnerable.

My aim is
close, but not perfect. I feel a sickening thud as
the axe head bites into and through the flesh of
the bear's shoulder, and then the axe is
gone and the bear with it, spinning sideways, and I see
the spade my father used for his attack, a long-handled
one, the handle still held across his chest as
a defence, but before I can do or say or
think anything else I'm knocked flying, it's the bear
and he's on me, grunting and salivating so close
to my face I can feel the hot, foul b
reath on my cheeks, and something else, drool or
blood across my throat, spilling on my chest,
and then another solid thud I feel in my own bod
y, and the bear shrieks and is gone again, rolling sideways through the snow, and I'm gazing at my father's blood-drenched face.

I scramble to my feet, looking for the axe so
I can fend off the next attack, but it's ove
r. The bear is writhing and coughing in the
snow, the spade lodged squarely in its spine
at mid-back. One of my cheeks is stinging, but I'm not
sure if the blood on my wool shirt
is mine or the bear's. Somehow, that seems
the least concern. There are slashes on both sides
of my father's face, and a deeper gash on
his neck that runs down inside his shredded
wool shirt. Judging from the blood that was spurting
onto me when the bear had me, not all the blood he's dripping is his own. But that's what I hope, not what I know.

TWENTY-NINE

R
ON BATHGATE LEANS BACK
against the tr
ee, and with his back propped against it slides
to the ground. “You okay?” I ask,
stupidly. The momentary eye contact told me he isn't.

He turns to watch James as he climbs
down from the tree. “I think so,” he
answers when James is down, as if what we've just been
through is nothing more serious than having walked
across an icy street. “What about you?”

I play the game. “Some scratches, that's
all. I think the bear had a better shot at you.”

He nods, then lifts
his left arm as James approaches. The boy
is wild eyed, but apparently unhurt.

“Is there a first aid kit on that
Ski-Doo?” I ask him. “And a flashlight? The bear got mine.”

“In my pack,” Ron
interjects, waving his arm in the direction he
came from. He motions to James, who is now
kneeling beside him, his own terror replaced by anxiety
about his father. “Get it for me, will you, son? Just up the trail there.”

“I've got
a cell phone in my pack,” I say. “I'll
call an ambulance.”

My father shakes his head. “Don't need an
ambulance. I'm fine.” I note that he's not using his right arm for anything.

I squat in the snow before him and grasp his upheld forearm. The jacket sleeve is torn and bloody, but that's
all. When I reach for his right arm, he flinches.
The sleeves are shredded, and the contusions there
are deep enough that I can see exposed bone
just below his right elbow.

“Let's cut the crap,” I say to him
under my breath. “You're not okay
.” I look up at James, who is now standing
stock still, watching us. “James,” I say, “Move your tail.
You get the flashlight and first aid kit, I'll get
the phone. My dog's down there somewhere,
too. The bear took a round out of her
when she tried to keep it away from me. I'd
better have a look to see how badly she's hurt. Can you do first aid?”

“I can
do some,” he answers, and scurries up the trail to
find the pack without explaining how much he can do.

I wade off through the snow,
skirting the dying bear. When I reach the
edge of the bank I call Bozo. She barks back
a wan reply. She's alive, at least. I st
ruggle back to the trail, following it to the
spot where my first encounter with the bear took
place. There I find my pack, and the snowshoes. I put them back on.

Bozo is fifteen feet down the embankment, lying
on her side in the snow. I call her
name, and in the faint light I can see her
tail wagging. There's a break in the
bank's edge below me where she can climb back up,
if she's capable of moving at all. If she
isn't, I'm in big trouble.

“Bozo,” I call, making my voice authoritative even though
I don't feel it. “Get your butt up here, you cowardly bugger.”

She whimpers, but gets to her
feet and follows me to the opening in the bank.
“Come,” I say. She does, but doesn't make it
on the first try. The trail of blood spots
are visible against the snow behind her even in
this light, and she's favouring her right rear leg.
Gamely, she tries again, and this time I'm read
y. I drop down on my stomach, grab
her by the collar, and wrench her toward
me. It's enough, and a second later she's lying on
top of me, licking my face. “Good dog,” I tell her. “Not a coward at all.”

A quick inspection of her haunch reveals a bloody patch
about five or six inches in diameter where the
bear's claws got her, and three or four
more smaller gashes. She's badly bruised, and the
re's likely tendon damage, but at least her leg and
hip don't seem to be broken.

She follows me back up
the hill and settles down a few feet up the trail,
giving the now-still hulk of the bear a wide berth.
James already has the first aid kit out and
is expertly encasing a large surgical pad with
a roll of gauze binding around his father's fo
rearm.

“We'd better put a tourniquet on that one,”
I suggest. Without a word, he scurries over
to the Ski-Doo and returns with a length of
thin rope and a flashlight. While he applies the tourniquet
I check my father's upper torso and head. Ther
e's a gash in his scalp just above the hairline that's
bleeding profusely, and a neck wound that looks
deep, but along which the blood is already coagulating. I
staunch the scalp wound and fashion a makeshift bandage to hold it there.

James
gently pushes me aside, and I defer. He r
efits the head bandage, hands his father a gauze pad, tells
him to hold it against his neck, and orders
me to sit down. I do, and he applies a
gauze pad to my cheek and deftly tapes it into place
with a strip across my forehead and another beneath my nose.

While he's doing this,
I retrieve the cell phone from my pack and
tap in 911. I'm able to calm myself
sufficiently to inform the emergency operator that there's been
a bear mauling, and get her to dispatch an
ambulance to meet us in the parking lot beneath the north end of the Nechalko bridge. Then I call Esther.

She's as clipped and efficient as the emergency operator
, not even asking which of us is injured. “I'll be waiting,” she says.

I'm lightheaded, but I fight it off. Too many things still to be done. I ask James if the bear went after the Ski-Doo.

“I don't think so,” he answers, but doesn't move.

“See if you can crank it up,” I tell him. “Scat.”

While he restarts the Ski-Doo, I play the flashlight ac
ross the bear. The animal is still alive, spr
ead-eagled in the snow with the hilt of the spade
protruding from its back, its deranged
blood pumping out in the dirty snow. When the
flashlight beam reaches its head, its eyes flicker. It
snorts, convulses, and is still. Dead, I hope.

The beam reveals a few
other things. The bear's hindquarters are a mass
of running sores, and when I step closer for
a look I see that the lesions run the length
of its spine and continue to its neck. Pr
esumably the chest and belly are similar, but
I'm not about to check. The mystery of what it
was doing awake in midwinter suddenly isn't quite so mysterious.
This character is no relation to Smokey the Bear
. He may look like the bear from hell, but
he's a local product, all the way. Ha
rd to say exactly how or why he got to
this condition except to point to the garbage strewn a
round the dump, but it's a question somebody better find
the specific answers to.

I glance back at Ron Bathgate — my father.
He hasn't said a word since I brought
the dog back, and it occurs to me that he might
be slipping into shock, if he hasn't already.
Behind me, where James has been jockeying the Ski-Doo
into position, I hear the engine stall. Great, I think.
An injured man and dog. But again, we'r
e in luck. The ignition spins once, a second time
— then the machine kicks to life.

“Can you stand?” I ask Ron.

He nods, braces himself against the tree
to rise, and falls back. “Maybe not,” he says.

“No matter,” I sa
y, manoeuvring myself beside him and slipping his less-damaged
arm over my shoulder. “James,” I yell. “Get the packs!”

“Sc
rew the packs,” he yells back. “Let's get out of here.”

I retrieve both packs and stack them beside
a tree, spearing my snowshoes tip up next
to them as a marker. Then I lift my father
to his feet, trying to keep us from toppling into the depression behind the tree. A
searing bolt of pain ploughs through my sternum, but I
hold my balance, and we stagger across the snow past the bear to the Ski-Doo.

James
is standing beside the machine, ready to go. “What now?” he asks.

“We'll have to load the dog onto this thing,
too. You drive,” I say. “Help me put Dad
between us and I'll hold him and the dog on. For Christ's sake keep it on the trail.”

He's
looking at me quizzically. “
Dad
? You called him
Dad.” It isn't so much an accusation as a statement.

“He's my father, too,” I say flatl
y, and turn around to call the dog over.

“Don't
you want to drive?” he asks, as if the two
things are connected.

“No,” I answer. “It's your machine.
You drive it.” One confession is enough. I've
never been on one of these things in my life, and I couldn't drive it if all four of our lives depended on it.

We settle both Ron and Bozo onto the seats. It's
crowded, and if we hit a good bump I'm
going to go flying. Bozo hasn't ever been near a Ski-Doo,
but she allows me to position her awkwardly acr
oss my lap behind my father.

“Ready?” James calls out from the front.

“Let's go,” I answer.

As we pull away an
instinct tells me to turn around. It's a good
instinct: the bear isn't dead. It is facing us, standing,
its front paws outstretched as if to embrace us,
its open jaws a bizarre collage of foam and
blood and teeth. I've got nothing to stop it with
this time, except a feeble beam of artificial light.

“Go!” I holler at James. “Go!”

As the snowmobile lurches forward, the bear
collapses snout first into the fouled snow, defeated by
its useless hindquarters and the spade lodged in its spine.
For a split second I'm unsure if the
roaring in my ears is the bear or the snowmobile, and we're out of sight before I'm convinced one way or the other.

I'M ABLE TO STAY
on the back of the
Ski-Doo even though James drives like a maniac, but I'm
beyond exhaustion by the time we arrive back under the bridge.
A couple of times Ron Bathgate turns to say
something to me, but the din from the Ski-Doo
is too great for me to pick it up. And
a couple of times I catch him starting to slump
to one side, but with my steadying hand on his
shoulder he keeps it together. Esther is waiting when
we get there, and so is the ambulance.

I let the ambulance attendants pull Ron
from the Ski-Doo, and as I stand to hug
Esther a still-deeper weariness settles on me. She holds me
for a moment, then moves away to go to James,
who is watching the attendants settle his father on a
portable sled. She lays her hand on his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” she asks him.

He half-turns to her,
keeping his eyes on the sled. “He got it, not
me. And” — he jerks his head in my dir
ection — “him. Check him.”

She lets James go and does
what he suggests, running her hands over my chest
and neck, and touching the bandage on my face. “You'
re going in the ambulance, too,” she says. It isn't
a request.

“Did you call Claire?” I ask.

“Oh yes,” she answers. “Wendel's on
his way up there right now. They'll meet
us at the hospital. I'll take James with me.” She speaks the last sentence loud enough for James to hea
r.

I've damned near forgotten about Bozo, who is
sitting on her haunches next to the ambulance. The attendants lift
my father gently into the back, and with what feels
like the last of my strength I lift the dog
into the ambulance and crawl in behind her. James r
eluctantly closes the door.