VII

Oh, all the years he’d waited. Waited and watched with his dispassionate eye while something died nearby, recording its passing like the truthful witness he was. Keeping his distance, keeping his calm. Enough of that. The bear was dying, and he would die too if he let her go now, let her perish in the dark alone.

Something had snapped in him. He didn’t know why. Perhaps because of the conversation with Guthrie, which had stirred up so much pain; perhaps the encounter with the blind bear at the dump; perhaps simply because the time had come. He’d hung on this branch long enough, ripening there. It was time to fall and rot into something new.

He followed the bear’s trail along the shoreline parallel to the street with a kind of exulting despair in him. He had no idea what he would do when he caught up with the animal; he only knew he had to be with it in its agonies, given that he was to some degree their author. He was the one who’d brought Cornelius and his habits here, after all. The bear had simply been doing what she would do in the wild when confronted by something threatening. She’d been shot for being true to her nature. No thinking queer could be happy with his complicity in that.

Will’s empathy with the animal hadn’t totally unseated his urge to self-preservation. Though he followed the trail closely most of the way, he gave the rocks a little distance when he came upon them, in case there were more animals lurking there. But what little light the lamps of Main Street had supplied was now too far behind him to be of much use. It was harder and harder to make out the bloodstains. He had to stop and study the ground to find them, for which pause he was grateful. The icy air was raw in his throat and chest; his teeth ached as though they were all being drilled at the same time; his legs were trembling.

If he was feeling weak, he thought, the bear was surely a damn sight weaker. She’d shed copious amounts of blood now and must be close to collapse.

Somewhere nearby a dog was barking, her alarm familiar.

“Lucy . . .” Will said to himself, and looking up through the flickering snow saw that his pursuit had brought him within twenty yards of the back of Guthrie’s shack. He heard the old man shouting now, telling the dog to shut up, and then the sound of the back door being opened.

Light spilled from it, out across the snow. A meager light by comparison with the streetlights half a mile back, but bright enough to show Will his quarry.

The animal was closer to the shore than to the shack, and closer to Will than either: standing on all fours, swaying, the ground around her dark with her free-flowing blood.

“What the fuck’s going on out here?” Guthrie demanded.

Will didn’t look at him; he kept his eyes fixed on the bear—as hers were fixed on him—while he yelled for Guthrie to go back inside.

“Rabjohns? Is that you?”

“There’s a wounded bear out here—” Will yelled at him.

“I see her,” Guthrie replied. “Did you shoot her?”

“No!” From the corner of his eye Will could see that Guthrie had emerged from his shack “Go back inside will you?”

“Are you hurt?” Guthrie hollered.

Before Will could reply the bear was up and, turning her bulk toward Guthrie, she charged. There was time as she roared upon the old man for Will to wonder why she’d chosen to take Guthrie instead of him, whether in the seconds they’d stared at one another she’d seen that he was no threat to her: just another wounded thing, trapped between street and sea. Then she was up and swiping at Guthrie, the blow throwing him maybe five yards. He landed hard, but thanks to some grotesque gift of adrenaline he was on his feet a heartbeat later, yelling incoherently back at his wounder. Only then did his body seem to realize the grievous harm it had been done. His hands went up to his chest, his blood running out between his fingers. His yells ceased and he looked back up at the bear, so that for a moment they stood staring at one another, both bloodied, both teetering.

Then Guthrie spoiled the symmetry and fell face down in the snow.

Still standing at the doorstep, Lucy began a round of despairing yelps, but however traumatized she was she plainly had no intention of approaching her master. Guthrie was still alive; he was attempting to turn himself over, it seemed, his right hand sliding on the ice as he tried to lift himself up.

Will looked back the way he’d come, hoping that somebody would be in sight who could help. There was no sign of anyone on the shoreline; perhaps people were making their way along the street. He couldn’t afford to wait for them, however. Guthrie needed help now. The bear had sunk down onto all fours again, and by the degree of her sway, she looked ready to keel over entirely. Keeping his eyes on her he cautiously approached the place where Guthrie was lying. The delirium that had seized him earlier had guttered out. There was only a bitter sickness in his belly.

By the time he reached Guthrie’s side the man had managed to turn himself over, and it was clear that he was wounded beyond hope of healing: his chest a wet pit, his gaze the same.

But he seemed to see Will, or at least to sense his proximity. He reached out as Will bent to him, and caught hold of his jacket.

“Where’s Lucy?” he said.

Will looked up. The dog was still at the doorway. She was no longer barking.

“She’s okay.”

Guthrie didn’t hear him reply, it seemed, because he drew Will closer, his hold remarkably strong.

“She’s safe,” Will told him, more loudly, but even as he spoke he heard the warning hiss of the bear. He glanced back in her direction. Her whole bulk was full of shudders, as though her system, like Guthrie’s, was close to capitulation. But she wasn’t ready to die where she stood. She took a tentative step toward Will, her teeth bared.

Guthrie’s other arm had caught hold of Will’s shoulder. He was speaking again. Nothing that made much sense to Will, at least not at this moment.

“This will . . . not come . . . again, . . .” he said.

The bear took a second step, her body rocking back and forth. Very slowly Will worked to pull Guthrie’s hands off him, but the man’s hold was too fierce.

“The bear, . . .” Will said.

“Nor this, . . .” Guthrie muttered, “nor this . . .” There was a tiny smile on his bloody lips. Did he know, even in his dying agonies, what he was doing: holding down the man who had come with such sour memories, holding him where the bear could claim him?

Will had no choice: If he was going to get out of the bear’s way he was going to have to lug Guthrie with him. He started to haul himself to his feet, lifting the old man’s sizable frame with him. The motion brought a howl of anguish from Guthrie and his grip on Will’s shoulder slipped a little. Will stepped sideways in the direction of the shack, half carrying Guthrie with him like a partner in some morbid dance. The bear had halted and was watching this grotesquerie with black-sequin eyes. Will took a second step, and Guthrie let out another cry, much weaker than the first, and all at once gave up his hold on Will, who didn’t have the power left in his arms to support him. Guthrie slipped to the ground as though every bone in his body had gone to water, and in that instant the bear made her move. Will didn’t have time to dodge, much less run. The animal was on him in a bound, striking him like a speeding car, his bones breaking on impact, the world becoming a smear of pain and snow, both blazing white.

Then his head struck the icy ground. Consciousness fled for a few seconds. When it returned he raised his hand; he saw that the snow beneath him was red. Where was the bear? He swiveled his gaze left and right looking for her. There was no sign. One of his arms was tucked beneath him, and useless, but there was enough strength in the other to raise him up. The motion made him sick with pain, and he was fearful he was going to lose consciousness again, but by degrees he buffed and coaxed his body up into a kneeling position.

Off to his left, a sniffing sound. He looked in its direction, his gaze flickering. The bear had her nose in Guthrie’s corpse, inhaling its perfumes. She raised her vast head, her snout bloody.

This is death, Will thought. For all of us, this is death. This is what you’ve photographed so many times. The dolphin drowning in the net, pitifully quiescent; the monkey twitching among its dead fellows, looking at him with a gaze Will could not stand to meet, except through his camera. They were all the same in this moment, he and the monkey, he and the bear. All ephemeral things, running out of time.

And then the bear was on him again, her claws opening his shoulder and back, her jaws coming for his neck. Somewhere far off, in a place he no longer belonged, he heard a woman calling his name, and his lazy brain thought: Adrianna’s here, sweet Adrianna—

He heard a shot, then another. Felt the weight of the bear against him, carrying him down to the ground, her blood raining on his face.

Was be saved? he vaguely wondered. But even as he was shaping the thought another part of him, that had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear, nor cared to have either, was slipping away from this place; and senses he had never known he owned were piercing the blizzard clouds and studying the stars. It seemed to him he could feel their warmth that the distance between their blazing hearts and his spirit was just a thought, and he could be there, in them, knowing them, if he turned his mind to it.

Something checked his ascent, however. A voice in his head that he knew was familiar to him, yet he could not put a name to.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” the voice said. There was a sly humor in it. He tried to put a face to the sound, but he saw only fragments. Silky red hair, a sharp nose, a comical mustache.

“You can’t go yet,” the interloper said.

But I want to, he said. It hurts so much, staying here. Not the dying part, the living.

His companion heard his complaints and would take no truck with them. “Hush yourself,” he said. “You think you’re the first man on the planet who lost his faith? That’s all part of it.

We’re going to have a serious conversation, you and me. Face-to-face.

Man-to—”

Man-to what?

“We’ll get to that,” the voice replied. It was starting to fade.

Where are you going? Will wanted to know.

“Nowhere you can’t find me when the time comes,” the stranger replied. “And it will come, my faithless friend. As sure as God put tits on trees.”

And with this absurdity, he was gone.

There was a moment of blissful silence, when it crossed Will’s mind that maybe he’d died after all, and was floating away into oblivion. Then he heard Lucy—poor, orphaned Lucy—howling out her heart somewhere close to him. And coming on the heels of her din, human voices, telling him to be still, be still, he was going to be all right.

“Can you hear me, Will?” Adrianna was asking him.

He could feel the snowflakes dropping on his face, like cold feathers. On his brow, on his lashes, on his lips, on his teeth.

And then—far less welcome than the pricking snow—a swelling agony in his torso and head.

“Will,” Adrianna said. “Speak to me.”

“Ye . . . s,” he said.

The pain was becoming unendurable, rising and rising.

“You’re going to be all right,” Adrianna said. “We’ve got help coming, and you’re going to be all right.”

“Christ, what a mess,” somebody said. He knew the inflections. One of the Lauterbach brothers, surely; Gert, the doctor, struck off the register for improper distribution of pharmaceuticals. He was giving orders like a field sergeant: Blankets, bandages, here, now, on the double!

“Will?” A third voice, this one close to his ear. It was Cornelius, weeping as he spoke. “I fucked up man. Oh Christ, I’m sorry—”

Will wanted to hush the man’s self-recrimination—it was of no use to anybody now—but his tongue would not work to make the words. His eyes, however, opened a fraction, dislodging the dusting of snow in his sockets. He couldn’t see Cornelius, or Adrianna, or Gert Lauterbach. Only the snow, spiraling down.

“He’s still with us,” Adrianna said.

“Oh man, oh man,” Cornelius was sobbing. “Thank fucking God.”

“You hold on,” Adrianna said to Will. “We’ve got you. You hear me? You’re not going to die, Will. I’m not going to let you, okay?”

He let his eyes close again. But the snow kept coming down inside his head, laying its hush upon him, like a tender blanket put over his hurt. And by degrees the pain retreated, and the voices retreated, and he slept under the snow, and dreamed of another time.