We are in the after, now, its tension drumming through me like the wing beat of a mosquito. The heaviness of waiting. Bill is missing most of his scalp and the moonlight casts slim shadows through the matted and bloody tangle that was once the familiar top of his head. A slope of pale bone, soft hair, and skin, he tries to keep his eyes open. Groans against the shock and pain with gritted teeth. I try to picture him at the breakfast table, in sparkling sunlight, the comforting width of his shoulders against the back of a chair.
I have Bill’s penknife in my right hand and I’m using it to cut away the loose flesh and skin that hangs like cured meat from his arm where the bear chewed on it. It’s easier than I expected, the knife slips through with little effort. The ease of it makes it worse. The knowledge of my husband’s softness, his buttery insides and the way they can be all turned out.
“Wrap me up,” he says when the small, shredded pieces of his arm have been cut away and dropped like rotting leaves to the forest floor. His voice is an animal version of the one I know, clipped and grunting as if he’s huffing the words into the night with all the effort of a strongman, muscles flexing and working just to keep him from tipping over. There’s agony coming off him in waves like sweat, the musty meat smell of the animal in every crease. A ferric film of blood has settled thickly in my throat. I fumble in the dark and swaddle Bill’s raw arm with fabric, my clothes all torn up to hold him together. I hope he’ll make it through the night like this, bandaged and shivering, his wounds oozing with each long breath.
We sit in the cold grass together, the damp seeping in, held by fear in the same swept clearing where it happened. Where, earlier today beneath the balmy afternoon sun, buzzed by mosquitos, we had set up camp. The flicker of our orange tent through the trees like a fluorescent ship’s sail in the night, us ready to crawl inside and be warm.
Beyond us, it’s only the forest, its slick dark, the murmuring of wind and creatures. The bear is out there somewhere, pawing and grumbling, scratching its snarled snout against tree bark. Its nails and teeth carry traces of Bill through the dirt. If it comes back now, we won’t see it until it’s on us, just like before when we were two warm bodies in a tent. If it comes back now, these quivering, painful moments will have been our last. I occupy myself by imagining the worst, the return. How will the beast look as it heaves itself through the trees and charges us? Will I have time to understand it? I hope I don’t.
I hold Bill’s good hand, squeezing to keep him awake. I talk to him about hiking out when the sun rises, our honeymoon, our favourite foods. During our lives I have tended my husband for countless hours through fevers and injuries, warming and feeding him. Clean bedsheets and chicken soup. Tonight, for the first time, I doubt my ability to save him. He sways against me like a tree tilting in the wind and I try to hold him up.
“I’ll lose the arm,” he says.
“Maybe.”
Bill drifts and I shake him gently. I am taken by vigilance, my body coiled around the memory of it, the hot closeness of teeth and bristled fur, all of us screaming. Pain fizzles from somewhere in my chest and I am more alert than I have ever been, sick with adrenaline like a mother. If only I had claws and fur.
Bill moans loudly. We have a gun which didn’t help us the first time.
“You’re okay, baby, you’re okay,” I say uselessly. I wonder if I’m lying, whether the sun will rise in time to save him. I won’t know until then if I’ve done enough.
We wait.
Author: Imogen Rae lives in the Gloucestershire village where she grew up. She enjoys writing fiction about fears, people and nature that is often inspired by unusual true events from around the world. She loves stories, animals and television.