Free Young Widower by John W. Evans Page A

distinct.
    Just across the path I saw what looked like clumps of feathers on the gravel. I reached down and picked up the pages from our guidebook, ripped from the spine and torn in half. I turned the crank and shined my light down into the brook. Had someone from Katie’s group fallen into the water? Had they all slipped on the rocks? Therocks sloped down to the river at an angle. If a person fell sideways toward the stream, I thought, they might lose consciousness, bleed, even drown. I tried to move faster and climb down to the stream, but I could make very little progress in the dark.
    I turned the flashlight crank and tried to make broad sweeps of the water. I climbed back to the trail and yelled Katie’s name again. Somehow I had turned myself around, because now I was facing out opposite both the smaller and the larger hostel, toward the ridge we had kept to our right as we crossed. It was then that I heard Katie’s voice and swung my flashlight around. I saw nothing, but I heard her:
    Don’t come closer. Find a gun. Get back quickly .
    Perhaps my screaming voice and Katie’s response, after so much silence, made the bear curious, even irritated to understand what he had happened upon, at being unable to synchronize his poor eyesight with the urgent noise.
    In a moment, in the ten minutes it took me to reach the smaller hostel and plead with the hostel owner to take his rifle, Katie would be alone on the ridge. First, the Romanian would sit up and punch at the bear, wildly, shrieking and screaming, and when the bear turned away, he would run toward the hostel’s porch light. The bear would not follow him. Sara would later say she did not know why she also sat up and screamed and ran. She had no memory of leaving Katie, only of seeing the lamp swinging from the porch of the smaller hostel, and then it getting larger as she, too, ran, screaming and crying, toward it.
    I remember all of this in the reverse order. Sara coming down the path, out of the darkness, distraught. The Romanian, already inside of the smaller hostel when I arrived, rocking under a blanket, saying only that he had managed to get away. I remember thinking, Katie cannot be far behind , because if Sara—urban, neurotic, slight—could survive the attack, then surely, so too would Katie. I remember thinking, with some hope, If the fat Romanian survived, then Katie must already be here . I had only to wait a little longer on the porch.
    Then, I was arguing with the hostel owner. He had a rifle, he explained, but he could not let me take it. He would be fined forty thousand Romanian lire for discharging a gun without a state permit to do so. All of the guests were witnesses. His business would be ruined. Two strangers—his sons? other tourists?—held my arms back, and a third stood between us. I thought, It is important that I try to get the gun , and I knew I would not get it. I offered him American dollars, my passport, my pack. I thought, All of this is taking too long . Someone else said to wait in the hostel until we knew there was no bear and I thought, This is when I should be heroic and go save Katie . I staggered out the door and toward the path. Time was slowing down now. It took forever to hike back up the trail and find Katie again. I thought, There will be a funeral at the church and a newspaper report and I will have to give a speech and I will need to bring the body home to Katie’s mother and someone else will have to ship the cats , and I hated myself for thinking it through so thoroughly.
    I could not run and keep my footing. When I found the place again, Katie had been alone there for twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes. Now, she was dying. I was sure of it from the sound of her voice and the manner of the bear: deliberate, certain, indifferent to my arrival. It was doing something. It had a sense of purpose. It did not retreat, even when the rocks I threw struck its fur and hindquarters.
    I thought, The bear will turn toward me