Free Young Widower by John W. Evans Page B

because I am provoking it, and when it charges, I will run down the path, and it will follow me away from Katie .
    Before that night we had never seen a bear. Which does not matter now, except to say that no one, especially Katie, whom we all imagined knew exactly what to do if attacked by a bear, had an idea of encounter or survival beyond the hypothetical situation. Play dead. Wait for the bear to lose interest. Leave.
    I watched the attack, trying to close the distance: fifteen, maybe twenty yards. Every time I thought to approach and intervene, I could not move my body forward. I panicked, but I also had a sense to fear for my own life. It was as though I stood on the rooftop terrace of a tall building, leaning my head to look over the side, imagining I was about to fall, while my feet remained at a distance from the ledge.
    In the moment I was ashamed of myself. The shame alternated a clear-headed practicality about survival with an untested capacity for heroism that would not come forward. It felt like cowardice. I threw rocks, yelled, and waved my arms at the bear.
    I thought, The bear will lose interest if I land a large enough rock near its head, and then it will scatter .
    I had no perspective on Katie’s body, except to watch the bear’s muzzle dip and lift over it. It seemed to move in and out of focus, as though spot-lit for a stage performance or caught in headlights. The white fur was thickest at the paws, or perhaps I was most comfortable watching the space just in front of its body. The scene was revealed partially with what I could manage to shine and how steadily I held the light. But the sound was constant; it invited speculation. The wind, the tearing of clothes, the snorting and grunting bear, all combined like woodcuts to assemble those parts of the scene I was constantly not seeing. I could fill in the gaps only as I imagined them.
    Katie screamed, at first words, then only the sound of her making noise, no longer a voice but something deep, rasped, and loud that seemed to continue out of habit, long after it might have stopped. I could not see Katie’s face or the entire length of the bear. I remember imagining for a moment the cartoon shape of a bear from a children’s book, overlaid on bright paper, filling the darkness with unmeasured angles.
    I thought, Why is no one coming to help me? I moved my limbs through molasses, at the darkness.
    When Katie saw the bear that would kill her, she stopped walking, threw her pack across the field, and laid flat on the ground. Sara and the Romanian explained much later that they had all made themselves small at first and spoke only in hushed tones. Katie had led this progression to the ground. Sara had also thrown her pack in the opposite direction. At first, it seemed, they acted together, certain of a survival they coordinated in hushed tones— Stay down. Don’t move —even as the bear moved closer, taking its time, measuring the stillness around each body.
    Bears in the wild are revealed, rather than seen. They are territorial by nature. They move in clans. They do not share open spaces. Rabid, startled, drunk, or hungry bears, and also cub mothers, violate these patterns. Brown bears weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds, have three-inch claws, and can run thirty miles per hour. Unlike a black bear, a brown bear on the attack rarely loses interest or spooks. Black bears lose interest when its prey plays dead; brown bears move closer.
    Katie knew some of this in the moment. I think often that Katie must have been so frustrated, believing she was doing the right thing, waiting for the bear to do its part and leave. She did what an American in the wilderness is supposed to do when she sees a black bear. Katie must have felt hopeful about her survival. Perhaps she was not conscious in the moment during the attack when I arrived. Or perhaps she knew I was there and felt disappointed that I did not do more.
    This is the man I married , she thought, the one who