Surviving Bear Island

by Paul Greci

  I turned away and heaved, but my stomach was empty. I guess the air was pretty rank down here between the guts and the skunk bandage. I stood up and sucked in the freshest air I could.

  I hoped I’d gotten everything out of the deer to keep the meat in good condition. I’d heard stories from Mr. Haskins about meat spoiling when someone like me, who didn’t know jack about what they were doing, cut into an animal.

  Keep the guts from spilling on the meat, that’s what I remembered. And get the skin off the animal. That would help cool the meat. My dad wasn’t a hunter. He loved fishing and talked about taking up hunting someday, but never had. Billy’s dad had a riverboat and took him hunting last year. Billy didn’t say much about the trip. Just that his dad was a jerk with a drinking problem even when they were away from home.

  I tried lifting the deer out of the hole, but it kept falling on top of me, and the guts. I cringed every time the deer hit the guts.

  This was my meat. No way could I ruin it. Without the deer, I may as well turn the knife on myself.

  I tried lying on my stomach at the lip of the hole and pulling the deer out, but could barely reach it, and couldn’t get enough leverage.

  I stood up and looked around. I needed to get the deer away from the gut pile, which I knew would attract bears.

  I leaned the spear on the edge of the hole, took a couple of pieces of rope out of my survival kit, and climbed back down, my boots squishing through the intestines. I tied the front legs of the deer together and slipped the spear through the rope. I lifted one end of the spear, rested it on the lip of the hole, then did the same with the other end so the deer just hung there.

  I hoisted myself out again. I tried brushing the dirt off my bare chest and arms but just smeared it around. I mean, it was a combination of deer guts and blood, my sweat, and dirt. I was bear bait.

  I touched my skunk-bandage and felt moisture right under the wound—it’d soaked through at least four or five layers of sweaty cloth. An image of my mom’s white biking shirt saturated with blood invaded my mind, and I wondered what was flashing through her mind if and when she realized she wasn’t going to make it. What do you do with the last moment of your life when you are alone?

  I grabbed the spear—a hand on each side of the hooves—and started pulling. The deer’s front hooves came over the lip of the hole. Its head appeared. Then the deer lay in the dirt next to the hole.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. I’m gonna be all right.”

  I draped the small deer over my bare shoulders and started downslope, dodging deadfall. I figured it weighed about sixty pounds, as much as a sled dog.

  Just outside my shelter, I dropped the deer, then jogged back upslope for the rest of my stuff.

  I was gonna put the pile jacket on but still didn’t feel cold as long as I was moving, so I just kept moving. Plus, I was a stinking wreck and didn’t want any of my clothes touching me right now.

  I collected wood for strengthening and enlarging my shelter, and for burning. Then I broke boughs and dragged them to my shelter.

  I leaned more big sticks against the giant Sitka spruce, and laid branches and boughs across them, until my shelter wrapped halfway around the tree.

  I stacked boughs in the back entrance to close up the space. I thought about putting a fire ring there, but the shelter bent around so much I didn’t think it’d be worth it. But I couldn’t just leave it open for the bears.

  I lit a fire just after the sun dipped below the ridge behind camp.

  I knew I was supposed to eat and sleep in different places. But I couldn’t let the deer out of my sight for long stretches of time. A bear might get it. I’d use it for a pillow if I had to.

  I had to skin this thing, so I made a cut below the neck and across the back, then pulled on the skin. It started to peel back, but then the meat started coming off with it, so I held the skin with one hand, and using my knife, cut away at the flesh.

  I kept working, pulling on the skin, using the knife to separate it from the meat until I’d exposed most of the flesh. There was still some skin on the lower legs. And the head, I didn’t know what to do with it so I just left it on. But the body and upper legs were clean.

  I added another round of sticks to the fire, then brought in boughs and covered the floor of the shelter.

  I hadn’t eaten any of the deer, but just knowing I had it had somehow energized me. And that made me think about how powerful thoughts could be. I didn’t quite understand why I was able to push myself when I had two head injuries, blistered feet, and had been starving since leaving Fish Camp. But I thought if I could figure it out a little more—that it would be useful. I mean, what if I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from? Why couldn’t I have as much energy then as I did now? I’d only gotten dizzy once since I killed the deer, but yesterday I was stopping every ten steps to rest.

  I carried the skinned deer into the shelter, and set it against the big spruce at the very back. The meat was cool to the touch. And that made me relax a little bit, like maybe it wasn’t rotting from sitting in the hole all night.

  I built up the fire, then stripped until the only thing I was wearing was the skunk bandage. It was still moist under the wound, but at least it hadn’t dripped.

  My blister-covered feet picked up spruce needles as I picked my way toward the small stream. This was gonna be my first official bath since the accident. I wished I didn’t have the gash under my chin. I really wanted to dunk my head and scrub my hair but didn’t want to mess with the bandage.

  At the bank, I eased my way in until I was standing shin deep, then bent and started splashing water between my legs and onto my chest and just kept splashing and scrubbing until my skin prickled with the cold.

  The meat bobbed in the slow boil. I held my nose over the bowl, and just kept inhaling. I had my pile jacket on. No boots, no socks, and the skunk bandage was still tied around my head. I’d scrubbed my long johns at the stream and now they were propped on a branch beside the fire, steaming.

  Besides my head, I actually felt clean.

  I pinned the meat with one knife and cut it into hunks with the other, then speared them into my mouth. One piece after another, like I was part of an assembly line.

  Stab meat.

  Insert in mouth.

  Chew with mouth only open a little so bandage stays in place. Swallow.

  Repeat until bowl has only broth, then refill.

  I turned to the deer, just a dark blob at the edge of the firelight. I smiled. All this from just one kill. And I thought about how lucky I was that I’d heard the noise. And then I thought about the bowl, and how lucky I was that I’d spotted it.

  And then thought, no, it’s only part luck.

  And part learning how to look and listen.

  I’d spotted that silver square because it was out of place. I knew what a strand line was supposed to look like, with the dull greens and browns, and pale yellows.

  And with the deer? I hadn’t just found it. I’d taken action.

  But getting knocked out, and then waking up hours later with a dead deer in the hole without a bear on top of it? Well, maybe that was a bit of luck. And the gash under my chin? Yeah, it was sore, and I didn’t know how deep it was, but I hadn’t bled to death, yet.

  Maybe my blisters were partly responsible. If my feet weren’t so torn up, I wouldn’t have decided to stay here an extra day. Then I started thinking about why my feet were torn up, and I realized that all this stuff was connected in more ways than one.

  It wasn’t some straight connect-the-dots-line where only one thing causes another.

  I cut another couple inches off the flank and plopped it into the broth.

  Later, with a belly full of broth and meat, I snatched bits of sleep between keeping the fire stoked, understanding that this deer was my life.

  THE ACCIDENT

  “Here we go,” my dad yelled.

  I felt the kayak jerk sideways. Now we were paralle
l to the waves on the outside of the rock reef. I reached forward to paddle, but this huge mother of a wave broke broadside on the kayak and buried my arm in the surf. The wall of water popped my spray skirt free from the combing and poured into my cockpit.

  I tried to sit up straight, but the boat was leaning toward the waves.

  “Paddle!” Dad yelled.

  I lifted my paddle and dug into the surf. Then the second wave hit, and I heard a crack. I leaned away from the rock and suddenly I was in the water upside down.

  CHAPTER 23

  SINCE the accident, the sun was something I’d glimpsed between rainstorms, but now, for the fourth day in a row, it filtered through the forest in long golden rays like it’d always been here. Steam drifted from moss-covered logs. Out on the beach, the dark rocks were warm to the touch, but you could still freeze to death at night if you didn’t have a fire.

  I’d washed and dried all my clothes except for my shirt, which was still wrapped under my chin.

  The sun was warm, but the north wind kept things cool enough, so the deer hadn’t rotted yet. At least I didn’t have to worry about flies laying eggs on the meat like I would’ve in the summer. Or yellow jackets swarming.

  I stuffed myself with hunks of boiled deer meat and drank the broth, figuring this was the best way to get all I could from the deer. I had to keep tightening the skunk bandage around my head because it loosened up every time I moved my jaw to chew, and I was eating all the time.

  I cut thin strips of deer meat and dried them on an alder grill until they were almost crispy. I had thirty strips, each about three inches long by one inch wide. These I stored in my shelter in one of my Ziploc bags, keeping it open to allow the air to circulate.

  My new plan: dry as much deer meat as I could and then make a push for the Sentinels.

  I snatched bits of sleep between keeping the fire stoked. I’d dry the deer meat during the day, then build the fire up big at night. I hadn’t seen any bears at this camp, not even fresh scat in the forest, but figured that fire was the main thing that would keep them away from the deer if any wandered through.

  I counted backwards and guessed it’d been at least a week since I’d left Fish Camp, and according to the marks on my spear, thirty-two days since the accident.

  I was still as skinny as a starving chicken, but I had some energy. And I used it to collect wood and boughs, and to cut and dry deer meat. My feet were healing too, with a thin layer of new skin covering some of my blisters. And my swan bite had finally stopped itching.

  My shelter was starting to sag in the middle from the weight of the boughs. I thought about trying to fix it, but right now I needed to deal with the skunk bandage. Sometimes my wound throbbed like it had its own heart. I wanted to know what was going on under there, but was scared to remove the bandage only to have blood start gushing. The shirt was crusty with dried blood on the outside, but I hadn’t stuck my fingers underneath to see what was going on ’cause I didn’t want to open the wound up if it was healing.

  I saw the clouds building to the south, and knew this might be my only chance to wash my shirt and actually be able to dry it. Plus, I wanted to wear my shirt the way it was supposed to be worn. I missed that layer right next to my skin, something the air couldn’t get under. And I was still a little freaked about wearing a bloody bandage ’cause I thought bears might be attracted by the smell.

  Wash that thing. Bears like blood. Period.

  I untied the sleeves from the top of my head, and peeled the skunk bandage off my face and the underside of my jaw, but when I got to the wound the shirt stuck, like it was part of my skin.

  I held the bunched-up shirt under my jaw as I walked to the stream. If the gash was actually closing, I wanted to do all I could to keep it from opening up.

  I lay on my belly and dipped my chin into the water.

  I tugged gently on the shirt, but it still wouldn’t let go. I sunk my head in the cold water farther, and shook it back and forth, and kept gently pulling on the shirt, and little by little it came free. I set the shirt on the shore and stuck my head under and raked my fingers across my scalp. The cold water plugged my ears, made it feel like my head was gonna explode.

  It needed a scrubbing, but having my head under freaked me out a little, so I bobbed it up and down and took a gulp of air each time and just kept raking.

  I sat up and shook my hair, kind of like a dog does when it gets out of the water. Then I patted the wound with my fingers and they came back pink.

  I took a breath. Not what I wanted to see. But pink was better than red.

  I wished I could see what was going on, and then I thought, the bowl. I jogged back to my shelter, grabbed the empty bowl and peeked into it, but saw only a blurry image among the dents.

  I flipped the bowl over and caught an image of my face on the side of the bowl. The image was small, about as long as my index finger, but pretty clear. I could make out a reddish smudge where the wound was. And within that smudge, a curved red line. I ran my hand along my neck below the wound. It came back clean. I touched the wound and my fingertips turned pink again. At least it wasn’t gushing. A little pink, I could live with. Like I had a choice. Then I tilted the bowl to have a look at my swan bite. All I saw was a narrow straight line below my ear lobe.

  Back at the creek, I scrubbed the shirt, watched the water turn pink, and wrung it out. And I kept rinsing and wringing the shirt until the water looked almost clear.

  It was hard to keep my fingers off the gash, even though I knew that the more I touched it the more likely I’d mess it up or get it dirty. I was about to head back to my shelter when I heard a splash downstream. I stood still, looking with eyes, listening with my ears, and trying to just feel whatever it was that was out there.

  I took a breath.

  Be like a tree—still.

  I heard another splash, then a hump of brown fur appeared in the middle of the creek.

  CHAPTER 24

  A LONGISH head popped out of the water about thirty feet from me, and let out a call that sounded like a muffled giggle. Then another head popped up, and another. Until there were seven in all. And they were all making these giggle-sounds, like they were having a conversation. One of them crawled up the bank on the opposite side of the creek from where I was standing and produced the loudest giggle yet. It had some gray fur mixed in with the brown. It pulled itself along on its belly for a couple of lunges and then turned and spoke again.

  River otters, I thought. A family of river otters. I’d seen solitary river otters a few times around Fairbanks, but never a whole family of them. Unlike sea otters, which are more rounded and live off shellfish, river otters are slender and eat mostly fish, but they’ll make a meal of ducks too, if they can catch them. The otters in the creek were chattering back and forth, their heads turning toward each other and the gray one on shore was getting louder and louder.

  Come on, I thought. Follow the old guy. He probably knows what he’s doing. And like I could control them with my mind, they started one by one up the bank taking the exact route the gray one had taken. They were still talking their giggle-talk and were now bunched up on a small mound almost directly across from me. I had remained completely still so either they didn’t know I was here, or didn’t care. The gray one started moving again, traveling away from the creek.

  No, I thought, don’t go. Don’t leave me. And I let out a couple of giggles, trying my best to imitate them. They all turned as one and seemed to focus in on me. First one, then another and another giggled back, until they were all giggling. I let out another giggle and that set them to giggling louder and louder.

  I wasn’t sure what we were talking about. I just wanted to keep the conversation going. They were stretching their long necks like they were trying to see me better. Then I realized that I hadn’t moved a muscle besides the ones controlling my vocal cords so maybe they actually hadn’t seen me yet. Maybe they were trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. If you heard s
omeone say hello but didn’t see them, then heard the “hello” again and still didn’t see anyone, wouldn’t you be curious? I would.

  I took a tentative step toward them and the giggling ceased like it’d been cut by a knife. Then it was replaced by something like screams.

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait.” I did the giggle-noise again but their screams just grew louder, and all together the family of river otters disappeared into the forest and my heart sank. I mean, besides my dad’s voice, I was actually talking to some people. Well, not people exactly, but still, I was hanging out with them.

  If only I hadn’t moved. But I couldn’t have stood there forever. Still, they’d talked back to me in giggle-talk before they’d seen me. They’d accepted me, that’s how it felt. And maybe they would come back and maybe they wouldn’t panic and scream and run when they realized that I didn’t want to hurt them, that I just wanted to be with them.

  And then I thought of the deer I’d killed. Could they sense I was a killer? Is that why they ran? But they were meat eaters too. I’d watched a video of a river otter eating a salmon. It started from the fish’s head and ripped and tore and swallowed.

  The next day the clouds started dumping rain. But it was a colder rain, like it might change to snow. And the air had that metal taste you get before it snows.

  All the fingers in my gloves had holes. My rain pants had split between the legs. And the heels in my socks were see-through thin.

  In Fairbanks sometimes we’d skip fall, or have it for a week or two, and go right to winter. Once you got into September you just never knew when, as my dad likes to say, “the hammer would come down.”

  Out here, I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t have any winter boots or gloves. I didn’t have any winter anything. If the hammer of winter dropped, I’d be pounded over and over.

  I spent most of the day inside, drying deer meat. And thinking.

  Since the accident I’d turned into a nomad. Traveling until I found food and then staying until the food source disappeared. I knew I needed to get to the Sentinels, knew that it was unlikely I’d see anyone anyplace else, but my day-to-day actions were driven by basic survival.