by Gene Wolfe
The level sunshine streaked the woods with golden bars that seemed to him to obstruct his vision, illuminating a young sumac as though with a spotlight, leaving a clump of bayberries darker than they had been by night. If the bear was moving he couldn’t hear it. It couldn’t be snuffling; he would have heard that. No question about it.
There! Behind the fallen log.
Once more he drew his bow. The wind pushed aside a leafy branch, and a gleaming shaft from the sun struck the place on the other side of the log before his own shaft could. A few twigs and dead leaves lay there.
Nothing else.
The laundry smell had grown stronger. Air pollution! Even way out here, there was air pollution. He snorted, allowed the bowstring to straighten again, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
And the bear rose on its hind legs at the sound, as bears will, and held up both paws.
No buck fever now. Back went the arrow to his ear. His release was clean and crisp, sending the long aluminum-shafted broadhead flying from his sixty-pound compound bow nearly as fast as a bullet.
Yet the bear tried to dodge. He saw it in slow motion, like movie blood flying off the teeth of a chain saw, the silver arrow streaking, the bear (almost as short-faced as a man, and not like a black bear very much) trying to writhe away before the arrow got it, the long orange hair on its chest crossed on a slant by a gray streak that was probably from an old scar, a crease from somebody’s big-game rifle.
Quick as the bear was, it wasn’t quick enough. The arrow hit it a little bit to one side of the breastbone, and buried the big steel head and half the shaft.
He had nocked another before the bear fell, and he let it fly, not so sure of his aim this time. Somewhere among the bushes and fallen branches the bear moaned, a deep, suffering noise that sounded practically human.
That first one got him good, and if you ask me the other one did, too.
A grizzly! His grizzly!
It seemed incredible. It was incredible. How many men in the whole damned country had taken a grizzly with bow and arrow? A hundred? Maybe. Maybe no more than a couple of dozen.
A couple dozen, and he was one of them. God had somehow, for some unknowable reason of His own, chosen to bless him beyond and above most other men, and he finally saw the level sunbeams for what they really were, God’s fingers, and he thanked God for it, mentally at first, then muttering the words and half ashamed.
Was the bear still there? He peered and squinted, but could not be certain. A cloud passed before the sun and God’s fingers were withdrawn, leaving the woods nearly as dark as they had been when he climbed into the blind. It was vitally important that he know; even a wounded buck could be dangerous.
Patiently he waited, twice thinking that he heard something big moving through the brush, each time assuring himself that it was just the wind, just his imagination. Either the bear was there (as it almost certainly was), or it wasn’t.
If it was, everything was fine; he had his bear. If it wasn’t, he’d have to track it and finish it off, if it still required finishing. He knew himself to be as good a tracker as anybody who hunted these woods, and knew too that he possessed a dogged persistence so great that his coworkers at the plant sometimes thought he was a little crazy, shimming and leveling, adjusting anew and trying again, working through break and then through lunch because doing it—getting it right—meant more to him than conversation or food. The bear would be found, if the bear was findable.
But the bear was probably dead already, lying no more than eight or ten feet from the point where he had shot it.
He took out another arrow just in case.
By degrees that seemed more than painfully slow, the sunlight returned, a little higher than it had been. He leaned from the blind, squinting. The bear probably wasn’t—no, positively wasn’t—where it had fallen. He could see the place now, see it as clearly as if he stood there, and there was no big animal there, so it had crawled away; with his arrow in it, it wouldn’t crawl very far, not even if the second one missed.
And if it had, where was it? Could it have buried itself completely in the dirt? In dirt that was full of roots? That was possible, maybe, but it didn’t seem likely, and he couldn’t see either arrow.
The wounded bear might be anyplace—might even be waiting for him at the base of the tree.
He climbed down cautiously, stopping twice to look below him. If the bear was there, he couldn’t see or hear it.
When he reached the ground, he got out his bow and nocked a third arrow. Bears could charge very fast. A well-placed arrow might stop a charging bear. But it might not, and a badly placed one certainly wouldn’t. His first shot had been right on target though, and the bear had been losing blood for a good ten minutes. How dangerous could it be?
With his third arrow still nocked, he strode down the game trail, then through the underbrush until he reached the point at which the bear had risen on its hind legs.
There was blood, dark already, clotted and reeking. Here—he put down his bow and knelt to examine the ground—the bear had crawled off, still bleeding but not bleeding nearly as much as he’d have liked, pulling itself along with its front claws and leaving six deep gouges in the litter of twigs and leaves.
That way.
He hesitated. He was honor-bound to track down and dispatch a wounded animal, and doubly bound to dispatch one as dangerous as a grizzly. His honor did not demand that he start tracking right away, though, or even walk fast once he’d started.
There was a gleam—a dull, metallic wink—some ten or twelve yards away, probably brass from somebody’s deer rifle. Cautiously he made his way over to it and picked it up. It was half an arrow, cleanly snapped in two: the blood-smeared head and a foot and a half of equally smeared hollow aluminum shaft. No bear, no animal of any kind, should have been able to pull that barbed broadhead out.
Looking around he found the other end tangled in a bush.
This was the second arrow, of course, not the first. It had made a shallow wound most likely, and had stopped with the head sticking out, having cut through a lot of fur, flesh, fat, and hide. Thrashing around, the bear had broken the shaft, and with the shaft broken both halves of the arrow had come out. That was what had to have happened.
He sat down on a fallen log. The bear was dying—that was absolutely sure. Very likely, the bear was dead already, and no more than a hundred steps away. However bad the second shot had been, the first one had been in the black. It had hit the bear’s chest pretty near center, and gone in deep. As long as its sharp blades were in the wound, every movement, every breath, would do more damage. He’d have another cup of coffee, drinking it slowly and enjoying it, then track the bear, find its body, and skin it. No way in the world could he drag an animal that big back to the van to take over to Lakeside Sporting Goods, where they did taxidermy; but he could skin it and he would, and carry back the pelt and head. What had he done with the thermos? He stood up and looked around before remembering that it was still back in the blind, and returned the arrow to his quiver.
He had almost reached the tree again when he glanced up at his blind with the half-formed idea of checking its effectiveness from the ground (as he had so many times while building it) and saw the wide reddish face glaring down at him.
Sheer terror gripped him, and he ran. When he stopped at last, it was only because the stand of saplings through which he had tried to flee was too thick, almost, for him to move. He fell to his knees gasping, his own hoarse breath too loud for him to hear anything else. Insects looped and dove before his face, intent on entering his mouth, nostrils, and eyes.
As the minutes crept past, his self-possession returned. Wounded animals frequently turned on their attackers. It had never happened to him before, but he had read about such things in hunting and fishing magazines, and heard stories from other hunters. The wounded bear had supposed that he was still in the blind from which his arrows had come; and recovering a little from the initial shock of its
wound, had climbed the tree in search of him. That was all.
He shuddered, every muscle shaking as if with cold.
He could have—should have—shot it there, standing solidly on the ground and putting two or three more arrows into it before it could get down. There had been two arrows left in his quiver—three, counting the one he had returned to it.
Thinking of his quiver, he groped for it. It was gone. Had he torn it away, dropped it in order to run faster? He could not remember, could remember only running, running and running, down the wooded slope and through a clearing. Maybe through more than one. Leaping over something that might have been a tree trunk or the trickling creek.
He got to his feet, his heart still pounding. Could bears hunt by scent? It seemed probable, and if they could it was possible that this bear was still on his trail, still after him. He tried to push aside the terrible memory of its eyes. It would have had to climb down from the blind first, and that had given him a lead.
A bear hunting by scent would move a great deal slower than a charging bear, too. He had seen coonhounds hunt by scent at a dead run, the coonsmell so strong and good they didn’t even have to put their noses to the ground; but he had not seen it a lot, and though a bear might have a good nose, it probably wasn’t as good as a coonhound’s.
Closer every minute, though. It would be getting closer every minute, and not baying like a hound either, but hunting silently, maybe snuffling now and then, so he’d better move, get moving soon, get away from it and find a road or something, and he could hitch a ride back home and get his deer rifle, get a neighbor to run him back out to the van.
Struggling, half walking and half climbing, he freed himself from the saplings and looked around, took a few steps, stopped, and turned, realizing at length that he could not be sure of the direction from which he had entered it.
Walking or trotting—running, he felt sure, was no longer possible for him—at random might bring him nearer the bear. He found his bandanna and mopped his sweating face. It was fall according to the calendar, and the night had been crisp; but the sun was up now, and the day starting to get hot.
He stood still to listen and heard only birdsong. The bear had silenced the birds when it had driven the deer up the slope—silenced every bird around there except for the squawking jay. Birds were singing now, singing in every direction as well as he could judge, so the bear was probably nowhere near.
The best thing would be to circle around. Come up to the van from the other side. He reached into his pocket and found the keys. Once in the van he would be safe, and he could drive home for his deer rifle.
The woods should have been familiar. He had hunted these woods every season for almost twenty years, taken a dozen deer and scores of rabbits and squirrels out of them. He knew them, as he had often told Dean and Juan, like the palm of his hand; but this was a new place, or a place that he was looking at in a new way.
He had not brought a compass, and none was needed. It was early morning still, and at this time of year the sun rose almost due east; he found it without difficulty. North was left, south, right, west behind him; but where was the van?
Cautiously he set out. It was true, of course, still true, that he might be walking toward the bear. True, but not likely. Away from it or at right angles to it were the way to bet, so he would bet like that, and soon—very soon, he hoped—he was bound to see something he recognized, something that would give him his—mentally, he canceled the word bearings. Something that would tell him which way the van was.
His blind had been well up a hill, so he avoided them, threading blind, dry little valleys, and once discovering a stagnant pool shrunk almost to a mudflat by the heat of the summer that was only just over. He thought he remembered seeing it once (much fuller then, with a loon’s nest at the edge) when he was out hunting with Dad; but he could not be sure, and he couldn’t remember where it had been anyway.
Deer flies found him. He got out his repellent and sprayed, but it seemed to do little good.
The sun was too high to direct him now, and he blazed his trail, cutting six-inch strips of bark from likely trees with his hunting knife and letting them hang, and breaking the limbs of bushes to point the way he was going—not doing these things so much in the hope that anyone would follow the signs and find him, but to keep himself from circling. Knowing that lost men instinctively turned left, he turned right whenever a choice presented itself, and tried to walk toward distant hilltops or large trees when he could see them.
Toward noon the sun vanished and he heard the rumble of distant thunder. A cool front was on the way, clearly, with a storm for a roadie. He found shelter under a rocky outcrop, took off his boots and stockings, and waited out the rain.
How many times had he read that smart hunters were never without a compass? That it was always wise to carry emergency rations of some sort? Bet’s little silver flask still held rock-and-rye. He sipped the sweet, potent liquor in the hope that it would assuage his hunger; but he was no drinker and soon recapped the flask, feeling slightly ill.
Thunder banged and rattled, rain pelted the dry woods, then slacked and faded to a shower as the thunder rolled away among the hills. Wearily he put on his stockings and boots again, rose, and set out, blazing his trail as before and soon encountering blazes that he himself had made only hours ago.
The sun was close to the western horizon when he came upon the road. It was not much of a road, only two streaks of muddy dirt, but among its rutted wanderings he imagined houses and farms, food and rest and telephones, and felt that he’d never beheld anything half so beautiful, not even Bet when chance had thrown them together at a high-school basketball game. Not even Bet, because she was there, too; and she was more beautiful now in the ruts of the dirt road, because she was his as he was hers, and she had given him Rusty.
Rusty ought to have a dog, a bird dog, maybe, that they could train together. A bird dog and a four-ten.
The road ran northwest and southeast, and there was no way to tell which direction might be better. Either one, he told himself, would be a great deal better than the way he had been going, better than wandering in search of landmarks that somehow weren’t ever there.
Following his rule, he turned right. The shadows were long when he came upon the broken pine and stopped. He had seen it before, surely. Had noticed it several times that summer when he was going out to work on his blind. It had not marked the end of the road; the road went on for nearly a half mile more, past the firebreak the rangers had cut three years before. Yet it had been near the end.
His feet were blistered, and he was pretty sure that the blister on the side of the left one had broken, but he went on at a good clip just the same. Another half mile—more like a quarter mile now—and he’d reach the van. He could drive home, get something to eat and a good night’s sleep. Come back Sunday morning to find his bear and skin it.
Two saplings up ahead … he stopped to look, then hurried forward. They had been bent and partially broken at several points, interlaced to form a knot that wasn’t quite a braid. His first thought was that he had failed to notice them that morning, his second that it had been too dark to notice much of anything, his third that it had been done recently; the saplings’ leaves were still green for the most part, and there was no sign that either had begun to grow into its tortured new shape.
His fourth was that it had taken enormous strength to do it. He had stopped to feel the bent and twisted trunks when something buzzed past him like an oversized hornet, and he felt that a red-hot poker had been rammed into his right arm. Whirling, he saw the bear, already nocking another arrow.
It missed as he dove into the undergrowth. Not long ago he had thought himself almost too tired to walk. Now he ran again, but not blindly as he had run before with abject terror grinding down his mind. There was a bend here, a pronounced one where the road skirted a hill. He cut across it and found the road again, sprinted down it—falling twice—and reached the van as the b
ear’s third arrow scarred its steel side.
It’s bigger than I am. (It was the first coherent thought since he had begun to run again.) And it’s stronger, a lot stronger. But I’m faster and maybe I’m smarter.
His arm, limp and drenched with his blood, would not respond when he told it to get the keys from his pocket. He seized the edge of the pocket with his left hand and ripped it open with an effort he would in ordinary circumstances have found flatly impossible.
It was hard to open the door left-handed and maddeningly awkward to jam the key into the ignition switch and start the engine, but he did both, and with his almost-useless right arm managed to knock the shift lever from Park into Drive. He jammed his foot down on the accelerator as he spun the steering wheel one-handed.
Like an angry bull, the van smashed through the roadside brush to turn and charge the dark figure of the bear. There was a shuddering impact. Momentarily the van skewed sidewise. He fought the wheel and raced down the road, covering a mile or more before he dared to slow a little and pull out the headlight switch.
Only one headlight came on.
Suddenly (much too suddenly for him) there was gravel ahead, then asphalt and speeding cars. He should perhaps have slowed and waited for a break in traffic. He did not, charging the highway as he had the bear. Horns blared, and this time the crash was deafening and the world a kaleidoscope of tumbling objects that flashed past too quickly to be seen, though not too fast to strike blows that numbed instead of hurting.
When he crawled from the wreckage, the bear was upon him, a bear itself wrecked, its head and one arm dangling, drenched in its own nauseous blood. He ran, and knew not where he ran, heard the scream of brakes and the sickening impact behind him.
It was after midnight when he got home. Bet helped him out of Dean’s car and into the house, ignoring his protests. “Oh my God,” she said; and again, “Oh my God.” And then, because he had been careful to limp, “Can you climb the stairs?”