by J. J. Martin
Father Sweet gave a chaotic performance trying to conceal his private parts. His left hand clutched at his groin. He crossed his legs, and with the other hand he waved goofily, smiling wide and bellowing a clownish “Helloooooo!” in a panicky attempt to appear normal and friendly.
The man looked at me, then to Father Sweet. He knotted his brows at us, as if to convey scornfully he didn’t know what was going on, but that we were clearly up to no good.
Hoping to make a wordless appeal for rescue I locked eyes on the man, but he was not game and shot me a hard look. As if convinced that this — whatever this was — was equally my fault.
A flush of shame rose up my neck.
The man was right. How did I get involved in this mess?
Maybe the woman could help. But she squeezed her eyes shut tightly. Paddling blind, she made a faint whimpering noise like she was sitting on a tack. “Squeeeeeeeee!”
They paddled on; stroke, stroke, stroke. We remained frozen in place. They headed downstream, toward the mild rapids, but I still saw them, and for some time they remained within shouting distance.
They never even changed the pace of their paddling. They were like robots. I imagined they paddled us straight out of their minds, so they could resume normal life and forget about that creepy boy and that awful naked man.
Father Sweet glanced around frantically. The invasion had thrown him for a loop.
Finally, I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.
“Fine, then!” he said, throwing up his arms. “Your temerity has defeated me.”
Once I saw him stomping out of the shallow, I felt great relief. Tears leaked from my eyes, which I quickly wiped away, and I snorted some mucous back up my nose.
He chuckled, wagging his finger as if we were playing chess and I just executed an unforeseen gambit. “You mercurial, teasing imp!” he said.
As he reached for his towel I giggled involuntarily, out of nervousness. Perhaps it was relief, or terror, I could not determine what I was feeling. All I knew was that feelings were happening to someone, and it may have been me, but at this time I was not acquainted with who that was.
“Oh,” snapped Father Sweet, suddenly angry at my laughter. “Indeed, I see. Indulge in your cachinnation at my expense. All for your mirth, eh! All right, then.”
“Why don’t we head back to the camp? I’ll start a fire,” I said, exuding pity. He looked so soggy and pathetic. I’d made an enemy. My parents were going to be outraged. The worst was still waiting for me, and it would come from my mother and father. “You can get warmed up. I’ll put the tea on for you, and you can smoke,” I said, trying to sound meek.
His face softened.
“Ah, my lad. Why must we quarrel? Your solicitude is touching.”
Lip quivering, I contemplated the couple paddling out of sight downstream. How could I paddle my own way out? Even back at camp, it would not be over, and there was his looming insinuation. His threat. I was desperate to return home, but Father Sweet turning to Jamie next was impossible to risk.
Looking at the camera, I decided to make a critical deal with him. Then something enormous happened, which I immediately packed away into the back of my mind, where its carcass could rot in eternity.
27
After drying his legs and chest he pulled on his shirt and socks and eventually his pants. We walked back toward camp, his arm resting heavily on my shoulders.
“Such a voyage we have had, eh?” he said. “Still quaking, I see. Hm. Perhaps you are merely cold!” His mood brightened. “Let’s head back to the tent now, there is still time. I’d like to warm up, too. I have an idea!”
At that, my heart sank. What did he mean by a new idea? What new, baffling activity did he have in mind now?
Father Sweet was nearly skipping. He moved quicker and cantered ahead, higher up the embankment.
“Come on! Let’s run!”
He ran, and I struggled to catch up. He got long ahead, past the highest and most treacherous part of the embankment, that awkward edge of the cliffside where a slip would do you in.
“Wait!” I said. Father Sweet had moved past the crook of the thin ledge and was gone, disappeared behind the forest and the angle.
I reached it myself, finally. The ledge was thin and crumbly, the trees awkward to hold and the drop to the river steep. There was about twenty feet of near-vertical dry-dirt slope, then sheer cliff another twenty feet. Maybe forty feet to the river below.
Father Sweet was nowhere to be seen.
The going was hard and slow because the sturdiest tree branches to hold were just out of reach for my arms. I could not grasp the lopsided cedar cross.
I pulled unsteadily forward, holding to a cedar branch that strained at my weight.
And that was when I smelled it.
Although I suffered from a humiliating phobia about bears, I had never, in fact, come face to face with one. Even if circumstances put me near a zoo, like that one in Kanehsatake, I simply avoided their pens.
But then, when the wind changed and blew at me, there was a shitty stink that came from nowhere. The stench was horrible and familiar at once.
Or was I simply confused? I did not trust myself anymore.
More than the scent, there was a presence. I could not fight it off further, and I felt my breathing start to go haywire again. Instinctually, I knew the presence was a threat and that if I continued along this path, nothing good would come.
I could go silent and hope it passed. If a bear was in the vicinity and found me, it would put my head in its mouth, and that would be it. It would devour me, stripping me like stringy chicken meat, right to the bone.
If I was to save myself, it would be at a painful cost.
I looked down. I could fall to the rocks and river below. Or luck may be onside and I could grab something on the way down. I could catch myself and not fall all the way. Either way, it was preferable to being eaten alive.
I stopped breathing, to hear more clearly, but it was only my heartbeat.
I could wait to see what emerged. Hang in here, waiting.
But the smell became stronger, and so I made my choice.
I had a tenuous grasp on a cedar branch — and my feet planted on the crumbly ledge of the escarpment. I let go and leaned back.
My heartbeat skipped, and I fell. Nothing was under my feet.
I fell freely.
It felt endless.
Then I hit hard the mud and rock slope, with a smash. My body slid down the cliff and my bare legs ground into the pebbles, mud, and scree. Abruptly, with a wrenching jolt, I got caught in a tangle of nettles halfway down. My left leg was unnaturally crooked and jammed.
I was safe from tumbling all the way to the river. For now.
As quickly as I was relieved to stop sliding, the pain shot in one heartbeat later, like fire. I gasped for breath. Finally, I gulped enough air to holler a yawp into the ravine. I followed that with a hysterical series of French curses that echoed.
“Maudit’ câlice! Christ Jésus!”
Blood was everywhere. What stopped me? It couldn’t be just a clump of weeds. Something pressed hard against my leg.
It was a rusty metal wire that ripped into my thigh, deep into my crotch. An old part of a fence, a trapline, or maybe even a telegraph wire. I was sitting astride it, and it kept me from falling. I was like G.I. Joe, wounded and hanging on to a thin rope, desperate not to fall. The slope dropped into a full cliff just under my feet. My bare legs were wrapped in nettles that burned my raw skin. The pain started me panicking.
I screamed.
The nettles were too thick to rip, and I became mad to break free. My pulse accelerated as the burn worsened with each second.
My mind blanked and I went into a full-on panic. I screamed, my voice high and shrill.
I was a trapped rodent stupidly yanking at his legs and yipping like a squirrel.
If I got free, I would fall onto the rocks under the cliff. I did not care. All t
hat mattered now was the burn of the nettles.
“I say, my boy, are you all right?” Father Sweet’s face appeared on the ledge above. “My word! What are you doing down there?” His voice shocked me.
I gasped a few times to catch my breath.
“I fell,” I yelled.
“Indeed you did. Is that blood? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right.” I looked at my legs, which were scummy with blood and mud. I was seeing stars and worried I might pass out.
“Here,” he said, reaching down with a stick.
I couldn’t believe it. The stick was completely useless. It was at least four feet too short, and it was a floppy green stick better used for marshmallows.
“Reach for it, my boy.”
It was such a ridiculously poor effort on his part that I laughed. A flimsy, finger-width twig. Three feet long. Not even close to long enough. It did nothing for me. I felt crazy.
My laughing got squashed by the pain and turned into deranged weeping. Blood ran down my leg and pooled in my shoe.
“If Mike was here, he would know what to do.”
“Who?” asked Father Sweet.
I realized I had spoken out loud without intending to. I have lost my mind, I thought. If I can get a grip, I can pull myself out of this mess. I just need to act carefully. Quickly.
“Well, if you won’t even try to let me help you,” said Father Sweet, sulking.
I would have to do this myself. The Holy Spirit of Practicality took hold. A Scout’s instinct.
If I got free, a bad fall would be next. I would break my leg, or worse. First, I needed to cut the nettles off. The wire, painful as it was, would hold me in place.
I poured a bit of canteen water onto each of my legs as a wash. There was a wound on the left leg, and lots of scrapes and scratches. In fact, the cut hurt less than the scrapes. It’s just skin pain, I told myself. The big wound was the only thing to worry about.
Wiping tears, I pulled out the Sucrets kit from my pocket. I pulled the tiny folding knife. I was shaking and dropped the tin, which bounced off the rocks as it fell to the river. The tiny knife was not serrated and the cutting was slow. Worse, it got slippery with blood.
“My dear boy, I cannot get to you,” Father Sweet said, six feet above my head.
I kept trying to cut myself free, but then the little knife slipped out of my blood-wet hands and tumbled down the embankment into the river. I whimpered. I tried ripping myself free of the nettles, but they only bound me more tightly. I fought to stay calm and use whatever resources I could muster. I would need to delegate to Father Sweet.
“Run back to the tent,” I told him. “In my pack on the outside pocket there is a Scout knife. Bring it to me.”
“Straight away!”
“And also, bring my first aid kit. Bottom of my bag.”
“Yes, sir!”
He ran off, leaving me alone. I stayed, entangled and trapped. The burn of the nettles became constant, and so hot with pain my skin felt cold. I violently shook.
It’s shock, I thought. I’m going into shock. I need to get this line off and apply pressure to the cut before I faint. Maybe if I can get the wire out of my leg, it may relieve some pressure.
When I put my mind to it, the line was easy to take off. I moved my thigh to reduce the weight of my body on my wound. This lessened the pain in my left leg. With my bloody fingers, I pinched closed the wound, and shifted to sit on the wire.
I felt like I was outside my body, a spirit. The wind hit my ear so clear that I heard minuscule whistles within the breeze. The water below gurgled. Each edge of each plant leaf on the riverbank shone, lit by the dazzling sunlight. I knew every single one as if they each had a name.
Maybe I’m about to faint, I thought. Maybe I already have.
I leaned back, feeling surprisingly peaceful, though I was cold and dizzy.
Then, a new sound. Something rummaging through the forest.
I heard heavy footsteps edging closer.
I looked up, expecting to see Father Sweet.
Instead, it was a set of black shoulders that curved like a mountain into a head big as a truck wheel. Its brass snout and enormous mouth breathed lustily at me. Dark, glassy eyes sized me up. They were dead and mechanical, shark-like bear eyes.
A looming, silent black bear stared me down. My worst nightmare.
I knew what it wanted. Finally, it had come for me. We regarded one another.
Was I dreaming?
I returned the animal’s straight gaze.
My pulse throbbed fast in my jaw and mouth. The bear bobbed and sniffed, trying to figure out how to reach me — a big, bloody morsel, hanging just out of reach. It was close enough I could smell its last meal of fishy garbage. But hopefully it was not close enough to reach me. Its bottom lip curled to show a row of its lower teeth. If it did happen to slide off the edge, it would land on me, pull me off the slope with it, and we’d fall together into the river twenty feet below. A bear always goes for the head.
My bladder emptied. All the piss ran down my left leg, stinging the wound.
The bear shuffled on the crumbly ledge, and swatted the brim of the cliff with its claw, doing a front-paw dance. Dry mud fell on me. I spat a few crumbs from my lips.
I will faint, or I will vomit, I thought. Somehow, though, it’s up to me to fix this. Here I am, hanging by a thread. Can’t go up. Long drop down.
The bear was less than eight feet from my face.
From a long distance away, I heard a child bawling. Childlike, whimpering, ka-yipping in a high pitch. Who brought a baby way out here? I realized it was me. I was crying like a baby.
Hearing myself, I grew hot with rage. I broke. I growled the way one might try to scream awake from a nightmare. It was a low rumble, but when I found my voice, I was able to pull it like a rope. And I found a way out.
No one could get me out of this fix. No one, except me.
Aiming squarely at the bear, I hollered a deep and angry roar right out the pit of my guts.
The bear stopped moving and regarded me, a noisy little creature.
I shouted again, and the monster tilted its head.
With my right hand, I grabbed a handful of scrabbly rocks and dirt, throwing it in its face. The bear snorted as the dust hit. I yelled and threw some more. Now the bear backed up a bit, confused.
I felt a stone lodged in the scarp and pulled it free, a jagged, half-baseball of sandstone.
I roared one more time and heard my voice howl in a good, strong wolf call.
I hurled the rock hard as I could. It hit squarely on the bear’s nose, which must have smarted plenty, judging by the paw it put up to its snout.
I shouted again, and the bear backed away, out of my sight. The giant head disappeared into the dark underbrush.
Seconds later, Father Sweet unexpectedly appeared.
“Why were you yelling?” he asked.
“Bear.”
He spun around to look, then laughed at me. “No, my boy. You’re imagining things!”
“There was a bear!” I said.
“Oh, come, come,” he said. “Your imagination.”
“It’s not!” I yelled.
“Here is your knife, now,” he said. “I’ll drop it to you, but you must catch it.”
“It can’t be far away, that bear.”
“Hm? Let’s not be silly.”
He genuflected and carefully lined up the knife to send it my way.
“Must have expert aim now,” he said. “If I am to save you.”
He steadied himself against the lopsided cedar tree for fear of falling into the ravine himself. At his back, the black trees hunched over him, as if they might push him over the edge.
“Be careful,” I said, hoarsely.
“My boy, I am always careful.”
He began to hum and sing a little, making more ruckus than I thought was necessary. He lined up the Scout knife the way he might if he were playing five-pin
or darts.
I saw the branches rustle and shake over his right shoulder.
The knife dropped down as I watched behind his back. The bushes moved.
It’s coming.
The knife hit my arm. I fumbled it. I was too transfixed by the movement in the bush. I was not even looking at what I was doing, only watching Father Sweet’s back. Pulling my arm in close and pressing the side of it against my leg, I blindly grasped at the knife as it flipped around.
With a lucky grip, I caught it.
“There, you see?” Father said. “Easy as pie.”
The branches moved roughly and suddenly.
“Watch out!”
He turned.
The bushes swayed, but did not open.
He stood, waiting. Nothing happened.
He tilted his head and looked into the darkness. Father Sweet turned back to me.
“Bit of a breeze, eh?” he said.
I stared for a long while. “Where did the bear go?”
“Right here,” said Father Sweet, tapping his head. “I told you.”
I shook my head and waited. But nothing came.
“Get on with it,” said Father.
I opened my Scout knife and cut myself out of the stinging nettles, still sitting on the wire line. In addition to the dirt scrapes, my legs were covered in red hives. Worst of all was my left leg. Now that I could get a look at it, I could see it was not just cut. The muscles and skin of my thigh had been torn. It was an awful wound, snaking like a river so deep into my leg that fat could be seen squelching out of the deepest part of the cut, where the wire had gone in. Fortunately, though, there was no sign of an artery bleed.
“I need tetanus shots,” I said.
“Come up now,” he said. “I will give you a Band-Aid, and we can get on with it.”
Carefully seizing weeds with my left hand and trying my best to avoid the nettles, I hoisted myself toward the ledge. With my right hand, I stabbed the knife into the slope for a grip. Father Sweet moved off toward a flat. Each movement of my left leg was agony; the knee felt broken and stiff and unable to bear weight. It was cocked at an unmoveable angle. I had to sidestroke my way up the ravine, heaving most of the weight with my arms.