Bear Spray

Once we were walking through a forest somewhere in Oregon. Me and Bear were playing this game where whatever Dad said, we repeated it. For example, Dad would say, ‘Ah! This is so neat!’ and we would say, ‘Ah! This is so neat!’ and Dad would say, ‘Who’s going for a swim when we reach the river?’ and we would say, ‘Who’s going for a swim when we reach the river?’ and Dad would say, ‘Oh, bugger off, you two,’ and we would say, ‘Oh, bugger off, you two,’ and everyone would be smiling because repeating things is funny. Then we would run past him. Maybe, as we did so, jumping and trying to touch his head; maybe tapping him on one shoulder before ducking and running past his opposite shoulder. But then we would break free. Running fast together. Trying to do tricks off rocks and trees — 360s and mute grabs. One time we ran ahead and the forest became a clearing and we tried to skid on the gravel. Bear kept saying, ‘One-foooooooted’ because of this time at the snow when I’d tried to skid on the ice one-footed while saying, ‘One-foooooooted,’ except I’d fallen on the ice instead. But then I told Bear to shut up because I’d heard something. Bear said, ‘What?’ And we listened. We waited. Then we heard it again. Yelling. We ran towards the yelling. We found a guy sitting in the middle of the hiking trail in the middle of the clearing. There was a vomit smell. There were gashes in his arms and legs. Deep ones, with blood coming out of the gashes, dripping onto the dirt. Bear ran back for Mum and Dad. I stayed with the guy. I asked him how he was. He said, ‘Been better, buddy.’ He laughed.

Mum and Dad came. They called an ambulance. While we waited for it to arrive, the guy told us he’d been walking with his wife on their honeymoon. They’d seen a bear so they’d hid behind a tree, except that his wife had taken a photo and the flash had gone off. The guy held up two fingers. He said, ‘Then two things happened.’ He gripped his pointer finger and said, ‘The bear sort of went ape-shit and started charging over our way,’ and then, gripping his middle finger, he said, ‘And my wife, well, she just plain piss-bolted down the trail, screaming and hollering about Jesus and Mary and whatever-else-the-fuck and then she was gone.’ He told us how the bear was standing over him and he was thinking: well, oh fuck, but then he remembered he was supposed to get into the foetal position, so he did, and the bear walked over and started pawing him back and forth, rolling him around. He said, ‘I felt like a goddamn toy.’ He looked at me and said, ‘If I was as skinny as you, I would have lost my arms.’ He told us the bear started getting real rough and he could feel its claws in his back and he thought: fuck this, and he got out his car keys and lunged at the bear, jabbing it in the nose. He said the bear ran away. He said he’d been lying there in the middle of the trail for over an hour. When the ambulance came, they asked if he had a message for his wife. He said, ‘You tell my wife I lost an arm AND a leg.’ Everyone sort of laughed, I guess ’cause of how losing your limbs can be funny. I watched them lift the guy into the ambulance. I watched no one get in with him. And I thought how, eventually, we all lose the things we love. Things happen and shit goes bad and there’s not a lot we can do about it.

After that we bought bear spray, which is like pepper spray, except for bears.