There Will Be Bears (12 page)

I check the news on my phone in American Civ, and they haven’t found Sandy. Usually when a bear harms someone, the Forest Service puts it down, because once they attack one human, they become more likely to attack another. But she just vanished.

Horrible thoughts are running through my mind as I walk home. Maybe wearing this bear costume is symbolic in some way. Like the universe is sending me a message. I’m inside a bear now, just like I will be after I get eaten by one in Wyoming.

I am thinking way too deep. This is so unlike me. I am thinking about death and what it feels like to have teeth wrapped around my neck when I should be picturing a fun-filled trip with Gene — riding horses, bonding over our kills, and filling our heads with memories we will never forget.

This could be my last day alive.

I have to get out of this ridiculous bear suit.

When I get home, Dad is hauling his suitcase down the stairs.

“Hey, you’re looking pretty ferocious there, Tyson. You ready to go to Rock Springs?”

I nod.

“What’s wrong? You don’t seem excited.”

“Oh, no. It’s just, I got a lot of things on my mind.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing important.”

“You sure?”

“No, really, Dad. I’m fine.”

“You know you can talk to me if something’s bothering you.”

“I know. Nothing’s bothering me.”

He doesn’t look convinced. “Well, let’s get going.”

“Just let me change.”

“I thought you were going to wear that bear costume all day.”

“It’s hot and uncomfortable.”

“But you’re going to wear it tonight with your grandfather, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t
know
? You spent all that money.”

“Dad, please. Let me go change.”

I’m making for the staircase when he says, “Did you pack all of Gramps’s camping equipment?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“His tent? His cooler?”

“Yes.”

“And warm clothes? It’s going to be cold in Idaho.”

“I packed everything.”

“Come here.” He pulls me into a half hug, one hand around my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For treating you like a child. You’re more mature than I gave you credit for. I was really apprehensive about the hunt because even though you’re not Gene’s grandson, you are my son. If you’re anything like me, you would have fainted when you saw all the blood and guts. There is a lot of it in an animal that size.”

“You fainted?”

“Your gramps — Gene — poured his canteen on me to wake me up.”

I’m not like Dad. I’m not scared about cutting open an animal as big as a morbidly obese dude or getting blood on my hands. I won’t faint out there.

I really hope I don’t faint.

I laugh. “Wuss.”

“And you understand why you’re not going on the hunt, right?”

“Because Gene is sick.”

“I don’t know what I would do if something happened to either of you. I love you guys so much.” He wraps his arm around my neck and pulls me in for a painful noogie, giving a growl.

“Dad. Cut it out.”

I have this heavy lump of guilt sitting low in my stomach. I mean, he doesn’t want me to go to the Grand Tetons for all the right reasons. But I’m going for all the right reasons, too.

Mom, Dad, and Ashley are planning on doing the whole tourist thing near Rock Springs — visit the wild horse sanctuary in the Red Desert, then the Killpecker Sand Dunes. Dad’s even talking about renting some ATVs to go off-roading, but I’ll believe it when I see it. If Gene and I make it back on Sunday, they’ll take me home.

When we get to the nursing home, Mom and Dad help bring our gear into the lobby.

Dad goes, “Call our cell if anything happens, you hear?”

“We will.” Gene told me there isn’t an ounce of signal in the Tetons.

“If Gene starts to feel weak or ill, if he gets a headache or is short of breath, I want you two to go to a ranger station immediately. Be responsible.”

Mom rolls her eyes. “Oh, Lee, they’ll be fine.”

Dad smiles, nodding in agreement. “Most important, I want you two to have a good time.”

Dad gives me a hug and Mom kisses my forehead, then they get in the SUV and drive away.

Gene is finishing dinner by himself in the cafeteria. He’s wearing his cowboy hat. He wears it every year when he drives to the Tetons. It has a raven’s feather, cigarette burns, and bloodstains.

He wipes his mouth with a napkin, and his sleeve slides up his arm. There’s a bandage barely covering a large bruise on his right forearm.

“What happened?” I say.

“Dialysis appointment this morning.”

“Oh.”

Knowing Gene, he was probably just sitting in a reclining chair and chatting with his nurse about the weather, like it’s no big deal that blood is getting pumped in and out of his body.

The thought of all that blood and the white hospital room and the beeping machine noises makes my head go light. Black spots appear around my vision. I have to sit down. I’m such a wuss.

And I’m definitely Dad’s son.

In fourth grade, my entire class surrounded a table to watch Mr. Carmichael dissect a cow eyeball and talk about all the different parts. When the knife went in and the juices squirted, everything went black. The next thing I remembered, I was on the ground and everyone was looking down at me. Mr. Carmichael put a cold rag on my forehead.

I had fainted. It was so embarrassing.

Maybe Dad was right. Gene is going to be mauled by Sandy, and he’ll be screaming for me to help him, but I’ll be passed out and useless in the sagebrush.

“Gene, am I a man?”

“Nope,” he says, without giving it a second thought.

“I thought you said thirteen is the year boys become men.”

He shrugs. “I know boys who are five times your age.”

“So hunting makes you into one?”

He shakes his head. “I know just the thing to cheer you up.” He takes off his cowboy hat and places it on my head. He says, “You can be me for Halloween.”

Gene goes to bed right after
Jeopardy!
and I stay up doing sit-ups and push-ups in the cramped living room. When my muscles can’t even lift me off the ground, I crawl onto the really small couch and put on his
Two and a Half Men
Season 3 DVD, but there’s no way I’ll fall asleep with Gene snoring in the other room like he’s got a Tater Tot stuck in his throat.

It’s after midnight and I’ve gone through all the episodes on disc 1, and it returns to the main screen. I can’t find the remote and I’m so scared that I can’t even get up to turn off the TV, so they’re playing the theme song on repeat.

“Men men men men, manly men men men.”

For three hours.

“Men men men men, manly men men men, oo hoo hoo, hoo hoo, oo.”

A real man wouldn’t be curled up like a fetus, hoping that morning never comes. I’m not even half a man.

We leave the nursing home at four a.m., and I maybe got fifteen minutes of sleep. The sun rises just as we pass through Jackson, the last city before the national forest. There isn’t a single car on the road. On our left-hand side, the Teton mountains rise up epically from the surrounding prairie, and they’re orange from the rising sun. Any other time, I would be amazed by these sights, but with death hovering overhead like a starving vulture, everything feels drab and colorless.

We get stopped by a herd of buffalo crossing the road. They look like devil creatures with their hooked horns and giant flat faces. A huge bull shepherding three calves stares at us menacingly.

I roll down my window to take a picture of them with my phone, but then I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. With Gene’s lucky hat, I kinda look like a real cowboy. I make a serious face and sneak a picture of myself instead.

When the buffalo pass, Gene takes a right and we enter into a forest of pine and aspen. The sign reads:
GROS VENTRE ROAD
.

“How do you say that?”

“
Grow-vaunt
. It’s French for ‘Big Belly.’ Yup, just twenty or so miles down this road and we’ll be at the ranch.”

The narrow road winds and climbs up out of the forest, and now we’re on a mountainside with a steep cliff to our right. There is no barricade, nothing to prevent us from falling hundreds of feet into the massive lake at the bottom.

Gene pulls over to the shoulder as an oncoming truck appears from beyond a bend.

“I’m gonna take a leak,” he says, then gets out.

I open the door to join him, but a small piece of ground comes loose beneath my foot and tumbles down the cliff. I guess I can hold it until we get to the ranch.

Gene looks like he’s in pain as he gets back in.

“You okay?” I say.

“I’m fine.” He breathes in deep a few times and blinks a bunch, like he just spaced out. He gets back on the road, which is getting worse the farther along we go. As we go higher up, the ride gets so bumpy I can feel the vibrations.

He coughs and his eyes get red.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Of course.”

The vibrations get so extreme that the truck slides at a curve, then tips a little on my side. Gene presses harder on the gas, and the engine revs up. I grab onto the handle above the window, squeeze my eyes shut, and brace for whatever’s going to happen next.

Gene gives a nervous laugh. “That’ll wake you up.”

I open my eyes. My hands are tingling and cold. Everything’s okay.

Snow begins to fall.

What if no one’s at the ranch? What if there aren’t any horses? Or worse, what if there isn’t even a
ranch
? We’re going to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a broken-down truck and no one to rescue us.

And then Sandy will come.

When the road levels out, I say, “Ashley was afraid that we might run into a grizzly bear.”

“Are you afraid of grizzlies?” he asks.

“No. Of course not.”

“They scare me to death. Haven’t I told you my grizz encounter stories?”

“You told me one decapitated your horses.”

There’s this deepness to his eyes like he’s looking at his memories instead of the road. He always gets excited at a chance to tell a story. “There was this other time I was hunting with some coworkers and we rode up to this place called Hackamore.”

Hackamore Creek. That’s where the Oklahoma girl got her legs broken.

He continues, “We got off our horses, and my guide and I went up a hillside that was covered in this really thick black timber. We were climbing over felled trees, hacking through overgrowth and branches. When we reached the top of this hill, we found the elk herd. There must have been close to two dozen. Just as I’m aiming my rifle, they all take off running. Then this big, mean bear — and she was solid. Just pure muscle. She comes huffing out of the trees —”

“How big was she?”

“
Big
. Like a couple of idiots, we haul it down that hillside, and sure enough we see her following us. We’re screaming and hollering for our lives, and she finally backed off when she saw the other hunters at the bottom of the hill.”

“Was it Sandy?”

“Yup. She was mean even back then.”

“I thought bears normally leave people alone.”

“This one don’t like people.”

“Why?”

He nibbles at one of his fingernails, then rolls down the window and spits it out. Maybe because he’s nervous, too. “Some bears are just nasty.”

“Do you think we’ll see her?”

“I usually see her once every other year. Flip a coin. Heads we see her and tails we don’t.” He hands me a penny from his cup holder.

I flick the coin, catch it, and smack it against the top of my hand.

“So what is it?” he asks.

It’s Abraham Lincoln’s decapitated head.

Our ranch is the very last on the road. With its tractors and flatbed trailers rusting away in overgrown grass, this place would be perfect for a horror movie.

Gene stops at the locked metal gate, and an engine growls to life next to the barn about a football field’s length away. An ATV hurries through the pasture where horses are grazing in the snow and stops on the other side of the gate.

“Hello, there,” the guy says. He’s stout and tall, maybe midfifties, and wearing a camouflage hat backward. “The name’s Mike.”