Brian's Hunt (9 page)

It was just what it was, a dead bear.

And he would have to clean it now, skin it, pull the carcass down to the lake and get his canoe and take it back to camp and use what he could, not waste any more than he had to because in the end it was as wrong to waste the bear as it was to let it live after what it had done.

In the firelight he found his bow and arrows and knife and small aluminum pot. The pot was dented but he pulled the edges apart and made it serviceable. It was not far to the lake and he brought water up and boiled it and gave some to the dog and drank some himself. Then he boiled mud and put it on his cuts and the dog’s head to keep morning flies away and then took the knife and turned to the bear.

There was much work to do.

I can almost hear the voices: “You said the last Brian book was the
last
Brian book,” and I did say that. But the response from readers is still profoundly overwhelming, hundreds of letters a day, all wanting more of Brian, and so this book, and I will no longer say that I will write no more about Brian and the north woods. . . . In some way he has become real to many, many people and they want to see more of him and so, and so . . . we shall see.

As to the subject of this story, it is hard to imagine any animal as evil—only man would seem to have a capacity for true evil and deliberate cruelty. And bear, especially, lend themselves to seeming likable. They have been romanticized to a point far beyond reality. What bears truly are has been lost in concepts like the teddy bear and Winnie the Pooh and I can well understand how some people will view the bear and the attacks in this story. Some years ago, just after the movie
Free Willy
—a film about a captive killer whale that a boy helps to freedom—had come out, I was interviewed on a radio call-in show and mentioned that I had seen two killer whales playing with a baby seal, throwing it back and forth like a toy before killing it and eating it, and the phone almost jumped off the hook. Killer whales are friendly, people said, which is sometimes true, and they only eat fish, which is not true—they not only eat seals but often dolphins as well, and off the coast of New Zealand a female and her calf attacked a scuba diver. They are wolves of the sea, if you will, and for a killer whale to eat, as with wolves, something else has to die.

And so to bear: the truth about bear is that they are cute and smart and, sometimes, lovable, and they also kill things and have on more occasions than some people like to admit attacked and killed and eaten human beings.

I have had bear come into my sled-dog kennel and kill dogs to get at their food—one particular dog, Hulk, was killed with a single blow in the middle of the night. My wife has been chased from the garden to the house by a bear, which almost caught her. It had a small terrier named Quincy hanging on its neck fur all the way. And I have a friend whose nephew was in a scout camp in Wisconsin and a bear pulled him out of his tent at night and tried to carry him off and eat him and only let go when dozens of scouts attacked the bear with rocks and sticks and forced it to drop the boy, who had to get hundreds of stitches and has not fully recovered the use of his arm.

And the attack in this story, a couple killed and the woman partially eaten, happened almost exactly as I describe it; the bear attacked them on an island in a lake in the Canadian woods where they had come in a canoe to fish, killed both of them and dragged the woman off to feed.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as prey—it
is
a lessening thought—but the truth is that in our arrogance and so-called knowledge we forget that we are not unique. We are part of nature as much as other animals, and some animals—sharks, fever-bearing mosquitoes, wolves and bear, to name but a few—perceive us as a food source, a meat supply, and simply did not get the memo about how humans are superior.

It can be shocking, humbling, painful, very edifying and sometimes downright fatal to run into such an animal.

GARY
PAULSEN
is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor books:
The Winter Room, Hatchet
and
Dogsong.
His novel
The Haymeadow
received the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award. Among his newest Random House books are
The Glass Café; How Angel Peterson Got His Name; Caught by the Sea; Guts: The True Stories Behind
Hatchet
and the Brian Books; The Beet Fields; Alida’s Song
(a companion to
The Cookcamp
);
Soldier’s Heart; The Transall Saga; My Life in Dog Years; Sarny: A Life Remembered
(a companion to
Nightjohn
);
Brian’s Return,
Brian’s Winter
and
Brian’s Hunt
(companions to
Hatchet
);
Father Water, Mother Woods
and five books about Francis Tucket’s adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults, as well as picture books illustrated by his wife, the painter Ruth Wright Paulsen. Their most recent book is
Canoe Days.
The Paulsens live in New Mexico and on the Pacific Ocean.