There Will Be Bears (15 page)

One part of me is happy. Another part devastated. His six-point rack means he was probably nine or ten years old. He survived grueling winters and other hunters trying to bring him down. He probably had calves. Now his eyes are glassy and his tongue is sticking out the side of his mouth.

Gene kneels and aims the camera.

I grab the rack. The elk’s head is heavy.

I should have been the one who killed him, a punishment for the pain I put him through. But instead, Gene did the dirty work, just like when he brought Dad out here. My one moment to show Gene I could be a hunter was a disaster.

As I give the most tired smile of my life, Gene takes a picture, the flash lighting up everything. And then another. Karen and Bright and all the other kids at school are going to look at my profile next week and see me, in my orange vest and Gene’s cowboy hat, holding up a dead animal’s head — like a real hunter.

I thought I would be more excited than this.

I say, “How are we going to get him out of here?”

He gets a small hooked knife from the sheath around his belt. “Since this is your bull, you have the honor of field-dressing him.”

“Huh?”

“We’re not going to pack him out until tomorrow — it’s getting too late. But if we leave his bowels in there, the meat will go rotten. So you’re going to cut his belly open.”

“Oh.”

I breathe through my nose because I can’t let Gene see just how deeply and nervously I’m breathing. Little black dots are fluttering into my eyes, and it makes these dark woods even darker. But I won’t faint. I
can’t
faint.

He hands me the knife.

I’m going to mangle this poor animal. I can’t even cut a steak without my knife slipping and getting juices on my shirt. Gene really can’t expect me to just
do
this, can he? Isn’t there something I can practice on first?

What if the bull’s not totally dead and his legs jerk or he squeals as I cut into him?

Gene shifts the elk’s massive body so the belly sticks up. With a grimace, he pulls back the left hind leg, ties a yellow rope around the hoof, and secures the other end to a tree trunk. The balls . . . and butthole are exposed. I have a knife in my hand. This isn’t going to be good.

“So what you need to do is make a circular incision right around his anus.”

Horror and disgust cut down my spine. “Huh?”

He smiles. He’s messing with me. I make an awkward, slightly relieved laugh, and then his eyes sharpen. “Go on.”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t have time to make jokes. I need you to listen now.”

I nod. I ready my knife. I’m going to do whatever Gene tells me to do.

This shouldn’t be a big deal. Millions of people have killed and gutted animals before me, and they never passed out because of the guts or blood. This is in my DNA. I can do this.

I stick the knife into his flesh, and I don’t feel dizzy or weird yet. I just hope the elk doesn’t explode all over me.

It’s warm.

“Okay, good,” Gene says. “Now grab the penis and make a cut toward the anus on both sides.” His voice is so calm, like Ms. Davis teaching us how to make a charcoal drawing.

“Haven’t we done enough to the poor guy?”

“State law. We need to prove the sex with the meat processor.”

“ ’Kay.” And so my knife goes where he tells me, and the hide peels away.

Is this what I am? Just a pile of veins and tendons and muscle? Something that can be cut open and eaten?

What the heck am I?

Okay, breathe. Just do what Gene says.

God, this is so weird. But why does it feel so normal? And why was I afraid of this in the first place? There’s blood on my hands, and I’m not dizzy at all. It smells rich and metallic and horrible, but I kinda like it.

“What do I do next?”

“Gently slit his belly up to his rib cage. Now, don’t get carried away, ’cause you don’t want to puncture that gut sack right there. A feather touch is all you need.”

The elk rests silently on the ground. He just lies there like an obedient dog as I slide the blade up his belly. It’s like his skin unzips. A large white veiny bag balloons up.

“Good. Okay, go ahead and finish your cut down to the anal cavity, making sure your knife is facing up. Careful. Don’t hurt yourself.”

I join my cuts together, and the gut sack comes spilling out, sliding across my foot like a really big and slimy water balloon.

This is
nothing
like breaking open a piñata.

Gene tells me every step of the way how to clean out my elk. I split open the rib cage, sever the windpipe, cut back connective tissue, and take the heart, the lungs, and the rest of his vitals out.

I’m looking at parts of the body that were never meant to see light.

The elk doesn’t kick or scream. He doesn’t beg for mercy. He’s dead, and the only thing that moves is his fur, which fluffs gently in the breeze.

“Nice work,” Gene says. “All clean cuts.”

“It ain’t no thang.” But I feel so proud hearing him say that.

I put all the guts and organs in a pile a few feet away. A puddle of blood has collected at the bottom of the hollowed-out body. It’s on my hands and arms and jeans, and I have Gene take a picture of me like this, and I make a really big smile because no one would ever believe I could do all this.

There’s no way Bright could field-dress an elk. He wouldn’t want to get his fancy pants all dirty.

“And last but not least . . .” Gene reaches into his pocket and pulls out a long green sticker. “It’s time to tag him. Go ahead and do the honors.”

I put the green sticker on his antler. He’s officially mine.

It’s totally dark now, and the air is so cold it hurts. The wind rustling in the willows and rattling the sagebrush reminds me that I’ve got blood on me and we’re in the heart of Sandy’s territory.

We still have to leave these woods, climb the hill, go back down to our horses, and then ride for two hours to the ranch. I’m going to sleep good tonight.

When we’re heading to the horses, Gene says, “We got to get up at four a.m. and get out here at first light to pack out your elk.”

People pay thousands of dollars to do this. I see why. You don’t get tested like this every day.

We ride back beneath the moonlight, which casts a purple glow atop the snow cover, and it’s like something out of a dream. But this is real. I’ve never experienced anything more vivid in my life.

I say, “Well, I guess the coin was wrong. We didn’t see Sandy.”

“Let’s hope she doesn’t get your elk before morning.”

When we get back to the cookshack, I collapse into a deflated brown beanbag chair, my arms spread out, and when Gene calls me to eat, I don’t move. I
can’t
. It’s past ten, and we have to be up again in six hours. But I’m going to regret it if I don’t eat, so I tell my muscles and bones to quit complaining. They thank me after I get my fill of chili dogs and jalapeño potato chips.

Mike and Nancy are still awake. They tell us they can never sleep until all the hunters have returned. They sit with us in the dining area.

Nancy says, “We’ll get your packhorses ready so you two can head out first thing. Gosh, a six-point. That’s incredible news. Way to go, Tyson.”

“Run across Sandy?” Mike says, like he knows how much the idea freaks me out.

“No bears,” I say.

“That hunter who shot her cub was right around your age.”

I look at Mike, and I can’t tell if he’s trying to test me in some way. I say, “What happened?”

He gets up from his chair and takes an old newspaper from a stack of hunting magazines next to the couch facing the fireplace. He puts it in front of me.

The headline above a yellow-highlighted article reads: “Hunter Fined Forty Thousand Dollars for Son Shooting Bear Cub.”

Before I even get a chance to read, Mike says, “This kid and his dad ran into Sandy and her three cubs near Purdy Creek. The kid got scared and fired, killing one of them. Sandy never bothered anyone before that day. But ever since, she’s been giving hunters problems.”

“Why are you showing me this?” I say.

He looks at me dumbly. “You asked about her.”

Later, I’m lying in bed, thinking. If I run into Sandy, I won’t freak out and do something stupid like that kid. How could he shoot a bear cub? I mean, what the heck was running through his mind?

Maybe Sandy charged at him.

We have to haul my elk out soon. Grizzly bears can smell blood from miles away, and there’s a lot of it there. First Sandy will feed, then the wolves, and whatever scraps are left over will get eaten by the hawks and eagles.

I pass out with my blood-encrusted clothes still on, so when Gene’s alarm goes off, all I have to do is put on my jacket, vest, gloves, and headlamp. We snag a quick breakfast of cereal, and Gene lets me have a cup of coffee, too. But I don’t need it. I’m determined to finish this job, and nothing will stop me. The smell of elk is practically tattooed on me.

I don’t put Gene’s hat back on because it’s just going to get in the way. We march down to the barn, where our horses wait in their stalls, already saddled. I feed Crazy Eyes a dish full of grain and then I take her to the creek for some water.

There’s a small buckskin horse and a brown horse with white spots tied to a hitching rail. Both of them have pack saddles and two giant burlap bags Gene calls panniers attached to the wood of the saddles.

When I’ve mounted Crazy Eyes, Mike hands me a lead rope that connects to the brown horse’s halter and gives Gene the other.

Gene leads, and I keep Crazy Eyes just behind the buckskin. Together, the four horses form a sort-of train that’s leaving the station. The moon has already set, so the only things to lead us are the stars and Gene’s memory.

We don’t say anything. I just listen to the steady rhythm of the horses.

Every so often, I’ll see a bright spark appear beneath the buckskin’s hoof, like she stepped on a firecracker. I hear the yipping of coyotes and I see my first shooting star. I make a wish that neither of us gets eaten. That everyone will get to see who I’ve become.

Even though it’s got to be below zero degrees, Gene doesn’t seem as sick as he did before. This place is like medicine to him.

We ride through Fish Creek, then North Fork, then Purdy. By the time we reach the place where we climbed on foot yesterday, I can’t feel my hands.

The sky begins to brighten just over the hills, and I smile. Warmth is on its way.

Instead of going on foot, we let the horses take us up the hill. Crazy Eyes’s head bobs sharply as she gets each step placed, jostling me in my saddle.

Just as we reach the top, the sun peeks out, and light fills the valley and shines onto the trees we entered yesterday. There’s no way the horses are going to fit through these woods while we’re riding, so we get off and walk with them until the trees and brush get too thick for them to pass. If nothing has eaten my elk, it should be just another hundred feet up this hill.

We tie the horses to the trees and carry the panniers. My elk is still here, completely intact. This time I do feel relieved, that maybe all this is normal and I’ve been freaking out over nothing.

I can’t believe I’m this hard-core. Karen said that in Texas, hunters shoot animals from pickup trucks inside fenced ranches. They use chain saws to quarter the meat. And they barely break a sweat.

There are no fences here. Not a single human around for miles. This really is the wilderness. But I’m not scared like I was yesterday, even though we’ll be hauling at least five hundred pounds of meat out of the woods.

Gene reaches into a pannier and pulls out all the tools we’ll need to quarter the elk — a hatchet and a mallet. That’s it. He says, “You start with the head and I’ll remove the hooves.”

On Gene’s instructions, I clear away the fur and muscle with his skinning knife. Then, using his tools, I chip away at the bone until I get the head free. There’s a deep, burning feeling in my biceps I’ve never felt before.

Gene throws the hooves onto the gut pile. He shows me how to split the body in half and then into quarters. I enter the cavity and sever the spine down the middle, being careful not to let the hatchet slide off center. This is the hardest part, but after a few tries while gritting my teeth, I splice the body into four heavy sections.