The Last of the Lumbermen Read online

  A quick inspection of her haunch reveals a bloody patch about five or six inches in diameter where the bear’s claws got her, and three or four more smaller gashes. She’s badly bruised, and there’s likely tendon damage, but at least her leg and hip don’t seem to be broken.

  She follows me back up the hill and settles down a few feet up the trail, giving the now-still hulk of the bear a wide berth. James already has the first aid kit out and is expertly encasing a large surgical pad with a roll of gauze binding around his father’s forearm.

  “We’d better put a tourniquet on that one,” I suggest. Without a word, he scurries over to the Ski-Doo and returns with a length of thin rope and a flashlight. While he applies the tourniquet I check my father’s upper torso and head. There’s a gash in his scalp just above the hairline that’s bleeding profusely, and a neck wound that looks deep, but along which the blood is already coagulating. I staunch the scalp wound and fashion a makeshift bandage to hold it there.

  James gently pushes me aside, and I defer. He refits the head bandage, hands his father a gauze pad, tells him to hold it against his neck, and orders me to sit down. I do, and he applies a gauze pad to my cheek and deftly tapes it into place with a strip across my forehead and another beneath my nose.

  While he’s doing this, I retrieve the cell phone from my pack and tap in 911. I’m able to calm myself sufficiently to inform the emergency operator that there’s been a bear mauling, and get her to dispatch an ambulance to meet us in the parking lot beneath the north end of the Nechalko bridge. Then I call Esther.

  She’s as clipped and efficient as the emergency operator, not even asking which of us is injured. “I’ll be waiting,” she says.

  I’m lightheaded, but I fight it off. Too many things still to be done. I ask James if the bear went after the Ski-Doo.

  “I don’t think so,” he answers, but doesn’t move.

  “See if you can crank it up,” I tell him. “Scat.”

  While he restarts the Ski-Doo, I play the flashlight across the bear. The animal is still alive, spread-eagled in the snow with the hilt of the spade protruding from its back, its deranged blood pumping out in the dirty snow. When the flashlight beam reaches its head, its eyes flicker. It snorts, convulses, and is still. Dead, I hope.

  The beam reveals a few other things. The bear’s hindquarters are a mass of running sores, and when I step closer for a look I see that the lesions run the length of its spine and continue to its neck. Presumably the chest and belly are similar, but I’m not about to check. The mystery of what it was doing awake in midwinter suddenly isn’t quite so mysterious. This character is no relation to Smokey the Bear. He may look like the bear from hell, but he’s a local product, all the way. Hard to say exactly how or why he got to this condition except to point to the garbage strewn around the dump, but it’s a question somebody better find the specific answers to.

  I glance back at Ron Bathgate — my father. He hasn’t said a word since I brought the dog back, and it occurs to me that he might be slipping into shock, if he hasn’t already. Behind me, where James has been jockeying the Ski-Doo into position, I hear the engine stall. Great, I think. An injured man and dog. But again, we’re in luck. The ignition spins once, a second time — then the machine kicks to life.

  “Can you stand?” I ask Ron.

  He nods, braces himself against the tree to rise, and falls back. “Maybe not,” he says.

  “No matter,” I say, manoeuvring myself beside him and slipping his less-damaged arm over my shoulder. “James,” I yell. “Get the packs!”

  “Screw the packs,” he yells back. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I retrieve both packs and stack them beside a tree, spearing my snowshoes tip up next to them as a marker. Then I lift my father to his feet, trying to keep us from toppling into the depression behind the tree. A searing bolt of pain ploughs through my sternum, but I hold my balance, and we stagger across the snow past the bear to the Ski-Doo.

  James is standing beside the machine, ready to go. “What now?” he asks.

  “We’ll have to load the dog onto this thing, too. You drive,” I say. “Help me put Dad between us and I’ll hold him and the dog on. For Christ’s sake keep it on the trail.”

  He’s looking at me quizzically. “Dad? You called him Dad.” It isn’t so much an accusation as a statement.

  “He’s my father, too,” I say flatly, and turn around to call the dog over.

  “Don’t you want to drive?” he asks, as if the two things are connected.

  “No,” I answer. “It’s your machine. You drive it.” One confession is enough. I’ve never been on one of these things in my life, and I couldn’t drive it if all four of our lives depended on it.

  We settle both Ron and Bozo onto the seats. It’s crowded, and if we hit a good bump I’m going to go flying. Bozo hasn’t ever been near a Ski-Doo, but she allows me to position her awkwardly across my lap behind my father.

  “Ready?” James calls out from the front.

  “Let’s go,” I answer.

  As we pull away an instinct tells me to turn around. It’s a good instinct: the bear isn’t dead. It is facing us, standing, its front paws outstretched as if to embrace us, its open jaws a bizarre collage of foam and blood and teeth. I’ve got nothing to stop it with this time, except a feeble beam of artificial light.

  “Go!” I holler at James. “Go!”

  As the snowmobile lurches forward, the bear collapses snout first into the fouled snow, defeated by its useless hindquarters and the spade lodged in its spine. For a split second I’m unsure if the roaring in my ears is the bear or the snowmobile, and we’re out of sight before I’m convinced one way or the other.

  I’M ABLE TO STAY on the back of the Ski-Doo even though James drives like a maniac, but I’m beyond exhaustion by the time we arrive back under the bridge. A couple of times Ron Bathgate turns to say something to me, but the din from the Ski-Doo is too great for me to pick it up. And a couple of times I catch him starting to slump to one side, but with my steadying hand on his shoulder he keeps it together. Esther is waiting when we get there, and so is the ambulance.

  I let the ambulance attendants pull Ron from the Ski-Doo, and as I stand to hug Esther a still-deeper weariness settles on me. She holds me for a moment, then moves away to go to James, who is watching the attendants settle his father on a portable sled. She lays her hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” she asks him.

  He half-turns to her, keeping his eyes on the sled. “He got it, not me. And” — he jerks his head in my direction — “him. Check him.”

  She lets James go and does what he suggests, running her hands over my chest and neck, and touching the bandage on my face. “You’re going in the ambulance, too,” she says. It isn’t a request.

  “Did you call Claire?” I ask.

  “Oh yes,” she answers. “Wendel’s on his way up there right now. They’ll meet us at the hospital. I’ll take James with me.” She speaks the last sentence loud enough for James to hear.

  I’ve damned near forgotten about Bozo, who is sitting on her haunches next to the ambulance. The attendants lift my father gently into the back, and with what feels like the last of my strength I lift the dog into the ambulance and crawl in behind her. James reluctantly closes the door.

  “What’s that dog doing in here?” the ambulance driver snaps at me.

  “That dog just saved my fucking life, you asshole, and she’s hurt.” My tone tells him he’ll have to throw me out if he wants to toss my dog. “She’s going to the hospital with the rest of us.”

  The second attendant, who I recognize as one of the linesmen who works the Junior B games and has done some of ours, helps me out. “Let him take the dog,” he tells his companion. “It won’t hurt anybody. But” — he turns his attention to me — “there’s nobody there who’ll treat h
er. She’s your problem.”

  The first attendant is bending over my father. “Shock?” I ask him.

  “Looks like it,” the linesman answers for him. “He’s lucky you could administer decent first aid, or he would have lost a lot more blood than he did.”

  I don’t set him straight about who did the first aid because I’ve got other fish to fry. The cell phone is still tucked in the pocket of my wool shirt. I pull it out, open it, and tap in Gord’s pager number. I listen to the message and answer it with the number of the cell phone. For once, my photographic memory for telephone numbers isn’t just cluttering up my brain.

  We haven’t gotten much beyond the bridge when the cell phone jangles with Gord’s return call. “What’s up, chum?” he asks.

  I explain what’s happened, and, without my having to ask, he picks up on what I want. “You want me to play veterinarian, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there a few minutes after you arrive. Keep Bozo in the ambulance for the time being, will you? I’ll want to check you and your father out first.”

  I relate a few more details about the bear, including my worry that it might have been rabid, and then hang up as the ambulance is pulling into the hospital’s emergency entrance.

  THIRTY

  WHEN THE ATTENDANTS OPEN the ambulance doors about all I’ve got left is a headful of telephone numbers and Gord’s instruction to leave Bozo in the ambulance. I don’t have to explain why I want her left there — the linesman has caught the drift of my brief conversation with Gord, and probably realized who I was talking to. I sit still, holding Bozo in my lap, while a couple of young guys in white coats pull my father out and wheel him inside. When they come back with another gurney for me, I crawl onto it without a word and close my eyes.

  Esther and James barge in through the front entrance, trailing several protesting nurses, just as I’m being wheeled into the cubicle next to my father’s. The emergency intern and a nurse are already working on him, cutting away the jacket and shirt from his upper body so they can see what the damage is.

  Esther unbuttons my wool shirt after retrieving the cell phone, and soon has me stripped to the waist. My injuries aren’t any worse than I thought, except for a bruise that’s blossoming across my right biceps and back where the bear crashed into me just before my father planted the spade in its spine.

  “That’s going to feel nice by tomorrow,” she says without flinching. “I’m going to get something to clean you up with.”

  She disappears and is replaced by Gord’s looming bulk. “You just don’t seem to be able to stay out of trouble lately,” he says. “Dunno what’s going on with you.” He isn’t smiling.

  “The dog,” I answer plaintively. “Esther can take care of me for the time being.”

  “Sternum okay?”

  I can’t quite repress a grimace. “Sure. Speak of it in the plural, and you’ll get the idea.”

  He nods, eyeballs the cuts, then probes my chest firmly enough to invoke a groan. When he’s satisfied that my estimate of the damage is accurate, he turns on his heels and disappears the way he came.

  The intern leans back from working on my father. “If you don’t stop this crap we’re going to have to assign a permanent bed to you,” he says.

  “He’s promised to go straight after this one,” Esther interjects, as she returns with a stainless steel washbasin and a box of gauze pads. “I hope I’m not going to compromise your insur- ance with this.”

  “Be my guest. We’re understaffed tonight. And anyway, insurance is overrated.”

  I tune out while Esther goes to work. She seems to understand that most of the blood on me isn’t mine. It occurs to me that we’re lucky, both my father and I. If just one of those last two shots we took at the bear had missed their mark, it could be chewing on our guts right now.

  Not a very nice thought, I tell myself as I watch Gord thunder in through the steel doors with Bozo. He’s carrying her, and she almost looks like a poodle in his big arms. He sets her down on the gurney I was brought in on, and tells her to stay. She whimpers a greeting to me and I see her tail wag briefly, as if she’s thinking of jumping back into my lap, but she stays where she’s told to.

  “Good dog,” I tell her.

  “Seriously injured dog,” Gord corrects me as he manipulates Bozo’s hindquarters with his fingers. “She got herself clubbed pretty good out there. You’d better tell me exactly what happened.”

  I give him and Esther the long version. By the time I’m halfway through, everyone else is listening, too.

  “You’re goddamned lucky,” Gord says. “All four of you.”

  Esther turns her attention to James, who’s been nodding assent to my version of the story while I was recounting it.

  “What happened before Andy and your dad arrived?” she asks him.

  “I dunno,” he says. “I was coming into town, like I was supposed to, for the practice, and I ran into that bear.”

  “You hit it with the Ski-Doo?”

  “Yeah, sort of. Not head on or anything. But it knocked the Ski-Doo off the trail and stalled it.”

  “And you got up that tree. Smart thinking.”

  “Didn’t feel very smart while I was waiting for someone to come,” he answers. “But that’s what Dad told me to do a long time ago if something like this ever happened, so that’s what I did.”

  Ron Bathgate speaks for the first time. “Good boy, son,” he says. “You did the right thing. Just be thankful that Andy here realized you weren’t at the practice and acted as quickly as he did.”

  James gives me a quick glance. “Oh yeah,” he says. “My brother.”

  I can’t quite read his expression.

  Gord, meanwhile, has disappeared again. When he returns, he’s carrying a tray of fully loaded syringes.

  “What’s that for?” I ask him, sullenly. “Something to calm us down?”

  “Damned near everything but.” He lifts a syringe from the tray and inspects it. “Let’s see what I’ve got here: rabies, tetanus, a couple million units of ampicillin. Hmm … I think I’ll do the dog first while you two bare your behinds for me.”

  I start to giggle despite the situation, but Gord glares at me: no jokes about that, even here.

  A nurse pulls the curtain between the two beds shut, and moves into my father’s cubicle to help him prepare. Esther gets a hospital sheet from somewhere and tosses it in my lap. “Do you need help?”

  “Don’t think so.” I answer.

  I have to call her in a moment later. Baring my backside is a production I can’t quite handle.

  THE NEXT HOURS AREN’T exactly the picture of clarity. I know what you’re thinking — I’ve spent so much time that way lately someone ought to install fog lights on me. But this fog isn’t my doing, and it’s accountable, it turns out, to the bear. I don’t get the worst of it, either.

  A few minutes after Gord gives the three of us our shots, and just as Wendel shows up with Claire, Ron Bathgate’s throat swells up and he goes into convulsions. If he were anywhere but in a hospital emergency ward he’d be dead, and even now it’s close. Gord and the intern recognize that he’s having an immune system reaction, and inject him with adrenaline and antihistamine. Just as they get him breathing again and on a respirator, Bozo has pretty much the same reaction. Before I can get a bead on any of it, so do I.

  We get the same treatment as Ron does, but without the oxygen. I don’t need it, and it’s hard fitting an oxygen facemask over a dog’s drooling snout. But my temperature shoots up, and it stays there until the antibiotics kick in.

  I wake up hours later staring at my dog, who’s been left on the gurney next to my bed. She’s strapped down now, snoring loudly with her swollen tongue lolling on the metal surface of the gurney like a dead salamander.

  My body temp
erature has gone back to something like normal, but it’s left me lightheaded and feeling more than slightly giddy. I’d have preferred to have woken up to Esther’s face, but Bozo’s will do. She’s alive and breathing, and that’s enough. Esther’s there, too, talking to Gord.

  “How’s Bozo,” I croak.

  “She’s got a crack in her hip,” Gord answers, without getting up. “It’ll heal on its own, but you’ll have to make her take things pretty easy for a month or so. Given your condition, that won’t be hard. How do you feel?”

  “Strange,” I answer. “How long was I out?”

  Esther gets to her feet. “Long enough. You had a reaction to something.”

  “So I gather. Man, do I feel odd. Like I’ve been reborn.”

  Gord laughs. “You got mauled by a bear, not the Lord.”

  “No, not reborn that way,” I answer. “Just cleared out, sort of.”

  “You’re joining Scientology? I knew I shouldn’t have given you that sedative.”

  “Stop making me laugh, you idiot. It hurts. And I’m feeling clear headed, not empty headed.”

  Esther is standing over me with the light above her.

  “Will you marry me?” I say to her. I’m feeling utterly clear headed, suddenly, about that.

  It’s her turn to laugh. “Make an honest woman out of me, you mean.”

  “You’re already an honest woman. This is serious. Where is everybody?”

  “Claire’s here somewhere, asleep I think. Wendel took James to our place. He’ll sleep there overnight because Claire wanted to stay near your father. And Jack was hobbling around here for a while, but he went home.”

  “Listen,” I say to her. “I’m serious about this. I want you to marry me. I want my cards on the table, my eggs in your basket, whatever. I’m here for good, you know? This is my home.”