Martin Gilmartin pulled his Imapala to the shoulder of New Jersey State Road 23. Turned the engine off. He reached into a paper sack and devoured the last of six Dorito-shelled tacos. Slurped at his fingertips. Swept slivers of cheese and fluorescent crumbs from the shelf made by his stomach. He came to Highpoint State Park to follow his dream. Not his original dream: of shedding his possessions and walking the earth unfettered, like Caine from Kung fu. The dream revised.
He took up his phone, the wide-screened, slim-bodied candy bar dwarfed by his thick palm. Wikipedia’d Pulp Fiction (film) and read through to the plot summary of “The Gold Watch”, then jabbed a fat finger at the tiny link for “machine pistol.” The screen went white but for the blue loading bar that drew its tedious, predictable path across the bottom of the page.
Not a sleeping dream, though it could have come to him in apneic sleep. A dream synonymous with an improbable goal. One he altered in tiny ways. An unforeseen waiting period. A detour to the Taco Bell in Milford. In his mind, the elderly frolicked. Acted young. Ate tacos. The slogan spoke to him. “Live Mas.” Then came the sense of absence upon his palate. His tongue became a wasteland, scorched soil screaming for salt and faux-cheese.
“MAC-10 (Military Armament Corporation Model 10).” He knew the acronym, but not what it stood for. “Hm,” he grunted at this new knowledge, put the phone on the dash and leaned to retrieve his backpack from the passenger-side floor. The Impala wriggled and complained beneath him. With labored breath he rummaged through the bag and produced the delicate Walther PPK. Martin liked the coolness of the gunmetal. The smallness in his massive hand. Like a joke. He thought, again, of a candy bar. Put the gun aside, and found the pack of double-wide peanut butter cups. Ate both in four total bites while skimming the Wikipedia entry for James Bond, who he never really cared much about. When the salesman suggested the Walther, he used Bond as a selling point. Martin thought about Casino Royale. Recalled only the torture scene. Knotted rope abusing Daniel Craig’s genitals. Still, he began the process of acquiring it.
He learned that the “British Secret Service” is a fictional entity. Wikipediad MI6. First World War. World War II. Holocaust. Extermination Camps. Mass Graves, and put the phone down again. Pulled the keys from the ignition and put them next to it on the passenger seat.
Then Martin got out of the car. A harrowing experience. Shocks and struts barked. Crunched. Then sighed. As he pried himself through the door, his shirt slipped up in back and the cool autumn tickled the hair atop his ass. He grimaced and thanked God his wife had not been in the car to see it all spill out. His ex-wife. He corrected himself, there, on the side of the road. The way she would have corrected him.
“Is it because I’m so chubby?”
“Morbidly obese, Mart. You haven’t been chubby for years.” Ellie had said. The unsheathed truth stabbed into morbidly and years. “You’ll be dead by forty.” He was thirty four then, thirty six now.
Backpack on his shoulder, heavy with camping gear, fishing pole in hand, he stepped over the guardrail, struggled to stay upright as he felt for the unpaved wilderness with his foot. He groaned as he brought his other leg over. Every step brought an electric twinge to his knees. When he had traversed a few feet of slight grade, first down through a natural gutter and gently up again, he found himself panting among the scattered trees. Wondered what kind of trees they were. He knew the names of trees, obviously, and could identify those most common in his boyhood. Pine Trees. Evergreens. He saw some of these. Those he couldn’t name were knobby. Some were thick and aged, others thin and young. Their leaves lay dead at his feet. He turned back to look at his car. A google image search of “trees of northeastern US” would get him there quickly enough. He returned to the car.
Martin walked among the “chestnut,” “maple,” and “oak,” trees, back up the slope. Ambled through the foliage until he met a hiking trail. Out of breath, he paused to drink a half-liter of water. His heavy steps and wheezing startled a coven of smallish, brownish birds into flight. He didn’t care to know the species of bird. Didn’t glance back down the hill. Instead, he turned left, where the canopy of bare branches looked thickest, and marveled at the silence. There was no silence. Birds sang. Wind rustled the things around him. Cars whooshed occasionally down the highway below. His feet shuffled. Dirt scattered. Pebbles skittered. Each breath he took culminated in a gravelly exhale. Still, to Martin, it felt like silence.
Did his wife have a boyfriend, he wondered? His ex-wife. She never mentioned one. Would she mention one? They didn’t hate each other. Martin enjoyed seeing her when he picked up their son, and never came upon an awkward TV drama encounter with a new lover. Ellie was always alone. Pleasant. Glad to see him spend time with Greg. Or to see Greg spend time with him.
When he moved out, he’d asked if she loved someone else.
“No, I don’t want to love anyone,” she’d said. “I just want to be alone. I want to feel … clean?” She said the word in a way that asked for his understanding. So he nodded, though he didn’t know what about his presence made her feel unclean. She was familiar with his bathing habits. He picked up after himself. There was the broken furniture. Two chair legs. And something within the couch that had worn out so you could only sit in the very middle, if you sat in it at all. He’d planned on getting to those repairs some weekend. It’s not like he was a hoarder or a junkie or anything.
Walking along the level trail came easier, so he lost himself in an episode of Hoarders. One he’d recapped to several co-workers just last week.
“There’s always cat crap everywhere in these houses. Like under the piles of newspaper and in random boxes.”
“Really,” said Bill Schaeffer, the new sales rep, who’d been welcomed to Nanolife with every half-dead account the other reps could scrape from their soles. He’d come into the break room and taken the last free chair. “I’ve never watched that show. It sounds kinda depressing.”
“Really?” Martin said.
“Yeah, I dunno.” A strange look came over Bill Schaeffer’s face then, as Martin took a zealous bite of his Chipotle Cheesesteak from Jersey Mike’s. Some hot cheese/sauce amalgam spilled down his chin and into his goatee.
“Gughhh,” Martin gurgled, and a tiny belch escaped with the noise. He swallowed hard. Pounded his chest. “Cow’s still kickin’.”
Bill Schaeffer laughed in his weird, faint, thin-lipped way and held a napkin out to him. Then pulled out his iPhone. Swiped the screen with his thumb.
“So the cat shit,” he began again through clumps of hoagie. “It’s just everywhere in these places. I don’t know what it is about these hoarders. But they love to have cats. But last night. This woman’s house. The guy, Matt Paxton, opened a box and it looked like a mass grave. Just dozens of dead kittens. And the maggots.” Martin gave an exaggerated shudder. “But, yeah. It’s a good show. Really interesting.”
“Yeah.” Without looking up, Bill stood. “Well, hey. I gotta get back. Have a good one, Mart.”
Martin stopped, unsure of how far he’d gone. Finished the open water. Pulled a floral print dishtowel from his back pocket to dab his slick forehead. He turned in response to the shuffle of feet. Two post-teenage girls came power-walking up the trail behind him, shifting their course to the left to give him a wide berth. As they passed, they whispered and giggled. “Nothing to see here,” he considered saying, “just a chubby dude goin’ fishin’.” But the situation didn’t actually warrant comment. The seesaw of their ass cheeks caught his eye with a vague magnetism. One wore black leggings. The other, tight pink sweats with the word Pink printed across them in white block letters. He thought about what he could make them do at gunpoint. Then tried to recall a recent sexual urge he’d been unable to sate with ninety seconds of streaming porn. Had Ellie ever check his browser history? She definitely saw pop-ups. Those couldn’t be helped. Could come from anywhere. But she’d never mentioned them.
As the hikers, or joggers—or whatever they called themselves—vanished around the bend, he decided to leave the path again. To find his respite—his woodland dreamspace—and make camp where the branches parted to reveal the stars. The trees and brush frustrated his passage. Snagged the loose-hanging tent of his shirt in their half-hearted attempts to stop him. But with care, he found decent footing on the hillside and climbed for a bit. Until his mind fogged with the aches and pains of physical activity, it replayed YouTube videos of people draining cysts. An episode of My Strange Addiction, in which a woman couldn’t stop drinking her own urine. Streaming video of a girl dressed as Sailor Moon giving head. Thirty second bursts of playing soccer with Greg on the lawn. A few steps. A kick. Pain in his back and knees. Bent over, hands braced on thighs, panting and spitting.
When the trees finally concealed the trail below, he eased himself to the ground to catch his breath and rest his joints. Laid back with his head on his pack for a pillow. Strained to remember details of the Wikipedia entry on spider bites. And poison ivy. He’d had both as a child, when he spent a good deal of time outdoors. Swinging sticks. Fondling leaves. Watching the stutter-step of a mantis and trying to imitate it. Worrying over poison sumac. He’d always loved those words in combination. “Poison sumac,” he said aloud.
Without sitting up he drew the pistol from his pocket and weighed it in his hand. It also reminded him of childhood, somehow. Of a water pistol. With the gun at his side, clutched as he’d seen it clutched in movies, he felt like a wounded desperado bleeding out in solitude after his last stand. He thought about work and how terribly boring it had become. Just like the rest of his life. Long staring contests with flashing cursors and scripts read over the telephone. Everything he said felt scripted. The cordial words he spoke to his ex-wife. The encouragement he uttered to his son. To Greg. Thin and athletic, as if born into immediate opposition with his father. He thought about all the money he spent on food. Disgusting portions of salted grease and sugar. Packing meat and fat on to what would ultimately be his corpse. The food he would eventually become.
He drew a long breath. It rumbled in his overtaxed lungs. As he pushed the air out, he looked for the strength to put the Walther to his temple, or in his mouth. Or under his chin. He heard the sing-songing birds. The whispering breeze. His heavy pulse thumping. His breathing. His grunting. No. It was not his grunting.
He opened his eyes to see a small bear sniffing at one of his spent Hostess wrappers. Lifted his phone to check the Wikipedia entry on bear attacks, and saw only gunmetal. The bear raised its head and watched him. Martin’s chest cinched around his rumbling organs. His heart pumped gallons of blood. Enough for two grown men standing too close to a bear. Two men and a small child. A five-year old. Like Greg.
God damn memory, he thought. He had recollections, but no real memory anymore. What did he remember? Plot lines. Moments. He remembered that a Wikipedia page on bear attacks existed. But now, at the end of his life, could draw nothing useful from it. Make noise and scare it off? Play dead? Back away slowly? His mind whirled in rapid panoramic sweeps of his interior camera that captured the details of nothing. Returned only a stew of blurred Technicolor. Bears are not natural predators. When they eat men, they don’t have the forethought—the mercy—to kill them first.
The bear watched as he struggled to his feet, trying not to jerk or fling his limbs. Standing, his legs shook. His bones felt gelatinous. He suspected he would be down again soon, one way or another. At his full height, 6’4”, Martin towered over the animal. A cub, he realized. Dragging his pack from the ground with his free hand, leveling the Walther with the other, Martin stepped back. The bear watched. Martin carefully slipped the heavy pack over his shoulder. The bear watched. He crouched again, knees popping, to collect the fishing rod. Then the bear bolted into the brush with hardly a sound.
Martin stared after it. Watched the patch of branches that bent to allow the creature to pass. His heart and lungs, near bursting, faded gradually to their normal usage. He put the pistol in his pocket and set out to find the lake.
He found his clearing a few feet from where the trees broke upon the edge of the water. In the miles since meeting the bear cub, he saw little of the woods. The forest remained green and brown on the periphery of his mind, which worked to keep him distracted from the strain of using his body with stories of failed Crystal Meth interventions. The clearing, a leaf-littered semi-circle, lacked the digitally enhanced serenity of his mental blueprint. Still, he thought as he dropped the pack and pole and stood at its center. Still.
As the sun set, Martin assembled the tent he’d purchased from Walmart, sized for a single, more diminutive person, navy blue roof and gray flap. On his knees, he cleared away some dry brush, gathered sticks and stones. Remembered how painful kneeling could be. Shifted to his rump and made a fire circle while bending forward over his crossed legs, ignoring, as best he could, the glimpses of his great, shadowy ass-crack his every move provided the forest. Beneath the trees, he found some thick, dead branches. Set them in the ring of stones and lit them with a barbeque lighter. Then stopped to admire his finished chores.
He felt strangely useful. Capable. A feeling he tried to hold on to while removing his shirt and using his dish towel to wipe away the sweat collected in his numerous and bulbous folds. Beneath his arms. His breasts. Between his legs. “Travel balls,” some comedian called them. Then he sat and stared into the fire, expecting only boredom to follow. But as the stillness outside tried to creep into him, he didn’t feel bored. Rather, his eyes shifted to track the source of every rustle, crackle or chirp. Unable to fix his eyes on anything that would slow the flickering in his head or drown the electric whine at the cusp of his hearing, he panicked.
Breathing rapidly, he fell to his back and saw, as if they had appeared suddenly, like shells bursting over a battlefield, the stars. He saw them and knew they meant something. Tried to remember the last time he’d seen them so clearly, or looked at them at all. Patted his pockets for his iPhone, hoping to open the Starwalk app and learn the name of each blue flare, but felt only the pistol. Would he see a shooting star? Had he ever seen one? Did they exist? He had never seen one. Orion’s belt caught his eye. And he could make out a dipper, but that was all of the celestial language known to him. The rest were just lights. Beautiful, though. Pulsing. Some like the blue cherry of an e-cigarette constantly inhaled. Others less glamorous, like distant streetlamps.
The spell broke as his stomach spoke to him. He unwrapped a turkey and bacon hero. In the future, he might create his own society in this place. His own history. And for lack of anything better to do, he could name the stars he didn’t know. Name the planets and the plants and all the insects. But not tonight.
He went into the tent, unrolled the two pads and his heavy, down bag, and tried to sleep. After so much exercise, he expected it to come easy. But it didn’t. In him—somewhere in him—a vague and unnamable pain peeled away from the others. He remembered an episode of Obsessed he’d seen rerun a few weeks ago, where a girl picked at her skin. Picked it raw and bloody. Wounded herself, insisting something beneath it itched and poked. Something unreachable.
He wondered if he could aim the Walther into his massive torso like a scalpel, and obliterate the pain. Blast it from his body. What was it? What. Was. It? He thought about Greg, and how he’d worry over his vanished father. Martin had tried to write a note to explain everything. He wrote it on a legal pad. Crumpled and rewrote it. Crumpled that note as well. With a cramped wrist he tick-tacked a message into his iPhone. “Greg,” it said, “ive gone awry for a while everything OK. Ill be back soon. Miss u love u.”
Martin hoped Greg would forgive him when he returned. He’d have to. “When I leave the woods,” he whispered to the dark, “I’ll be more like I should be. I’ll be a better dad. A good man. I just need some time.” Time? Time to what?
He slept a fitful sleep. His girth flattened the bedrolls and he felt the protruding rocks and roots, and the cold earth stabbing through. Noises startled him. Brought him full awake more than once. He strained his ears to decipher the footfalls of some animal. A bear? No. Something smaller. Still, he didn’t sleep again until the sounds seemed to move away and fade out, taking the world with them.
Stiff and covered in sweat and dew, he dragged himself from the tent at something like dawn. Ate a granola bar and a banana. Took a meteoric shit on the outskirts of the clearing and buried it without knowing if that was the correct thing to do. Then he dug worms from the damp ground near the shore of the lake and went fishing.
Eleven nights and ten mornings showed him the various holes in his plan. With no cooler, he ate only what he caught once his non-perishable carbohydrate wads depleted. Though he found some blueish berries, and some blackish berries. Ate them hesitantly and lived. He had no razor, and scratched at the gathering stubble like a flea-bitten dog. The lake water had a crispness to it, but also an underlying hint of filth that registered at the back of his palate. What would he do when the lake froze? Could he survive on snow? Would his body simply eat itself, like a bear in hibernation? He missed toilet paper. Made do with water and leaves. Wished for his phone many times over. Wondered if the car was still there, or if the phone held any charge.
He brought no clothes but what he wore that first day. As those garments stiffened and chaffed his skin, he considered the logistics of cleaning them in the lake. How soon would they dry in the chill autumn air?
Each night, he slept in pain. His back. His knees. But more and more acutely, he felt that mysterious pain swim throughout his body. All he knew of it was that it had always been there, smothered in food. As if every morsel he put in his mouth was a bomb aimed at a moving target. One he couldn’t hit. But he tried all the same, until the pressure of compiled carnage pushed the walls of his body as far as they went.
In this place, he could no longer sit on the toilet for an hour and stare at scrolling text and pictures, or collapse into something that once resembled a couch and watch the others: those with the same pain. Who let it destroy them on camera, more rapidly—more obviously—than he destroyed himself.
Still. Still the air felt clean in his ever-laboring lungs. And his clothes, always loose, felt a little more spacious. And he found, though his thoughts were mostly of food, faces would occasionally flit past his internal lens. Bill Schaeffer, a meth addict at his intervention. Erin, the first girl who blew him, who clung to his hips and seemed to want to drown in his flesh. His son. A McRib sandwich. A glass bottle of coke. Time, as he sat fishing, crawled forward. Except when his mind disconnected or he fell asleep. Then great swaths of his life vanished, along with the anxiety of its disuse.
In moments of cynical clarity, Martin awoke to where he was. “What am I doing here?” he wondered. “How long has it been? I should be at home. I should be with Greg. And Ellie.” These glimpses of reality brought on crippling panic. He sat motionless, lakeside, ignoring the state of his line. “It’s getting colder.” He said to the air around him, the words appearing as smoke. “I know how this ends. I’ve seen Into the Wild. I’ve seen Grizzly Man.”
Mornings, when he seemed to be the last living man on the planet, he’d squeeze a couple of rounds out of his handgun. Tiny though it was, it exploded into the woods, the sound a sudden, thunderous proclamation of his presence to the animal kingdom. He fired at the surface of the lake to avoid hitting something of consequence. The impact of the bullet on the plane of calm water miniscule. The splash hardly noticeable.
Routines formed. He woke. Shat. Collected berries and wood from expanding circuitous patrols around the clearing or along the rim of the lake. More and more he noticed the encroachment of his fellow man upon the forest. The white/gray of old cigarette butts, scraps of singed paper, the glimmer of plastic or foil. Bottle caps and jewels of broken glass sang out to his eyes as he walked. Disrupted the earthen murmur of the nature’s colors. Grass green, leaf brown, rock gray. He saw the evidence of human invasion everywhere, and though dulled by the insurmountable nature of such an undertaking, considered collecting it all and dumping it in a trash can in the picnic grounds.
They were not far off, these picnic grounds. Were likely deserted this time of year. One morning, as he hung three fish from a tree near his tent, which now served as storage, he felt a pang for some kind of human contact. Something non-destructive. Like a disused barbecue or an empty restroom. After a brunch of lakewater and berries, he wrapped himself in his sleeping bag. And with a whittled sapling for a walking stick, set out.
Avoiding the main trail, he stomped through the brush. Followed a muddy, overgrown path for more than an hour. Through the mesh of leaves he caught the glint of a metal picnic table. And in the quiet, heard murmuring voices. At first, he thought he was out of earshot. Stood still and strained his ears. He could make out no words, and, for a conversation, the spacing of the sound seemed odd. Overlapped, and varied in volume. Like an argument.
He stepped back, wanted to flee without seeing or being seen. Then a feminine shriek pierced the air. Cautious as his body would allow, he shuffled to the edge of the brush. Saw two bodies pressed together on the table nearest him.
She knelt upon the bench, laying her stomach across the metal. Folded her hands beneath her face. Looked away from Martin, as if she were napping at a school desk. A man stood behind her, his flannel shirt on. Jeans around his ankles. He pumped in long, smooth strokes, seemingly fixated, not on her, but on his own flesh as it disappeared and reappeared, or so Martin imagined. Close as he was, he could see only shadow in the intermittent space that came between them. The man was older. Leather-faced. His apple-red cheeks creased and wrinkled. The close-cropped hair shone silver around the black band of his earmuffs. Martin’s own member swelled. Added to the weight of the gun in his pants.
The man came. It was a funny sound that could only be made by an old man cumming, surprised to find himself inside a lithe young woman. He fell forward. Ground his hips against her in his final throws. Plied his hands between her and the table until she arched upward to allow her breasts to fall into his hands. She turned her smiling face toward Martin, and ground back against him. She’s young, Martin thought, stroking himself. He wondered if they were from Keystone College. Wondered if he paid her. He came on the soil.
She opened her eyes. Froze. Screamed. The man saw him too, and his mouth fell open. Martin turned and ran. His walking stick in-hand. Semi-free penis scratching against his open zipper. A few hundred feet away he stopped and sank down against the tree, lungs burning. Realized he was not in any danger. What could they do? Had they seen a man or a filthy sasquatch? As he squatted to catch his breath, blood flooded into his penis again. Though he had already come, it stood erect and he relieved himself again. Twice in the course of a few minutes. Something he’d done only, if ever, in the unquenchable wake of puberty.
As he walked back to his camp along the glimmering shore, he thought about his ex-wife. How they enjoyed fucking and watching movies and eating junk food. And how, somewhere along the way, while he ate and watched, her attention had turned elsewhere. To Greg. And how somewhere, further along, he’d eaten enough, watched enough, fucked himself enough to be numb to her absence.
He breathed the mountain air, and his eyes filled with tears.
“I’m going to have a baby,” she said to him one morning while he dressed for work, searching his face for something. Though afterward he would love Greg beyond doubt, in that moment, the effort of forcing out a smile through the cold terror was massive. Herculean. His greatest feat of strength. It left him so spent he called in sick. Waited for her to leave and spent the day making love to pizza, Ben & Jerry’s and Celebrity Rehab.
Some scent, or noise, or disturbance in the atmosphere halted him just outside his clearing. Told him to approach with caution. A huge black shape bolted through the brush at the opposite side of his camp. His heart in his throat, Martin remained still, watching the break in the trees through which the shadow had departed. When all felt quiet, he entered the clearing, stepped around his fallen tent and saw, on the ground, the remnants of his fishing line. Scales and scraps of fin and tale.
As the fear faded, the sight of his devoured food enraged him. He shouted after the vanished bear. “Very funny, guy. That was my dinner, ya fat bastard.” As he set about repairing his line and restoring his tent, his stomach growled. Part of him thought this might be the time to pack up and leave.
The clearing flooded with starlight and moonlight. Though he wrapped himself in all the cloth he had, Martin left his face uncovered and watched the faint plumes of his own breath lift toward the speckled heaven. Breathing came easy, and, of late, he fell asleep quickly, fireside, in spite of the chilly, rocky ground. Snow had yet to fall on his little camp, but he could smell it coming. As he could in the distant analog of his childhood, alone in his back yard on a Saturday morning, swishing bare, fallen branches through the air.
Beneath his covers, he scratched at the sting of some louse that had become his bedmate, and wondered how long he’d been here. How much longer he’d stay. He wondered, also, at how he’d managed to stay so long, but as each day crawled by, as he performed each routine upon which his survival hinged, the idea of leaving the woods seemed dreadful. On his diet of fish and forage, he’d grown thin. Or thinner. And the aches and pains of walking or bending or breathing rarely troubled him. He guessed himself filthy by the clumps of matted hair and long, unshorn goatee. His clothing held little original color, had absorbed as much of the forest as the pores in the material would allow. It had been some time since he’d seen his own reflection and he imagined himself to be a shambling clump of the earth itself moving between the trees. He hadn’t considered taking his own life for some time, except to note that he had not considered it. Maybe he was ready. Maybe it was time to go.
Broken twig. Shattered leaf. Pad scraping the ground. Martin heard the bear before he saw it. Knew it for what it was. Silently cursed his carelessness, as the fat shadow nosed through the scraps of fish he’d forgotten to dump in the lake.
He pulled the covers tight. Hoped to be ignored as the bear crunched on the meager mouthfuls of Martin’s leftovers. Slowly, he drew the tiny pistol from his pocket. Found the trigger and, from his back, leveled it at the mass of fur, dimly oranged by the fading coals of his fire. The bear turned on him, silent though he was. Grunted. Snatched the last piece of fish and moved to the treeline to devour it.
Martin rolled slowly to his knees and stood up. Inched backward, pistol outstretched.
“Get the hell outta here,” he screamed, his hoarse voice cracked. At this burst of sound the bear spun in a circle like a playful dog. But did not leave. It paced at the edge of the clearing. Kept its eyes on Martin. Snorted. “Go on,” Martin shouted. “Get!” He lowered the Walther a few degrees and fired at the ground. The bear reeled as the report obliterated the serenity of the night. A spray of rock and dirt jumped up and bit at its haunches.
Before Martin could think to fire again, the gap between them closed. He stood, frozen in place. Heart and breath on pause. The bear came within striking distance and veered away. A bluff charge, Martin realized. Something he’d read on some webpage, some day in the recent past. Martin hadn’t responded to it. Had not backed away. And the bear turned on him again, stood on its hind legs and unleashed a roar that smoldered in the cold. Drowned the television in his head. Eradicated every preconception he ever had about the roar of a bear. He wanted to crumple to the ground and weep.
But he did not crumple. He would not play dead. He named the bear. Horace. It seemed to fit, and made him less afraid. He took an unsteady step and roared back. Drained every vacuole in his massive lungs. “Fuck you, Horace. Fuck You Horace.” Horace’s left paw swatted Martin across the face. Pain came in a white gush that took away his sight. Martin fell on his side, then rolled reflexively to his back.
His vision cleared enough to see the black blur lording over him. He raised his left arm in time for Horace to clamp down on his wrist. Felt each tooth breech his body, like a dull saw blade rending at fat and muscle. Martin screamed. Gurgled, more like, as the bulky creature stepped on his chest. He wished for it to go black. To be devoured in a peaceful coma. But the coma didn’t come. His right hand felt heavy as he lifted it. He remembered the gun as the butt hammered into Horace’s snout. The bear let go of his left forearm, clamped down on his right hand, gun and all. Martin dumped the clip into the animal’s mouth. The sound the weapon fired inside a bear hollow. Otherworldly. Like the footsteps of a Greek god on a wet marble floor.
Horace staggered off of him, dragging his right claw across Martin’s chest. He looked down at the laceration. Saw blood fill the gashes made in the ragged remnants of his flannel shirt. But, through the agony he found strength. Felt his heart rage. Horace lay dead, sprawled on his stomach. Martin found his feet, took up a heavy, still-smoking log and dashed in the bear’s skull. Then fell on his stomach and the world was a flash of pain then darkness.
Later, he opened his remaining eye to see the sky grown pale. Though unable to lift his limbs, he turned his head in response to a skittering light in the bushes. Choked out a sound that was meant to be “Help.” A man’s voice responded. Martin let consciousness slip away again. Wondered if he’d be fished from the woods by a helicopter.
Martin’s time in the state park totaled eleven weeks. He almost couldn’t believe it when Ellie told him while he lay in his hospital bed. They kept their distance as his nurse removed the gauze that wrapped most of his face. His son, tearful, clutched at Ellie’s pant leg. His ex-wife fidgeted with her hands, her keys, her purse strap. He had come back from the dead.
Horace had taken his right eye. Torn a bagel of flesh from his left forearm. And the lacerations across his nose and cheek looked distinctly like the swipe of a bear claw. Martin examined them as best he could in a hand mirror, before the nurse redressed the wounds. He could call them nothing but what they were. Horrific.
“We’re glad you’re okay. We missed you,” Ellie whispered as the nurse left.
Martin tried to smile at her, but found it too painful. He put the mirror down and beckoned them closer with his right hand. They approached cautiously, as if he were a wild, unpredictable beast. “Srrry I scrrred you,” he muttered, unable to enunciate fully.
His son, snail-like in his exploration of his bedridden father, ever so gently put his head on Martin’s belly. Well away from the stitches in his chest. Martin’s large hand covered his son’s back. He felt the ribs expand around the boy’s lungs. Felt the bulge of his bent vertebrae, and closed his eyes.
Later, as they were leaving, Ellie turned on the TV for him. “Anything special you’d like to watch?”
“This is fine,” he mumbled back without looking up to identify the program.
Ellie lingered in the doorway for a moment. “We’ll be back in the morning. I hope you can sleep.”
He nodded.
She led their son from the room. Closed the door. He found the remote and turned off the television. Let the whisper of forced air sift into the room like sand.
Bill Schaeffer had taken over his job. His accounts. Martin was happy for him, and, the day he returned to claim his personal effects, dropped into his office to wish him well. As he walked among the cubicles, he saw his former colleagues. Pale faces lit with the sickly liquid light of their screens, white wires dangling from the conches of their ears. Those who took notice of him saw his face. The black pirate patch over his eye. The scars. They slipped him polite smiles and looked away before their terror could leak. Looked back at their boxes. Martin was staggered by the squareness of everything. Everywhere he looked he saw boxes. Boxes within boxes.
“Hey, Mart,” Bill said from behind his desk. He smiled too. Made eye contact. Applied the impenetrable, cocky cheer of a salesman. “So glad you’re okay, buddy. Can I get you anything?”
“Thanks, Bill. Nah. I’m alright.” A long pause, as the two men grinned dumbly at each other.
“So what are your plans?” As the question came, Bill picked up his iPhone and skimmed the screen with his thumb.
Martin watched his eyes focus, reflecting diamonds of white light. He suddenly didn’t feel like talking. Like watching this man feign interest in his new camper. Or the sale of his condo. Or anything made of tangible flesh and blood. “Not sure yet. I just wanted to wish you luck. If you have any questions about the accounts, here’s my number.” He took one of Bill’s business cards and scrawled the digits on its blank back.
“Sure, I’ll shoot you a text. We’ll grab some dinner or a beer or something.” Without looking up from the phone, Bill took the outstretched card.
“Sure. Well, I’ll let ya get back to it.”
At this, Bill put the phone down and stepped out from behind the desk to shake Martin’s hand. The calcified smile shimmered through his otherwise unimpressive features. “Best of luck to ya,” he said. “I think Sandra has your stuff in a box at reception.”
“Sure, thanks.”
As he moved back through the maze of desks, the electric hum of man-made light, monitor tubes and fluorescent cylinders, irritated him. He clenched his fists in his pockets. Sneered, though the expression was undetectable beneath the fossilized claw marks of old Horace. He found the box waiting for him on Sandra’s unoccupied desk. It contained some photos of Greg and Ellie, a plaster rooster his son had painted blue and green and orange. He removed these. Left the phone charger, headphones, and uneaten candy bars. Returned to the car, where his son waited patiently—flipping through a sticker book—to be taken to the park.
–Art by Petra
–Art by NiiCoLaZz
Sportswear Design | Chuck 70 National Parks – Unisex by Converse Online , Ietp , Australia