Dan Versus Nature

by Don Calame

  “Max!” I shout through cupped hands. “Barbara! Help! Get out here!”

  “What the hell do we do now?” Charlie says.

  “The bear’s stopped,” Hank says. “It’s nervous. We can take advantage of that. Here. Let’s get in a line. Make ourselves seem big. Scare it off.”

  “Interesting theory, Mr. Langston,” Charlie says, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the moonlight. “However, I do believe I remember a certain bush pilot saying that it has been an extremely long winter here in the Frank. That the animals were having a difficult time finding sustenance.”

  “If we run away, it’ll chase after us,” Hank says. “Just like it did with Dan. You want to risk being the one it goes after?”

  “Well,” Charlie says, pushing his glasses up. “When you put it that way.”

  The bear lifts its nose, its nostrils twitching.

  The four of us stand in a row and link arms. We take a step toward the bear.

  The bear slaps at the dirt, warning us.

  “Um,” I croak, my throat saltine-dry. “It doesn’t look very frightened.”

  The animal takes a step forward.

  “Make some noise!” Hank shouts. “Rah! Rah! Go! Leave!”

  “Relinquo!” Penelope yells. “Ut de loco in inferno!”

  Charlie blinks at her. “You think the bear knows Latin?”

  “You think it knows English?” Penelope counters. “Besides, Latin’s my reflex language. Vado! Emigro! Exitus!”

  The animal continues forward, its nose sniffing the air like mad.

  “It isn’t working!” Penelope cries.

  Max stumbles out of the shelter, scratching his head, his eyes half shut. “What the heck’s going on out — oh shit!” Suddenly, he’s wide awake and in an action-man stance. “Nobody move.”

  “Tell that to the mountainous omnivore,” Charlie says.

  “Is it morning already?” Barbara croaks as she crawls from the hut. “I feel like we just — Oh-my-God-a-bear!”

  Max holds up a hand. “Stay calm. It’s just curious. Look at its nostrils go. It’s caught a scent. Is someone wearing perfume? Cologne?”

  I glare at Charlie, who doesn’t meet my gaze.

  “It’s a bold animal,” Max says. “But there are too many of us. It won’t attack. Stand your ground.”

  And yet the bear keeps advancing.

  “Keep making noise,” Max instructs. “Barbara and I are going to circle around to you. The last thing we want is this animal thinking it’s cornered.”

  Hank roars, “Go away, bear! Go away!”

  “Vanesco!” Penelope screams. “Abeo!”

  “Jah!” I holler. “Bah! Wah! Get lost! This is not the camp you’re looking for!”

  “Good, good!” Max says, holding Barbara’s hand and cautiously leading her in a wide half circle around the camp. “More aggressive! Don’t back down.”

  The four of us go nuts, yelling and howling and shrieking. Stomping our feet. Kicking up dirt.

  The bear stops. Tilts its head curiously.

  “Excellent!” Max says. “Keep going! Don’t let it think you’re weak!”

  “Hold on, Penelope,” Barbara says. “Mommy’s coming.”

  “Yah! Yah! Yah!” I shout, my voice going hoarse and phlegmy. “Scram! Shoo!”

  Suddenly, the bear rears back and swats its front paws hard on the earth. Its head juts out as it gives a low, angry, guttural growl.

  Oh crap!

  “The bear’s just testing you,” Max says, stopping in his tracks and holding Barbara back. “It’s all a big bluff.”

  The bear springs forward, its teeth bared and clacking, like Hannibal Lecter about to feast.

  The six of us scream bloody murder and scatter.

  Hank and Penelope bound into the woods. Charlie stumbles after them, his arms pinwheeling like a mental patient. Barbara stretches out a hand and screams Penelope’s name as Max yanks her off into the darkness.

  And where do I run? Not away from the camp like all the others. No, I race toward the hut — because there’s no way a bear will be able to get at me inside a fortress of twigs and sticks.

  But even though I know I’m running toward my doom, it’s too late to do anything else now. I just have to hope that the bear decides not to —

  Fuck!

  My foot catches a rock, sending me flying.

  I slam hard into the branch shelter, the whole thing collapsing and clattering around me.

  I’m swallowed up by sticks, leaves, and shrubbery. I claw at the debris, swiping pine needles from my face. I flip over and look up just in time to see the bear changing course and lumbering toward me, its dark eyes locked on mine.

  Again.

  The bear clomps forward, its nostrils quivering, its sharp claws scraping the ground as it goes.

  I grab a stick and hurl it at the bear from where I’m sitting. The stick goes way wide. “Yah! Get out of here! Yah!” I grab another one and throw it as hard as I can. “Yah! Yah!”

  The branch bounces off the bear’s shoulder.

  But it keeps coming.

  I kick the bramble off and scrabble to my feet, the bear closing in on me. I’m about to make a run for it when, miracle of miracles, I spot Max’s homemade bow and arrows on the ground. We never did get that archery lesson from him.

  I snatch up the bow and one of the crude arrows anyway. I face the bear, my legs weak and wobbly.

  I nock the arrow and draw back the bootlace bowstring. My arms tremble from the strain. Or from fear.

  I raise the bow and take aim, the shoelace cutting into my fingers.

  The bear stops. It growls and smacks at the ground, like it knows what I’m about to do.

  “Don’t come any closer, you bastard,” I say, trying to sound brave and determined. But the arrow clicks and trembles inside the little notch; there’s no way in hell I’m hitting this animal. Not even to save my life.

  A loud branch cracks to my right.

  I spin around to see who — or what — it is. And when I do, the bootlace snaps, thrashing against my forearm.

  The bow flies out of my hand and smacks the bear in the nose. Meanwhile, the arrow rockets off to the side and —

  “Uuu!” Hank grunts and drops to his knees.

  “Oh crap!” I stare at the arrow sticking out of Hank’s left calf. Blood blooms around the wound, staining the pant leg of his sweats.

  I glance over and see the bear dragging its sore nose on the ground.

  I run over to Hank. “Oh my God,” I say, examining the injury. “It . . . went all the way through. I am so sorry, Hank! I was aiming for the bear, but then you startled me and I —”

  “It’s . . . fine. Just . . .” Hank swallows. He looks up at the snorting bear. “Help me up. We have to . . . get out of here. Before it comes . . . after us.”

  “Do you need to rest?” I ask Hank, his arm heavy around my shoulder.

  It’s been slow going with Hank having to lean most of his weight on me as we hobble along, but we’ve managed to get a fair ways into the forest. If the bear is following us, it’s doing so in stealth mode; we haven’t heard so much as a rustle from behind us since we left the camp.

  “No,” he says, his breath labored. “We just . . . need to get as far away as we can.”

  I grimace, hoping he can’t see my expression. My legs are on fire, my shoulders are cramped up, and my back feels like it could snap at any moment.

  But there’s no way I can complain. Not when Hank’s the one with the arrow piercing his calf — an arrow I put there. If he can keep going, I sure as hell can.

  “I’d like . . . to get to the river . . . if we can,” Hank pants.

  The damned river. I can hear the sound of cascading water off in the distance, but how far is anyone’s guess. I don’t know how I’m going to make it there without collapsing.

  “Hello?” A voice rasps in the dark. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Dan,” I say. “And Hank. Who’s that?
”

  The bushes rustle and a thin beam of light swings through the dark as Penelope and Charlie lope toward us.

  “Thank God we found you,” Charlie says when they get to us. “And that you’re OK.”

  “Not exactly,” I say, gesturing to the arrow in Hank’s leg.

  “Holy Christ!” Penelope’s eyes bug behind her glasses. “How did that happen?”

  “Dan . . . shot me,” Hank says.

  “He what?” Charlie gives me a holy-crap-are-you-that-desperate look.

  “It was an accident,” I explain. “I was aiming for the bear. But the bowstring exploded on me, and the arrow went in the wrong direction. If you want to blame someone, blame Max and his shoddy workmanship.”

  Penelope crouches down to examine the wound. “That looks extraordinarily unpleasant.” She stands. “We need to remove the shaft and clean the wound as soon as possible.”

  “We’ll need . . . water,” Hank says, perspiration beading his forehead. “We should head toward . . . the river.”

  “From the sounds of it, the river’s at least a mile away,” Charlie says. “But there’s a stream a couple hundred yards back the way we came.” He slips Hank’s other arm around his shoulder. “Come on. We’ll take you there.”

  I desperately want to ask Penelope to spell me for a bit, but the combination of guilt and pride makes me bite my tongue. Literally. It’s the only thing keeping me from screaming.

  Penelope leads the way with her Maglite. Charlie, Hank, and I step-limp our way behind.

  “Did you see my mother?” Penelope asks, not sounding terribly concerned.

  “Max . . . dragged her off . . . into the woods,” I gasp, struggling to keep Hank vertical. “When . . . the bear attacked.”

  Penelope looks amused. “It’s not bear that Max should fear,” she says. “It’s cougar.”

  A short but agonizing while later, we find the stream. Charlie and I ease Hank down onto a log.

  “Thanks, guys,” Hank says, his shirt soaked in sweat. He winces as he props his injured leg on a rock. He grabs the cuff of his sweatpants leg and tears it in two to reveal the full horror of the trauma.

  I retch, my stomach turning.

  Penelope shines her flashlight on the wound, examining both sides of Hank’s leg. “It’s fairly clean. The projectile perforated the soft tissue and passed straight through the gastrocnemius. Missed your fibula and tibia completely.” She stands. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “How do you know all of that?” I ask in awe, still barely able to look at the wound myself.

  “I consider myself pre-premed,” she says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I was reading Gray’s Anatomy when you were still trying to find Spot.”

  “Gray’s?” Charlie asks skeptically. “Isn’t that a bit antiquated? I’d have thought a serious doctor-in-training would have read Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy.”

  “Netter’s is excellent,” Penelope says. “However, it isn’t completely representative of practical anatomy. Not to mention the mistakes. Now Rohen’s is another story completely, as it uses actual cadaver photographs.”

  “I’m all for photographs,” Charlie counters, “but don’t you think illustrations have the benefit of being able show the borders of structures more clearly?”

  “In some cases,” Penelope says. “But if I’m going with illustrations, I’m sticking with the Sobatta. The drawings are superior, and they identify all of the anatomical structures by their Latin names, which I prefer.”

  “Enough!” Hank says, his voice strangled. “Let’s get on with this. After I break off the arrowhead, I’m going to need one of you to remove the shaft.”

  “Wh-why can’t you do that, too?” I ask, feeling light-headed.

  Hank grimaces. “It’s not going to come out without a fight. And to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll remain conscious long enough to finish the task.”

  Oh, God.

  Penelope shrugs. “I’ll do it. Bloodshed and viscera don’t unnerve me. Unlike these two hemophobes.”

  “I didn’t . . . say I wouldn’t do it,” I croak.

  “Me . . . either,” Charlie adds weakly.

  Penelope shines the flashlight on Charlie and me. “You sure? Because you both look decidedly whey-faced.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I shot the arrow. So . . . I should be the one to pull it out.”

  “I appreciate the gesture, Dan,” Hank says, his sweaty face tinted blue by the moon. “But it has to be done quickly, without any hesitation.”

  “That settles it,” Penelope says, pushing me out of the way. “Give me some room, boys. The more time we waste, the greater the risk of infection.”

  “Well, technically,” Charlie says, “the wound’s most likely already infected, but —”

  “Oh, shut up, Bill Nye,” Penelope snaps. “Your pop-science trumpery is next to useless here.” She turns to Hank. “You ready?”

  Hank takes a deep breath and nods. He grabs the tip of the arrow with both hands and flexes it. “Oh, God.” He grimaces as the arrow bows but doesn’t snap. “Rrrrrrrr!” he groans, bending the shank even farther.

  Fresh blood spills from the wound as the jostling arrow tugs at the holes.

  “Jesus Christ,” Charlie says, turning away. “I can’t watch this.”

  I half close my eyes, but for some reason I can’t stop looking, even though my head is full of helium and my stomach is flopping over like a dying fish.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Hank gives one last long scream as he bears down and —

  Crack!

  The wood splinters and the arrowhead breaks off.

  Hank’s body crumples. He starts to teeter off the log, and I leap over, grab him, and heft him upright.

  “Thanks . . . Dan,” he mumbles.

  “Would you like to wait a minute?” Penelope asks, sounding authoritative. “So you can compose yourself before I commence with the extraction?”

  He shakes his head. “No . . . get it . . . over with.”

  Penelope looks at us. “When I withdraw the projectile, the wound will start to hemorrhage. One of you needs to be ready to perform hemostasis. The last thing we want is for him to become hypovolemic.”

  “And if we were speaking English?” I say.

  “We have to stop the bleeding,” Charlie explains.

  “How do we do that?” I ask.

  “Your T-shirt should do,” Penelope says. “You’re going to want to put a lot of pressure on it in order to initiate coagulation. And no matter how loud Hank begs and screams for you to stop, you do not let up, understand?”

  I nod, my chin trembling.

  Hank meets my eyes. “It’ll be . . . OK, Dan . . . Once . . . it’s done.”

  “I’d offer to do it,” Charlie says, retching a little. “But, you know, blood-borne pathogens and everything. Not that I think you’ve got anything, Mr. Langston.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, with false confidence. “I’ve got it. If you could stand behind him, though, and keep him steady . . .?”

  Charlie gulps. “Oh, uh, right.” He moves behind Hank, placing a hand on each of his shoulders. “But make sure you cover that wound immediately. A severed artery can really spray.”

  “I’ll do my best.” I pull off my shirt, the night air chilly on my chest. I fold the cloth over a few times to give it some layers. “R-ready,” I say to Penelope.

  Penelope hunches over Hank’s leg. She grabs the tail of the arrow with her right hand and places her left against his calf. All business now.

  “I’m not going to lie to you,” she says. “This is going to hurt like a motherfucker. But I’ll do it as fast as I can.”

  “Wh-what do w-we do n-now?” I say, shivering like crazy, my arms wrapped around my naked torso.

  Penelope, Charlie, and I are huddled up next to each other like penguins, sitting on the ground in front of a passed-out Hank. With the LED light on my ID bracelet now blinking an angry life-support red and th
e smiley faces on my boxers glowing a bright green, I’m a regular neon advertisement for loserhood.

  “We w-wait until he w-wakes up,” Penelope chatters back. She’s seated on my right, wearing nothing but her red underwear and a white tank top, her milky-white skin glowing in the moonlight.

  I mean, probably glowing in the moon. I’m doing my best not to look at her. Because when I eventually tell this story to Erin, I don’t want to have to censor out parts of it.

  It took Penelope three hefty tugs to get the arrow fully dislodged from Hank’s leg. He blacked out sometime between the second and third tugs. And who could blame him? If I had to deal with that kind of pain, I would’ve prayed to pass out the moment the arrow pierced my skin.

  There was a shitload of blood. The first big squirt caught Penelope in the glasses, making her look like she’d just staked a vampire. I covered the wound as soon as I could and kept the pressure on. But Hank bled through my shirt and sweats, Charlie’s jeans, and Penelope’s T-shirt and sweatpants before we were able to stop the bleeding completely. Then we gently cleaned the wound with fresh stream water, using Charlie’s undershirt as a final bandage.

  Afterward we all rinsed off in the creek, which didn’t help with the cold situation.

  Now we sit and wait for Hank to come to.

  In our underwear.

  I shift my position. My ass is starting to feel sort of . . . itchy. Probably because I didn’t have time to wipe up properly earlier.

  Shifting makes me hyperaware of Penelope’s naked arm touching my naked arm. My eyes drift over to her and her long, naked legs, pulled up against her body. Her smooth arms, the moonlight cascading over the soft swell of her —

  Whoa-kay! Enough of that. I wrench my gaze away.

  “You, uh, think he’ll be OK?” I ask the stream. “It s-seemed like he lost a l-lot of blood.”

  “It’s n-not the blood l-loss you have to w-worry about.” Charlie, seated to my left in his not-so-tighty-whities, rubs his arms vigorously. “It’s s-septicity. That’s what’ll k-kill him. There are at least thirty different types of bacteria that’ll c-cause a wound to become gangrenous: staph, strep, klebsiella, E. coli. The list goes on. If he’s l-lucky, it’ll be localized and he’ll only lose the leg. If he’s not so lucky . . .” Charlie shrugs. “Well, you’ll pr-probably want to avoid an open casket.”