by JG Faherty
“Oh, what the hell. Let’s do it!”
For Alec, their first few hours at the zoo were better than he’d hoped they would be. Nothing they did was exceptional, but just being together, holding hands, laughing—there was a quality to it that he knew had been missing from their lives for too long.
For him, it was as if they’d travelled back in time, back to when Nick was still their only child. In those days, they’d had the whole world ahead of them and every day seemed better than the one before it. Sure, money was tighter then, but doing simple things together—like going to the zoo—had given them more joy than fancy dinners or Broadway shows or expensive vacations. Even after Sue came along, family had stayed the most important thing in their lives. Alec became a Little League coach and a Cub Scouts troop master just to have quality time with Nick. And when Sue got old enough to join the Brownies, Casey added assistant troop leader to her already long list of motherly duties.
And Cub Scouts and Brownies had led to camping, which led to…
Stop it. Don’t go down that line of thinking. This is the beginning of a new life for everyone.
He turned to Casey, who was pushing Jennifer in the stroller.
“Hey, how about ice cream? It comes in plastic cups with animal faces on them.”
By then the sun was baking them pretty well, and Casey gave him a grateful look.
“That sounds great. We’ll wait over there.” She pointed to a bench that was nicely shaded by a large tree.
“Be right back.”
While he waited in line at the snack bar, Alec took out his phone and scrolled through his emails, highlighting work-related messages to read when they got home, and deleting the junk. In the process, he came across a couple of messages from one of his college buddies, who loved sending politically incorrect jokes and photos.
Chuckling at a picture of a midget trapped between the naked breasts of a six-hundred pound woman (“I thought I dropped something at lunch!” was the caption), it took him a second to notice there was a commotion going on around him.
Looking up, he saw people pointing, all of them with alarmed expressions. Several were commenting in loud voices.
“Look at that!”
“Oh, my God.”
“Somebody help her!”
Turning, he saw a woman chasing a baby stroller down a path. For a moment he felt a surge of anger. What kind of parent let their kid’s stroller roll away like that?
Then he recognized the pink T-shirt the woman was wearing.
Casey!
For the rest of his days, Alec never knew if he shouted her name out loud or if it was just in his head. All he remembered later was taking off after his wife and child and the world shrinking into a tunnel around him, where the only thing he could see was Casey chasing after Jennifer. How the stroller had gotten to such a speed on flat ground, how it was able to take the turns and stay on the path—hell, how it could roll away on its own at all!—none of that entered his mind at first. The only thing he focused on was trying to save them.
In the normal world, the worst that could happen would be the stroller tipping over or Casey falling down. Scrapes, cuts, maybe a broken bone or two. But something in his brain told him there was more going on than just a runaway stroller. It was still picking up speed, actually increasing the distance between it and Casey’s outstretched arms.
Alec ran past a wooden sign and a sick feeling erupted in his stomach.
The stroller was headed for the black bear enclosure.
Impossible! his mind screamed. There was no way it could happen. The path took too many turns. But even as he thought it, the stroller banked hard to the left, rising up on its right wheels to take the sharp curve.
“No!” Casey’s scream came back to him as if from miles away, stretched out and distorted like a train’s horn speeding past.
Alec forced his legs to move faster, suddenly sure the stroller was going to make the remaining turns and take flight, sail right over the safety wall of the bear enclosure. He slammed into onlookers and bounced off without feeling the impact, startled shouts and harsh words nothing but white noise to his ears. He felt as if he were running a race that someone had fixed. He could see himself getting closer to Casey, but Jennifer’s stroller continued to put more distance between them.
The stroller wheeled around the next turn like an Indy racer and Alec swore he heard Jennifer laughing at the top of her lungs. She’d never had any fear; she loved being tossed in the air, ran into water without a care for going under and approached all dogs with a smile. “Doggie! Doggie!” she’d say, ignoring all warnings to be careful around animals she didn’t know.
And more than anything else, she loved to go fast, whether it was in her stroller, a shopping cart or a ride at the amusement park.
Her laughter now in the face of death didn’t surprise Alec one bit.
Someone grabbed his arm and he was startled to see it was Casey. With all his attention focused on Jennifer he hadn’t noticed he’d caught up to his wife.
“Get…get…her!” she gasped, her face flushed and sweaty from running. Then he was past her, not even bothering to answer, saving all his oxygen for his already aching muscles. He thought he heard her shout “Save my baby!” but he couldn’t be sure.
Jennifer’s stroller completed the last curve in the path and somehow accelerated into the straightaway that led to the black bear enclosure. Alec put everything he had into moving his legs faster and through watering eyes he saw that he’d actually gained a few feet on his daughter’s out of control cart. Laughter floated back to him and the hairs on his neck stood up as he realized it wasn’t Jennifer’s.
Yet he recognized it all the same.
No! It can’t be! It sounds like—
“Look! That stroller’s gonna hit the wall!”
A stranger’s voice brought Alec’s attention back to the danger at hand. Jennifer’s stroller was headed straight for the waist-high cement wall that surrounded the sunken enclosure housing the black bears. The wall was topped by a three-foot high iron fence that curved inward so that even if one of the bears managed the incredible feat of climbing a ten-foot smooth wall it still wouldn’t be able to escape its pen.
That same wall represented both danger and rescue for Jennifer. If her stroller hit at full speed, it was bound to flip or break or crush in on itself like an accordion. And Jennifer, made of only flesh and bone, would suffer as a result. Alec pictured her arms or legs snapping, her head smashing onto the blacktop or into the wall, pieces of metal from the canopy or handles piercing her like spears.
However, the wall would also make it impossible for her to roll into the pen.
Alec saw with frightening clarity that the stroller wouldn’t slow and he wouldn’t reach it in time. There were only a few feet left before the inevitable collision and his only hope was that he could scoop her up fast and rush her to the nearest first aid station.
Time slowed to half speed as he sprinted the last few steps. Ahead of him, the carriage crashed into the wall at exactly the point he’d predicted. The back end rose up and Jennifer’s body sailed out, her arms and legs waving in giddy fashion, an ecstatic smile on her face.
Alec came to a stop, although he didn’t know it at the time, his body and thoughts immobilized by shock as he tried to comprehend the scene before him.
Never mind that Jennifer shouldn’t have been ejected at all, that her seatbelt should have kept her in the stroller.
She was still rising upward like a leaf caught in a breeze.
Onlookers cried out and gasped as Jennifer floated up and up and up, following a flight vector that defied gravity. And although he never said a word to anyone later—not the police, not the press—it wasn’t until she was over the top of the iron fence that she began to move forward and downward in a gradual arc. He saw it clear as day, his
eyes following her descent into the jaws of death.
“No!” Something hard shoved him to one side. Casey sprinted past, practically a blur as she raced for the wall. People screamed at her to stop but she never paused, just leaped up onto the cement barrier and then jumped again, somehow managing to land on the curved bars.
And then she was gone.
Time froze for Alec. His body refused to move. He stared at the spot where Casey and Jennifer had disappeared, waiting for them to pop right back up, safe and laughing and not a scratch on them.
“Holy shit! That lady jumped into the bear den!”
That first exclamation started a cacophony of shouts and cries for help. It also broke Alec’s paralysis. He sprinted to the wall and climbed up, kicking away the hands of people who tried to grab him. Unlike Casey he didn’t jump onto the bars; instead, he seized hold of them and pulled himself up until he reached the curved summit.
Holding on as tight as he could, he tried to peer between the bars to catch sight of Casey, but the inward curve of the cement wall blocked his view. All he saw was the back end of a bear lumbering out of sight. Noises echoed up from below him, horrible gnashing sounds his brain refused to process. Then a different sound reached him.
The sound of a baby crying.
Alec looked to his left and nearly lost his grip.
Jennifer was hanging from a bar just three feet away, her pink jumper snagged on a bar that at some point in time had been bent so that it no longer curved down but stuck out at an angle. Her eyes were closed and her face was red from crying and wet with tears, but she looked safe and unhurt.
“Jen! Jennifer! It’s Daddy!” Alec called to her as loud as he could but she didn’t open her eyes, just kept bawling. Turning back to the crowd that had gathered, he cried out.
“Someone get help! My baby is caught on the fence! Hurry before she falls in!”
“I’m coming, sweetheart,” he told Jennifer, although he couldn’t tell if she heard him. It was something easier said than done. He had to back down the bars without falling between them, scuttle to his left and then climb back up. By the time he reached her and stuck his arm through the bars to grasp her by her jumper, two men in security uniforms had already shown up and were clambering up beside him with some kind of safety hook attached to a rope.
“Move back,” one of them said, but Alec refused to let go and retreat down to the wall until he was sure they had Jennifer firmly attached to the rope. Even then he felt like a helpless fool as he watched two strangers slide his daughter off her perch and pull her up to safety.
Only when he had a shrieking Jennifer clutched in his arms did he let his thoughts turn to Casey.
“My wife,” he said over Jennifer’s shoulder, aiming his words at the security guards. In the distance, the despondent wail of sirens became audible. “Please, tell me…”
The two men exchanged glances and Alec knew right then she was dead. He’d seen those looks on peoples’ faces before, back when he led the rescue team to the campsite.
But they’d been wrong about Casey then. Maybe…
“She could still be alive. You have to go check.”
The taller of the two guards, whose name tag read “Larson”, pursed his lips before answering.
“I’m sorry, but…between the fall and…” He turned away, looked toward the enclosure. For the first time, Alec heard people shouting and banging things.
They’re chasing the bears away from your dead wife’s body.
“I don’t understand,” he said, even though he did. It was as if someone else was speaking through his body.
“They’re usually pretty calm,” the second guard said. “We keep them overfed, and they’re lazy to begin with. But a fall like that, there was blood, and—”
“Shut yer mouth,” Larson told his partner in a harsh whisper. The man did as he was told, but by then it was too late. The image had already formed in Alec’s mind, his brain using the memories of the campsite to create a picture so awful it actually hurt to see.
Then everything mercifully disappeared, painted over in solid black.
Alec spent the next four days in the hospital, alternating between bouts of weeping and falling into a dreamless sleep that was almost coma-like. When he was awake, he refused to eat and only gave in and drank something when the pain in his throat prevented him from sleeping.
He ate something on the third day, but only after his doctors threatened to have him transferred to the psychiatric unit if he continued his hunger strike.
Returning home was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do; back when they’d lost Nick and Sue, he and Casey had been able to lean on each other, provide support and comfort. Now he had no one, and on top of that he had to pick Jennifer up from her friend’s house and explain that Mommy wasn’t coming home, she’d gone to live with Nick and Sue in Heaven.
It took every ounce of will he had not to break down in front of her.
Only when he’d gotten Jen to sleep did he allow himself more tears, and even then it was downstairs so she wouldn’t hear. He sat on the couch in the family room, a glass of scotch in one hand and Casey’s picture in the other, quietly raging at the incredible absurdity that fate had made of his life.
Bears. Goddamned fucking bears! First my children and now Casey. It’s like something out of the National fucking Enquirer, or a sick fucking joke.
He hadn’t read any newspapers or watched television since waking up, but he could imagine the headlines in the Post and the other rags. Real-Life Goldilocks Doesn’t Survive Second Bear Attack. Zoo Bears Finish What Their Cousin Started.
And then there’d be the jokes on late night TV and Howard Stern. Why’d the bear cross the road? To eat one of the Winter kids! Say, when does a bear not hibernate in Winter? When it’s too busy eating one of them!
All of that was bad enough, but there would be worse to come. The looks from people when he went out in public. The solemn condolences while eyes expressed different thoughts altogether, thoughts they most assuredly voiced when he was out of earshot.
“Jesus, the guy’s whole family was eaten by bears. How’s that for weird?” “I heard his wife actually jumped in with the bears to save her kid. I don’t know if I could do that.”
And the final kicker: “He must be feeling like shit. First he couldn’t save his kids, and then he couldn’t save his wife.”
Feeling like shit. That was putting it mildly. Nobody would ever know how goddamned awful he felt. He couldn’t even put it into words, not out loud, not in his own head. There were no words. They’d all been crushed under the thousand-ton weight of guilt and then beaten to pieces by the iron fists of remorse and self-reproach.
Because when it came down to it, everything was his fault.
He’d been the one to suggest the camping trip. He’d been the one to insist they go to the zoo.
And he’d been the one on both occasions who wasn’t there when it mattered.
He’d run away the first time, leaving behind a wife who was badly injured and two children who were screaming for help. Sure, he’d overcome his fear and gone back, but by then it had been too late. Nick and Sue were dead, the bear gone, and the only witness to his shame was whatever God had sent the bear in the first place.
Then a year later he hadn’t run fast enough. In fact, he’d just stood there while Casey gave up her life for her child. He could have stopped her. Could have pulled her down. Then they’d all still be together. But instead he’d simply watched like a statue while his wife threw her life away. And for what?
Nothing.
Alec’s rage boiled over and he reared back to throw the picture across the room. At the last second he remembered Jennifer sleeping upstairs and he tried to stop his arm, but it was too late. The best he could do was change his aim, and the picture ended up bouncing harmlessly off the loveseat acros
s from him.
Frustrated by the inability to release his pent-up anger and grief, he downed his scotch and reached for the bottle. Forgoing the glass, he tilted the bottle up and let the contents pour into his mouth. The alcohol carved a bittersweet track down his throat and merged painfully with the acids already percolating in his stomach. He swallowed six or seven times before he couldn’t keep up and he coughed liquid fire into his nose.
His wrath temporarily bumped aside by the scotch-flavored lava in his nasal passages, he leaned back, intending to catch his breath before repeating the process.
Instead, he fell asleep.
And dreamed.
In his dreams, he was back at the zoo, where he and Jennifer’s stroller were the only things moving. He raced past bystanders who were frozen in place, turned to living stone in the middle of whatever they’d been doing. Only their eyes followed his progress as he chased the stroller toward its inevitable crash site.
Just as it had in real life, the stroller hit the wall while he watched, helpless to stop it. Only this time he knew it was going to happen so he kept his eyes on Jen as she was ejected. Sure enough, she flew up into the air in the same impossible fashion as before. Only now it happened in slow motion, allowing Alec to see each detail.
Jen didn’t fly out of the stroller as much as she rose up into the air, almost as if she were tied to invisible strings. Her mouth was open with laughter and her arms held out at her sides while she did her out-of-this-world trick. Then, at a height of almost ten feet off the ground, her body suddenly tilted forward and her trajectory changed, taking on an arc that should have landed her well into the bear enclosure.
Forcing his will on the dream, Alec froze her there and ran forward, climbed onto the wall and then up the bars to the spot where he’d first seen his daughter snagged on the errant iron bar.
Then he watched as Jen’s descent started.
He gasped as once again she defied the laws of physics and gravity and her path brought her inward, back toward the bars.
One of which slowly bent upward to catch her.
Dream-Alec turned toward the immobile onlookers.
