by Wendy Delsol
“What?”
“Take them off.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“I’m not taking them off. My feet will get cold.”
He looked at me with exasperation. “You limped the last half hour and we’re only halfway around the lake.”
I grumbled, but bent to unlace the espresso-brown ankle-high hikers.
I handed them over to Jack, who proceeded to vandalize my property. He removed the laces in a series of efficient tugs and then twisted the leather backward in a flap, bending the high-top portion over the heel. He dropped them to the floor of the platform and continued to pummel them with his own heavy footgear. Kicking and stomping and grinding my two-hundred-dollar nubucks into a pulp. At one point he removed a large stone from his backpack and hammered on the ankles. Who carries a rock in their backpack? No one, of course, which was how I knew the assault was premeditated.
“Are you quite finished?” I asked.
“That should do it.” He dropped the boots into my arms and playfully wrapped the loose laces around my neck as if to copy the scarf I had stylishly knotted at my throat. The leather was scraped, and cracked and creased where it had been bent backward. They looked awful and would never again complete the boot-cut Lucky jeans and brown leather bomber jacket ensemble.
I grumbled again and bent to relace and then refit my boots. I stood to find Jack planted above me with his arms crossed and a huge smile on his face. “Better?”
I took a tentative step. Damn him. They were better. Much better. Had some give to the ankle, finally. “A little.”
The eagle remained at its nearby perch.
“My grandmother says it’s a good omen to be eye-to-eye with a bird,” Jack said.
As if it had been eavesdropping, the eagle flew away, its wings clapping like thunder. It distanced itself in a matter of moments, skirting the trees along the lake’s edge. “I think it’s mocking us.” I looked down at my pathetic feet. “Pitying us our inferior means of travel. I’d take wings today.”
“If you could stand the heights.”
I looked to where the great bird had settled, a football field away and at the upper reaches of the towering pines. “No problem. The higher the better.” It was true. I’d always scrambled to the top of the highest thing: slides, jungle gyms, high dives, and ladders. And I always took a window seat on a plane.
The others joined us on the platform. We spent a long time sharing Matthew’s binoculars and snapping photos. They were sorry to hear they’d missed our up-close-and-personal with the eagle.
“We’re atop an esker,” Jack said.
“A what?” Pedro asked.
“An esker. It’s an elevated ridge between two depressed surfaces formed by subglacial streams or tunnels.”
Pedro laughed. “Dude, you sound like an encyclopedia.”
Jack just shrugged. “Glaciers are interesting. They shaped so much of our landforms.”
“Interesting to penguins and polar bears, maybe,” Pedro said. “Me, I just think it’s a nice view.”
“We should get going,” Matthew said. “It’s still quite a hike back.”
We kept with our plan to hike the full circular route around the lake. It definitely felt good to walk and generate a little body heat. The first few minutes back in the cool afternoon air had been a shock. I still couldn’t believe Jack continued with no jacket. How could anyone be so impervious to the cold? I could actually see steam forming where my warm breath met the air’s chill. My feet were still aching, though to be fair, the injuries were preexisting. I comforted myself with the thought that we were heading down.
We came upon a fork in the path, one side wider and obviously more traveled than the other.
“I saw this on the map back at the tower,” Penny said. “We go this way.” She pointed to the wider trail.
“The smaller one would run along the lake,” Pedro said skeptically. “It seems more logical.”
“Trust me,” Penny said. “Tina and I checked the map.”
We set off on the larger trail. Twenty minutes later, we came upon a good-size stream. We all stopped short, realizing that the means of traversing the running waters was a series of wet slippery rocks, each spaced about a foot from the other and spanning a distance of at least twenty feet. Our feet were definitely going to get wet.
Pedro went first, making quick work of the stepping stones. Penny followed him, and though she teetered at one point — balancing with one leg hanging precariously over the rushing waters — she also reached the other side with no more than a few splashes on the hem of her jeans. Matthew and Tina probably shouldn’t have tried to hold hands as they crossed. Though deserving of points for chivalry, he probably did, in hindsight, drag her into the waters with him. They flailed about fairly comically and emerged on the other side with their pants drenched to their thighs.
I could see the muscles in Jack’s shoulders tighten into a ripple under his T-shirt, and though I was impressed, I knew it wasn’t a good sign.
“I’m going back to the fork,” he called to the others. “There’s probably a bridge on that trail.”
Pedro was the first to react. “What? That’s like a mile back, probably more. And who knows if that trail leads into this one?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Jack said. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
“Seriously, dude,” Matthew said. “You saw us. It isn’t that deep.”
Something very dark flashed across Jack’s face. The wind rifled through his hair. “I’ll catch up,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” I said to him in a quiet tone the others across the stream couldn’t hear.
“I don’t do water,” he said.
“What does that mean, you don’t do water?”
“I don’t swim. I don’t boat. I don’t fish.”
“Why not?”
He blew air through his lips in a half whistle. It seemed like a stalling tactic. “It’s a long story,” he said finally. “You go ahead with them. I’ll catch up with you guys in a little bit.”
I stood there frozen, not knowing what to do. My feet were aching, and all I wanted was the fastest way back to the upholstery of Pedro’s mom’s Suburban. I realized, with a start, that this was the first he’d spoken to me since we’d descended the tower. And a dismissal at that. A directive for me to leave him. A “go away” decree.
“I’ll stay with Jack,” I called across to the group.
Matthew made one last attempt at convincing Jack to cross, but it only seemed to anger and embarrass him. I reminded them I had my cell phone, and that we could call if we ran into any problems. With that, the four of them shrugged and continued down the trail, while Jack and I retraced the path back toward the fork.
I walked ahead of Jack, wanting to admonish him for being so quiet all day, but didn’t dare darken his mood. I was also highly curious about his aversion to water, but knew it was neither the time nor place for that conversation. We reached the split and headed down the other trail. I hoped this path wouldn’t take us too far out of our way. My feet were beyond pain now, and though I knew I walked with a decided hobble, I had no choice.
“You’re limping,” Jack finally said.
“I know,” I said, none too pleasantly. “My feet are killing me.”
“It’s your boots.”
“You don’t say.”
I could hear a muffled laugh behind me, and then he said, “Stop a minute.”
I sighed good and loud, but came to a standstill under some low-hanging trees.
“You’re in pain,” he said. “Let’s take a little break.”
We came to rest under an overhang of pines. I sat on a fallen log and stretched my feet out in front of me.
“I feel responsible,” he said after a minute or two of nothing but the forest crackling around us. “This detour is my fault.”
“I wasn’t forced into anything. Besides, even in the big city, they teach us ab
out the buddy system.”
“Buddies, huh?” he said with a grin. “Let me help you out there, buddy. Take your boots off again.”
“What? No way. They’d end up in shreds.”
He laughed. “I wasn’t going to work on your boots. I was going to wrap your ankles.”
“With what?”
“I could cut up that scarf of yours. I have a pocketknife.”
“Are you crazy?” My hand flew to my throat. “This was expensive.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Besides, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“The last two times we touched weren’t so successful,” I said.
He looked up at the sky. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“Talk? Really? You talk? That would be something new.”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been very good company today. It’s just . . .” He paced back and forth. “You make me so . . .” He balled his hands into fists at his sides. “I have a theory about that thing between us.”
“What kind of theory?”
“I think we just need to let it play itself out one time, and then we’ll be over it.” He took a step toward me. “How bad could it really get?” He wiped his palms, one across the other, in nervous pumps.
“Forget it,” I said, rising to my feet. Damn. My ankles were rubbed raw. I slowly curled the scarf from around my neck and tossed it to him. “You cut. I’ll wrap.”
He did, indeed, have a knife with him and made quick work of my cashmere scarf. I unlaced my boots, took the two halves, and swaddled my bruised ankles. They felt immediately better. Cashmere has that effect. I stood and looked down at my altered footwear. It was a sorry sight. I just hoped the rest of my attire survived the day.
“We should press on,” I said. “We don’t want to keep them waiting.”
The trail became narrow and densely forested. I wondered if we’d made a mistake. This was clearly a seldom-used route. We ducked under fallen branches, scrambled over large rocks, and, at times, bushwhacked our way through dense vegetation. Finally, the path skirted the lake’s edge, where waves tumbled over a rocky shoreline.
“What’s that?” I pointed to a round black dot in the water just fifty or so yards up the trail.
“Shit,” Jack said.
“What is it?”
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Jack whispered. He stopped dead in his tracks.
I continued to stare at the object. It moved then, and splashed a little in the water. “Is that a bear?” I asked.
“Yes.” Jack was looking about wildly, behind him, behind me, off into the trees.
I looked again at the furry mound. Even allowing for the distance, it didn’t look very large. “Is it a baby?”
“Yes.”
“That’s OK, right?” I could hear a nervousness cording through my voice.
“No. That’s bad. Very bad.” Jack kept his voice low and continued to scan the area, looking for something.
“Why?” I whispered, following his cue.
“Black bears would prefer to leave us alone.” He held his hand up as if gauging the wind. “They’re not aggressive by nature, except . . .”
“Except?”
“When protecting their young. If we come between that cub and its mother, this could get ugly.”
“Ugly?” Forget nervousness, there was now an open-throttled panic to my voice. I’d been promised Minnesota-nice bears.
“If only I knew where the mother was. What direction,” Jack said, more to himself. Again he scanned left and right. “The right wind would help us. If we were upwind, she might not catch our scent. Never know we were here.”
“Unless you brought a very large fan, I don’t know what we could do about that right now. Don’t you think we should just back away? Put distance between us and it.” I pointed at “it” as “it” playfully splashed at something in the water. Hard to imagine that anything so childlike could be a threat, but I’d seen enough Discovery Channel and PBS to know better. I tried to remember something, anything, which would help in that moment. Making tea out of pine needles and lashing shelters out of palm fronds came, crazily, to mind.
“Make no sudden moves,” Jack said, placing one foot slowly behind the other.
I did the same.
“Bears have a sense of smell a hundred times stronger than humans,” he whispered, placing another foot warily behind him. “If we rush, we’ll actually displace our scent.”
I placed another foot, slowly, behind me. It was difficult to keep my balance at this awkwardly slow gait. Our movements made tai chi look like the hundred-yard dash. We had both backed up about ten yards when the snapping of twigs and a low growl froze us in our tracks. Through the trees, between us and the cub, a big black mama bear emerged. This can’t be the end, I thought. I’d never shopped for Chanel in Paris, or Prada in Milan — or fallen in love.
And then several things — bizarre, unexplainable things — happened simultaneously. A rush of wind so swift and sudden it produced a small boom came over the lake, ruffling the fur on the mama bear and causing the baby bear to lift its paws in a batting motion at this teasing funnel of air. The eagle, its wingspan stretching six feet at least, rode that same channel of wind and with an angry caw dove at the cub. And then a black bird, in some crazy kamikaze move, went after the eagle. Inside a single beat of my thumping heart, the mother bear lunged out of the woods and toward her unprotected babe and the bird of prey.
“Run,” Jack urged, though still keeping his voice low. He waited until I was a few paces in front of him and then he followed. I could hear his labored breathing and the heavy thud of his boots behind me. We ran full out. My legs were seizing with cramps, and my lungs felt ready to pop. We came across a large tree fallen over the path. I stumbled, clumsily, my sweater catching on a spindly branch, and I fell, hard, backward. In the tiniest of moments, Jack was upon me. He ripped the bottom edge of my sweater from the tree’s snatches and then bent to lift me from where I lay sprawled across the earthen floor. I felt his arms encircle me and it seemed like time itself was stalled, suspended in the space between us — and then a shocking burst of freezing pain. Scenes flashed in front of my eyes, obscured in a watery haze. Panic consumed me. I kicked, but my legs felt heavy and moved as if through something thick and cold. And I was sinking. Going down fast and hard. I struggled, yet it only seemed to hasten my fall. I tried to scream, but my voice was muffled, and my lungs filled with a horrible pain. And though there was light above, darkness grew as I descended. It was a cold like nothing I’d ever felt before, a chill that brittled my bones. I felt hopeless, utterly hopeless, and then resigned. Death. This could only be death.
“Let me go. Let me go.” I was lying on my back on the gravel path, screaming.
Jack lay on the ground next to me. “Are you OK? Are you hurt?”
I tried to sit up, but the muscles in my stomach had turned to jelly. Still, we had to keep going, away from the bear. I took a deep breath, attempted to stand, and then everything started to spin. The last thing I remembered was a look on Jack’s face that was pure agony. And then complete and total blackness.
I came to feeling like I was on a horse. There was a constant jostling motion, which was making my head pound. I looked up to find myself in Jack’s arms, and we were running.
“What happened?” I managed to say, though my voice was weak.
Jack stopped suddenly and dropped to his knees, still cradling me in his arms. “Oh, my God, I thought I killed you.”
It took a few moments for it all to register. I remembered the bear, and the freezing jolt of pain.
“I must have fainted.”
“You weren’t breathing,” he said.
I felt awkward in his arms, my face pressed against his still jacket-less chest, with his head bent to rest just inches from my own. But I was definitely weak, and somehow it felt warm and safe in this position.
“Can you give me a momen
t?” I asked in a faltering voice.
He continued to hold me. Many minutes passed. I couldn’t believe how still he remained. And as I was suspended in this cocoon, I felt strength returning to my body. Finally, I wiggled to release myself, though it seemed he let go reluctantly.
I sat on the ground next to him, my arms around my knees. “I think I’m going to live.” I tried to laugh, for his sake. I could see how pained he was. “What happened back there?”
“For starters, we had a bear encounter.”
“I remember,” I said, rubbing my head. “Are we safe here? Would she still come after us?”
“We’re safe,” Jack said. “She wouldn’t abandon her cub to chase us, and those birds . . .”
“What was up with those birds?” I asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. They acted like . . .”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. It was just very strange.”
“I’m not going to argue,” I said. “It bought us time.”
“Yes. It did,” Jack said. “And then you fell. And I tried to lift you up, and you had a . . . reaction.”
“If I remember correctly, you did, too.”
“Not like you.” He shook his head regretfully.
“But what did you feel?” I asked.
He seemed to fight some internal debate, but then began in a shallow voice. “I couldn’t breathe. When I touched you, I couldn’t breathe. It’s as if a weight pressed down on my chest and I couldn’t fill my lungs with air.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Your turn,” Jack said. “What happened to you?”
“I froze, and then I sank, and then I died.”
“Froze?”
“Yes. And I hate the cold. Have for as long as I can remember.”
“You died?”
“That’s what it felt like.”
“Tell me,” he said. “Did it seem like a dream, or a hallucination, or a vision, or . . .” He paused as if measuring his choice of words. “Or a memory?”
“Oh.” This came out in a gasp. “How could it be a memory?”
He stood up and started pacing in front of me. It seemed he wasn’t going to reply, or at least, not until he’d carefully planned the words. “Remember when I first saw you in your grandfather’s store?” There was uncertainty in his eyes and voice. “Do you remember what I said?”
