by a kilometer marker showing the highest point of the peak. Then we set out in two groups—me and the Israelis at the front; Katie, Sara, and the Romanian following—to walk the mile or so to the next hostel.
Just after dusk, at a long turn in the path, we noticed that Katie’s group had fallen behind. The Israelis went ahead, while I waited at a stream. Glacial ice was melting on the ridge, and there was enough water to make crossing in the dark tricky. When Katie’s group didn’t come, I hiked back up the trail to find them. It was darker now. I followed one trail, but it led in the wrong direction. I doubled back toward the first hostel, whose light I could see in the distance. Nearthe kilometer marker, I found pages from our guidebook strewn on the ground, next to Katie’s backpack and shoes. I yelled her name. I tried to walk in circles, remembering an old Boy Scout trick about not getting lost. From about twenty yards off the trail Katie called back. Don’t come closer . Find a gun . Get back quickly .
The trail was rocky and hard to follow at night. I kept losing my footing. I fell. I got up. The second hostel also had a porch light. A group of tourists standing under it were waving at me. The Romanian, they explained, had escaped the bear and run ahead of me to the hostel. Now they were watching for other survivors. Sara was running down the trail, too. She was just behind me. Katie was alone on the ridge.
Inside the hostel the owner refused to give me his rifle. With so many witnesses, he kept insisting, he would be fined for discharging a gun without a state permit. His business would be ruined. I tried to buy the rifle with American dollars. I offered to trade my passport for it. Instead he called for a hunting patrol from a nearby village.
I stumbled back to the trail. Three men staying at the hostel followed at a distance. It was hard to find the kilometer marker again. When we saw the bear and heard Katie’s cries, the three men ran. I stood now ten, maybe fifteen yards from Katie, shining my flashlight across the ridge. I had a better view of the bear: large, brown, straddled over Katie, dipping its head back and forth across her torso, with white fur on its front paws and muzzle.
I sat up all night with Katie’s body. Three doctors from nearby cities arrived to certify her death. They defaced Katie’s body with various crude tests—eyelid check, stethoscope, CPR , reflexes—that only confirmed the obvious. I remember that as each took turns compressing her chest, I could hear ribs crack. I wondered how the eventual autopsy would distinguish this trauma from the bear attack. Probably, it wouldn’t.
I understood immediately that there would be a funeral, an obituary, explanations, maybe at some point accusations, clarifications, and misunderstandings. I don’t know why I was thinking about it. I imagined it: standing in the first few pews of the church in Illinois with the faux-gothic exterior and uncomfortable wood benches. The spread of food in the basement after the service. In a diner across the street, people who grieved for Katie might ask questions, then decide to blame me, hate me, or feel genuinely sorry for me. I was a witness now and a young widower. I did not know any witnesses of bear attacks or young widowers. Someone thought to cover Katie’s body, and as the night went on, I started to fear it. Whose body was under the tarp? Katie’s body was under the tarp.
In Indiana my taste in television evolved. I became suspicious of representations of suffering, especially gratuitous violence. What was the point of imagining bloodlust and apocalypse, if not to enjoy it? I preferred alternative logics—superheroes, universes, Texas—and comedies. They rejected finality. I found comfort in their repetitions. What did it matter that I was real and the people I watched were not? I felt present by proxy in constant variations on redemption: charity, sublimation, self-actualization. Even
Katherine Garbera - Baby Business 03 - For Her Son's Sake