“He’s, he’s got a dagger tattoo on his, his…” She was thinking now. “His left chest, on the left side, his left.”

Thorne breathed in through his nostrils. Clearly, that was not going to be adequate. “He got any markings or tattoos anyplace else?”

“Uh, um,” said May, tears already starting to form. “His ankle, like, a little ways up, a snake. I think, his right leg.”

Thorne nodded. This was a possibility. I sidled up next to him, alongside Dr. Heath, who’d been waiting around for our return. He lifted the tarp from the other end, revealing the dead man’s boots. Gingerly, he rolled down the thick, gray, bloody work sock, and there it was. A snake, shaped like an S, about two inches long.

Wickens and his daughter couldn’t see the leg from where they were standing, but when Thorne looked over at them, I guess it showed in his face, and he said, “I’m sorry.”

May threw her arms around her father, and began to wail.

5

IN THE FOLLOWING COUPLE OF HOURS before Dad phoned for me to come and pick him up at the hospital, I accomplished a fair bit.

First, I went into his cabin, the first in the line of five nearly identical buildings along the shore, and bear-proofed it. No way Yogi was coming in to get me for dinner. The cabin consisted of one large room that was a combined kitchen, living, and dining room; two bedrooms, one of which Dad used as an office; and a bathroom. I went to each window in every room, made sure they were all properly latched. Lakeside, there was a screened-in porch with a door, then a second door into the cabin itself. I figured screens didn’t offer much protection against a bear, so I didn’t worry too much about that door, but the one from the porch to the cabin I made sure was locked, as well as the door that came in from the back. I didn’t know whether bears had the smarts to turn doorknobs, but no way they had keys.

I rummaged around in the kitchen cupboards until I’d found a kettle and some teabags, and made myself some tea. I was feeling a bit chilled, which I attributed as much to the whole experience as the weather. In the living room area, where an old couch and a couple of worn easy chairs were positioned around a television, there was a woodstove, a pipe running straight up from it and through the ceiling. Dad had outfitted this cabin with a furnace for year-round living, but the stove was a nice touch. I crumpled up some newspaper in the bottom, laid on some kindling followed by logs that Dad kept in a neat pile next to the stove, and got a fire going.

The cabin screamed Dad. Wood piled neatly, out of the way where you couldn’t trip on it. A fire extinguisher hanging on the wall by the back door. No knives pointing up in the cutlery basket of the dishwasher. A textured floor in the base of the tub so as to prevent slipping.

Once I had my hot mug of tea, I took it with me into Dad’s office. There was a computer on the nearly empty desk. Dad, being something of a neat freak in addition to a safety freak, kept the desk uncluttered. Shelves that lined one wall of the room contained, among other things, neatly labeled file boxes. I jiggled the mouse and the computer screen came to life, the on-screen desktop as tidy as his real one. I clicked on the round blue “E” at the bottom and opened up the Internet.

I entered “bear attack human” into the Google box and was reading my third article when the phone rang.

I grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Zack?”

“Sarah, hi,” I said.

“I’ve been trying your cell, but you haven’t been answering.” She was worried, and pissed.

“I guess you can’t get much of a signal up here,” I said. “Sorry. I was just about to call you.” I was, honestly, about to do just that.

“What’s going on? Is your father, is he…”

“He’s alive,” I said. “He’s okay. Well, he’s got a twisted ankle, but that had nothing to do with a bear.”

“Then who-”

“A neighbor. Or a friend of a neighbor. Went out looking for a bear, guess the bear found him first. Who was that writer? Said, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you?”

I gave Sarah more details, how Dad had hurt his ankle, the confusion, the confidence-inspiring Chief Orville Thorne.

“So, does this mean you’re coming straight back?” Sarah asked.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I sort of offered to stay a few days, help my dad until he’s back on his feet again.”

“Oh,” Sarah said, clearly some hesitation in her voice. “Is that such a good idea? I mean, isn’t there a bear wandering around there?”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to be careful. I’ve already been on the net, reading up on bear attacks, and when I go into town, to get Dad, I’m going to get some bear spray.”

“Bear spray?”

“They’ve got this stuff, I just found it on the net, it’s like pepper spray, you shoot some in the bear’s face, he leaves you alone.”

“Really.”

“The main thing, they say, is don’t run.”

“Don’t run,” Sarah said. “So a bear’s coming at you, you’re supposed to just stand there. What are you supposed to do, tell him you’re a close personal friend of Smokey?”

“Throw something at him,” I said. “Scare him off.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or punch him. Right in the nose.”

Sarah was quiet for a moment. Then, “You. Punch a bear in the nose. I can see that.”

“The fact is, bear attacks on humans are very rare,” I said, quoting from an article on the screen. “Bears don’t naturally want to attack humans, will even try to avoid them most of the time. Unless, you know, they’re hungry or something.”

“Isn’t there someone else up there who could help your father?” Sarah said, changing gears.

“Maybe,” I said. “But at least for a couple of days, I think I should hang in. You think you can swing them into letting me have a few days off?”

“Yeah, I imagine. What are you working on, anyway?”

Although Sarah was often my editor when I was doing a story for cityside, I also reported to editors for other sections that ran features. Such was the life of a reporter at The Metropolitan, that you served several masters all at once who wanted different things and conspired against one another in their bid to get them. In just a year I’d seen several reporters gunned down in editorial crossfires.

“A feature on people never going out anymore, they’ve got home theater systems, Jacuzzis, all that shit, the whole cocooning thing.”

“Wow, great idea,” Sarah said. “I don’t think we’ve done that in, I don’t know, two months, at least. We’ve done that story twice a year for the last ten years.”

“It’s for Weekend,” I said. “I think they just heard about it.”

“I’m going to talk to Magnuson about this,” Sarah said, invoking the name of our much-feared-at least by me-managing editor. “This is stupid.”

“So you’re saying don’t worry about it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” I said.

I sensed Sarah smiling at the other end. “I know,” she said tiredly. “But you have had lapses.”

Not more than a minute after I hung up, the phone rang again. “I’m finally done,” Dad said. “Can you come get me?”

“Sure.”

“Are you planning to pick me up in that little car of yours, or are you going to bring my truck?”

I did a brain-sigh. “It’s a safe car, Dad. It’s also good for the environment. It’s a hybrid.”

“Oh jeez, say no more. Why don’t you come in the truck. Extra set of keys in the drawer. I’ll have more room to stretch out my leg, which hurts like the bejeezus.”

“Twenty minutes,” I said. “But we have to pick up some things on the way back.”

“Like what?” Dad asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, and hung up.

Dad’s truck was like his cabin: immaculate. Except for a few dead leaves on the driver’s floor mat, it was spotless inside, and the gas gauge was only a needle’s width from full. Dad had never let the tank on any vehicle he’d ever owned go below the halfway point, and any time I’d ever borrowed his car as a teenager, I made sure to never leave it with anything less than three-quarters of a tank of gas. “It’s simple preparedness,” he’d say. You get an overnight oil crisis, and you’re all set.