Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins

eyes wasn’t working, the bear’s tooth had punctured the back of my right eye socket, went right through. I just knew I was going to die, but I remember thinking I did not want to be eaten. I put my cap on, thinking that would slow the bleeding, and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure, maybe there was some exposed brain.” Dale was squeezing the couch’s armrest. He has big hands.
    â€œI remember thinking I wasn’t too happy with my rifle. I tried to keep the sun at my back. If I could, I figured I would hit the road where my truck was. I could barely see, everything was blurred. I had no idea where the bear was; they are extremely dangerous when wounded.” Dale spoke this quickly, as if by reliving it his metabolism had sped up.
    I wondered how it must have felt knowing that the bear was somewhere close. How would all that adrenaline feel, how would it alter your behavior?
    â€œMy jaw was badly broken, all the skin was off my right ear, one of my cheekbones was broken, my temple was punctured. I now have metal plate in my forehead. I knew it had to have been a big bear because otherwise my head wouldn’t have fit in its jaws. The most serious injury I’d ever had before this was a broken leg when I was fifteen.” Dale took off his glasses to clean them; he explained that without his glasses that day he couldn’t have seen much at all.
    â€œI felt like if I could walk three-quarters of a mile, I would hit the road. Turns out I went over a mile and a half, got lost somehow.” With his skull punctured, flesh torn off his face and ear, bones in his face crushed, how could he have gotten up and kept going? The will to survive must be strong in Dale Bagley.
    â€œFinally, I hit the road and backtracked to my truck. I lost all track of time. The bleeding had slowed down some, though I was soaked in blood from the top of my head to below my chest. I’m Red Cross certified, but couldn’t see myself. I got in my truck, couldn’t really see, just tried to drive down the middle of the road.” The surgeons must have done an outstanding job on Dale because the radical extent of the wounds he had just told me about were not evident, even when the sun shone directly on his face.
    â€œAfter a couple miles—I have no idea how I drove that far—I was in the middle of the road, I saw another truck or some kind of vehicle, coming the other way. It is hard to say what the other driver thought when they saw the way I must have been driving. I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, let them by me. I stopped and got out and flagged the man over. I couldn’t really talk the way my jaw and all was crushed and mangled. I asked him, it took almost all I had, to take me to the hospital.” What would someone have thought seeing Dale so damaged, so soaked in blood, his face so misshapen, his voice gurgling or whatever it was doing, barely able to speak?
    â€œThis man, his name was Jerry, he had been out there looking at property. I am fortunate he was there, and he was an Alaskan.” Dale comes across serious, sincere, and deliberate, under control.
    â€œI don’t remember much about getting to the hospital. Jerry was trying to ask me a lot of questions, but it was too painful to talk. He pulled up to the front door of the hospital in Soldotna and let me out. I told the young gal, the first one I saw at some desk or something, that I had been mauled by a bear. She ran away from me, didn’t say anything. Everyone around me ran off. I thought, where did everyone go?” Surely Dale must have looked worse than anything they’d ever seen there. It turned out they went to get help.
    Dale mentioned that he did remember seeing the infamous human mannequin at the hospital, the one where they hang all the fishing lures that the doctors have pulled out of the salmon and trout fishermen who have come to the Kenai for the world-famous fishing. They put the lures and