Young Widower by John W. Evans

will not save me, who loves me but cannot save me .
    I threw bigger rocks. The bear moved away, flashed its muzzle, and moved back.
    A boy and his father, hiking in the opposite direction, had stopped us just past the kilometer marker on the ridge to say they had seen a bear crossing from the other direction. It could not be far from the spot where we stood. We should be careful on theridge at night, use our flashlights, and make as much noise as possible to announce our presence and deter an attack.
    Did each of us, in that moment, imagine a bear attack and our survival? Or did we shrug off his warning as improbable, full of the wrong kind of caution? How could we suddenly be in a moment of worst-case survival? We were standing together, taking pictures next to a kilometer marker. We were making our way to the only hostel on the ridge with rooms to rent for the night. We could not stay in one place. The sky was plum colored. It was cold. The wind was picking up, and already we were wearing sweaters and stocking caps to stay warm. Already, we were survivors, in our minds, the likely elect, moving in wide circles far from danger; the very improbability of an attack, its cartoonish quality in our imaginations, made the odds of our survival more certain.
    As I turned the crank to keep my flashlight on the bear, I saw a group start down the trail from the hostel. I thought, Someone is coming to save Katie , and then, No, someone else is coming to save Katie . I yelled to Katie to wait just a little longer.
    I thought, A husband who loves his wife would have charged the bear already .
    I walked back to the path to make a signal to the group, to jump and wave my arms, but I was too early. They processed so slowly, moving together, now a rescue party, now a funeral rite, taking care with the steep rocks and riverbank. Hours seemed to pass as their flashlights inched forward.
    I could not startle the bear and also wave them down. I had chosen to walk toward them, and now a distinct feeling of inconvenience bothered my sense of helplessness. In both places, the trail and near Katie, something inevitable was made to feel drawn out. Katie would die. I knew this already; I could imagine nothing else. But also I knew we had the right tools—guns, knives, reinforced cookware—to intervene and save her, if only they would hurry up. I both wanted Katie’s suffering to be over and for her voice to carryon a little longer and further, just far enough to persuade the hunters to move more quickly. But if she could not be saved, then I wanted her to die quickly. I could not listen to her screaming, even from a distance.
    In the end, with their guns and yelling and clanging pots, they came like a soccer club, a band of revelers, a wedding party, all noise and celebration, unmistakable and intrusive in the cold summer night air. It must have carried for miles across the ridge. I walked back to the trail and toward them, so that they would be sure to see me.
    They asked, Where is the bear?
    They were hunters arriving, someone explained, from the nearest village. We should move together in a large, loud group toward the bear and Katie’s body. We moved in darkness. We moved hypothetically, uncertain of our arrival. We saw no bear, and then we saw Katie’s body. I made myself walk over and look at Katie’s face. I did not want to look at it. Her face was perfect: intact. Some mud on her right check. Her hair down across the forehead more than usual.
    And then I saw it, and I understood. We shined the light onto her face, into her eyes. The Israeli doctor was there with her husband. She performed a few simple tests. Katie’s pupils, she explained, were dilated and black. They did not shine back as they should. The doctor found an irregular pulse, then no feeling. It was Katie’s body. It was cold. We needed to leave the ridge before the bear returned.
    In the moment before the attack, Katie walked in one direction, laughing and smiling, making