Young Widower by John W. Evans Page A

progress toward a light bulb hung from the porch of the smaller hostel to which only Sara and the Romanian would arrive. Now, a hunting patrol carried her body in the other direction, toward the larger hostel where we had eaten dinner. I walked behind them. I could not touch Katie now. I was terrified of her body. I could not look at it. I thought, We are mov ing your body inside where it will be safe . In the basement of the larger hostel we laid Katie’s body on a tarp on the concrete and waited for the doctors.
    Arête : a sharp ridge. From the Latin arista : ear of wheat, fish bone, spine.
    I am told that a climber makes a ridge sacred with her death, that the place where Katie died locates a point of reverence for other journeys, but I do not believe it. For a while I imagined there were flowers there and a pile of stones stained at the base with her blood, but I know this is not true. I have not returned to the place to make it sacred. I can’t imagine I ever will. Any marker has long since collapsed. Or it has lifted like a prayer from the place of her death and vanished somewhere along the nearby trail.
    3. The Legend of a Life
    Maybe the bear had been there for a while, and they did not see it until that moment: the now-lit path, wide across the ridge, coming into focus. Katie’s flashlight reflecting brighter on the far rocks as she turned the crank. She stood like that a moment, testing the charge, looking in every direction for the trail. A mountaintop.
    Maybe the bear was migrating with the season, seeking out less encroached-upon spaces, guarding the path for its cubs. Seasonal construction crossing this path put the bear on edge, making it more cautious but also wilder, wary. Hunters crossed here; and tourists with cameras who threw rocks; cars and state vehicles and construction trucks; the long gondola whirring when there was no wind. The buildings all year now shook with noise and lights. At night the windows dimmed and went silent. Here was the safest place and time to cross this ridge and perhaps the next ridge; to make a wide circle of other bears; to be alone; to move down across the forest, toward the streams, to fish and forage.
    Katie put on her pack. Her ankle was swelling now; it would soon be stiff. They walked the trail single-file, cautiously, steppingcarefully up and down the rocks, making little noise to announce their presence. So perhaps they surprised each other. The bear ambling toward them, doglike, taking its time, careful about the surrounding darkness. The hikers securing their footing and saying nothing in the last light. The bear must have seemed enormous: three and four times the size of bears at a zoo, outsized but also vibrant, so plain in its terror. The claws retracted. The snout closed.
    How far away was it? Ten feet? Twenty? No one seemed to know. Katie’s mind flashed options, calculating the intervening time and space. Three or four seconds. Did the bear really see them? Did the bear care that they were there? She thought, We can run , but she knew they could not outpace it. She thought to open the pack and find the pepper spray. Was there enough time? The pepper spray was zipped into a pouch inside the top pocket. If she dropped the pack and dug inside of it, then she might call attention to herself and distract the bear. It might charge. Of course, anything she did could provoke the bear. There was a space between them still; that was important. And maybe the bear had not yet seen them.
    Katie was easily the most fit, the one who knew and loved nature. She looked to the two hikers behind her. How quickly did the surprise turn to terror? Was it in an instant? Was the understanding of their danger, and their mortality, obvious? Or, did they laugh at first? Were they shocked and overwhelmed? A fucking bear! Was that shock held in check by reason and optimism? There were three of them and only one bear. Could they, together, scare it off and escape the situation?
    Katie