29 Moves

The length of the shadows extending from the dew drops on Russ’s tent told him he’d overslept. Stretching the stiffness out of his back he considered Brit’s suggestion he take this solo getaway. Somewhere beyond the reaches of modern technology.

You never have any fun, his wife had said.

Really? I believe I’m always having fun, Russ replied, displaying a sly grin.

Well, you never do anything fun, she argued. One day, your son or daughter will want to go camping and fishing with you. What will you do about that?

First of all, sweetheart, when did we decide we were having children? Second, I know what needs to be done while camping and fishing. This time Russ gave Brit his best eyeroll.

I know you know, well, probably know more about camping than any single camper in the history of camping, but you’ve never experienced it. She put her hands firmly on Russ’s shoulders, It’s different when you actually do it.

Brit, of course, had been correct. Russ had read seventy-three books on the subject of camping. Books from The Pocket Guide to Camping to everything Bear Grylls had written. Hell, he even owned a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide. If it had been published within the past hundred years, Russ had read it.

The air south of Boston was never so pure, so exhilarating or so serene as he was experiencing here, the pacific northwest. The sky was such a deep blue, seemingly without end. The smells of the forest, birth and decay mixed together in a wonderful balance. The sounds of nature in their purest forms, no cars or airplanes or mp3s to drown them out. The water from the lakes and rivers, so fresh, a perfect elixir.

Walden simply didn’t give nature its due, he thought.

Russ heard the crack of a small branch as he pulled open the zipper of the thin membrane that had been his sole protection from the wild while he’d slept these past three nights. Thirty-eight degrees to the right, twenty meters away an animal maybe one fifty to one hundred seventy pounds with a wide foot was foraging for some breakfast. Far too light to be a wolf. Much too wide to be a deer. Aware that young grizzlies never stray too far from their mothers, Russ slowly and carefully emerged from his cocoon.

Once clear of the damp forty denier double walled nylon structure, Russ stood upright to his full six-foot-two height. He could see the child bear, a female, alongside of her brother; and just beyond them both, their mother. The fully-grown sow grizzly looked to be three hundred and fifty pounds. She would be just under seven feet tall if she were standing on her two powerful hind legs. For now, though, she was on all fours, maternally keeping watch on her young ones feasting on huckleberries and attempting to dig up some sweet roots.

At twenty meters, Russ knew so long as he moved slowly and deliberately while packing up his camp he would unlikely be seen as a threat and generally ignored by the family of bears. In fact, momma bear gave him a quick glance but seemed bored by the prospect of keeping an eye on him.

Now, with a clearer view of it, Russ was able to better gauge the height of the sun. He decided 7 a.m. was plenty late enough to get a start on his day. He grabbed the last of his Honeycrisp apples and walked over to the edge of his camping area, away from the bears. It was time to See a man about a horse. A phrase that to Russ’s bewilderment, Pops was so fond of saying. The first time he’d heard Pops use the phrase, at two, little Russ got so excited. He’d thought he was going to see a real horse. Some thirty-five years later, remembering his youthful optimism never failed to bring a smile to Russ’s face.

As the man with the horse was finishing up, Russ caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Nature nature everywhere, he thought.

Turning his head to the right he saw a one-year-old male grizzly cub, its nose testing the appeal of each and every branch, rock and blade of grass it could get to. Strange that this cub would be away from the others.

Shouldn’t you be thirty yards stage right little fella?

SNAP

Russ didn’t have time to turn around to see what he already knew. A branch the size of his wrist being broken by a three-hundred-and-ninety-pound momma bear. A second bear. A much bigger second bear.

The first hit came with the force of a small car. He felt his right collar bone snap, quickly and cleanly. But that spreading warmth beneath the skin: the bone had perforated his subclavian artery. He was bleeding internally!

The follow through of the bear’s hit crumpled him to the ground. Immediately Russ flipped over onto his stomach and covered the back of his neck with his hands. Seemingly dissatisfied with this, the bear began lashing out at Russ’s back and shoulders.

His ultra-thin thermal-wear offered little resistance against the powerful arms of the grizzly. Five claws from each paw sliced into his skin. Each claw between a half and one and a quarter inches deep inside him. Five nearly perfect parallel cuts from his left shoulder to his low-rise Wranglers. The middle claw being the shallowest offender. Russ considered this, perhaps a prior injury had misaligned the digit.

As he’d hoped, the swelling around his clavicle was significant. The added pressure on the injury was, fortunately, acting as a tourniquet of sorts, slowing the flow of blood from the damaged artery. If he could get out of this, he could position the broken bone to apply even more pressure upstream of the tear and buy himself more time before bleeding out.

After two more, less powerful, lashes to his back -Is she getting bored?- The bear took a few steps back. Absent the full weight of the bear, Russ was able to take in a slow, silent breath. His alveoli were eager to get to work. Motionless, Russ felt trickles of blood from his back wounds curling their way down his sides, tickling his stomach, -Fortunately less than half a pint, so far.

Russ could hear the one-year-old moving off from the urine stenched area where the two had met. Casually brushing through the forest flora, no interest in the actions of Mom. Having moved three meters out, the adolescent huffed, followed by three nasal exhales. Russ hoped that was grizzly-speak for, Come on Mom..

It was then that Russ’s ravaged back betrayed him and gave out an involuntary twitch, a muscle spasm in response to the savage injuries. Enraged that the threat was not dead, momma grizzly roared and pounced towards Russ.

Unsatisfied with the position of her prey, the bear struck Russ on his right side, flipping him over, exposing him completely to her. The beastly maneuver broke three ribs, Russ felt rib six puncture his lung. The right to left motion also jostled his broken collarbone, fortuitously applying the needed torque to compress the torn artery above the tear. Small favors.

The surprise of the maneuver had Russ’s eyes open, staring at the face of his attacker.

Don’t move. Don’t you dare move. Body still, eyes stay open. Just as she found you.

The ground he was now lying on felt different. Where he initially had felt all grass and soil, he now found patches where the native granite was exposed. His head rested on a soft tuft of grass. His left arm was perched upon a surprisingly sharp piece of stone, one that threatened to puncture his prone limb. His right calf seemed to be stretched over a rolling pin of unforgiving granite.

The grizzly bettered her advantage over Russ, straddling him with all four legs, her face inches from his, sniffing, nudging looking for signs of life. Eyes open and fixed on the space seven inches directly in front of his right nostril, Russ had an easy view of his tormenter.

Such an impressive animal. She’s beautiful, he marveled silently.

The artery seems be stable, significantly slowed blood loss there, Russ mentally taking stock of his predicament. Back as well, about a quarter pint additional loss. Right lung is of minimal use, if I can keep my pulse below seventy and breathe slowly I’ll be fine. This twig on my eye may be an issue. A just-so motion could scratch my cornea.

The sow’s front paws now on his chest. Pressing and probing. Seeking out any sign of life left in the threat to her calves.

Enough with the CPR, huh? Russ thought.

In one final test of her dominance, the enormous grizzly stood upright and roared to the world that she had won. Her right hind paw came down an inch from the sharp rock threatening to puncture another artery, in his left arm. Her left, firmly planted on Russ’s calf, positioned right above the rolling pin. He heard both his tibia and fibula snap to either side of the stone, the tibia first, giving him the look of a man with three knees.

The distance between the bears face and his eyes now gave the appearance of two attackers with his cross-eyed view.

So majestic.

Satisfied with her triumph the, now, gentle giant got down to all fours and slowly padded off towards her offspring, leaving diminishing bloody paw prints as she went. Russ counted off ten minutes before he uncrossed his eyes and lifted his head...

2

Ok, Russ, time to see what’s what, he thought to himself.

Including the internal bleeding, my circulatory system is down two and a half pints. Still only a Class 2 hemorrhage. Once I start walking the rate of loss will likely increase. Best case three hours until shock sets in. Worst case, one and a half. The lung is still useless. Focus on keeping your heart rate low, take slow and measured breaths through the left lung. Let’s get up and see what’s what with the leg.

As he’d expected, the broken right lower leg would not support his weight. Any attempt to place weight on his right leg and he could feel the above-break bones start to slide alongside the below-break bones. The unnatural bone movement threatened to cause increased damage to the already injured tibia and fibula as well as potentially causing damage to the surrounding muscle and blood vessels.

The fracture of the two bones were nearly identical in relative position along them as well as the angles of the breaks. With four and a half kilometers to the nearest lodging, and then seventy-five more to the local hospital, three hours didn’t seem to be enough time until the increasing loss of blood left him unconscious or worse. No time for a proper splint.

Russ removed the belt Pops had given him when he was seven.

This is the belt my father, your grandfather, used to whoop me with when I got out of line, and sometimes when his drinking got out of line, Russ’s father had told him. Russ, I hated this belt. So many nights I wanted to sneak into his bedroom and take this damned thing off the nail that had been hammered into the back of his door. Then I’d take it out back and toss it in the food trough, with some taters and swill, and let the hogs eat the whole damn thing.

When he died, all he had to his name were the clothes on his body. No way in Hell I was gonna let him keep it, so we buried him without it. I imagined him getting to the Pearly Gates, standing waiting for his judgement, with his bloomers fallen down around his ankles. To Hell with this one, St Pete would say with a laugh.

I’ve kept it all these years, I’m not much sure why. But today I’m giving it to you, son. I’ve never raised a hand to you, and I never would. You keep this belt with you, Russ. You keep it and always remember that we’re not here to cause pain to others. You keep it and you think about that.

Sitting as upright as his swollen and damaged body would permit, Russ took the belt and fitted it loosely around his broken lower leg, above the break. He rolled up the denim of his jeans as high as they would go. Then slowly and steadily he tightened the belt just under his right knee. The first pull dug deep into his calf muscle, nice and tight. Then summoning up as much strength as he could, he strained to pull the leather even tighter. Beneath the muscles and tendons, he could feel the broken tips of his tibia and fibula bending towards one another. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he pulled harder yet. Still unsatisfied, Russ gave one more hard yank, he felt the tap of bone tips touching. Tying off the belt, he said to himself, Now for the tricky part.

Reaching farther down his leg, Russ curled the fingers of his right hand underneath his heel and pulled hard against the sole of his Keen Targhee hiking boots. The swelling and weakness from his broken clavicle prevented him from applying much lateral pressure up his leg.

Guess we’ll go southpaw on this, he muttered to himself.

Russ grabbed just above his ankle with his left hand and tightened his fingers around his leg in a test clench. Satisfied his off hand would provide enough grip to perform his field triage, he placed his right hand just below the break in his lower leg. A little up, down, left and right testing suggested he would be able to adequately align and realign his below the break bones in relation to the bound upper tips, despite the reduced capacity of his right arm.

With the care of a first-time parent swaddling his newborn, Russ began to pull his leg up towards his knee. Accepting that some nerve damage was certain to occur, Russ was very aware that he could not afford additional ruptured blood vessels. Little by little, ever so slowly, he could feel the bound upper bone slide into the interosseous membrane between the lower tibia and fibula.

Russ felt the bones begin to tear through the soft membrane. The compression along the length of his lower leg created slack in his soleus muscle as it became longer relative to the shortening of his leg. His calcaneal tendon began to bulge away from his body due to the shortening of his leg. Finally, he felt the outer bones above the break press against the inner bones below the break.

Tapping into his primal energy, Russ reached down to his heel with his right hand and gave out a warrior’s scream as he pulled with all he had. The bones scraped by each other another inch and a half, he could feel the fractured bones splintering from bone on bone friction. Then loosening the belt he’d used to constrict the bone above the break, he moved it to just below the break and tightened it until he thought it or his arm would snap. He secured the belt to hold tightly around his leg maintaining the pressure was the only means he had to provide lateral structure and stability to his piecemealed extremity.

Raising himself up off the ground, Russ was pleased, though not surprised, to find he was able to place weight on his damaged leg. The belt provided compression enough to keep his upper bones from moving farther into the space between the lower bones. The loss of three inches to his right leg, however, gave too substantial an amount of vertical pressure to the damaged leg. Each test step taken transferred too much of his weight vertically along the intertwined bones, forcing them to wedge further into and around each other. Not wanting to cause more damage to the already ravaged leg, Russ picked up a fallen branch to serve as a staff, using it to offset the weight of each step.

***

For the first two kilometers, Russ simply navigated by the sun. Being 23 arcminutes above the 43rd parallel, he easily deduced due east, slightly more northerly than magnetic east.

The swelling aside, Russ realized he had little functional use of his battered right leg. His lower extremity virtually immovable from ankle through knee due to the increasing swelling. Thankfully, though, he found he was able to swing his leg forward from the hip with each step, thereby forgoing the need to bend his knee. The new, shorter length of the appendage allowed for easy clearance of most of the obstacles and small rises within each step.

At that two-kilometer mark, Russ’s mini leg started to take on a decided sausage look, the swelling threatened to test the material strength of Wrangler’s finest. With so much restricted swelling potentially creating added pressure within the circulatory system, thus causing greater blood loss under his broken collarbone, Russ knew he had to remedy the situation.

Fortuitously, mama grizzly had begun the tearing process nearly an hour and a half ago. Sliding a finger sized stick in one hole and out the other Russ twisted and ripped a generously sized hole along the front of his jeans. Two more sets, one to either side of the first and the denim material began flapping in the breeze.

As he’d expected, a few hundred meters past three kilometers Russ came across the first man made path. There may be countless great explorers in the world, climbing mountains or searching the seas, but most folks preferred to wander close to home. Now it was just a matter of taking the road more travelled at each intersection until he came across a house, preferably an occupied one.

***

By the time Russ politely knocked on the door of the first, and occupied, house he found, he was certain his internal and external wounds had cost him considerably over three pints of blood. His best-case scenario clearly wasn’t in the cards.

Jeff Fullerton answered the door, a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and sensible slippers on his feet.

Good Lord son, what’s happened to you? he asked.

I ran into some of your local fauna, sir. Seems I wasn’t as warmly welcomed by them as by yourself, Russ replied.

Come in, let’s have a look at you. Get you off that kielbasa masquerading for a leg at least, Jeff said setting down his coffee.

Sir, if it’s all the same to you, I need emergency medical assistance and I’d…

Mary, call 911, there’s an injured man here, Fullerton began yelling over Russ’s words.

...like to offer... Sir, I’ve lost thirty-six percent of my blood in the last few hours. If that number rises above forty, shock will likely set in and I…

Mary, tell them he’s lost a lot of blood!

...won’t be able to guide the surgeons...No, again if it’s all the same to you, I need transportation to the nearest emergency facility, I believe it’s thirty… Russ attempting to regain control of the conversation.

Mary, grab the keys to my truck, we’re taking him to Fairview ourselves! Jeff yelled louder yet to his wife.

Thank you, sir. My name is Russell Felton Williams.

Jeff Fullerton, son. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but I don’t think either of us is set to enjoy this very much.

"The situation could be kinder, yes. Could I trouble you and Mary for some water for the ride? And if you have a cellular phone to bring