And Ted has picked up the bear.
Ted lunged at the bear’s stomach, and we saw the wind get knocked out of the bear as Ted hoisted it up over his head. Ted’s whole body is now trembling with the effort, and then he snaps himself upright, and he shakes it, and its legs smash together, and it gives a yelp.
The bear’s front legs are dangling and bent at painful angles over Ted’s head, and now Ted, with the bear, is running full bore at the highway barrier.
“Stan,” I say. “What’s he . . . is he going to . . . throw the bear over the guardrail? Stan?”
Stan doesn’t respond. He’s watching Ted and muttering, and I want to yell at him to snap out of it, but I’m also completely terrified that if I disturb this situation, if I let the bear know there are other people here who are weaker and more terrified than Ted, then the bear’ll eat Ted, and then Callie, oh God, Callie. I look back. She’s watching everything with her hands over her eyes, her fingers splayed wide like slats in a window blind. Ted’s still carrying the bear, and it still looks to me like he’s preparing to throw it far away from us, but I’m having lots of trouble believing in a reality as insane and backward and illogical as the one that’s apparently right in front of me. But it’s all I have to believe in, and so I do. I hope he throws the bear over the divider. Because the bear will recover from a fall like that, he’ll just get up and scramble away and out of sight, and then Ted will dust himself off and get back in the car, and he’ll just sit in the backseat blankly and calmly like nothing ever happened, and we’ll drive off, trembling, completely terrified, and just so relieved to be alive.
But that isn’t what happens.
What happens is: Ted rams the bear’s head into the barrier. He runs at full speed, somehow managing to distribute the bear’s weight so that the bear is in front of and forward of his body, almost like a lever. This doesn’t look right, not even a little, and now it definitely doesn’t look like Ted was ever planning on throwing it. Instead, he keeps pushing forward. He gathers momentum until there’s nothing left to gather, and all that’s left for him to do is ram the bear’s head into the highway barrier.
But then he doesn’t stop. He finds more slack to pick up. He just keeps moving, pushing into the dirt with his legs while the bear shudders, goes limp, and makes the saddest, most terrible sounds. The sound of all life leaving a body that big. These are not sounds I am ever going to forget. Teeth are falling like loose change. Ted’s face isn’t exactly calm, but it’s also not incredibly expressive or full of fear or pain either. Like a guy in a weight room. Like he’s exerting a lot of concentration and effort, but without any actual feelings attached to it. I can’t help but think Ted looks a little monstrous.
Suddenly, we’re moving.
Slowly, Stan is inching us forward. “Ted!” he calls. “TED!” he shouts again, but louder. “TED!” he screams and opens the car door.
Ted looks up, and just like that, he walks back to us, his footfalls strong and deliberate. His face still has that look of almost frighteningly dedicated concentration. His jaw is clenched so tight I can see it through the filters of the dirty windshield and the tears welled up in my eyes. His eyes are focused on something beyond us, and he’s still moving like the world’s a step behind, leaning forward, as if pulled—no, tugged—along. Beyond him the big bear twitches, and I realize I’m holding my breath.
Stan gets out of the car and walks to Ted. He isn’t shouting now, he’s saying, calmly, soothingly, “Ted. Hey, Ted.” When he gets to him, he says, “Whoa,” and Ted still doesn’t look at him. Stan puts his arms on Ted’s shoulders, and it isn’t until he stops Ted in his tracks that Ted’s eyes seem to see him. “Ted, whoa, hey,” Stan says, and Ted’s jaw slowly unclenches. While Stan leads him back to the car, I coach myself to start breathing again, slowly. I look back at Callie again, bracing myself for how frightened she must be, but her face looks placid. She’s just sitting there, quiet and still. She’s looking ahead, north.
WE’RE DRIVING AGAIN. It’s quiet as hell.
I never thought of hell as being quiet before, but I’m starting to think, of course, that’s exactly what it would be. Hell is probably just you and whatever demons are crawling around in your head, locked in a small, quiet room, damned to whisper to each other forever. Neither of us moves to put on the radio, even though I think we’d both rather listen to anything other than the sound of us coming to terms with what just happened.
After a few miles we reach a rest stop, and I don’t even need to tell Stan to pull over. We park, and I tell him I’m going for a walk.