THE CALL

Glen Rumble pulled the Wrangler to a stop while his partner, Melinda Gaines, popped open the passenger door. The early-morning sun blazed pink through the trees and turned her blonde hair the color of the sunrise as she walked toward a group of campers gathered in front of some tents by the lake’s edge. There was an energy buzzing about them that redoubled when they recognized Glen and Mindy as park rangers. One woman, who had obviously just awoken, ran up to them and waved her arms around her head, “Thank God you came so fast! Mark cut himself real bad!”

The first thing to do was crowd control: distraught relatives or friends of an injured hiker or camper most often succeeded only in making things worse. He nodded to Mindy but she had already put her arms around the woman and had veered her away from the other campers, talking in low, reassuring tones.

The campers were huddled around an unshaven man in shorts and an old beer T-shirt. His face was ashen and his eyes bulged with fear. A teenage boy helped him hold a washcloth and some paper towels over his left hand. The paper towels were stained a brilliant red.

Glen squatted in front of the man, introduced himself, and smiled, “What happened here?” He was attempting to distract the man while he removed the makeshift bandages to look at the wound.

“I went fishing this morning,” the guy looked about to puke.

Glen nodded and looked at Mark's left hand. There was a seven-inch slice in the palm that bled with authority; he would need stitches. “And you cut yourself trying to clean your catch?”

“Uh-huh.”

Glen stood the guy up and walked him toward the Jeep, “Fish for breakfast? Mm-mmm.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Mark said weakly as Glen and Mindy helped him into the back. Once secure, Glen and Mindy shared a look and smiled: it seemed an everyday occurrence that some family guy drags his crew into the wilderness in his Escalade to “rough it,” only to maim themselves on some routine chore. Glen slipped into the driver’s seat while Mindy explained to the campers that they had radioed the nearest hospital and that an ambulance would be waiting for Mark on their return. He fired up the Wrangler before Mindy opened the door, but his cell phone vibrated in his pocket as he pulled away, so he fought with the old dirt road while simultaneously fumbling the phone from his pocket.

He flipped it open, “Hello?”

The voice was quiet, as though they were on speakerphone, but some distance from their cell. Glen squinted and leaned forward, as if that would help hear the caller. He thought he heard “summit” and “eastern face,” but wasn’t sure.

“Look, I have to get a guy back to the Ranger Station for stitches, but if you can call back in a half-hour…”

Suddenly, the Jeep skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. Mindy braced herself against the dash and Mark groaned in the back. Glen opened his door and looked back to Mindy. A haunted shadow clouded his eyes as he spoke one word, “Bear.”

Glen kept his back to the Jeep and kept one finger in his ear to help him hear. He paced as he spoke, nodded a couple times, then asked, “Do you know where you are?”

Then, “Damn it!” He ran over to the Jeep and jumped in. He mentioned something about seat belts and slammed the Wrangler into gear. The high-speed descent was treacherous and Glen spent most of his energy focused on the road, but he divulged what he could of the phone call to Mindy, “Woman was apparently mauled by a bear a few minutes ago. She’s wounded and doesn’t know where she is…”

“But if she used a cell phone, “Mindy said, “then she must be over on Blanchard’s Trail.”

Glen nodded, “Because that’s just about the only place with enough reception to make a call.”

Mindy called the Station and reported the hiker’s call. She ordered Gordon to fire up the chopper. Glen thought of the rifle locked in the back of the Wrangler and wondered if he would have to bring down a bear today.

He narrowly dodged a tree and said through clenched teeth, “There’s one more thing…”

“What?”

He shook his head, “Dunno, but I swear I recognized that voice from somewhere. I think it may be Nancy, my son’s girlfriend.”

Mindy didn’t say it, but she thought, “Oh God!” She knew Glen’s son and some of his friends had been camping this weekend up on Blanchard’s Trail.

Glen slammed to a stop and rushed into the Station to get Gordon and one of the EMTs into the helicopter. The trip to Blanchard’s Trail took less than ten minutes, but to Glen, each tick of his watch was a lifetime.

The chopper landed, and they quickly found Nancy. She was crying and bloody from a gash on her head, but she was okay. Glen asked her about the others and she could only cry and point, “About a mile that way.”

Mindy ran as fast as she could through the forest, but her legs were not as long as Glen’s, and were not fueled by the adrenaline of a frightened father. She heard a shot in front of her and she quickened her pace.

Mindy smelled the blood before she entered the cleared ground of the campsite. She saw an unmoving brown heap at the far side; it had been a good-sized bear.

She stopped at the edge of the trees when she also saw Glen, at the center of the clearing. He was on his knees, holding his son's motionless body close to his chest, and crying.