Sadie hadn’t run off. She was beating the bear with the rifle, shouting at him to let her brother go. Deke could hear her over the roaring that filled his ears.
The dog hadn’t given up, either, but was still biting at the bear, coming at him whenever the bear’s snapping jaws turned away.
Deke heard someone shrieking in pain and realized that he was the one doing the screaming.
Maybe Sadie and the dog kept the bear from immediately ripping him to shreds. He tried hard to maneuver the shotgun, but the weight of the bear’s body kept him pinned to the ground.
Then he smelled the bear’s hot breath, right in his face. It was like some awful dog’s breath, hot and fetid, stinking of rotting meat. That was when the bear’s jaws closed around his head.
He felt teeth grating across his skull, sliding over the bone, looking for a grip. The bear was going to pop his head open like a walnut. The paws shifted to hold him down while the bear’s jaws slid around to get a better hold, peeling his flesh away from the bone in the process. The sound of Deke’s own screaming intensified.
By turning its attention to his head, the bear had moved enough to give Deke some wiggle room. His side felt like it was on fire, as if the bear’s claws had been hot coals. Deke started to fade, but the bear shook his head for him, clearing it. Not yet. He tugged the muzzle of the shotgun up another inch and pressed the trigger. He heard the gun go off, but the blast was muffled by the mountain of bear crushing him to the ground.
At first, nothing happened. The bear kept working at his skull like a dog with a bone. Sadie kept hitting the bear, clubbing it in the head with the rifle butt. Then the bear’s jaws moved more slowly, like it was bored with him, or getting tired, and finally stopped.
Grunting with the effort, Sadie pulled him out from under the bear.
She was sobbing. “Oh, Deke, oh, Deke.”
“I’m all right,” he said, then slipped into a welcome blackness.
There was nothing for Sadie and his ma to do but sew him up and pray. Truth be told, the lion’s share of both tasks fell to Sadie. The country doctor came by and shook his head. The closest thing to a real hospital that could do surgery on Deke, maybe patch him back together, was more than fifty miles away. Old Man McGlothlin offered to take him in his truck, but they all knew the boy would never survive the ride. Nature would just have to take its course.
“I done warned him about that bear,” the farmer said.
Shaking his head, he went off to butcher what was left of the pig, skin the bear, and dig young Deacon’s grave.
For the next week, then two, Deke lingered. His life flickered and threatened to go out like a candle in a drafty room. He took his time dying. Autumn leaves filled the hole where he was meant to be buried. Without anyone knowing, Sadie cut off one of the bear’s claws and saved it as a talisman.
Instead of dying, Deke got stronger. The candle flame burned stronger. He came from hardy mountain stock, after all, and the young were resilient. Still, it was two months before he could get out of bed. He moved slowly, painfully, but the bones and muscles were knitting back together.
As for the scars, there was nothing much that anyone could do about that. Sadie and Ma rubbed bear grease on the angry red furrows to help them heal. The scars on his body were hidden easily by his shirt. New hair grew on his scalp. When he turned his face slightly away, he looked like the same old Deke. But on his left side, his face and ear remained badly mangled, a reminder of the bear.
Deke would live, but there was a price to pay. As if the physical injuries hadn’t been enough, all these years later, he still had nightmares about that bear. It was as if in taking the bear’s life, Ol’ Slewfoot had passed on its own scars and pain to Deke, like a dying curse. In the same way, the bear must have passed on some of its power and wild spirit.
On the ship, Deke tossed and turned in the narrow bunk, trying to get comfortable. After a while, he stopped fighting it, grabbed a blanket, and curled up in a corner of the deck. The breeze on deck helped to clear the fog of bad memories from his head. He was sure some squid would come along and roust him out, but until then, he let the night air wash over him as he finally slept.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The rest of the voyage to the shores of Leyte was mostly filled by days of boredom, mixed with a few moments of terror whenever there was a scare about a Jap plane or sub. Sure, these squids slept in a bunk and ate three squares a day, but it was hard to forget that at any moment they could end up feeding the sharks if the Japs got lucky with a torpedo.
Finally, the monotony broke when Lieutenant Steele gathered them together on deck.
“Here we are, boys,” Steele announced. He pointed toward the west. All that they could see was more endless ocean. “Leyte is just over there.”
“What, is it invisible?” Philly wondered. “I don’t see a thing.”
Steele shook his head, then assured them that while land was nowhere in sight, Leyte was just over the horizon. The horizon was currently being churned by large waves that caused the deck to roll — a feeling that Deke was never going to get used to, no matter how much time he spent at sea. He definitely had granite running through his veins, not salt water.
They were launching in less-than-ideal conditions, but their timetable didn’t give them the luxury of waiting for calmer seas. Night was falling, and the men were not pleased that they would be landing in the dark, but that was their best hope of making it to shore undetected.
“We can’t go in any closer,” Steele explained. “That big gun that we’re trying to knock out would send this destroyer straight to the bottom. The captain tells me that the ship may already be in range, but that the Japs may not want to reveal more than they have to at this point. In any case, he doesn’t want to make it any easier for the Japs to sink him than he has to.”
“If he knows where the Japs are, why the hell doesn’t he drop some shells on their heads? That’s what I’d like to know. This floating tin can has plenty of firepower.”
“In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re trying to get ashore without letting the whole Japanese army know about it. Opening fire on them right now wouldn’t be very smart, now would it? We don’t want to ring the doorbell.”
Instead of the destroyer itself, a smaller launch was taking them in to shore. The craft was piloted by a single sailor. To Deke’s surprise, he recognized the gruff petty officer that he had seen on deck. The man had the air of an old salt about him and hadn’t been overly friendly toward the ship’s “passengers,” but he had volunteered to pilot the launch. “I figured that I’d take you in myself,” he said. “That way, you’ll have a chance of making it to shore.”
Skilled though the petty officer might be, the smaller boat still bucked and bobbed in the swell. He did manage to keep the launch tight against the sides of the much larger destroyer as the men of Patrol Easy climbed down the ladder and dropped the last few feet into the boat.
Deke was the third man over the side, following Lieutenant Steele and Philly. He concentrated on handholds and footholds as he made his way down the ladder. It wasn’t at all like climbing the ladder to fix the barn roof, but just two ropes with wooden slats in between. At first glance, descending the ladder looked like an easy enough task, and maybe it was for a man unencumbered by equipment. At five foot ten with a lean build, Deke wasn’t a big man, but he was solid as a locust fence post. That was a good thing, because he soon found his body being pounded against the steel sides of the ship.