We Are the Deadliest

My daughter wants to see bears, but I’m the one who finds them when I wander off the hiking path, when I left Maggie and my husband. We saw sheep and deer, but those didn’t satisfy her. Not even a wolf, its posture rigid, its eyes cold and pitch black, could satiate her. She grew bored at the sight of it. I want to see a bear, Maggie repeated. They’re the deadliest mammals, she added.

            We are the deadliest, I wanted to tell her, but then decide I didn’t want her to know how life really was. I knew she’d find out soon enough.

            I don’t know how long I was walking for when I find myself at the top of a hill and see the three cubs below me, trailing behind a large brown bear. They walk in a line, the smallest cub falling in the rear. It has a strange gait, doesn’t walk the same as its siblings. I know nothing about bears, but I assume the large bear is the cubs’ mother. They begin to wrestle with her, and I know for sure they are her babies. I can’t imagine those small cubs trusting anyone else like that, being comfortable enough to be that vulnerable.

            My eyes drift to the smallest cub again. It pounces on a cub, but is quickly tossed on its back, ignored. The mother approaches the smallest cub and pushes it on the ground. Her mouth opens wide—and I swear I hear a growl escape from her or maybe it was me. She lunges toward the cub’s throat, her teeth sinking into the soft cushion of its neck. The cub thrashes against its mother’s grip and lets out a screech that is panicked and confused and I wonder if a human scream sounds like a bear’s or if a bear scream sounds like a human’s.

            I remember then the packet we were handed when we first entered the national park. The park ranger emphasized, maybe doubting that we would read the thin piece of tri-folded green paper, that if we encountered a bear, we needed to make ourselves less threatening to avoid being attacked. I know that isn’t true, as the bear finished devouring her cub, the snapping of bone between teeth like a child enjoying a piece of sweet candy. I know that if the bear turned her head and stared at me, that I’d stumble down the hill to join her. I would open my mouth unnaturally wide when I’m done to proudly display the fur stuck in tufts between my teeth, my tongue dark, coated in soil because I licked the blood that soaked into the earth.

I could have stood there forever, but I hear my name and I run away from the bears. Tree branches cut into my cheeks, snag my clothing. As I sprint through the wilderness, an overwhelming sense of sadness makes me stumble. I lean against a large rock, trying to collect my breath. I hear my husband call my name once more and, before my daughter emerges from a cluster of bushes, I think of the bear again, imagine my own teeth stained crimson, Maggie’s blood metallic and slightly sweet, pieces of my daughter’s blonde hair and skin stuck underneath my fingernails.

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Katy Ross, a native of New Mexico, received her MFA from New Mexico State University.