It’s Not Really About The Bear
I have fleetingly
mentioned in other stories that my finger had been bitten off by a bear and I
realize that it’s not fair to bring it up so nonchalantly and never tell the
story about how it happened. I’m not
sure why I never wrote it down, but I will do so now and see if I can figure
out if it took so long for any other reason besides my laziness.
I think that
before I tell it I will have to give some background on my friend Wayne who was
the catalyst for the whole story taking place.
In fact, most of my stories that start with the sentence “My friend
Wayne and I…” usually end up with me in the emergency room or waking up in some
strange place hung-over. There will be
time for those other stories later.
Wayne would do
things like make plans with you to do something that cost money and after you’ve
paid he would come up with some excuse why he didn’t have the money now, but he
would pay you next time. Of course he
never did. His most frequent excuse was
that the Mac machine ruined his card while he was trying to get the money. He is the only person I know who had his Mac
card ruined every other week consistently for several years!
He would also
make up stories that never happened or brag about things he never did or at
least exaggerated greatly about what really happened. He did it out of insecurity, and the sad
thing was none of us ever thought less of Wayne and he didn’t have to lie or
make stuff up for us to be his friend, but like a lot of people his insecurities in himself outweighed
his trust in his friends and I could never hold that against him.
Besides, that’s
not all Wayne was. He was a very good and dependable friend
where it really counted. He always had
my back and he would come help you anytime you asked. He had been there for my friends and me when
nobody else was and we appreciated him for that.
I first met Wayne
some 16 years ago and we first became friends when he stood up for me in a bar
against a guy much bigger than me, much bigger than Wayne
for that matter. It was a
misunderstanding over a woman and I hadn’t even done anything wrong, but this
guy was mad and there was no explaining.
He was a body builder and taking steroids and I had seen him beat up
other people in the past. I would have
gotten my ass kicked if not for Wayne . He got in the bigger guys face and the bigger
guy backed down.
One thing about Wayne ,
he was a fighter. He wasn’t a jerk about
it and I never really saw him start a fight, but he was always ready to finish
one.
He was one of
those people who liked to claim that he was part Indian, but when he was drinking,
the tribe he descended from tended to change.
One time it was Cherokee, the next he was a Blackfoot Sioux. On a side note: I think it’s funny that there were hundreds
of different Indian tribes in this country, but whenever I meet some drunk in a
bar who claims to be part Indian it’s never one of the tribes no one has ever
heard of but always Cherokee or Sioux or Apache. Never one of the seemingly endless tribes
that all the small towns are named after.
The federal government officially recognizes 565 tribes, but I never met
some redneck that claimed to be from the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, or the Muckleshoot tribe, or some
other tribe that doesn’t sound as cool as Comanche.
One incident
regarding the Indian thing with Wayne
was when my friend Phil went out riding motorcycle with him. He warned Phil that he had better wear some
sunscreen because it was hot out and he might burn. Wayne
further explained that because of his Indian heritage he would be fine. Well, when they showed up at my place that
night Phil was fine but Wayne was
badly sun burned. To make matters worse
he had been wearing a shirt that was made of netting and he had the pattern
burned into his skin. I remember Phil
asking him “so how’s that work out for you Cochise?” and we all laughed. As he typically did, Wayne
ignored it and acted as if nothing had happened and didn’t understand why we
thought it was so funny. Wayne
would just grin what we came to call his “Joker” grin, named after the Batman
villain. Wayne
knew when he was caught in a lie and there was nothing left for him to do but
grin and bear it.
Another thing
about Wayne was that he always
tried to get people to call him by his nickname “Hollywood .” It was somewhat sad that no one had given him
this nickname, he just thought it would be cool it people would call him
that. People should not have to give themselves
a nickname. No one was even sure where
the nickname came from or what it was supposed to mean.
Oh well, back to
the bear.
It was Thursday, November 4, 2004 . Wayne
told me about how his friend Eric had a brother who raised exotic animals and
claimed he trained them for movies and such, but who really knew how much was
true when you were dealing with Wayne . At any rate, Wayne
knew I liked animals and he went on to tell me that this person had a bear that
was now grown and it needed to be moved to a bigger cage, and I could come with
him and help if I wanted to. There was
also a lion, a tiger, and some other animals there I could see. I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to pet
a tiger.
Wayne and I took
my car and we drove up past Wind Gap and onto some twisty back roads until we
came to the house. There was a makeshift
gate in a wooden fence that Wayne
opened so I could drive the car through.
I made my way up a winding driveway to the house. Across from the house were cages that held
some of the animals. Eric’s brother
wasn’t there yet so I took some time to go see the animals. The lion and tiger were in one cage, and not
a very big one. These days I am really
against keeping animals captive unless they are really well housed in a very
natural environment, and even then I’m not too thrilled about it. At the time these events occurred I hadn’t
given it a lot of thought, and although I was assured at the time that the
animals were well taken care of and exercised, upon reflection I am not sure if
that was the case. The lion was at the back of the cage lounging up on a shelf
and the tiger came right over to the fence.
The lion was a male and he looked very regal sitting there with his big
mane and solemn face.
The tiger was a
female and as I said, she came right over so I put my hand through the bars and
pet her. She rolled on the ground and I
started scratching her belly, which she seemed to love. She licked my hand and I honestly didn’t
think twice about what I was doing. I
haven’t changed since I was a small kid.
I was always running up to strange dogs or trying to touch wildlife that
should be better left alone. I could
never understand why the animals couldn’t sense that I was no threat and simply
wanted to pet them. I’m not quite as
naïve about animals as a grown up, but I will still try to hand feed a deer or
a squirrel if I see one, usually to no avail. That being said, I must admit I do get nervous
hiking in the woods now where there may be bears anywhere nearby.
I took a few
pictures of the lion and tiger and then I made my way over to the bear
cage. The bears cage was made from chain
link fencing. That’s the reason we were
here, to move him out of this cage and into a better one.
It was a black
bear, and while the bear was still a young adult, he was almost full-grown. I’m six feet tall, and when it came over to
the fence it stood up on its hind legs with its paws against the side of the
cage and its face was level with mine. I
held my hand up to the cage and let him sniff it through the fencing. I had taken one picture of the bear before I
went over to the cage and I looked down at my camera to make sure it was still
turned on, not thinking about my other hand that was still held up for the bear
to smell a few inches from the cage.
This next part is
a little graphic, so be forewarned.
I felt something
touch my hand and I looked up just in time to see the bear’s tongue snaking
through the fencing and wrapping around the pinky of my left hand and pull it
into his mouth. His front teeth grabbed
hold of it and there I stood frozen in time with my finger in a bear’s
mouth. I looked at him and he returned
my gaze with a quizzical stare that told me he wasn’t sure what this was all about. It might be a game, I might be feeding him a
treat, but whatever it was there was no anger or ferocity in the bears
expression or demeanor.
The only thing I
could think to do was to scold the bear as you would a puppy that had hold of a
sock.
I waved my finger
in front of it and told it “No. Bad
bear. Let go.” The bear simply looked confused. He was tugging my finger somewhat gently (as
far as bears go) and my palm was against the fence with the wire forming one of
the diamond shapes in the fence digging into where my pinky joined the rest of
my hand.
Then I felt the
bears teeth start to crunch down on my finger.
In a sudden flash of inspiration, I realized that if I banged my other
hand on the fence right in front of the bears face I might startle it and he
would let go.
I want to go on
record right now that I have since decided it is never a good idea to try to
startle a large wild animal into doing anything. The bear did seem startled for a second, then
he proceeded to sever the bone in my finger and pull. As is often the case with car accidents, the
events seemed to unfold in slow motion.
With the bone disconnected the bear pulled back and the skin and tendons
of my finger stretched like mozzarella cheese much farther than I could ever
have imagined it could. Mercifully the
flesh reached its breaking point and ripped off.
“It sure
did.” I replied, confirming his
assessment. I wish I could report that
we had some philosophical epiphany that produced something more intellectual to
mark the occasion, but that was it.
I had been
playing guitar since I was a kid so the first thing I did was move the rest of
the fingers on my hand to see if I could still form chords or play leads. It seemed possible. I looked back in the cage to see if the bear
had spit out my finger, but he had not.
It seemed he had eaten it.
Eric was just
coming out of the basement door and I yelled over to him that I needed to go to
the emergency room. I went into the
basement with him and he gave me a rag to wrap around my hand. He was clearly agitated and was more worried
that his brother would be mad at him for bringing me there and letting this
happen. I impressed upon him the
importance of getting me to the hospital and I assured him that I wouldn’t tell
the doctors about the bear so he made up an elaborate lie to tell the hospital
about an old conveyer belt we were supposedly working on that caught my finger
in the drive chain. I quickly agreed to
the story if it got me to a hospital quicker.
I made one more
quick pass by the bear cage just to check to see if he had spit my finger out,
but he had not, so off we went. I
insisted on driving my own car so I followed behind Eric’s truck as he led the
way. Wayne
was sitting in the passenger seat of my car and I had him call my father on my
cell phone and hold it to my ear so I could talk to him.
“Hello dad?” I
said when my fathers voice appeared on the other end of the line, “it’s me,
Dave. Listen, I’m driving to the hospital, a bear ate my finger.”
“Yeah, right,
what’s going on?” Came his reply.
“I’m telling you,
I’m on the way to the hospital because the bear ate my finger.”
The conversation
went on like that until I finally convinced him that I was telling the
truth. I left off telling him I’d call
with more information once I got there.
After following
Eric for some time, we pulled into a shopping center parking lot and Eric
parked his truck. I got out of my car to
find out what the problem was, and he informed me that we were here. Here turned out to be a Redi-Care facility in
the strip mall, and I again impressed on him that I needed to go to an actual
hospital. He told me that they could
handle it here and I should just go in.
I told them to
follow me and I would prove that I needed a hospital. We walked in and I asked the
nurse/receptionist if I could see a doctor right away. A doctor came out of a doorway behind the
counter and asked what the problem was.
“Can you do
something for this?” I asked, unwrapping the towel and holding up my hand with
it’s missing finger.
The doctors face
went a little white and he stammered “what the hell are you doing here? Get to a hospital immediately!”
“See?” I said to Eric
angrily, “Now take me to the fucking hospital!”
We finally got to
Easton Hospital
They moved me out
of the waiting room and onto a bed and there I sat and waited, my head now
filled with morphine. I continued to
wait, while Wayne and Eric tried to chat up one of the nurses, even though I
could tell right away that they didn’t have a chance.
Guys are funny
that way. We were all in our mid to late
thirties, and she had to be no older than 22, but men never seem to notice when
they become the old guy trying to impress young women that they used to make
fun of when they were younger. It must
be an evolutionary thing, still trying to pass your genes on even though you
now live outside the herd and the stallion has driven you off the females. You just continue to rut from the edge of the
tree line and hope some desperate female notices you.
I actually hated
her, because she kept talking about my missing finger and saying how she loved
gore and that’s why she was a nurse. In
fact, I’m not even sure if she was a nurse.
She was pretty stupid, and very unprofessional, and frankly I don’t know
why Wayne and Eric were interested in her in the first place. To be fair
though, they were kind of bored and they did have all their fingers, so why
should I cast stones?
She actually
asked to see my finger because she liked looking at gross stuff (I swear to God,
her exact words!) but by now I was getting freaked out looking at it and I kept
it wrapped up in a towel with an ice pack.
I continued to
wait. I had been here for an hour or so,
and they informed me that their hand surgeon was on his way, he was hung up in
surgery now, but he will be here in no time. In a telling example both of
Wayne’s ignorance and loyalty, he actually inquired if they could cut off one
of his fingers and sew it on to my hand so I would still be able to play
guitar. He really thought it was
possible, and couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t do it!
About five hours later
(!) the hand surgeon showed up. He was
Indian, not like the phony American Indian that Wayne
was, but the South Asian Indian variety.
His bedside manner was not the best, but I don’t especially think it was
because he was Indian, I think he was just a bit of a jerk. He helpfully informed me that he probably
could have saved more of my finger had he been there quicker, which was not
really comforting and what I wanted to hear, but the morphine took the edge off
of any anger or frustration I may have been feeling. He told me he would need to take some more of
the bone off, and I assumed that meant some kind of expensive surgical saw or
some such apparatus, but he pulled out what looked like a pair of garden
shears.
At this point the
horrible young nurse asked if she could observe. He inquired if she was
studying in whatever field it was that involved working on people’s hands that
had been partially eaten by bears, but she explained that she just liked gory
shit. I told him to get her the hell
away from me and told him I wanted to lodge a complaint against her. I never
did lodge the complaint, but I feel sorry for anyone subjected to having that
idiot for a nurse. I still can’t imagine how she had lasted in the hospital
that long, I mean she wasn’t that good
looking.
So the surgeon
snipped off more of my bone with the garden shear-looking thing and sewed me up. He again reminded me that I might lose more
of the skin because it had taken so long for someone (him) to get to it. He suggested cutting it all the way back so
it would look like I never had a pinky, but I wanted to try to save as much as
I could. I told him I played guitar, and he chuckled and said “well, maybe not
anymore”. Like I said, he was kind of a
jerk.
After that, I
went home to recuperate, but a few days later it was clear that the skin was
dying and I would lose more of my finger.
I had harbored some secret hope that I might be super-human, or at the
least part reptile, and the missing portion of my finger might miraculously
regenerate, but it was not to be. My
lousy body was not even going to heal the ¾” of skin I was now going to lose. I still haven’t lost my childlike innocence
in the regard that I still think I might somehow be immortal, or have some
other amazing and as yet undiscovered powers, but I am resigned to the fact
that they do not reside in my fingers.
So it was off to
some surgical center and the doctor got out the shears and clipped off some
more bone and sewed me up once again.
That’s pretty much it. I healed eventually, and now I have a stub where
my left pinky used to be. I still play
guitar, but my leads suffer and I usually have to learn songs in different
tunings, but it wasn’t as if I was going to be a rock star anyway.
We had both been
part of the heavy metal club scene drug culture, and Wayne
never seemed to leave the bars or the drugs far behind. Don’t get me wrong, he
wasn’t crazy with it and upon occasion my friends and I still partied a little
when we got together for old times sake, but none of the all night binges
anymore. We had left those days behind,
but when Wayne got that money he
started going out every night and doing drugs several nights a week. Wayne
was a monster with the drinking and drugs.
He could handle a lot and keep right on going. I was pretty good at it myself
back in the day, but I couldn’t keep up with him.
A couple of
months before he died he started acting strange. He always seemed to be sick, throwing up a
lot and saying it was the flu. He showed
up at my house one night and was crying, telling me he didn’t like himself
because he got in fights too often, but he was drunk and he snapped out of it a
few minutes later I didn’t really think a whole lot of it. I asked him if
everything was all right and he reassured me it was and smiled that Joker grin
and wouldn’t discuss it anymore.
The last time I
spoke to him was a week or two before he died.
He showed up unannounced at my place and wanted to come in. He was drunk
and loud and I explained to him through the door that I was watching my
girlfriends pet bird and it was out of the cage and I couldn’t open the door
right now. He started saying I was lying
and I didn’t want to see him, and that was not like Wayne
at all. I told him to hang on a minute
and I would put the bird away and come outside and talk to him. He got angry and left muttering
incoherently.
I felt bad that Wayne
was upset, I called his cell phone but it was off and went right to voice mail,
which wasn’t that uncommon the last few months. Wayne
always had some excuse that the cell phone company had screwed something up,
but I knew he must not be paying his bill.
I spoke to a
friend the next day and he told me that Wayne
came to his place after he left mine.
Once there awhile Wayne told
my friend that he had been snorting heroin the last couple of months. This was very surprising, if not for the
obvious reasons. Wayne
had been very vocal for many years about how he had a family member who had
gotten messed up with heroin, and he better not catch any of us doing it. He was adamant about it, almost threatening
us and we used to laugh because although some of us did a little coke now and
then, we did not intend to ever do Heroin!
We wouldn’t even know where to get it, but in a weird way we felt
touched that Wayne would care about us enough to always give us the impassioned
lecture every other month or so.
Which made it all
the more strange when he left my friend to go in the bathroom and snort some
and came out and basically nodded off in a chair. My friend let him sleep for an hour or so and
when he got up and said he was leaving my friend tried to make him stay and
sleep there. Wayne told him not to
worry about it, that he had places to be.
And he left. And that was the
last time any of my close friends or I saw Wayne .
My friend also
told me that when Wayne got there
he was bitching about me and how I was lying to him about the bird and I didn’t
want to see him. He explained to Wayne
that I was, in fact, watching the bird and I wasn’t lying and I was still his
friend. Wayne
calmed down then and felt better about it, and mentioned that he would call me
tomorrow and apologize, but I never got that call. It’s okay, I had already
forgiven him when he left my place the night before. What was I gonna do? That was just Wayne . I do feel better that he knew I wasn’t lying
or trying to get rid of him. He really was one of my closest friends and I
still miss him to this very day. I’m
sure some people reading this knew Wayne
and can attest to the fact that even though he could be a loose cannon at times,
he was a solid human being, if not a bit of a tragic figure.
I don’t know if
drugs played into his death, but I would assume they did in some way. I never wanted to hear the details of how he
died in his truck against that church.
It still almost doesn’t seem possible that he’s dead, he seemed so much
larger than life at times. One of the things I miss most about Wayne
is that he was the last friend I had that was wiling to go anywhere or do
anything at a moments notice. My close
friends now are all like me, loners.
They say no man is like an island, but my friends and I are about as
close as you can get. I don’t have a
social circle as much as I have an archipelago. Sometimes I still think I hear him outside my
door and whenever the phone rings after 11:00
my first thought is of him. While I may
be better off without those occasional wild nights and crazy tangents Wayne
brought to my life, the world seems a little empty without them. I miss you Hollywood.
