The Bear

If I get behind one more logging truck or big pickup and can’t see far enough ahead to pass, I think I’ll scream. The speed limit through Georgia is only 55, and I’m on a two-lane highway through pecan groves and cotton fields, rows of peanuts and planted pines, crossing bridges over rivers and creeks, headed to the writing workshop. I gun the red Prius up to 80 mph to pass the big white Ford F350 in front of me with the large black tarp slung across the bed.

As I get closer, my focus shifts and I notice what looks like a mammoth, black, hairy human foot dangling off the passenger’s side of the truck. “What the heck!” I mutter, doing a double take as my car’s speed increases and I draw even with the truck bed.

It’s not a tarp I’m seeing. It’s a huge, hairy, black body, the head—with red mouth agape—hanging off the driver’s side. A bear. Dead. With a large bullet hole open and angry, a jagged ruby wound in the creature’s huge chest.

“Oh, shit!” I exclaim to myself. “Damn!” I grip the steering wheel harder and feel the muscles in my shoulders freeze up. I suck in my breath and work to keep my focus on the road as I pass the truck and its inert cargo while a great silent wail, a tsunami of hot energy, moves up from below my belly and out the top of my head.

I remember the mantra of Chenrezig, the great pearlescent bodhisattva who, unblinking, views the sufferings of sentient beings throughout the worlds—and I begin to chant his mantra that relieves those sufferings, OM MANI PADME HUNG, OM MANI PADME HUNG.

I wonder how the bear died. Was he roaming alone through what he thought was safe forage, looking for berries or honey? Did he feel the wind through the pines, the wind ruffling his thick fur? What were his bear thoughts in the final moments of his life, before the rifle blasted that hole through his heart? Was he aware, in those last seconds, that something had gone awry in his world? Did he feel a giant stabbing pain when the bullet tore away his flesh and scattered his life force, or he did drop all of a sudden to the ground there in the middle of the forest, with the berries ripening and the bees humming and the wind making its wild music in the pines with autumn coming in? What was the last thing he saw? What strange bear image counted as his last thought?

I’m in Georgia, I remembered. Bear hunting is probably legal here.

I feel like I’ve been shot through the heart.

I wrote this piece at a workshop where we were asked to convey an emotion by describing our sense impressions. Do you know which emotion I'm describing here?