Boy in the Box

then, white men couldn’t hunt them. The Inuits had special laws that allowed polar bear hunting in particular seasons. But I was there to defend the bigwigs and employees from threats when they had to go on expeditionary excursions. Frankly, I didn’t do much. I think they kept me around because it looked good, made a good story, made them feel like they were doing something to keep themselves safe up there. We lost more men to them getting drunk, wandering out into the tundra and freezing to death, than anything else. The six months of light and the six months of darkness threw a lot of them off, made them crazy, in a way. I was used to it. I had done military training stints up there. It’s a different kind of place. It’s like a world that functions according to a different set of rules – physics, maybe. Anyway, I didn’t have any trouble. Didn’t even get to shoot anything, just basically kept an eye on things from a distance. The animals didn’t come close, really. But there was one time.

“We were going out to scout a new pipeline route. A real desolate area. Nothing but snow and hillocks and frozen tundra. We took a helicopter in. It was bright that day. The snow blinds you, so I had on goggles. They make everything look flat. You can’t see the contours of the land. It’s hard to distinguish what’s alive and what isn’t. I wasn’t too concerned at first because nearly everything up there is cold and dead.

“But I could feel it almost as soon as we stepped off that helicopter. Something out there, something watching. The thing with polar bears is they rarely come across humans. They don’t know to stay away. They don’t distinguish between food sources up there. A human might as well be a seal who can’t swim, and there we were, six fat seals all lined up like a buffet.

“You ever seen how polar bears hunt? They’re patient. They wait and stalk for hours. And you can’t see them out there in all that white. They’ll sit dead motionless watching. They’ll wait till the wind is kicking up snow like a blizzard so their movement is hidden. They’ll be staring straight at you with those triangular heads just a few yards off, and you can’t see them. But you can feel it sometimes. Maybe it’s those leftover instincts from our caveman days. Anyway, we were no sooner on the ground than I could feel it. It was just us out there. Not another human soul for hundreds of miles, but I could feel something watching us. I glassed every bit of that tundra, couldn’t see nothing. I kept the executives and engineers in a tight group and separated myself to draw whatever it was out toward me. I was carrying a .45-70. A close-up gun. A hundred yards at best. I knew anything out there would be up close, fast and personal.

“I was a few hundred yards from the group. I looked back and could see them in their little huddle against the wind, so many layers of clothing and gear they looked like a poor man’s astronaut, that big whirlybird sitting on the snow with its blades bending toward the ground. Then I turned back, and in a rock outcropping I could make something out – an outline of white on white with a little black triangle of a nose, still as rock, pointing right at me. I put the binoculars up and looked. I knew what I was looking for, but he was still impossible to see. I didn’t want to backtrack. I didn’t want to turn my back. They run so fast. Fast enough to run up on a seal before it slips into the sea. I just stared at him, and he stared back at me. I was pretty sure I could make out those beady little eyes.

“I put that Remington up to my shoulder and sighted that black nose in as best I could. It was then I heard something on the wind. My name. Someone was screaming my name. I broke concentration for a second and turned to look over my left shoulder back toward the group, and it was then that I saw this massive white mass pounding across the snow toward me, flanking me. This big male was coming at me like a freight train. It was so fast. There was so much force behind it. For a moment I was completely stunned – literally immobile with fear and surprise. He was ten yards away when I got off my first shot. I didn’t have time for a second. But I was lucky. A head shot. All fifteen hundred pounds of him came sliding up to my feet.”

“They were hunting in pairs? I didn’t think polar bears did that.”

“They don’t. There was no other bear. I was staring at the rock outcropping, thinking I saw something that wasn’t there. I imagined it, made a bear out of some random rocks and snow, and the whole time that big bear was moving up on me from my left. It was like a trap. The glamour of the snow tricked me, lured me in with an illusion before he made his killing strike. The guys back at the helicopter saw him running me down, screamed my name. If the wind hadn’t carried their voices, I probably would’ve never heard. It was a split-second shot. Pure luck, nothing else. Their heads are small, sleek. It was an impossible shot. Frankly, to this day, I wonder if that bear actually got me and everything else is just a dying dream. You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes just as you die? Everyone assumes it’s the memories of the life you’ve lived that flashes in your mind. But what if your whole life flashes before your eyes? Not just the life we lived but the life