The Last Hunt

By Ed Carlson

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This story is purely fictitious. The names used herein are for character

identification and should not be construed as real people, alive or dead.

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I’m sitting here all alone in the house. The lights are off, as is the TV. It’s quiet way out here. The only sound is my caregiver’s heavy breathing as she sleeps in the upstairs bedroom. I’ve been offered a teaching job at the university. I really don’t want to move back, but a person with no arms shouldn’t live this far from town. There are a lot of happy memories here and also a lot of pain. Now that Ed is gone, I suppose that I have no real reason for staying other than the peace and tranquility of living in the cabin that we built together. Really Ed did most of the work, even though I was able to help hold up one end of the board from time to time. It was a true labor of love for the both of us. Everywhere I look, I see things that remind me of him and what a wonderful man that he was.

Actually, my story starts back in grade school. That’s where Ed and I first met. We were good friends and when we got to high school, began dating. My life fell apart when I was a sophomore. One of my girlfriends and I were out for a drive after school. I remember it was a beautiful spring day. I had just gotten my license and was still a very inexperienced driver. The windows were all rolled down, and the radio was cranked up. I was showing off when I took a right turn too fast, and the car rolled onto its left side and my outstretched arm.

When I woke up in the hospital, my left arm was gone completely. The surgeon had left the ball end of the upper arm bone so that my shoulder rounded smoothly. Luckily my friend was unhurt, but I was emotionally devastated. That’s about the time that Ed started paying a lot more attention to me, but just as good friends. My classmates were always very supportive. When I was chosen for the cheerleader squad, I was the only one to get a unanimous vote. No one ever teased me about having only one arm. Instead, someone always seemed to be there to give the extra hand that I would sometimes need. My parents could never afford a prosthetic arm for me. I usually just let my sleeve hang empty, but sometimes I would just turn it inside out. Tee shirt sleeves looked the coolest just hanging there.

When we were juniors, Ed asked me to go to the prom with him. Mom had made my prom dress, and Ed looked really handsome when he came to the door. I remember how embarrassed he was pinning on the orchid corsage. We went to dinner, and I had to ask him to cut my steak. We had a wonderful time at the dance and drove up on top of the hill to look at the stars afterwards. I remember how beautiful they were that night when Ed first kissed me. When I kissed him back, I felt a passion that I had never felt before. I remember that I had tears in my eyes when we finally broke off the kiss. Ed asked me what he had done wrong. I told him how I felt about him and that I had tears in my eyes because I only had one arm to put around him. That seemed to turn him on more, and the next kiss was filled with even more passion. That night, we were beginning to fall in love and didn’t know it.

After that, we both went out with a few other people, then we had another wonderful date. We sat and talked for a long while about our dreams. The more we talked, the more that our dreams seemed to intertwine. Soon we were going steady. The more that we were around each other, the deeper our love grew.

We went together all through our senior year in high school, until almost graduation. We had a fight and broke up. I blamed myself and thought I had caused the breakup because I only had one arm. I was to learn later how wrong that I was.

That fall, Ed and I both enrolled at the same university. I would see him on campus from time to time. He was usually accompanying a beautiful blond with only one leg who used crutches. He called and asked me out one evening. While we were sitting out on the deserted restaurant terrace after dinner, he confided that he was a devotee. He said he didn’t know much about it until he had researched a term paper for a psychology class. He learned that perhaps my lack of an arm had been our real attraction. He asked me to go steady with him again and to help him to try and sort out his feelings. It took me less than a heartbeat to say yes. I told him how much that I had missed him and had feared that I had lost him to the one-legged blond. He said that her missing leg had been his attraction. Our torrid love affair began to blossom again. That evening, we were to have sex for the first time. We had both been virgins up to that time. It was a wonderful night that neither of us ever forgot.

We began to explore our sexuality and shared books and videos. We found how quickly that I could be aroused by Ed touching my amputation scar just right. He was easily aroused by me letting him fondle the amputation site or if I rubbed my modified shoulder on his private area. We experimented even more by having my other arm taped up behind me and me pretending to be armless. I would slip my tee shirt on over both shoulders. Other than a different bulge on my right side, it was quite convincing. He would feed me dinner and snacks. I learned how to drink beer by putting my mouth over the neck of the bottle and tilting my head all the way back. After I almost drowned the first time, I learned how to control the flow by using my tongue. Sex was better for both of us when I had my arm restrained. I’m not sure whether I was enjoying the concept or the extra attention. I decided that if I was to lose my other arm, and if I was only going to have a short stub, then surgery should be done to give me a balanced appearance. It was a strange thought for me, but I became quite adamant about it.

Ed was an outdoorsman, and I soon began to acquire the same love of the great open spaces. We became almost inseparable. Sex in some of our overnight outings was fantastic. Around the time school was out for the summer, he told me to save a two-week block of time. He surprised me with a whitewater rafting trip in the Grand Canyon. We flew over to the jumping off point and met the two large motorized rafts. After seeing some of the most spectacular scenery imaginable, ten days later we set up camp for the last time. That night, as we were all sitting around our last campfire, Ed got down on one knee and asked me to marry him as he slipped a diamond ring on my finger. I began to cry and said yes. The entire camp erupted in applause.

Our parents were overjoyed by our announcement when we got home. Talk of a wedding began even though no date had been set. The summer flew by, and soon we were back at school. Ed and I rented an apartment near the university. It was small and old, but we were together. We decided on a June wedding. That kept our parents busy planning. We told them that it didn’t need to be an elaborate affair, but things somehow became a bit more complex than Ed and I imagined. The wedding went off in fine style, and soon we found ourselves on a romantic tropical island honeymoon. We came home and went back to our usual summer jobs.

Our junior year flew by, and we both were in summer school doing environmental studies for our majors. One day, we were in a motorboat speeding across the lake. It was an open bow boat, and I had been seated in the front. I had gotten on my knees and was leaning over the bow watching the water speed by under the boat. I hadn’t noticed that we were coming up on the wake from another boat. We hit the wake and the boat went up into the air and I became airborne and flew forward over the bow of the boat. The last thing that I remember was the bow of the boat hitting my head.

When I awoke in the hospital, Ed was by my side. I was groggy and kept asking what had happened. The doctor came in and had a great deal of difficulty telling me that he had amputated my remaining arm and that I had a concussion. The rapidly spinning propeller had literally chewed my arm into little pieces. I don’t remember crying then, but I do recall asking him if he had made both sides match. He said that Ed had given him my instructions and that he had tried his best. Then I drifted back to sleep.

When I woke up the second time, I was in my hospital room. Ed was there with me. I remember how tender he was as he bent down and gave me a kiss. I looked down at my shoulder and saw the bandages and no arm and began to cry. Ed comforted me as much as he could, but I couldn’t stop crying. I don’t remember it, but Ed said that they had to give me another shot to get me quieted down. It took me a few days to come to grips with what had happened. I soon began to take my lack of arms in stride. My wound site healed nicely. The surgeon had followed Ed’s instructions completely, and I was indeed a balanced bilateral amputee.

Rehab started as soon as the IVs were removed and I was weaned from the pain drugs. The instructor was excellent. He was a Vietnam vet who was also a DAE. He related well to my problems, having been through it himself. He was able to show me how to do a lot of things that I never thought that I could do. I became quite proficient at eating using my toes to hold a fork. I also practiced my penmanship using my toes. And Ed was always there for me.

We investigated the possibilities of having me fitted with myoelectric prosthetic arms. We quickly abandoned the idea when we saw the cost. We didn’t have any insurance. Luckily, the school had picked up the doctor and hospital bills.

When I was discharged, Ed took me to a new apartment that he had rented near campus. I could function better there. My whole life was different, and I depended on Ed to do a lot of things for me that I had always taken for granted that I could do for myself. He gave me baths and helped me use the toilet. We were really close before, but now we were inseparable. Our sex life only grew much better. I had two sites that really aroused me, each in a different way. Ed seemed to really enjoy sex more too. About the only time that we weren’t together was when I would go to the amputee support group meetings. When our senior year started, we had our classes arranged so that we both took the same courses. That spring, we graduated and were recruited as a couple to do wetland research in a northern wilderness area.

We moved north and lived in town for a while and used our place there as a base. We would spend weeks in the remote areas doing our research. We tent camped most of the time. We both loved the tranquility of the open space.

We found this property and fell in love with it. Luckily, we were able to trade for it with some work for the timber company that owned it. We picked the site for our home on the edge of a meadow and near the stream. We built on the north end of the meadow with the house facing south to gain maximum advantage of what low sun that we get in the winter. The northern side of the house is protected from the winter wind by the trees. The house has a great room facing south with a massive rock fireplace on one end. Our bedroom, the kitchen, bath and utility rooms are on the north tucked under the balcony that forms the loft. The stairs to the loft—which contains the office, library, and another bedroom—are in the great room opposite the fireplace. A large outside deck runs the full length of the house on the south side. It’s a great place to lounge in the warm summer sun. The outbuilding contains the generator and a shop that also is the garage. Solar panels augment the generator, and together, they keep our battery bank well charged. We have a well and a pump for running water. We use a radio for communication with the outside world and a satellite hookup for Internet access and TV.

Ed worked hard building our dream house. I was always there to do what I could, which didn’t seem like much to me. I did figure out how to drive nails by holding a hammer with my feet, but I was really slow. It took us three summers to finish the place working only when we had spare time. We still needed to earn a living. We worked throughout the area in a two hundred mile radius. We have lived out here about seven years now. We had a wonderful life together. As well as being my husband, he was my friend. We never had any secrets from one another. We had our differences of opinion but never fought. Ed never lifted a hand to me in anger. We lived in our own utopian world out here in the wilderness. It is where we both wanted to be, but most of all, we wanted to be with each other. We were both totally committed to each other.

The fateful day came last fall when we were out deer hunting for our winter meat supply. We had taken our four-wheel drive pickup and driven down our road about five miles from the house. We had seen several bucks in that area earlier. Ed parked the pickup in a spot near where I could watch the salmon spawn in the creek. He gave me a tender hug and told me how much he loved me. I responded with a kiss and told him of my love for him and that he meant the world to me. Ed took his deer rifle, and went into the trees. It was late afternoon. The warm sunshine felt good as I sat there watching the fish move upstream.

Ed had been gone about a half hour when I heard him yell and come crashing through the brush. He hollered for me to get back into the pickup. He broke out of the woods and started running down the road with a huge brown bear chasing him. He stumbled and his rifle fell into the ditch. I had made it back to the pickup and was struggling to get the door open. Ed tried to get to his feet just as the bear got to him. The bear gave him one large swipe with his paw and Ed went flying through the air. When he landed, he didn’t move. I screamed and the bear started toward me. He was closing fast, and I still couldn’t get the door open. Out of desperation, I managed to wiggle my way under the pickup instead. Crawling without arms is not an easy task. Luckily, the four-wheel drive gave the pickup more ground clearance and I was able roll to the underside and out of the reach of the long claws of the huge bear. He growled and sniffed and then tried to swipe at me, but I had managed to get beyond its reach. I could see Ed lying motionless in the road as the bear circled the pickup trying to get to me.

I thought of my need for arms to be able use the bear gun that we always carried in the gun rack in the back window. I couldn’t even fire a rifle when I had one arm.

After what seemed like hours, but was actually only a few minutes, the bear gave up on me. He lumbered back over to Ed and sniffed. He pawed him one time, but Ed’s body remained limp. I wanted to call out to Ed, but I tried not to make a sound while the bear started slowly down the road. Finally, the bear stood on his hind legs and sniffed the air before he went back into the trees.

I waited until I was sure that the bear was gone. I wiggled my way out from under the pickup and struggled to my feet. I ran over to Ed and knelt down beside him. He was not breathing, and I couldn’t hear a heart beat when I put my ear to his chest. His neck was at a severe angle, but there was very little blood. I knew that his neck was broken and that he had died instantly when that damn bear first hit him. The sun was going down, and I knew I couldn’t make it home before dark. I would hike back to our home in the wilderness to call for help in the morning. I began to cry now that the meaning and reality of Ed’s death set in as I knelt beside the only man that I ever loved. That night, as I lay beside his still body and remembered our wonderful times together, I discovered how alone I really was.

E N D