Ten years before the selection process
During the fall of 1957, Ricardo Coletta was fourteen years old and that morning it was cold and damp, over the Creek mountain.
He was lying down and had been lying in wait for almost four hours, and by then he was really starting to feel cold.
His breath was coming out in little clouds and it was a gray morning, almost blue.
He was lying under some fallen branches, his head facing downhill toward the plain and the river, his hunting rifle at the ready, locked and loaded.
Despite the tiredness, his eyes peering out of the fallen branches were attentive. His gaze was really focused, in constant movement, his eyes never shut.
Patience..
It requires a never ending patience.
His father was one hundred yards away, on his right side, hiding in more or less the same way.
Patience... And feeling the wind.
Below them, the woods stretched down for some yards and then the trees were gave way to a clearing in front of a little river.
Sounds and wind... The wind most of all.
The kid shut his eyes.
His father had taught him that if listening or smelling proved difficult, just try to close your eyes... It will help you to focus even more.
Coletta listened to the water of the river flowing below him, he felt the wind blowing softly and took note of its direction in case he had to shoot.
If the animal came from the top and the woods, it would smell him.
If it arrived from below – as his father thought – or rather from the plain and river bed, it wouldn't have a clue about his and his father's presence.
Coletta was cold.
He would have given everything he could to just move a little bit, just enough to pull out the flask from his rucksack and have a little drink.
Just to warm up a little bit.
However, despite the so many yards that divided him from his father, he decided to stay still, because he would have noticed him, and he would have scolded him.
They had been still for hours, almost since dawn.
The kid couldn't stand it anymore.
In the end, when he had almost lost hope, it came.
It was an enormous, dark male, two and an half yard tall at least; one of those bears so big that it could have killed you even just trying to pet you.
Coletta squeezed the rifle between his hands.
It had showed up near the cascades, where he and his father weren't expecting it.
It was too far away.
He had to move, he had to go down a little bit.
He got on to all fours.
After all of those hours spent lying still, when he finally moved, the kid felt something really similar to pain.
Coletta turned his head to his father and as he did, he found his father's eyes already waiting for him.
The two nodded to each other.
They hadn't much time left.
The kid tried to find a compromise between speed and silence.
He moved crouched and fast through the woods in front of the plain, and started coming down toward the waterfalls, where the bear was still drinking.
Coletta stopped at the end of the woods, about one hundred yards from the beast.
It wasn't an easy shot and between him and his father he was the closest, so he was the one that had to shoot.
Coletta raised his hunting rifle and pointed it.
Then he rolled up the sling around his left forearm.
He lined the iron sights to the center of the head of the animal, then held his breath.
The bear stopped drinking and rose up on two legs to smell the air, as if he had just sensed something wrong.
Coletta adjusted his aim.
He was going to take his shot but he realized that the last branches between him and the plain might come into his line of fire.
So he raised himself completely – like a soldier coming out from his cover – then he lined his sights again.
And that was when the creature turned to him and saw him.
Their eyes met.
Coletta's were firm, precise, resolute.
On the contrary, the animal's brown ones filled with hate.
His lips curled up over his teeth, while a big cloud of enraged breath started coming out from his mouth.
In the blink of an eye, before Coletta's eyes, that wonderful creature had changed into an ultra-dangerous demon.
He had to shoot it in the head, otherwise he risked 'doing nothing more than tickling it, pissing it off even more', which were his father's exact words.
But Coletta couldn't keep his sights still on the beast's head.
His arms were shaking because he had just spent too much time lying still, and in the cold.
But the bear was surely going to run somewhere and since he couldn't wait any longer, Coletta pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed round the valley like thunder and that lonely echo went up over the mountains tops.
The bear vanished inside the waterfalls, but it didn't fall: he vanished on all fours.
The kid had missed it.
Holy shit – he thought
He had missed him for good.
Coletta stood still, taut as a violin cord, his mouth half-closed, his breath coming out his mouth in small steam clouds.
After that moment of hesitation, he pushed the loading lever backward and forward – Clackk! -, thus reloading the rifle.
He surely had missed it and the worst thing was the beast had seen him but he... He had no idea about where it could be by then.
His legs became flabby.
With a jump, he got over the big rock where he had just shot from.
He held and pointed the rifle ready to fire. His head was down on the iron sights, all of his body facing the direction he was pointing it to, towards the waterfalls.
“RIIIIICK” screamed his father.
Coletta instinctively shifted his aim to the river bank.
“RIIIIIIIICK”
His father, one hundred yards higher than him, was desperately waving his arms, but the kid didn't turn to him, because he felt it would be a mistake.
The bear peeped out from below the waterfalls, but this time he was close, too close, at around fifty yards from him. To gain some ground, it had run under the waterfall crest and thus 'under cover', just like a fucking soldier at war would have done.
And now, it was going to kill him.
In that moment, the whole world started to slow down in front of Coletta.
The bear climbed over the waterfall crest with an unbelievable speed. Once over the plain, it started running so fast that it looked like flying.
The scene looked unreal.
Ricardo had never seen anything like this before. That beast weighted quintals and yet it could run so fast that it looked like as if it was gliding in the air.
The terror took over the kid's legs – trying to escape would be useless – and if something hadn't woken up inside of him, he would have just stayed there still, simply waiting to die.
But on the contrary, terror forced him to think.
He would never have had the time to shoot, reload and shoot again.
He had just one round at his disposal and the kid knew that, so he did everything he could to avoid wasting it, because his life depended on it.
So, as the bear charged towards him, across the plain, the kid took a deep breath and focused his mind as he had never done before in his life, because for the first time since he was born, Ricardo Coletta – fourteen year old – was risking his life.
Then everything vanished: the valley, the river, his father's screams...
In front of him there wasn't anything more at all but his sights and the beast.
Then he saw the bear becoming smaller.
The whole world seemed to make a fast backward zoom, but the kid immediately understood that it had to do with something happening inside his mind and body only, because it couldn't be anything else.
He almost lost his focus, but then he gave everything he could to ignore that strange feeling.
He aimed at the lower half of its head, just to make the shot a little bit easier, and then he finally shot.
He shot and again he missed.
Even though he knew he could never do it in time, he put his hand on the re-loading lever and while he was reloading - for no reason at all - the bear reached him.
Coletta now had the confirmation that yes, everything was now over... Not that after the missed shot he expected anything different.
He was then within paws reach.
At fourteen, Coletta felt a brand new kind of feeling, that feeling you feel when you are absolutely sure that you are going to die, and right now.
He was sure for good.
And in a certain sense, it was almost fair.
Coletta thought that in some way he deserved it, because all things considered the bear was fighting for his life so it was a natural law - and somewhat even right - that the thing was reciprocal.
And this was the way the kid, at barely fourteen, understood for the first time what life and death really are.
The bear was in front of him, was almost on to him when Coletta saw a little blood squirt jumping out from his head.
The bear continued standing over him, ready to hit, but this time his movements were slow, as if it was undecided.
Coletta understood that something had happened when he realized that he had just reloaded and yet he was still alive.
And while his rifle was finishing its 'clakk', he realized that the bear would not be able to hurt him anymore.
His father had hit it in the head.
Although still standing, the beast was now barely breathing in front of him. It was smelling the air for its last time before dying.
Only then did the kid and the beast really look into each other's eyes.
The brown eyes of the bear lowered on that kid that, in the bear's mind, was killing him.
Those eyes looked human at this time, and were looking at the kid with resignation, as if what had just happened was some kind of enormous, inexplicable form of injustice against it.
Coletta pointed his rifle between those eyes.
He couldn't miss from so close, but he didn't shoot anyway. He wanted to keep his last round in case it was absolutely necessary to shoot it.
So he kept his rifle just like that, floating in the bear's head's direction, while the beast's eyes slowly started to shut, and the kid could see every single shade in them.
The beast then slowly collapsed to the ground, but the tumble it took was so powerful that the kid felt the ground shaking under his feet.
Coletta then lowered his look (and aim).
The beast's eyes weren't dead yet.
So, while they were fading off even more, Coletta and the bear continued to look into each other's eyes until the very end, when the bear stopped breathing.
When the father reached his son, he was out of breath.
He walked to him with his rifle pointed to the beast, his eyes fixed on the sights, as policemen do when they get close to a suspect for an arrest.
Once he reached his son, his father never lost his aim on the beast down at his feet.
“You all right?” he said.
The kid could barely breathe.
“Yes” he said, but he was starting to feel that his legs couldn't stand him anymore, and he had a strong need to urinate. Hadn't he immediately done it, he would have pissed himself.
After what seemed an eternity to him, his father put a hand on his shoulder.
“It's dead – he said -. It's not breathing anymore”
Only then did his father finally lift his rifle and let it hang on his sling, on his back.
The kid felt a lump inside his throat and had to sit on a large rock, because he really couldn't stand on his feet anymore. And he couldn't feel his legs either, as if he was drunk.
“Everything all right, son?”
“Yes”
“Maybe you should lie down for a while”
“No”
He still had a real urge to urinate, but now he wasn't worried about pissing himself anymore.
Then he started to tremble, but not because of the cold.
Father and son stayed for a while just like that, in silence, one standing and the other sitting on the rock, in front of the carcass.
His father searched his jacket, then lit up a cigarette using a steel zippo.
“Want one?” he said.
“No”
Then the two stayed there listening to the river's sound, while some mountain crows lazily flew above them, with his father smoking in silence.
They stayed some minutes just like that, until his father put out his cigarette against the sole of his boot.
Then he sat beside his son.
“I'm cold, dad. And I have a weird feeling in in my legs”
“You are in shock. It will be gone in a while”
“Am I a chicken, dad?”
“No, son. You have been very good”
“I missed it two times”
“No. The first time you hit him, but too low. You just tickled him”
“What's the problem with my legs, dad?”
“I told you son, it's just a matter of fear. But it's not the fear of cowards, this is something different. This is called shock. Remember it well. Try to feel it the best you can and to remember it, so that should it one day had happen to you again, you will already know what it is”
“Ok dad”
The man pulled out a whiskey flask and passed it to the kid.
Ricardo drank a sip of it.
“Son?”
“Yes”
“Don't say a word about that to your mother, ok? You would kill her with a broken heart”
“Sure dad”
“Are you cold?”
“Yes, but I can't stand up yet”
“All right”
His father removed his backpack, took a blanket and put it on to him.
“Better?”
“Yes it's better”
“You know kid, this is really one hell of a bear and we are going to make a lot of money out of it. But this one was also the last. We don't really need this money. From now on, let's leave the bears in peace. What do you say?”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I won't say a word to mommy, because she would feel ill as you just said. But if she finds out what has just happened, she is going to kick your butt for good, isn't she?”
His father smiled and gave him a pat on his shoulder.
“Sure kid... If your mother finds out, she is gonna kill me. You can count on that”
His father looked to him again and shook his head.
Then they both started laughing.