Page 107 of Shielding Instinct

“By that, I think you mean taking irrational chances and pushing things too far?”

“Yes.” He opened his bag of chips and angled them toward her, so she knew she was welcome to share.

“I guess you’re living with that on the daily in your career. But you’re trained to do it. And that’s the difference between danger and stupidity.”

“Fawning,” Hawkeye said again, but this time, it was like he was tumbling the idea around. “So, I can’t trust a woman’s smiles to mean they think they’re having a pleasant exchange. They may be frightened. Wow. That’s difficult to swallow. Imean, if I’m turning to speak to a human being near me, and they happen to be female, how would I know if they thought they were in danger?”

“I doubt you're saying things to a stranger like, ‘You’re beautiful.’ Or ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ Or other smarmy things?”

“I don’t know that I never did that. But usually, I talk to people more conversationally.”

“And if they were saying I’m not interested, I came here to have a quiet meal and read?”

“Obviously, that’s clear communication they don’t want to engage in a conversation with me. ‘Have a nice night.’ Move on.”

“Dog handler,” Petra said, taking a bite from her cheese and veggie sandwich.

“What?”

‘You’re a dog handler.” She held her hand over her mouth so he wouldn’t see her half-chewed food. “No means no when you train your dog.” She swallowed. “You thoroughly understand the concept. Good on you that you can extrapolate that out, and you know that when women say that to you, it’s the same thing.”

“That’s kind of you to say. But at the same time, I don’t think you can apply that as a blanket truism to all dog handlers. Let’s just say when they’re not with their dogs, they might not act as upstanding, and now that I’m pulling up pictures, I’m remembering episodes where I’ve witnessed fawning. I don’t know what to say. It feels like a ‘sorry’ should slide in here, but it doesn’t make any difference to the grand scheme.”

Petra sighed.

“Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, go to the fifth one you said, fine. What’s that one?”

“It’s that it doesn’t occur to you at the moment that there’s a danger where it’s possible that if you acted like there was adanger, it wouldn’t be dangerous.” Petra heard that tumble of words and even she wasn’t sure they made sense.

“Nope,” Hawkeye said. “I’m not going to try and untangle that sentence.”

“I’ll give you an example. I went to Alaska. I had a bucket list item I thought I might try to check off. I wanted to see a mama bear catch a salmon and feed it to her cub.”

“Wow.” He laughed. “That’s oddly specific.”

“I know, right?” Petra smiled. “It got into my imagination that I really wanted to see this happen. When I found an Alaskan cruise on sale for next to nothing and only four days long, I twisted my friend Tamika’s arm, and she came with me for the cruise. She stayed on the boat. I went out on a bear walk. Two hundred dollars, no guarantee that you’d see a bear.”

“Worth it.”

“Absolutely.” Petra took a bite of pickle. “We’re walking down the path, and we see a black bear, fat and happy, getting ready to go into hibernation. He’s off in the distance. We walk a little further, and there’s another black bear waddling her fat bottom in and out of the bushes.”

“You’re down on a path in sight of black bears?”

“There’s a wooden walkway fairly high above the ground,” Petra explained. “There are two bear guides with us, though their depth of bear behavior knowledge was pretty low. Imagine the kind of young man who would bag your groceries. The only reassuring thing about either guy was that they each had a car flare taped to their chest, ready to deploy. Apparently, it’s the smell and not the flame that’s the deterrent.”

“Interesting,” Hawkeye said, then creased his brow.

“What was that thought?” Petra asked.

“We practice in the forests around Northern Virginia, black bear country, as you know.”

Petra nodded. “Easier to get to, but no salmon.”

“True. But we have different ways of dealing with bears if we see them. It mostly means being aware and minding our own business while we sing a song or talk out loud, so the bear is aware of us and knows we’re not looking for a fight.”

“It’sfine, move along,” Petra said.

“Ah. I’m getting it now. So, bears in Alaska…”

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