Surviving Summer Vacation

by Willo Davis Roberts

  “I want to pet a bear,” Ariadne piped up.

  Alison shook her head. “These are wild animals, Ariadne. You can’t pet them. You can only take pictures of them.”

  The little girl’s eyes were wide. “Will wild animals bite me?”

  “Not if you stay back away from them,” ­Alison assured her.

  “Can we feed them?” Billy asked.

  “No. You aren’t allowed to feed them,” I said, glad Dad had looked up a little about it. “It would make them sick.”

  Actually, the food we were eating was beginning to make me sort of sick. Alison and I had never had so much junk food in our lives, and we’d only been gone from home for a few days. I never thought I’d look forward to a salad or a serving of peas, and even broccoli sounded better than another potato chip.

  “We’re going to stay in a campground outside of Yellowstone,” Mrs. Rupe told us. “It’s not far away, and it has better facilities than the park,” she said. “We’ll have a store and a laundry and a playground for the little kids and an indoor heated pool. Besides, the campgrounds inside the park were all full by the time I called.”

  The campground turned out to be neat. We went to the swimming pool first thing. It was surprising how fast Billy and Ariadne were catching on to swimming. They weren’t especially graceful, but they could keep themselves afloat all right.

  Harry was the kind of guy who liked to sneak up behind you and jerk you under. He even did it to Alison, who didn’t care for it much when she didn’t have a chance to get a good breath of air first. There were some other kids there, though, and they invited us to a water volleyball game with a big ball, and that distracted Harry from any more dunking.

  The RV park was full, and after a while so many people came in the pool that we decided to get out. “Hey,” Harry said, “let’s go play video games. There’s an arcade right off the laundry room.”

  I knew Harry had more spending money than I did, and I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to spend on video games, so I was glad when Alison came to call us to supper.

  We walked back to our campsite, smelling everybody else’s hamburgers and hot dogs being grilled. People were sitting around their picnic tables or eating in their rigs with the doors open, so we could tell what most of them were having. I hadn’t eaten any junk all afternoon, so I was hungry. I hoped we weren’t having more chips, at least for tonight.

  We were, though. With grilled cheese sandwiches. Mr. and Mrs. Rupe had been invited over to the Nabakowskis—in the mini motor home from the last campground—for steaks.

  “You kids can toast your sandwiches all right, can’t you?” Mrs. Rupe asked cheerfully. Without waiting for a reply, the Rupes were out the door and gone.

  I looked at the refrigerator. “Is there anything green in there?”

  “A head of lettuce. There was a cucumber, but I think it got slimy already. Listen, I’ll fix hot sandwiches and make a salad if you’ll take Billy and Ariadne outside and watch them. I can’t do this and keep track of them, too. Make them sit at the picnic bench.”

  So I tried. Harry could have helped, but he didn’t. He was talking to a girl in red shorts from the trailer two spaces down.

  I sighed. “Sit right here,” I told the little kids, “while I bring out the paper plates and stuff, okay?”

  When I came back, fifteen seconds later, Ariadne was gone. Billy was watching a column of ants cross the table to a spot of what might have been jam left by the last users.

  “Where’s your sister?” I demanded.

  Billy looked up vaguely. “I don’t know.”

  I cursed under my breath. “I’ll have to go look for her. You stay put. On second thought, you’d better come with me so I can watch you.”

  Reluctantly, Billy left the ants. “She went to see the bears, maybe.”

  “She can’t see the bears. They’re in the park, and we aren’t there yet.”

  There were people all over the place, cooking, eating, heading for the pool or back from it, crowding into the store. Ariadne had been wearing a red swimsuit, but half the kids out running around had red somethings on. We passed Harry, and I called, “Come help us look for your little sister.”

  He waved, but the girl was smiling at him, and he didn’t come with us. “Nothing will happen to her with all these people around,” he said and kept on talking to the girl in red shorts.

  I snorted. Did he really think all these strangers were going to look out for Ariadne?

  We walked from one end of the camp to the other and didn’t see her. We met Alison, with an anxious look on her face, when we were almost back to our motor home.

  “I can’t find her,” I said. “If she’s moving, she could be staying just ahead of us.”

  Alison bit her lip. “And it’ll be our fault if anything happens to her. Why didn’t you get Harry to help look?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Harry’s not much use in an emergency. You don’t think she could have gone back to the pool, do you?”

  “I hope not. I’ll go check there, and you make another pass around the park. This time stop and ask people. Maybe she went in someone else’s trailer or something.”

  Ten minutes later, at the far back of the campground, I stopped. Nobody had seen a ­little girl in a red swimsuit. I didn’t know where else to look, and I was getting pretty nervous.

  “Ariadne, where are you?” I yelled in frustration.

  To my great surprise, she answered. “I’m here,” she said.

  I looked all around, but it wasn’t until she yelled again that I looked up.

  And there was her little face, peering down at me from the top branches of the tallest cedar tree in the camp. About a mile over my head.

  My stomach tightened in a knot. She had to be at least thirty feet off the ground.

  My mouth went dry. “Come down,” I ­suggested, “and have supper.”

  “Okay,” Ariadne said and disappeared. A moment later there was a flurry of movement in the branches, and I thought she’d fallen.

  “Ariadne?” I asked.

  Her voice sounded small. “I can’t get down, Lewis. I slid, and my hands hurt.”

  My teeth came together with an audible click. “How did you get up there?”

  “I climbed up to get away from the bears,” she said.

  “There aren’t any bears here,” I protested, moving directly under the lower branches. I couldn’t even see her when I looked straight up.

  “They would bite me,” she said, and then I caught a glimpse of red and a few needles drifting down through the branches as she slid down a bit more.

  I had visions of her falling all the way and breaking her neck. And guess who’d be held responsible?

  I evaluated the tree, swallowed, and called up to her. “Stay where you are, Ariadne. I’ll come and get you.”

  “Can I climb up too?”

  I’d forgotten Billy. “No. You sit down, right there, and wait for me, okay?”

  I didn’t know if he could be trusted or not, but I had to get Ariadne down.

  The branches scratched my face and especially my ears as I climbed. It was a long way up, and the branches were getting a little small to hold my weight before I finally got within range of her. She looked scared, and reached out for me.

  “If I try to carry you,” I told her, “I can’t hang on. I need both hands to get down, so I’ll stay just a step below you, to catch you if you slip, and you move down one branch at a time. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Ariadne said. “See, Lewis, there’s the bear!”

  I looked down where she was pointing. I might have laughed if I hadn’t been so high in the air, still having to get her safely down.

  “That’s a dog, Ariadne. Not a bear.”

  “No, I heard that lady call him ‘bear,’ ” she insisted.

  “
He’s just a big dog, and they probably named him Bear because he sort of looks like one. Get ready, now, and put one foot down, okay?”

  And then I paused and leaned out a little to see better. Was that a familiar car in that last campsite way up on the side of the hill, almost hidden by a couple of trees?

  It was light blue, but I couldn’t tell if it was the same car that carried the guy who claimed to have lost his keys near our coach. But now I could tell that this one was towing a small travel trailer.

  Ariadne’s foot touched my shoulder, and I guided her foot onto a sturdy branch and dropped down one level myself. I hoped we both made it down all right.

  It seemed to take forever, and Alison was standing there with Billy when I dropped to the ground, soaked in sweat. I handed Ariadne to her with relief.

  “Let’s go eat,” I said, to cover the fact that my knees were wobbly.

  “I think the first sandwiches are probably cold by now,” my sister said. “Whatever made her climb up there?”

  “A bear,” Ariadne insisted, ignoring my explanation. “There! See?”

  Even when we paused to talk to the lady who was walking the dog, Ariadne wouldn’t believe he was just named Bear, but was a dog, so I gave up.

  I glanced over in the direction where I’d seen the blue car, but I couldn’t see it at all from the ground. By this time, though, I realized that we’d seen the same people and the same rigs in each of the campgrounds. A lot of them were heading for Yellowstone, too.

  When we got back to the motor home, Harry was sitting at the picnic table, finishing the last of the sandwiches Alison had made. He hadn’t touched the salad.

  Alison’s lips tightened, though I was glad we were going to get fresh, hot ones. “You might have helped,” she said.

  Harry grinned. “With all those sandwiches going to waste? Didn’t Ma pack some Fig Newtons somewhere? I couldn’t find them.”

  “They were in a box in one of the basement compartments,” I said. “That one, I think.”

  “The keys are in the ignition,” Harry said, popping open a Coke and taking a slurp.

  Meaning, I took it, that I should fetch the keys and find him the cookies. Alison wasn’t the only one gritting her teeth, but I did it.

  As I turned the key in the compartment door, I heard a sound that I realized I’d heard earlier, sort of faint and far away. “Sounds like a cat around here somewhere,” I commented.

  Before I could prop the door open, Billy exploded in my direction. “I want the kitty,” he cried.

  And sure enough, we had a stowaway.

  There he was, the big gray-striped cat Billy had been chasing at the other camp. He leaped past me and right into Billy’s arms.

  Chapter 6

  I looked at Billy accusingly. “Did you know that cat was in the compartment?”

  He returned my gaze without speaking, stroking the animal’s thick fur with obvious pleasure.

  “Did you put him in there?” I demanded.

  “Billy, that’s kidnapping!” Alison said, horrified. “He belongs to the people at the other campground!”

  “They weren’t taking care of him,” Billy said, and though he refused to actually admit anything, we knew he had deliberately taken the cat and put him in the compartment.

  We told the Rupes as soon as they came home, after leaving us kids alone all evening. They raved about the steaks the “Nabs,” as they called them, had barbecued. I thought about our cheese sandwiches.

  Alison told them about the cat.

  “The lady at the store said his name was William,” Billy volunteered. “Same as mine. We need some cat food, Mama. He didn’t like the crusts of my sandwich.”

  “There’s tuna in the cupboard. Give him some of that,” Mrs. Rupe said. “It’s in that top cupboard, Alison.”

  Alison didn’t move. “I’ll bet the people who own him are worried about what’s happened to him. They probably never saw him again after the fire. They may even think he was killed.”

  Mrs. Rupe was already reaching for the magazine she’d been reading earlier. “We can leave him off on the way home. We’ll be staying at the same campground again.” She sat down in the copilot’s seat, adjusting the back to a comfortable angle.

  “Don’t you think we should call them and let them know William’s all right?” Alison asked hesitantly.

  “He’s only a cat,” Harry said. “What’s the big deal?”

  My eyes met Alison’s and neither of us said anything more as she got down the tuna and put some on a paper plate. I knew Alison would have given almost anything to have a cat of her own, but if she’d brought home one that belonged to someone else—even if Mom and Dad had allowed her to have one—they would have insisted the owners be notified at once, until it could be returned.

  When we got up the next morning, eager to go on to Yellowstone National Park, I couldn’t find my glasses.

  “Where did you put them?” Alison asked, popping frozen waffles into the toaster for ­Ariadne.

  “The same place I’ve been keeping them every night since we left home. In my left shoe, under the edge of the couch where nobody could step on them.”

  Alison’s eyes turned toward Billy. He was sitting at the table opposite his little sister, stroking the cat, who seemed perfectly content in his lap.

  “Billy, did you take Lewis’s glasses?”

  His smile was innocent but I knew he was guilty. “Where did you put them? I have to have them, Billy. I can’t see without them.”

  “William wants some more tuna fish,” Billy said.

  His folks were sitting up front, drinking coffee, and they heard all this. Neither of them turned around or said a word. I felt rage rising up inside of me, and I thought Alison was feeling the same thing, even if they weren’t her glasses. I reached over and took hold of Billy’s ear, pinching it a little.

  “What did you do with them, Billy?”

  He pretended he didn’t hear me, stroking the cat more vigorously until I applied a little more pressure and then began to twist his ear.

  When I was in the third grade, we had a teacher named Mrs. Stott. I heard her once telling the sixth-grade teacher that twisting an ear was how she controlled an unruly pupil. It leaves no marks,” she’d said, “but it’s usually effective.”

  It was effective on Billy, too. The angelic smile slid off his face, and he muttered under his breath, “They’re in the pocket behind ­Daddy’s seat.”

  There was a pouch there where the maps were kept. Mr. Rupe kept right on reading the morning paper while I dug out my glasses and inspected them to see if they’d been scratched. I settled them on my nose and felt relieved when everything around me sprang back into sharp focus.

  Some fun it would have been riding through Yellowstone without my glasses, I thought, glaring at the back of Billy’s head. A moose could have stuck his nose right on the window and I wouldn’t have recognized it.

  I wasn’t disgusted with Billy as much as I was with the rest of the Rupes. They all knew Billy had taken my glasses—my eyes practically—and nobody said a word about it.

  I didn’t think about it very long, though. A lot of the other people from the campground were also going into the park, and the cars, trailers, and motor homes stretched out in a long line, getting tickets.

  The woman in the ranger’s uniform handed Mr. Rupe a bunch of maps and papers, and he tossed most of them over his shoulder into Harry’s lap. “There, educate yourself,” he said.

  Harry tossed them to me. “You read this, Lewis,” he said. “I just want to get to the good stuff. Where’re the bears?”

  “I don’t like bears,” Ariadne said nervously. “They will eat me.”

  “No, they won’t,” Alison assured her. “We’ll just look at them through the windows, and we’ll be perfectly safe.”

  We
crossed the border between Montana and Wyoming—the boundary was inside the park—and I looked down at the top paper of the things the ranger had given us.

  It was a bright yellow flyer with big letters across the top. “Warning,” it said. “Many visitors have been gored by buffalo. Buffalo can weigh two thousand pounds and can sprint at thirty miles per hour. These animals may appear tame, but are wild, unpredictable, and dangerous. Do not approach buffalo.”

  At the bottom of the page was a sketch of a gigantic buffalo tossing a man into the air, with his hat flying one direction and his camera dropping another way.

  I read this aloud, and Harry laughed. “Maybe this is going to be interesting after all.” I wondered if he was hoping to see someone thrown or trampled, but I was afraid to ask.

  “Look at the map,” Mr. Rupe said, passing a car in a zone where a sign said NO PASSING. “See which way we should go when we get to an intersection.”

  I studied the map. “The roads go in two loops,” I said after a few moments. “If we turn left and go north, we can see Mammoth Hot Springs and then follow the loop around through the Tower-Roosevelt area and back down to Canyon Village. If we go right at the first intersection, we’ll see the paint pots and a lot of the geysers, including Old Faithful. That goes on around what they call West Thumb, around part of Yellowstone Lake and Fishing Bridge, and back up to Canyon Village.”

  “What’s all that stuff?” Harry wanted to know. “Where do we see the animals?”

  “It’s a park—thirty-four hundred seventy-two square miles of it,” I said, reading from one of the brochures. “And the animals run wild all through it. There’s no way of knowing where you’re going to see animals.”

  Harry looked astonished. “You mean we came all this way, and we might not even see any animals?”

  “We just got here,” Mr. Rupe said somewhat crossly. “I’m sure there are plenty of animals.”

  And right after that, Alison lifted Ariadne to stand on the couch as she cried, “Look! There’s a whole herd of buffalo!”

  There were too many to count, strung out along the river to our left. None of us had ever seen buffalo outside a zoo before, and I immediately thought of the westerns I’d read, when Native Americans galloped across the plains for their winter food while the big animals thundered ahead of them.