"Yes," Jonathan assured her as he had so many times before. "It'll just be two more months, and we'll be there."
"Two more months!" It came out as a wail, and Jonathan knew exactly how she felt. Sometimes he didn't think he could last that long, either. He didn't think he could keep taking breaths and pushing them out, over and over and over and over again, for so great a time.
It would take millions and millions of breaths, probably a trillion-trillion before he would see his mother and sister again. He should have realized when Dad had said, "We men will go on ahead," that six months would be too long. At the time, though, he'd been too pleased to be considered one of the "men" to think about the amount of time involved.
But then six months would have been too long to be away from his dad, too, so there hadn't been much of a choice.
"It'll go fast, Rhonda," he said. "Really it will."
"No, it won't," she sad. "You're lying." He could practically hear her lower lip trembling. "Two months is a long, long, long time." And she handed the phone to Mom without even saying goodbye.
He talked to Mom a little, but he didn't tell her about the Mama Goose dream. Hearing her voice made him feel more homesick than ever, so he hung up as quickly as he could.
Then he walked over to the zoo. The entrance was only about half a block from his house. He poked his head through the ticket window. "Hi, Frank," he said.
"You here again?" Frank replied with mock horror. "I think you spend as much time here as your dad. We're going to have to put you to work."
"Could you?" Jonathan was filled with sudden hope. "Really?"
But Frank laughed and reached to ruffle Jonathan's hair. Jonathan could feel the heat flooding his face. Frank had been kidding. Of course! Why couldn't he ever tell when grownups were kidding?
"Here." Jonathan thrust his backpack through the window, his head lowered to hide his embarrassment. "Would you keep this for a while?" It held his homework. After he was through walking around the zoo, he'd come back and sit in the gatehouse with Frank and do his homework, waiting for his dad to get off work.
"Sure," Frank replied, taking the pack. Then he turned around, picked up a bag of freshly popped popcorn, and thrust it at Jonathan. "Would you keep this for me?"
Jonathan grinned. "Sure."
"Don't eat it now!" Frank called after Jonathan as he stepped away from the window. "I just asked you to keep it for me, not eat it."
"And don't eat my backpack," Jonathan called back cheerfully.
Still, he sighed deeply as he moved off into the zoo. Rhonda was right. Two months was a long, long, long time.
3. "Mama!"
THE kick the mother moose delivered while protecting her dead baby made only a glancing connection, but the blow was hard enough to break the young bear's lower jaw. It also knocked out several of his front teeth and shattered a lower canine tooth.
The cub ran and ran, moaning the whole time. He stopped occasionally to paw at the searing pain in his mouth. Then he ran some more.
He ran without considering where he was going. Sometimes, in his agony, he actually bumbled into a tangle of bushes and had to pull himself free or slopped into a marsh where the wet earth sucked at his paws. But as soon as he broke free again, he ran some more.
He ran and bellowed. Bellowed and ran.
***
Jonathan scooped a few kernels of popcorn off the top of the bag with the tip of his tongue and stopped in front of the red fox's freestanding oval cage. The fox lay curled on a shelf high in the exhibit, peering down at him with bright button eyes.
"We had a quiz in math today," Jonathan told the fox. "It was pretty hard, but I think I got most of the answers right."
The fox blinked, yawned, tucked his long fluffy tail over his nose.
"Yeah," Jonathan agreed. "That's what I think about quizzes, too." Then, as if the fox's yawn had been catching, he yawned as well and moved on into the zoo.
The nights had been endless when they'd first come to Alaska, but now that spring was here, they were getting too short—only five or six hours of real darkness. They would get even shorter as the days moved toward summer. Dad said it would be daylight most of the time here in Anchorage by late June. Exactly the opposite of the way it had been when they arrived in January. Then the sun had stayed low on the southern horizon, peering at them through the trees for a few hours in the middle of the day. It had never really climbed into the sky, the way it was supposed to. Duluth was pretty far north, too, but not so far north that the sun couldn't make it up into the winter sky.
It wasn't just not having enough dark at night that kept him from sleeping, though. Sometimes he couldn't help lying awake, thinking about everything he had left behind.
His mother. His sister. His friends. He'd made some friends at school here, but he didn't know any of them really well yet. And none of them lived close enough to be able to get together much outside of school. He even missed the zoo back in Duluth. Lake Superior Zoo. His dad had been a keeper at Lake Superior Zoo, and as long as Jonathan could remember, he'd loved that place. That zoo even had a waterfall and a stream running right through the middle of it. And a polar bear named Bubba who stood on his hind legs and threw a big red vinyl ball at his dad, who would toss it back.
Jonathan stopped walking. That was Mama Goose calling! He knew her imperious honk anywhere. He lifted his chin and honked back, then waited for a few beats. The entire zoo was heavily forested, the paths and the displays forming the only real break in the trees, so if she wasn't on one of the paths, it could be hard to see her. Then there she was, stiff-legging it through the trees, giving out a scolding honk with each step.
"Did you know you promised to make me breakfast this morning?" Jonathan asked her when she joined him on the path. "I asked for French toast, but you never delivered."
Mama Goose's thoughts weren't on French toast. They were on the bag of popcorn Jonathan held. She stretched her neck and danced around him, if a goose's side-to-side wobble could be considered dancing. He knelt on the path next to her and poured some of the popcorn out onto the ground. Popcorn wasn't supposed to be shared with the animals—they each had a special diet, and junk food wasn't any part of it—but Jonathan couldn't see that popcorn was so different from the corn his dad allowed.
The white goose gobbled the kernels in staccato bursts, so he poured more out, then put some into his own mouth. He let one hand rest on Mama Goose's back and sighed. Wouldn't it be wonderful if adopting an animal really did mean being allowed to take it home? Then he—and, of course, Rhonda when she came—could have Mama Goose close by all the time.
He hadn't known being in Anchorage with his dad would be so lonely. Even when Dad was home, even when they were sitting across the kitchen table from each other, eating, Jonathan often felt alone. When they were home in Duluth, he'd never noticed how little his father had to say. Somehow, with Mom and Rhonda around, the house was always cheerfully noisy. With just him and his father, the quiet seemed louder than any noise he knew how to make.
At least, he never felt lonely when he was with Mama Goose. He liked the other animals, too, but she was the best. You couldn't invite an elephant or a llama to come sit in your lap.
Maybe today, once he and Mama Goose had finished the popcorn, he would go see Ahpun and Oreo, the polar and brown bear cubs. The Alaska Zoo must be the only zoo in the world to have a polar bear and a brown bear living in the same display. Usually those kinds of bears didn't associate with each other, but these two had grown up together from the time they were orphaned as babies, and they were great friends. Dad had said they might get into trouble one day and have to be separated, but for now people came from far away to see a brown bear and a polar bear side by side.
When Rhonda got here, she could pretend to be Ahpun and he would be Oreo. Rhonda would like Ahpun best, Jonathan was certain, because the white bear swam like a seal. Rhonda would love to hear Jonathan tell about how she would feel inside Ahpun's thick whit
e coat, how she would splash around the big pool. Round and round, upside down and sideways, even turning somersaults. Swimming the way a polar bear did was almost as good as flying.
Just thinking about Ahpun, Jonathan could feel the way the cool water flowed through his white fur. Actually, a polar bear's fur wasn't really white. His dad had told him that. It was without color, and something about the light playing on it—when his father told him, Jonathan hadn't understood exactly what it was—made it look white. But it would be white to Rhonda. And she would toss her dark curls and laugh at the freedom of skimming through the water like a fur-covered fish. Nothing, nothing to hold her back.
"Hi, Jon. What're you doing?"
Jonathan was so deep into his swimming reverie that he was startled at the voice. He hadn't seen his father coming. He leapt to his feet, closing the bag of popcorn as he did. "I was just going to go see Ahpun and Oreo," he said. And then, looking down at Mama Goose who was still pecking at the fluffy white kernels spread on the path, he added, "I guess I kind of spilled a little popcorn."
"Mmm," Dad said, looking down at the path and the busy goose. "Convenient to spill the popcorn when Mama Goose was near." But even as he said it, he put an arm around Jonathan's shoulders and gave him a hug, so he wasn't angry.
"Yeah," Jonathan said, giggling and looking fondly at the goose's bobbing white head. "Mighty convenient."
"Anyway, I was looking for you. We've got a couple of orphaned moose calves that need a bottle-feeding. Like to help out?"
"Sure thing, Dad." Jonathan fell into step beside his father. "I'd like that a lot."
His dad gave his back a pat.
Jonathan skipped a couple of times to keep up with his father's long strides. Already he could feel the orphaned moose calves tugging at the bottles. Their noses would be soft and warm. Their thick pink tongues would curl around the nipples, pulling at the milk.
And before Jonathan had even arrived at the pen, he had already slipped inside one of the moose babies. He tottered on skinny, gangly legs, his big head heavy on his short neck. He reached for the bottle, and the warm milk slid down his throat. His stubby tail wagged itself into a blur.
Still, deep inside his chest something had caught into a hard knot. "Mama!" the orphaned moose calf cried, even as it took the milk in eager gulps. "Mama! Mama!"
4. The Encounter
NIGHT had fallen, but the young bear ran on without considering his destination. He had long since left behind the territory he and his mother knew, so where he went no longer mattered. All that lay before, around, behind him was new and strange.
The cub had been born and lived all his life near Anchorage, but though some bears wandered through the city itself, he and his mother had always stayed away. She had been adept at finding food for both of them. Why should she go near the strangely altered landscape of the city with its hive of humans?
As the young bear forged ahead, he hardly noticed that clipped lawns and ornamental shrubs had begun to replace the marsh and meadow and forest he was accustomed to. He noticed little, in fact, except that his jaw hurt horribly, that he was alone, that he wanted his mother.
He paused once to sample some grass the April melt had uncovered, but his sore mouth made chewing difficult. He moved on. He didn't stop again until he came to a strange metal object. It was saturated with a scent his mother had taught him to avoid ... humans. But beyond the human scent was another, even more pungent. It was the totally compelling smell of rotting food.
He sniffed around the can, tipped it over with an experimental blow from one paw, and when the cover came off and rolled away, settled down to enjoy the contents. His first meal of human garbage. Delicious, delicious garbage! And much of it soft enough that he could eat it without aggravating the pain in his jaw.
He ate and ate, then moved on, looking for more.
***
Jonathan lay watching the undulating bands of light that poured through the skylight in his bedroom. Pink and blue and green flashed across the sky like a rainbow gone mad.
He thought of calling his father to come see the show, but he didn't. Dad would just point out that the northern lights came often here and that they both needed their sleep.
If his mom were here, she would watch the dancing lights with him. Jonathan could remember once when he was a very little boy and his mother plucked him, sleeping, out of his bed on a summer's night and carried him to the backyard to see a display not nearly as spectacular as this one.
He didn't remember Dad being there to watch the night sky with them, though.
Mom said that Dad was a practical man, more of a scientist than a poet. And Jonathan knew that to be true.
Mom loved poetry. She loved music and soft trailing scarves and flowery scents. Dad came home from work smelling of the big cats, and when Jonathan had dared to say that he, too, wanted to be a zookeeper when he grew up, Dad had said, "Then you must learn to pay attention, son. You can't dream among the animals the way you do."
It didn't occur to his father that "dreaming among the animals" might be just another way of paying attention.
Jonathan closed his eyes and turned over onto his side. Dad was right about one thing. He did need to get some sleep. Another quiz tomorrow. Social studies this time. Why didn't anyone ever ask him what it felt like to be a polar bear ... or a moose calf ... or a white goose? Now that would be something worth taking a quiz about!
Jonathan was just drifting toward sleep when a sound brought him awake again. A thud ... like something falling. Like someone falling. It seemed to come from the deck just below his window.
He jumped out of bed, taking a tangle of covers with him. He kicked the blankets aside and peered out the window. Despite a light layer of new snow on the deck, it was too dark down there to see anything. He scrabbled under the bed for his slippers. He couldn't go outside without something on his feet. He found one moccasin-style slipper and one sneaker and pulled them on. The sneaker was for the wrong foot, but he didn't care.
He hurried down the stairs on tiptoe. At the sliding deck door he stopped and peered out. The house was surrounded by enormous fir trees, so even though the sky still flashed brightly, the shadows of the tall trees fell across the deck, obscuring everything.
Jonathan flipped on the light switch. No light. Of course. That was his fault. Before supper, Dad had asked him to replace the bulb on the deck. He had said he would—and he'd meant to do it, really—but then he'd forgotten.
Another sound. Almost a moan. Someone in pain?
Dad? Had his father gone outside and fallen down because the bulb hadn't been replaced? Maybe he had come out to see the northern lights blazing across the sky after all.
Quickly, silently, Jonathan slid the glass door open and stepped out onto the deck. The cold night air slapped him in the face. It would be a long time before it would be warm here, longer even than it took to warm up in Duluth. Snow crunched lightly under his feet.
He could see nothing. "Dad?" he called in a voice that surprised even him with its tremor. "Are you out here?"
No answer. Only that noise again, a little louder this time. Jonathan took another step.
And then he saw. Not his father. A brownie! It wasn't full grown, but plenty big enough. And close enough, too! The shadowy hulk rose not six feet from the spot where Jonathan stood. Jonathan could make out the hump of muscle between the shoulders and the profile of the slightly scooped face that distinguishes brown bears from black.
The other way people said you could tell the difference between the two was that if you climbed a tree, a black bear would climb up after you and eat you. A brown bear would stay on the ground and shake you out of the tree and then eat you. Jonathan wished he could manage not to remember things like that.
The bear stood so close that Jonathan could smell the rotting food on the brownie's breath and some other, darker smell that must be the bear himself. If the creature had wanted to, he could have reached out and knocked Jonathan down
with one of those huge paws. But he didn't seem to want to. In fact, as surprised as Jonathan was to be standing there on his own deck staring into the eyes of a bear, the bear seemed equally surprised to be confronted by a boy.
And then, with a kind of strangled moan, a sound similar to the one Rhonda made when Mom was brushing tangles out of her long hair and she was trying really hard not to cry, the brownie bounded past Jonathan, down the snowy steps and was gone.
Jonathan stood rooted for a long moment listening to the pounding of his own heart.
5. Hunger
THE bear kept moving, steadily, stopping now and then to nose at a possible source of food. Everything around him was totally unfamiliar, but the smell of food seemed to permeate the air. Along with the smell of humans.
Still ... the human he had just encountered hadn't hurt him. And here, surrounded by their presence, and their smell, other bears didn't appear at every turn to run him off.
He came across a bird feeder and rose on his hind legs to take it delicately between his paws. His long tongue took up the task of drawing every last seed into his mouth.
Maybe this strange human place would be his new range.
If only he weren't so lonely
***
"Jonathan!"
The name drifted up from the bottom of the stairwell, and Jonathan came awake suddenly. Not Jon. Not Jonnie. Jonathan. He must be in trouble. He sat up, instantly awake. "Yeah?" he called back.
"Would you come down here, please?"
What had he done now? He couldn't figure. He'd washed the dishes last night, hadn't he? The few dishes left over from the boxed macaroni and cheese Dad had fixed. Mom made mac and cheese from scratch, a whole different dish. Hers was creamy and sharp with good cheddar. The stuff Dad had made—
"Jonathan? Are you coming?"
"Yes, Dad." He put his feet on the cold floor, dropping his head between his knees to look under his bed for his slippers. One was out of reach in the far corner. The other was close at hand, as was one black, high-topped sneaker. They would do.
A Bear Named Trouble Page 2
