Bearwalker

by Joseph Bruchac

  Mr. Philo smiles back at her. “Point taken. All I am saying is that it is an easy hike to get there. It’s only a hundred yards off the main marked trail. I could do it in the dark.”

  Mrs. Philo is patting her husband’s arm. He turns to look at her.

  “What?” he says.

  “Not with those knees and”—she pats his chest—“this heart, dear.”

  “All right. Point taken.” He looks at Mr. Wilbur. “So Kirk will be the one to do it. Think you can locate that spot?”

  “Piece of cake,” Mr. Wilbur says. “Even a child could find the way.”

  He turns to Mr. Mack, who is still slouched in his seat at the other end of the room, a blank, uncaring look on his face. “Does he have any weapons? Did any of you bring any firearms?”

  Mr. Mack looks up like a man waking from an unpleasant dream. Slowly, he shakes his head. “No, no. None of us had guns. We never planned violence. All he has is that big knife of his.” Mr. Mack’s whole body shivers. “He said the only way to kill is hand to hand. Guns are for cowards.”

  “Good that we have the only gun, then,” Mr. Philo says.

  “For all the good it will do you,” Mrs. Osgood adds.

  I suppose she’s right. Whoever takes that phone will have to avoid getting ambushed by Walker White Bear or Jason Jones or whoever that homicidal maniac thinks he is. Even a shotgun may not be enough protection.

  Mr. Wilbur takes the phone from her. “Maybe we could do something out front to draw attention there. Then I can slip out the back, circle past the lake and hit the trail over there.” He lifts up the big flashlight, then puts it down. “Baron, I should probably borrow that little head lamp of yours. A small light like that is less likely to be seen. I can just flick it on now and then to find the silver trail markers.”

  I’d forgotten I was still wearing the flashlight. I take it off my forehead and hand it to him. I wish there was something more I could do or even say to help.

  Mr. Wilbur turns back and reaches toward the corner. A perplexed look comes over his face. “Where is it?”

  “Are you looking for this?” a sarcastic voice says.

  We all turn to see Mr. Mack, his back straight, not slouching in terror and despair any longer. There is a very unpleasant smile on his face. The shotgun he’s holding is pointed at all of us.

  18

  An Act

  We all stare at the man who is so unlike the cringing figure we’d seen just moments before. It was all an act. He’s fooled us again.

  Mrs. Osgood takes a step toward him and he points the shotgun at her chest.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he says. He’s talking like a clichéd villain in a bad movie, but he’s no less dangerous for that.

  Mr. Wilbur reaches out to take Mrs. Osgood’s arm and pull her back so that she is standing next to me.

  Mr. Mack smiles. It’s not the sunny, insincere smile he showed everyone earlier in the day when he was playing the part of the genial camp director. This grin is that of a wolf that has just trapped its prey. He motions with the shotgun at the table.

  “Sit, all of you.”

  Mrs. Osgood reaches behind my back as she moves toward the table, pushing something hard under my belt. I slip my hand back there to feel it and know what it is right away. No one else has noticed this exchange between us. Mr. Mack doesn’t pay attention to the fact that when I sit down it is not at the table but on the stool in the corner that is closest to the back door. I’m by a window where I can look outside into the dark night. I’m just a little kid. No threat at all.

  Everyone except Mr. Mack is sitting now. I wonder how he expects to control this situation all by himself. What if one of the parents or Mrs. Smiler comes in? What about all the kids out there?

  Someone taps twice lightly on the back door.

  “Now who could that be?” Mr. Mack says, his smile getting even broader. Without lowering the shotgun, he backs up to the door. He taps on it three times, unlatches it, and then steps back again, never taking his eyes off the four adults sitting at the table.

  The door opens, but the skinny man with thinning blond hair who steps through is not the one I’ve been dreading to see. It’s one of Mr. Mack’s supposedly slaughtered assistants. The sleeves of his khaki shirt are rolled up now and I can see the tattoo of a cartoon canary with an arrow through its heart on his right bicep.

  “Back from the grave so soon, Cal?” Mr. Mack smiles.

  “Hunh?” the man says. “What do you mean?”

  “A private jest,” Mr. Mack says. “Where’s your equally undeceased sibling?”

  “What?” Cal says. I can see now why he and Mr. Mack’s other assistant hung back without saying anything earlier in the day. Plainly Cal was not hired for his mental acuity. As Grama Kateri might put it, he’s a few potatoes short of a bushel.

  “Where…is…your…brother…Marlon?” Mr. Mack asks, his voice insultingly slow as if talking to a three-year-old. Cal doesn’t catch it.

  “Oh,” he says, pointing. “Out there.”

  “Bring…him…in,” Mr. Mack says.

  “Oh, okay.” Cal goes back outside as Mr. Mack shakes his head.

  “Monosyllables work best when communicating with morons,” he says, looking at the Philos and Mr. Wilbur as if asking for their sympathy. “It is so hard to get good help these days.” He pauses, waiting for a response.

  No one says anything, but Mrs. Osgood, who is being ignored right now by Mr. Mack, makes a shooing gesture toward me with her hand under the table. I understand what she means.

  “Well,” Mr. Mack says, his tone that of someone who loves to hear himself speak, “if no one is going to ask, I should just tell you. That tale about my murderous associate, who remains lurking somewhere out there in the woods, terminating his coworkers, was a bit of a fable. As you can see, Cal and Marlon remain alive and well. I also prevaricated just a bit about our being unarmed. Marlon is in possession of a pistol and is, no doubt because he lacks the intellect to understand the concept of consequences, unafraid to use it. That turned out to be, quite frankly, fortuitous. I must confess that we did have a major labor dispute with our ersatz aboriginal colleague. Different goals, you see. Lucre on our parts, slaughter on his.”

  As convoluted as Mr. Mack’s diction is, I think I understand what he’s saying. Mr. Mack and his two men are doing this to make money. They really did have a falling-out with Jason Jones or Walker White Bear or whoever he thinks he is, because his aims are darker and bloodier. He wants to kill us all while the others are just in it for profit. From the looks on the faces of Mr. Wilbur and the Philos, they grasp the situation too.

  Mr. Wilbur finally says something, and even though it also sounds like it’s from a bad movie script, it is appropriate.

  “How do you expect to get away with this?”

  “Extremely well paid,” Mr. Mack replies. “The Bahamas are quite pleasant at this time of the year, you know. There will be a substantial deposit in my bank account in the Cayman Islands. And as for Cal and Marlon, a return to incarceration, alas, seems fated to be their eventual recompense. There will be many witnesses left to tell at least part of the story.”

  Many witnesses, I think. But not everyone. Even though Mr. Mack drew the line at mass murder, death is part of his scenario too. The Philos have to die so their land will be inherited by the nephews who are behind this whole plot. Mr. Wilbur and Mrs. Osgood and I have all heard too much. He’s telling us all of this because he is planning on wiping out everyone in this room. I’m even more certain now of what I have to do, do or die trying. An act of desperation.

  I shift my weight onto my feet and lean just a little toward the door. I’m quietly taking deep breaths, getting ready. I turn my eyes away from the light of the hissing Coleman lanterns, and focus on the darkness outside the window. Two flashlights make bobbing circles on the ground that come closer and closer toward the building, and pass the window.

  Two light raps come aga
in on the back door.

  Mr. Mack sighs. “It is already unlocked, Cal,” he says in disgust. “Just come in.”

  The door opens and Cal enters, followed closely by his brother, Marlon, who, though a little brawnier and darker-haired, is a close copy of his twin brother. His sleeves are rolled up too. His tattoo shows a cartoon mouse with a dagger stuck through its head. It’s funny the kind of details that your mind takes in, the way things seem to move in slow motion, when you do something dangerous or foolish.

  Like what I’m doing right now. I’m off my stool, ducking under the arms of Cal and Marlon as they grab at me and miss. Marlon swings the pearl-handled pistol in his left hand as if it is a club, trying to hit my head. The barrel grazes my cheekbone, drawing blood, but I’m past him. I sense as much as see Marlon raising his gun and cocking it.

  “No,” Mr. Mack roars. “Watch them. I’ll get the boy.”

  Not if I can help it. My feet thud down the steps and hit the hard ground. It’s dark, but even in the darkest night there’s always some light. My eyes have adjusted, more than the eyes of Mr. Mack. I’m counting on that as I see the slight glitter of water in front of me and know that I’m already next to the lake. I’m a fast runner. They won’t be able to catch me. Even if they shoot at me, it’s hard to hit a moving, dodging small person in the dark. Or so I hope.

  The beam of a flashlight sweeps over me. I feel a searing pain stab into my back and shoulders at almost the same time as I hear the thud of the shotgun blast. I take a few staggering steps on the wood planks of the dock before I fall. The black water closes over my head.

  19

  Quiet

  The cold water revives me as soon as I plunge into it. Somehow I’m not dead. Even though my back and shoulders smart, it doesn’t hurt that much now. Maybe I’m just in shock and can’t feel the pain. But my mind is working just fine and it tells me to dive deeper, to turn back toward the dock and swim underwater. I’ve always been a great swimmer and I can stay underwater for a long time. My hands feel the pilings of the dock and I pull myself under it. Then, slowly, I allow myself to float toward the surface, just enough so that my head is above water and I can take a breath again. I force myself not to gasp as I look up.

  Through the narrow cracks between the boards I can see a flashlight’s beam directed over the dock and out onto the water. Then comes the thump-thump-thump of heavy feet. I take a deep breath and pull myself underwater again. I don’t want to take a chance on being seen through the cracks between the boards. I start to count slowly. One and one thousand. Two and one thousand. Looking up, I can see a faint gleam of light and I know that Mr. Mack is using my big flashlight to look under the dock.

  Forty and one thousand. Forty-one and one thousand. The water above my head becomes dark again. But I wait and keep counting.

  Ninety and one thousand, ninety-one and one thousand. I rise to the surface again and listen. I can hear a voice, far off now.

  “Did you get him?” it calls.

  “Blew him into the water.” Mr. Mack’s self-satisfied voice comes from right above me. He’s still standing on the dock, shining the light out onto the surface of the lake. “I don’t see his body, but not to fret. From that range he’ll have a hole in him the size of Montana.”

  Mr. Mack chuckles and then steps back off the dock. I hear the sound of his feet growing fainter and then the back door of the building being shut.

  I don’t climb up on the dock. No sense in taking chances by exposing myself. I wade a little farther past the boats, crawl out onto the little beach behind them, and rest on my hands and knees. My back smarts too much for me to lie down on it. But that’s all. It just burns a little. I unbutton my shirt and peel it off my shoulders. It sticks like sunburned skin being pulled off. But when I feel the shirt with my hands there’s no big hole in it like you’d expect from a full load of shotgun pellets. Just lots and lots of little tiny holes.

  Rock salt! I almost laugh out loud. That was what Mrs. Osgood meant when she said that it would smart if she shot Mr. Mack. When you just want to use a shotgun to scare away bears without really injuring them, you take out the iron pellets and then refill the shell with a load of rock salt. That was what I had been shot with. I’m okay!

  But I am now shivering like crazy and my teeth are chattering. My body had been chilled by the lake and the night air is starting to feel colder. My wet clothes are not helping. I’m going to go into hypothermia unless I keep moving.

  I reach one shaking hand to my back pants pocket where I stowed the cell phone before I made my mad dash. It’s one of the many pockets in my baggy cotton pants that has a zipper on it. When I pull the phone out it only seems a little damp. It should work just fine. I reach into another pants pocket and my fingers find the little carved bear. Feeling it makes me calmer, even though I’m still cold. I leave it there, and trying a third pocket, I find one of my disposable flashlights. I bend to shield it with my body, cup my hand over the end, and press the switch. The light glows red through the skin of my hands. It’s working. I turn it off, stand up and begin to feel my way along the shore toward the Osgoods’ cabin.

  Moving helps some, but I am still quivering from the cold when I reach the edge of the building. I make my way around to the back and flick my light on for just a second. I almost say Hallelujah! out loud at what I see. Just as I’d hoped, those old clothes that belonged to the Osgoods’ son are still hanging there.

  I’m shaking so much that I don’t even try to unbutton my shirt. I just rip it and my T-shirt off, à la Hulk Hogan in one of his wrestling matches, and drop them on the ground. I yank the closest shirt off the line and put it on. There’s no pants, so I’ll just have to make do with my wet ones. But I use a third shirt like a towel as I sit down and pull off my sneakers, strip off my socks, replace them with a wool pair from the line, and put my sneakers back on. Then I take a second shirt and put it on over the first.

  The second shirt comes almost down to my knees and that’s good. My fingers are no longer numb and I button it up all the way. By the time I’m done I’m no longer shaking.

  I flick on the light again and direct it toward the trail edge, where it reflects off a silver trail marker. I quickly turn it off. I’m not so worried now about the three men in the kitchen of the main camp building. The Osgoods’ cabin is still between them and me. They won’t see this light. But there is someone else to fear in the darkness.

  I know in the logical part of my mind that Walker White Bear or Jason Jones is not a creature out of some old story. He’s not some terrible being who can turn himself from a human into a bear. He’s just—ha, just—a crazy person who wants to kill every human being here at Camp Chuckamuck. Now that makes me feel a lot better, doesn’t it? Except I am worrying in another part of my mind that he is that and more.

  I worry that he can see in the dark and that he is out there stalking me right now. I worry that his senses are more than those of an ordinary human. I’m bleeding, from my cheek and from the dozens of little puncture wounds on my back. And the smell of blood, the scent of a wounded animal, always attracts a predator.

  Keep moving, I tell myself. Just keep your ears open.

  Listen. My dad and mom, Uncle Jules, and Grama Kateri have said that to me so many times. In the old days, being a good listener could mean the difference between life and death. I’ve always remembered that, but it has never meant as much to me as it does now. I’m moving as quickly as I can without making a lot of noise. I’m thinking about what Uncle Jules and Dad both taught me about how to move quickly on a trail in the woods. Stay low, roll your feet, don’t bring them down hard. Keep your hands up and slightly ahead of you.

  It’s no longer completely dark now. The first light of dawn is starting to show above the trees. I can see without flicking the flashlight on every ten or twenty steps. I try to keep my vision wide like Dad told me he did when he was in enemy territory. Use peripheral vision so that I see things off to the sides rather than just st
raight ahead like I’m looking down a tunnel. Turn my body every now and then to see what is behind me. Keep going. Keep listening. Stay aware.

  Birds are beginning to stir in the trees, making their first tentative sounds before bursting into sunrise song. I no longer hear so many noises from the woodland creatures that come out at night, scurrying in the leaves and brush. People who’ve never been in the forest think it is quiet at night, but many animals feed and move about more at night than during the day. I’ve already spooked a little group of deer into bounding off through the woods, almost blundered into a porcupine that made a little moaning sound, rattling his quills against the brush as he moved away. In a way, the sounds and presence of those animals has been reassuring to me. It only becomes totally silent when a hunter’s presence makes itself felt.

  It’s getting quiet now, though. The forest around me feels something and I feel it too. The trail, although it is rutted deeply by countless feet following it over the years, is steeper now. I’m having to use my hands as I climb up rocks and around the roots of trees that splay out over the bedrock stones like huge fingers. It’s hard to turn around and listen when I’m climbing like this. Something is watching me. I haven’t seen anything. But I can feel it in my bones. I’m not alone.

  I slowly settle myself back on the tree root I was about to scramble over. I move my head, taking in the whole circle around me. Just as I start turning to my left, I freeze. Another set of eyes is focused straight at me. Dark, deep eyes. There, no more than twenty feet away, its presence as sudden as if it just materialized out of thin air, is a huge black bear.

  20

  Battery

  I look back at the bear. I know that staring into the eyes of a wild animal isn’t a good idea. That animal might take it as a challenge. But I can’t seem to make myself look away. Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to see a bear in the wild. I know how risky it might be to get this close to a bear, so close it could be on top of me in only a few steps. But compared to the humans not far from here who would gladly kill me, this bear seems positively benevolent. I don’t feel threatened.