A Boy and a Bear in a Boat

by Dave Shelton

  So the bear must have just abandoned ship to teach the boy a lesson. Either he’d got so angry he’d just swum off or … the boy could hardly stand to think the thought but it wormed its way into his head just the same. Maybe the bear had been so upset and angry that he’d drowned himself! Surely he couldn’t be that sensitive? Bears aren’t sensitive, are they? But he definitely wasn’t there and the boy had ruled out monsters and pirates …

  The boy felt a lot more awful now than he had done when he woke. He hadn’t been happy to be stuck on a small boat in the middle of nowhere with a big, smelly bear, but it was a lot better than being stuck on a small boat in the middle of nowhere entirely on his own. And even if the bear was irritating and smelly and infuriating, the boy still quite liked him really. Mostly. The boy felt at once as if he were entirely empty and as if he might explode. His head felt sick and his stomach felt dizzy. Tears and rage and sadness welled within him and he knew that at any moment they would all start pouring noisily out of him.

  Then with a wet Splop! a large sponge landed at his feet. The boy stared at it. Then he stared at the bear, bobbing in the water a few feet from the bow.

  “I brought you a present from the bottom,” he said. “Have you seen a real live sponge before?”

  The boy was so amazingly relieved to see him that, naturally, all he could do was shout angrily.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You were gone for ages! I didn’t know where you were! Do you know how worried I’ve been?”

  Then he shut up, partly because he sounded exactly like his mum (and when she said those things he always told her not to make a fuss) and partly because he suddenly needed to concentrate on not falling over. The bear was climbing back into the boat, which dipped sharply to one side as a result.

  “I thought you’d be pleased,” said the bear, rather tetchily, as he flopped wetly over the side. “I was having a bath so as to be more fragrant to your delicate young nostrils, but I can see the effort has gone unappreciated. And I dived right down to the bottom to get you that sponge. That’s not easy, you know. Luckily I’m good at holding my breath.” The bear struck what was meant to be a heroic pose, but it was rather undermined by his petulance and the way his fur looked funny when it was wet. “Big lungs,” he said, proudly, as puddles formed at his feet and drew watery lines along the cracks between the planks.

  “Aren’t you meant to be rowing this thing?” said the boy. It was meant to sound angry but he was smiling a little as he said it.

  Inclement Weather

  The bear rowed and the boy sat. The boy wasn’t sure at first if he could even be bothered with his usual morning look around. But then he didn’t really have anything better to do, and he had a long day to fill. So he stood and stretched and looked out over the back of the boat and away to each side and saw only a cloudless blue sky over a featureless blue sea.

  He decided to take the forward view by surprise. He braced himself, hunched his shoulders, scrunched his eyes shut and crouched just a little as he counted silently to three. And then he pounced! He whirled around, jumping on the spot and turning himself to face forward, opening his eyes wide and shouting, “HAH!” just for good measure.

  The bear, who had been in his usual happy daydreaming state as he rowed, leaped inches from his seat in surprise. Then, as he bumped back down, he lost his stroke. One of the oars came up out of the water and skimmed over the surface while the other dug too deeply in. He hit himself hard in the belly with the handle of the one oar, knocking the breath from him, while the other came loose from his grip. He doubled over in pain, but quickly sprang back up to catch at the loose oar as it slid away. Flustered, he lunged at it clumsily, doubling himself over once again and just managing to catch it in time.

  Still hunched over, and a little winded, he looked up at the boy, angry words gathering behind his teeth jostling to get out. But he saw that the boy had a surprised expression on his face and was pointing over the bear’s head at something. He looked round.

  There was a cloud.

  It wasn’t a big cloud. It wasn’t an interesting shape. It wasn’t beautiful. But it was there, breaking the monotony of the sky, a light grey blot amid the flat blue. It was something different, and it had surprised and pleased the boy because of that.

  The bear threw it a glance and then mustered a scowl for the boy. Then he started rowing again and cheered up almost instantly.

  They were rowing straight towards the cloud and as the day passed it grew slowly bigger and darker.

  “It looks like a storm coming,” said the boy.

  The bear turned for a fresh look.

  “No, not a storm,” he said. “It might get a bit … inclement. Perhaps a drop or two of rain. But not a storm, no.”

  Half an hour later, hard rain lashing at his face, the boy took this up with the bear.

  “I thought you said there wasn’t going to be a storm,” he shouted.

  The bear gave him a puzzled look.

  “This? This isn’t a storm,” he said. “This is just a bit of rain.”

  The Harriet leaned over alarmingly as a wave struck it hard on one side. The bear casually dipped an oar into the water, turning them to ride more comfortably over another even larger wave.

  “But it’s all wrong!” said the boy.

  “What do you mean?” said the bear.

  “Rain is meant to go this way,” said the boy, waving a frantic hand straight up and down. “Not this way!” Now he waggled the same hand horizontally.

  “Ah, yes. There is a bit of a breeze too, now you mention it,” said the bear.

  The boy gave him an exasperated stare.

  The bear stared firmly back.

  “I’ve been in storms, lad,” he said. “I’ve been in real storms. And this isn’t one, believe me.”

  The boy said nothing more. He was still annoyed, but he could see that the bear was genuinely untroubled by the conditions. He steered the boat expertly, riding the waves with ease, showing little more concentration or effort than when the waters were calm. He knew what he was doing.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “This is just a little squall.” He glanced up and around, seemingly oblivious to the lashing rain and the biting wind. “It’ll soon be …”

  With eerie suddenness the rain stopped, the clouds dissolved and the sea flattened.

  “… over,” said the bear.

  The boy wiped a hand across his face, clearing wet hair from his eyes, and looked round in amazement. In all directions he saw a clear blue sky over a calm blue sea. It was as if the squall had never happened. He almost wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing. Only the ankle-deep water in the bottom of the Harriet (with the rubber duck now floating on top of it) told him otherwise.

  After the bear had filled his water bottles from the rainwater (and they had both taken a long drink) the boy borrowed the kettle to bail with, and a warm sun set about drying out their sodden clothes and fur.

  “See,” said the bear, his snout turned up to the sky and a happy grin on his face. “It’s turned out lovely.”

  The boy, tired and wet and hungry, didn’t quite agree. But then they shared the last of the chocolate and he cheered up a bit.

  He looked through the comic again. He had it out on the middle bench to dry and had to turn its soggy pages very carefully to avoid pulling them free from their staples. It took him a long time to get to the end this way.

  And then, of course, the end wasn’t the end anyway.

  The Very Last Sandwich

  They had been trying to ignore it for quite some time, but the noise their stomachs were making was getting so loud now that each was struggling to hear what the other was saying. It was as if, while the boy and the bear attempted polite conversation, their digestive systems were having an increasingly heated argument.

  At last, the boy dared to broach the subject.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, and his stomach growled a low note of agreement.

  “Re
ally?” said the bear.

  “Is there anything left at all?” said the boy.

  “Well, we had the last of the chocolate …”

  “So there’s nothing?”

  “Well …”

  The boy, whose expression was already downcast, cast it deeper.

  “We’re starving hungry,” he said. “We’re lost …”

  “We’re not lost!” said the bear.

  “… and there’s no food left.”

  “Well …” said the bear.

  “What?” said the boy.

  “… there’s still …”

  “Oh, no!” said the boy, “Not that! Not …” He could barely say the words. The very thought of it made him feel sick and small and scared. “Not …” his voice was a whisper, “… The Very Last Sandwich!”

  “Well, look, I know it doesn’t look very appetising …” said the bear.

  “Noooooo!”

  “I know it’s a bit … past its best.”

  “No way!” said the boy.

  “And I suppose it does smell a bit funny. And there’s a little bit of mould on it.”

  “A bit? It’s furrier than you are!”

  “It’s not that bad,” said the bear, not altogether convincingly.

  They sat in awkward silence for a moment. Then their stomachs, presumably worried by the embarrassing break in the conversation, started moaning again with renewed vigour, the bear’s a deep rumble, the boy’s singing a harmony higher up the musical scale.

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to take a look at it at least,” said the boy. “Where’s the lunch box?”

  “That’s the spirit,” said the bear, rummaging purposefully in the small storage area under his seat.

  The boy watched the bear’s bottom, stuck up in the air as he leaned over to search for the lunch box. He had noticed that the bear’s tail was a handy indicator of his mood and he was relieved to see that it was waggling in quite a perky fashion now. It seemed as if the bear’s confidence and optimism were genuine rather than just a reassuring act. The bear hummed as he rummaged and his bottom danced, just slightly, in time with the tune. Yes, for all the worrying details of their situation, the bear seemed genuinely to believe that they would be OK. So maybe they would. The boy managed a half-smile (he would save the other half for later) and glanced up at the cloudless blue sky, feeling anew the warmth of the sun on his face. Yes, he told himself, everything will be fine. And he truly believed it.

  “Ah!” said the bear.

  “What?” said the boy, lowering his eyes and noting that the bear’s backside was now worryingly still.

  “Oh!” said the bear.

  “What is it?” said the boy.

  The bear straightened up and turned slowly to face the boy, holding open in front of him the old and battered metal lunch box. It had some new dents in it and it was empty.

  “I think it’s escaped!” said the bear.

  Fishing

  They didn’t spend long looking for The Very Last Sandwich and they didn’t look very hard. The bear took a quick glance through the jumble and clutter at the front of the boat. The boy peered briefly into the shadows at the stern. Just for a moment he thought he heard something, a sort of wet crunching sound. Then he told himself very firmly that he had not and turned to face the bear.

  “Well,” said the bear, “as we’re all out of sandwiches, I suppose we’d better catch some fish.”

  “Oh, right,” said the boy. He was rather thrown by this seemingly obvious solution to their food problem. He looked out at the sea and considered it in a new light. So far, he had only really thought of it as a kind of prison. And he had only thought of its surface, never of its depths and all the incredible varieties of life it contained. All its incredible varieties of tasty and nutritious life …

  “Mmm …” he said, “a nice bit of fish … that’d be lovely. And I suppose you can just reach down into the water and scoop them up with your bare paws, can you?” (He had seen something of the kind on the telly once.)

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, no. But we could have a go with this.”

  The boy looked round at him and saw that the bear was holding a fishing rod. It was old and worn and a good length of the line had unravelled from the reel and tangled around it, but it looked sturdy enough.

  “A passenger left this on board a couple of months ago. He got a bit seasick and left in a hurry when we got back to land … eventually. I’ve been meaning to give it the heave-ho for ages, but I’m glad I didn’t now.”

  “Oh, good,” said the boy, a tiny hiccup of hope making his voice sound odd. His next meal still seemed a long way off but at least he could believe there might be one now.

  The bear examined the fishing rod, unknotting the tangled line and winding it back onto the reel. When he was finished he held up the free end.

  “Hmm … no hook.”

  The boy, for once, was not discouraged.

  “Maybe we could make one somehow.”

  “Yes,” said the bear thoughtfully, “maybe, if I can find some wire or—”

  The boy interrupted him. He had had an idea and he thought it might be a good one.

  “Ah!” he said, scooping up the comic. “How about this?”

  The bear looked puzzled.

  It was an expression he had worn often over the years and it suited him rather well.

  The boy was busy and intent. He opened up the comic and began working at one of the staples, unbending its arms and wiggling it free of the pages. He soon had it loose and held it up, proudly and hopefully, for the bear to see.

  The bear gave it some thought.

  “Yes,” he said at last, “that could work.” He plucked the staple from the boy’s hand.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then, head cocked to one side, tongue out and eyes fixed in intense concentration, with surprising dexterity he used his claws like a pair of pliers to fold and bend and twist the staple into a neat hook shape.

  “You’re welcome,” said the boy as the bear held up the end result.

  “Now, what can we use for bait? Maybe we need to have another look for that sandwich,” said the bear.

  “No,” said the boy. “Not only do I not want to eat that sandwich, I don’t want to eat anything else that’s eaten that sandwich. Besides, at this stage I think the sandwich is more likely to eat the fish than the other way round.”

  “Hm. You do have a point,” said the bear.

  They thought for a while to the accompaniment of their duetting stomachs.

  “Ooh!” said the bear. “We could make a fly.”

  It was the boy’s turn to look puzzled. He wasn’t as good at it as the bear but it was a decent enough effort for a beginner.

  “You know,” said the bear. “Fly fishing. They wear those really long wellies and stand in rivers for days on end. For fun. And they use pretend flies for bait. Hooks made to look like insects.”

  A dim memory of a chilly visit, some years previously, to Boring Uncle Iain’s house coughed politely for attention at the back of the boy’s head.

  “Oh, yes,” said the boy. “I think I know what you mean. Aren’t they usually a bit sort of hairy or feathery or, um … furry?”

  “Yes. That’s right. Now if we could just find some— OW!”

  The bear scowled at the boy and rubbed an angry paw vigorously over the tiny patch on his thigh that suddenly found itself bald. The boy, trying quite hard to look apologetic rather than amused, held aloft the newly liberated tuft of fur between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Yes,” said the bear, snatching it away, “that should do.”

  He didn’t stay angry at the boy for long. He was soon absorbed in the task of making the fly. It took a long while to work it out and the boy kept asking questions. But then sometimes, though he would never admit it, answering an annoying question helped him to work out what to do next. And making the fly was a fiddly business, so the boy’s thin fingers were a help whenever two paws didn�
�t seem enough to get the job done. After a lot of false starts, mistakes, a bit of shouting and a couple of minor puncture wounds, they managed between them to bind the tuft of fur to the hook using a loose piece of thread from the sleeve of the boy’s coat. The bear licked his wounds while holding up the fly in the other paw. He and the boy scrutinised their handiwork.

  “It looks good,” said the bear.

  “Yes, it does,” said the boy.

  He smiled at the bear. The bear smiled back.

  “Let’s catch some fish, then,” he said.

  The boy had an old door key that he took from his key ring to tie to the end of the line as a weight. The bear tied the rubber duck a few metres further up the line as a float. The newly furry hook went between the two, closer to the key than the duck.

  “Is that right, do you think?” asked the boy, looking at it all.

  “Right enough, I reckon,” said the bear cheerily, and drew the rod back behind his head, then threw his arm forward, whipping the rod up and over with elegance and force, as if he’d been doing it all his life.

  Then, after they’d carefully removed the hook from his bottom and he’d stopped yelling, he tried again.

  The line flew out across the water, drawing an elegant arc through the air. The key hit the surface with a distant plop and pulled the hook down after it. The duck float floated and the line dropped down across the sea between it and the boat, doodling lazily across the surface of the water. The bear reeled in the line a touch, taking up the slack. Then they watched the distant duck bobbing on the sea. And they watched and they waited. And they waited and they watched.

  A lot of time passed very slowly.

  The boy’s legs began to ache, so he sat down. Then after a while his bottom ached from sitting on the hard wooden seat, so he stood again. His stomach gurgled and he yawned.