Night of the Black Bear

by Gloria Skurzynski

  “Merle Chapman,” Jack repeated. “Kind of husky, reddish blond hair. Maybe you haven’t met him yet because he’s new at this job.”

  “I know everyone who works here,” Caitlyn said definitely. “No one’s named Merle.” As she left them then, after one more smile at Yonah, Jack wondered if he’d gotten the restaurant’s name wrong. Ashley raised her eyebrows questioningly. Yonah looked totally not surprised.

  “I’m almost positive Merle said Sunset Grill,” Jack said, a bit puzzled.

  “Yeah. That’s what Merle told me when he took off for this supposed-to-be job a few nights ago,” Yonah nodded.

  “Supposed to be? What does that mean?” Jack asked.

  “It means Merle’s a big fat liar. He doesn’t work here. I never believed he did. Let’s see, I think I’ll have a double burger with fries. And a shake. What are you guys going to order?”

  Ashley and Jack glanced uncertainly at each other, then looked down at their menus. Yonah seemed to be telling them, no more questions, not now.

  When their meals arrived—Ashley got a plate of popcorn shrimp and Jack had a double burger like Yonah’s—their talk sounded almost normal. Almost, but not quite. Puzzlement over Merle’s lie, if it really was a lie, seemed to hang like a mist above the table, the way clouds of mist hang over the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains.

  Ashley, who never hesitated to speak what was on her mind, slowly stirred her lemonade with a straw as though this time, perhaps, it would be wise to be more careful with her words. But after a few moments she frowned, tossed her head, and came right out with it. “Why do you hate Merle?” she asked Yonah.

  It seemed to catch him by surprise. He hesitated before he answered, “‘Hate’ is a strong word. I don’t really hate him. I just don’t want to be connected to him. Since we were little, he’s been like a fly buzzing around me—always there, always a nuisance.”

  “Because your mothers are friends?” Ashley asked.

  “Right. They’re almost like sisters, especially after Merle’s dad died. My mom kept helping out because things were so hard for Arlene Chapman.” Yonah took a long drink of his milk shake, rubbed his forehead, and said, “Whoo! Brain freeze. I hate those. Do you ever get brain freeze?” After a pause he added, “Now Merle—he doesn’t freeze my brain, he frosts my shorts. Ha!”

  “Yeah, funny.” Ashley laughed a little, halfheartedly. “But why, Yonah? You still didn’t say why.”

  Looking through the window at the Gatlinburg street traffic, Yonah said, “Oh—I guess it goes a long way back. OK! Here’s an example.” He drummed his fingers on the table and began, “I’m a year and a half older than Merle, so my mom was always giving him my outgrown clothes and stuff. No problem there. But she’d let him have my toys, too. Sometimes I wasn’t through with them. She’d say, ‘You have lots to play with, Yonah, and Merle’s mother can’t afford to buy him things. You need to share.’”

  “That sounds…nice of her,” Jack murmured.

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t care about balls and books and stuff, but one time, something happened that….” Yonah drew circles on damp sides of his glass as he continued, “There was this one thing I really loved. A Chief Cherokee action figure. It belonged to my dad when he was little, and it was still in the box, with a ton of accessories—bows and arrows, a quiver, a buffalo-horn headpiece, a war bonnet, lots of other stuff. I was real careful with it. Each time I took the Chief and the other things out of the box to play with, I put them back exactly where they belonged.”

  “So what happened?” Ashley asked.

  “Merle wanted it. My Chief Cherokee.” Yonah set the glass on the table, hard. “He grabbed the box from my hands, and he tore it. So, I punched him, and his lip bled and he howled and my mom came running. She yelled at me and gave Merle my Chief Cherokee. To keep!”

  Jack could see how that would make a little kid mad. “How old were you?”

  “I was seven. Merle was almost six.”

  “Really.” Ashley curled her fingers over the edge of the table as she leaned forward. “And you’re still mad at him over that? After all these years? He was only a little kid!”

  “No, that’s not the only thing.” Yonah glared at his hamburger, then picked it up and said, “Forget what I told you. Let’s eat and get out of here.”

  Jack knew his sister was turning all this over and over in her mind, carefully examining Yonah’s words as she searched for the heart of his conflict with Merle. Finally, when she pushed away her empty plate, she said to Yonah, “There’s more, isn’t there? I guess that Chief Cherokee thing was what started you being mad at Merle, but no one stays mad for nine years about something like that. That’s not the real story. There’s something a lot bigger. Right?”

  They were interrupted by the hostess, Caitlyn, who approached carrying the check on a little tray. Standing close to Yonah, she handed it to him.

  “I’ll take that,” Jack told her as he reached for it. “Am I supposed to give the money to you?”

  “No. Pay up front,” she answered.

  Yonah had begun to get up to follow Caitlyn, but Jack stopped him with, “Wait! I’d like you to answer Ashley’s question—that maybe there’s something much bigger. Is there?”

  Yonah settled back into the booth, peeling a couple of dollar bills out of his wallet to leave as a tip—Jack had forgotten he was supposed to tip the server. “Why? Why should I answer Ashley’s question? What’s it to you guys?”

  “Because,” Ashley began slowly, “if I believed you hate Merle because he took a favorite toy from you when you were little—or even worse, if I believed that you hate him because he’s a white guy and you blame him because his ancestors took Cherokee lands long ago—then I’d think that was way harsh. That you were harsh. And I don’t think you are.” Smoothing the dollar bills on the table top, Yonah murmured, “Thanks. For not thinking I’m harsh.” He looked up, his dark eyes troubled, and said, “Things are really bad for Arlene right now. The insurance won’t pay for all her hospital bills, her car was totaled, and she might not be able to work for a while.” He licked his lip with the tip of his tongue, looked sideways, and then began again. “I think Merle’s in trouble. He’s doing something that’s wrong, and I think I know what it is, and it makes me crazy angry. But I’m not sure about it. If I tell anyone what I suspect, Merle could get slammed. That would hurt Arlene, and I don’t want that to happen.”

  “It’s about him not being a busboy, right?” Jack asked. “I was trying to figure out why he’d lie about that, and this is what I think. He brings his guitar, so he’s probably out on the streets somewhere singing for quarters, and he’s ashamed for people to know that.”

  “Huh?” Yonah muttered. “If that was true, I’d have heard about it. My friends would see him, and they’d tell me. Merle would tell me. That’s not illegal.”

  Jack asked, “You think he’s doing something illegal? Like what?”

  Yonah didn’t answer that directly. He just said, “You heard Merle today—about the moonshine? He doesn’t worry about what’s legal and what’s not.”

  Slowly standing up, Ashley said, “You’re way too suspicious, Yonah.”

  Yonah got up, too, and shrugged, saying, “Think what you want.” Without waiting for them, he left the dining room and headed for the door. Jack stopped to pay the bill, then hurried to catch up with Yonah and Ashley.

  As they walked back toward the digital lab, Jack glanced across the street where a small bus was parked. The sides of the bus had been painted with scenes of the park, or at least he figured that’s what the pictures showed—tall mountains filled with mist, and black bears standing on their hind legs, bears running, climbing, holding fish in their mouths, even boxing each other. “Smokies Touring Service” was the name on the side of the bus. As Jack watched, a dozen people started boarding it.

  At that moment Ashley tugged the sleeve of his sweatshirt to say, “Check over there. It’s that Space Needle in the picture on C
aitlyn’s badge. Look how tall it is! I want to go to the top.”

  “It’s got a virtual reality roller coaster,” Yonah told them. “You should ask your folks to take you.”

  “I will!”

  As soon as they opened the door to the digital lab they smelled the pizza. An open box with a few pieces left lay on the table, next to three paper cups for soft drinks.

  “So far, we can’t find a tie-in between the elk herd and the aggressive bear behavior,” Olivia announced to the kids.

  All over the room, elk photos appeared on tall flat screens. They were dazzling pictures—clear, bright, and intense in color—elk with rough coats and soft brown eyes, elk gracefully moving their large bodies on thin legs, an elk scratching behind an ear with a hind hoof. But there were no signs of disease. Jack stared at the images, wide-eyed, hoping that some day he’d be as good a photographer as his father.

  Moments later the door flew open again, and this time Kip Delaney burst in, calling out, “Glad you’re all still here. I just got back from the lab in Knoxville.” Dangling from his hand was a sealed plastic bag containing a digital camera. “Heather and Mrs. McDonald have already left for North Carolina, but I told them I’d send Heather’s camera by express mail as soon as we finished the tests.”

  “What tests?” Jack asked his mother.

  “The bear had that camera in his mouth,” Olivia explained. “We wanted to check the camera for bear saliva. If we can get gene identification from the saliva, we’ll know when we’ve caught the right bear—if we do catch him.”

  “How’d it go, Kip?” Blue asked.

  Kip shook his head, answering, “No go. Too many people had handled the camera—that Jordan guy, the paramedics, the nurses at the hospital—there wasn’t enough bear spit left to get a good analysis.”

  Olivia looked disappointed until Kip announced, “However…the flash card is still here in the camera. We can look at the pictures Heather took before the mauling.”

  “Good job!” Right away Steven inserted the flash card into the card reader. The first pictures to come up on the screens showed a tombstone that read “Howard McDonald 1912–1983 Rest In Peace.” The next picture showed a smaller tombstone: “Grace Neely McDonald 1916–1982 Returning To The Arms of Jesus.”

  Then the photos got exciting. Steven clicked to change the images about every two seconds, making them appear one right after another. It was almost like watching a movie.

  The bear could be seen in the distance, standing up, arms dangling. In the next picture he’d come closer, his mouth slightly open to show those big canine teeth that had ripped flesh out of Heather’s thigh. The following pictures showed him first raising then lowering his head. Next, he lifted one paw as his shoulders shifted, almost as if he were dancing. With each picture he moved forward, his head lowered. In the last photos he stood up tall again, and as his face came closer and closer, Jack felt like those two black eyes were staring straight into his own!

  “That crazy girl!” Blue exclaimed. “I can’t believe she kept taking these pictures. In this final one the bear’s no more than five feet in front of her!”

  Steven added, “Yeah, right before the bear grabbed the camera.”

  “Ugh!” Ashley cried. “I wouldn’t want a bear coming after me like that. I mean, he’s big!”

  A pause, then, “You’re right, Ashley,” Kip said. “He’s way too big.”

  All of them turned toward Kip, unsure what he meant. But Olivia caught more meaning than the rest of them. Frowning, she said, “Go on, please, Kip.”

  His finger on the keyboard, Kip clicked back to the first picture. “This black bear is a male. Males average around 175 or 200 pounds—you probably thought they were bigger than that, Ashley, but that’s their average weight. The weight changes through the different seasons of the year.”

  He faced them. “At this time of year in the park, the black bears have just recently come out of their winter dens.” To Ashley, Jack, and Yonah, he added, “Maybe you kids know this, maybe you don’t, but the reason bears spend winters in their dens is because each autumn, their source of food decreases or is eliminated altogether. So after most of the food is gone, they just go to sleep to conserve their energy. Nature has programmed them to sleep when there’s nothing much left to eat.”

  “Right,” Olivia agreed. “It’s called denning.”

  “So here it is, now—early spring,” Kip continued. “Once bears wake up, their systems are really undernourished, and they’re looking for food. They’ve been living off their own body resources while they were in the dens, and their weight is a lot lower than when they first went into their dens. At this time of year—right now—there isn’t a lot of high quality natural food around, so—” Kip picked up a pencil to point at the bear on the screen. “This bear should be a lot thinner than he looks here.”

  “Strange,” Steven murmured.

  “Yeah. Maybe. Or not,” Yonah said softly.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was Sunday morning, early. This time Olivia drove, and Steven turned around from the front seat to tell Jack and Ashley, “Lily Firekiller just called on my cell phone. After we drop you off at the Firekiller house, she’s planning to take you to the Space Needle in Gatlinburg. Yonah told her you wanted to go there.”

  “Yay!” Ashley cried. “Mrs. Firekiller is the nicest lady!”

  “Next to you, Mom,” Jack said, figuring it never hurt to throw out a little compliment, especially since his mother hadn’t been making many touchdowns in trying to solve the bear mystery. “Where will you and dad be this morning?”

  “Searching for clues again,” Olivia said. “We have some big questions we’re trying to answer—why these bear attacks happened, and most important, will we need to close the park?”

  Jack was silent for a moment before he asked, “What about that spilled mash at the still? I mean that moonshine mash I took the pictures of. If the bear got drunk from it, he could have turned mean.”

  Slowing the car to make a turn, Olivia answered, “Your pictures were good, Jack, but they didn’t show any evidence of bear activity. Blue is going to the farm to check out the site today just in case, but we don’t expect he’ll find anything.” Then, pulling into a driveway, she announced, “OK, here we are at the Firekillers’.”

  Lily came to the door to greet them, and told them that Yonah wouldn’t be going to the Space Needle. “He’s been there lots of times, and he’s upstairs now studying for a calculus exam tomorrow. He says he’ll see you later—I’m inviting all of you to Sunday dinner after Blue and Kip and you Landons finish your work.”

  “Thank you!” Olivia and Steven both exclaimed wholeheartedly. “It’ll be great to have a real home-cooked dinner after all the take-out food we’ve been eating since we arrived,” Olivia added.

  Right then a thundering of footsteps on the stairs grew loud as Merle rushed into the room, shouting, “I finished all my homework!” Raising his right hand, he said, “I swear I did, Lily! Can I go to the Space Needle with you all?”

  Homework! Jack and Ashley were supposed to keep up with their assignments for the three days of school they would miss, but Jack hadn’t opened a single book. Oh, well, he would deal with that on the long flight home.

  “So, can I go to the Space Needle with you all?” Merle was pleading.

  “Sure,” Lily answered. “Let’s get moving. Even on Sundays the Space Needle opens at nine, and I’d like to get there before it’s too crowded.”

  The drive to Gatlinburg from the Firekillers’ house on that quiet Sunday morning took no more than 12 minutes, but to Jack it seemed longer, because he shared the backseat with Merle. After listening to all of Yonah’s suspicions about Merle the evening before, Jack couldn’t fall into the easy, friendly kind of talk they’d had during the bike ride. He kept remembering how casually Merle had spoken about the moonshine still, as though breaking that particular law didn’t matter. He mentally questioned why Merle would insist on biking
to his job, with the guitar case strapped to his back. Was Yonah right? Was Merle involved in something illegal? Or was Yonah totally off base, making up false accusations just because he didn’t like Merle?

  Merle didn’t seem to notice that Jack stayed quiet. He kept talking enthusiastically about Jack’s Photoshopped pictures, like the one of the fish with Ashley’s face. Jack had downloaded some of the silly ones onto Lily’s computer yesterday, and Merle said he’d looked at them several times because they were so funny.

  “You’re a real digital artist, Jack,” Merle told him now. “Someday, if I ever make a CD, you can design the jacket.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jack answered, beginning to feel even more uncomfortable.

  The entrance to the Space Needle looked pretty ordinary until Jack stood still and raised his eyes all the way up to the observation platform, towering 400 feet above them. Lily Firekiller bought tickets for herself and Merle; Jack and Ashley paid for their own with money their dad had given them earlier.

  It was a fast elevator ride all the way to the platform at the top. Jack was glad he’d brought his camera because the view was really spectacular: the city of Gatlinburg beneath them, the tree-covered hills so close he didn’t need to zoom the lens to feel right on top of them, the clouds skimming the mountaintops, and way over there was Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

  “See any bears through your zoom lens?” Ashley teased, knowing that was impossible.

  Jack swung around and snapped a quick picture of her; he’d Photoshop it grotesquely when they got home to Wyoming. He could feel Merle’s impatience, though, because Merle kept urging Lily about going to the virtual roller coaster. That meant more tickets to buy. And they weren’t cheap.

  Two to a pod, the four of them climbed into VR roller coaster seats, with Lily and Ashley in one pod and Merle and Jack in another. Bars swung down to secure them. Jack figured that must mean the pods actually flipped, so the ride would have real movement as well as virtual imaging to give the sense of speed.