Bearwalker

by Joseph Bruchac

  He drawls out those words sarcastically—“…good families”—making it clear that he means just the opposite.

  “Those boys and girls had been given everything they needed by their rich parents. They weren’t poor like the Joneses and their boy. But those spoiled little rich brats decided to torment that poor boy. They played mean tricks on him. They never figured they would be getting their comeuppance. Daddy and Mommy would always protect them. But then one day one of their tricks went a little too far and…”

  “Stop right there!”

  The tone of that voice is so commanding that Walker White Bear actually does stop. He turns, though, with a murderous look on his face to stare down at the one who just spoke up and who rises to her feet now, unafraid, to face him. It’s Mrs. Philo.

  “No!” she says. “You will not tell that story. What happened to that boy at this camp was a tragedy. I will not abide it being turned into a grisly tale to terrify young people.”

  Mr. Philo stands up by his wife. He may be a very old man, but his demeanor is not that of a gentle elder right now. He shifts his cane to his left hand as he holds up his right, his index finger raised toward the sky.

  “Sir,” he says, lifting the heavy cane to point it at the hulking figure’s chest. “You’re done.” Mr. Philo’s voice is not loud or filled with growling menace like that of the one he has just silenced, but there is such quiet authority, such dignity in his words, that everyone hears him.

  Walker White Bear doesn’t step back at first, though. He rocks onto the balls of his feet, almost like a bear about to charge. But the tall old man stands his ground, holding up that heavy cane as straight as a spear.

  “Now,” he says, gesturing to the side with his finger. “Go.”

  Walker White Bear turns away. For a moment it seems as if he is about to drop down on all fours. But instead he just walks out of the circle of light from the dying campfire and disappears into the darkness.

  “I think we’ve had enough stories for the night.”

  It’s Mr. Wilbur. He’s standing next to the Philos. I hadn’t seen him get up to join them. Everyone in the circle begins to move. Most people seem either a little confused or else oblivious to what has just gone on.

  Mrs. Smiler leads the group back down the trail toward the turn around the hill where the first power pole will become visible. The use of flashlights by us kids may still be forbidden, but she’s using one to find her way.

  I hang back, like I usually do. That’s why I hear what Mr. Philo is saying in a low, firm voice to Mr. Mack.

  “You and your staff are going to meet with me tonight.”

  Mr. Mack starts to say something. Mr. Philo holds up a hand to forestall any comment from the camp director. “Not now. As soon as the campers are in their cabins.”

  For once, Mr. Mack is not smiling. He looks as if he is sucking on a lemon as he walks away after shouldering his canvas bag. The only ones left here are the Philos, Mr. Wilbur, and myself.

  “You can douse the fire now,” Mrs. Philo says to Mr. Wilbur, who has been using a stick to spread out the last of the glowing coals in the fire pit. There’s a long hiss as he pours the bucket of water and then it is totally dark and silent.

  A loud scream echoes through the night.

  13

  Point

  Do I have to tell you that it was Heidi who screamed? Histrionic is how Mr. Wilbur referred to her. I didn’t have to look that word up to know it means “theatrical.”

  Theatrical or not, it resulted in a general panic that was finally quelled by the arrival of Mr. Wilbur and the Philos, with me as their light bearer. There’d been no objections to my turning on my big light to lead them around the bend to the mass of confused campers who were not being calmed down by Mrs. Smiler, who had somehow dropped and broken her flashlight in the ensuing confusion. She and the three parent chaperones, all of whom lacked flashlights of their own, were as much in the dark as the kids.

  “Settle,” Mr. Wilbur says. His familiar, commanding voice has its effect. It gets everyone’s attention. Everyone stops trying to talk at once, even Heidi. Admittedly, it helps that Tara has her arm around Heidi’s shoulders and her hand over her friend’s mouth.

  Adrenaline is an amazing thing. When you get frightened or suddenly excited about something, your body pumps it into your blood and you are capable of energetic action. I’m thinking of that as I watch the Philos. They weren’t just following me with my light as I ran along the path, they were practically carrying me, leaving Mr. Wilbur behind. I guess a lifetime of taking care of kids means that when they think kids are in trouble they spring into action—and any arthritis or heart problem just has to take a backseat. The two of them are moving among the kids, comforting some, gently teasing others, asking one or two to help them sort things out. I don’t know beans about running a camp, but I can tell they are really good at this.

  Mr. Wilbur is holding my big flashlight now, its beam making a big circle on the ground in front of him like a heatless campfire. I handed my light to him before I pulled out the Maglite on its Velcro strap that is now fastened around my forehead. Of course it’s off right now because I’d be blinding people with it whenever I turned my head in someone’s direction. I want to be able to look around now and see who’s here without attracting attention to myself. What I have seen so far is worrisome. Two people are not here.

  “Everyone calm now?” Mr. Wilbur asks. He holds up his right hand, palm facing forward and puts the index finger of his left hand to his lips. We all know this sign is for us to be quiet and pay attention because he uses it at least three times a day in class. We follow suit with thirty-four eighth-grade hands. Thirty-four index fingers are pressed to silenced lips.

  Mr. Wilbur looks over at Mrs. Smiler and the three chaperones who have been counting heads.

  “They’re all here,” Mrs. Smiler says. “No students are missing.”

  She’s being redundant, I think. Saying the same thing twice in two different ways. So am I, for that matter. She’s trying to look calm, but she is as nervous as I am.

  This, by the way, is one of the things that sucks about being thirteen. You are just old enough to realize that those adults you used to think had all the answers are sometimes just as confused and clueless as you are.

  “All right,” Mr. Wilbur says. “Good. Now, Heidi, can you, my dear young lass, tell me why you just screamed like the proverbial Irish banshee?”

  That joking tone of his and the thick Irish accent he puts on are just what’s needed right now, even though things are serious. It makes even Heidi smile.

  “It just scared me when the light went out all of a sudden and then someone grabbed my shoulder from behind and growled at me.”

  “Who did th—?” Mr. Wilbur starts to say, then shakes his head. “Do I even have to ask?” he says, turning his gaze on Willy Donner.

  “Guilty as charged, Mr. W.,” Willie says, a little smirk on his face vanishing when Heidi turns and punches him in the left biceps. “Ow, that hurt!”

  “People!” Everyone turns back to Mr. Wilbur again. “Let us not go medieval on one other. I’ll let that punch go, Heidi. We’ll call it justified retribution. Very Old Testament. But here is a new commandment. There shalt be no more hitting, grabbing, or intentional freaking out of thy neighbor. And we are heading back to the main building.”

  He pauses to scan the crowd. I know he’s looking for me and I stand up. His eyes meet mine and he presses his lips together and nods. Even though I am more scared than I have ever been in my entire life, even though I have this feeling of absolute certainty that the worst is still to come, I haven’t panicked. Mr. Wilbur can see that. And even though I am the littlest kid in our class, I can see that he is relying on me. I’ve earned his respect by not acting scared.

  It’s only logical, though. Like my uncle Jules said to me once, just being scared ought to be enough for anyone. Acting scared on top of it is just a waste of time and energy.


  “Drag,” Mr. Wilbur says with a smile, tapping himself on the chest. “Baron, you’re point man.” He knows all about my family’s military history and knows I’ll understand what he’s saying. I’m to go at the head of our column. He’ll be the last person, making sure that no one straggles or gets left behind.

  “Yessir,” I reply, snapping a salute. Then I turn on my forehead Maglite.

  With the Philos close behind me, and the other five adults placed at regular intervals in the group, I start leading our group back up the trail past the lightless pole toward the darkened buildings of Camp Chuckamuck.

  14

  Coleman Lanterns

  We’re back inside the main building. I’m sitting in the corner near the big fireplace, where a pile of logs burns so hot that I’m sweating. But I’m not about to stop putting logs on the fire. Poe-boy has his head on my knee and I am petting him with one hand and writing with the other. A lot of people seem to have finally fallen asleep. But not me. I couldn’t sleep even if I hadn’t volunteered to be the fire keeper and be in charge of the Coleman lanterns.

  So much has happened since we got back from the fire circle that I don’t know where to start. So I’ll just make a list in my journal of, as Mr. Wilbur puts it, the pertinent points.

  Point #1: Mr. Mack and the one who calls himself Walker White Bear have vanished. So have the other two people I haven’t really mentioned before, two men whose names I never got who were brought in by Mr. Mack as counselors. They hung back when our bus came in and none of us, Mr. Wilbur included, ever got a good look at them. We were supposed to be introduced to them. But then everything got crazy. I wonder if they are as incompetent at being camp personnel as the other two. I wonder what they really were hired to do. I wonder what all four of them are doing now.

  Point #2: The power lines to the camp seem to have been cut. There’s no electricity at all and there’s a deep darkness all around because the sky is still clouded over.

  Point #3: There is also no emergency power here. A backup generator was supposed to kick in if there was any kind of power failure, like a tree being blown down in a storm over the lines. But as we walked back to the main hall, everything was still dark except for one faint light that appeared to be bobbing on the porch of the building. It turned out to be Mrs. Osgood holding up an old kerosene lamp she’d just lit. The emergency generator was not working, she told us (but not in those few words). When Mr. Philo took a look at it, the first thing he noticed was that the cap was off the gas tank. He put a stick in to measure how much gas was there, and when that stick scraped on something gritty he shook his head in disgust. “It’s been sabotaged,” he said. “Someone poured sand into the tank.”

  Point #4: It has been decided that everyone is going to spend the night together here in the main building. Mrs. Osgood brought out half a dozen Coleman lanterns and lit them. Although I have to pump them up every now and then to keep the fuel flowing, and they give off a faint roaring sound, they also provide almost as much light as a 100-watt bulb. So even though the room is filled with strange shadows, it is light enough to give most folks a sense of security. Mr. Wilbur organized details to go to the cabins and bring the foam mattresses from the bunks and all of our stuff into here. The room has been divided into a boys’ side and a girls’ side, with most of the adults sleeping in a line down the middle of the room where they have set up half a dozen cots. Mr. and Mrs. Philo are in two cots near where I’m sitting in the corner by the fire, furthest away from any of the doors. Mrs. Osgood is on another cot next to the door that leads into the kitchen. It’s good that this big building doubles as the dining hall and that the food is also stored in here.

  “I have all of my necessities,” Mrs. Osgood said, when she met us with her lantern, pointing at a long bag she’d propped in a chair on the porch. “So I calculate that we all can be as snug as a nest of bugs in a rug, what with food and fire…” And so on.

  And I suppose we are snug in here, even though it is stuffy with all of the windows in the building closed and latched as tight as the doors. No one is supposed to leave the building until dawn. There are two bathrooms in this main building and buckets of water have been brought from the lake so that the cabin toilets can keep functioning.

  I guess those are all the main points that I need to list. Everyone is keeping calm. Things are organized to keep everyone safe. But I don’t think we are safe. None of the adults are talking about the how and why of all this. Maybe they don’t want to alarm us or they think that kids just live in the moment and are not concerned with things like the future. I am, though.

  My mind is running through scenarios as I try to put this puzzle together, even though I think there are still pieces missing. There has to be a plan behind this, a logical reason for what has happened so far. I haven’t quite figured out what, but I think I know why from eavesdropping on Mr. Wilbur’s earlier conversation with Mrs. Smiler. I think the result is supposed to be the end of Camp Chuckamuck and the selling of the property for all that money. That seems obvious to me. Make the camp fail and then it has to be sold.

  But there’s an even darker side—Mr. and Mrs. Philo. Someone must have tricked those kind old people into coming here and getting trapped. It may mean that the plan behind it all is really an evil one. It may mean that someone wants to do away with them so that they’ll no longer be around to prevent their land from being sold. But how do the people who are doing this expect to get away with it?

  I think about Mr. Osgood. Even though I just met him and his wife, I know in my heart that they could not be part of a plan to do harm to anyone. He’s our biggest hope for rescue because until he reaches the outside no one will know that we’re all in trouble and caught here. I look at my watch: 11:00 P.M. He should have reached a phone long ago. People might be on their way here already. Unless he never reached a phone. Unless something happened to him.

  I try not to think about that, but turning my thoughts from him turns them back to us. It’s like looking away from the edge of a precipice to see a monster creeping up on you. What about the rest of us? Is something supposed to happen to us, too? Will the ones who have planned this see us as witnesses and thus dangerous to them?

  I shiver again at where this train of thought is leading me. The only silent witnesses are dead witnesses. Could this be so coldhearted and evil a plan that killing about forty people is part of it? But it couldn’t be. That kind of plan wouldn’t just be coldhearted. It would be insane.

  Suddenly we hear the thud of footsteps on the porch and pounding on the door.

  “Let me in!” a voice screams from outside. “He’s gone crazy. He’s trying to kill me!”

  15

  Let Me In!

  Mrs. Osgood was at that door only a heartbeat after the first anguished scream. She was, quite literally, loaded for bear. It turned out that Mr. Osgood’s Betsy was not the only firearm in Camp Chuckamuck after all. There was a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun in Mrs. Osgood’s hands. Apparently it had been one of the “necessities” in that long bag of hers. And as she competently worked the pump to jack a shell into the chamber, she also knew how to use it.

  Everyone had been freaked out by the sudden banging on the door and the unnerving scream that accompanied it.

  “Quiet down,” Mr. Wilbur shouted, raising his hands to get everyone’s attention.

  The tense silence that followed was quickly broken.

  “Who’s there?” Mrs. Osgood asked.

  “For God’s sake, it’s me,” answered a strained voice strangled by fear.

  No one made a move to unlock the door.

  “Name yourself,” Mrs. Osgood said.

  “Winston. Winston Mack. Let me in. Hurry. He might be coming. Oh God!”

  The Philos, Mr. Wilbur, and Mrs. Osgood all exchanged a quick glance. Then Mrs. Osgood stepped back, keeping the shotgun leveled at the door, as Mr. Wilbur unlocked and quickly swung it open.

  It swung open even faster than Mr. Wilbur had inte
nded because the head counselor had been pressing himself against it and looking back over his shoulder. Mr. Mack came stumbling in and sprawled onto the floor, pointing behind himself as he fell.

  “Close the door, close it, close it, lock it,” he babbled, clutching an old brown backpack to his chest as if it were a shield to protect him. He no longer looked like the smiling, firmly-in-control person he appeared to be when we first saw him. His face was scratched, his shirt torn, and there was blood on his hands.

  That was half an hour ago. Although Mr. Wilbur paused long enough to shine the beam of my big flashlight outside, he saw no threatening figure pursuing. The solid oak door was shut and locked again without incident.

  It has taken this long, and two cups of coffee, for Mr. Mack to calm down and start saying anything that makes any kind of sense. He’s talking now about how it all started to go wrong.

  Mr. Mack is sitting in the kitchen with Mr. Wilbur, the Philos, and Mrs. Osgood, who has not relinquished her 12-gauge. The door, which is partially open, is close to where I have my sleeping bag on the floor. As a result I’m able to listen in on what’s being said.

  It turns out that one of the things I suspected is true. Mr. Mack and his crew had been hired as ringers. Their mission was to make sure that Camp Chuckamuck failed. Not spectacularly, but through little acts of incompetence and sabotage. Then, when the camp closed down, they’d be paid for their dirty work. Mr. Mack knew nothing about running an outdoor camp, but was someone that the Philos’ nephews, who were behind the whole scheme, knew they could count on to do this kind of job.

  There’s a pause for a moment. Then I hear Mr. Mack draw in a deep breath.

  “You know, you weren’t supposed to be here,” he says. I can’t see who he is directing that statement to, but I assume it is the Philos. His next words prove my assumption right.