“Huh?” I say. What friends? Does she mean Mr. Wilbur?
Mom reaches over and picks up a box. “You must be the most popular kid in your school,” she says. “There’s over thirty get-well letters here from your classmates. Plus there’s that.” She points with her chin toward the wall on the other side of my bed. There’s a big sign pasted up there, eight feet long and four feet high, with two words on it in huge letters.
OUR HERO
And all around it the kids in my class have signed their names and written stuff. Not just “Get well soon,” but also things like “Baron, you rock!” and “I never knew you were so cool!”
I look back at Mom. For some reason my eyes are moist. She has her head turned sideways, studying me.
“Is it my imagination,” she says, “or did you get bigger while I was gone?”
It’s a bright December morning. It’s warm for this time of year and there’s no snow yet. The sun is shining on the steps of Grama Kateri’s trailer, where I’m sitting and waiting for the school bus. I’m holding my little carved bear in one hand and my pen in the other as I write in my old journal. Mr. Wilbur gave it back to me yesterday. Between all that happened that last day at Camp Chuckamuck and my being in the hospital and then everything else, he completely forgot that he’d found it on the floor inside the main camp building. It fell out of my pocket when he gave me that friendly shoulder squeeze.
Reading through some of my old entries, it now seems to me as if I spent too much time feeling sorry for myself. But, like Grama Kateri says, remembering where you were helps you figure out where you need to go.
Where Mr. Mack and Cal and Marlon needed to go was to jail. They all accepted plea bargains that gave the brothers five to ten years in the crowbar hotel and Mr. Mack ten to fifteen. They could have taken their chances on a trial, but their lawyers advised them to take the deal that gave them shorter sentences. After all, Mr. Mack could have gotten a life sentence for attempted manslaughter. Their deal meant that they had to testify against the no-good nephews of the Philos and the executive officers of the Awlin Group, the developers who were behind the whole plot to destroy Camp Chuckamuck—and, though they are still trying to deny this part of it, eliminate Mr. and Mrs. Philo. Mr. Wilbur has told me that the case will be tied up in the courts for years, but it is probably going to end up bankrupting the Awlin Group, and that, sooner or later, almost all of the bad guys will end up in prison.
As for the Philos and Camp Chuckamuck, there’s good news there, too. Mr. and Mrs. Philo have decided that they’re not ready to retire after all. They’ll be hiring a new staff, but the Philos will be on site at the camp to make sure things get run right. They’ve also finished all the legal work to put the whole property into a permanent conservation easement to protect it from future development and keep it forever wild as a nature preserve. No logging. No condo or resort building. No matter what happens, its fifteen hundred acres will still be a place for the moose and the bears, the tall cedars and hemlocks, and all the other wildlife and plants of the Adirondack regions.
There’s one or two more things you’re probably wondering about. I know that I am.
The first, of course, is the monster at the heart of this story, the one who turned out to be a man with a painful past and a twisted heart. The Bearwalker. Walker White Bear or Jason Jones or whoever he was. What finally happened to him?
I’m sorry to say that’s another question that hasn’t been answered. The sheriff’s deputies and the others who were called in to search looked for the place where Jones had been attacked by the mother bear. They only had Mr. Osgood’s directions to go on since I was still in the hospital and in no condition to talk to anyone. And Mr. Osgood hadn’t seen it for himself. He just passed on what I had told him as we limped down the mountain.
They never found the spot. No sign of a struggle, no trail of blood. No bear tracks. Nothing. Finally they called off the search. Only one thing ever turned up. In November a hiker on one of those high trails saw something half buried in the leaves. It was a rusty saw-bladed hunting knife. Maybe someday a big-boned skeleton with unusually long canine teeth in its skull will be found. Or maybe not.
Although my mom is back safe and sound, we still don’t know what happened to my dad. It’s been said that some American soldiers are being held as prisoners of war. All we can do is hope that he’s one of them and that someday he will be able to come home. Uncle Jules says that life is like that. You never get an answer to every question. You just have to trust that you’ll learn enough.
The bus driver is honking his horn at me. I look up. Tara is waving from one window of the bus and Cody is gesturing at me from the window behind hers. It’s a toss-up which one of them I’ll sit with today. Maybe Tara. After all, I’ll see plenty of Cody at basketball practice after school. Even though I’m the shortest guy on the team, I’m the fastest down the court and I have a great jump shot. Plus I’m now five foot six and I’m still growing.
Enough. Time to close this journal and end this story. At least for now.
About the Author
JOSEPH BRUCHAC is the author of SKELETON MAN, THE RETURN OF SKELETON MAN, THE DARK POND, and WHISPER IN THE DARK, as well as many other critically acclaimed novels, poems, and stories, many drawing on his Abenaki heritage. Mr. Bruchac and his wife, Carol, live in upstate New York, in the same house where he was raised by his grandparents.
You can visit him online at www.josephbruchac.com
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Also by
JOSEPH BRUCHAC
Skeleton Man
The Return of Skeleton Man
Whisper in the Dark
The Dark Pond
Credits
Jacket art © 2007 by Sally Wern Comport
Copyright
BEARWALKER. Copyright © 2007 by Joseph Bruchac. Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Sally Wern Comport. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Epub © Edition JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780061838699
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