Night of the Black Bear (8 page)

Jack felt a sudden sense of shame. Merle was only a year older than Jack, a kid trying to earn some money to help his injured mother. Not even old enough to drive a car, Merle had to ride a bike to his job with his guitar strapped clumsily to his back. The only bit of luck in his recent life had been finding this job where he could sing his great songs to an audience that appreciated them. Right now the tourists were clapping and whistling and asking for more. If they weren't supposed to be in this picnic area after six o'clock, was that such a huge crime in a world full of big-time troubles? All this skulking through the trees trying to nail Merle, just because Yonah didn't like him!

It was time for Jack to stand up to Yonah. Time to stand up for his own values about what was fair and reasonable and what wasn't.

Turning around, not exactly shouting but not whispering, either, he told Yonah, “This is it! No more snarking around as if Merle's dealing 'shrooms or something! He's just singing, that's all! I'm going out there, and I'm gonna let him know we're here. We can at least give him a ride back home after he's finished.”

“Wait!” Yonah's command was as powerful as his hand that clamped Jack's arm. “Look over there. Forget Merle—check out what Merle's boss is doing.”

Jack's eyes followed the finger Yonah pointed toward the creek. What he saw were the chicken-filled tubs lined up along the creek bed. They must have been taken out of the bus before Jack, Ashley, and Yonah got there. Even from that distance, Jack could tell that four of the tubs had already been emptied. One was still full, and another swung from the man's hand as he climbed farther along the bank, slipping a little on the edge. The man stopped then and dumped the contents into the brush that lined the creek.

“Why'd he bring garbage all the way out here to get rid of it?” Jack asked, as Ashley peered around him so she could get a better look.

“He's not dumping garbage,” Yonah answered. “Don't you see what's happening here?”

“Not really. No.”

“He's bear baiting. And Merle knows that's illegal.”

“He's what?” Ashley screwed up her face, unsure what those words meant.

“That guy's putting out food to attract the bears,” Yonah said.

“Why is he…?”

“So the tourists can take pictures when the bears come here to eat.” Yonah jerked his head toward the creek. “Like right now. Take a look!”

B
ears. Two of them.

They didn't hurry, they ambled as though they knew where they were going and had plenty of time.

Jack was struck by how much their heads resembled the heads of dogs—the long thin snouts, the same intelligence in the eyes. But when the bears opened their mouths, panting, their teeth looked a lot scarier than dog teeth.

The tourists went totally wild. They squealed, they pushed forward for position, they cut in front of one another to get a better view through their camera lenses. Merle hurried to help his boss carry the empty tubs away from the creek bed, and then he went back to pick up the picnic chairs knocked over by the tourists in their rush to see the black bears.

The bears looked big, but it was hard for Jack to tell if the bears were bigger than usual, since he didn't know how they were supposed to look at this time of year. He stood rooted, half afraid to move, although the bears were still across the creek and not too close. Then one of the bears stood up on its hind legs. As tall as a man, with the forelegs hanging limp like arms and the claws on his front feet curved inward like fingers, the bear leaned against a tree and rubbed his back on the trunk. Like a human! The second bear slipped a little on his way downhill, as awkward as a little kid trying to dance. Ashley caught her breath. She wore the same expression of wonder and fear that Jack was feeling.

As the first bear reached the base of a tree where some bait had been dumped, he licked the food once with a long pink tongue, then moved it around a bit using his front paw. Apparently satisfied, he snarfed some of the chicken and began to chomp it. Chewing open-mouthed, he stared across the creek—right at them! At Jack, Ashley, and Yonah!

On the near side of the creek, Merle's boss spoke softly through a small bullhorn, warning the tourists, “Don't get too close, folks. Stay up here away from the creek bank. If you slipped and fell into the water, that might scare away the bears. You're paying good money to see them, so be careful. You can get great pictures from right where you are.”

Merle held his guitar by the neck with his left hand while he supported a frail looking woman who clutched his right arm. The woman burst into laughter, along with the other tourists, as the second bear stopped eating for about ten seconds to scratch his ear with his hind paw.

“Behind you!” Yonah said suddenly.

It took a minute for Jack to register the scene. Black bears—four of them by Jack's count—ambled into the clearing with their pigeon-toed walk. They moved slowly, turning a bit from side to side as they sniffed the air, then snuffled the ground, while moving downhill toward the food that had been strewn next to the creek.

Suddenly, one of these new bears seemed to sense the three humans standing among the trees. He looked straight at Jack and panted a little, his teeth very white against his black face. As the lead bear snapped his jaws, lowered his head, and flattened his ears, the other bears came alert to the nearby presence of humans. They growled and made
whooshing
sounds to show their irritation, their big heads turning as they stared from Jack to Yonah to Ashley and back again.

Fear rooted Jack to the spot. His mind flashed with the images of Heather and her wound and the blood that had seeped into the ground, deep red in the grass. There, right ahead of him, he saw those powerful white teeth that could rip through flesh as though it were tissue paper.

“Don't move!” Yonah commanded. “Act like you're not scared, and they'll leave us alone.”

A low growl, guttural and deep, came from the largest of the bears. Reflecting the dying sunlight, his eyes glowed like bits of gold. Rearing up on his hind legs, the bear stood upright. Jack gasped at the size of it.

“Don't panic,” Yonah ordered, but fear rose from Jack's stomach, jamming his throat until he could hardly breathe.

“There're so many!” Ashley gasped. Just then a fifth bear appeared, smaller than the others but moving more quickly toward them. Her voice shaking, Ashley said, “Yonah, are you sure that's right? That we should stay here and not move? Shouldn't we run away?”

His sister's voice jolted Jack into action. “He's wrong. We've got to get out of here. Fast!” he commanded. “Away from the stream. Walk—don't run.”

Yonah yelled, “No! Stand still and make yourself look big! Show you're not scared of them.”

“Be bear food if you want to,” Jack shouted back. “I'm taking my sister out of here. Come on, Ashley!”

Torn between what he believed was right and yet wanting to protect his friends, Yonah hesitated, then decided to follow them.

The trees were deep in shadow, like pools of ink, but patches of sunlight remained where the tourists were gathered. Fighting the impulse to run, Jack moved into the open, toward them. He wanted to get where other people were. Closer…closer…they were going to make it.

Ahead, the tourists waved their arms. Some of them cupped their hands around their mouths, calling out something, but Jack couldn't make out their words.

“What?” he shouted.

“Back!” a deep voice was yelling. “Turn around!”

“What are they saying?” Ashley cried.

“I don't know,” Jack answered.

Glancing backward, Jack suddenly realized what everyone was hollering about. Three more bears were coming down another slope. Eight bears! How could it be possible?

“Go the other way!” Yonah yelled at Jack, grabbing Ashley's arm.

As Jack whirled around, his voice froze in his throat. Black bears were coming at them from every direction—large bears, small bears, bears pawing the ground and swatting the tree branches, bears huffing, growling, and chomping their teeth—always moving toward them.

In minutes they would be surrounded with no way out!

“Ashley, climb this tree. Right now! And stay there!” Jack ordered her. For once Ashley obeyed him, letting him boost her foot with his hands since the lowest branch was higher than she could reach. That left Jack and Yonah on the ground, Jack tingling from anxiety as he locked eyes with the nearest bear across the 50 yards that separated them.

“Over here! Come near us! Get closer!” the tourists were shouting,

“No, don't go! Don't leave me here in the tree by myself!” Ashley pleaded.

“No way!” Jack assured her, his eyes riveted on the biggest bear.

Snapping its jaws, lowering its head, flattening its ears, the bear growled and slapped the ground to show his irritation. He looked from Jack and Yonah to the cluster of tourists as if deciding which would be the biggest nuisance in keeping him from getting where he wanted to go.

For Jack, it was as if time had stopped, as if his breathing might never begin again. This time Yonah didn't order him to make noise because Yonah was silent, too. The other bears came a little closer but seemed to be deciding which was more important: the humans or the chicken pieces on the creek banks. Most of them decided in favor of the chicken.

Then, suddenly, the near bear charged. “Whoa!” Jack yelled, because it was charging right at them!

“Jack!” Ashley screamed, terrified for her brother.

“He's bluffing,” Yonah said, and sure enough the bear stopped after a mere ten feet. He pawed the ground, huffing, pacing first toward the tourists and then circling back toward Jack and Yonah.

“Grab that branch,” Yonah told Jack, pointing to a good-size limb lying on the ground. “If he runs over here, start hitting him with the branch. But keep looking around—make sure you know where the other bears are.” Yonah unzipped his sweatshirt, grabbed the two sides, then raised his hands high, stretching the shirt between his arms.

“What are you doing?” Jack yelled.

“Making myself look bigger to scare them off.” Pumping his arms so that the sweatshirt flapped between them, Yonah yelled some Cherokee words at the bear.

“Ashley, shake those tree branches as hard as you can,” Yonah told her. “Make a whole lot of noise. Act like you're a mountain lion or something.”

None of it worked. The big bear decided to take action. With frightening speed, he came rushing—not toward the tourists, but toward Yonah, reaching him faster than Jack thought possible.

 

Ashley yelled as Jack started to swat the bear with the branch. That was useless, because the bear swatted back—but not at Jack. Sweeping his paw with those curved claws in a powerful arc, he sliced through the sleeve of Yonah's sweatshirt, leaving four parallel scratches across his arm.

Yonah tried to hit back, but his arms got tangled in the sleeves of his sweatshirt. The tourists shouted at the tops of their lungs, Ashley shrieked, and Jack hollered as he kept swatting the moving bear with the branch, but nothing helped. The bear's mouth opened wide, and he lunged toward Yonah's face.

In the wild confusion, Jack hadn't noticed Merle racing across the ground toward them. But suddenly, there he was, his guitar raised above the bear's head. The guitar made an odd thudding, vibrating noise as Merle hit it against that big male bear, beating him on the head with it and across the back and on the shoulders and chest until the sound became a loud
c-r-ack,
as the back of the guitar broke in half, crosswise. Merle kept hitting. Next, the front of the guitar splintered, sending bits of wood flying everywhere.

Now the bear turned toward Merle, its jaws wide, the long canine teeth gleaming. Still Merle swung at him, using all that was left of his guitar—the neck with the fingerboard. The guitar strings dangled and whirled crazily as he smacked the bear's snout with it. When the bear lunged, Merle shoved the neck of the guitar sideways into the wide open mouth, and the bear clamped down on it.

The scene suddenly turned so crazy that Jack couldn't tell what was happening. Out of nowhere, Blue appeared, forcing himself between Yonah and the attack bear. And Steven—where had he come from?—grabbed the branch from Jack's hands and started whapping the other bears that milled around, way too close.

“Ashley, stay up in that tree!” Olivia screamed.

Kip sprinted across to the man in charge of the tour, grabbed the bullhorn from his hand, and started bellowing into it, “Go! Get gone! Get out of here, bears!”

He must have turned the bullhorn to full volume, because his amplified yelling echoed so loudly it not only scared the bears, it made the whole scene feel like a nightmare or a horror movie. “Go! Get away! Scat!”

The bears decided that was enough. With the neck of the guitar still in his jaws like a dog carrying a bone, the biggest bear turned and loped away from all those shouting, screaming, panicked, excited people. The rest of the bears took their time leaving the scene, climbing the hill until they became lost in the foliage. Piles of chicken remained along the creek bank.

“I'm OK. I'm OK, Dad,” Yonah kept assuring Blue. “How'd you get here? Where'd you come from?”

“Later. I gotta radio headquarters and tell every ranger on duty to come here right now. Who brought these park visitors here?”

Merle stood silent, breathing quickly, a large flat piece from his ruined guitar in his hand.

Steven was calling, “It's safe to come out of the tree now, Ashley,” as he reached up to help her.

“Are you hurt, Jack?” Olivia cried.

“No, I'm fine. Just scared.”

“How'd these visitors get here?” Blue demanded again.

Yonah panted, “Some guy from Gatlinburg brought them. I can't see him now. He's gone.” After a glance toward Merle, Yonah asked Blue, “Hey Dad, do you have a handkerchief or something I can wrap around these scratches? They're bleeding.”

“Right. Let me look at that. Olivia, will you tell Kip to find the guy who brought the visitors here, wherever he is? And tell Kip to get names and addresses from the visitors. We'll need witnesses.”

Merle's body seemed to slump as though the air had been let out of it. His gaze sank to the ground.

“And Steven,” Blue added, “why don't you get your kids into your car right now, and I'll take Yonah in the patrol car.”

Yonah stammered, “Uh…what about Merle?”

Was it happening? Was Yonah going to accuse Merle right here and now? How could he do such a thing, after Merle had kept him from getting his face chewed off! Expecting the worse, Merle stood unmoving, his knuckles white as he clutched a piece of his broken guitar.

“I mean, I want Merle to ride with us, Dad.” Turning to Merle, Yonah said, “I owe you big time, brother. You saved my skin. I feel awful about your guitar.”

“'It's OK,” Merle muttered, looking relieved.

So Yonah was finally on Merle's side. But even if they all stayed silent, Merle would find himself in trouble because of the witnesses. It was just a question of how much trouble.