Night of the Black Bear (9 page)

T
uesday 9:45 a.m., Park Headquarters.

The table seemed about the same size as the one in the teachers' lunchroom at Jack's school, but instead of middle school teachers chattering over lunches they'd brought from home, the eight people around this table sat in silence. No coffee cups, no glasses of water—the scene resembled interrogation rooms on TV crime dramas. Merle and Yonah had been allowed to miss school to take part in this meeting, but they looked like they'd rather be anywhere else but here.

Were they seated that way on purpose? Jack wondered. The four adults were on one side: Kip Delaney, Blue Firekiller, and Olivia and Steven Landon, in that order. And on the other side of the table, in the same order, Merle, Yonah, Ashley, and Jack. The trouble with this picture was that Yonah, Ashley, and Jack had parental support directly across from them, while Merle, the kid in trouble, was on his own. And pretty scared.

Jack drummed his fingers on the table and then stopped, because it sounded too loud in the stillness. Across the table, Kip concentrated as he shuffled some reports in a pile in front of him. Then he peered over his reading glasses, cleared his throat, and began speaking.

“Well, first I'll tell you that we got the guy. A couple of rangers drove the tourists back to where they first boarded the bus in Gatlinburg. The tourists gave us the name of the man who was running these tours—Orson Moffett. In fact, those folks just wouldn't stop talking about the whole experience.” Kip paused, then smiled a little. “By the time I got there, they'd downloaded about a million pictures onto their laptops, and they made me look at all of them. Video, too!”

Merle slumped so far he nearly slid out of his chair. Even if he'd wanted to, there was no way now he could deny he'd been part of the Smokies Touring Service bear excursion.

Kip continued, “Moffett's in trouble because he didn't have a permit for commercial activity in the park. That's the small stuff.” Looking up, Kip added, “The big stuff is that there's a law against feeding, harassing, or disturbing the park's bears. A federal law.”

He handed one of the papers to Blue, who passed it to Olivia, who read it quickly and gave it to Steven. With his expression turning serious after he read it, Steven slid it across the table to Jack.

At the top of the page it said:

Don't Feed the Bears Act

108th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 1472

The Secretary of the Interior shall enforce
the regulatory prohibition against the feeding of
wildlife on National Park System lands
to prohibit individuals from intentionally
feeding bears for the purpose of enticing bears
to a particular area, a practice known as bear baiting.

 

There was more, but Ashley tugged the paper from Jack's fingers. Anyway, he'd seen enough.

“A little background here,” Kip was saying. “I'm going to explain the three different bear behaviors in this park. First, there's wild behavior. Bears that have wild behavior rarely ever come near people. If they smell humans, they run away from them because they're afraid of people—that's why park visitors usually don't see many bears. And we work very hard to keep it that way.”

Kip was speaking to all of them, but Merle hung his head as if the words were arrows aimed right at his heart.

“The bears' number one defense against humans is their fear of people,” Kip continued. “When we strip that fear away from them, it puts not just peoples' lives in jeopardy, but also the bears' lives.”

Ashley pushed the paper showing the federal law toward Yonah, who reached forward to take it. He jerked back fast, his lips forming a silent “Ow!” as the table's sharp edge stung his bandaged arm.

“The second behavior,” Kip went on, “is called habituated behavior. That's about bears feeding near picnic areas or trails where they find food that people have dropped or otherwise left behind. The food still smells like humans and that would normally scare them off, but they get over their fear pretty quickly because the food rewards them.”

“And speaking of food,” Steven said, staring at his daughter, “as I recall, you had a half-eaten hamburger in your pocket yesterday, Ashley.”

“No I didn't. I threw it away—after a while.”

Jack, Ashley, Yonah—all three of them had had the smell of food on their clothes the night before from wiping greasy fingers on their shirts and jeans.

Kip added, “I suspect last night's attack at Chimneys had more to do with the third level—food-conditioned bears. That means that when bears become so used to getting human food, they start to depend on it. We found out that Orson Moffett has been feeding bears at Chimneys since the first spring thaw.”

For the first time Merle spoke up. “I only started working for him a week ago,” he said in a shaky voice.

Ignoring that, Blue explained, “You can't say every bear that's food-conditioned is gonna attack somebody, but you sure can't say if you food-condition a bear it's
not
gonna attack somebody. Moffett has made big trouble for us. And for the bears.”

Silence. Jack felt bad enough, but Merle looked like he was ready to fall to his knees and beg for mercy.

“In those pictures from last night,” Blue said, “I saw tubs labeled Charlie's Chicken Shack. When I checked with the Shack manager, he told me Moffett's been buying leftover chicken and chicken parts there regularly, paying $100 a tub.”

“That's a lot of money!” Jack exclaimed.

“Humph!”
Blue snorted. “That's negligible, compared to what he was earning. He had 18 tourists in the bus last night at $200 a person.”

“Two hundred dollars!” Quickly Jack did the math. $3,600 minus $600 for chicken parts—that was a big profit for one night's work.

“He paid me $50 for singing,” Merle said. “Fifty dollars each time I went with the tour bus people.” Then, more softly, “How much trouble am I in?”

Blue didn't answer directly. Instead, he said, “I'd like you kids to wait in the hall while we have a little meeting here.”

Yonah asked, “Including me? And Merle?”

“‘Kids' includes you and Merle,” Kip told him.

Jack looked toward his parents, who didn't return the look because they were talking quietly to each other. As the four “kids” filed out of the room into the hall, they heard the door close firmly behind them. There was nothing in the hall but four chairs, a wastebasket, and a copy machine. As each of them picked out a chair to sit on, Jack felt the way he had when he'd been sent to the principal's office for firing off potato nuggets in a cafeteria food fight in sixth grade.

Ashley broke the silence. “Jack and I are grounded for the rest of the month.”

“Why?” Merle asked.

“For going off in the car with Yonah and not telling anyone,” she answered. “What about you, Yonah?”

“My driver's license has been suspended—by my parents. If I don't do anything wrong between now and the first of June, they might let me drive a date to the junior prom. But that's conditional. I'm allowed to appeal.”

It was a relief to talk about it. Jack hadn't been alone with Merle and Yonah since the bear attack the night before. He said, “I never figured it out, and I didn't want to ask my parents last night because things were kind of…uh…tense, after we got back to the hotel. But how did they find us at Chimneys picnic area? I mean, you pulled the car way off to the side of the road, Yonah. Did they drive all over the park and just happen to notice the car?”

Yonah shook his head. “Our car has a Starfind Auto System. It's one of those communication things where if you lock yourself out of the car, you can call them and they unlock it. Or if you're in a crash, they instantly radio for help. And if your car's missing, you phone them and they find it.”

“So they found us easy, then,” Jack said.

“Noooo! That's one of the things my dad's maddest about. I mean, maddest at
me
. He called Starfind, and they told him he would have to report that the car was stolen. Report it to the police, and then the police would have to contact the Starfind people before they would even start to look for it! My dad knew it wasn't stolen. He already figured I had it. But he had to call the police anyway.”

“Whew!” Jack could just imagine the stress in that whole process, with Steven, Olivia, and Blue informing city police about a missing car and three missing kids.

“Then, after our folks got to the car,” Yonah continued, “they heard all the people yelling and screaming so they ran toward the noise. Lucky for us!”

Suddenly Jack noticed something sticking out from a corner down the hall. Something red!

“Is that your—?”

“Uh-huh,” Merle nodded. “My bike. Kip found it last night when they gathered evidence in Moffett's garage. He found my guitar case, too.” Merle stood up and walked to the end of the hall, then came back carrying the case. He sat down with the guitar case on his lap, the clasps toward his chest. After unsnapping them, one clasp at a time, he opened the lid very slowly and reached inside.

If he has mushrooms in there, I'm going to freak, Jack thought. Instead, Merle took out something that might have been a box, but the guitar lid hid most of it.

“Uh…,” he began.

For a guy who could write great song lyrics, Merle seemed to have trouble finding words at that moment. After letting the guitar case slide gently from his knees to the floor, he stood up and carried the box to Yonah.

Yonah's eyes widened. “Chief Cherokee!”

“Take this,” Merle told him. “It's yours.”

Yonah reached for the box, holding it as if it were the holy grail. Now it was Yonah who couldn't find words. “Where'd it…? How'd you…?”

“I was planning to give it back to you a week ago,” Merle told him, “when my mom got hurt, and I went to stay at your house. It's been in your house this whole while. But you kept raggin' on me all the time, and that made me mad. So, I just left it in a drawer. But now….”

Yonah shook his head and held out the box to Merle, saying, “I can't take it back.”

“Why not?”

“My mother gave it to you. To keep.”

Ashley's chair was close to Yonah's, and she reached to touch his arm. “Yonah, he wants you to have it. It's a peace offering,” she murmured softly.

Hesitating for what seemed like a long time while he stared from the box to Merle and back again, Yonah finally stood up and said, “I accept this, brother. Thanks.” They touched fists, sealing the treaty.

Yonah had just opened the box to show them Chief Cherokee when the door opened, and Kip called out, “Come in now, please. All of you.”

With the Chief Cherokee box under his arm, Yonah followed the rest of them into the room. Blue said, “Put the guitar case over there in the corner, Merle. And you kids, sit where you were sitting earlier.”

The trial is about to begin, Jack thought. Ashley bit the tip of her fingernail. What was going to happen? It was as if Kip had heard Jack's unspoken question.

“We've got big, serious problems from this point on,” he began. “All those bears you saw last night are now food-conditioned, which means they'll be going after food whenever they think tourists have any. We'll try to take that bad behavior out of the bears before it gets passed on to the whole bear population.”

Blue broke in, “We won't have any trouble locating the problem bears—with all those pictures and video tapes the tourists took last night, it's probably the most documented bear incident in all national park history.”

At that, Merle actually blushed.

“What will you do to the bears?” Ashley asked.

Kip shuffled his papers before he answered, “What we do with them now depends on just how food-conditioned they've become. From the bears' viewpoint, going to that picnic area and eating Moffett's bait has been a positive experience. So we have to change it into something negative. We'll go back to Chimneys and capture the bears with traps, then knock them out with drugs, ear tag them, tattoo them, pull a small tooth for aging purposes, and after they wake up again, we'll release them. And hope for the best: that they stay away from people.”

“We're not going to be roughing up the bears, or beating them,” Blue said. “We won't do anything too harsh to them.”

“Unless…,” Olivia spoke up, then left it unfinished.

“Unless they keep coming after park visitors,” Kip said. “Then we would have to put them down.”

Her voice trembling slightly, Ashley asked, “You mean, kill them?”

The four adults were silent, as if trying to think of the gentlest way to answer Ashley, but Yonah came right out with it.

“Yes, kill them. That's what ‘put them down' means.” And angrily, “What's going to happen to that bear-baiter Moffett?”

Kip answered, “We have plenty of evidence—one of the bus tourists, a Mr. Cabelli, videotaped everything that happened last night. It's enough to nail Moffett. For baiting bears and leading tours in a park for money, and operating without a permit, the maximum penalty will probably be a $5,000 fine or six months in jail. Or both. He could also get sued by the attack victims. I sure hope he at least gets some tough jail time.”

Jail time! If Moffett went to jail, Merle must have been wondering, what would happen to
him?
Panicked, he looked from one person to another around the table.

“What about me?” Merle asked uncertainly.

Jack held his breath, waiting for the answer.

“Did you ever actually touch the chicken used for bait?” Blue asked.

“Well, I went to Charlie's Chicken Shack with Mr. Moffett, and I loaded the tubs in the back of his car, then I put them into the bus.”