Bearwalker (3 page)

I
've always had this ambiguous feeling about scary stories, whether they're modern ones like that overblown tale of Jason Jones that Willy was spinning or ancient stories from the time of my ancestors. Whenever my mom or dad would ask me if I'd like to hear a story, part of me would be eagerly saying yes while another part of me was just as vehemently saying no. I knew that the nighttime tale they'd tell might have a monster in it.

Mohawk stories have the world's scariest monsters. Long ago, the forests were full of bloodthirsty things stalking the night. Hungry giants with skins made of stone, huge panthers with eyes of fire, whirlwind creatures screaming through the air, ogres that were once just greedy humans—until they ate their own flesh and then became cannibals with an insatiable lust for human prey.

There were so many terrible creatures in the old days, it's a wonder that any of my ancestors escaped to pass the stories on down. I asked my parents that very question.

“How did any of our old people survive?”

Mom nodded in appreciation of the wisdom of my question. I was only eight years old then.

“Hmm,” she said. “I can think of two reasons. One is that our old Mohawk people were tough.”

Dad chuckled at that remark. “Especially the women,” he said. That earned him a punch in the arm from my mother.

“See what I mean, my son,” Dad said, cradling his arm as if it was broken. “Our women are daaaan-gerous.”

Mom shook her head, but she couldn't keep from laughing. It always made me feel safe and secure when they teased each other like that. I miss that feeling—and both of them—so much.

“What's the second reason, Mom?” I asked.

I had to do that. It looked as if they were about to get into one of their full-scale wrestling matches. They just did it for fun, but when both your parents are soldiers with black belts in karate, a kid learns when he
needs to keep a discussion focused.

My mom raised one eyebrow at my dad. “Later,” she said, cartoon menace in her voice.

“I can't wait,” Dad replied. “Bring it on.”

“Bad parents! Behave!” I said. They both laughed at that, but it worked.

Mom settled back down with her arm around me. “The second reason,” she said, “why our old people survived, even surrounded by all those terrible, hungry creatures, is that we've always been smarter.”

If you were smart enough, if you just used common sense and the lessons taught you by your elders, you might be able to defeat a monster. Even if you were a little kid. I liked that. That's why I kept listening to the stories they told and asking them for more. Those scary stories made me feel safe. Safe because my big strong parents were there with me. Safe because every story they told always came to an end. Safe because the hero or heroine of the story usually found a way to defeat whatever threatened the people.

Usually. But not always. If you were stupid or selfish, if you didn't show proper respect to the natural world, the monster might just win. That was always there in every story. There
might still be a happy ending, but not for the foolish human in that tale.

Why did my parents tell me those stories? I ask myself that question a lot these days now that they're no longer with me. I'm as alone as one of those long-ago orphan boys who had no one to care for him but his old, weak grandmother. (Although no one better call Grama Kateri weak if they want to remain unbruised!) I suppose my dad answered that question that day when I was eight.

“It still must have been scary back when there were monsters,” I said.

My dad leaned over and put both his hands on my shoulders. “Son,” he said, “it's still scary now.”

 

Standing here at the foot of the bus steps, trying not to stare at the tall figure who hasn't seemed to notice me yet, I'm hearing my dad's voice say those words.

There's no logical explanation for the way I'm feeling. But I sense something very wrong about the one I'm looking at from the corner of my eye. You don't make eye contact with a predator unless you're prepared to attract its attention.

Activity is swirling around me. The man in charge of the camp, the square-built blond guy with the sunny smile so broad it must make his face hurt, is talking with Mr. Wilbur and the other adults whose van pulled in while I was sitting in the bus. Things are being unloaded, people are talking, there's an occasional shriek from one of the girls—usually Heidi. Every now and then someone jostles by me. Everyone is doing something. Everyone except me and…him.

He's wearing the same khaki shirt as the others, with that triangle camp logo on the shirt pocket, but that is where all resemblance to the other staff ends. You might say that he looks like an Indian. He has long black hair down to his shoulders and his complexion is almost as dark as mine. Porcupine quill earrings dangle from his earlobes and he wears a leather band around his forehead. There are Indian bracelets on both his wrists, turquoise rings on his thick fingers. Instead of sneakers he wears moccasins on his feet. A big silver Navajo belt buckle is at his waist. His necklace is made of huge bear claws.

That necklace sends a shiver down my back. I know how much some folks, some Indians included, like to wear jewelry decorated with
animal claws. There was a time when I thought about wearing a bear claw necklace, it being my clan animal. But after what Grama Kateri told me a few years ago, I decided that I would never make or put on a bear claw necklace of any kind.

“Some people,” she said in a sad voice, “hunt bears just to chop off their paws and pull their teeth for making necklaces and cut out their gallbladders to make a kind of medicine. They just leave the rest of the bear to rot in the woods.”

Even if I were a person who made necklaces out of grizzly bear claws—and there are some of our people who do that with prayer and care and respect—I know I wouldn't make one like the one he is wearing. His necklace is more than just the claws, which haven't been cleaned but have pale dried flesh there and look like they were roughly torn from the bear's paws with pliers. The bones that the claws were attached to are also on that necklace. It makes me think of one of our tales in which the monster wears a necklace of shrunken human skulls. Or the more modern story I heard on TV about soldiers overseas who cut the fingers off the enemies they killed and strung them together to wear around their necks.

The one wearing that grisly necklace might look Indian to some, but I don't think he is. You can't always tell if someone is Indian by the color of their hair or how they dress. Over the years our people adopted in plenty of folks from other tribes: Abenakis, Mohegans, Irish, English. I once saw a painting in the cultural center up at Akwesasne that was done by a Tuscarora artist, Rick Hill. It made me smile and then nod my head in recognition. It showed an old-time Mohawk man with a roach-style haircut, his face all painted, his clothes those worn three hundred years ago. But his hair was blond, his facial coloring fair. The picture was titled
The First Blue-Eyed Mohawk
.

It's not just hair and skin and clothing. There's a way people hold themselves and talk and behave that makes it clear who they really are, what nation they hold in their hearts. There's something about that one there that freaks me out. His hair, the way he's dressed, everything about him seems unreal. Like it's all a disguise. He's pretending to be something that he is not. Not just pretending to be Indian. Pretending…to be human.

He's studying the crowd of us. Watching us the way a mountain lion might eye a herd of
deer from a place of concealment. I'm so short that I don't think he can see me. Then he suddenly turns his head. His eyes catch mine; I can't look away. A little smile curls his lips.

“I am doomed!” someone behind me declares. “My life is over!”

I quickly turn my head away to look behind me.

It's Willy Donner. He's holding his cell phone and frantically tapping away at its keys. He holds it up again. “Look,” he says, his voice as tragic as that of a shipwrecked sailor. “No signal!”

“Cell phones do not work here,” a know-it-all voice intones. “No towers in these mountains.” It's the square-built man in the khaki uniform. He's close enough now for me to make out the name tag on his chest.

MR
.
MACK
,
CAMP DIRECTOR
, it reads.

“So you won't mind handing them over,” Mr. Wilbur adds. He has a box full of manila envelopes in his hand. “Write your name on the envelope, put the cell phone into it, seal the envelope, and hand it back.” He pauses and holds up his finger. “Also any other electronic devices. IPods, Game Boys, whatever. You are all officially now unplugged.”

Mr. Mack and his assistant counselors go around collecting the electronic devices. There's a lot of them. Enough bulging envelopes to fill a big cardboard letter file box. There's some grumbling, of course, but everyone gives up their gadgets except for me. I just don't own any of that stuff, especially not a cell phone. Grama Kateri firmly believes they cause brain cancer. Mom agrees with her. So there's no one I'd be calling on one.

While the electronic toys are being collected, I sneak a wary glance back toward the
EAGLE'S NEST
sign. There's no longer anyone leaning against the wall. How could someone vanish that fast? Was he just a figment of my overactive imagination? But even if he wasn't real, in the conventional sense of things, I am certain that I had a vision of something threatening.

I
'm sitting in my bunk now. We have an hour for journal time.
Find a quiet place. Write down your impressions of your camping experience thus far.
The boys' cabin is about as quiet as it can get because no one else is in here. That is muy cool by me.

You might think I'd be out exploring the woods, looking for signs of animals, communing with nature. After all, I'm an Indian. Isn't that what we are supposed to do? Not. I try to avoid those stereotypes about Native Americans that the other kids and even some of my teachers seem to have. I never wear any Indian jewelry or moccasins. (You can bet I have never mentioned the regalia stored at Grama Kateri's that I used to wear when Mom took me to dance at powwows.) I keep my hair short—a Marine-style haircut. I can't do anything about my skin color or my features, but
most non-Indians don't see you as a real Indian unless you're dressed for the part. Sneak under the radar. Fade into the background as much as possible.

Even so, under other circumstances, I really would have been out in the forest like a shot as soon as I was given the chance. Stereotypes be danged. But things are different now. I have some real reasons for caution.

I got tripped again as soon as I stepped through the door of Hawk Haven. Being little is an advantage in one way, though. When someone trips you, you don't have far to fall. I went right into a roll that brought me back up to my feet again. Mom had taught me that, as well as making sure when you roll that you come up facing whoever has just tripped you. Asa, of course. He didn't press what he might have thought was his advantage. Maybe my rolling up to my feet surprised him. Maybe the way I was holding my hands up like a boxer deterred him. Or maybe he remembered that Mr. Wilbur and the camp director, Mr. Mack, were just outside.

He and his crew did have one other little surprise for me. The twelve bunk beds ranged around three walls of the cabin came supplied
with thin foam mattresses. Twenty-four mattresses. More than enough for seventeen boys. Except Asa and his boys grabbed all of the seven extras. That left no mattresses on the remaining bunks. I would have had to spread out my sleeping bag on bedsprings—if they even let me claim a bunk for my own.

I figured none of the boys would risk their necks by speaking up for me. When a wildebeest is being chewed on by a pride of lions, the rest of the herd just looks the other way in relief. My only recourse would be to complain to the adults, which would make me even more contemptible in everyone's eyes as a squealer. I'd rather sleep on the floor.

I was surprised, though, at what happened next.

“Hey, Baron.”

It was Cody. He hooked a thumb toward the bed directly over. As I stared in disbelief, he pulled off the extra mattress he'd placed on his bed and flipped it back over his shoulder onto that top bunk, his eyes on Asa and the others the whole time. Asa's jaw dropped so far I thought he'd bruise it on the floor.

Somehow I'd found, if not a friend, at least someone who was not going to treat me like
pond scum. Under most other circumstances I would have been feeling optimistic about my chances of continued survival were it not for my new major reason for worry. A reason I could only hope was just my imagination.

I should talk to someone about this, but there's really no one here I trust enough. The adults, even Mr. Wilbur, would say I was being silly. All I trust is this journal—my secret one. I've already finished writing something safe and nonrevealing—about how exciting it was to see those three moose—in my school journal. That's the one that Mr. Wilbur will see. No mention in it of bullies or fearsome, possibly illusory figures.

I've spent too much time covering up my real feelings, any obvious signs of weakness or loss, to start sharing my fears with anyone outside my family.

Dad and Mom both told me that the surest way to get mugged when you are walking down a dark street late at night in a big city is to give off fear vibes. Act like you think you're going to be a victim, you end up as one.

“Of course,” Dad had added, “the smartest thing to do is to avoid being alone on a dark
street late at night in the first place.”

I'm taking Dad's advice now, trying to avoid trouble. Here in this upper bunk in the corner with my back to the wall I can at least see anything that might be coming at me. I'm not off alone in the woods where something huge and deadly might be lurking behind any big tree or bush or rock.

But I can't stay here forever. I look at my watch just as I hear the clanging sound of a big cowbell being hit by a stick. It's the signal for everyone to gather in the main hall. We're going to rejoin our flights—back to the flock. Time to work together, build teams. Happy little birds, be solitary sparrows no longer.

We'll meet the rest of the camp staff and then be told what group task we have to accomplish for the two remaining hours before dinner—maybe nest-building. Dinner will be our first meal in the dining hall. We were all given lunch bags from the school cafeteria when we left Pioneer Junior High, which we ate on the bus. A sour apple and two peanut butter sandwiches are lodged in my gut like little gooey fists.

I slide my pen into the rings of my private journal and stick it down into the deep breast
pocket of my shirt. Slinging my back pack over my shoulder, I climb slowly down the ladder. Why hurry when every step just brings you that much closer to your doom?