Bearwalker (8 page)

H
ow can things happen so fast and yet also drag on so slowly at the same time? The crazy flurry of activity that started with that frenzied knocking on the door has been followed by what seems like an interminable period of waiting.

But when I look at my watch I see that only an hour has passed since Mr. Mack stumbled in carrying Mr. Osgood's pack. Only an hour. It feels to me as if it were days ago, as if we've all been waiting here not knowing what is going to happen next for an absolute eternity.

I'm amazed at how calm Mrs. Osgood is now. Or maybe I'm not. I know what it is like to be in denial, to absolutely refuse to accept—despite all the evidence to the contrary—that someone you love has just disappeared and will never come back.

At first, all of the adults in the kitchen had
been so stunned at the sight of Mr. Osgood's jacket that they hadn't thought about the kids in the main room. Everyone had been wakened—and freaked out—by the noise of Mr. Mack's arrival. The confusion hadn't been helped by the sight of him being hustled into the kitchen to be questioned.

Mrs. Smiler and the parent chaperones had just started to get the kids semi-settled down again when Mrs. Osgood's loud “No! No!” had come ringing out of the kitchen. That had stirred things up again and started what sounded like a stampede behind me in the main hall. I didn't even think about what I was doing. I quickly pulled the kitchen door shut, cutting off the sight of Mrs. Osgood and that frighteningly bloody green jacket. A big head bumped against my hip. It was Poe-boy. Together, the big black dog and I turned to face the crowd that actually stopped surging forward and got quiet when I thrust my hand up toward them, palm out.

Asa was at the front of the crowd and he took a hesitant step toward me.

“What's going on?” he said in a shaky voice.

His face was pale. Even though he was still physically taller than me, I realized at that
moment both how scared he was and how calm I felt. I also came to the recognition that there really was nothing that scary about him after all. He and his friends, who were huddling together behind him like chickens expecting to get picked off by a hawk, looked like nothing more than frightened little boys. I scanned the other faces in front of me, boys and girls who were my classmates but seemed to be seeing me in a new way. Harle, Cody, Willy, Heidi, Tara, and everyone else. They were all waiting, even Mrs. Smiler and the parent chaperones who were at the back. They wanted reassurance from me, even those boys who'd made me so miserable for so long.

I knew in my heart that if I survived this night I would never be afraid of Asa and his crew again. For the first time I understand something that my mom had told me one day when I came home after being picked on by bigger kids. “Bullies,” she said, “act that way because they're afraid.”

I also knew, for whatever reason, that what I had to do now was say something to help everyone calm down. “It's okay,” I said. “Mr. Mack got hurt, but it wasn't bad. Mr. Wilbur will be out in a second to explain things. Settle, okay?”

It wasn't what you'd call oratorial eloquence. But it worked. The kids calmed down, no longer milling about like a herd of cattle about to head for the nearest cliff, and Mrs. Smiler moved to the front. She raised her hands in a shooing gesture.

“Okay, campers,” she said, “you heard the man. Party's over. Everybody retreat to their own crash pad.”

Then she turned, smiled at me, and leaned close. “Baron,” she said in a soft voice, “you are one cool dude.”

A hand grasped my shoulder from behind. “I'll second that,” Mr. Wilbur said. “Think I need to say anything to the kids now, Ginny?”

Mrs. Smiler shook her head. “I think it's all groovy for now. What they need to do is get some sleep or they'll be basket cases tomorrow.”

“More than they already are?” Mr. Wilbur smiled, but I could tell that his smile was forced.

“What is up?” Mrs. Smiler said.

“We're still figuring it all out.” Mr. Wilbur shook his head, his brief smile vanished now. “Let's just say I was a little too right in my misgivings about our new camp director and his staff.”

 

Misgivings.
Not a bad word for how I'm feeling now. Not fear, but a vague uncertainty about what exactly is going to happen next. Aside from being certain that, whatever it is, it is not going to be good.

I've slipped back into the kitchen after the other kids were settled into their sleeping (or lying awake with their eyes wide open while being filled with dread) areas.

Poe-boy, of course, has followed me, although he leaves my side to trot over to Mrs. Osgood, who kneels down and puts her arms around him. Her eyes are moist, but her face looks calm now.

I'm trying to be unobtrusive, but Mr. Wilbur notices me. For a moment I think he's going to ask me to leave the room. Then he shakes his head and smiles in resignation. “You might as well stay and hear the rest of this, Baron,” Mr. Wilbur says.

He looks over toward Mr. Mack, slumped in a chair under the alert gaze of Mr. Philo, who is now holding the shotgun. “It won't hurt to have one more pair of eyes keeping watch on our deceptive friend over there.”

He motions for me to move over near the door that leads outside. It's on the other side of
the room from Mr. Mack, but plenty close to hear all that will be said as he takes a deep, shuddering breath and starts to speak.

“I needed someone who knew the area. That is why I hired him.” Mr. Mack doesn't look up. He keeps his gaze on his bloody hands. It is as if he's talking to himself, unaware that anyone else is here. “How could I have known who he was and what he was really up to? It is certainly not my fault, not my fault at all.”

“Where's my husband?” a sharp voice cuts in.

Mr. Mack lifts his head in surprise, as if realizing for the first time he's not alone.

“George,” Mrs. Osgood reminds him, holding up her husband's coat with her left hand, her right hand on Poe-boy's head. “Where is he now?” The big dog catches the tone in her voice. A growl starts deep in its chest.

Mr. Mack cowers in his chair. “Keep that dog away from me. I don't know. All I know is that Walker handed me that pack with that jacket in it. All he was supposed to do was stop him from calling for help. He wasn't supposed to do anything to him. I didn't know the man was a killer.”

“But you never saw my husband's body, did you?” Mrs. Osgood is standing. For some reason she looks less distressed than before as she holds
back Poe-boy. The huge black Labrador's growling has gotten much louder now and he is baring his teeth at the man who is shrinking even further back.

“No, no. No, I didn't see his body.”

Mrs. Osgood nods. “Good,” she says, pulling Poe-boy back with her as she sits down. She smiles over at me. “George is not an easy man to kill, son,” she says.

Mr. Philo kicks the leg of Mr. Mack's chair. “You said he was a killer and that you didn't know who he was. I assume you meant that man who calls himself Walker White Bear. Explain what you meant.”

Mr. Mack runs a hand through his hair. An officious tone comes back into his voice. “You fail to understand, sir,” he says. “Staffing decisions are difficult, even under the best of circumstances. I wasn't able to obtain a résumé, you know. I would not expect a former basketball player to appreciate the difficulty of being an efficient administrator when lacking the requisite access to properly background-check one's employees.”

Mr. Wilbur rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. I know what he means by that. This guy, Mr. Mack, is whack.

Mr. Philo nudges the barrel of the shotgun against Mr. Mack's shoulder. “Speak English, pal,” he says. “I'm only a dumb ex-jock.”

“Careful with that shotgun,” Mrs. Osgood warns. “It has a hair trigger. It would smart some if he was to get hit with the load I've got in those shells.”

Mr. Philo steps back. “Speak,” he says again. “How do you know the man's a killer and who he is?”

“How do I know?” Mr. Mack's face is defiant now, his tone superior. “Do you recall my two other counselors? As soon as they saw that…”—he looks toward Mrs. Osgood and her husband's jacket, which is now neatly folded and placed on the floor by her feet—“that blood, I could see from the looks on their faces that they just wanted to get as far away from all of this as they could. They were petty criminals, but they are not murderers. And then when he told us who he really was, that was the last straw for them. They turned and ran.” Mr. Mack shudders and puts a hand to his forehead. “He grinned at me when they ran. Then he pulled out that long knife of his and went after them.”

Mr. Mack is talking louder and faster now, his hands tapping his knees as he speaks. “Even
though they split up, they didn't get far. Either of them. He caught them. Rounded them up. He can see in the dark like some animal. And he's so fast, so strong. I heard their screams. They screamed and they kept screaming. I didn't look back, though. I was running too. Running and running and running until I got back here.”

Mr. Mack's voice slows down and then stops like a toy whose battery has run down.

It is more awful than I thought. Everyone is shocked.

But Mr. Philo is not too shocked to speak. “You still didn't answer my second question, pal. Who is he?”

Mr. Mack whispers the name, but everyone hears it. Mrs. Philo raises both hands to her mouth. It's a name we all know.

“Jason Jones.”

J
ason Jones is real. He's not a myth at all. Mr. Philo is shaking his head. “Of course,” he says. “I should have recognized him. But his hair was blond and crew cut when he was a boy and his eyes were blue. Why is he pretending to be an Indian?”

Mrs. Philo pats her husband on the arm. “Hair dye,” she says. “Contact lenses. That poor boy always did go in for drama. Remember how he kept changing his name and saying he was really adopted? Can you blame him for that after how he was treated by…them? He probably does think he's an Indian now. Poor deluded boy.”

Mr. Philo shakes his head again. He's holding the shotgun loosely in one hand with its barrel now pointing at the floor. “He's not a poor boy any longer, Dora,” he says. “Even when he was fourteen he was dangerous. How
did the state ever let him out? You know he blames us for what happened to him.”

“I know,” Mrs. Philo says, taking her husband's hand as he leans the shotgun in the corner. “I know, Wally.”

What happened to the real Jason Jones, the one who is calling himself Walker White Bear? Mr. Wilbur doesn't know the real story any more than I do, and we both listen as the Philos fill us in about the “poor boy” who was the son of a camp cook and caretaker here at Chuckamuck over twenty years ago. That cook and the caretaker were new and they showed up with their gangly teenage son in tow, a big boy who was withdrawn and wouldn't make eye contact. The Philos, who had always been kindhearted, decided to let Jason take part in all the activities as if he were one of the regular campers.

“We thought it would do the lad good,” Mr. Philo says. “I come from humble beginnings myself.”

But they'd missed two things. The first was how badly he had been abused by someone, really badly abused. They first began to realize that when they noticed the scars on his arms and legs the day Jason came for swimming
lessons. Scars from burns.

“An accident,” Jason's father said when Mr. Philo asked him about it. “The kid's always been clumsy.” From that day on, no matter how hot it was, Jason wore long-sleeved shirts and slacks and didn't come to any more swimming classes.

The second thing the Philos failed to notice was that the big, shy boy's personality was what people now call bipolar, with a good amount of paranoid schizophrenia mixed in. The other campers hadn't tortured him or played mean tricks on him at all. He'd imagined all that and come to the Philos time after time to complain about what the other kids were doing to him. But it wasn't true.

What was true was that Jason Jones really was being abused by his own parents, even though he denied it when the Philos asked him directly about it. Then the Philos's cat disappeared. For a day or two they thought a coyote might have gotten it, until Jason said in an innocent voice, “Did anyone look back in the clearing along the trail to the spring?”

Mr. Philo found their cat—what was left of it—in that clearing. The footprints in the soft earth matched those of only one person.

The stories about Jason killing other
campers weren't true. It went no further than that cat. The Philos brought in the sheriff's office and people from Social Services. All three members of the Jones family were interviewed and at one point Jason confessed to killing the Philos's cat—and other small animals—over the past years. He also admitted that it was his father who beat and tortured him whenever he got drunk—which was every weekend. It was all put on tape, which was good since Jason later denied all of it and claimed that the Philos were the ones who had mistreated him. They were out to get him and his family, he said. It was all their fault.

The Joneses were fired from Camp Chuckamuck. Jason was put on medication and sent into foster care, even though he begged to stay with his mother and father.

“We kept up with what happened to them through the papers,” Mrs. Philo sighs. “It was such a tragedy.”

Jason Jones was finally allowed to go back to his family. He was nineteen years old by then, a huge, hulking man and no longer a little boy. Somehow, despite his medical history, he'd been accepted in the Army and had been to boot camp and trained for the Rangers. Then he was
home on a weekend leave.

“Jason's story,” Mr. Philo says, “was that intruders broke in and did…what was done. But the story didn't hold up. He was tried for the murder of his parents and because of the way the trial went, because of the unbalanced way he acted and the outrageous things he said…”

“Why, at one point he stated that Wally and I were the ones who'd gone there and done that dreadful deed,” Mrs. Philo interjects.

Mr. Philo nods. “In the end a decision was made to send him to a secure medical facility instead of a regular prison.”

“We thought he'd spend his life in there,” Mrs. Philo adds.

“But apparently not,” Mr. Philo concludes.

A long silence follows. I think I know the question that is in everyone's mind. But no one speaks up, so I do.

“Well, what do we do now?” I ask, stepping up to the table. I'm surprised at how calm and clear my voice is.

Mr. Wilbur actually chuckles. “Baron,” he said, “thanks for cutting through the gloom. You have hit the nail on the proverbial head. Any ideas?”

A chair scrapes on the floor and I turn to look. Mrs. Osgood has just stood up and walked over to one of the cupboards. “I've got one,” she says, as she rummages around and pulls out a cell phone. “We can call for help. The Sheriff's Department can have a mountain rescue helicopter in here by first light.”

“Cell phones don't work around here,” Mr. Wilbur says.

“They don't work most places, young fella,” Mrs. Osgood replies, a no-nonsense tone in her voice. “But George found one place where you can pick up a signal. He calls it the Bear Seat. Look.”

Everyone gathers around the table as Mrs. Osgood pulls out a map of the trails and unfolds it. “Up here,” she says, “just a random scoot. Not more than a mile and a half.”

“I remember that spot,” Mr. Philo says. “It's the west lookout on the side of Pisgah Mountain. There is a rock slab there that looks rather like a bench.”

“Ayup,” Mrs. Osgood says. “The bears like to come at sunset and sit there. That is why George calls it the Bear Seat.”

Mr. Philo taps the map with a long index finger. “I know that place also. I always led our
trail hikes past there, though I never saw a bear.”

“You never was an Abenaki, either,” Mrs. Osgood says. Her voice is light and teasing, which is strange seeing as how her husband's bloody jacket is still resting on the floor behind her. Or perhaps not so strange because she is so certain he's alive. Then again, everything is weird right now—this night, the way we are talking. My head is swimming from the strangeness of it all.

Mr. Philo smiles back at her. “Point taken. All I am saying is that it is an easy hike to get there. It's only a hundred yards off the main marked trail. I could do it in the dark.”

Mrs. Philo is patting her husband's arm. He turns to look at her.

“What?” he says.

“Not with those knees and”—she pats his chest—“this heart, dear.”

“All right. Point taken.” He looks at Mr. Wilbur. “So Kirk will be the one to do it. Think you can locate that spot?”

“Piece of cake,” Mr. Wilbur says. “Even a child could find the way.”

He turns to Mr. Mack, who is still slouched in his seat at the other end of the room, a blank, uncaring look on his face. “Does he have any
weapons? Did any of you bring any firearms?”

Mr. Mack looks up like a man waking from an unpleasant dream. Slowly, he shakes his head. “No, no. None of us had guns. We never planned violence. All he has is that big knife of his.” Mr. Mack's whole body shivers. “He said the only way to kill is hand to hand. Guns are for cowards.”

“Good that we have the only gun, then,” Mr. Philo says.

“For all the good it will do you,” Mrs. Osgood adds.

I suppose she's right. Whoever takes that phone will have to avoid getting ambushed by Walker White Bear or Jason Jones or whoever that homicidal maniac thinks he is. Even a shotgun may not be enough protection.

Mr. Wilbur takes the phone from her. “Maybe we could do something out front to draw attention there. Then I can slip out the back, circle past the lake and hit the trail over there.” He lifts up the big flashlight, then puts it down. “Baron, I should probably borrow that little head lamp of yours. A small light like that is less likely to be seen. I can just flick it on now and then to find the silver trail markers.”

I'd forgotten I was still wearing the flash
light. I take it off my forehead and hand it to him. I wish there was something more I could do or even say to help.

Mr. Wilbur turns back and reaches toward the corner. A perplexed look comes over his face. “Where is it?”

“Are you looking for this?” a sarcastic voice says.

We all turn to see Mr. Mack, his back straight, not slouching in terror and despair any longer. There is a very unpleasant smile on his face. The shotgun he's holding is pointed at all of us.