Night of the Black Bear (7 page)

They found Steven exiting the visitor center. Before he had the chance to speak, Jack announced, “No mash tie-in. They just make cornmeal here. Am I right?”

“You got it,” Steven agreed.

“So now where do we go and what do we do?”

Steven motioned them to follow him to the car. Right before he unlocked the doors, he said, “We've done our sleuthing pretty quickly this morning, faster than I expected. So I've been thinking—we're almost at the southern boundary of the park. How about if we give Ashley a little treat?”

“A treat? For me?” Ashley brightened.

“For you. Take a look at Jack's map, Ashley. What's the next town, heading south?”

Jack unfolded the map to let his sister study it. “It's called Cherokee!” she answered.

“Yes. It's on the Cherokee Indian Reservation. The ranger I was just talking to mentioned that there's a Museum of the Cherokee Indian we can visit. Since you haven't found your Cherokee legend so far,” Steven said, patting Ashley's shoulder, “I thought this would be a great place to look for it.”

Ashley was so excited she practically dove into the car. But since Jack was hungry, he persuaded his father to stop first at a fast-food place for lunch, where Ashley kept urging them to eat faster. She didn't even finish her own burger. Wrapping the last part of it in a napkin, she shoved it into the pocket of her zip-up flannel shirt.

“That's going to make your shirt greasy and smelly,” Jack told her. “I don't care. Let's go.”

The museum was less than two miles farther. After they parked and went inside, they were greeted by a guide, a Cherokee woman named Juanita.

“First I'll show you the exhibit rooms,” she said, “and then we have a film.”

To Ashley, and to Jack, too, this was a wonderful part of the day's trip. The museum was filled with life-size statues of Cherokee warriors and Cherokee leaders, arranged in scenes to make them look real. One scene showed richly dressed Cherokee elders greeting the arriving ships of Europeans. The scene Jack liked best was a warrior in buckskins holding up an offering to the gods.

While he was admiring that, Ashley cried, “Look—masks! Like Yonah made, but different kinds, too.”

“These are masks worn by warriors from each of the seven Cherokee clans,” Juanita explained. “The Bird clan, Wolf clan, Wild Potato clan, Paint clan, Long Hair clan, Deer clan, and Blue clan.”

“Could I ask you a question?” Ashley moved closer to Juanita and began, “Yonah…uh…a friend of ours, said the Europeans came here and pushed the Cherokee people out of the Smokies. Can you tell me what kind of Europeans they were?” Jack knew Ashley was thinking about their own Italian grandparents. She'd inherited her dark eyes and hair from them.

“Way back in the 18th century,” Juanita answered, “the English and Scotch-Irish first came to these parts. A century later, they had moved onto much of the Cherokee land.”

Jack, whose blond hair and blue eyes matched Steven's, whispered, “Was that us, Dad?”

Steven whispered back, “Yep. Those Scotch-Irish and English folks, the ones who chased away the Cherokees, were our long-ago ancestors. I know you're not proud of what they did, and neither am I.”

Juanita had moved ahead of them so she didn't hear that—not that it would have mattered, probably. Turning around, she invited them, “If you'd like to come here into this small movie theater, you'll be able to watch the history of the Cherokee Nation on film.”

That was when the Trail of Tears came to life for all of them, the story of the Cherokee people forced off their land, pushed away by soldiers on horseback. There were scenes of women carrying babies across cold rushing streams, of children shivering as snow blew in swirls around them. Then a deep, halting voice, one that sounded as though it belonged to an ancient Cherokee man, spoke the words slowly:

As they came out of the theater, Jack saw a real trail of tears on Ashley's cheeks. She'd found her Cherokee legend, a sad one, but true.

T
he front door was open, so Jack and Ashley walked right into the Firekiller house. They must have startled Yonah because he whirled to face them, his right hand behind his back.

“Where's your mom and dad?” Yonah demanded.

Startled by Yonah's intensity, Ashley stammered, “Mom called Dad on the cell phone…”

Jack broke in, “The manager of a hotel near the town dump saw some bears there. Dad dropped us off. He's gone to meet Mom and take pictures. OK?”

“OK.”

“So what are you hiding?” Jack came right out and asked him.

Yonah scowled, then slowly brought his hand out in front of him. He was holding a fresh, crisp $50-bill. In a rush he explained, “My mom's working late. She said there's leftover turkey in the fridge, and I should get it out and make sandwiches for us. But Merle's books were on the kitchen table, and when I moved them, this fell out of his biology book. So—what do you think it means?”

“It means he got paid,” Jack answered. “He has a job as a bus—” His words faltered.

“Not at the Sunset Grill, or any other restaurant, I don't think. When people get paid in cash like this, it's from some shady operation.”

Ashley sighed. “You're so suspicious, Yonah. Did you ever just come out and ask Merle where he works?”

Yonah shrugged. “What's the point? He'd lie to me. But hey, here's what I'm thinking. Here's the plan.

We'll drive to Gatlinburg and go up one street after another 'til we see that red bike. It's about a thousand years old, so no one else will have a bike like that anywhere in the city.”

“You're going to drive us?” Jack asked uncertainly. This would be a much longer drive than going two blocks for a burger. Their dad would not like it one bit.

“You scared?” Yonah asked, opening his eyes wide in mock fear. “I could maybe get you a car seat for babies.”

That did it! After that slam, if Yonah had dared Jack to leap off the Space Needle, Jack would have take the dare. In an hour or two his parents would come back here, expecting them to be at the Firekillers', and they'd freak out because their kids wouldn't be around. But it would be worth any consequences to shove Yonah's sneer down his throat, and maybe at the same time prove Merle's innocence. If he
was
innocent.

“Let's get in the car,” Jack said, his voice gruff.

Yonah asked Ashley to sit in front because he said she was great at noticing things—just one more put-down for Jack, who crouched forward in the back staring intently at the streets of Gatlinburg. He made a personal vow to be first to spot that red bike. They passed the Book Warehouse in the Mountain Mall, a Subway sandwich shop, which reminded Jack how hungry he was, Ripley's Aquarium, and then—

“Over there,” Jack cried out, pointing to the right. “I don't see Merle, but there's his bike. It's leaning against a wall behind that small bus.” It was the bus he'd noticed two nights earlier when they'd walked back from the Sunset Grill—the one with “Smokies Touring Service” painted on the sides.

“I'm pulling over.” Yonah drove up an incline and stopped behind a restaurant directly across the street from where the red bike was parked. “Everybody out. We'll sit on the wall in front of this place. It's higher than the street, so we'll get a real good view of whatever's happening over there.”

With Yonah issuing orders like a drill sergeant, the three of them positioned themselves on the stone wall. Legs dangling, they focused on the parking lot across the street and on Merle's bike.

Nothing happened. Ten minutes passed. Where was Merle? Ten more minutes, then another five minutes.

“Could we get something to eat? Maybe in this restaurant behind us?” Ashley asked softly.

Jack was hungry, too. Hours had passed since their lunch in Cherokee. “We could sit at a table next to a window in there,” he suggested. “That way we can keep looking across the street.”

“This place is too expensive,” Yonah told them, “unless you've got about 50 bucks on you…” His words trailed off then because all of them thought about that $50-bill Yonah had carefully returned to Merle's biology book. “Here's a better idea. We'll drive to Charlie's Chicken Shack and order at the drive-through. It's just a couple of blocks from here.”

“Somebody needs to stay here to keep watch,” Jack told him.

Ashley shifted on the stone wall. “You guys go. I'll stay and watch.”

“Maybe…,” Jack hesitated. Was it safe to leave his sister alone in a strange city? What if someone…

“Jack,” she mocked, reading his expression, “it's still daylight! There are people all around. No one is going to kidnap me. If anyone tries to touch me, I'll scream bloody murder. So go! I'm hungry enough to eat any kind of chicken, even fried chicken bladders. Do chickens have bladders?”

Yonah laughed at that all the way back to the car. He seemed to think Ashley was hilarious. “Get in!” he ordered Jack, starting the car before Jack was all the way through the door. Yonah obviously knew his way around Gatlinburg, taking the back streets and coming out onto the main drag right at the sixth stoplight.

They had to wait in line at the drive-through window. Jack checked out the menu—chicken bits, spicy chicken wings—but before he had a chance to order, Yonah told the girl at the window, “Three chicken strip wraps, three onion rings, three cherry slushies, and a whole lot of napkins.” Turning to Jack, he asked, “Got ten bucks? That'll cover yours and Ashley's.”

Jack had the urge to argue that if he was going to pay for his own food, he should be allowed to choose it, but the girl had already left the window. Maybe Yonah thought he had authority to take charge because he was a high school junior, and Jack wasn't quite out of middle school. But older did not necessarily equal smarter, Jack thought resentfully.

“Drive ahead to the next window,” a voice instructed them through a loud speaker. A minute later a guy wearing a black stud in one ear handed Yonah two paper bags and a cardboard tray with the slushies.

“Hold these,” Yonah told Jack. “I have to drive.”

They'd just pulled out of the parking lot when Yonah swerved so suddenly and so fast that Jack got thrown sideways against the door, fighting to keep the slushies from tipping sideways. “What are you doing?” he yelled.

After pulling into a driveway, Yonah immediately cut the motor. “Shut up!” he whispered. “Look over there, at the back door of the drive-in.”

And then Jack saw…Merle! So this is where he works, Jack thought. Why should this be such a big secret? Who cares if he works at a drive-in instead of a restaurant? He was about to say that when he noticed Merle loading large tubs of something or other into the trunk of someone's car, a black Town Car.

“What's…?” he began.

“Weird,” Yonah breathed. “Look inside that guy's trunk. There's six of those big tubs. It can't be trash because there's a dumpster at the back end of the parking lot. And now Merle's getting into the car. I'm gonna follow them.”

After the black Town Car had pulled out into the street, Yonah waited for it to move all the way to the end of the block and turn the corner. Then Yonah started his own car, drove to the end of the block, and followed, staying a couple of cars behind the black one.

Somehow it was not a great surprise that the black car pulled in next to the Smokies Touring Service bus. After all, that's where they'd spotted Merle's bike. Not a surprise, but still a puzzle as the driver got out of the car, went to the tour bus, and opened the luggage bin.

Yonah parked the car where he had earlier. By the time the boys joined Ashley, Merle had already begun lifting the tubs out of the Town Car's trunk. He transferred them, one by one, into the luggage bin of the bus. While all this was going on, Yonah kept staring, his black eyebrows lowered, his dark eyes focusing intently on every movement across the street.

“Can we eat now?” Ashley whispered.

“Sure, go ahead,” Yonah muttered. “I ordered chicken wraps 'cause they're easy to hold. You can eat and watch at the same time.”

What they saw next was one more puzzle piece: Merle wheeled his red bike inside a building and came out carrying his guitar. He climbed the steps into the bus, returning quickly without the guitar.

Minutes later they'd finished their chicken wraps, wiping their fingers on the napkins before shoving all the greasy papers into one of the bags. “My fingers smell like chicken and onions,” Ashley mentioned. “Is there someplace I can wash my hands?”

“No! Don't go anywhere right now,” Yonah ordered, “because if that bus moves, we have to follow it,
muy pronto!
Just do this.” He rubbed his hands vigorously up and down on the front of his sweatshirt, then held them palm-up to show Ashley that they were clean—sort of.

Ashley wrinkled her nose. She wasn't about to wipe smelly onion grease on the outside of her new flannel shirt, even though earlier she'd stowed part of a hamburger in the pocket before finding a place to get rid of it. She dug through the paper bag again, found a fairly clean paper napkin, spit on it to dampen it, then carefully cleaned her fingers with it.

They didn't have long to wait before things started happening across the street. In the next quarter hour, people began to arrive, some in cars, a few in taxis. They seemed kind of old, not exactly elderly but maybe in their 50s or 60s. There were a few younger people getting on board, but no kids. And just about every person who boarded the bus was carrying a camera.

Merle helped some of the older ladies to climb on board, then he just hung around as if to make sure that everyone who was supposed to be on the bus had entered. He was the last to jump up the steps. The door closed behind him.

“Run to the car!” Yonah barked. “Run!” Jack ran. So did Ashley. Behind them, the bus drove slowly, edging into the street.

“Where do you think they're going?” Ashley asked as Yonah started the car.

Jack thought that was pretty obvious. “The bus says Smokies Touring Service. They'll be touring the park.”

“Right, for once,” Yonah remarked.

On the two-mile drive from Gatlinburg to Sugarlands Visitor Center, Yonah drove cautiously, staying a few cars behind the tour bus. When they reached Newfound Gap Road, the bus was only a tenth of a mile ahead of them.

Mile markers lined the side of the road. Jack knew that just past mile-marker 4 they'd come to Chimneys picnic area. Sure enough, that's where the bus slowed. Even though Yonah had stopped farther back along the side of the road, Jack could see Merle jumping out of the bus to unlock a chain stretched across the entrance. Driving through, the bus turned into the parking lot.

Yonah pulled ahead and kept on driving past the entrance. “Why aren't we stopping?” Ashley asked him.

“'Cause they'd see us.” He drove around one more bend in the road before he pulled over to the shoulder.

 

After a couple of cars went by, he made a U-turn so he was headed back toward Chimneys picnic area. Two hundred yards before the picnic grounds turnoff, he parked the car as far off the side of the road as he could without running into a tree. “Everybody out,” he said. “Stay in the shadows.”

“Why are we sneaking?” Ashley asked.

“If I'm right,” Yonah told her, “it will be obvious pretty soon.”

They crept forward like an Indian scouting party—very appropriate, Jack thought—with Yonah in the lead, then Ashley, then Jack, through forest that looked dimmer now that the sun was sinking beneath the tops of the trees. They could see that the concrete-paved parking lot was totally empty—no cars and no bus. So where had the bus disappeared to?

Wordlessly, they followed Yonah, who steered them through the forest to the farthest edge of the parking lot. A pavilion set back among the trees was empty. In fact, the whole place was eerily deserted. They must have made a mistake—there was no tour bus here. Could it have driven out from some other exit and gone somewhere else? But how could they have missed that?

Yonah swung around in a half circle and gestured for them to follow. Ahead was another gate—two metal pipes welded in a sideways
V
hung between two posts. The gate was shut, but a short chain dangled from one end, unfastened. Beyond it lay an unpaved road, with just two tire tracks in the dirt.

“This way, but stay in the trees,” Yonah told them. “The bus has got to be up this road, and that's illegal because this picnic area is closed to traffic at 6 p.m. Somehow they got a key to unlock the gates.”

Illegal? So this was the illegal action Merle was involved in that frosted Yonah so much! Just because the picnic area was supposed to be closed after six o'clock—was that such a big deal? A feeling of rebellion bubbled up inside Jack.

Catching up to Yonah, he started to tell him that he thought this whole thing was incredibly stupid and that they should stop right now, but suddenly, he heard voices. Jack looked straight ahead. There was the tour bus!

It had parked in front of a small concrete-block building painted brown. The door to the building stood open, and as they watched, Merle came out of it, carrying folding chairs. He set them up on the level ground for the tourists to sit on, then went back to get more chairs.

It was a secluded spot, overgrown with foliage, bordering the same creek bank Jack and Ashley had slid along earlier in the day. After all the tourists were seated, chattering and rearranging their chairs for better views, Merle went inside the bus and returned with his guitar case. Opening it, he said a few words to the tourists that Jack couldn't quite hear. Then Merle played his guitar and began to sing.

Jack could hear him clearly now, his voice rising through branches that waved above them in the slight breeze. The song touched the darkening evening skies as the words wound into Jack's conscience: