The Bear: A Novel (6 page)

“Open,” says Stick.

He gives me a smile and I know he wants to be friends with me because he can’t open the tin. He has a hand on the tin and a fat finger is trying to scrape the side to get it open. It makes me remember the raccoon that comes and gets our garbage. It can open all the tins and even the wood box that my dad puts all the garbage inside of and forgets to lock. Sometimes the raccoon hides inside the box and waits for my daddy to come early in the morning when he is still half asleep and has a whiskery face and no glasses. Daddy opens the box and the raccoon jumps out and says boo and I look out the window and watch the raccoon run away with a black mask on his face and I can see that he is laughing about his joke of scaring Daddy. Another time when I watched the raccoon open up all the garbage I got in trouble for not saying but the raccoon was very good at our garbage. He had little fingers that got into everything and when he needed to open a lid he could use a fingernail to push it in and make a hole and pull and eat everything inside. There are holes in the cookie tins but Stick’s fingernails won’t fit in them to pull. Even though I am at the other end of the canoe I can see that Stick would do better with hands like a raccoon’s. His hands look fat and like they can’t do anything.

“Open,” he says.

I just sit there because the canoe is long and tippy and it doesn’t seem like I have energy to get all that way.

“Open now.”

Stick is trying to pretend he is the boss but he isn’t. He is using his Daddy voice and making his eyebrows push up in the middle like that is going to make me move. I want a cookie too maybe but I am tired and there is some wind that makes my hair blow and it feels a little bit like Momma’s fingers so I don’t want to move from my spot.

“Nana. Open, Nana.”

I look over the edge. The canoe is made of metal and it is the color of a money if the money wasn’t a shiny one but older and with a beaver. Or like the one that my grandpa gave me with the head of a guy that I don’t know him. The edge of the canoe moves up and down a little or the water is moving up and down like a rocking and that feels nice too. The sun is smiling down and the water twinkles hello when they touch. My eyes twinkle back and that is nice and I ignore Stick who is huffy at the other end of the canoe. I stare at the water and it ripples all over like the skin of a fish except more like a sandbar except not the color of sand but smooth glitters like a fish. And maybe a hundred fish are swimming just under the top of the water and they are all having their backs up against the top so I can see them moving along the water and flowing under the canoe and Stick and I will be picked up in the canoe and we will ride on the backs of the fish. And they will take us to their fish castle that has a queen fish who is bigger than everyone else and she will welcome us and give us chocolate to say hi and after that maybe some chocolate milk too.

But in the fish land we can’t breathe in water so there are bubbles all around and a fish puts a bubble on my lips with its nose and when that bubble is done another fish comes and brings a new bubble. I say thank you and I’m not sure if it’s the same fish that brought the bubble before so it is a good idea to say thank you anyway when you aren’t sure because it never hurts anyone. The fish says you are welcome and dips his fish nose at me and I think that the fish seem to want manners so saying thank you might get me more treats. Fish don’t like bubble gum.

A big grape bubble goes flying out my mouth and the fish gets whacked on the nose and all of a sudden all the fish turn to look at me so I pull out my magic wand and whack whack whack. The battle of the fish means I have to keep fighting and magic-wanding the fish. And the battle gets bigger and an octopus that is my friend comes to help and he has many arms and they all start going whack whack whack so many times and it’s enough that the canoe starts to wiggle because all the fish are growing big teeth to get us and opening their mouths. The edge of the canoe goes dip and I see the fish are trying to tip us into the water so there will not be bubbles to breathe so I must magic-wand more! I yell “Charge” and say the spell that is the strongest magic spell and I hear a big clang and it is electric from my magic spell but I hear a roll and look across the canoe and that’s when I see Stick is standing up.

Stick is picking up the cookie tin after he dropped it and it went clank. He tucks it under his arm and he has moved on his bum like he is supposed to but now he is at the bar and is standing and trying to get a leg over it and hold onto the tin both at the same time.

“Sit, Stick,” I say because I trained his inside dog with tricks.

He doesn’t care. He won’t listen with the inside dog and just wants to get over the bar so I can open the cookies and he can eat them all. I don’t want him to eat them all and that is not fair. He gets one leg over the bar but it is hard to stand with holding the cookies too. He falls back a little and pulls his body up and then falls because his head is so big like a basketball and it pulls him over all the time. The cookies go clank on the canoe and Stick’s head goes crack on the edge and I think uh-oh that’s going to be bloody. I look at the edge for the blood and I see the water is there and the fish army. There are no fish but the water is right at the edge and Stick is in a ball on the bottom and one of his legs is hooked up on the bar and the other is not. We are tipsy.

I put both my hands out on the other side. Both my hands are on the edge of the canoe and I spread my knees wide out and hang my head over. I keep my hips still but we wiggle the other way and I lean. This is what Momma made me do when she would sit in the canoe and try to make it tipsy. I would stop it by holding still and she would try again and again and she is bigger so after a lot of times we could tipsy into the water and be wet and she grabs me and we laugh.

“Sit, Stick,” I say in the Daddy voice and push my eyebrows in the middle.

I look over and he is crying and still in a pile.

“Get to the middle,” I say.

It’s one of the biggest rules in our family. When Daddy and Momma are pushing the canoe and Momma steers from the back and Daddy is the power at the front and Stick and I have to sit in the middle. I get to sit on Coleman because I am better at not wiggling and being higher up and Stick sits on the bag with our clothes that is squishy so sometimes I wish I sat there because Stick always gets the good things. But really I like the back most times because Momma will talk to me in a quiet voice. We can have our fishing rods in the water and even I can play with Lego but there is no standing up if we want to stay in the middle.

I lean out and look at water and then smack the water comes up to my face. I jump back and grab the other side of the edge and I put my knees out and we tipsy that way so far my fingers are in so I jump into the middle and we rock to one side and the other and I look down and away and see that Stick has rolled into the middle like a good boy. His leg is still up on the bar but he is on his back and his pj’s are all wet because now he is lying in water that got in the canoe. My face is wet too. And my fingers. I wait until the canoe isn’t tipsy.

“Stay, Stick,” I say.

“Okey.”

“Good dog.”

Stick sticks out his tongue but he doesn’t really play.

I can see red bang on the side of Stick’s head but not blood. He has a bang and he looks sad lying on his back with his foot in the air and in the water that is on the bottom of the canoe. I keep my hands on both edges and move in to see him and the cookie tin is floating by. I grab it. The water covers my foot only and there is no tin can with the label peeled off and it used to have tomatoes that we can use to get the water out of the boat. I help Stick up and the back of his hair is sopping wet but hangs onto the water and goes like a white fin at the back of his head.

“I am the queen and magic and you are in the fish army,” I say.

“Fishie.”

“Okay?”

Stick nods and he is staring at the cookie tin and thinks I might take it away. I get my fingers on it and it is slippy and wet and I kind of wish I had claws so I could stick one in the hole that is in the top that wasn’t there before when we left the cottage. I snuck a cookie when Momma wasn’t looking. She found the lid off when I forgot to put it back because the cookie was so good I had to eat it right away. She looked at the lid off to the side and put it back. She looked at me and smiled and said “A bear must have gotten into our cookie tin.” And I smiled too and shrugged my shoulders so she wouldn’t know. I get the lid off and whoa the smell of cookies and there are chocolate chips and I stuff one into my mouth and take another and give one to Stick. Finally he is eating a cookie and he is quiet and we are sitting in ankle water in the canoe with sopping wet bums.

I eat
a lot of cookies and my stomach feels a little sick. I turn and look back at the island. The sand has moved away. There are little waves that are pushing us and the wind is still in the air. The canoe is floating. I need Momma’s paddle to make us go really fast back to the island.

“Canoe ride all done, Stick.”

“Yep.”

I want to get back to the island to be with Momma and then Daddy comes back. I look for the paddle that is Momma’s that she was using in the back to make Js to keep the canoe straight. It is a golden paddle with leather on the handle to make it soft for her hands. There is a guy that looks like an eagle on the flat part that goes in the water and she says that it is made to be like an otter’s tail because they are really good at pushing water and swimming. Momma’s paddle makes our canoe swim straight.

Daddy’s paddle is tall like him and Momma told him how to do it. It has a really really long tail and is more like yellow. Stick and I have dinky paddles that are the same even though I am the oldest and soon I will get a bigger paddle that this man with a funny name made. Kettlewell. Everyone will be so proud that I am so big and can make the canoe go fast. I look and there are no paddles in the canoe. I forgot. They are on the island with Momma and I want to see her. I did what she said and Stick and I have been for a canoe ride so now I will go back and see her and Daddy will be there too. And get life jackets because I forgot. We can all get in the canoe with the life jackets and paddles and Coleman and we can go home. My bum is wet and I’ve had enough camping now so home is better. I remember my bed, which is my favorite place and I can’t wait to get inside and I reach over to get Gwen and she is floating but her hair is wet. She is heavier than she normally is. I feel sad because I don’t like Gwen to change and the sniff is not the same. I give Sticky one more cookie and tell him that his stomach will feel kind of sick too but he doesn’t listen. He takes a cookie in his other hand and starts to nibble. I put the lid back on the cookie tin and put it down so it can float around wherever it wants.

I will have to paddle with my hands to get the paddles to paddle and it’s funny. I tell Stick to stay in the middle of the canoe.

“Okey.”

I wiggle up to the pointy front of the canoe that is Daddy’s seat and put my chest on it like my momma showed. There is air blowing that is pushing my hair back and mostly my hair hangs down the front with bangs and a little bit sometimes in my eyes. Momma cuts it with special scissors that Daddy can’t use to cut Stick’s noodles because they are only for bangs. Now my bangs is pushed back by wind and I feel them go to the side not like Jessica’s bangs at my school who has pigtails. I want my hair not like that but like Jessica’s with shiny bangs so I put my hand to push it forward and it blows back. Jessica’s hang forward and shiny because her mom puts hot air on them and a brush that is a circle and it pulls shinies into bangs with a spray that is not like water. It makes my tongue feel like a sour key candy and when it went in my mouth my tongue wanted to get up and crawl away. I put my hand in my bangs again and now they are wet with water and only half hanging. Not like Jessica’s. At all.

I lean in and use both hands to make cups. The water feels nice. My hands look white in the water. White and wiggling and the small chopper waves lick at them. Yum. And I pull once and look up and the sand is closer now and it is working to paddle with my hands not a paddle.

I will fix the paddle before Daddy comes back and I can give it to him and it’s just like when he came to the cottage. I lean forward and stick my hands in and pull pull pull lots of times. The water is floating by the canoe so I think it is swimming forward and I pull more and my hair gets pushed back a little from my forehead but the girls with the pigtails. Jessica isn’t here so she can’t see and laugh so I keep pulling. My arms at the top start to get burn and so does my back. I have to stop and put my chest down on the tippy point of the canoe and let the burn drip out my fingertips. It slides down my arms and goes so I can pull water again. I pull pull pull and I turn my head to the side so my whole hand can be in the water and pulling like Momma says to do with the paddle to make it go faster. I look at the island and a tree on it and it is getting a little closer so I keep pulling as much as I can. Soon the burn comes again and I have to stop and drip.

I need help and I turn to ask Stick if he will paddle. He is sitting in the middle of the canoe like I told him and not moving because he is busy eating the cookie I gave him. He eats it slow because he always eats anything with chocolate really slow so he will have some in the end and I won’t. I feel mad that he is eating every cookie and not me.

“Help me?”

He looks up and holds up half a cookie and has chocolate smeared on his face just to show that he has a cookie left and I don’t. He pushes his round cheeks into smiles. He has two dots in them. Momma said when he paddles he only dips for lilies and doesn’t make the canoe swim any faster or maybe even slows it down. When she said that she and I had a giggle that Stick couldn’t see but not like a mean laugh. It was a laugh because the Stick is pretty funny and also still like a baby a lot of the time so you can’t ask him to do hard things and then get mad because he forgets or wanders off or doesn’t. Stick is like having an extra bag. Except a bag sits still and holds clothes. This bag is wet and eating all the cookies and showing me he has some when I have none.

“Cookie!” says Stick.

I look at Daddy’s broken paddle on land and worry drips into my heart. I don’t see Daddy. Momma said to take Stick in the canoe and wait. A little puddle of black sits in my heart too and I know Momma said to wait. I am supposed to get Stick in the canoe and wait and now I am going back. I am bad. I want to be good girl and Daddy will come back again and my family will be four.

“Wanna go for a ride, Stick?”

“Yep.”

I am a good girl.

I scoop my hands in the water a lot of times but I can’t turn the canoe around. I don’t know what to do and worry that I am bad again. I look at the canoe and think what Momma said that a canoe is the same pointy on both sides. I need to climb around to where the back is pointing and I can go that way. Only it will be hard not to be tipsy. I put my hands on the sides of the canoe and move my feet. I am in the middle with only a little tipsy and I have to step over the cookies and step over Stick and his crumbs. I am at the back of the canoe and it is now the front. I lean on the pointy part and put my chest on it. I put my hands like cups and I pull pull pull and Stick and I go into the lake and I keep going. My arms hurt and I do more pulls. I keep going and after a long time maybe forever I think that my stomach feels cookie sick and that the canoe is going rock rock rock like a lullaby. I am tired because Coleman wouldn’t let me sleep so much. The wind pushes at my hair and my arms feel so heavy from the burn and it won’t drip out the ends of my fingers because now it’s too thick and so it just stays still and I try to keep pulling. I know Momma feels really proud.