Bearwalker by Joseph Bruchac Read Free Book Online Page A

hand.
    â€œGeorge,” Mrs. Osgood said, “put down the bear pan and come meet these two nice boys Baron and his friend Cody who have made friends with our Poe-boy and…”
    â€œAny bear come into camp,” Mr. Osgood said, “they just hightail it for the hills when we bang on this bear pan. Even faster than your fellow campers done when they thought a bear was after ’em.”
    Mr. Osgood looked down at me with a twinkle in his eyes. “Aren’t you afeared of bears, young fella?”
    â€œNo sir,” I said. “I’d like to see one.”
    â€œHmm.” Mr. Osgood nodded, a pleased look on his face. “Some spare time, I ought totake you and your friend here up to the Bear Seat.”
    I look over at Cody, who is sitting on the other side of the fire during Mr. Mack’s speech. I have to give him credit. Although at first he ran inside the boys’ cabin, he was also the only one who came back and stood next to the door to try to guard it—with a broom that he picked up, no less—just in case that black beast tried to follow them in. As a result, he saw that the supposed bear was nothing but a dog and came over to join me petting Poe-boy.
    Cody senses my eyes on him. He looks my way and actually smiles. He’s still a little embarrassed at having been spooked, but is able to see the humor in the way he and everybody else acted. My mom always told me you can trust folks who know how to laugh at themselves. Cody’s smile encourages me and I relax. Maybe too much.
    â€œAny questions?” Mr. Mack says.
    I raise my hand. It’s as if there is another part of me taking over and I’m not really sure what it is about to say. And what is worse, I can’t seem to stop it from happening. It’s like when a stone breaks loose from a hillside andstarts to roll. Nothing is going to halt it until it hits the bottom.
    â€œYes, ah…”
    â€œBaron,” I say. “My family is Mohawk. I grew up hearing stories about black bears. None of our people were ever afraid of real bears. We even have a story about how a mother bear took in an orphan boy and cared for him like she was one of her cubs.”
    Why am I saying this? Is it something in the air here? After a year of semisuccessfully allowing my Indian ancestry to fade into the background, I have just blown my cover bigtime. Clam up, dummy! I tell myself.
    I manage to snap my mouth shut before I babble out anything else that might be used against me later. It’s probably too late. I can already imagine Asa war-whooping at me and his buddies sarcastically calling me “Little Bear.”
    Mr. Mack is smiling even broader, but his eyes don’t look happy. I get the feeling he’s not that pleased that I spoke up.
    â€œBaron, thank you. How wonderful. I’d love to hear that story.” He looks around the circle. “And I am sure that everyone else here feels exactly the same. An authentic Native American traditional tale! Perhaps we can convince you toshare it with us around the campfire one of these evenings.”
    Or perhaps you could convince me to shoot myself right now, I think.
    There’s no way it can get worse than this.

7
Stories About Bears
    W herever you go, Indians have stories about bears. And bears are a lot like people. They walk on two legs at times and when a bear is skinned it looks like a naked human being. Bears eat some of the same food that people do. They even have the same illnesses. The strongest of the old medicines among my own Mohawk people were supposed to have been given to us by the bears. People watched what bears ate when they had certain sicknesses because they found that eating those same medicinal plants would make people get better, too.
    My dad and mom once took me to the Six Nations Indian Museum in the little northern Adirondack town of Onchiota. It’s on the other side of the mountains from where we are, over to the