The Bear: A Novel by Claire Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

crying but growling and yelling.
    I hold the tin up above my head. I still need it to make him do things. He won’t stop and he gets his claws out and scratches my face hard. Stick is small but he can be mean and I am not supposed to be too rough but he doesn’t care. I scream because it feels like blood on my cheek and I jump up with the tin up high and he is still clawing. He is hurting me and I shout at him to stop and he doesn’t so I throw the tin. He keeps clawing me because he doesn’t know that I’m not holding the tin and I hear clang clang clang and it stops us both. We look and the tin has gone into the front of the canoe in front of Momma’s seat. Stick shoves me back and grabs the edge of the canoe. I know he wants the cookies and doesn’t care but my face hurts and I put my hand on the scratch. Stick puts his belly on the side of the canoe and flops his head inside. He pulls on the bar and slides on his belly and the canoe nearly tips but it doesn’t and only his body tips inside. His head is on the ground and his legs plop in after but he doesn’t care because all he cares about is cookies. He gets up and steps over my bar and walks back up to Momma’s seat. He sits and keeps the back of his head to me and I see he has the tin in his hands and he is trying to open it. I don’t care because my cheek hurts and my feelings hurt too. I have my hand on the canoe. I feel my hand on the canoe move up into the air a little bit.
    And wait a minute the canoe is loose on the sand and I can take a step forward and it comes with me and the canoe is swimming. Stick’s bum in the back made the front float up from the dirt. I get excited because I got the canoe in the water and I didn’t think I could and I didn’t even need Daddy or Momma to help. Stick sits in Momma’s seat and wrestles with the cookies and can’t get them open and I try and get my leg up over the side of the canoe. I can’t because now the canoe is swimming, it is high up. I can pull it easily and see a rock like Momma showed me. I pull the canoe to the rock and Stick doesn’t care because all he thinks is cookie cookie cookie. I step on the rock and it is a good choice of rock because it isn’t a slippy and my foot sticks to it. I step over the side and into the middle like I should so it’s not tippy. My pj pants pull down and my bum smile is out so I have to reach and pull them up. The canoe wiggles but not much and we float a little and I look at the water and remember no paddle. I don’t have a life jacket on and that is trouble. I look for a yellow spot and there is no life jacket on the floor and I need a paddle. I look back at the sand and a paddle is lying there. I think it is two paddles but it is one and broken. Daddy’s paddle is broken I remember. So so mad.
    “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