Free The Bear: A Novel by Claire Cameron

rolls back like it is just waking up from a nap. The tippy point is full of dirt and there is brown mucky water inside. It’s like a bathtub after a bath when I was really dirty from playing soccer in the mud and I rolled to get a kick but it didn’t work. Instead I went squishing through the mud and it went up my pants and came out in the bathtub and my daddy said “Holy cow” when he looked because he didn’t know that a girl could ever be that dirty. I felt proud because I am.
    The mud tries to drink my feet down. I pull a foot out and pull the other foot out and the first one sinks in again. I give Gwen a sniff but she is all wet. I give her a squeeze and she cries out the water and I say “Don’t worry, Gwen, I will save you.” So I pull a foot out and put it closer to the side and then pull another foot out and put it even closer to the side. Gwen gets to the side of the water that is grass and mud and I hold her close. My knees come up and I sit and let my head fall down. I put my holes where my eyes go on my knees and let them sit in there. Gwen and I are close and it is dark with my knees in my eyes so I don’t have to see. I sit and stay like that and Gwen keeps her cheek on mine.
    I don’t move until I hear a soft jingle. I look up and know it is the cookie tin. Stick is sitting on the stick turtle beside the dirty bathtub canoe. He is sitting on the sticks with the tin in between his feet and his stupid fat hands are trying to get the lid off the tin but they can’t. I see that the sticks and mud make a sidewalk between us. I stand up and pick over the sticks to get to where he is sitting. The sticks get more ouch as I get closer because there are more of them and less mud. But I get to Stick and he looks at me like he is sad that my hands are less stupid than his.
    “Come on,” I say.
    I grab the tin out of his hands and he yowls but stands up and I take one of his hands and pull on it. I keep pulling and he comes on across the sticks to the earth.
    “Owey, owey,” he says as he walks.
    The sticks jab at our feet and we have to go so slow because his legs are stumpy. I get more sticks in my feet because I am going first. If we hopped it would be faster or skipped. He can’t and I can but he is hugging my hand with his so I wait. We get our feet on the dirt and it feels better. I keep his hand and we go to a place up a little from the water that is drier but that doesn’t matter because our pj’s are sopping. We sit and I open the tin and I give one to me and one to Stick and eat a cookie.
    After a minute I hear smack smack smack. I think it is Stick’s lips because he is eating a lot of cookies but it is not. Someone is swimming in the lake in front of us. Smack smack smack and huff breathing like Stick’s nose as it swims. I think a rat because I can see the fur but it swims more and I remember looking underneath the water that was like a fish tank at the zoo and it’s a beaver. I hold Gwen up to look at the beaver and its tail smacks again and she swims around in a circle and makes a breath on the water like swimming isn’t hard but she is mad at us. We eat more cookies each until all the cookies are gone and I look out at the lake. The beaver comes making a circle again. I think maybe the pile of sticks are her house and she doesn’t like us there. She smacks her tail on the water again and Stick looks at me.
    “It’s a beaver. She says hi,” I tell him because I don’t want him to feel like she is mad.
    Stick smiles and looks back at Beaver swimming and holds up his hand. “Hi, Beaver.”
    She smacks back. Stick thinks she is waving but I think she doesn’t like us much and wants us to go away and no one wants us here. The parents are both mad and not coming not just Daddy this time it is different. The sun gives too much shine and there are trees everywhere with their dark in between and I don’t see anything I know.

11.
    Momma said to me “Daddy and I will be there.” I am a