Free Grizzly by Will Collins Page B

the boy as if it were his fault. "Lousy power brakes!"
    He turned into the camp area. As he pulled up onto the sod, the car bounced up and down as if it were mounted on a pogo stick.
    They got out. The man walked around the car, inspecting it. There were enough dents to make him grit his teeth, but the big blue Caddie was apparently unharmed otherwise.
    He pushed down on the hood and let go.
    The car tried to become a yo-yo. It leaped up and down as if alive.
    "Stinking shocks are gone," mumbled the man. He glared at his son. "Well, Fred, how about it? Are you waiting for the sun to go down? Get that luggage rack untied."
    The boy climbed up onto the hood and began to struggle with the shock cords. They were drawn too tight for his twelve-year-old fingers to pry free.
    "Come on! " yelled his father.
    "They won't come loose," called the boy. "They're too tight."
    "Oh, hell," said the man. "Get down. I have to do everything myself. I don't know why I take you camping, anyway."
    The boy, sliding down the hood, didn't know why either. Because it always turned out like this, with his father shouting at him for not being able to correct for some mistake in planning that the man himself had made.
    The camp grounds in the parks are filled with such misplaced vacationers. With no aptitude for adjusting to the woods, they try to force the woods to adapt to them. The result is always a miserable visit.
    "You've got to use a little muscle," said the man. He slipped one of the shock cords loose, and once free it whipped out of his hands, taking off a little skin in the process, and slashed the metal tip against the side of the car, just behind one of the fancy opera windows.
    The man saw paint fly and said, "Oh, my God!" The car was less than two months old, and it looked as if this single trip had already depreciated it by a couple of thousand dollars. He slid down from the open door, where he'd been standing, and examined the damage.
    The scratch was enormous, and had gone through paint and primer to bare metal, which was dented with a long, narrow mark that would have to be filled.
    "Now look," he told the boy. "Why do you make me nervous? If you didn't make me nervous, this wouldn't have happened. But you always make me nervous."
    Frightened, the boy said, "I'll unzip the carrier." He wanted to be out of reach. After outbursts like this, furious slaps usually followed.
    "Sure you will," his father said sarcastically. "And you'll rip it, right? That's all we need after everything else. A scratched car and a ripped zipper."
    "I'm good at zippers," said the boy. "I can do it. I always fix Mom's zipper when it gets stuck."
    "Some trick," mumbled the man. He wondered where he'd put the bourbon. A drink would go down good right now.
    A green ranger vehicle came down the hill and turned into the clearing. The man did not hear it coming, and almost fell over the trunk of his car when he suddenly saw it. His attitude changed instantly. He was eager to please, to ingratiate himself with Authority, lest he be arrested for breathing.
    To Kelly Gordon, leaning out the Toyota's window, he said, "Hello, Officer. How do."
    Kelly bit his lip to keep from grinning. He had seen many like this man—cowed and respectful in the presence of a uniform, loud-mouthed and resentful of its authority once it was gone.
    Kelly said, "I'd like a word with you."
    The man approached the ranger vehicle, wiping sudden sweat from his forehead. "Why, sure." He looked at the Cadillac. "I . . . I'm parked all right, I think. What—"
    Feeling pity, Kelly said, "Hey, mister, settle down. You haven't done anything wrong."
    Disbelievingly, the man said, "I haven't?"
    "You're just fine. I only wanted to tell you to be careful, don't wander off up toward the high country."
    "Careful?" The man's voice rose. "Why should we be careful?"
    "We had a little trouble with a bear and—"
    The man went pale. "Bears? Oh, my God!"
    His son said happily, "I like bears."
    The man yelled at