The Bear: A Novel by Claire Cameron Page A

face in my hand and he gets drinking like that. I put two hands together and scoop and it gets more in his lips. I do it again and I look at the water and see little pieces of dirt but they look like nice dirt not bad. Stick drinks all that and so I get a bit more and this time a fish! It is small and clear and has legs sort of like a crab but sort of like a spider and maybe not a fish but something crawly. Stick puts his face in to drink it.
    “No, Stick. There’s a fish.”
    “Where?” He looks behind him.
    “There!” I point down but my fingers can’t point because they are making the bowl that holds the fish like a fish tank.
    “Where?” He looks down into the muddy water in the pool.
    Finally I put my hands up near his face so his eyes can’t look anywhere else and he sees it.
    “Fishie!”
    He is excited too and we watch it scratch at my hands except I can’t feel it but a small tickle.
    We are busy watching the fish and I see something moving out of the corner of my eye but I don’t care because the fish is trying to crawl out the side. It looks not happy to be in my hands or like it is worried and I think about squeezing my hand to crush it. I close my fingers but Stick makes me open them again because he wants to see. But I am the boss of it and the fish can’t get away and I don’t care about Stick so I smack my hands together and squish squish roar.
    “Hey,” says Stick.
    “I must crush you,” I say in my deepest voice and I am a pretend big man with muscles like Daddy’s. I open my hands again and look. There is no fish and the water has fallen back into the puddle and we look but no fish. It must be scared of me and it ran away. Or it fell back in the puddle or I crushed its body so we can’t see it anymore.
    “Here, fishie fishie.” Stick is looking around the ground.
    The corner of my eye sees something again. It is brown and over in the part where there are no trees and more grass. It has fur and it moves and that makes me turn my head. It is half in the grass and an animal. I think oh neat because I like animals and especially tigers. This is not a tiger because there are not orange and black stripes. The fur is brown and the body is big and it is like a blob sitting in the grass. I think it is cute for a second and maybe a hippo like at the zoo and then it moves a big head around to look at us and I feel a little scared. There is no fence and it is not that far away. And you have to be careful about animals I remember. Even Snoopy. They don’t speak English and can get confused like Stick except that he is human too. No fur. This animal doesn’t look mad but I don’t know if he likes us or not. He starts to move and I put a hand down to grab Gwen and sniff. The animal steps up onto a harder part in the dirt and I see it is huge and it has four legs that used to be in the water and now they aren’t.
    “Look, Stick,” I whisper. “A horsie.”
    Stick looks over and his mouth goes into an O and he is quiet. He turns to me and puts his pointy finger to his lips and says “Shh.” He is squatting down and has his hands on his knees. This is funny because when we are at the zoo he always shouts at the animals and Daddy says no. We are not supposed to shout or bang the glass because it gives the animals headaches and they have to put up with a lot. I watch it too and it is standing now up higher so I can see that it has legs that are really long. Now he is standing on them. It has a smooth fur that is brown and darker than Gwen. I think it is probably a horse with big lips because of the eyes at the side of its head. A horse can see backwards to run from people if it needs to. And big ears that might make it a donkey but it does not make donkey noises. It got a haircut because it has bangs that are straight across and not in his eyes. That is like how the lady cuts my bangs and sometimes I wish they could stay long but then I can’t see where I am going. The horse doesn’t make any