A Bear Named Trouble by Marion Dane Bauer

Author:Marion Dane Bauer [Bauer, Marion Dane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ages 9 & Up, Retail
ISBN: 9780618517381
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2005-08-30T18:39:44+00:00

8. Trouble

"HE killed her! He killed her! He killed Mama Goose! She's dead!"

The words erupted from Jonathan in a shout. He filled the night air with his outrage the whole way home. He shouted and sobbed and ran, clutching the white goose close to his chest. He kept picking up her head, trying to keep it from dangling so pitifully, but each time the silence of the feathery head, the unnatural weight of it in his hand, made his fingers go slack, and he let it fall again. He tumbled through the sliding deck door and hurtled up the stairs to his dad's bedroom.

Halfway between the bedroom door and the bed, Jonathan stopped and shouted it all again. "He killed her! He killed Mama! She's dead!"

His father lurched upright, rising so fast that Jonathan stepped back a couple of steps. But he didn't stop crying out. "She's dead! She's dead!"

"What!" His dad's brown hair stood in spikes all over his head, and his eyes were open so wide that they were rimmed all the way around with white. "Jonnie! What is it? What's wrong?"

"That bear!" Jonathan was sobbing now. He leaned back against the wall next to the door. "That bear. He killed Mama Goose."

"Oh," his father said. "Oh! Mama Goose." And his spine suddenly slumped. "I thought ... I thought..." He didn't say what he had thought, just reached out as if to capture Jonathan's hand, but Jonathan was too far away for him to reach. "Come here, son." He beckoned. "You were having a dream. Only a dream. That bear isn't going to hurt any—"

But when Jonathan approached, a thin beam of moonlight fell across the goose clutched to his chest, and Dad's gaze fastened there. "What?" He reached out and touched Mama Goose's dangling head, just lightly. Then he reached beyond the goose to the front of Jonathan's muddy jacket. "Where—where have you been?"

He was fully awake now. He even ran a hand through his standing-up hair to smooth it down.

"That bear." Jonathan gasped for breath. "The brownie that broke into the zoo. He did it again. And this time he killed her."

Dad had his feet on the floor now. His bare feet looked pale and somehow very naked. He reached for a robe and slippers. "You were there?" His voice was stern, but when he lifted Mama Goose from Jonathan's grasp and put a hand on his shoulder to lead him back downstairs, his touch was gentle.

First Dad opened the sliding door and laid the dead goose on the snowy deck, then he closed the door again and, brushing his hands on his robe as if something about death might cling to them, pulled the drapes closed.

Jonathan let his knees give way and sank to the couch.

"Now tell me," his father said, coming to stand in front of him. "All of it."

Jonathan told "all of it" between hiccupping sobs. About luring the bear to the deck by putting out the loaf of bread. About following him into the zoo, under the fence.

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