Read There Will Be Bears Online
Authors: Ryan Gebhart
There Will Be Bears
CHAPTER 1 - I Drink Half a Liter of Prune Juice and Use the Neighbor’s Toilet for Two Hours
CHAPTER 2 - Me and Gramps Make Our Hands into Bear Claws and Growl
CHAPTER 3 - It Turns Out My Best Friend Is Actually a Yamhole
CHAPTER 4 - Gramps Gets Pulled Over and I Eat Some Skittles
CHAPTER 6 - I Order the Nothing with a Side of Nothing
CHAPTER 7 - There Will Be Bears
CHAPTER 8 - The Sunrise Village Nursing Home
CHAPTER 9 - Two Rifles and a Box of Ammunition
CHAPTER 11 - I Call Gramps by His First Name
CHAPTER 12 - She Wears Short Skirts; I Wear Pizza
CHAPTER 13 - Someone Karen Would Like
CHAPTER 14 - The Headline Story
CHAPTER 16 - It’s Hot and Uncomfortable Inside a Bear
CHAPTER 18 - Grizzly Bears Like Their Meat Rotten
CHAPTER 19 - The Place Where the Ohio Couple Died
CHAPTER 20 - Where Everything I Wanted Comes True
CHAPTER 21 - Like Breaking Open a Piñata
CHAPTER 23 - Beneath a Heavy and Warm Shadow
CHAPTER 25 - The Latest Issue of Better Homes and Gardens
Country Orchard Prune Juice
, reads the label on the plastic jug in front of me. They say this thick, nasty-looking sludge is a potent laxative. Well, I’m about to drink the whole thing.
I heard somewhere that courage means being afraid of something and doing it anyway. I never thought I would be so frightened by a fruit juice, but my heart is pounding and my palms are sweaty. As far as I know, no one has ever OD’d on prunes.
Google, please don’t let me down on this one.
Gramps sits across from me at the kitchen table, his fingers tapping against his own jug, checking the birdsong clock above the sink.
In fifty-four seconds, it will be six o’clock.
Tick
.
In fifty-three seconds, the Canada goose will honk.
Tick
.
In fifty-two seconds, Gramps and I will each be chugging a liter of prune juice to completion.
Pruning
, Gramps calls it. Before he goes on his yearly elk hunt, he prunes so he’ll be ready to face the wilderness. He says it’s good for the digestive tract, puts hair on your chest, and makes you feel like a new man. And for my thirteenth birthday, Mom and Dad promised I’d get to join him this weekend. We’re going to the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and I’ve been waiting for this trip all year. Not only do I get to hunt with the coolest old guy in Colorado, but this will also finally be my chance to see a grizzly bear in the flesh. I’ve been obsessed with them since I saw the Timothy Treadwell documentary. He lived with the bears for thirteen summers, until one finally ate him. It was so cool. But Gramps says that if I want to go, I have to prune with him.
Mom would never let me prune with Gramps — she thinks it’s immature and disgusting — but Mom’s not here. And what Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her. It might back up the toilet, but I’ll just blame that on Ashley.
“You ready, Tyson?”
This is it. And to my own surprise, I’m not that scared. The Canada goose honks, my eyes close, and I’m choking the stuff down. My eyes are watering and my throat gets tight and I’m just about to refund all over the table when Gramps gives a satisfied sigh.
“That’s the stuff.” He wipes his mouth with his forearm.
I can only finish half of my jug.
Now, your typical old person just drinks a small glass of prune juice with his toast and soft-boiled egg in the morning to stay regular, but Grandpa Gene is insane in the good kind of way. He wears his beat-up cowboy hat to church and sits in the front row. And he’ll dance with any woman at the Rodeo Tavern. It doesn’t matter if she’s some hot woman in her twenties or some fatty in her fifties. He just loves to dance.
Gramps is pretty much my best friend. Well, Brighton is
technically
my best friend, but lately he’s been busy with football practice and hanging out with his new girlfriend from American Civ. The last time we actually did something was in July, when we sang karaoke for his birthday. He has a game tonight, so at least I’ll be able to see him then.
“Now what?” I ask, a sour aftertaste in my mouth and a purplish-brown mystery sitting low in my stomach.
With one hand against the table, Gramps hoists himself up. “We watch
Wheel of Fortune
.”
I follow him into the living room. There are still a couple of unpacked boxes from when me, Mom, Dad, and Ashley moved into his house last month. It already feels like home, all old and broken in. Heck, we’ve spent every holiday here since Ashley was born. I know everything about this house, from the crawl space in the basement to the picture of Michael Jordan slam-dunking in the bathroom.
In
the
bathroom. As in
one
.
There’s only one bathroom in Gramps’s house.
Why didn’t it occur to me before? What are we going to do?
“What time is your friend’s game tonight?” he asks. He makes a relaxed groan, deflating into his reclining chair.
“Um, what are we going to do about the bathroom situation?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who gets the bathroom?”
With a devilish grin, he says, “Whoever is faster.”
My stomach gurgles like someone just flushed a toilet. “Huh?”
“Your grandmother and I pruned twice a year. Once in the spring, once in the fall. We watched
Wheel of Fortune
and
Jeopardy!
, and then we raced to the bathroom.”
“What does the other person do?”
“They make do. Now, hush.”
This is the most horrifying episode of
Wheel of Fortune
ever. How can people be solving puzzles at a time like this? Who cares about a new car or a ten-thousand-dollar prize?
After sixty agonizing minutes, I’ve become an overfilled water balloon hovering above a needle, ready to explode with prune juice and bad news.
I can’t make any sudden movements.
Gramps lowers the leg rest and gets into position.
We both eye the closed door at the end of the hallway.
As soon as
Jeopardy!
ends, we make a break for it, rushing for the bathroom like football players trying to recover a fumble. He stiff-arms me with his left hand, and I fall to the ground, using every muscle to hold back this cat-4 hurricane inside of me. Gramps may be bigger, but I squeeze my way underneath him and I’m just about to make it to the bathroom when —
“What the heck?” Dad stops both of us when he opens the door going to the garage.
“We were just —”
Gramps closes the bathroom door behind him. I hear the horrifying click of the lock and the bathroom fan turning on.
“Dude, you cheated!”
Dad says, “Tyson, what’s going on?”
I bolt out the front door, my butt cheeks clenched tight. Where do I do the deed? The Privetts’ house or the Castillos’ house? Who would be more offended by me barging in and tearing up their bathroom?
The Privetts.
So I run toward the Privetts’ house.
Mr. Privett looks at me all weird as he opens his front door. He can’t really help it when his turtleneck is swallowing his face like a snake with its jaw unhinged.
He says, “Ty. What can I do for you?”
Oh, man. Cat-5! I break past him and hurry for the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I drop trou and . . . dang, Mr. Privett has a pretty solid setup in here. There’s a whole stack of mags, really fruity potpourri, and this toilet paper is way better than what we have at Gramps’s place.
Now I can just sit back and relax.
He knocks. “Tyson —”
Guh. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
In here, I don’t have a care in the world. In here, I can read
Better Homes and Gardens
to my heart’s content.
He knocks again.
“I already told you, I’ll be out in a second.”
“Tyson Eugene Driggs, it’s your father. You can’t go barging into Mr. Privett’s house.”
“Sorry, Dad. I had to use the bathroom, and Gramps was using ours.”
“Then you shouldn’t have drunk an entire bottle of prune juice.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I only drank half.”
There is a long pause, and I fill the silence by misting some Mountain Spring air freshener.
He says, “You and I are going to have a little discussion.”
“What? Why?”
“Meet me in the kitchen at seven thirty. We’ll talk then.”
“I’m a little busy right now. You better reschedule for eight thirty.”
“Tyson,” he says, then draws out a pause. “You’re not going hunting this weekend.”
Dad takes a seat next to Mom at the kitchen table, looking all parental and stern. But he can’t bring me down. My body hasn’t felt this clean in a long time. I guess a diet consisting mostly of Fruit Roll-Ups, cereal, and pizza will back a guy up.
He says, “We need to talk about your grandfather.”