The Bear: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

comes to the crack. It is wet so the black dog isn’t sick. It is big. It looks shiny like the chair at my grandpa’s house. Grandpa loves to sit. He says his “old bones” need a chair and there is a handle that I pull on the side. I am only allowed to pull the handle when Grandpa is ready for his legs to kick up. My grandpa is very nice when I do things his way and so I do. The chair is black and sometimes the cleaning lady rubs a cloth on it so much that I can nearly see my nose. Not my real nose but like a shadow of my nose. Rose. That is the cleaning lady. She smells like lemons and wears an apron that I think should have lemons too. Instead it is pink flowers that are more floaty. Rose came after my grandma died and my grandpa missed her so much he got Rose to do her jobs. When I pull the handle on the chair a small toadstool appears from the bottom of the chair and picks up Grandpa’s feet until he is lying down like a bed. Except it isn’t a bed. It’s a black chair. Shiny and smooth with dimples. Like this nose.
    The nose sniffs and I watch the nostrils go in and out. Stick is quiet and I only hear him make a small squeak but I don’t want to lift my head because the nose is looking at me. It keeps breathing in my air like it’s saying hello like Snoop does. Except it’s not hello. It’s more like who are you? I don’t want to talk and I keep my head flat and I feel Stick is moving like he is trying to get away. There is nowhere to go inside Coleman. Stick is wiggling and I want him to stop. I push to get him over more on his side again. His head comes up near mine and our feet are curled together. The nose keeps sniffing around the edge of Coleman’s mouth and I take my hand and put it over Stick’s mouth like when we hide from Daddy. Not enough to make Stick mad or tight so he can’t breathe but I don’t want the black dog to know us. Stick’s stomach sucks in like he is going to scream and he changes his eyes to look at me. I say shh and I can feel his lips flap open to yell at me but his eyes blink once and he is quiet. I put my hand on him and we are quiet and we watch the nose sniff sniff sniff.
    The rock is still stuck in the side of Coleman’s mouth. The front of Coleman has the metal tooth that Daddy pushed in to make us stay. The nose finds Coleman’s metal tooth and pushes on it. The nose lifts up and a big tongue jumps out. I see a black lip and a tooth that is very white and long. The fur is a little bit wet and there is pink juice on it. I once had a juice box with tomato juice at a party. That was sneaky. Usually it would be apple or orange or fruit juice and this was tomato and I did not like it at all. I spat it out and Daddy said it was a mess. But he wanted me to put the mess in my stomach and that was gross. So I did spit and I said sorry but I didn’t think sorry. The black dog has tomato juice on his jaw and some of it paints onto Coleman’s white lip. The tongue comes out and licks the juice and keeps licking like Coleman has yummy things stuck on his mouth.
    The teeth open and I see the sides scrape along the edge of Coleman and I see little bits of Coleman turn into metal splinters. The black dog is making grunts like it is uncomfy or maybe mad. He is chewing on Coleman like he was a toy and I grab Stick in because I don’t like looking at the teeth. There is one that is really long and I start to shake. And the tooth is scraping and ducks under the metal clip and catches there. The tooth is like a hook and Coleman shakes and Stick screams and I think maybe I do too. The fur in the crack snaps back and the tooth isn’t a hook even though it tries to be. It comes right back and the mouth pushes and tries to get hooked. It pushes in and fills us with its smell. Bad bad breath. Like rotting stink. The hamburger that Momma forgot in the fridge and only found when it was brown with green fur. Like that except with black fur. Stink. The tooth comes in and looks like a sword