The Bear He Won Twice

The older farmer shook Mack’s hand. The woman from the 4-H barn hugged me. The FFA boy whooped and threw his corn dog stick in the air.

The man took his pole and brought down the last big white bear on the wall.

It was the same as the first one, the same black button eyes and the same brown nose.

Mack did not hug this one. I noticed that right away. He took it from the man, said thank you the way I have taught him a thousand times, and tucked it under his arm like a sack of feed.

Then he turned and looked down the midway, past the lemonade stand and the bingo tent, toward the Ferris wheel.

“Where’s Aunt Viv?” he asked.

I looked at Malcolm. Malcolm looked at me. Neither one of us had to say it. We both knew exactly what our son was about to do.

Malcolm squeezed my shoulder. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll stay and thank these folks.”

And he did. He went down the line and shook every hand that had paid for a ring, and he tried to give them money back, and every one of them refused.

I texted my mother-in-law, Adele, who had come to the fair with Viv and Kinsey.

She texted back that Viv’s truck had not started in the parking field, and they had all come back in, and Kinsey was in line for the Ferris wheel with her.

So Mack and I walked down the midway together, him with the bear under his arm and me beside him, past the duck pond game and the pony rides, and I did not say anything because I did not trust myself to.

We found Viv standing by herself near the gate to the Ferris wheel, under the lights, off to one side of the line.

She had her arms crossed and her black jacket buttoned up to the collar.

I could see Adele and Kinsey up near the front of the line, maybe twenty people ahead.

Kinsey had the first white bear in her lap on the bench where they were waiting.

Viv saw us coming. She saw the bear under Mack’s arm, and then she saw me, and her whole face went stiff.

She lifted her chin a little, the way she has done since she was a girl, the way she does right before a fight.

I did not say one word to her. I stopped two steps back and let my son go the rest of the way by himself.

Mack walked right up to his aunt and held the bear out to her with both hands, the way you hold out a cake.

“This one’s for you, Aunt Viv,” he said. “So you have one too.”