Bear in the Family

Bear in the Family — page 5 — And speaking of washouts hold on their father warned I’m going to have to go off-road The Jeep bounced into the ditch He carefully drove around some fallen and burnt trees and then maneuvered back up onto the road The drive home from town usually took about forty-five minutes Town was where they went grocery shopping where they went to school where most of their friends lived and where both Jasmin and Hunter were on soccer teams It was also where their grandparents lived For the last two weeks they’d been living at their grandparents home Their grandparents were nice and they loved them but everyone wanted to get back home Assuming their home was still there and hadn’t been destroyed by the 4

Bear in the Family — page 6 — forest fire The closer they got the more they worried because they could see the fire had swept right across the land Brody kept leaning over the back seat and putting his head over Jasmin’s She could feel his hot bad breath and he drooled a little bit onto her shoulder Brody she said as she pushed his head to the side and wiped away the drool with the back of her hand Brody leaned down and gave her a lick on the face She wanted to be mad at him but she couldn’t He was such a good dog Brody had been around longer than the kids Her parents often joked that he was their original child When she was little Jasmin had often taken her naps snuggled around Brody in his big dog bed 5

Bear in the Family — page 7 — It really is a beautiful day her mother said The sky is so blue It was a nice day and it was good to see the sky and the clouds and the sun Before the rain had put out the fire the air had been so filled with smoke at times that the sun was only a brown blur above them And at night they could see the orange in the sky as the fire burned around them If it hadn’t been so scary it would have been beautiful Thank goodness the town had been spared from the fire It sat on a lake and was protected on the other side by a rocky hill and the highway Those things along with the firefighters had saved it There had been many firefighters in and around the town They had seemed to be everywhere They’d worked around the clock only stopping to sleep and 6

Bear in the Family — page 8 — eat before heading back out to continue the fight They had never even changed out of their firefighting clothes big black pants orange vests and helmets Their faces had always seemed to be smudged Her parents called them heroes Everybody did There had been firefighters in the sky too A regular stream of airplanes water bombers had landed on the lake scooped up water and taken off to dump it on the fire

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