Mysteries in Our National Parks: Night of the Black Bear: A Mystery in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Downtown by the neon lights

Where trouble runs and the young men fight

There’s a woman singin’ slow

Her voice is rough and low

And when she steps to the microphone

The songs she sings are all her own….

Jack straightened in surprise. Merle was good! Really good! The song went on:

Now I might seem as far apart

From Mona’s world as day from dark

But Mona sings her soul to me

And all her songs, they set me free

She makes me feel I’m not alone

She sings for me as if I was her own.

The women in the room applauded, yelling “yay’” and “whoo hoo.”’ By then Jack wasn’t just surprised, he’d zoomed all the way to astonished! Merle was as good as any singer Jack had ever heard on the radio or on television.

“That’s my favorite of all the songs Merle ever wrote,” his mother was saying, as she smiled and nodded her head.

“You wrote that song? Yourself?” Jack stammered.

“Yes, he did,” Arlene answered proudly. “You know, we named Merle after the country singer Merle Haggard. When he grows up, Merle’s gonna be just as famous as Merle Haggard.”

Who was Merle Haggard? Jack had never heard of him.

Bess asked, “You used to sing, too, Arlene, didn’t you? Back a ways?”

“Well, yes, I did. When Merle’s daddy was alive, we sang together. We wanted to be another Johnny Cash and June Carter, can you imagine?” She laughed a little at that, then clutched her chest, saying, “Ooh, that hurts!”

Johnny Cash! Jack knew about Johnny Cash. “I worked on a Johnny Cash CD cover,” he said.

For a few silent seconds, everyone stared at Jack in amazement. “You…you designed a Johnny Cash record cover? By yourself?” Merle asked.

“No! No, I mean…I never designed it for real. I just fool around with Photoshop. Like…I change pictures to make them look funny or scary. Then I post them to a blog.”

“Oh.” They all looked a little disappointed. “Well, let’s see your Johnny Cash cover then,” Corinn told him, pulling a small laptop from a briefcase near her feet. “I brought my computer today so we could go over Arlene’s Dollywood hospital insurance plan. Here, I’ll turn it on for you.”

Jack wished he’d never mentioned Photoshopping. He felt really stupid as he moved over to the computer Corinn set up on the bedside stand. Taking a deep breath, he signed into the blog and pulled up the picture he’d posted.

There it was, a CD cover of country music superstar Johnny Cash with his famous black shirt and pants all covered with one-dollar bills Jack had pasted on him digitally. “I call it ‘Cash on Cash,’” he said weakly.

Their reaction was a big surprise. Corinn, Bess, and Merle burst out laughing, and Arlene cried, “Oooh, let me see! That is so funny. ‘Cash on Cash!’”

Bess told Jack, “If you did a cover of Merle Haggard, you could make him look haggard—you know, all old and wore out.”

The others laughed even louder when Arlene said, “How ’bout Martina McBride in a weddin’ gown?”

Corinn, the younger one, must have sensed that Jack didn’t recognize those names. In a quieter voice she told him, “You’re not from around here, are you, Jack? This is the home of Dollywood and Nashville, the country music capital of the whole wide world. Every one of us Tennesseans grew up listening to country singers and country music, ’cause it’s all about us and who we are.”

Before Jack had a chance to answer, the phone rang, and Bess picked it up since Arlene couldn’t reach it. “It’s Blue,” she announced. “He says to come right down to the parking lot.”

After Jack said good-bye to the women, Merle told him, “I’ll walk you down the hall so I can tell Blue I already got a ride to Gatlinburg.” As they ambled slowly, Merle exclaimed, “You’re a real artist, Jack, to do stuff like that. How did you learn it? I wish I could do that, but I don’t have a computer at home.”

No computer? Jack didn’t know what he’d do without his own computer—it connected him to the world. He took a closer look at Merle, noticing that he wore a sweatshirt and stained pants that might have come out of a thrift shop. His shoes were pretty worn, with the rubber on the side of the soles discolored and cracked.

Merle’s mother had mentioned that his father was dead. “Your mother works at Dollywood?” Jack asked. “What does she do there?”

“She’s a groundskeeper. She goes around trimmin’ bushes and sprayin’ bugs and stuff. She won’t be able to work for a while, though. That punctured lung will take a long time to get better. That’s why I’m lucky I got this job.”

Lucky? It sounded like the only luck they had was bad luck. Just as Jack was about to ask Merle what kind of job he had, he noticed Yonah coming toward them down the hall, walking fast.

“Uh-oh,” Merle said, just before Yonah caught up to them. “Here comes Yonah the fire-spitter.”

“You mean Firekiller,” Jack corrected him.

“Wait ’til you know him better,” Merle said.

“What’s taking you so long?” Yonah demanded. “My dad’s been waiting in the parking lot.”

“Tell your dad he doesn’t have to wait for me. I got another ride to Gatlinburg. So back off, man,” Merle told Yonah. To Jack, he said, “It was good meeting you.

Real good. Your work is cooler than frost. I’d like to see more of it.”

With that, he was gone, and Jack had to follow Yonah. “Waste of time…coming after Merle,” Yonah was muttering, hotly.

Jack remembered that Yonah’s mother and Arlene Chapman were supposed to be good friends. Yet Yonah hadn’t even stopped in the room to ask Arlene how she was feeling. What a jerk! Why did Ashley think Yonah was so great? Jack was glad they didn’t have to ride home with him.

On the way back to their hotel in Gatlinburg, Jack talked excitedly to his parents about Arlene and Merle and Merle’s great singing until Ashley cried, “All right! We get it! He can sing. But Yonah doesn’t like him.”

“How’d you know that?” Jack asked her.

“I saw Yonah’s face when he told his dad that Merle wouldn’t be coming home with them. His dad told him to cool it, that it didn’t matter.”

“Yeah, well if I had to hold an election between Merle and Yonah, I know who’d win.”

“Enough!” Olivia called back. “Please be quiet for a while. I have a lot of thinking to do.” After a few minutes she said, “We need to watch the evening news to find out what that Greta will say about the bear attacks and the park. I don’t want to miss any of it, so I think we should have dinner in our rooms instead of going out to a restaurant.”

The Landons were staying in two connecting rooms at the Gatlinburg Lodge, which meant Jack had to share with his sister. Ashley didn’t like that at all, and Jack liked it even less because Ashley was always locking herself in the bathroom so she could mess with her hair. If Jack pounded on the door to make her come out, his mother or father would yell at him to stop.