The Bear Went Over the Mountain Read online

  “Hal, I’d like you to meet … from Psychology Today …”

  “… the way your heroine learns to advocate for herself …”

  The sinister space continued to enlarge, with grotesque human forms emerging out of it, jabbering, gesticulating, threatening. He pushed his way across the disco floor. Gadson grabbed him. “Hal, we did it.” Gadson’s arm came drunkenly around the bear’s shoulder. “We showed them time-honored American copulation and they loved it. Now let’s mix in something more exotic. Let’s challenge their sexual stereotypes. Let’s Begin the Beguine.”

  The bear evaded Gadson’s grip and continued toward the door. Professor Penrod stepped in front of him. “The fish symbolism in your book … the fishing pole …”

  The bear darted around the influential professor and rushed toward the entrance of the disco, heedless of the curious stares of the guests at his party.

  “Well!” exclaimed the editor from Women’s Wear Daily as she watched him go out through the door. “I think it’s refreshing. I mean, authors play at being publicity shy, but did you ever see …?”

  “What’s he doing to us?” cried Gadson to Bettina. “Doesn’t he know how much this goddamned party is costing?”

  Eunice also saw the bear’s retreat and hurried after him. At her first publishing party, before her personal transition from hairdresser to author was complete, she’d freaked out too, suspicious that people were making fun of her when they praised her angels. “Hal, wait!”

  The bear was hurrying away down the street, paws over his ears, trying to block out the sounds of the human world. He sniffed the air, hoping to find that scent he used to follow in the forest, which drew him toward a sunlit slope where wild irises bloomed. From there he’d been able to look into an enchanting valley that held all the things a bear cared most about—fish, nuts, berries, and the soft silence of the day in which to gather them. The company of crows was enough, their wing beats fanning the still air, their piercing cry bringing him news of the owl, the eagle, the hawk. The foxes withdrew as he approached. He was king in that valley. As the acrid fumes of Manhattan filled his nose, he felt his great heart breaking. He’d thrown paradise away, for fame and honey.

  “Hal, please, wait for me!” Eunice raced after him, hair streaming, perfume trailing, high heels clicking. “Hal, please!” She caught up with him, grabbed him by the sleeve. He turned with a roar and she was struck to the heart by his unhappiness. “My poor darling,” she cried, and threw her arms around him, indifferent to the two photographers who’d followed her down the street, led by Bettina, who was yelling at them to grab this photo opportunity of her top writers having a lovers’ quarrel.

  Flashes were popping, and the automatic winders of the cameras were whirring, as Bettina’s lust for good photo coverage raised her voice to a shriek. “Be sure you get cleavage!”

  Eunice spun toward her. “Bettina, how could you?” After which she graciously obliged the photographers with a profound glimpse of cleavage, then threw her arms back around the bear. “I understand how you feel, Hal. I’ve been through it all myself.” She stroked his face as her visionary eyes filled with tears. “The cheap and tawdry ritual of success. It’s monstrous, it’s wounding. But it’s the price we have to pay for being rich and famous. And my angels have assured me it’s all right to be rich and famous. The angels like rich and famous.”

  Arthur Bramhall and Vinal Pinette slid down a wooded ravine at twilight to the mouth of a cave. Bramhall sniffed the opening thoroughly and cautiously. The smell was of pine boughs and bear. He crept in, over the dried needles that covered the floor.

  “How’s she look?” asked Pinette, appearing behind him at the doorway of the cave, into which the twilight streamed. “Abandoned.”

  Pinette crept into the cave and squatted down on the dried boughs. “Uncle Filbert tried cave life once. Leonora Spraggins was after him, as he’d put a bun in her oven, and Leonora’s five brothers was after him too.”

  Bramhall squatted down with his back against the wall. The whirl of the world was far away. There was only the smell of bear and pine boughs and the view through the cave door to the trees. A sigh of comfort went through him, as of some larger creature whose requirements were not easily met, and for whom a spacious cave such as this was just the ticket.

  “To complicate matters for Filbert the police was on him too, for rigging a bingo game. So a nice cave was just the ticket.”

  Bramhall crawled outside to a nearby pine, snapped off enough boughs to fill his arms, and returned. Pinette watched him lay the boughs down. “Filbert come out to a bright new future. The police had forgot about him and Leonora had found herself another suitor who fit the bill even though he did have a goiter on the back of his neck the size of a seed potato. You think we should write this down? My memory ain’t what it used to be and we might never catch hold of this material again. I believe it’s the stuff of pop’lar entertainment.”

  Bramhall sat on the fresh boughs, feeling more secure in this cave shaped a million years ago than he’d felt even in his barn or in Gummersong’s hut. The enclosure had sheltered countless generations of animals, and he felt their affection for it, as if the walls of the cave held memories of their feeling.

  “Uncle Filbert must have done some deep thinking during his spell of denning, because a little while after he come out he wangled himself a loan from the government and started up his own grocery business. He’d have been a rich man today if he hadn’t made one little mistake.” Pinette gazed through the somber light of the cave toward Bramhall.

  “What was Uncle Filbert’s mistake?” asked Bramhall.

  “He used to drink himself to sleep every night with a jug of wine, which in itself don’t entail much risk. But one night he reached for his jug and fetched up a jug of Clorox instead. We found him next morning stiffer’n a rolling pin, finger hooked in the empty Clorox jug.” Pinette nodded his head solemnly in the shadows. “So right there we got ourselves an instructive tale about what and what not to keep by the bedside. That kind of story has an audience.”

  Bramhall saw, caught in the jagged face of the cave wall, strands of coarse fur left by the previous occupant. He felt the comings and goings of this creature as it huffed in and out of the lodging, doing as he’d just done, making a comfortable bed for itself. He felt its bulk, its awesome power, its imperial claim to this space. And he knew, with a strange inner certainty, that it would not be returning.

  “Hal, this is Bettina. It’s time for you to go to your interview. Remember? You’re taping with Bryant Gumbel. A limo will be waiting for you outside your building. I’ll meet you at NBC.” Bettina was in her office at Cavendish Press, talking on her headset telephone, which left both her hands free to deal with the paperwork generated by Hal Jam’s tour. Four-color brochures had gone out to every important newspaper, television and radio station in the country, and doors had opened. Within the folder was an excerpt from the novel which The New Yorker had run, and a fascinating bio of Jam invented by Bettina. There were a number of witty remarks of Jam’s, also invented by Bettina. A five-by-seven glossy photo had been included, of the bear, strikingly lit and looking seriously literary.

  Bettina hung up and looked at her assistant. “I don’t think he realizes how hard it is to get on the Today show. I do hope he and Bryant Gumbel will get along.”

  · · ·

  The bear descended the elevator in his apartment building, greeted the doorman politely, stepped outside, caught a whiff of Central Park, and walked directly on by the waiting limo, which was driven by Zinatoon Nipunik, of Lightning Limo. Nipunik was stooping to retrieve a fallen ball of falafel which had squirted from his pita bread onto the floor of the limo, and so he missed his passenger’s approach.

  The bear plunged into the park. It was the first winter he’d spent awake, and he savored the solemn landscape. That great time-waster, hibernation, in which he’d lost years of his life, was unneeded now that he had central heating. He rolled
in the dry grass, kicked his paws at the sky, and emitted a soft, pleasure-filled growl. Then he felt a troubling shadow cross his mind, about something he was supposed to do. What, what, what?

  Interview!

  Where?

  Somewhere.

  Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere.

  With somebody.

  Who?

  Don’t tell me, wait, I know it.

  His tongue ran over his snout as it came to him. Gumball!

  He came up out of the park onto Central Park West, and knew he had everything under control as soon as he saw the subway entrance.

  He was fond of subway entrances because of their cavelike appearance. He rarely passed a subway entrance without descending into it. Then, once he was down below, the echoing tunnels made him feel at home. On one of these descents he’d discovered gumballs, which were dispensed from round glass globes attached to posts on the subway platform. Had his cave in the forest had a gumball dispensing machine he might never have felt the desire to leave. But again, it had been up to mankind, with its superior mental powers, to make this great stride forward.

  He descended now, into the subway, through the turnstile, and onto the platform. Sure enough, there was a gumball machine.

  I’m doing beautifully here, he said to himself as he approached the machine.

  He inserted a quarter in its slot, turned the crank, and out rolled a large red gumball. He took it in his paw and gazed at it.

  Interview.

  With a gumball.

  He waited, and while subway trains came and went and the gumball sat unmoving in his paw, he wondered if perhaps there was something he’d missed.

  He popped the gumball into his mouth.

  The vivid red dye which coated the gumball melted onto his tongue, and the carcinogens within flowed over his taste buds, absolutely first-rate.

  He chewed happily, feeling that, after all, the mission had turned out well. He was interviewing a gumball. Publicity was easy. He wondered why the little birdlike female at his publisher’s was so worried about it all the time.

  A subway train rattled into the station. He got on it. It was the first time he’d been on a train, but today was a day for breaking new ground.

  He sat down and the car started. He stared at the subway tunnel walls rushing past; he chewed his gumball thoughtfully.

  He rode along through a great many stops, until he grew hungry. Time to get off, he said to himself, stood, and waited for the train to enter the next station. He surfaced in a neighborhood he’d never seen before. He walked along, sniffing the air, but before he’d gotten a complete sampling, a dominant male in a shiny red suit with big shoulders stopped him. The dominant male had two females with him, in short skirts. “Hey, brothah,” said the dominant male, “you like to subagitate with the sisters of mercy here?”

  The females smiled at him, and one of them angled her body toward the bear so her hip stuck out, and said, “You wan’ some of my cat meat, honey?”

  The bear was hungry, and he was grateful to her for offering to share her cat meat, but it was not a favorite food of his. “No thank you,” he said. “Good-bye.”

  “He’s not here!” screamed Bettina into her cellular phone as she paced wildly on the sidewalk in front of NBC. “I hired your company to pick up my writer and bring him here and he’s not here!”

  “My driver dere,” said Manfaluti Kheyboom, the owner of Lightning Limo. “He was front of boolding.”

  “Well, where is he now?”

  “Driving.”

  “Without my writer?”

  “Your writer not appear.”

  “What do you mean, he not appear? He left the building.”

  “My driver ask. Nobody know nutting.”

  “Well, nutting is what you’re going to get paid.”

  “My driver lost t’ree hours.”

  “And I lost my writer!”

  “Not my fault, lady. Fault your writer.”

  “Fault your mother!” said Bettina, and ended the call with a violent jab of her finger on the cellular disconnect button. Manfaluti Kheyboom shook his head sadly and thought to himself, you come to America, you struggle to learn language, you hire good driver, and all you get is misunderstandink.

  · · ·

  The bear didn’t know he was in Harlem, but he knew it was different from his own neighborhood. There was music floating from the windows, and the people seemed in less of a hurry than in other parts of town. They congregated on street corners, while people in his neighborhood just rushed along the sidewalk and didn’t even look at each other. He felt himself relaxing and decided he would move here.

  He was in his gray tweed suit and baseball hat, with his elastic tie, and he wished he had a shiny red suit like the one worn by the dominant male.

  He walked on, sniffing his way through the smells that came from the restaurants. Watching him were two heavily armed children. They were brothers and the bigger kids called them the Tinys—Tiny One and Tiny Two. Tiny One had an IQ of 200, and had been able to read a newspaper since he was in diapers. His ambition was to be a criminal and drive a white Lincoln with gold-leaf chrome.

  Tiny Two had discovered the principle of base-10 arthmetic while goofing with the beads on his playpen. He’d worked his way through complicated mathematical procedures before he could speak, and now calculated sums in his head with astonishing speed. His ambition was to control sixty blocks of Harlem selling caviar crack, from which he’d make a thousand dollars a day. Tiny One and Tiny Two knew they were the smartest people in Harlem, but older gang members still kicked their asses a lot. So they were on the lookout for opportunities to impress the older members. And this big buster who’d just walked into the neighborhood might be that opportunity. He was big, and he looked bad. “Probably trying to cut himself a piece of territory,” said Tiny One.

  “We be the ones doing the cutting,” said Tiny Two, touching the concealed barrel of his submachine gun.

  The bear was strolling happily along, doing his latest imitation of a human being. He was copying the walking style of the dominant male in the red suit, a rhythmic swaying of trunk and pelvis, and footsteps that rocked along the ground, as if testing it for solidity.

  “Dude walking like a pimp,” said Tiny One.

  “He dressed awful square fo’ a pimp.”

  The bear noticed some unusual hand gestures young people in this part of town made to each other when they met on the street, and he copied these too.

  “Goddamn, he signing!” cried Tiny One. If anyone who wasn’t a member of the ruling gang made hand signs, they had to die. “Putting the neighborhood down bad! Disrespecting the sign! I’m gonna pop the mothahfuckah!”

  “We ain’t in close enuf. Keep yo’ cool.”

  Tiny One and Tiny Two moved along quickly. “I’m gonna spray that big buster’s ass good for signing like that,” said Tiny One. Somewhere in his smart little self, he knew he was lost in a house of mirrors, but as he was only eight all he could think to do was grow bigger in the mirror.

  “Yeah, he gonna sign fo’ the last time today,” said Tiny Two, who had a similarly vague awareness about himself. Sometimes his lightning math calculations arrived with thoughts about his future that frightened him, but they came and went too fast.

  The Tinys drew closer to the bear. He’d stopped to listen to three males singing on a street corner. They sang the most beautiful music he’d ever heard. Their voices were locked in harmony, and his ears rotated with the loveliness of it. It sounded like this:

  “Shooo-doop-en shooo-beee-doooo …”

  Their close vocal harmony created a sound the bear felt he could touch with his paw.

  “Fuckah be signing again,” said Tiny Two.

  “We got to get around the other side, or we liable to shoot the King Tones in the ass.”

  “Be great to take him down right ’longside the King Tones though.”

  “Yeah, they ’preciate a dramatic touch like that while the
y singing.”

  The King Tones were known individually as King Cobra, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Imperial Decree. Imperial Decree had been ingesting a new brand of paint thinner, which gave his throat a coating he liked for singing. He had the deepest human voice the bear had ever heard, and the sweetest, like a heavy golden syrup pouring into the air from his throat. But Imperial Decree’s eyes had begun to revolve in his head from the effects of paint thinner, and his knees were buckling.

  “You okay, Imp?” asked King Cobra, the leader of the group.

  “Be fine …” said the crumpled singer. “Jus’ need to take a moment here …” Imperial Decree pressed his cheek against the pavement, as his head seemed to be rotating at an increasing rate of speed. “Got to … stabilize…”

  “You sing from down there?”

  “Sing anywhere.”

  “Okay, le’s take it from the top again.”

  Tiny Two and Tiny One had realigned themselves so they had the proper trajectory on the Big Buster. “Now,” said Tiny Two, “le’s get down for the ’hood,” and reached inside his shirt for his weapon.

  “Shooo-doooop-en shooooo be-doooooo …”

  The harmony floated out again, but the bear noted that a portion of it was missing. The singer with the deep voice was moving his lips but no music was coming out, only soft sputtering sounds.

  “Shit, he out of it totally now,” said King Cobra. “Vinyl resins fuck him up bad.”

  The bear opened his mouth, and suddenly a deep musical growl was coming out, for bears are tuneful beasts at heart. His tremendous barrel tone filled the air. The King Tones looked at him in surprise and resumed their singing, their eyes saying, take it.

  The bear took it, floating happily in the song, becoming part of the dimension of harmony. His musical growl fit the pulsing bass line, and he poured all of his heart into it, his mighty diaphragm expanding and his breath resonating in his huge chest and stomach cavity.

  Dude got a voice like the horn on the Staten Island ferry, observed King Cobra.