The Bear Went Over the Mountain Page 3

  The other skinheads had their arms up, trying to shield themselves from the blur of metal. Its impact twisted them around, breaking ribs and elbows, and a large automatic weapon bounced along the floor of the bus station. An elderly woman picked it up.

  As Heimlich desperately tried to fit his nose back on, the bear looked anxiously about, afraid the crowd would attack him for such a bestial act. He started to hurry away, but now that the danger was past, the crowd applauded, crying, “Way to go” and “Nice piece of work.”

  And, with the automatic in her shopping bag, the elderly woman got on a bus to visit her aggravating son-in-law in New Jersey.

  Arthur Bramhall followed Vinal Pinette into the entranceway of a small farmhouse. Wood was stacked neatly in the yard, and a pail of fresh water was beside the door. “What you need,” said Pinette, “is more sociability. Fred’ll cheer you up.” He knocked on the door. “Fred, you there?”

  “Come on in,” said a voice from inside.

  Pinette and Bramhall entered. A burly man in work pants and shirt sat by the stove. “Art,” said Pinette, “this is Fred Severance. Fred, this is Art Bramhall, from up the college. I thought you and me could cheer him up.”

  Bramhall saw that his host was depressed, could feel it, could almost smell it.

  “She left me, Vinal.” Severance shook his head sadly, then remembered his duties as host. “You boys want some tea?”

  The wood stove held pots and pans dented and blackened by a lifetime’s use. Severance’s face was reflected in the gleaming chrome of the stove, his head elongated in the metal, as if a zucchini squash were growing in his brain. Well-used harnesses hung on the wall, along with antique snowshoes. The only contemporary note was a framed color photograph of a young woman.

  “That’s her,” said Severance, noting the direction of Bramhall’s gaze. His voice was low, solemn. “World Federation of Wrastlers come to town for their annual show, and off she went.”

  “Cleola went off with a wrastler, did she?” inquired Pinette.

  “Yes, she did. And I blame myself.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” said Pinette.

  Severance’s gaze returned to the photo of his beloved. It was a studio photograph, of the kind taken at high school graduation. “I shouldn’t of let her go, Vinal. Not to wrastling. ’Cause now she’s out on the road with a tattooed midget.”

  “Her family was always fond of travel,” admitted Pinette. Then, delicately, he changed the subject. “Show Art that contraption under the stove.”

  Severance rolled out a crudely carved length of wood, whose center was about the size and shape of a pair of bowling balls. “Beavers did that. And rolled it for miles.”

  Bramhall stared at the astonishing sculpture, whose mechanical utility could not be denied. It had the presence of a totem; it riveted his gaze, as if he’d met it somewhere before—his dreams of the last few nights had been terribly strange and colorful, involving all sorts of animals both real and monstrous.

  Beavers, he thought to himself, they chiseled this with their teeth. But he felt how much more there was to the object than simply the tools with which the little sculptors had created it. There was an emanation coming from it, of soulful gnawing in the moonlight, while the forest was still and men were asleep. Then the beavers worked, and Bramhall, with a strange floating sensation, felt himself go to them, felt himself crouching beside them on the wooded hill above their pond, the hill down which they would roll their prize. Their eyes flashed at him, signaling a pact he could seal with them, if he desired.

  With a jolt of fear, he felt himself snap back from the vision. His body twitched in the chair, as if he’d just rebounded from a long elastic swing through the forest.

  “Not too many people know beavers invented the wheel,” said Pinette to Bramhall. “And that’s the kind of story—” He slapped his knee for emphasis. “—you want to tell when you get to writing your new book.”

  The bear pushed his shopping cart through the supermarket. The sky-scrapers of Manhattan had astounded him, and now the endless amounts of honey that man had available to him had humbled him to the ground. The intelligence, the inventiveness, the time and courage it took to lay in this much honey was the final proof that man wore the crown of creation. “Bears are just along for the ride,” he said to himself as he filled his cart with honey—honey in jars, honey in plastic bottles, honey in plastic tubs.

  A rainbow of colors dazzled him, and he peered more closely at the bright glass jars. Can this be? he asked himself. Excitedly, he selected an assortment of jams and jellies. When I think of the hours it would take me to pick this many blueberries … And there was no competition from crows, no foxes to chase away. He ignored the quiet voice within him that said that this superabundance came with a price other than the one fixed to the lid of the jars. By the time he reached the checkout counter, he had every jam jar in the store. Mounded above them were packages of cookies, cakes, pies, and doughnuts, and his respect for humanity’s accomplishments was boundless.

  The supermarket had narrow aisles and stock crammed everywhere. The checkout lines were long and customers smoldered with impatience. But the bear didn’t mind, as it would have taken him months to gather in the forest what he’d just gathered here in a single hour. He pushed his cart in behind an elderly female. She’s old, she’s wise, I’ll copy her. Be a golden opportunity.

  “This goddamn fucking place,” said the elderly female.

  The bear nodded and made a mental note.

  The old woman pointed a gnarled finger toward the girl working behind the checkout counter. “She’s half-asleep. She don’t care. We can wait here all day for the little slut.” The old woman rammed her cart against the end of the checkout counter, rattling the magazine stand. “Come on, speed it up!”

  The checkout woman gave the old lady a flickering glance of contempt and continued with her slow and dreamlike tallying of merchandise. The bear found her performance mesmerizing, the way she’d take hold of something, slide it along, make a bell ring, then slide it further along, to where another young woman bagged it. The movements of both women were so smooth, their manner so poised, like a particularly graceful shorebird whose antics he appreciated in salmon fishing season. The thought of this bird took him suddenly backward, to memories of his territory. Who was commanding it now? What incursions would be made into his favorite fishing spots? What other bear was even now sniffing its way into those fields he’d staked as his own? A stab of jealousy ran through him, for the unfettered step of that rival whom he could sense across hundreds of miles, a rival alone at the edge of that special field, sniffing, sniffing. Used to be one big tough sonofabitch controlled this patch. Gone. Must be dead. So then it’s mine.

  “Get with the program, girlie,” growled the old lady, banging her cart against the counter again.

  The bear angled his own cart so that he was able to bang it against the counter too, like a real human being, and in doing this he silenced the battling voices inside him.

  The old lady turned toward him with a conspiratorial glance. “We oughta set fire to the place, that’d get them moving. They’ve only checked one goddamn item in the last minute and a half.” The old lady pointed to a watch that was pinned to her coat along with a card bearing her name and address. “Don’t think I haven’t timed them.”

  The bear continued banging his cart back and forth against the checkout counter. I’m a model of deportment here.

  The checkout woman totaled the old lady’s order. “That’ll be twenty dollars and fifty-two cents.”

  “Up your ass,” replied the old lady. She paid, was handed her parcels, and left the store, muttering to herself.

  The bear emptied his cart onto the conveyor belt. When his items had been packaged and handed to him by the bagger, he said, “Up your ass,” and walked toward the door. He was learning more every day.

  “What you want,” said Pinette, “is a story that will touch people in the heart
.” They climbed into Pinette’s truck and he steered them through the twilight, along the dirt road that connected the houses in the remote settlement. “I hate to see a man’s suitcase stolen by a bear,” continued Pinette. “Nor a child neither.”

  “A child?”

  “Mavis Puffer, one time, was out covering her garden against the frost. She looks up and sees a figure by the fence, which could only be her old man coming home. It’s dark, and Mavis never had sharp eyes. She hands her baby over the fence, says, ‘Take him inside, he’s cold.’ Only it wasn’t her old man, it was a bear.” Pinette took off his cap and scratched his head, the story apparently concluded.

  “And what happened to the child?”

  “Bear et it, likely.”

  They rode in silence for several miles, Bramhall returning his gaze to the forest. He saw the glimmer of a pond through the trees, saw burnished twilight on the hillside above it, and a longing filled him, to be there, to see the beavers roll their wheel, but more important, to have them look at him, their eyes glinting, signaling.

  “I believe your story is up ahead, at Armand LeBlond’s place,” said Pinette, and pulled his truck into the LeBlond driveway. The door to the farmhouse opened and a woman stepped out. “Armand’s mother-in-law, Ada Sleeper,” said Pinette meaningfully as he and Bramhall climbed from the truck, Bramhall mindful of a nearby fence, which was humming with electricity.

  “How you keeping, Ada?” asked Pinette.

  “Just fine, Vinal.” Following this reply, a strange sound emanated from Ada Sleeper’s throat, like the cackling of a hen. And then her voice became normal again. “Armand’s in the south meadow. He’ll be back soon.”

  “And Janetta?”

  “In the barn,” said Ada, the hen-cackle sounding in her throat once more. “Janetta!”

  A young woman came out from the barn. Behind her Bramhall saw lighted stalls and the forms of cows.

  “Company, Janetta,” announced Ada with cackle.

  Janetta LeBlond came across the yard, smiling tentatively at the two men. Introductions were made, and Pinette engaged her in conversation, during which he several times sent knowing nods toward Bramhall, whose significance Bramhall failed to understand. Then Armand LeBlond came across the field, and Pinette and Bramhall went to meet him. “How’re you, mah friend?” asked LeBlond in a buoyant Maine-French accent.

  “I brung this feller to see you, Armand. He’s a writer looking for a story.”

  LeBlond drew out a pouch of tobacco and paper and rolled himself a cigarette whose ragged ends ignited in a sputtering rush of flame. He glanced at Bramhall. “You talk to Mudder-in-Law, you hear how she sound like chicken?”

  “I did notice, yes,” said Bramhall.

  “Well, Janetta used to sound like chicken too. It run in dat family.” LeBlond puffed on his homemade cigarette thoughtfully. “Very queer damn business. But den one night, Janetta had too much to drink and she c’lapse into mah fence.” He pointed to it, and the fence seemed to hum slightly louder, making a chord, as if proud of the part it had played.

  “She musta spent too much time hanging there,” explained Pinette, “because it took the cackle right out of ’er.”

  “Den de old woman want to t’row herself against dat fence too, get rid of cackle same way. But I tell her, dere’s no one like you wid chickens, Mudder-in-Law.” As LeBlond said this, Bramhall noticed that several chickens were devotedly following Ada, clucking up against her ankles. LeBlond turned to Bramhall. “I give you dozen eggs, you tell me. Best damn eggs you ever eat, I bet.”

  The three men stood quietly then, as the last light of the day was lost over the fields. Later, in the truck, with a bowl of eggs on the seat between himself and Bramhall, Pinette said, “A remarkable true story, Art, which I believe has all the trimmings.”

  Bramhall picked up one of the eggs and cradled it softly in his palm. Then he put its cool surface against his slightly fevered forehead. It had a soothing effect.

  “Porkapine going,” said Pinette, nodding ahead of them, where the ambling creature was caught in the headlights of the slowing vehicle. Its eyes gleamed, and Bramhall got out of the truck while it was still moving. He followed the porcupine across the road, which caused it to raise its quills defensively. It waddled off into the foliage, and he listened to it going slowly away into the darkness of its own concerns.

  “Porkapines are comical rigs, all right,” said Pinette, coming up beside him in the road.

  Bramhall was sniffing the porcupine, its odor somewhat human, like a heavily perspiring person in a raunchy undershirt.

  “What’s up, Art? You smell something?”

  “You don’t smell it?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  The porcupine had gone far enough into the underbrush for the sound of its movements to go undetected, but its odor was leaving a vivid picture of it in the night air. Bramhall turned his head around, suddenly aware that he was smelling a night rich with scents of every kind. But the moment he tried to analyze the sensation, something slammed shut, with the sound of a filing cabinet, a door, a window whose sash has snapped, and that snap was his return from whatever perfumed cloud he’d been traveling on, and his heightened sense of smell was gone.

  Elliot Gadson was reading the final proofs of an autobiography written by acquitted society scion Barton Balfour III, who’d been accused of having disposed of his wife by serving her up to guests in a light Madeira mushroom sauce. Balfour’s prose style left much to be desired, but the main thing was that the heart was there.

  “Mr. Hal Jam to see you, Mr. Gadson.” A young editorial assistant stood at the door, the bear beside her.

  “Ah, Hal, come in, come in. I’m delighted to meet you.” Gadson came around to the front of his desk, holding out his hand. “I loved your book. It was completely real to me. I felt I’d known the people in it all my life.”

  The bear was sniffing the office: coffee, cologne, paper, glue. He liked the life-size cardboard replica of Barton Balfour III with a knife and fork in his hands; it showed a proper esteem for eating.

  “I can’t remember the last time I read such an absorbing work,” continued Gadson, feeling his way carefully, as Jam had the air of a messenger boy who’d been sniffing aerosol cans. “Noticing our other titles? As you can see, we have a diversified list. A star biography or two, the latest from the Bel Air Diet Doctor …”

  Gadson was not warming to his new author, for Jam was guarded. God, I hope he’s not homophobic, thought Gadson, whose wall carried a poster of Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, at the moment when he’d put on a woman’s nightgown and cried, “I just went gay all of a sudden.”

  The bear was not homophobic, as bears have a tolerant sexual attitude. Occasionally young male bears who fail to find a female will hump each other, and no one makes a fuss about it.

  “I’d like you to meet Bettina Quint, our publicity director,” said Gadson, and dialed another office. “Hal Jam is with me now, Bettina.”

  The bear had turned to look out the window, over the bustling city. “Mine,” he said, making his territorial claim. Of course, to firm it up he’d have to shit along the perimeter. All in good time. Hearing a sound at the door, he turned back around, and had the impression that a confused hummingbird had just entered the room.

  Bettina Quint was tiny and moved with great speed. A rapid shift of trajectory, upon spying Hal Jam, caused her to strike a stack of books and send them flying. “Oh shit,” she said, and started picking them up.

  “Please, leave them,” said Gadson with a patient air.

  “This is my second collision of the afternoon. The first one was much more colorful.” Bettina attempted to adjust her flyaway bun of streaked-blond hair. An emerald scarf encircled her twenty-two-inch waist; her constant hurrying flight burned calories in a steady flame. She rushed to her new writer and shot out her hand. “Your book is going to be a blockbuster.”

  Bettina spoke as a hummingbird might, in high-pitched p
eeps of great excitement. The bear sniffed her discreetly, taking in the aroma of her perfume, makeup, deodorant, hand and face cream, and the faint residue of the soap she’d showered with. Her resemblance to a hummingbird pleased him, for hummingbirds were close to bees in their habits.

  Bettina had already made her own assessment of the new young writer the Muses had sent off the assembly line. From her reading of a three-paragraph synopsis of Jam’s book she’d concluded that he was the find of the year—a writer who could move a woman to tears of compassion for herself. She regretted not having had time to read the book—it seemed like fun—but that was a luxury she couldn’t afford just yet. The interviewers she’d be wooing wouldn’t have time to read the book either; they’d be working from her publicity release. Something so drab as the book itself wasn’t much use to anyone.

  “I’m like the Shadow, Hal. I cloud men’s minds. I’ve got a big budget for Destiny and Desire, and that means I’m going to impose you on the national consciousness.” Bettina moved as she spoke, sitting, standing, sitting again, this time on a papier-mâché fishing frog from Java which Gadson kept at the edge of his desk. “I’m not talking a brief moment of exposure here and there, I’m talking major saturation. I’m sorry, Elliot, was this a precious memento?”

  “Ignore it, darling.”

  “To saturate we have to tour long and hard, Hal. We have to give the public a feeling of intimacy with you.” Bettina paced to the window and back, then to Gadson’s couch, ideas seeming to propel her as they surfaced. Her hands were continually gesturing, and the bear watched her dizzily, his nose working back and forth. She smells sincere, he said to himself.