The Bear Went Over the Mountain (19 page)

The bear commenced eating beside the windows, gazing out toward the park. There was roast duck on his plate and ducks floating in the pond outside. He nodded in approval. Very convenient. They just go over and kill one. He wondered—should I volunteer my services? I’ll suggest it later.

Bears are congenial but solitary creatures and he was
content eating alone this way in a nice comfy chair. He now knew that bittersweet thoughts about his forest life were distortions and served only to undermine his present happiness. A bear had to live in the moment. He ate one meal, belched gently, and started in on the second. Your omnivore on tour, digesting nicely.

The telephone rang and he stretched out a paw.

“Hal, it’s Bettina. Is everything all right there? Are you comfortable?”

“Sure.”

“I saw the interview with Sandy Kincaid. You were wonderful.”

“They wash my underwear.”

“What?”

“When it gets dirty, they wash it. Well, good-bye.”

He ate several desserts and then turned slowly in his chair, facing back into the room. The excellent housekeeping pleased him. Crisp clean sheets have it all over pine boughs when it comes to nap time.

He got up, stretched out on the bed, and closed his eyes. A lovely heaviness rolled in, the dreaminess of the bear in repose. He saw bright little champagne bottles dancing around, their transparent forms filled with sparkling liquids that swirled him toward sleep.

Arthur Bramhall lay sleeping in his den. He had dreams. He dreamed of bears; their great dark forms rubbed against him, then led him down forest trails.

“I’m downstairs,”
said a female voice.

“I’m upstairs.”

“Hal, it’s Julie Moody. It’s time for your next interview. Do you need help getting ready?”

“I can tie my shoes,” he said with dignity, and hung up. Does she think a bear can’t dress himself?

Fly zipped. Now the clip-on tie, what a device. The man who invented it was a genius.

Key, money, candy bar. I’m ready.

He made a few territorial scratch marks on the wallpaper and left the room.

“Hal, you’re a blast,” said Dave Drover, the fast-talking host of
Driving with Drover
, a Boston rush-hour radio show broadcast over the most powerful radio station in the Northeast. “I mean it, you’re a breath of fresh air in the airwaves. Okay, let’s take a break for the weather and I’ll be right back with my guest, Hal Jam, author of
Destiny and Desire
.” Dave Drover removed his earphones and swiveled in his chair toward his guest. “The switchboard is lit up. People want to talk to you, pal.” Drover
took a quick sniff from the inside of his French shirt cuff, in which his daily ration of cocaine was stashed. When the diamonds hit his brain, his mind raced into regions of speech so swift that no one, not even he, could follow them, and he became momentarily silent. When the weather report was finished, Drover signaled for the commercial and slipped his earphones back on. The bear sat across from him, in front of another microphone, with only a vague understanding of the part he was playing in the rush-hour radio broadcast. But he was deeply impressed by the speed of Dave Drover’s speech. He yearned to talk fast like that, to have words dancing on the end of his tongue, to send them spinning out into the air, light, nimble, in a bubbling stream.

“Welcome back, everyone, you’re driving with Drover at half past the hour. My guest is Hal Jam, his book is
Destiny and Desire
, and he’s a fantastic writer, and an original thinker, as I think you’ll agree. Hal, simple question, please forgive it: How did you get started in writing?”

The bear wanted desperately to match the sparkle of Drover’s speech, to twinkle and bubble, to dance in the fountain of sound, and he tried to recall what really got him started, what first drew him to the world of humanity. “Garbage.”

Drover liked sharp, one-word answers from his guests, for that sent the ball quickly back to him, and he
was born to talk: “You looked at what was around, you saw it was garbage, and you thought I
can do better
. Not surprising. And then?”

“A man put a book under a tree.”

“Simple and poetic. And you were that man.”

“I was watching.”

“Were you ever. In your book you’ve got some of the most telling observations I’ve ever seen. This book is a manual for everyone who’s confused about relationships between the sexes, and that’s undoubtedly one of the reasons it’s so popular, and there’s someone on the line who wants to talk about it. Go ahead, you’re driving with Drover.”

“Yes, my name’s Marcia. I haven’t read the book. You said it’s a sex manual?”

“In a manner of speaking, Marcia,” answered Dave Drover. “What’s your question?”

“I want to know if your guest thinks people who live in the country have better orgasms. Because maybe I should move there.”

“I don’t think they’ve got a way of monitoring that, Marcia, but let’s ask our guest. Hal, what do you think?”

The bear leaned toward his own microphone. He didn’t know what they were talking about, so he said, “Sugar.”

“Right on, Hal, it’s sweet wherever you get it,” said
Dave Drover, “and good luck with your move, Marcia.” Drover smiled appreciatively toward his quiet guest. The guy knew whose show it was.

In New York City, Bettina was listening on her office radio. She turned to Gadson. “Tell me Hal isn’t a phenomenon.”

“Well, sales
are
going through the roof.”

Bettina strode back and forth in front of her window, her eyes on the East Side skyline. “He cuts through the communication barriers that inhibit the rest of us.”

“Yes, you can’t say he’s inhibited.”

“But he’s basically unassuming. That’s why he’s doing so well. He doesn’t threaten people with complicated ideas.”

“For the longest time I thought he was brain-damaged,” admitted Gadson.

Vinal Pinette sat in front of his living room stove, staring at the flames dancing behind the stove’s glass window. His dog lay beside him, chin on his paws, tail thumping rhythmically.

“It don’t do to fool with nature,” said Pinette.

The dog looked up, intent upon the molasses cookie Pinette was dunking into his tea. The dog observed that there were more of them on a nearby plate, and a cookie right about now would be appreciated. Should none be forthcoming, he’d go back to licking his balls, which always had a soothing effect on him.

“We just have to wait it out and watch,” said Pinette, bringing the tea-soaked cookie to his lips.

The dog’s tail thumped harder, and he gave his most eloquent look, the one with cookie written all over it.

Pinette turned toward the window and gazed out to the drifts of snow starting to bury the junked cars in his field. He missed Art Bramhall, missed talking with him by the stove, missed keeping watch with him over the
slow procession of winter days. “Art’s a good feller. I hope we see him again.”

The cookie is the natural food of dogs, said the dog, and emphasized the point with a pathetic look that was meant to show the pitiful results of cookie depletion in his system.

“You already had four,” replied Pinette.

It’s winter, I’m a dog, all I’ve got to keep me going is licking my balls and the love of cookies.

Pinette reached to the plate, tossed one, and the brown morsel was trapped in the dog’s flashing jaws. In one gulp it was gone.

It’s a pity I can’t slow that process down, reflected the dog as he stared at the floor. If I broke the cookie up into little pieces I could savor the experience. But somehow in the passion of the moment, I lose control.

“Secret Service guys,” said the Ritz Carlton elevator man to the bear, drawing attention to the several serious-looking young men in dark suits, standing stiffly in the lobby. The bear sniffed toward them and smelled the tension trickling down their armpits.

He looked out toward the street. People were shouting and holding signs, and it made him nervous. He was glad to be on his way back to his room, but as he was lumbering into the elevator, the next elevator opened, a dominant male stepped out, and everyone in the lobby turned toward him.

“Have a nice day, Mr. Vice President,” said the elevator man.

The vice president wished the elevator man the same. He was surrounded by staff, and Boston politicians. The bear smelled adrenaline and noted how the figures around the vice president were chattering like overwrought squirrels defending their nuts.

The bear didn’t know what a vice president was. This was because he was a bear. He wondered if he ought to challenge this dominant male. Maybe pick him up and shake him
a little, just to make the point about who was top bear in this lobby. But there are plenty of females to go around, reflected the genial bear as he watched the women striking mating poses for the vice president and making mating signals with their eyes, lips, fingers. They were in pretty coats and their hair was shiny and smelled good and their legs were shiny too, but after all, I’ve already mated twice this year. I’ll leave the field to this other dominant male.

With this convivial gesture, he turned back toward the elevator door. But as he did, another strong smell floated in on him, a smell like the one a coyote puts out when he’s stalking. He turned around and sniffed the air. Separating the various currents filling the lobby, he determined that the coyote smell was drifting down from a male who was descending the staircase from the tearoom on the second floor. The bear watched him carefully, for that funky smell meant a kill was about to take place.

The bear had spent a day and a night in the hotel, which made it his territory, and while he didn’t mind sharing the women with another dominant male, he couldn’t allow overt displays of aggression to go unchallenged. He liked this hotel, the food was good, and they’d washed his underwear and returned it nicely folded in a plastic bag. If anybody was going to get aggressive, it would be him.

The aggressive male stepped off the stairs and edged his way toward the vice president. His name was Wilfred
Gagunkas and he was preparing to blow up the vice president and himself. Gagunkas’s selfless desire to die, and take everybody in the lobby with him, was fueled by the terrible knowledge that a former Amtrak station in Boston was being converted into a massive crematorium for disposing of those men, women, and innocent children who resisted the One World invasion. Highway signs in and around Boston had already been marked with stickers by U.N. troops, orange for confiscation of nearby facilities, blue to indicate cremation areas, green for helicopter landing sites. Rolled up in Gagunkas’s back pocket was the latest intelligence issue of
The Constitutionalist
, which contained vital information on California earthquakes. Gagunkas had been astounded to learn that six of the biggest earthquakes in recent history had taken place in conjunction with abortion- or homosexual-related events. Shit like that
had
to stop.