“Well, Mama Bear wasn’t going to stand for that nonsense,” continued Spatt. “She come right in the door and give us a look that said we’d better not mess with her.”
“We didn’t neither,” said Pinette.
“She lifted her cub up by the scruff of the neck and the little bugger whined to beat hell, but she dragged him outa there. He and Mama Bear went trotting off in the moonlight with Mama licking him and scolding him at the same time. And he looked back over his shoulder at all of us, as if he had plans for coming back.”
Pinette placed his big woodsman’s hands on the edge of the table and rocked in his chair. “I’ve knowed a fair number of animals in my day, and not one of them was as smart as that bear cub. Now, you take this dog of mine here—” He pointed toward the beast, who looked up at him guiltily, aware by the old man’s tone that one of his poorer performances was coming under discussion. “He broke into the feed room and ate a fifty-pound bag of chow in one sitting. Swelled up like a bullfrog, and was so stuffed he couldn’t even move his tail. Sorriest-looking rig you ever saw.”
The dog’s tail thumped now as he thought back with mixed emotions to the incident. Yes, he’d been rendered motionless from gluttony, and the gas pains had given him some bad moments for awhile, but on the whole the experience had been positive.
“Now, a bear’d eat that fifty-pound bag and ask you politely for another one,” said Pinette.
Spatt gazed toward the window ruminatively. “Bears are deep.”
“There ain’t nothing so deep as a bear,” agreed Pinette.
The bear took his time furnishing his apartment, because he wanted it to be in perfect taste. Light came from bubbling Lava lamps. A painting on velvet, of a trout, hung on the wall. The walls themselves were covered with a bright nursery paper depicting teddy bears playing with balloons. A beanbag chair, loosely molded to the bear’s shape, was in front of a big-screen television set. He was seated in it now, watching a cartoon. A brightly colored coyote being struck with a wrecking ball and flattened to a shadow on a wall was very much to his liking. He turned on the lamp beside him, which had beads of illuminated oil that fell in a shower around a gold-tinted plaster Venus. The bear was especially fond of this object. This was because he was a bear.
After watching television for a short while, he became uneasy. He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was filled with pies and cakes. “Do I have enough?” He was still troubled by the instinct to hoard, which he fought down by telling himself, “I can get more,” and by reminding himself that the great thing about civilization was that you could always go shopping. Just to steady himself, he opened the kitchen cupboards and looked at his stores of honey. Every shelf was filled with the golden nectar, and there weren’t any bees to contend with, another important advantage of city living.
He shuffled out of the kitchen and sat back down in front of the cartoon show. Now the coyote was being run over by a steamroller, his neck elongating as he tried to escape. The bear clapped his paws. “He won’t get out of that one!” But he did get away, and the bear gave an appreciative growl. Coyotes were tricky. They’d stolen food from him a few times. You have to bang them against a tree real hard, which knocks the wind out of them. Then they behave.
These flickers of memory sank him into reflection about the forest he’d put behind him. “I should go back,” he said to himself. But then he thought of his cupboard full of honey, and the web of forest reflections dissolved. He padded back to the kitchen and brought out a jar of tupelo honey. “This,” he said as he admired its amber beauty, “is what it’s all about.”
He was jarred out of this meditation by the ringing of his telephone. He spun around in alarm, his claws spread to strike. When he detected nothing but the annoying sound, he stepped slowly from the kitchen into the living room and cautiously approached the phone. It was a child’s phone in the shape of a pair of bunny rabbits, back-to-back, their ears holding the receiver. It had appealed to him in the store when he’d purchased it, but now he looked at it suspiciously, his eyes narrowing, his first impulse to hammer it, because bears are never at home to just anyone.
The bunnies continued to sound, their eyes lighting up with each ring; in the store he’d been delighted with this feature, but now the bunnies’ eyes seemed to glow malevolently, on and off.
He removed the phone receiver from its cradle and set it down on the table. That shut the bunnies up, but now a voice was coming from the receiver.
“Hal, are you there? It’s Zou Zou …”
Female, thought the bear to himself as he stared at the phone.
“Hal, I’ve been calling you for days … Hal? Are you busy? Are you writing? I’m not interrupting you, am I?”
He sniffed the earpiece, trying to get the scent of her, but it was no-go. However, as the voice continued to speak, he managed to place it. It was the female he’d rutted with. Cautiously, he lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Hal, I know you’re there, I can hear you breathing …”
The bear felt the tiny voice spiraling down into his ear like a bee. He tapped the receiver into his palm, wondering if something might fall out of it, perhaps a tiny human female with pollen covering her legs.
“Hal, please talk to me. I’m back in Los Angeles and I’m trying to go about my life but I have to know how things stand between us.”
The bear set down his jar of tupelo and untwisted the lid.
“Hal, please tell me what you’re feeling. Do I mean anything at all to you?”
“Honey,” said the bear as he removed the lid and admired the golden beads that dripped from it.
“Oh, Hal, I knew we weren’t just a one-night stand. Hal, I’m prepared to make a complete commitment to our relationship. Do you feel that way too?”
“Sure,” said the bear.
“Hal, I’m so glad I called. If you knew how I’ve been oscillating here. Staring at the phone, afraid to call, afraid I might be interrupting your writing, afraid of so many things …”
The bear listened to the female buzzing in his ear. He listened for quite a long time, fascinated by the droning little sound. But finally he said, “Well, good-bye,” and hung up. He was pleased with the way he’d handled the telephone call. He’d been polite, but he’d said what was on his mind.
He picked up his honey jar again and tipped it to his lips. As the sweet ambrosia trickled over his tongue, he knew he was powerless against it.
“There’s the feller we’re looking for,” said Pinette, pointing through the window of his truck toward a skinny individual walking by the side of the road with a stick in his hand and a burlap sack full of empty cans on his back. The afternoon sun was on him, and his shadow was long and strongly etched on the road. “Gus,” called Pinette as he pulled his truck in beside the man. “Hop in.”
The man raised his stick enthusiastically, then tossed it and the sack in back of the truck and climbed in. A sweet smell of soda emanated from his clothes. Pinette said, “Gus, this here’s Art Bramhall. Him and me are writing a book together.”
“Gus Gummersong,” said the man, shaking Bramhall’s hand.
Pinette steered the truck off the pavement onto a dirt road and followed it for several hundred feet, to a tiny shack. The yard surrounding it was piled with firewood, tires, scraps of iron, and a mound of soda and beer cans.
“By god, ain’t this weather nice?” said Gummersong, pointing with a grizzled chin toward the dead-calm afternoon sky. “Makes a man glad he ain’t in jail.”
Bramhall followed him into the smallest living space he’d ever seen. A tiny stove was at its center, with a narrow cot beside it. A pail of water with a dipper was on a stool, and a pair of pants hung from a nail on the wall. It was like being in a monk’s cell—or an animal’s den—and Bramhall felt strangely comfortable, more than he’d ever been in any of his own residences. “I like your place,” he said.
“It keeps the flies off,” said Gummersong modestly. His missi
ng teeth gave him the look of a medieval fool. He moved the pail off the stool for Bramhall. Then he sat down on the cot and Pinette sat beside him.
The smell of the surrounding fields drifted in through the tiny window. “So tell me ’bout this here book you’re writing,” said Gummersong.
“Our first idea,” said Pinette, “was to write about bears.”
Gummersong reached beneath his cot, brought out a gallon jug in the crook of one thick finger. “Bear grease. Best place for a whoreson bear. In a jug.” He unscrewed the lid and put the mouth of the jug under Bramhall’s nose. The odor was overwhelmingly rank. “That’s one bear we don’t have to worry about.”
Pinette took the jug and poured some of the grease on his finger and rubbed it into his boot. “The very best substance there is for turning water. Try ’er, Art.”
Bramhall dipped a finger in the thick grease and rubbed it into his own boots, over the toes and into the seams. The smell filled the shack now and was somehow familiar to him, as if he’d known it for years.
Gummersong put the lid back on the bear grease bottle and held it up to a shaft of sunlight that came through his tiny window. Then he turned to Bramhall. “Here, you take ’er.”
“I couldn’t do that,” said Bramhall, reluctant to reduce the few possessions of this hermit.
“You take ’er,” chimed in Pinette. “There’s all kinds of uses for bear grease.”
Bramhall accepted the bear grease, cradling the jug in his lap. “Thank you, Gus.”
“Don’t mention it. Jug was taking up valuable space.”
“As I was saying,” said Pinette, “we’re gathering stories for our book.”
“Any money in the job?” Gummersong leaned forward keenly.
“Down the road,” said Pinette.
Gummersong reached for the stick with which he speared empty cans and bottles. “It’s al’uz down the road, ain’t it.”
“What I’m thinking,” resumed Pinette, “is that we should write us a love story.”
“In that case,” said Gummersong, “you come to more or less an expert.”
Pinette’s bushy eyebrows went up and down several times expectantly, and he glanced at Bramhall to be sure he was paying attention.
“The love of my life,” said Gummersong, “was a woman who bred guard dogs.” He sighed and cradled his stick dejectedly. “She were easy on the eyes for a woman her age, and she set out a good feed for a man. But after awhile I noticed she took a few drops of something in her tea each night. I asked her what ’twas and she says arsenic. Claimed it settled her nerves, which it very well may have done, I never tried it meself.”
“You told me,” said Pinette, “it lent an air of tranquillity to the evenings.”
“Well, it did,” said Gummersong. “But she carried it too far. Started taking drops all day long and stiffened up at the dinner table one night. Knife in one hand, fork in the other. Couldn’t move a muscle for over an hour. I told her the arsenic was having an adverse effect on her, and that she’d have to give it up. She knew better’n me, of course.”
“Strong-willed,” nodded Pinette.
“She had to be, in her line of work,” said Gummersong. “Them guard dogs was mean sons-of-bitches. Anyway, she said she had a nice income, and who was a damn fool man to tell her what to put in her tea?” Gummersong tapped the end of his stick thoughtfully on the rough board floor of the shack before resuming. “Well, a week later I found her facedown in the dog pen, and her nerves was more’n settled, she was croaked.”
“Then Gus made his big mistake,” said Pinette. “Any one of us mighta done the same.”
“I lit out,” said Gus, “and never asked myself what them dogs were gonna do when they got hungry. Course they et her.”
“A hungry dog ain’t particular,” said Pinette.
“But they wasn’t used to arsenic in their feed, and they keeled over dead themselves.”
“When Gus come back here, the police wasn’t far behind him.”
“Said I’d poisoned her.”
“Got into the papers and all,” said Pinette admiringly. “ ’Tain’t every day a woman gets et by her dogs, with her boyfriend implicated.”
“It took all the money I had to get clear of that case,” said Gus. “Had to sell the farm. Even so, my reputation was tarnished.”
“Well, you didn’t have much of a reputation to begin with.”
“True enough,” said Gummersong. “Well, sir, when all was said and done and the judge was bribed, I come out of it with barely the shirt on my back. I thrashed about for awhile, till I found my present line of work.” Gummersong raised his stick again. “And I ain’t never been happier. Got that whoreson farm off my back, and I spend my days the way I wants to.”
“And he owes it all to that arsenic-eating woman,” said Pinette as he got up to leave. “That’s the part I think our readers will go for.”
Gummersong accompanied them into the dooryard. “Don’t be afeared to rub that grease in,” he said to Bramhall.
“Thanks, I will,” said Bramhall, swinging the jug by the handle. The thick yellowish liquid made a heavy sound. Though his literary life had been ruined by a bear, he lowered the jug with a sort of courtesy toward its contents. And a sort of acknowledgment came from it, that perhaps something was owed to him for his having been ruined by a bear and that the matter was being taken into hand.
Elliot Gadson and the bear stepped into the large, mirrored exercise room of Gadson’s health club. The bear was in gym trunks and a T-shirt, as was Gadson, who’d suggested that his portly writer would benefit from working out. Gadson was himself in very good shape, having been a champion diver in his days at Yale. Currently he was being trained on the club’s Nautilus equipment by Bart Manjuck, a powerfully muscled young man who awaited them now. Manjuck was eating a Bel Air Protein Wafer sold by the club and wore the club’s own T-shirt, the sleeves of which were stretched tight around his biceps. His hand rested lightly on the tip of an upright metal bar on which was threaded a thousand pounds of circular iron weights.
“Bart,” said Gadson, “this is my guest, Hal Jam.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Manjuck. “Ready for a little sweat?” He was gauging what kind of shape Mr. Gadson’s friend was in. Grossly overweight, observed Manjuck. No muscle tone at all. And he’s got a bad slouch. Looks like it takes all his strength just to stay upright. “I think we should start you out with a nice light program. Not too much weight, we don’t want any strain.”
“Fine by me,” said the bear. No strain was just what he liked.
All around the room men and women were grunting and panting as they rowed and lifted and pedaled and climbed stairs that didn’t go anywhere. Soon he’d be climbing stairs that didn’t go anywhere either and then he’d be a full-fledged human. He was pleased to see how many females there were in the club. Maybe he could have them up for honey sometime. But when the eyes of the trim, pumping females fell on the porky-looking guy, they barely acknowledged his presence. They were building power bodies to go with their power jobs, and men who didn’t keep themselves in condition were pathetic.
“Why don’t you just step this way, Hal?” said Bart Manjuck. “I’ve got a curling machine free and we can put you on it with around fifty pounds resistance. That shouldn’t stress you too much.”
“Great,” said the bear obligingly. As he followed Manjuck, he stubbed his toe on the pile of weights, so he picked up the weights to move them out of the way. “Okay?” he asked, holding the thousand-pound stack questioningly in the air. Bart Manjuck’s head came forward like an astonished camel’s. The trim women paused in their pumping and watched the porky guy pick up a second thousand-pound pile of weights in his other hand. Considerately, he took them to the corner of the room, where he set them gently down.
A petite middle-aged woman rose from her Nautilus machine and strode swiftly toward them. “You must introduce me, Elliot,” she said in the throaty Southern accent that’d be
en heard on all the morning network shows that week. “Eunice Cotton,” she said, extending her hand to Jam. “You’re some power lifter.”
“Well, of course, it wasn’t a lift, strictly speaking,” said Bart Manjuck, bouncing up and down on his Nikes and flexing his pectoral muscles.
Gadson said, “This is Hal Jam, Eunice. I sent you the manuscript of his book.”
“This is Hal Jam? But I loved your book,” she said. Though she hadn’t actually read the manuscript, it had been on her desk for several days, awaiting a jacket quote from her, and she’d been getting a feeling for it each time she set her coffee cup on it.
Eunice’s own books were about angels. Her latest, Angels in Bed, was written simply and beautifully for all the world, as was her last best-seller, Angels in Business. Her writing had the slow, easy flow of the bayou in it, and an alchemical inventiveness inherited from a father who’d spent his life turning cornmeal, water, and sugar into bootleg bourbon. Eunice had left the Louisiana swamps to become a hairdresser in New Orleans—a tarty-looking girl with nice high breasts and a ready laugh. One day, while breathing the fumes of a particularly strong hair spray, she had a vision of a strong, handsome, sexually pure male with frosted curls who said he was her guardian angel and that he was going to make her a star. Working in the evenings, she cranked out a two-hundred-page text on angels, written in the chatty style of a hairdresser talking to a client in curlers. Her word processor corrected her spelling and grammar, more or less, and she handed out copies of the spiral-bound manuscript at the American Booksellers convention in New Orleans. Elliot Gadson received the manuscript directly from Eunice, glanced at it, expecting something quaint or just plain crazy, and immediately saw the potential in Eunice’s angels. He took Eunice aside to see if she was of reasonably sound mind and discovered that she was an authentic American yakker, a born distiller of dreams like her daddy, Anvil Cotton. She used too much corn and sugar in her mix, but it made for memorable moonshine, and made a fortune for Cavendish Press. Eunice moved to New York City, bought a seven-room apartment in the Dakota, and became a popular figure on talk shows. She shed her tarty look, assumed a pilgrimlike hairdo, dressed in dowdy clothes, and talked with Geraldo and Oprah, but underneath the dowdiness a sexy hairdresser was hidden; when she gave her throaty laugh or made some salty comment, the audience loved it.