Winkie

by Clifford Chase

  “Take it easy,” said the detective sternly, but the officer paid no attention. He was breathing hard and yammering something about a “talking bear.” The chief glanced uneasily at the journalists, who were filming, taking photographs, writing on notepads. It would only make matters worse now to order them away. “… then the little critter blinked,” the young officer was saying. He had to lean over onto his knees to catch his breath, but he kept jabbering. “… and I thought, What the? …” As the cameras flashed, the chief stared down at the top of the young man’s bare head, shaved to dark nubs. “… at first we thought he was dead …” They all shaved their heads nowadays, the chief thought, to look tough. But then they just fell apart in a crisis. They spoke gibberish. “… so I’m saying, ‘I didn’t mean to shoot ‘im,’ when I hear this little high voice, kinda raspy, and I look and it’s him—the bear, I mean—and he says, I don’t know, he says he forgives me …”

  Actually Winkie didn’t forgive him. Rather, the bear had said, “OK, OK,” and he only said that to make him be quiet. Apparently it worked, because the young officer ran off. Winkie’s middle hurt. He guessed that he had been shot. He wasn’t sure if he couldn’t move or if he just didn’t feel like it. He didn’t know if he was in great pain or just annoyed. He moaned experimentally but it didn’t make things any more clear.

  The officers didn’t seem to know what to do. One said, “You ain’t such a bigshot bomber now, huh, motherfuck?” Winkie had no idea what he was talking about. The others told the man to shut up. Their radios squawked. “Chief’s coming,” said someone. It was half warning, half reassurance.

  There was a tramping sound, a murmuring of the men; the wall of uniforms parted, and the chief marched through. He stood there a moment looking down at Winkie. He was handsome with a big square gray head that Winkie liked immediately. Abruptly the chief turned to his men. “Well, what are you doing just standing there?” It was the same voice that had come from the helicopter, and it spoke with the same miraculous authority, as if from on high.

  On his way from the helicopter to the cabin, the chief had once again composed himself. The contrast of the overexcited young officer had actually helped. He enunciated his next command carefully: “This suspect is no different from any other criminal.”

  As if a button had been pressed, the crowd of policemen suddenly began speaking and acting with perfect conviction, and each knew his duty. “You have the right to remain silent,” began one. Another roughly placed Winkie’s paws together and handcuffed them, not seeming to notice that the silver rings were too big. Winkie played along and kept his paws together. Several men had charged into the cabin, yelling, guns drawn. After some scuffling and more yelling, a voice called out, “All clear in here.” Winkie rolled his eyes. Another called, very efficiently, “Don’t touch anything.” Still others had busily repositioned their floodlights even closer to the cabin, so that it was now bright as daylight. More men arrived wearing suits and carrying huge briefcases. “Coming through,” they said. They put on white gloves and blue paper slippers and entered the cabin. No one gave the bear a second glance now. Shortly an ambulance arrived in the woods, and two hefty men in white came running with a stretcher. “Shot,” said one of Winkie’s guards. “Stomach, we think.” By his calm, professional manner the two emergency workers understood their own roles, too.

  “Pulse: zero,” said one, letting go the bear’s cotton paw.

  “Blood pressure: zero over zero,” said the other, as the puffy black cuff wooshed out its air.

  The first one shone a small flashlight in each of Winkie’s glass eyes, each of which went click-click. “Pupils abnormal but reactive—what’s yer name?”

  “Winkie,” said the bear, automatically. He almost added, “Marie underneath,” but that was too hard to explain.

  “Sex?” asked the other emergency worker.

  Also too hard to explain. Winkie didn’t answer.

  “Sex?” the man repeated, annoyed.

  The first worker gruffly moved the bear’s handcuffed paws aside to reveal the place where Winkie’s legs came together: a flat seam across worn blond fur. “Female,” he said flatly and definitively.

  If Winkie could have blushed, he would have.

  “Sign here,” said the second one. He handed Winkie a clipboard and pen. The bear made a large W.

  “No, here.” The worker pointed.

  Winkie made another W.

  Now each man took an end of the bear. “One, two, three—lift!” they said, and Winkie was on the stretcher. They tightened the white straps as far as they would go. “OK,” said one, and the bear was upraised and carried along the overgrown path, one policeman trotting in front, one behind. Winkie began to like the jostling, but it ended quickly. As he was loaded into the ambulance, he turned and saw that a huge yellow forklift had been maneuvered into position behind the cabin. With a metallic whine, it lifted the little godforsaken shack right off the ground, and the men in slippers jumped out one by one like mice.

  * * *

  In the big gray hospital, the doctors could only play at treating Winkie. They huddled around X-rays that showed only his metal parts—eye sockets, joints, squeaker. They murmured strings of complicated words. The nurses pretended to draw blood and the lab sent back readings of air. It reminded everyone pleasantly of their medical training, when they practiced only on dolls and cadavers, and nothing much was at stake. The bear was carted around on gurneys and “hooked up” to various tubes and machines. At least once a day, detecting no breath and no pulse, they administered CPR, then electric shocks. “Clear!” they yelled, and Winkie got the jolt. “No response. Clear!”

  The shocks were thrilling, but the bear tried not to make a peep. Just when the doctors and nurses seemed to have lost all hope, when they were about to pronounce the time of death, Winkie would begin quietly singing, “Beep … beep … beep …”

  His imitation of a heart monitor was poor, but that wasn’t the point. One by one the medical personnel lifted their heads in joy. Winkie liked this part of the game best. “You’ve done it again, doctor!” a pretty nurse might say. “Saving lives is my job,” a handsome doctor would reply.

  Actually it was the cleaning woman, Françoise, who had discovered the two bullet holes in Winkie, one in front, one in back, and she had had the good sense simply to sew them up with a needle and thread that she kept with her cleaning supplies. This was during Winkie’s second or third night here, while his police guard was asleep. Françoise had tiptoed in after hearing the bear moan. Her face was unlined and light brown like Winkie’s, her hair clipped short as brown fur, and even her heavily made-up eyes were the same light tan color as his. She looked at him with calm, open curiosity, and Winkie felt his intuition of trust kick in for the first time in ages. He lifted his child’s hospital gown and pointed with a loosely cuffed paw to where it hurt, on the left side of his fur-worn belly. There, too, where bits of sawdust leaked out, the cleaning woman turned her lovely brown-onbrown gaze.

  X-rays showed only his metal parts.

  The point of the needle hurt a little each time it went in, but Françoise was a gentle seamstress. “Ever since I was a little girl, I loved to clean. I don’t know why,” she said softly, so as not to wake the officer. Though her name was French, her accent was something else. “But last year the new bosses, they buy the hospital—for nothing. Now I do two people’s jobs …” She laughed conspiratorially. “I’ll be in big trouble for taking a break like this … OK, little bear, show me your backside.” Happily Winkie turned over and Françoise started on the second wound. “I have come to this country from Egypt, in 1967. It was because my girlfriend, Mariana, she left me, on my eighteenth birthday. She said, ‘Françoise, it’s very wrong what we do.’ So I decided that same day, ‘Shit, I’m going to America.’ ” She giggled. “I never wanted to see her again. And what happens but Mariana comes here too, two months later. We are together ever since.” Françoise tied off the last thread, whi
ch was hot pink like her uniform. She said musically with another chuckle, “So you never know about fate, do you, little bear?”

  3.

  Over the next few days Winkie began to feel better. He lost no more stuffing. He sat up in bed and watched television. When a distinguished physician noticed the pink stitching, the M.D. simply said to his resident, “It appears the surgery was successful.” Winkie let them pretend that modern medicine had cured him. He had begun to eat, and the staff let him have all the Jell-O he wanted. Winkie offered stool samples as thanks.

  To the police he offered nothing. When they had first said to him, “You have the right to remain silent,” Winkie listened no further. He’d scarcely spoken to anyone but his cub, so silence sounded good to him now. Certainly he had no interest in defending himself.

  Each day the chief detective came to question him, referring to such and such events in such and such places on such and such dates. Winkie no longer admired the detective’s big gray head. “Now, Miss Winkie—if that is your real name,” the chief would begin. The questions that followed were so confusing that it took the bear several days to understand even vaguely what he was charged with. “We found the old man, buried in a shallow grave next to the cabin—right where you left him,” said the chief in outrage. “He found out what you were doing, and he tried to stop you—so you killed him, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?!”

  The bear winced—not at the accusation, but at the mention of the very man who had kidnapped his child.

  Winkie wanted to cry out, but he could only look out the window and sigh—inwardly, for a real sigh would only bring queries about the sigh. It was sunny out. He could hear the chief detective breathing. He was beginning to dislike policemen as a group, though he knew it was wrong to generalize.

  “Winkie, Hinkie, Slinkie, Stinkie—I don’t care,” said the chief. “Don’t think, Miss or Mrs. Whoever-You-Are, that you’re going to get away with what you’ve done.”

  Winkie almost perked up at “Stinkie.” Miss Stinkie, he thought. Miss Stinkie.

  The detective followed the bear’s gaze out the barred window and saw nothing but sky. He tried to collect his thoughts. More and more now, they ran wild. Winkie—winking at us. Hinkie—flaunting her weirdness. Slinkie—she’ll try to slink away, like one of those toys hopping down the stairs. Stinkie—like her crimes!

  “Who do you work for?” the chief shouted.

  Winkie yawned. It would almost be worth it to say he’d been lying before, that Stinkie was his real name.

  Each night the chief tossed in bed.

  Some kind of alien, he mused. Some kind of demon. Some kind of ghost. Some kind of antimatter. Some kind of deformity, the horrible physical result of unspeakable depravity. Some botched creation, a mad experiment gone wrong. Some sort of humananimal hybrid. Some sort of ultimate weapon. Some sort of government cover-up. Some sort of mutant, the product of chemical waste, global warming, nerve gas, radiation. Some freak of nature. Some advance in evolution that we can’t even begin to understand. Some sort of dinosaur, reawakened after aeons. Some sort of time traveler. Some being from another reality or dimension. Some creature previously thought to be mythical. Some rare configuration of energy, a kind of quantum lightning. Some kind of message from the universe (“He said he forgives me”). Some kind of punishment sent by God …

  The chief looked at the clock’s glowing squared-off numbers: 3:15 A.M. “Piece of shit,” he muttered. He put the pillow over his head. The phone began to ring, but he barely noticed.

  Maybe it’s innocent. Maybe it’s the last of its kind. Maybe it’s a renegade. Maybe it’s a ringleader. Maybe it’s just one of a whole race of them, thriving near Chernobyl …

  “I saw an article about you,” whispered Françoise, seating herself on the edge of Winkie’s bed. She came by almost every night now, because the police guard always fell asleep at exactly 3 A.M. “Little bear, they say you make bombs!” She could barely contain her laughter.

  Even with Françoise, Winkie hadn’t yet chosen to speak, but he did often smile at her and now he let himself chuckle a little. He hadn’t chuckled in a long time.

  “And they say you are a girl?” Françoise made an expression of exaggerated surprise. “I was sure you were a boy! Because you remind me of my brother.”

  Winkie shrugged significantly.

  “Ahh, OK,” said Françoise, comprehending immediately. She ran her hand over her crew cut. “That’s why you remind me of my brother.”

  Françoise had never mentioned her brother before, but Winkie, too, understood immediately more or less what she meant. As she took out the newspaper, the bear let himself enjoy his inclusion in Françoise’s special circle of comprehension and similarities.

  She cleared her throat and read aloud from the front page: “‘According to sources close to the investigation, Ms. Winkie is very possibly the head of one of the most massive terrorist operations ever discovered in this country.’” The newspaper went on to list the many bombs the suspect had mailed to various locations over the past several years. “As to Ms. Winkie’s extremely small stature and unusual appearance,” the article continued, “police sources attribute it to a rare medical disorder that may actually be common in some parts of the world, such as Asia or the Middle East. ‘Not coincidentally,’ said one senior investigator, ‘these same areas are breeding grounds for terrorism.’ The investigator declined to name the disorder.”

  By now Françoise and Winkie were giggling so loudly that the guard woke up. The chief was called. Françoise was driven to the station and questioned through the night. Winkie was taken from the hospital to jail.

  Violin

  1.

  The jail was no more than a block from the hospital, but the plain white sedan sped down streets and highways for hours. The FBI agents stopped to refuel again and again at the same Mobil station, making no attempt to hide the fact that they were driving in circles, and not even big circles. Winkie assumed they wanted him to know they could do this sort of thing to him if they wanted. The agents, one male, one female, one in a gray business suit, the other in navy, shared a single bag of potato chips at each Mobil stop but offered nothing to the prisoner, whom they left shackled to the armrest with a set of plastic cuffs. Occasionally the car screeched to a stop by the side of the highway, and not even bothering to unhook him, the female agent jerked the door ajar and commanded, “Go.” It took Winkie a moment, the first time, to realize she meant for him to relieve himself.

  As he lifted his hospital gown and squatted out the door, shivering, while car after car whooshed past in the weak sunlight, a memory came to him suddenly of being shaken and shaken until his eyes throbbed, by the first child he knew, Ruth. Then she ordered the sick bear to lie down and repeat such curative phrases as, “There is no power in matter,” and, “Rely on God’s allness and love”—

  There was another jerk on the handcuffs, and Winkie had only an instant to pull in his behind before the car door slammed shut. His hospital gown caught in the door, so now he was tethered even more tightly. He supposed the journey could go on indefinitely. He was thirsty. Watching the same arrangement of trees flick by for the seventeenth time, he wondered why he’d never thought about Ruth while he was in the hospital, where he’d undergone so many play treatments and had even become a girl again, as he had been so long ago, for Ruth. Now that he did think of her, it made perfect sense that he should.

  “Because matter has no consciousness or Ego, it cannot act,” he could remember Papa reading aloud from Science and Health. The three children listened, but Ruth, the youngest, listened most intently. In her lap sat the teddy bear she had named Marie. It was Sunday afternoon. “Admit the existence of matter,” Papa continued, his voice nasal and quavering, “and you admit that mortality has a foundation in fact.” A draft stirred the collar of Marie’s blouse, and she wondered what matter was. And mortality. She was pretty sure she herself was dead matter, yet she could also think and feel …


  As the wires rose and fell in the car window, Winkie realized he couldn’t even count the number of years that had passed since that moment on Ruth’s lap. His eyes clicked shut in pain. Yet something had opened within him—here, of all places. He was ready to remember more.

  Marie’s fur was thick and even, she had never been mended, and her eyes rolled open and closed with the satisfying action of freshly oiled machinery. She knew almost nothing.

  Marie was neither boy nor girl, so it was both a privilege and yet an insult to be called “she” or “her.” For wasn’t it good to be a “she” and not an “it,” and she definitely was not an “it,” but neither was “she” who Marie was. Sometimes she hated herself for perking up at the sound of her name being called. There was a part of her that was deep and unnamed, and then there was that other part, located in the brightness of her polished glass eyes, that acquiesced and betrayed the self so easily, saying eagerly, “I’m yours,” as if that were someone.

  Marie was barely someone at all, and often for hours she stared ahead thinking nothing at all, even if the telephone jangled or the big Victrola began its tinny bleating down in the front parlor. She was no one until Ruth came into the room, and sometimes not even then, not until Ruth spoke to her.

  “Hi, Marie,” was all the girl needed to say, and the little bear’s eyes were flooded with a jumble of color, her ears with the distant tinkling of the knife sharpener’s bell, and her body with a smiling combined with excruciating sadness and regret combined with gratefulness combined with wanting to die again.

  “You’re the berries,” Ruth might say, rubbing her nose against the bear’s, and indeed the words were like sweet fruit falling down and down onto Marie’s imaginary tongue. Then if Ruth hugged her tightly, Marie let out a squeak. She couldn’t help it. She squeaked whenever she was hugged.

  She seemed to draw her very life from Ruth’s gray blue eyes and long lashes, and sometimes Marie loved the girl with such intensity that it dizzied her and made her own eyes flutter as Ruth laid her down to bed and the world flickered out like a power failure. The girl would speak for her then, out of the blackness, saying, “I love you, Ruth,” and the accuracy of those words, heard from outside herself, would seem to strike Marie like blows to the head, igniting another wave of color and flashing lights.