The Bear in a Muddy Tutu

by Cole Alpaugh

  The bear pushed her way up in the tight quarters, lifting her chin over the edge of the door.

  “Shit!” one of the boys said. “It’s got rabies!”

  “She’s just drooling,” Bagg laughed, as great gobs of bear spit ran down the back of his Jeep. The bear rested her chin on the door. Her yellow eyes darted from boy to boy and then zeroed in on the source of the smell. Bagg was holding a pie in one hand, and the bear sent her long tongue toward it, letting him know she was very interested. She let out a low, rolling moan as if to say “please.”

  “Whoa,” one of the boys said, as Bagg cupped the fruit pie for the bear to slurp and gum. “It doesn’t have any teeth.” The boy looked as if he were imagining what it would be like to be eaten by a bear without teeth, all slurped and sucked down.

  “I need to find her owner.” Bagg took the rest of the doughnuts and other scraps to feed the big old bear. This bear was going to need a real meal and he figured to buy a bag of dog food from the convenience store. Probably not gonna find anything that says bear food.

  “I heard ’em last night,” came a small voice from the back of the group. “I heard the trucks come past my house before the sun came up. I thought it was the county truck with the sprayer in back, but the noise kept getting louder and bigger, you know?”

  “Where were they headed?” Bagg felt the familiar old rush of getting to the real facts of a story. Politicians were really no better liars than a bunch of teenage boys hanging around outside a convenience store trying to make a little mischief.

  “Like Marco and Chuck said. They went down Great Bay.” The boy came forward, pushing the taller boys out of his way. “For real, though. You just keep headin’ down the Boulevard until you come to the middle of nowhere. Plenty of room for a circus to set up down there.”

  Bagg wiped the bear spit onto his jeans and then peeled two ten dollar bills from the thin fold of bills in his front pocket. “Go grab me a bag of dog food, would you, please? You keep the change.” The boy who’d heard the circus trucks sprinted back to the store and through the open door.

  The boys were now surrounding the back of the Jeep, shoving each other for a chance to scratch the gentle old bear. She closed her eyes and pushed her big body as best she could up on the reclined back seats so the boys could get to the good spots near her belly.

  “Here, mister.” The out-of-breath boy who’d sprinted back with the twenty pound bag of dog food held it out.

  “Thanks for your help, guys.”

  “Man, if I found a bear, I’d keep it,” said one of the boys.

  Bagg took the dog food from the boy and propped it on the passenger seat. He pulled the strings to tear it open and then wedged it between the backseat and the side window closest to the bear. She buried her head inside the bag and began to gum away at the food. Bagg made a mental note to look for some softer chow, maybe the canned wet stuff, if he didn’t find her owner right away.

  Bagg climbed behind the wheel and started the Jeep, as the boys slowly backed away.

  “You make a left out of the lot, then the second right,” the boy called Marco reminded Bagg.

  “It kinda takes you to the middle of nowhere,” Bagg finished for him, smiling. Bagg backed up the Jeep, then shifted gears and made a left into traffic and headed for nowhere.

  Chapter 26

  The bear popped her head out of the bag when the Jeep bumped out of the parking lot.

  “Sorry,” Bagg called back to her, but she went back to gobbling the dog food.

  Bagg found the turn onto Great Bay Boulevard, a long straight road that headed south, directly toward the ocean. For the first mile or so, the road passed through typical shore area neighborhoods, then a marina on the left and a few more side streets with houses that backed up to canals. But then the developments gave way to wetlands, and the only trees were the ones that lined either side of the road. Beyond those trees were marsh grasses and muddy ponds as far as the eye could see.

  A little farther and the trees were gone, replaced by a deep sandy berm, and then a wide expanse of dark water off to the left. Bagg had been to beaches above and below this area but didn’t even know this middle ground existed. Bagg slowed the Jeep as the road became more and more covered with wind-blown sand. He glanced over his shoulder to see that the bear had eaten her way to the bottom of the bag and was now gumming the thick paper, slurping at the crumbs.

  Bagg drove over a series of small bridges and came to what appeared to be an old ranger station off to the left. It was hard to be sure from this far away, but there appeared to be a uniformed man sleeping on the front step, baseball cap pulled down over his face, and a tall, skinny bottle next to him. By the angle he was splayed out, Bagg got the impression the man was passed-out drunk.

  A little past the ranger station, the bear in the back of Bagg’s Jeep let out a blood-curdling, right out of the deepest wilds of nature kind of thundering bellow. Bagg reflexively jerked the wheel, the Jeep’s front wheels slipping and then catching again, as he nervously checked the rearview mirror. Something had definitely upset the bear, and all the stories coming over the wire he’d read about animal attacks came rushing back to him.

  * * *

  “I smell home!” Gracie screamed out in bear language. “Home! Home! Home!”

  “Easy, girl,” the new man said to her, but she could smell the trucks and the other animals, and all the things she loved. Her good man was here, Gracie knew and tried to push herself up over the backseat to get a better look at where this little truck was going.

  “Whoa!” the new man said, but Gracie was able to get her front end over the seat and could see the top of one of the big white tents.

  “There it is!” Gracie mewed, pushing her way up between the front seats as the new man drove them up and over a little bridge. Gracie could see the trucks now, and all the smaller tents, too. Her hair stood on end and she was rocking the entire Jeep back and forth as they pulled up to the back of one of the smaller trucks.

  “Good man!” Gracie called out in bear. She couldn’t see him, yet, but thought she might smell him. Yes, his scent was mixed in here somewhere, as she held her nose up and breathed in all those good, familiar smells. “Good man!” she shouted again.

  * * *

  Slim Weatherwax was miserable, twisting the greasy wrench to bolt together fencing as the mechanics unloaded the kiddy rides behind him. Neither his heart nor his throbbing head were in it, but this shit had to get done. The roustabouts were finishing off the last of the small tents, obscuring most of Slim’s view of the marshes. Every couple of minutes, he’d struggle to his feet and shout Gracie’s name between cupped hands. It sent a jolt of pain right through his forehead, but he called just the same. Gracie wasn’t agile enough to climb up into truck wheel wells, wasn’t skinny enough to duck down and hide in any of the grasses. Slim just couldn’t understand, figured there must be something he was missing because his head was aching so badly from last night’s booze. The bad feeling in his gut was all Gracie, though. Where that damn slobbering girl had gotten to was making him sick to death, but he was too proud to ask where they were, what state owned this stretch of stinking muck they were setting up in. Not that he’d get a good answer, since you weren’t ever supposed to tell a drunk where he was. It was pretty much a law to screw with a drunk who sobered-up lost.

  The sun beat down hard and Slim got to his feet to call Gracie’s name again when a Jeep came up and over the rickety island bridge off beyond the little tents. Anybody else probably would have thought it was having some sort of engine troubles, but Slim knew better. He knew that wonderful and terrible noise—what a man might mistake for a bull getting its balls twisted something fierce—coming from the vehicle was a lost bear who’d found her way home. Slim dropped the big wrench and ran.

  * * *

  Billy Wayne also took notice of the strange noises coming from the approaching vehicle, and reached into his open Samsonite and pulled out the Smith & Wesson .38 Sp
ecial he’d only fired once before in his life.

  “You took care of me once,” Billy Wayne crooned to his loaded gun, making some very bear-like noises of his own, as he struggled to get up from the piss-smelling cot. Billy Wayne emerged from his tent in time to see a large black bear tearing across the grassy muck, its giant claws throwing mud up in its wake. The bear seemed to have zeroed in on one of his flock, one of the sulky ones who’d sat off by himself during Bill Wayne’s vanilla pudding benediction.

  Billy Wayne raised the gun like he had the night before, just as the bear began a last leap toward the helpless, cringing man. This was a much more difficult shot, being a moving target and all. He was one for one when it came to miraculous shots, as he gently squeezed the trigger, sighting down the barrel at the thirty-or-so yard target. With no more than a hair’s worth of pressure left to go, the gun suddenly exploded out of his hands and stabbed itself into the ground, stubby barrel first.

  “Ouch!” Billy Wayne cried out, both hands stinging equally. Trying to rub away the pain, Billy Wayne looked up to see the face of a strange man looming over him, breathing heavily.

  “Why does everyone keep trying to shoot that bear?” Lennon Bagg asked.

  Chapter 27

  Billy Wayne imagined himself high up in one of the old biplanes trailing banners advertising Long Beach Island nightclubs and Coppertone suntan lotion. He’d look down on a true miracle, the birth of something he had led to this hallowed place. Fish Head Island had been nothing until he’d recognized its potential. It would look just like a beautiful flower opening its petals from up in those puffy clouds.

  Billy Wayne barked orders he knew nobody really listened to. Not yet, anyway. But they would grow to trust him over time, and he had plenty of that to spare, so he didn’t mind a bit of antipathy as long as they didn’t show it to his face. He had called a meeting in his tent headquarters with the ride mechanics to go over a master plan for setting up. The two mechanics seemed to agree with Billy Wayne’s input, shaking their heads while sometimes looking at each other, then went back outside to do what they’d all done a thousand times before. As long as the work got done and nobody made fun of him.

  The two large main tents were erected at the center of the island, side by side. Their big flaps opened toward the clanking kiddy rides and the ocean inlet beyond. These rides included the mini-motorcycles, a merry-go-round, a small roller coaster that only managed to rise and fall about six feet, and a truck ride where toddlers could beep horns and pretend to steer. The spinning chain swing needed a new clutch, and without the Pisanis to place an order, the ride remained packed on a truck.

  Fourteen smaller tents went up in a semi-circle around the two main structures. All their flaps opened toward the center, giving visitors a clear, circular pathway around the main tents, ending at the kiddy rides and the gaping mouths of the big tents.

  Billy Wayne’s red and yellow tent was at the near corner of the island from the bridge, directly behind the largest trucks. Only from above would anyone see the miniature town created by the trucks. The vehicles were parked in such a way as to leave a fifty by fifty foot square in the middle. The camper trucks with retractable awnings mostly lined this common area, and there were at least a dozen small pup tents already in place. This was their village, where the workers ate and slept, the new heartbeat of the island. Of Billy Wayne’s island.

  The main security system for this area was in how the vehicles were arranged. After years of practice, the trucks were situated so anyone entering would need to walk through a narrow, up-and-back maze walled off by hulking circus machinery. Somewhere near the halfway point of the maze was a menacing German Sheppard-mix staked on a thick chain, just short enough to allow passage with a little side-stepping.

  It was low-tech security, but the mangy old mutt named Beelzebub had a hellish streak, having bitten nearly every one of the circus workers at one time or another. Even the recently deceased tiger had been wary of Beelzebub’s lousy temper.

  “Is that the thickest chain we have?” Billy Wayne had come within inches of having Beelzebub clamp down on his buttocks. Foaming spittle had splashed across the back of his pants.

  “We’ve used it to tow the eighteen wheelers, boss.” The ride mechanic eyed the heavy iron chain, probably regretting he’d had the dumb luck of being within earshot of the boss’ cries for help.

  Billy Wayne used a tissue to wipe his pants, trying to convince himself his screams hadn’t made people think the damn dog had gotten hold of one of the little girls running around this place.

  Visitor parking was delineated by orange cones poached from various road crew work areas on the countless highways the circus had passed through. Drivers would come over the low bridge onto the island and then be ushered immediately to the left. When that lot was full, cars were to be directed to a second and third lot to the right of the bridge. The old trick, Billy Wayne had been told, was to get people as far away from their cars as quickly as possible. Strand them with their wallets in hand, and decisions about whether to buy dinner were easier.

  Although the circus owned two small generators, the ride mechanics had tapped into the pole-mounted transformer near the ranger shack. Large, relatively dangerous orange cords snaked through the marsh, humming with power.

  “Anybody ever get hurt by rigging something like that?” Billy Wayne stood over the cord, which disappeared under the canvas wall of one of the main tents.

  “Well, no, boss,” the mechanic said, his greasy hand rubbing at the whiskers on his chin. “But we ain’t never stayed no place long enough to borrow off a pole.”

  “But it works, right?”

  “Long as it don’t rain.” The mechanic turned and stalked off, the first drops of an evening shower falling on their shoulders.

  * * *

  Game Warden Clayton Flint’s life changed in these first days of the new arrivals to Fish Head. He took to drinking himself unconscious indoors, instead of out on his insect free front steps. The first couple of times he’d reached that wonderful state of drunkenness—the place where there’s still plenty left in your bottle and yet you can’t seem to manage to get to your feet to pee—he’d been shaken something terrible by the sound of the lion. The big cat apparently suffered from emphysema and spent half-hour stints disengaging various wet chunks from its lungs.

  Not totally unbearable in the middle of the day, but at three in the morning, just as you were entering the final stages of stupor, the effect was petrifying. So chilling was the deep, chuffing battle with its own fouled lungs when you were drunk and battling bed spins, even some of the old timers had been complaining, suggesting some strong cough medicine or that maybe it was time to put the sick old cat out of its misery.

  Flint seemed to become more ambitious in his pest control tasks. He widened his spraying to include more than just the ranger shack parking lot. He made a slow lap around Fish Head Island every Thursday morning, once again happy to be killing bugs for a purpose, singing along to Bon Jovi songs blasting from his radio. The laps also gave him the opportunity to note which spots needed to be cleaned up. The preacher kid was good about sending someone right out with a trash pick-up stick and garbage bag. It amazed Flint how an entire circus left less trash than city people coming down for a day of crabbing, and he wasn’t shy about giving the workers their due credit.

  On just their second night on Fish Head, the circus opened for business, lights flashing and music rolling across the still marsh. Three dozen cars parked in the lot, mostly families and a few crammed loads of teenagers. A bottle of cheap vodka in one hand, Flint watched from the back step of the ranger station as not one person swatted the air around them.

  * * *

  Billy Wayne held vanilla pudding meetings at one o’clock each afternoon, about the time the last of the hardest drinkers had woken up, followed by private consultations.

  “Boss, can I chew your ear ’bout somethin’?” was how it almost always began.

  �
��It burns like that time I ate a whole bottle of chili peppers when I take a piss,” was how it sometimes progressed.

  Billy Wayne glowed with excitement every time his tent flap opened, though. Nothing was too trivial for this Messiah. In fact, the trivial stuff was easier to deal with. With the house share of the receipts, Billy Wayne found a goldmine of relief at the pharmacy in West Tuckerton.

  Creams for jock itch and shampoos for head lice. An extra fifty bucks dispersed with the technicality involving prescriptions for infections, and the various sexually transmitted diseases being swapped back and forth among patrons and roustabouts. Billy Wayne’s morbidly obese, hypochondriac mother had prepared him well for treating circus folk ills.

  The psychological counseling was the most challenging and satisfying to Billy Wayne, especially when he seemed to get it right.

  Step number twenty-nine from How to Become a Cult Leader in 50 Easy Steps: “People have a deep psychological need to keep their heads stuck firmly in a hole when confronted by emotional issues that could cause discomfort. If avoiding such confrontation is even the tiniest bit possible, widen the hole for them to get their shoulders in, too. Ever hear the saying about whistling past the cemetery? Teach your followers to whistle loudly and you’ll be rewarded with peace and accord.”

  “I caught my Suzie screwin’ Omar.”

  “Omar from the bed of nails act?”

  “Yeah, I caught them screwin’ on the bed of nails.”

  “Hmm.” Billy Wayne would pause, flipping back through his good book’s pages in his head for help. “Maybe they weren’t having sex. Maybe they were trying some new act and didn’t want to damage their clothes.”

  “She was moaning all hot and heavy. Then she came back to the trailer with little red nail marks on her knees.”

  “Jesus had nail marks,” Bill Wayne said in a solemn voice.

  “So you’re sayin’ that maybe they wasn’t really screwing?”