The Bear in a Muddy Tutu

by Cole Alpaugh

  Bagg craned his neck to look past Singe and out the small window, convinced the old storyteller was still just messing with him.

  But he wasn’t.

  Chapter 47

  Dr. Frank Pillbright’s favorite thing in life was observing the birth of a tropical storm, especially one that grew up strong, made a name for itself, and was remembered long after it had died from the cold. Pillbright could just as easily have become a pediatrician, if only his grades had been a little better and his fear of blood a little less severe. Because he was a meteorologist consumed by tropical storms, Pillbright spent a great deal of his time observing radar maps and satellite images concerning the Sahara Desert.

  The Sahara Desert is a big place—almost as big as all of the United States—way over on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from Pillbright’s tiny home in St. Augustine, Florida. His home was also his office, or at least had been taken over by office things. His living room was cluttered by eleven computer monitors, all displaying a highway of sorts, one made of winds that ran from the African continent to North America. It had been as hot as hell during the first week of September in the northern part of Africa, and the North Atlantic had gotten toasty warm, as well. The Sahara had begun its annual custom of sending hot swirling winds out over the warm ocean water, one after another, like a very large game of Frisbee.

  One wave of spinning hot air that came out of the desert was promptly named Five by meteorologists in charge of those details, sending the birth announcement out in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration e-mail to news organizations around the planet. It was Pillbright’s job to double-check these e-mails for accuracy before they were released, confirming the barometric pressure levels, wind speeds, and that sort of thing. It might not seem like terribly interesting work to most other people, but to Pillbright, it was like the thrill of weighing a newborn baby.

  The rotation of the Earth and the flow of the ocean helped keep the spinning alive, as the growing disc headed west across the open water, feeding itself with the warm moisture below, nudged by the northeast trade winds.

  The storm had no particular interest in finding land, Pillbright knew, let alone the people who lived on it. Land, as it happened, made the storm feel weak, drained of its energy. But the storm had no choice but to go where it was pushed by more important winds and currents.

  Nine days after observing the storm’s birth, Pillbright watched it skirt along the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, then spend an entire lazy day moving nowhere, enjoying the bathwater temperatures north of Puerto Rico. After a gentle shove from behind on day eleven, the storm resumed its travels, leaving some of its energy behind in the Dominican Republic, and then a little more as it passed directly over the Bahamas.

  The storm wanted to grow, Pillbright sensed, but kept running into clusters of land surrounded by shallow water that couldn’t keep up with its thirst. To Pillbright’s relief, a subtropical high over the Gulf of Mexico turned it north, helping it avoid the quick death Florida would have caused.

  The prevailing westerly winds plotted a new path for the storm, urging it to the northeast and toward yet another speck of land called Bermuda. The waters were cooler up here, and Pillbright knew the storm felt sluggish and exhausted. The cold had that effect. The time to die was approaching, and the storm didn’t have the strength to protest its fate.

  With all the disappointment of its winds never reaching the magical thirty-nine miles per hour, it did not receive a proper name. No wonder meteorologists called them depressions, Pillbright thought. What could be more depressing for a raging storm—with all kinds of haughty potential—than to be called only by a number? Tropical Depression Five, with just a smidge better luck, might have been known as Dean, as it snuck up on Bermuda, and any airplanes happening by.

  Pillbright opened another e-mail from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, then turned to adjust his computer monitors back toward a lovely, rotating newborn infant over the Sahara Desert. Disappointment was short-lived this time of year.

  Chapter 48

  If Tropical Depression Five had a little more pep—its winds just a mile or two per hour faster—Flight 1142 from JFK to L.F. Wade International Airport would have been canceled, thus saving a very expensive, well-made Brazilian piece of machinery from being smashed into roughly twenty-seven thousand pieces.

  It wasn’t the lightning bolt that slammed the nose cone, and then ran along the aluminum skin of the fuselage, that brought the plane down. The bolt burned out running lights and blackened the fresh blue paint on the right engine before exiting through the tail. The lightning damage was mostly cosmetic, what with all the wonderful safety features on the pricey airplane.

  Peter Singe, AKA Lightning Man, feeling the power on the other side of the double-paned safety glass, longed for the dreadful, wondrous energy. Lightning Man heard the crash of brutal voltage, ten times the temperature of the sun, and waited for the explosion to take him, like it had so many times in the past. All that rage and energy so impossibly close, yet Singe was denied like a shunned lover; he was a single sperm trapped in a protective condom, so close yet so far.

  Bagg eyed his friend’s queer expression of near ecstasy, wishing like hell they could pull this thing over so he could get out. His video screen had gone from enthusiastic sneak-previews of upcoming movies to ominous snow, like the tip-off in a horror movie that something was about to happen.

  Apparently a result of the lightning strike, little yellow oxygen cups now hung swaying from the cabin roof on shimmering webs of tubing. The plane bounded through the turbulent sky as they began the merciful final approach. The clouds outside, which had devoured the plane thirty minutes earlier, were thick and dark and streaked the windows with constant rain. The clouds lit the faces of the frightened passengers with strobe-like lightning flashes, and there was little talking, not even from the captain or stewardess. The flight crew was busy with this little mess.

  “Thirteen.” Singe spoke in a spent voice, rolling his head toward Bagg, and turned his wrist to show off the blackened face of his watch. He smiled at Bagg with a tired, satisfied expression. It hadn’t been like the other body slamming encounters, and he’d nearly missed noticing the lightning’s soft caress. But it was enough. Singe turned back to the jostling window to watch the flashes of light.

  * * *

  The thirty passengers were quiet, perhaps hypnotized by the swaying oxygen masks that nobody was putting on. Bagg and Singe sat in row eighteen, seats C and D, just behind the right wing and engine. Another solid thump, followed by the vaguely familiar mechanical hum of the landing gear being dropped in place, gave Bagg some mild comfort. Okay, Bagg thought, the tires are down, so nothing major was broken by the lightning. This was going to be okay, and now the deceleration had a calming effect, despite his suspicion that they would break through the clouds any moment to discover they were a mere five feet over the ocean and headed directly into the side of a building.

  When the plane suddenly accelerated, dipping the passengers back into their soft seats, Bagg assumed the captain had decided to make another pass. Or maybe he’d rejected the ridiculous idea of landing in all this rain and wind. But the acceleration was followed by a weightless drop, as if the plane had stalled and was falling straight down, going for a belly flop into the sea rather than some mundane three-point touchdown on the smooth concrete runway.

  The flickering cabin lights went dark, as did the snow on the video screens. Both engines made a gasping noise, reminding Bagg of the feeling when you stuck your head out the window of a speeding car.

  “Goodbye, Lennon.” Bagg cringed as Singe took his hand in the dark, as if on a first date in a movie theater showing some apocalyptic thriller. Instead of popcorn, Bagg smelled hot wires, the taste of pennies on his tongue. He watched the curious motion of the oxygen cups, dancing at the end of the long narrow tubes, like yellow butterflies playing in the night.

  “Butterflies.” Bagg
shut his eyes, deciding the image was a good one to have when performing a belly flop in an airliner from a mile or so in the sky.

  Morgan had once caught a butterfly in a net he’d bought for her in a toy store. It had been for collecting insects and had come with a small plastic container where you could study your finds. She’d been thrilled with her catch, put grass and leaves in the bottom, and added a little bottle cap of water.

  “Her name is Tinker Bell,” she told her father, placing the container on her bedroom window sill. “She’s going to have a dozen babies and I’ll teach them tricks.”

  But the next morning, Bagg had been awakened when Morgan climbed into his bed, snuggling close to him. It had been a regular event if she woke before him in the small apartment, and Bagg was about to drift back off to sleep for twenty more minutes. But the little body pressed to his back was making little lurching movements and he heard the stifled sobs.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” Bagg rolled over to face his daughter, but she had her chin pressed to her chest, hands cupped by her face, and she hadn’t answered through her tears.

  “Morgan, what’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t mean to, Daddy.” She was slowly shaking her head side to side.

  “Didn’t mean to what?” he asked, brushing the hair back off her forehead.

  Morgan unclasped her hands to show the dead butterfly.

  “I let Tinker Bell die.”

  “Butterflies,” Bagg repeated, as the plane continued to fall, the churning, white-capped sea racing up to meet them.

  Chapter 49

  “Hey, Mack.” A brown pelican tried to get Bagg’s attention. “You ain’t looking so good.”

  They were bobbing in the churning water, rain falling in fine drops, swept across the surface by swirling winds. Bagg’s head and chest rested on a blue seat cushion he’d apparently come across out here, wherever that happened to be.

  “Who are you?” Bagg squinted against the salty blowing mist.

  “I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

  “No he ain’t!” came a voice from behind. If Bagg knew one bird from another, he’d have recognized this as an American Woodcock, also known as a timberdoodle. “He’s just a dopey pelican.”

  “Who you callin’ dopey, Woodcock?” The pelican craned its neck to see over Bagg. “What kinda name is Woodcock, anyway? Sounds like a porn star."

  “Hey, coulda been worse,” said the flycatcher who’d drifted up next to the pelican. “He coulda picked the name Swallow!”

  “Ha, ha, ha! Swallow!” The pelican laughed along with the flycatcher.

  “Why you draggin’ me into this?” asked the little brown bank swallow, who was floating somewhere near Bagg’s bare feet, picking at the swirling white foam.

  “Yeah, hey, sorry there, Swallow.” The flycatcher looked embarrassed. “No offense.”

  “So whaddya gonna do now, Mack?” The pelican turned his attention back to the human who was clinging to an airplane seat cushion, miles from where it and the rest of the airplane should have landed on solid ground. “What’s your big plan?”

  * * *

  Bagg knew he must be dead, stuck in some sort of purgatory reserved for people with unresolved issues. Clearly being lost at sea represented the search for Morgan. The raging storm was his ex-wife? The birds were angels?

  Bagg ignored the bird-angel thing’s question and resumed his journey to Bermuda by kicking his feet.

  “Hey, Mack, you go that way and you ain’t hitting dry land for about eight hundred miles. You like lobster, Mack? Man I could really go for some lobster. When you get to Maine, you pick me up one, how ’bout it?”

  Bagg made a u-turn on the crest of an enormous wave, and the pelican rose up on the swell beside him, stretching and flapping its wings and began shouting. “Wahoo! Wahoo!”

  The sea settled back down for a moment and Bagg got his feet going again. He felt like he was looking through a submarine periscope in an old movie, where the captain was trying to keep from breaking the surface and the lens kept getting splashed by the choppy surface.

  “That’s better, Mack.” The pelican stroked to keep up. “Jeez, if you humans had to migrate to survive, us birds would be ruling things by now.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” added the flycatcher.

  “Hey, Mack, one more thing before you go.” The pelican had to raise his voice as an especially strong gust of wind drove a wall of heavy rain across the gathering of birds and lone survivor. “There’s a little human girl been looking all over the place for you.”

  Bagg kept kicking his feet.

  Chapter 50

  The rain was amazing. The gigantic drops sounded like hailstones on metal surfaces and made huge splashes in puddles. The wind swirled in great arcs from different directions, wreaking havoc on small trees.

  Morgan stood on the Tucker’s Town main dock, but there were no signs of any huge celebration, other than a big flapping banner still attached to a light pole at one end.

  The banner said “Welcome,” but Morgan felt anything but.

  The water surrounding the marina was filled with birds, which Morgan understood was because of the storm. Birds knew when to seek shelter and when to come out of the storm. It was an irony not lost on the little girl who stood on the very last wood plank of the dock, toes hanging ten inside her soaked sneakers. She held her backpack in her arms, trying to shelter it from the rain. But she knew her pictures must be getting drenched.

  When it was an hour past the time the boats were to depart for the sanctuary on the VIP tour, Morgan abandoned her vigil. Shivering from the chilly rain, she turned and headed back to a large, dark wood gazebo that offered cover from the driving deluge.

  The sky was getting darker overhead, even though it was just past two o’clock.

  Morgan sat on the damp bench that circled the inside of the gazebo, cradling her backpack, craving her warm spot back on her beach. There was a long, snake-like hiss from up in the rafters, barely audible over the steady rain.

  Squinting into the shadows, Morgan picked out the big eyes that were peering down at her over the edge of a nest.

  “Hello,” Morgan said, “I’m just looking for my dad.”

  There was no response, so Morgan let it go. She was in his home, and all the birds were pretty upset by the storm.

  “What kind of bird is that?” A voice came from the far side of the gazebo, startling Morgan badly enough she lurched to catch her falling backpack.

  “A Barred Owl.”

  “I thought it was a snake at first.”

  “Yeah, they hiss when they’re upset. They’re all freaked out from the storm.”

  “You know a lot about birds?” Morgan was confused at how she’d missed the man sitting there when she first came in out of the rain.

  “My father’s a bird. He died when I was a little kid, and I’ve been trying to find him.”

  “No luck so far?” The man made no move to come closer. It was just Morgan, the man across the damp gazebo, and an owl keeping an eye on everything from above.

  “Everyone thinks I’m crazy.”

  “Because you’re looking for your father? I don’t think that’s so crazy. I lost my dad, too.”

  “Mom and my teacher think I need a psychiatrist.” Saying the words out loud made Morgan feel very alone. “The kids call me names.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know who you are.” Morgan looked at the man sideways, her cheek resting on her wet backpack. “You’re Mr. Dupont. You came here for the ceremony.”

  “That’s right. What’s your name?”

  “Morgan Freeman. Like the actor. I came here to see if you could help me.”

  “Help you find your dad?”

  “Yeah, well, I figured if there was anyone who could help ...” But Morgan couldn’t finish, her voice caught in her throat and her next breath was a monumental struggle. The tears welled up and spilled over and she clenched her eyes as tightly as she coul
d. Everyone was right. She was crazy. She was a stupid, creepy girl who didn’t have any friends and never would. All the kids were right to hate her, and so was her mother.

  “Are birds your favorite animals?”

  Morgan couldn’t answer at first, just a small, strangled cough came out; she sounded a lot like the owl in the rafters. “I wanted to have a bear when I grew up.” Morgan wiped her nose on her wet sleeve. “My dad said he’d consider it, but only if it were a really special trained bear.”

  “Trained to do what?”

  “To dance,” Morgan had her voice back a little. “What else would you train a bear to do?”

  “Like a circus bear.”

  “Yes, right.” Morgan shook her head. “One like in my dad’s story.”

  “A story about a circus bear? I could really use a good story about now. Would you mind sharing it?”

  “I’m not as good as my dad at telling it.”

  “I like stories even if they aren’t told all that well.” Dupont got up and came forward to sit and face Morgan, across the gazebo’s wide opening. “Tell me.”

  “Okay, well, there once was a circus. And there was a bear named Sadie, who wanted to be a dove and to fly away from the mean owner who sometimes hit her with a whip. Sadie was friends with a magician’s assistant, who was practicing and trying very hard to be a real magician.”

  Morgan paused, remembering her father’s soft voice in her dark room. She remembered the comfort in that voice, how every word was meant just for her, secrets kept just between them. A part of her felt like it was wrong to share their story with this stranger, but another part of her was telling her it was okay and somehow very important.

  She’d written the story down once, word for word as she remembered her father tell it, but the sheet of paper had disappeared from the top drawer of her bedside table. She knew her mom had stolen it, probably tearing it into little pieces, but she was afraid to ask.