The Bear Went Over the Mountain

by William Kotzwinkle

  “Hal,” said Scott Emery, “if you’d just sit in this chair facing Sandy …”

  The bear sat down and Sandy Kincaid smiled at him. “I genuinely liked your book,” she said. “We’ll say good things about it.”

  “I’m Hal Jam,” he said, and pointed to his name card.

  “Yes,” said Scott Emery, “let’s get rid of that, shall we, and replace it with a microphone.”

  A sound technician clipped the microphone onto the bear’s lapel and returned to his console. “Could you say something, please?”

  The bear said, “Up your ass,” and the technician chuckled. “Fine, I’ve got a level.”

  Scott Emery said, “When we go on, speak directly toward Sandy.”

  The lights were switched on, bathing the bear and the anchor woman in bright light. On the adjacent set, the surgeon was just finishing his interview, which was audible now, over the studio speakers. “… like to finish by saying that with laser surgery, removing the gall bladder is a very simple matter …”

  Removing the gall bladder? The bear stared into the blinding lights. The dark space beyond them seemed to grow, as if he were in a gigantic cavern controlled by creatures with dangerously burning eyes.

  “One minute to go,” said a voice from the darkness.

  The bear rose in his seat. He’d been tricked! They were going to remove his gall bladder and put it in a bottle!

  “Please, Hal,” said Scott Emery, “we only have thirty seconds …”

  The bear let out a roar and the sound man clutched his earphones in pain as his vu-meter leapt into the red zone. Scott Emery hissed to his cameramen to stand by. If his crew handled a live nervous breakdown with taste and dignity, Scott Emery, young producer, would get a nice red apple from the station manager. “I’ve got it,” said the man on camera one, swinging quickly to cover the guest’s erratic movement, which now included lifting Scott Emery into the air and shaking him.

  “Twenty seconds …”

  Sandy Kincaid watched in fascination. A best-selling author assaulting an assistant producer on the air could help her faltering ratings. People complained that she was too sweet. Well, she’d show them. She put on her most serious-face-of-journalism and prepared to deliver the hard edge of the morning to Boston, as the bear tossed Scott Emery onto an off-camera prop table, amidst a display of the latest in computerized kitchen aids.

  Mrs. Moody charged across the set, came in behind Jam, and stroked him gently behind the ears. “Hal, it’s Julie,” she said softly. “Here are your Cheesy Things.”

  She’d raised five children and taken twelve hundred authors around, and she hadn’t lost one yet. Her hands slipped down to his massive shoulders, caressing them. “It’s all right, Hal. Just sit down, and eat your Cheesy Things. This nice woman only wants to ask you a few questions and then I’ll take you back to the hotel”

  “Five, four, three …”

  The bear sat back down.

  “I’ll be right here,” said Mrs. Moody as she stepped out beyond the cameras. The bear stared into the menacing darkness. He sniffed, and Mrs. Moody’s scent was still in the air. Its familiarity calmed him, as did his Cheesy Things. He turned toward the brightly lit young woman seated across from him and sniffed her.

  “My guest today is Hal Jam, author of the best-selling novel Destiny and Desire, a book everybody seems to love, both critics and public alike. I’ve just finished it, and I found it wonderfully fresh, and yet somehow it manages to reaffirm some very important values. Hal, good morning.”

  “I’m Hal Jam.”

  “You certainly are,” said Sandy Kincaid, smiling perkily while trying to psych this maniac out. She didn’t want him attacking her on the air, no matter what it did for the ratings. “You obviously know the great outdoors—the fishing scenes are wonderful—but you also know women, Hal. How does someone who has lived so far from civilization have so much wisdom concerning the inner life of the opposite sex?”

  The bear ate the last Cheesy Thing and then stuck his nose in the bag. Then he looked at the pretty young woman sitting across from him. He felt words bubbling inside him, as if Sandy Kincaid’s swift chatty style was in him now. To his great surprise, chatty words bubbled swiftly out of him. “When I lived in the woods I only did it once a year.”

  Sandy Kincaid blinked, reddened, and pushed on. “The degree of tenderness you’ve created in this rural atmosphere is one of the things critics are raving about. It leads me to this question: Are you saying that tenderness is impossible in our hurried city life? Is sexual tenderness more likely to occur between two people in a quiet country setting?”

  The bear stuck his long tongue into the Cheesy Things bag and licked up all the salt. “When I did it in the forest, if I wasn’t careful I could get badly mauled.”

  Sandy Kincaid looked nervously past the bear toward Scott Emery, who, in spite of having been thrown among the computerized kitchen aids, was waving to her, encouraging her to run with the interview. The cameramen were smiling, and the rest of the studio staff, who were usually half-asleep, were all listening attentively.

  The bear crossed his stumpy legs and turned the bag inside out to lick it more thoroughly. And more chatty words bubbled out of him. “I had to hold on really tight from behind or those females would have torn me apart.”

  Sandy Kincaid’s eyes revealed a certain unsteadiness. “Are we talking about any particular female? I mean, was there a model for your heroine?”

  “We’re talking about a big bear female.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose she would be bare,” laughed Sandy Kincaid nervously.

  “Now that I live in the city, I do it more often, but it’s safer.”

  Sandy Kincaid switched to her politically correct voice. “We’re all committed to safe sex.”

  “A bear female in heat is touchy,” explained the bear.

  The director turned to his assistant. “What?”

  “Hal,” continued Sandy Kincaid, gamely pressing on, “you’ve become an overnight sensation. Have you changed because of it?”

  “This morning,” said the bear, quickly opening his suit jacket and pulling the edge of his underpants out over his belt.

  Sandy Kincaid looked back down at the book and tried to bring order to her wildly racing thoughts. “If you could sum up your impressions of urban life in a single word or two—”

  “Cheesy Things,” said the bear, lifting the empty bag in the hope of getting more.

  “Do you mean that urban values are cheesy because everything’s been commercialized? But that’s how a civilized society works. Isn’t it slightly unfair of you to hold the mirror of rural life up to us and say, you must live like this? Modern city life is cheesy of necessity.”

  “You don’t like Cheesy Things?”

  “I’m not saying I don’t like them. I’m saying those cheesy things have to exist.” Sandy Kincaid felt herself on somewhat firmer ground now. She had strong political opinions, gathered from the wire service to which her station subscribed. “I’m saying we’re stuck with them.”

  The bear squinted toward the lights. Talking so much had made him hungry. “I want more Cheesy Things.”

  “I understand your view, that we’ve become greedy consumerists,” said Sandy Kincaid, hoping that the interview was finally getting a rhythm. “But we can’t all just move back to the woods and be like the people in your book.”

  “It’s my book,” said the bear aggressively.

  “Yes, certainly, and you have the right to do whatever you please in it, but can a work of fiction actually hope to change society’s views?” Sandy Kincaid was hoping to relax a bit, now that they were safely lost in meaningless abstractions.

  “Sex and pizza,” said the bear.

  “But, Hal, don’t you think it’s too easy to just write American culture off as hopelessly mired in ‘sex and pizza,’ as you call it?”

  “Your legs really glow,” remarked the bear, gazing down at the glossy sheen of her ankles,
calves, and the bit of thigh showing beneath the studio lights.

  “Leg shot,” said the director from his control booth, and as the camera tilted, added, “I like this yo-yo. Who is he?”

  Sandy Kincaid, having lost the point she’d been trying to make, said, “I’ve been talking with Hal Jam. The name of the book is Destiny and Desire.”

  “I’m Hal Jam,” said the bear.

  Bettina, watching the show on satellite from her office in New York, turned to Elliot Gadson and said, “Tell me I’m crazy. But I think he’s a natural.”

  “Natural is not quite the word I’d use to describe him,” said Elliot Gadson. “But he certainly is memorable.”

  Following his interview, Mrs. Moody drove the bear to the Ritz Carlton. The car had hardly stopped when a top-hatted doorman with white gloves and the motions of a masterfully manipulated puppet opened the car door, and the bear ambled out.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the doorman, and gestured briskly toward the front door. “After you, please. I’ll see to the luggage.” Mrs. Moody led her author into the lobby to the reception desk. “This is Mr. Jam,” she said to the young woman behind the desk.

  The young woman gave the guest a welcoming smile. “You’re in room 32, Mr. Jam, facing the park.” She handed the room key to the bear. “Enjoy your stay.”

  Beside the reception desk, the concierge handled the requests that came from the hotel’s guests. The bear was sniffing the lobby, and the concierge was sniffing him, figuratively speaking; the concierge could smell money, and his treatment of a guest was based on just how strong the scent was. A South American cattle baron, short, compact, bristling with authority, had a rich scent; the gaunt chairman of a merchant bank, tall, spectral, had a rich scent; the vice president of the United States, who was currently ensconced in the largest suite in the hotel, had a rich scent. This new gentleman he wasn’t sure about, as he observed him from the corner of his eye. The gentleman’s suit was a good one and fit him perfectly; his tie was decidedly a question mark. He had an authoritative presence, with his barrel chest and large head, but there was something strained about his posture, as if he were forcing it. The old rich were never strained, their ramrod posture steadied by the heads of those their forefathers had ground into the earth. Yet this burly gentleman did have an emanation of something very old about him. Studying him as he walked across the lobby toward the elevator, the concierge couldn’t know that the bear’s family was the oldest in America, having been there for 30 million years. The concierge decided it was best to rank him as resembling old money, until further clarification.

  “Shall I come up and see that everything is okay?” asked Mrs. Moody. She stepped into the elevator with the bear, and the white-gloved elevator man closed the door. The perfume in the elevator was blended exclusively for the Ritz Carlton so that returning guests felt something like a familiar embrace when they rose toward their room once more. And for those new guests like Mr. Jam, it was a poignant little introduction to the hominess that awaited them. The bear sniffed appreciatively. They give you a key and tell you where to go. The elements of uncertainty, so troubling to a beast, are eliminated.

  “Third floor, watch your step, please.”

  Mrs. Moody led the way down the hall, helpfully pointed to the brass plate on a door, and opened it. They stepped into a large room whose wall of windows faced the park. The furniture was antique French reproduction—a gracefully curved desk, a reading table, a pair of softly upholstered reading chairs, and a nice big bed. There was room in it for several bears.

  “Your next interview isn’t until noon. You’ll have some time to rest up a bit.” Mrs. Moody was opening a refrigerated bar with the room key.

  The bear peered excitedly in, and removed the various snacks, along with a bottle of champagne.

  “You’re hungry?” asked Mrs. Moody. “Just call down.” She handed him the room service menu.

  He saw with pleasure that they had cooked bird, choice pieces of cow, and salmon. “One of each,” he said, and stretched out on the bed.

  Somewhat startled, Mrs. Moody hesitated at the door, with the feeling that perhaps her young author could continue to benefit by her presence. She sensed something vaguely inexperienced about him, and she wanted to be sure he was comfortable. “When you need laundry done, you call down and housekeeping will pick it up.”

  “I change my underwear every day,” said the bear proudly.

  The bear’s meal came to him on a wheeled table with a white tablecloth on it and a warming cabinet underneath, from which his three meals were served. “You’re expecting guests, sir?” asked the waiter.

  “It’s just me,” smiled the bear, tucking a napkin into his collar. He gave the waiter a hundred-dollar tip, because he liked everyone to be happy and because he wanted to keep things moving smoothly on the food front.

  “Enjoy your meal, sir,” said the waiter sincerely.

  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 pla
ying 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.”