by Rafi Zabor
The Bear Comes Home 195
"You think?"
"With a couple of deepish inner contradictions."
"Me?" the Bear asked, all innocence, but Hatwell had overheard the exchange and was looking on from a discreet distance, staring actually. Had he heard the whole thing? Had he heard the Bear's idea of percussion and slapping his head open? Jeez, he hadn't meant anything personal. The Bear waved at Hatwell with an attempt at easy geniality and got a wary nod back, then returned his attention to Jones. "Who, me?" he asked, with a passing reference to the Coasters.
"Yeah, you."
"But I'm just your simple cuddly basic woodland creature."
"Oh yeah," said Jones. "Right. I forgot."
Ihc Bear stayed in the back of the van with the boxes of books and records until they cleared the second toUbooth north on the Thruway. Then he struggled forward to the shotgun seat and sat himself down. "You handle this big ol' van predy^ well for such a sweet young thing," he said.
"Give me a break," said Iris, and gave the steering wheel a sideways yank that made the Bear grab the armrest for support. Her voice was ever soft, an excellent thing in woman, but she sure could be tough on a vehicle.
"Look," the Bear said to change the subject, gesturing with an open paw. "Trees. Nature. Green shit."
"I'd like another sip of Evian water," Iris said, "if you can find the bottle for me."
He found it and twisted the plastic cap open. "As Sibelius said," the Bear told her as he passed her the bottle, "while other musicians mix up all kinds of fancy cocktails, I provide clear spring water."
"Thank you," said Iris, and handed the bottle back. Although her tone hadn't varied from its usual melodious politesse, the Bear decided to give up on the charming drollery crap for a few minutes.
"Did you feel the city let go awhile back?" he asked her. "The last ring of its gravitational field. The event horizon."
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"Palpably," Iris said. "I have to admit, it is a relief to get out."
"Think about it, global warming has its good side. Anything that puts New York City underwater can't be all bad. In a decade or so there'll be fish swimming through the office buildings and reading old newspapers and personnel files. It'll be a much more meditative place then, and a lot of people will be heading out of town. You and me, we're avoiding the rush."
"I still live there," Iris said. "I'm driving back tonight and returning the van before ten tomorrow morning."
"Well, there's still time. It ain't swimming season there yet."
"I can't swim."
"Oh yeah, I forgot." The Bear remembered the story about some of her cousins repeatedly drowning her in a pond and pulling her out, reviving her, then drowning her again, back in her childhood, when she'd been farmed out to an aunt for a couple of years while her mother had a breakdown. They had bound her arms and legs with rope to keep her from thrashing around and kept an end loose to pull her out of the pond with. Once, they had lost their grip on the end and things had gotten serious. "I could teach you," he offered. "I could teach you to swim."
"I don't think so," Iris said.
"Maybe some other time. It's never too late."
No answer. Maybe it was a mistake to have mentioned it at all.
"Was Jones doing any heavy lifting back in town?" the Bear asked Iris, partly to change the subject.
"He had some people helping him, some hired people and Johnny Coyle. But Jones is fully healed now. You don't need to worry about him."
"He was never very strong."
Jones was moving house back in the city, and so Iris had volunteered to take the Bear up to the Catskills in the rent-a-van. Jones had boxed the stereo for him along with a few cartons of books and records he'd requested, and Iris had picked them up before collecting the Bear just past the tick of noon. For safety's sake—no sense getting your tail caught in the door on your way out of town—he'd been extra careful with his coatcollar, hat and scarf, had taken the back stairs down and exited the building by the laundry-room door.
In general he felt a bit turbulent about the move.
On one paw, it was an obvious good thing. On the other, it cut him off from most of the fife he knew. Which might also be a good thing. Still ... it lacked the homey touch. He'd be on his own up there, although there was supposed to be a sometimes tenant in the basement room to ease his interface with the rest of the world, and both Jones and Iris had promised to drop up frequently to see him. Promises, promises: jabberwocky and air. But then
The Bear Comes Home 197
there were the woods. It had been awhile since he'd had a good long ramble in the woods.
Iris was intent on the road ahead. The western sun traced her profile with a single line of white-gold light. He watched a small motion in her throat, and waited for her to speak. He had noticed, only recently, that she was one of those people whose nose moved when they spoke, the dainty tip of it dipping down as her lips and jaw worked. But what was there to say at the moment?
"Nice weather we're having," he said.
"Really."
See that? Even for one semi-sarcastic word, a Httle dip at the end. The Bear looked off into landscape, out his side an excoriated cliff clawed out of the land by the roadbuilders, past Iris' western window a fringe of trees, then an indeterminate expanse of grass with stray bits of commerce strewn about the middle distance. Soon they'd see the ridge of the Rondout, then there'd be a woodsy stretch through gathering hillocks, and it'd be awhile before the mountains showed, blued by distance. He always enjoyed his first sight of the mountains.
In the meantime there were gossip's flatter vistas. "Did you get the feeling," he asked Iris, "that Sybil was really welcoming Jones into her apartment and hfe?"
"I think he's a bit nervous about it, and that she's . . . but I hardly know her."
"I think he's sneaking in under cover of crisis," the Bear suggested, "and she's letting him, for whatever her own reasons might be at the moment. But I don't know how secure his position is. My guess is that it's probation at best."
"You think so?"
"Poor bastard," said the Bear, and shifted voluminously in his seat. "I hope he does okay out there without me."
"That's really touching," said Iris, "especially in view of the way you've been treating him lately."
"Yeah, but he's getting so . . . he's getting so . . ."
"You're so used to having him around as a sidekick," Iris told him in her usual tone, "that as soon as he shows a sign of independent life you feel insulted."
"All right, all right," said the Bear.
"You feel deprived of your natural rights. It's egoistic nonsense."
"Maybe I just miss my buddy."
"Maybe," Iris allowed.
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The cliff face out the Bear's window slanted off, then vanished, and he had the leisure to observe a stray house-and-barn combo, two piebald horses standing puzzled in a pasture, and just coming up, a large low factory set neatly in a field. Highway coming through. Move your ass or try to like it. Can't stop progress. Bang bang you're dead. "Music?" the Bear suggested.
Iris gave it a shot, but there was nothing on the radio in this region.
The Bear leaned forward and punched the cassette into the slot.
"Do we have to listen to 'When a Man Loves a Woman' again?" Iris asked him.
"But it came out so cool. I wish they'd let me put down a vocal."
Iris said nothing for a moment. Then, "I think 'Vehicle' is the best thing you've done," she told him. "That and the new version of'Billy Heart.'"
"Well sure. But I have a special fondness . . . and Lester's on it."
"Lester's wonderful. Bear," said Iris. "And I got the message already."
"But wasn't I fimky?" asked the Bear.
"You were funky," said Iris, and turned to him, keeping half an eye on the road. "But are you going to start asking me Was I wonderful? Aren't I talented? Wasn't that a great solo? That's not
a job I want to take on. Bear. I'd find it exhausting. Is that what you want me to do?"
"Of course not. Keep your eye on the road."
"Thanks for the instruction."
He was not doing all that well today. This move upstate was probably a mistake too. Everything was coming up noses.
The Bear punched the cassette out and fiddled with the radio. Two rock stations staticked their way in, beset by bronchial interference that occasionally parted to reveal full-fi-equency industrial-strength ear-candy striving to articulate over a range of power chords how, some way or other baby, we were gonna win and make it, were gonna get through the night and take it, gonna cfimb that mountain, really gonna see the sky. There was nothing out there on this stretch of the American airwaves but striving toward triumph. The big guitar solos were interesting for their first couple of bars, but after the initial liberating blast they had nothing much to say. Iris and the Bear looked at each other briefly and he turned the radio off.
There was the Rondout in the west, a ridge rising out of the land for no apparent reason and with little aesthetic sense of adjacent consequence. After New Paltz—what was wrong with the old Paltz?—a line of power towers strode across the gathering hills, laces of wire strung between them in series. The Bear thought of a TV sitcom husband, hands imprisoned in skeins of wool as his wife wound still more wool around them, the Atropine scissors not yet in view.
The Bear Comes Home 199
The Bear remembered that the mountains would appear, but not quite as soon as he wanted them to.
Then there they were, spreading north and west along the horizon, forested from lap to top, flanks purpled by haze and distance, peaks rounded by modesty or age. The Bear loved the perspective they lent the landscape, the scale they afforded. He had always found mountains a great perceptual aid. Mountains made room for sages. Chinese inkscapes: towering crags, tiny figures. He was glad to see the mountains again.
"That's the turnoff," he said, pointing at the Kingston sign. It was followed by a smaller sign that said Woodstock, a hippy-dippy coda to the main signifier, for those who cared, or just for tourists.
The Bear crawled into the rear of the van as they swung off the Thruway in a long arc to approach the tollbooths. "At the roundabout, follow 28 West to Pine Hill," he told Iris, and pulled a blanket over his head just in case. There were state police around.
W%en they were established on the straight road west he came front again and sat himself down. When they cleared the car dealerships and the clutter of lesser commerce, the Bear saw the sign welcoming them to the Catskill Forest Park. When a mountainside momentarily darkened the roadway, a grey-white spill of cloud fanning down its front, the Bear assumed the voice of a bored taxi driver. "This is Illyria, lady," he said, but got no response at all.
Oh well, he thought.
"The Woodstock turnoff comes up on the right," he said. "There's a gas station and a light."
When they reached it. Iris steered the van onto the lesser road, and as they entered the lee of Overlook Mountain the Bear felt a familiar sense of welcome from the land coming to embrace him, a female, mothering presence that made for a dramatic change when you were coming up from the city, though you might not notice it once you stayed awhile. Forgetfulness or the fading of illusion? Either way, it felt nurturing and undeceptive to him now.
It was still early spring in the mountains, and the Bear wondered if a few others of his approximate kind were drifting down from the ranges one county north. Woodstock's fall summer biped population wouldn't swell the area for another few months, the land was sweet, and there'd be hills to roam and things to munch on. They were black bears, smaller than he was; they'd avoid the lowlands except to hit the creeks for hatchlings. In the Bear's experience, most of them hadn't fallen so far, yet, as to live wholly off the trash-piles, though of course folks tended to raid where they could. It'd be nice to
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see another bear or so, as long as he didn't have to get into some endless lamebrained fight over turf when all he wanted was to socialize a little, lay back, swap stories. He was a more social being than his country cousins, and wasn't always understood. He was handsomer than they, whatever their color phase, and wondered if they envied him his wider, more dignified head, pronounced, expressive brow, better shoulders, and that distinctive hump of muscle on the upper back—all in all a more pleasing shape, limbs more clearly articulated, his look altogether more detailed, fur more variegated and pleasing in texture, and he moved better than they did, with less bumbling. The males would curse at him and labor their heads through the phantasmal logarithms of their nationalistic conceptions when all he wanted was to express solidarity, admiration, brotherly love. What a way to run a planet. The woods were as mad and racketous with competing delusions as the city he and Iris had left behind. There was so much space and so little room to move.
And then there were the lady bears.
They were a different scene altogether. Fun at first, but the mating rituals got boring after awhile—the Bear could splash around in a pond and play clumsy patacake with a lady for an hour or so, but how could he do a week of it and still find it interesting? It was touching and atavistic and warm in a dumb sort of way, but the Bear couldn't help but find it kind of rudimentary after awhile, and his sexual interest tended to wane after the fifteenth repetition of Gee you're cute and Gee you're big. And then, if they made it, if they got it going and they were both crooning along, if you tried to turn the beat around and asked if she wanted to try doing it face to face instead of from behind, because, look, it's possible, let me show you—watch out! she'd figure you wanted access to her underbelly and throat only to claw them open, and her face? why, she'd ask you, would you possibly want to look into my face? and to unfreak her out of the horribilitude of your unnatural desire, well, it would be back in the pond and more splashy-splashy for a day or so before she would let you approach again. Afterward it was was all Thanks, that was nice, but who the fuck are you anyway and you only wanted me for one thing and you've had it, so if I see you after the cubs are born I'll kill you before I let you touch them. As if the Bear would eat their babies! How could she think that? How could you talk to anyone like that? The Bear, he had told her, had told a number of versions of her to no purpose, was prepared to be the lovingest dotingest father that universal beardom had ever set forth on this stomping green earth, but the only response that all the warmth of his connubial heart had ever evoked from any she-bear he'd bodied forth a litter of cubs with was blind unthinking fury, bared teeth, unreasoning demented
The Bear Comes Home 201
eyes and a brisding back shinnying into place at the door of the cave. Even so, he'd had to marvel at such overwhelming motherbear devotion, and admit in the face of it that in her impersonal singleness of purpose she was better than he could ever be. His trembling sons and daughters didn't want to see him either. Time is short!—he had wanted to tell them—and habitat is shrinking! Men are coming! Wise up! Evolve! The poor dumb darling stumbling things didn't know what he was talking about, and in the instant he understood why his family's wisdom, such as it was, had always been matrihn-eal. You could only argue with biology's imperatives so far. What kind of place was this? Who ran this benighted planet anyway? There must be some wised-up bears somewhere out there on the continent, but he'd never met up with any. A guardian bear on the higher astral plane, big Kodiak-looking fella about eight feet tall watching him calmly, full of wisdom and compassionate strength, an easy trick to manage, thought the Bear, when you didn't have time and space to contend with; but back here in Mudville he'd never met another soul his soul could peacefully commune with, not a whisper, not a wisp. O for a friend to know the sign!
Well, there'd been Jones.
And now he was in love, he guessed, with Iris, who was driving.
The van braked to a stop and the Bear nearly bumped the windshield with his heavy head. A line of cars coming from the other direction had also
stopped. "What is it?" he wondered aloud.
"Look," said Iris, and pointed at the road.
"You're kidding," said the Bear. It was too cartoon-typical: two lines of traffic had ground to a halt so that a slow fat brown caterpillar could cross from one side of the road to the other. "You know what that kind of caterpillar's called?" the Bear asked Iris. He watched its brown fur ripple through quarter-inch after quarter-inch head to tail on the asphalt.
"No," she said.
"It's a Woolly Bear," he told her.
"Omen, anyone?"
"More like one more too blatant signifier, to my way of thinking. Your lane's clear," he said. "You can go ahead."
As she steered around the caterpillar, giving it wide berth, the Bear saw the lead driver in the old Volvo at the head of the opposing line of traffic see him, and they locked in eye contact, the Bear and this older guy with a spreading grey beard, long grey hair, granny glasses, and what might have been love beads around his neck. The Bear watched this man nudge the woman sitting next to him, a refined if odd-looking middle-aged lady with blond hair going grey, tucked into a funny flowerpot hat. They were both
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looking at him now. The Bear watched the man break into a wide-screen grin and wave hello. The woman looked more startled, but she didn't turn away. The man raised two fingers in a victory V as the van passed the Volvo. The Bear waved, and gave out his mildest, most sociable smile, with a bit of tongue hanging out the side for laughs.
Home, thought the Bear, anyhow for awhile. I can't live around this kind of people forever. It's droll but it'd fuck up my whole sense of outline.
"I think we should detour around town," the Bear told Iris when they had cleared the last of the caterpillar jam.
"How do I do that?"
"I'll tell you when we reach the bridge."
"How far?"
"Not."
There seem to be some new housing installations under the pines, the Bear noted, since the last time I was here. Corporate condo shit of some kind, apotheoses of motels. They look wrong. Betcha people are paying a fortune for them.