The Bear Comes Home

by Rafi Zabor

  "Banks?" Garrett asked him from the stereo cabinet. "Isn't a little discreet drug dealing more conventional?"

  "I go for the direct approach," Rondo said. The bus swung up into daylight and soared out over the river. "Stick 'em up. Hand over the cash. Nice tits. Nobody move."

  "You think we could get away with a bank?" Hatwell asked the driver.

  "You kidding?" Rondo asked him. "Easy."

  I'm just a simple musician, the Bear wanted to say. I want to carry a tune in this complicated world, but even he couldn't buy the poignancy of the statement. Not in the middle of this racket.

  "How much you clear your typical bank job?" Hatwell asked.

  "Depends," the driver said.

  "This is gonna be a great tour," Bostic told the Bear, leaning confidentially toward him across the aisle. "I was worried at first, but now it's shaping up pretty good. I was afraid it was gonna be boring but we're doing fine. Yoo hoo. Bear. You with us? Call your office."

  "Yeah. Sure. Definitely. What?"

  324 Rafi Zabor

  Garrett got the FM on and diddled the dial down to KCR, everyone's favorite station. "Now, as it happens," a man's pleasant voice was saying on the radio, "Monk's band had lunch between takes two and three of'Bye-Ya.' That's right, on this particular record date, between takes two and three of 'Bye-Ya' Thelonious Monk's band sat down to lunch, and I invite you listeners out there to discern such difference as you can between takes two and three, because Thelonious Monk's great band sent out for sandwiches and had lunch right there in the studio, between takes two and three. Of 'Bye-Ya.' That's right, we're listening to the music of Thelonious Monk today. Today we're listening to the music of Thelonious Monk. It's our little tribute. To Thelonious Monk, to whose music we are listening today. And now we'll listen to takes two and three of Monk's tune 'Bye-Ya,' take two being what we might call the 'hungry' take, and we'll go on to the next take without a break, but we'll try to remember that the band took their own break, for lunch, between takes two and three of that particular tune, 'Bye-Ya,' on that particular day. Now I don't know what deh they ordered their sandwiches from, although they were within range of both the Carnegie Deli and Max Asnas' Stage Delicatessen, or what kind of sandwiches they had, though I've heard from several sources that Monk himself was partial to corned beef—"

  "I love this guy," Hatwell said.

  "We all love this guy but we need some music," Bostic insisted, "and he got at least another five minutes to go before we hear any. See what's on BGO."

  "And bring me my beer," the driver said.

  "—whereas Charlie Rouse, well actually I don't know what CharUe Rouse went for in the way of sandwiches, but he probably had something substantial to eat, with maybe some potato salad on the side, so when we listen to take three of the tune we might try to imagine what—"

  Garrett twirled the knob and found the Jersey jazz station and within a bar and a half everyone's head came up. "That sounds good," Hatwell said. "That a tenor or an alto?"

  "Alto," said the Bear. "I should know who that is but I don't."

  "'But Not for Me' in Coltrane's reharmonization," Garrett said of the tune, correctly.

  "He's good," said the Bear. "I hope he's not some kid the same age as you guys 'cause if he knows that much at twentysomething he scares the shit out of me."

  "I know who it is," said Bostic, smiling smugly, "because I got the record."

  "Who?" asked the Bear.

  The Bear Comes Home 325

  "L//7-uh." Bostic shook his elegant African head. "Sweat it out. BHndfold test."

  The Bear lowered his head and Hstened. Plays better than I do, he thought. Listen to him work his way through the changes. A relaxed way with alternate chords and scales. Swings. Nice rhythm section sounds hke some old hands. VVTio the fuck is it? Not Frank Morgan. Plays almost as well as Jackie, though not as distinctive a presence. . . . Damn, but he can play. I shouldn't be out here. I shouldn't be on a bus heading into America. What business do I have blowing on a horn in public again?

  "It's not Kenny Garrett," Hatwell said.

  "It's not Kenny Garrett," Bostic confirmed.

  That's a relief, thought the Bear, and raised his head in time to catch a spectacular aerial view of the Hudson River, the Palisades, a downpour of light upon what once must have been a spectacular piece of wilderness, and then the bus was negotiating its way through a maze of lanes branching in all conceivable directions—Route 4, Route 17, Fort Lee, Palisades Pkwy, NJ Tpk, Springsteen Expwy, whatever. The Bear surrendered control to Rondo Talmo, who seemed to know the way to whatever unexpected doom the world was cooking up.

  "Hold the beer till we're past this shit," Rondo said—and this was encouraging—as he slipped his mafia sunglasses on and primped himself erect on the elevation of his seat, then relapsed back into kidney-fat and cushions.

  The Bear watched the bottom of Rondo's shirt rebulge and thought. Damn, that altoist can play. "Rhythm section's good too," he said aloud.

  "You don't get off that easy," Bostic told him.

  "He doesn't have that Ornettish burr in his tone anymore," said the Bear, "but...isitGaryBartz?"

  "Bingo," the drummer told him. "You win the dinette set and the lifetime supply of dog food. Gary Bartz. Read it and weep."

  "I always liked Gary Bartz," said the Bear, "but he didn't play hke this before. Where's he been the last few years?"

  "I'd say he's been putting in some serious time in the shed," said Bostic.

  "WTiere's my horn?" the Bear wondered.

  "Where you put it," Bostic said. "Yeah you better start worrying about the real shit. See, the money's always fucked, the business always got you by the balls. That's the law. Don't waste your energy on it. Get to work on your horn. Where you're sure to lose too but the time passes better."

  "Bostic the Gnostic," Hatwell nodded.

  "Let me hear the rest of the tune," said the Bear.

  Fuckin' hell, he thought as he hstened. Gary Bartz. I could have gotten by

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  without hearing alto playing this good just now. Fluent. In command. Comprehensive. Relaxed. Well, he'd always liked Gary Bartz but at the moment he kind of wished Gary Bartz had stayed out there in the commercial wasteland making repeated attempts at some pseudofunk radio hit except Wynton hit and jazz was hip again and Bartz was back for real and better. I'm trying to get a tour going and I can't deal with this information at the moment.

  Deeper down, the Bear envisioned himself spending a lot of his coming roadtime in the back of the bus, huddled over the bright curve of his horn, working everything he knew to death trying to squeeze some music out. He'd better. And he'd better have luck.

  The tune ended after about five more minutes. "That was Gary Bartz," the radio said in a deep cool radio voice, "and now a word from the absolute masters of the budget oil change, the folks at Blink-a-Lube, that's right just shut your eyes and the next thing you know your vehicle is running smooth and sweet as the day it was bom because at Blink-a-Lube we understand—" Garrett was waiting, and the dial whirled back to KCR to tell them, "So when you hear take three, see if you can detect any change from the second take, after which Thelonious Monk's quartet paused for lunch in the studio, ordering sandwiches from the local deli, before proceeding to the third take of 'Bye-Ya,' even though the very first take they did that day turned out to be the keeper. But what we'll hear now are the second and third takes, respectively, between which, that's right, the band paused for a taste of lunch, and since we're listening to Thelonious Monk's music today, exclusively, I thought we might take a closer look at. . ."

  The bus ran on an even keel now, having completed its choice of road on the multifarious earth, and settled into a steady groove west. "I think I could deal with that beer now," said the voice behind the wheel.

  "Rondo!" came Garrett's voice from the rear.

  "Scherzo!"

  "Allegro!"

  "Harpo!"

  "You drive Hke God o
n acid," Garrett's voice resumed, "but your taste in beer is, can I say this? Your taste in beer is for shit."

  "Bring me the fuckin' can."

  "Bring Rondo the fuckin' can."

  "Bring Rondo the fuckin' can," two knocks on a wingtable, "and tvo hard-boiled eggs."

  "Okay, here they are then, takes two and three of 'Bye-Ya,' as played by the Thelonious Monk quartet, separated by a lunch break—the takes, that is, and not the band, which I presume ate their lunch together, although know-

  The Bear Comes Home 327

  ing Monk it's possible he might've taken his sandwich and enjoyed it in a corner . . ."

  Garrett came past, bringing Rondo the fuckin' can—"Green death," he told the Bear, who wondered what he meant—then resumed his seat.

  Linton was thumbing back the pages of the itinerary printout: "Holiday, Holiday, Quality—I like Quality cause the rooms are new and the bathtubs are fiberglass and kinda soft so if you happen to meet a mermaid at the gig and take her home it's easy on her hips—^Mcintosh, Scottish Inn—meaning cheap, you dig?—Red Roof, Holiday, Shylock's, Ramada . . . I've seen worse. Heyy," he said, looking up at the Bear and a slow smile spreading across his face. "Hey Bear, you can't stay at the same ho-tels as us, can you? Guys, hey guys, the Bear can't stay at the same ho-tels as us. He got to stay at some hotel for bears exclusively. You think that's fair?"

  "Maybe," Harwell piped up, "we could put together some kind of a protest. At the ho-tel."

  "Or stop off, pick up a case of Nair, wipe him down and maybe he can pass." Linton folded up his long body in the seat, cackling.

  "Or electrolysis," Harwell suggested. "Less greasy mess. Just stick a wire up his ass and plug him into a wall socket. All you need's a broom after. You know how to use a broom, doncha Garrett?"

  "Hey," said Linton, "what color is he under all that fur anyway? Peel a dawg back he white.''

  Garrett looked up from his book of crossword puzzles. "What does the chief of the Nez Perce Indians wear?"

  "Aperce-nez," said Harwell. "Next."

  "Peel a dawg back," Linton was persisting, "he this fanny sickly kind of white. We Nair the Bear or fry him with a wire we got to finish him up with Man-Tan or some thin'."

  "Now back in the o-old days," Hatwell reminded the bus, doing a movie cracker sheriff, "we-uh didn't use no Nair, we always used tar. Cause you can set tar on fire. See what I'm sayin', with tar you got options.''

  "So what you're trying to say," Linton asked him, "we set the Bear on fire and walk him into the Holiday Inn?"

  ''Got to set him on fire," Hatwell said. "He too big for the microwave, though maybe we cut him up he'll nuke okay in pieces—hard to tell if we don't try."

  "We could practice on Rondo," Linton suggested.

  "Not enough fur."

  "Fur ain't everything."

  "True, and with Rondo you could cut his head off for practice and he wouldn't notice it. No one would."

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  Garrett raised a pen above his crossword. "Instructions for Tabriz, fifteen letters, Turkish."

  "Git ve hashsiz gel^^^ Hatwell told him.

  "Hat," Linton said. "Help me with this. I'm still stuck on walking in the HoUday Inn with the Bear on fire."

  "It's something we coulda done for the Fourth of July," Hatwell said, "if we started this tour a couple weeks earlier. But as things stand it's pure head-theater is all. I'm kind of stuck on the imagery too but that's it."

  "Uh huh," Bostic said, "but what I was wondering, you think Nair bumsV^

  The Bear yawned and Garrett muttered into his crossword, but this line of talk was good for another ten miles before Linton and Bobby got bored with it and wound it down.

  "Bear," Rondo asked when there was silence, or something Hke it. "There anything special I c'n do for you?"

  "Yeah. If you see Sheryl Crow's bus, run into it a little. I'd like to meet her."

  "Bear meets Crow," said Hatwell, pleased. "Another shaggy dog story."

  Later, a leafy landscape going past, green but soiled with the soot of commerce. "See," Bostic was telling the Bear, who was getting used to the motion of the bus, "one of the drags when you road, first you got all this New Jersey Pennsylvania shit to deal with. You movin' but nothin's changed, still looks Hke New York out there."

  "Whereas when you get to Ohio," Bobby Hatwell said, his voice flat, "there're all those palm trees and tropical birds and volcanoes and the occasional passing dinosaur. Linton, what the fuck you trying to tell the Bear? You're more than six years old, right? So unless there's something wrong with your rock country head you already know all we're ever gonna see is another steaming heap of the same old shit all the way to the end of the line."

  "The Mississippi River? The Kansas flats when you see a thimderstorm fifty miles off?"

  "Linton, just to be a bro I'll try not to be bored out of my skull but I can't promise."

  "Colorado," Bostic proposed. "The Rockies."

  "That's just mountains. I want something different."

  "What kind of different you want, Ra-heem?" Linton asked him.

  The pianist thought for a moment. "Vanadium-based Hfe-forms. Thoughts made of colored light. Emotions with visible nine-sided crystal structures. Solar-powered vegetables writing comic books. You know what I'm saying? Different."

  The Bear Comes Home 329

  "Talking bears not good enough for you?"

  Harwell glanced at the Bear. "I got used to it," he said. "Rondo!"

  "What?"

  "Tell us about the bank job."

  Rondo began to tell them about the thrill of bank robbery—"when you go in there, man, I tell you, it's a bigger charge than sex," he said, and all three rhythm section guys looked at each other, made faces and did jerkoff motions in their laps.

  The Bear watched Garrett unpacking some things from his blue canvas briefcase: a pocket chess set, a heavy hardback—what was it? The new translation of The Man Without Qualities; Garrett was into the second volume; the Bear had read the old translation ages back. See, the Bear told himself, that was the idea, bring along a big doorstopper of a book. He was aware of the anxious profusion of paperbacks in his own bag: his three favorite Shakespeare plays, Lear, Hamlet, The Tempest —why hadn't he packed unfamiHar ones, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, A Winter's Tale} —a couple of Elmore Leonards he'd already read twice, a biography of Talleyrand he knew he wasn't going to read, a beat-up Penguin Charterhouse of Parma —the only great book, in the Bear's opinion, with a sufficient sense of the preposterous, but maybe he was prejudiced in this regard—from which he might skim a favorite passage or two . . . dumb, dumb: he was doing everything wrong. He was born under a bad sign. If he didn't have good books he wouldn't have no books at all. "Garrett? You don't happen to have the first volume of the Musil with you, do you?"

  "Sorry."

  Linton leaned in to read the title off the fat spine of the book on Garrett's table. ''The Man Without . .. Whoa, Hat. Garrett's reading a book about himself:'

  Hatwell stretched his arms aloft, yawned extravagantly and spun his pivot chair through a few degrees of arc. "Gametime," he said, and without much enthusiasm pulled a laptop computer from his chairside bag, started punching keys to wake it up.

  "Another thing," Rondo said, still pursuing the happiness of a well-run bank job, "we'd be interracial plus a talking bear extra, and that'd fack 'em up enough on the IDs so if they remembered anything at all they'd only remember one of us, see . . ."

  "Excuse me," said the Bear, "but if one of the bank robbers was a talking bear, wouldn't they tend to remember him} And wouldn't that kind of point the finger at T/ze?"

  "Yeah but you'd be fuckin'-A effective," Rondo said. "Their brains'd go

  330 Rafi Zabor

  into paralysis. They'd get all fucked up. They'd hand it over, we'd spHt, and they wouldn't remember shit and the cops wouldn't believe 'em anyway."

  "Who has the power to cloud men's minds?" Hatwell asked Bostic.

&n
bsp; "The Shadow do," came the reply.

  "The cops'd know they were running some shit on 'em must be an inside job and we're clear," Rondo resumed. He cleared his throat heavily. "So whaddayou guys think? I could call my friends in Detroit 'n' they'll set us up for twenty percent, twenny five with the local cops paid off to be on lunch break. You interested. Bear?"

  "I think I'll pass," the Bear told him.

  "Typical musician," the driver said. "Long on dream and short on action. No offense."

  "None taken," said the Bear.

  "And if the tour money's short?"

  "I'll think about it," the Bear told him.

  "Well, Fm up for it," Hatwell announced. "Banks, Fort Knox, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Long as you can promise me I won't be bored."

  "Bored? Bored} Fuck no," Rondo said, turning heavily to look over his shoulder at the pianist. The bus stayed true in its lane. "Not a chance. On a bank job? Never."

  "You don't know me," Bobby Hatwell said.

  The Bear leaned over to watch him working the joystick on a baseball game, a layout of flat primary colors on the screen: here's the windup, the pitch—the ball seemed a little slow and it moved in visible increments—a swing and a miss, strike two, one and two the count.

  "Want to play?" Hatwell asked him.

  "I'm not into these things," the Bear said.

  "After this tour I'll get me a new computer, faster chip, more RAM, get into some of the newer software. This one's not too hip."

  "Wait a minute," said the Bear, leaning in farther. "That's weird. Are all the players white?"

  "What'd you expect, realism? Wake up and smell the bullshit."

  "They're all white? I don't believe it."

  "Ah," Hatwell said, drawing in a lungful, "the smell of day-old bear. You oughta bottle it. Born yesterday and still going strong. Rondo, can I have one of your beers?"

  "Yo-ho," Rondo said. "Take anything you want, man."

  "You can have one of my meat patties on a three-beer exchange rate if you want."