Stories (2011) (107 page)

"Buddy."

"You heard me. Oh, the door, it's locked, and you can't
work the lock from inside, 'cause it's keyed, and I got the key. So don't think
about going anywhere."

"That's not very buddy-like," Jim said.

The bear studied Jim for a long moment, and Jim felt himself
going weak. It was as if he could see the bear's psychosis move from one eye to
the other, like it was changing rooms. "But, you're still my buddy, aren't
you, Jim?"

Jim nodded.

"Well, I'm sort of bushed, so I think I'll turn in
early. Tomorrow night we'll catch up on that weenie pull."

When the bear went to the bedroom and lay down, Jim lay on
the couch with the blanket and pillow the bear had left for him, and listened.
The bear had left the bedroom door open, and after a while he could hear the
bear snoring like a lumberjack working a saw on a log.

Jim got up and eased around the tower and found that he
could open windows, but there was nowhere to go from there except straight
down, and that was one booger of a drop. Jim thought of how easily the bear had
killed the whore and how he admitted to killing others, and then he thought
about tomorrow night's weenie pull, and he became even more nervous.

After an hour of walking about and looking, he realized
there was no way out. He thought about the key, but had no idea where the bear
kept it. He feared if he went in the bear's room to look, he could startle the
bear and that might result in getting his head chewed off. He decided to let it
go. For now. Ultimately, pulling a greased bear weenie couldn't be as bad as
being headless.

Jim went back to the couch, pulled the blanket over him, and
almost slept.

Next morning, Jim, who thought he would never sleep, had
finally drifted off, and what awoke him was not a noise, but the smell of food
cooking. Waffles.

Jim got up slowly. A faint pink light was coming through the
window. The kitchenette area of the tower was open to view, part of the bigger
room, and the bear was in there wearing an apron and a big chef's hat. The bear
turned, saw him. The apron had a slogan on it:
If Momma Ain’t Happy, Ain’t
Nobody Happy!

The bear spotted him, gave Jim a big-fanged, wet smile.
"Hey, brother, how are you? Come on in here and sit your big ass down and
have one of Mr. Bear's waffles. It's so good you'll want to slap your
momma."

Jim went into the kitchenette, sat at the table where the
bear instructed. The bear seemed in a light and cheery mood. Coffee was on the
table, a plate stacked with waffles, big strips of bacon, pats of butter, and a
bottle of syrup in a plastic bear modeled after Mr. Bear himself.

"Now you wrap your lips around some of this stuff, see
what you think."

While Jim ate, the bear regaled him with all manner of
stories about his life, and most were in fact interesting, but all Jim could
think about was the bear biting the head off that hooker, and then slashing the
other with a strike of his mighty paw. As Jim ate, the tasty waffles with thick
syrup became wads of blood and flesh in his mouth, and he felt as if he were
eating of Mr. Bear's wine and wafer, his symbolic blood and flesh, and it made
Jim's skin crawl.

All it would take to end up like the whores was a misstep.
Say something wrong. Perhaps a misinterpreted look. A hesitation at tonight's
weenie pull. . . . Oh, damn, Jim thought. The weenie pull.

"What I thought we'd do is we'd go for a drive, dump
the car. There's a ravine I know where we can run it off, and no one will see
it again. Won't even know it's missing. Excuse me while I go to the shitter. I
think I just got word there's been a waffle delivery called."

The bear laughed at his own joke and left the room. Jim ate
a bit more of the waffle and all the bacon. He didn't want the bear to think he
wasn't grateful. The beast Was clearly psychotic. Anything could set him off.

Jim got up and washed his hands at the sink, and just as he
was passing into the living room, he saw the gun they had found in the car,
lying on a big fluffy chair. Part of it, the barrel, had slipped into the crack
in the cushions. Maybe the bear had forgotten all about it, or at least didn't
have it at the forefront of his mind. That was it. He'd been drunker than a
Shriners' convention. He probably didn't even remember having the gun.

Jim eased over and picked up the weapon and put it under his
shirt, in the small of his back. He hoped he would know how to use it. He had seen
them used before. If he could get up close enough—

"Now, that was some delivery. That motherfucker
probably came with a fortune cookie and six-pack of Coke. I feel
ten
pounds lighter. You ready, Jimbo?"

In the early morning, the forests were dark and beautiful
and there was a slight mist, and with the window of the car rolled down, it was
cool and damp and the world seemed newborn. But all Jim could think about was
performing a greased weenie pull and then getting his head chewed off.

Jim said, "You get rid of the car, how do we get
back?"

The bear laughed. "Just like a citizen. We walk, of
course."

"We've gone quite a distance."

"It'll do you good. Blow out the soot. You'll like it.
Great scenery. I'm gonna show you the graves where I buried what was left of
them fellows, the arsonists."

"That's all right," Jim said. "I don't need
to see that."

"I want you to. It's not like I can show everyone, but
my bestest bud, that's a different matter, now ain't it?"

"Well, I don't..."Jim said.

"We're going to see it."

"Sure. Okay."

Jim had a sudden revelation. Maybe there never was going to
be a weenie pull, and as joyful as that perception was, the alternative was
worse. The bear was going to get rid of him. Didn't want to do it in his tower.
You don't shit where you eat. . . . Well, the bear might. But the idea was you
kept your place clean of problems. This wasn't just a trip to dump the car,
this was a death ride. The bear was going to kill him and leave him where the
arsonists were. Jim felt his butthole clench on the car seat.

They drove up higher and the woods grew thicker and the road
turned off and onto a trail. The car bumped along for some miles until the
trees overwhelmed everything but the trail, and the tree limbs were so thickly
connected they acted as a kind of canopy overhead. They drove in deep shadow
and there were spots where the shadows were broken by light and the light
played across the trail in speckles and spots, and birds shot across their view
like feathered bullets, and twice there were deer in sight, bounding into the
forest and disappearing like wraiths as the car passed.

They came to a curve and then a sharp rise and the bear
drove up the rise. The trail played out, and still he drove. He came to a spot,
near the peak of the hill, where the sun broke through, stopped the car, and
got out. Jim got out. They walked to the highest rise of the hill, and where they
stood was a clean, wide swath in the trees. Weeds and grass grew there. The
grass was tall and mostly yellow but brown in
places.               

"Spring comes," the bear said. "There will be
flowers, all along that path, on up to this hill, bursting all over it. This is
my forest, Jim. All the dry world used to be a forest, or nearly was, but man
has cut most of it down and that's done things to all of us and I don't think
in the long run much of it is good. Before man, things had a balance, know what
I mean? But man ... oh, boy. He sucks. Like that fire that burned me. Arson.
Just for the fun of it. Burned down my goddamn home, Jim. I was just a cub.
Little. My mother dying like that... I always feel two to three berries short
of a pie." "I'm sorry."

"Aren't they all? Sorry. Boy, that sure makes it
better, don't it. Shit." The bear paused and looked over the swath of
meadow. He said, "Even with there having been snow, it's dry, and when
it's dry, someone starts a fire, it'll burn. The snow don't mean a thing after
it melts and the thirsty ground sucks it up, considering it's mostly been dry
all year. That one little snow, it ain't nothing more than whipped cream on dry
cake." The bear pointed down the hill. "That swath there, it would
burn like gasoline on a shag carpet. I keep an eye out for those things. I try
to keep this forest safe. It's a thankless and continuous job___Sometimes I
have to leave, get a bit of recreation ... like the motel room ... time with a
friend."

"I see."

"Do you? The graves I told you about. They're just down
the hill. You see, they were bad people, but sometimes, even good people end up
down there, if they know things they shouldn't, and there have been a
few."

"Oh," Jim said, as if he had no idea what the bear
was talking about.

"I don't make friends easily, and I may seem a little
insincere. Species problems, all that. Sometimes even people I like, well... it
doesn't turn out so well for them. Know what I'm saying?"

"I... I don't think so."

"I think you do. That motel room back there, those
whores. I been at this for years. I'm not a serial killer or anything. Ones I
kill deserve it. The people I work for. They know how I am. They protect me.
How's it gonna be an icon goes to jail? That's what I am. A fuckin' icon. So I kinda
get a free ride, someone goes missing, you know. Guys in black, ones got the
helicopters and the black cars.

They clean up after me. They're my homies, know what I'm
saying?" "Not exactly."

"Let me nutshell it for you: I'm pretty much immune to
prosecution. But you, well... kind of a loose end. There's a patch down there
with your name on it, Jimbo. I put a shovel in the car early this morning while
you were sleeping. It isn't personal, Jim. I like you. I do. I know that's cold
comfort, but that's how it is."

The bear paused, took off his hat and removed a small cigar
from the inside hat band, then struck a match and took a puff, said,
"Thing is, though, I can't get to liking someone too good, 'cause—"

The snapping sound made the bear straighten up. He was still
holding his hat in his paw, and he dropped it. He almost made a turn to look at
Jim, who was now standing right by him, holding the automatic to the bump on
the bear's noggin. The bear's legs went out. He stumbled and fell forward and
went sliding down the hill on his face and chest, a bullet snuggling in his
brain.

Jim took a deep breath. He went down the hill and turned the
bear's head using both hands, took a good look at him. He thought the bear
didn't really look like any of the cartoon versions of him, and when he was on
TV he didn't look so old. Of course, he had never looked dead before. The eyes
had already gone flat and he could see his dim reflection in one of them. The
bear's cigar was flattened against his mouth, like a coiled worm. Jim found the
bear's box of matches and was careful to use a handkerchief from the bear's paw
to handle it. He struck the match and set the dry grass on fire, then stuck the
match between the bear's claws on his left paw. The fire gnawed patiently at the
grass, whipping up enthusiasm as the wind rose. Jim wiped down the automatic
with his shirt tail and put it in the bear's right paw using the handkerchief,
and pushed the bear's claw through the trigger guard, closing the bear's paw
around the weapon so it looked like he had shot himself.

Jim went back up the hill. The fire licked at the grass and
caught some more wind and grew wilder, and then the bear got caught up in it as
well, the conflagration chewing his fur and cackling over his flesh like a
crazed hag. The fire licked its way down the hill, and then the wind changed
and Jim saw the fire climbing up toward him.

He got in the car and started it and found a place where he
could back it around. It took some work, and by the time he managed it onto the
narrow trail, he could see the fire in the mirror, waving its red head in his
direction.

Jim drove down the hill, trying to remember the route.
Behind him, the fire rose up into the trees as if it were a giant red bird
spreading its wings.

"Dumb bear," he said aloud. "Ain't gonna be
no weenie pull now, is there?" And he drove on until the fire was just a
small bright spot in the rearview mirror, and then it was gone and there was
just the tall, dark forest that the fire had yet to find.

She said a dog bit her, but we didn't find the dog anywhere.
It was a bad bite, though, and we dressed it with some good stuff and wrapped
it with some bandages, and then poured alcohol over that, letting it seep in,
and she, being ten, screamed and cried. She hugged up with her mama, though,
and in a while she was all right, or as all right as she could be.

Later that evening, while I sat on the wall and looked down
at the great crowd outside the compound, my wife, Carol, called me down from
the wall and the big gun. She said Ellen had developed a fever, that she could
hardly keep her eyes open, and the bite hurt.

Carol took her temperature, said it was high, and that to
touch her forehead was to almost burn your hand. I went in then, and did just
that, touched her forehead. Her mother was right. I opened up the dressing on
the wound and was amazed to see that it had turned black, and it didn't really
look like a dog bite at all. It never had, but I wanted it to, and let myself
be convinced that was just what it was, even if there had been no dog we could
find in the compound. By this time, they had all been eaten. Fact was, I
probably shot the last one around: a beautiful Shepard that, when it saw me,
wagged its tail. I think when I lifted the gun he knew, and didn't care. He
just sat there with his mouth open in what looked like a dog's version of a
smile, his tail beating. I killed him first shot, to the head. I dressed him
out without thinking about him much. I couldn't let myself do that. I loved dogs.
But my family needed to eat. We did have the rabbits we raised, some pigeons, a
vegetable garden, but it was all very precarious.