The Bear Went Over the Mountain (15 page)

The bear shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, paw in his mouth, then pointed to the only writer he knew—Eunice Cotton.

“Eunice?” she asked, turning off the microphone. “That’s kind of odd, coming from a literary heavyweight. I like Eunice’s books, they’re fun, but do you take them seriously?”

“Pastry,” said the bear, trying to return the conversation to the essentials.

“That’s what I always felt. But you’re implying they’re more than that?”

“More sweets.” He struggled to clarify. “Sweets are good.”

Carmen pushed her glasses up onto her nose with her middle finger. She had a quick mind, made even quicker by the high levels of sugar now in her bloodstream. “I think I see what you mean. Eunice’s sweet pop angels are a balance for the bitterness of the nineties?”

The bear nodded, his mouth stuffed with marzipan. I’m fielding questions well today, he said to himself.

“And you don’t mind admitting you can learn from pop philosophy? That’s very refreshing, Mr. Jam. I hate literary snobbery myself. I mean, why should I feel guilty if I read a book of Eunice’s and it gives me a nice gooey feeling? So what if she pushes all my buttons? It’s healthy. Tell you what, can we get together for a longer interview? When it’s quieter?”

Bettina stepped in. “I bet Hal hasn’t told you how much he admires your show, Carmen. Shall we set up an in-depth interview for tomorrow?”

The two women walked off together and the bear gave a small sigh of relief. When humans talked to him, his mind seemed to skid to a halt. I’m still a little insecure, he said to himself. With time, it will pass. He imagined
himself chattering brightly to people, making all the quick human sounds of conversation. Bound to be a break-through soon, he told himself. I’ve only growled a few times all evening.

“Are you writing a new book?” asked a voice at his elbow.

The bear shook his head. “I can’t find one.”

“It’ll happen,” said Alice Dillby, a young editorial assistant at Cavendish Press. She wanted very much to be helpful, and her enthusiasm was fueled by the excitement of the party and the honey circulating in her system. “What do you think your problem is?”

“I’ve looked under every tree.”

“But you have something you’d like to write about, don’t you?”

“No,” said the bear.

Alice gazed at him with admiration. What she loved best in a man, and seldom found, was modesty. That was why Hal Jam had such tremendous presence, because he carried himself without pretense. “You’ve really lived,” she said.

“In a cave.” He sipped at his honey, undisturbed by his confession, as he now knew that people always heard things differently from the way he meant them. He found it strange that he was the cause of this huge celebration, he a bear. I made all this happen, he said to himself, because I was in the right place at the right time. Opportunity
came along in a briefcase and I grabbed it. I’ve never looked back.

She sensed he was trying to teach her something important. “A cave?”

“In winter.”

“You’re talking about Plato? His myth of the cave?”

“Cozy cave. You dream.”

“Yes, yes,” assented Alice ecstatically. “We accept the dream in the cave instead of our real, true self. Who of us really lives out our ideal?”

Alice’s voice began to blend with the other voices at the party. The deep spaces of the disco buzzed, and the bear’s ears rotated forward, as if toward impending danger. The current of his happiness switched to fear. Lights flashed on Alice’s skin, turning it neon white and red, causing her somewhat toothy face to pulse aggressively.

“… like to take your photo with the mayor, Mr. Jam, please …” He was jerked away from Alice, and a flash went off. The buzzing grew louder and the space that held it deepened in a terrifying way … humanity … humanity … a bear’s only enemy.

“Hal, I’d like you to meet … from
Psychology Today
 …”

“… the way your heroine learns to advocate for herself …”

The sinister space continued to enlarge, with grotesque human forms emerging out of it, jabbering, gesticulating,
threatening. He pushed his way across the disco floor. Gadson grabbed him. “Hal, we did it.” Gadson’s arm came drunkenly around the bear’s shoulder. “We showed them time-honored American copulation and they loved it. Now let’s mix in something more exotic. Let’s challenge their sexual stereotypes. Let’s
Begin the Beguine
.”

The bear evaded Gadson’s grip and continued toward the door. Professor Penrod stepped in front of him. “The fish symbolism in your book … the fishing pole …”

The bear darted around the influential professor and rushed toward the entrance of the disco, heedless of the curious stares of the guests at his party.

“Well!” exclaimed the editor from
Women’s Wear Daily
as she watched him go out through the door. “I think it’s refreshing. I mean, authors
play
at being publicity shy, but did you ever see …?”

“What’s he doing to us?” cried Gadson to Bettina. “Doesn’t he know how much this goddamned party is costing?”

Eunice also saw the bear’s retreat and hurried after him. At her first publishing party, before her personal transition from hairdresser to author was complete, she’d freaked out too, suspicious that people were making fun of her when they praised her angels. “Hal, wait!”

The bear was hurrying away down the street, paws over his ears, trying to block out the sounds of the human
world. He sniffed the air, hoping to find that scent he used to follow in the forest, which drew him toward a sunlit slope where wild irises bloomed. From there he’d been able to look into an enchanting valley that held all the things a bear cared most about—fish, nuts, berries, and the soft silence of the day in which to gather them. The company of crows was enough, their wing beats fanning the still air, their piercing cry bringing him news of the owl, the eagle, the hawk. The foxes withdrew as he approached. He was king in that valley. As the acrid fumes of Manhattan filled his nose, he felt his great heart breaking. He’d thrown paradise away, for fame and honey.

“Hal, please, wait for me!” Eunice raced after him, hair streaming, perfume trailing, high heels clicking. “Hal, please!” She caught up with him, grabbed him by the sleeve. He turned with a roar and she was struck to the heart by his unhappiness. “My poor darling,” she cried, and threw her arms around him, indifferent to the two photographers who’d followed her down the street, led by Bettina, who was yelling at them to grab this photo opportunity of her top writers having a lovers’ quarrel.

Flashes were popping, and the automatic winders of the cameras were whirring, as Bettina’s lust for good photo coverage raised her voice to a shriek. “Be sure you get cleavage!”

Eunice spun toward her. “Bettina, how could you?” After which she graciously obliged the photographers with
a profound glimpse of cleavage, then threw her arms back around the bear. “I understand how you feel, Hal. I’ve been through it all myself.” She stroked his face as her visionary eyes filled with tears. “The cheap and tawdry ritual of success. It’s monstrous, it’s wounding. But it’s the price we have to pay for being rich and famous. And my angels have assured me it’s all right to be rich and famous. The angels
like
rich and famous.”

Arthur Bramhall and Vinal Pinette slid down a wooded ravine at twilight to the mouth of a cave. Bramhall sniffed the opening thoroughly and cautiously. The smell was of pine boughs and bear. He crept in, over the dried needles that covered the floor.

“How’s she look?” asked Pinette, appearing behind him at the doorway of the cave, into which the twilight streamed. “Abandoned.”

Pinette crept into the cave and squatted down on the dried boughs. “Uncle Filbert tried cave life once. Leonora Spraggins was after him, as he’d put a bun in her oven, and Leonora’s five brothers was after him too.”

Bramhall squatted down with his back against the wall. The whirl of the world was far away. There was only the smell of bear and pine boughs and the view through the cave door to the trees. A sigh of comfort went through him, as of some larger creature whose requirements were not easily met, and for whom a spacious cave such as this was just the ticket.

“To complicate matters for Filbert the
police was on him too, for rigging a bingo game. So a nice cave was just the ticket.”

Bramhall crawled outside to a nearby pine, snapped off enough boughs to fill his arms, and returned. Pinette watched him lay the boughs down. “Filbert come out to a bright new future. The police had forgot about him and Leonora had found herself another suitor who fit the bill even though he did have a goiter on the back of his neck the size of a seed potato. You think we should write this down? My memory ain’t what it used to be and we might never catch hold of this material again. I believe it’s the stuff of pop’lar entertainment.”

Bramhall sat on the fresh boughs, feeling more secure in this cave shaped a million years ago than he’d felt even in his barn or in Gummersong’s hut. The enclosure had sheltered countless generations of animals, and he felt their affection for it, as if the walls of the cave held memories of their feeling.

“Uncle Filbert must have done some deep thinking during his spell of denning, because a little while after he come out he wangled himself a loan from the government and started up his own grocery business. He’d have been a rich man today if he hadn’t made one little mistake.” Pinette gazed through the somber light of the cave toward Bramhall.

“What was Uncle Filbert’s mistake?” asked Bramhall.

“He used to drink himself to sleep every night with a
jug of wine, which in itself don’t entail much risk. But one night he reached for his jug and fetched up a jug of Clorox instead. We found him next morning stiffer’n a rolling pin, finger hooked in the empty Clorox jug.” Pinette nodded his head solemnly in the shadows. “So right there we got ourselves an instructive tale about what and what not to keep by the bedside. That kind of story has an audience.”

Bramhall saw, caught in the jagged face of the cave wall, strands of coarse fur left by the previous occupant. He felt the comings and goings of this creature as it huffed in and out of the lodging, doing as he’d just done, making a comfortable bed for itself. He felt its bulk, its awesome power, its imperial claim to this space. And he knew, with a strange inner certainty, that it would not be returning.

“Hal, this is Bettina. It’s time for you to go to your interview. Remember? You’re taping with Bryant Gumbel. A limo will be waiting for you outside your building. I’ll meet you at NBC.” Bettina was in her office at Cavendish Press, talking on her headset telephone, which left both her hands free to deal with the paperwork generated by Hal Jam’s tour. Four-color brochures had gone out to every important newspaper, television and radio station in the country, and doors had opened. Within the folder was an excerpt from the novel which
The New Yorker
had run, and a fascinating bio of Jam invented by Bettina. There were a number of witty remarks of Jam’s, also invented by Bettina. A five-by-seven glossy photo had been included, of the bear, strikingly lit and looking seriously literary.

Bettina hung up and looked at her assistant. “I don’t think he realizes how hard it is to get on the
Today
show. I do hope he and Bryant Gumbel will get along.”

·  ·  ·

The bear descended the elevator in his apartment building, greeted the doorman politely, stepped outside, caught a whiff of Central Park, and walked directly on by the waiting limo, which was driven by Zinatoon Nipunik, of Lightning Limo. Nipunik was stooping to retrieve a fallen ball of falafel which had squirted from his pita bread onto the floor of the limo, and so he missed his passenger’s approach.

The bear plunged into the park. It was the first winter he’d spent awake, and he savored the solemn landscape. That great time-waster, hibernation, in which he’d lost years of his life, was unneeded now that he had central heating. He rolled in the dry grass, kicked his paws at the sky, and emitted a soft, pleasure-filled growl. Then he felt a troubling shadow cross his mind, about something he was supposed to do. What, what, what?