The Bear Went Over the Mountain (20 page)

The Constitutionalist
also detailed how the IRS is building gigantic silos in Kansas to imprison loyal Americans. Any concerned citizen trying to get near these silos is killed immediately by black-uniformed troops. However, the Rockefellers are allowed to go there without any problems. This information, and so much more, was circulating in Gagunkas’s overloaded brain.

Gagunkas knew for a fact that the United Nations had put Russian soldiers on U.S. soil and that the entire U.S. Air Force was run by Austrians. People looked at you
like you were nuts when you told them the One World Police State was already here, but the Russkies were performing maneuvers in Idaho. There were Chinese tank crews in Arizona. Yid bankers were financing a Super Tunnel from Siberia to Alaska. There was a secret elevator in the White House that went seventeen stories underground, to the command bunker of the One World Government, and the vice president rode it every day to receive his marching orders.

Now
, thought Gagunkas, a blow for freedom. I’ll show these liberal pukes how a real man dies!

The bear calmly bopped Gagunkas on top of the head, and Gagunkas fell to the floor. As he did so, the voices of the Secret Service agents erupted.

“Incident at one o’clock! Take cover and evacuate!”

Agents grabbed the vice president, shielding him from the crowd with their bodies and moving him toward the door. Vice-presidential staffers flung themselves gallantly under lobby furniture as the Secret Service men cranked their weapons.

“Here,” said the bear, pointing down at Gagunkas.

Several agents hurried over and, very carefully, opened Gagunkas’s jacket. “He’s covered with plastique. That’s a detonator on his belt. We’d have been chopped meat.”

“My territory,” explained the bear.

The agents handcuffed Gagunkas where he lay unconscious, and called for the city’s bomb squad.

“If you’d step this way, sir,” said an agent to the bear, taking out his notebook. “How did you know he was strapped?”

The bear tapped his nose.

“You just smelled it,” smiled the agent. “That’s how it is sometimes.”

“Well, good-bye,” said the bear, and stepped toward his elevator.

The vice president’s schedule did not allow him to personally thank the bear. But a note was made of the bear’s name, and the slow wheels of government were set in motion.

“Hal stopped an assassination attempt on the vice president!” Bettina burst into Gadson’s office. “He was on CNN just now. Christ, what a break.” Bettina gingerly stepped past the life-size replica of Barton Balfour III. “Of course, the reporters couldn’t get much out of him.”

“He down-played it?”

“He looked like he’d forgotten it. How could you forget saving the vice president’s life?”

“Einstein couldn’t take public transportation,” said Gadson. “He’d forget where he was going.”

“He
is
a sort of Einstein, isn’t he? I mean, on another wavelength or something. I suppose I can work that angle.”

“It seems to me as if Hal has worked the angles for you.”

Arthur Bramhall slept his deep sleep undisturbed. Vinal Pinette snowshoed through the woods every day and quietly checked on him. The fur-bearing woman went with him a few times, but never actually entered the cave. She didn’t like to intrude on anyone’s personal boundaries. She was even circumspect with her sheep.

The bear sat surrounded by tall stacks of his book, which the bookstore in Philadelphia hoped to sell that day. It pleased book lovers that he took the time to write his name clearly, rather than just dashing off the swift, disdainful bit of illegibility that some writers put onto the title page of their books.

“Would you please sign this one for Bob?” asked the woman standing before him now.

“How do you spell it?” asked the bear.

“Spell what?”

“Bob.”

“Oh, the usual way,” laughed the woman, and then saw that Jam was waiting for her, his pen poised over the book. “B–O–B,” she said in some confusion.

The bear mouthed the letters silently as he wrote them,
B–O–B
, and then mouthed his own name as he wrote it,
J–A–M
.

His media escort in Philadelphia was Adele Nofsacker. Adele was inclined toward hysteria, and when she saw how slowly he wrote, she knew that watching him would be unbearable, so she’d gotten him to shorten his
signature to
Jam
, which he liked, because you couldn’t do better than Jam.

Now she walked to the front of the store, where the manager was beaming over the turnout for Jam’s appearance. “He’s caught on like wildfire, hasn’t he? Of course, saving the vice president hasn’t hurt.”

While the manager was talking to Adele, an advance
New York Times Book Review
arrived. Adele quickly turned to the best-seller list. Hal Jam’s book had hit number one.

Adele carried the newspaper over to Jam’s table and laid it in front of him. “You did it,” she said.

The bear looked to where she pointed, then looked up at Adele.

“You’re number one,” she said.

“I’m Jam,” he said insistently.

The signing went well, as did the interviews that afternoon. The bear now knew that the blinding lights of a TV studio held no menace, that no one lay in wait for him in the surrounding darkness. Prior to each interview he insisted on a supply of Cheesy Things, which he ate during the interview. On returning to the Latham Hotel with Adele Nofsacker that night, he was approached in the lobby by a rotund gentleman carrying a briefcase. “Mr. Jam?”

The bear looked at the briefcase hopefully. “Do you have a novel in there?”

The man appeared puzzled, and Adele Nofsacker
took over. “Mr. Jam has had a long day, and needs to rest.” Adele’s sacred vocation was protecting her writers, and Hal Jam needed more than most; the poor man was so gentle, so accommodating, he’d never get any peace if she let autograph seekers hound him into the night.

“I’m from the Cheesy Things Company. I’m here to make Mr. Jam an offer.”

The bear’s ears lifted. “You have Cheesy Things?”

The man opened his briefcase and handed the bear a bag. “We were delighted to learn how much you enjoy them.”

“You’ll have to contact Mr. Jam’s lawyers,” said Adele. “Come along, Hal.”

“Please,” said the Cheesy Things man. “I flew in from Wisconsin especially to see Mr. Jam. Surely he can spare five minutes.”

“Tomorrow,” said Adele. “Mr. Jam is very tired.”

“Excuse me,” said the man from Cheesy Things. “You are?”

“Adele Nofsacker.”

“Ms. Nofsacker, I know you’ve both had a long day, and I don’t wish to intrude.” The Cheesy Things man edged a little closer, trying to intrude, but the bear
was walking away, nibbling the product, which bore a close resemblance, visually and chemically, to Styrofoam packing peanuts, coated egg-yolk yellow. He pressed the elevator button as the Cheesy Things man moved in alongside him, with Adele Nofsacker on the other side.

“Mr. Jam, Cheesy Things is offering you money.”

“Call us in the morning,” said Adele Nofsacker.

The elevator door opened and the Cheesy Things man forced his way in beside them. “We’d like you to go on eating our Cheesy Things on your tour, wherever you go. For which we’ll pay you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“You have to be joking,” said Adele Nofsacker. “Mr. Jam is a distinguished American author, not a basketball player. He doesn’t lend his name to any product except his own books.”

The elevator was now rising. The bear continued to nibble his crispy, puffy treat. As one who’d found the cellulose in wasps’ nests palatable, he was right at home with a mouthful of Cheesy Things.

“But look at him,” said the man from Cheesy Things. “He loves our product.”

“He’s not endorsing it,” said Adele Nofsacker, staring at the elevator panel as the floors lit up.

“Look,” said the Cheesy Things man as the elevator door opened, “I can go a little higher.”

“You’ve gone as high as you’re going,” said Adele. “Mr. Jam has an early flight tomorrow and he needs his sleep.”

“If he has an early flight how am I supposed to talk to him tomorrow?”

“That’s your problem,” said Adele.

The bear walked behind them, shaking the Cheesy Things bag into his mouth. He’d said a lot of words today and was pleased with himself.

“All right, we’ll give him three hundred thousand.”

Adele Nofsacker inserted the key into the bear’s door. “I don’t think you understand. Mr. Jam is not interested.”

“A case of our product is delivered to each of his hotels along the way, and all he has to do is eat from a single bag on the air, or display it in some other natural and convenient way. For which we’ll give him three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Adele Nofsacker gave the Cheesy Things man a look of contempt. “Mr. Jam declines your offer.”

The bear passed through the opened door, which Adele Nofsacker tried to close on the Cheesy Things man, but he inserted his briefcase at the last moment.

“All right, all right, we’ll make it four hundred thousand. That’s a fair offer, because we’re not talking a
long-term endorsement here, only the length of the tour.”

Adele Nofsacker stared at the Cheesy Things man as if he were a carpet beetle. “Half a million.”

“Deal.” The Cheesy Things man opened his briefcase and whipped out a contract. “And by the way, would you consider working for Cheesy Things?”

“We’ll talk later,” said Adele.

Vinal Pinette sat down on his old iron bed. He wore a frayed knit cap to keep his bald head warm, and his dentures were in a glass, smiling at the faded wallpaper. Outside, the snow piled up to the edge of the windowsill, and the moonlight shone on the rounded snowbank and the heavily burdened trees. “Art’s like a son to me,” remarked Pinette to his dog, who was on the floor beside the bed.

The dog looked up, hoping for a last little morsel to round off the day, a good-night wiener, perhaps.

A bare light bulb hung above the bed, still burning. Pinette reached up and turned it off. The moonlit window became the brightest spot in the room. “Art, my boy,” he said, “I hope you’re keeping well.”

The dog walked out of the bedroom, his nails making soft clicking sounds on the warped pine floorboards. He walked into the kitchen and stared into his dish. It was empty, of course. Still, it never hurt to check.

He had a noisy slurp of water and then curled himself behind the kitchen stove. Sighing, he wrapped his tail over his nose and
closed his eyes. After a few minutes he was asleep, chasing wieners through his dreams. He snapped at them so violently he woke himself up.

Only a dream, he said, and sighed again, the ancient sigh of the dog by the fire when wieners are in short supply.

When the bear and his Chicago escort, Will Elder, entered the Channel 7 green room, the Reverend Norbert Sinkler was also waiting there. Elder introduced the two best-selling authors. “Reverend Sinkler, Hal Jam. You’re both high on the charts this week.”