The little bear wept now to remember it, shaking his head no. Not because he was a prisoner now, but because he was a prisoner then as well—full of hope but a slave to others’ whims, silent and watchful, stuck in the warm confines of Ruth’s family, loved, yes, but only as a toy and only for a time, always longing for more, even when he was held, never quite satisfied, often lonely, ever fearful, soon to be rejected, betrayed, and cast out.
He cried as well because he knew that it was his duty to recollect it, not just a moment of it or the simple facts he’d recalled for Unwin, but as much of it as possible, so that he might begin to understand. What understanding would do for him, the bear didn’t know, but he had to understand anyway. “Think back”—He’d been avoiding his dream’s command for months now, but he realized he couldn’t much longer. It was simply the work before him, the clear task that had to be done, no less than stowing away his acorns in the fall, or finding them again in winter.
“—I said, get up, goddamn it!”
The yell shattered the bear’s ears, and in the next instant he had leapt to the far corner of the bunk, pressing his back to the wall. He imagined his two eyes glowing like a wild animal’s.
“Oh no ya don’t,” said Agent Mike, reaching for him. “Little—” There was nowhere for Winkie to go, and the agent simply grabbed him by his collar. “Shit, I’ve seen canaries harder to catch than you.” He held Winkie out to Deputy Walter, who stood ready with the shackles. The bear continued squirming angrily.
“Come on now, little fella,” said Walter, very calmly, “you don’ wanna miss yer plea hearing, do ya?”
Winkie had forgotten that he was going before the judge today. He ceased his struggle but continued staring resentfully at Walter.
“Now, ya know I hafta do this,” he said, locking the shackles.
“And we don’t want to wake Junior, now do we?” Mike snarled.
In fact Darryl kept snoring in the bottom bunk, just as he had last night, tangled up in his blankets. He seemed to be hibernating. Winkie had not yet seen his cell mate’s face, and he wondered, for a sweet, hopeful second, if Darryl might be a bear, too.
* * *
A huge crowd shouted and jeered outside the courthouse, jerking their placards up and down like spears. “Holy shit,” muttered Agent Mike, who was driving. Like angry Styrofoam peanuts they poured around the car, packing it tight, so the bear had to wait there with Mike and Mary Sue as the police tried to clear a path. With terrified wonder he watched the angry faces undulating in the bulletproof windows. Their yells were muffled, but their signs were professionally printed and all said the same thing:
KILL WINKIE
—Leviticus 20:25
Past the mob, through the doors, down the halls, up the stairs, and inside a small, oval anteroom, it was perfectly quiet, except for the voice of Charles Unwin.
“Um, OK, um, Mr. Winkie—is ‘Mr.’ all right?—OK, Mr. Winkie—wow, that’s gonna take some getting used to—Mr. Winkie, Mr. Winkie, Mr. Winkie—OK, um, anyway, I am trying my best, my level best, I assure you, to get you your correspondence, they can’t just do that, withhold your mail without any reason.” Unwin had mentioned this before, but only now did Winkie understand its significance, and he looked at his lawyer eagerly. “—But of course that will be a separate hearing, I’m sure you understand that that has nothing to do with today, so let’s just, let’s just leave that aside, for now, I mean, just for now …”
They had been waiting here sometime, with Agents Mike and Mary Sue and two policemen, for the judge to call them. Winkie looked up at his attorney’s worried face with something like hope. He was the only human being who knew the bear’s life story. Somehow he had won his trust. So then, Winkie asked himself, was this the man to save him?
“I guess all we can do now is relax until the judge calls us. Sometimes that’s all you can do. Can you, can you, can you do that?” Unwin was asking. “Well, OK then,” he answered himself, planting his hands firmly on his knees. He said nothing for a few minutes. Then as if the bear had beckoned, Unwin nodded and bent to speak to him more privately. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” he whispered. Winkie glanced sideways at the others in the room. “But I have this terrible, uncontrollable fear of losing cases. Silly, isn’t it? It’s just plain silly, I know, I know, I know.”
The two agents and the two officers gazed down at their tooshiny shoes, smirking, but Unwin didn’t seem to notice. The airconditioner ducts loudly wooshed. Winkie knit his brow.
“You see, it’s my name,” Unwin continued. “I’m afraid it’s a jinx. I know it’s stupid to think that, but I can’t help it. I say to myself over and over, ‘Don’t think that!’ And before I know it, what happens? I’ve lost another case.” He looked troubled and his small, deep-set eyes ran this way and that. “In point of fact, I’ve never won a single case. Not one! I shouldn’t be telling you this either.” Unwin swallowed several times, cleared his throat, and coughed. Winkie looked down at his own shackled feet. “Um, the closest I’ve ever gotten was a hung jury,” the lawyer continued. “Oh, but that was sweet! That was truly truly wonderful! When was that—five years ago? No, um, seven.” He sighed. “But I remember it like, like, like yesterday. When that jury filed back into the courtroom and the foreman said they were hopelessly deadlocked, suddenly for one brief moment it seemed as though—!” He lifted up both hands gratefully and smiled. “I mean, I felt as light as air! It was, it was, it was amazing. But then—oh well, what can you do?—a month later the man was tried again, and he was sentenced to twenty years hard labor.”
Unwin fell into silence, his brow appearing first hopeful and then devastated, again and again. Slowly Winkie let his head drop into his paws. The ducts continued whooshing. Now and then he jingled his chains.
“Hear ye, hear ye, the Honorable Judge …”
With a flourish of his robes the judge took his seat and looked gravely at the little bear. “Mr. Winkie,” he said sternly, “you are hereby charged with the following crimes.” He banged his gavel once for each charge. “Terrorism.” Crack. “Treason.” Crack. “Conspiring to overthrow the United States government.” Crack. “Providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.” Crack. “Possession of components from which a destructive device such as a bomb can be readily assembled.” Crack. “One hundred twenty-four counts of attempted murder.” Crack, crack, crack, etc. The list in its entirety went on for five hours, fourteen minutes. The judge had to stop in the middle for lunch, resuming in the afternoon. “Impersonating a woman.” Crack. “Fraud.” Crack. “Resisting arrest.” Crack. By now nearly everyone in the courtroom had fallen asleep, soothed by lunch and mesmerized by the judge’s droning, nasal voice and thick, black, furrowed eyebrows that never budged. “Corrupting the youth of Athens.” Crack. “Holding the false doctrine that the sun is the center of the world and the earth moves.” Crack. “Blasphemy.” Crack. But Winkie himself did not doze. He hung his head in shame, listening to every word, even the ones he didn’t understand. “Witchcraft.” Crack. “Teaching evolution in the schools.” Crack. “Ritual satanic abuse.” Crack. In the courtroom window, the sun had begun to set, casting a fiery glow upon the lonely little defendant. “The creation of immoral works of art.” Crack. “Obscenity.” Crack. “And lastly—” said the judge, grandly turning the final page and enunciating with special distaste—“acts of gross indecency with certain young men of London.” Three extra loud cracks.
The courtroom awoke with an outraged jerk.
“Mr. Winkie, how do you plead?”
A perfect silence like the beginning of time.
“Um,” said Unwin, straightening. “Um. Um. Not guilty. Not guilty on all counts!”
The courtroom burst into uproar. “Horrible!” they shouted, as Winkie was led away. “Vile!” “Filth!” He dared not lift his head. For them to say such things, Winkie thought, he must be a very very bad disgusting dirty bear indeed.
Hurricane
&nb
sp; 1.
Tonight Cliff had gone right to sleep, as had his older brother Ken. The bear heard Ruth’s footsteps in the hall, trudging down the stairs, then Cliff’s father’s voice in the living room. From the shelf, he watched Cliff’s little shape under the dark blankets and wondered why things had to be the way they were.
Winkie had seen it happen five times and now a sixth: a child being formed. Sometimes it was wonderful and sometimes he could hardly bear to keep his glass eyes open.
The child was being formed and the child was also forming itself. There were these two forces at work, and one could never tell what the outcome might be. The child was what it was, and then things happened to it, and in this way, as Winkie watched, unblinking, because he couldn’t blink, the child became what he or she was to be.
Sometimes it seemed to Winkie the world and the child were two trains on a collision course. So that what the child was to become might be a wreck. It had never been so for any of the children in this family; but it might have been, it could just as easily have been; for in small ways it definitely was the case, again and again—Winkie saw it, just as he saw and felt and tried to help each child put itself back together, in these small ways. And then that was what the child was to become, too, something mended, just as Winkie himself was mended, even if only in small ways.
“No, no—it’s necessary. Necessary,” the bear muttered to himself. “Surviving is necessary.” But he wasn’t convinced. Perhaps Cliff dreamed of monsters and surely he would survive dreaming of them, but why did he have to? In a little while, by the subtle change in his breathing, Winkie could tell that the boy was now half awake. A sour-sweet fart floated in the still night air. Cliff had to go to the bathroom, yet he lay motionless. He was trying to hold it and he would not succeed. It had already happened in just this way many times before.
Winkie wanted it to be otherwise, but he tried to understand that this was the way of the world and it was so for himself, as well. And though the five-year-old would awaken to shame and might try to hide the soiled underpants in the bottom of the hamper, he wouldn’t or couldn’t stop even though lately he was in trouble for it all the time.
Winkie also knew that these very things were, in turn, forming him, a bear, and he was forming himself. That was how it was when Cliff renamed him; the toddler chose “Winkie,” but the little bear who became him, breathed the name into his soul, turned into a boy, remained a girl, Marie, inside, and was proud of all of it, for all of it was his fate. From then on he stared back at Cliff with glass eyes both more ancient and ever renewed.
As to whether such events were necessary or not—whether they were what the bear most needed—he didn’t know, but being formed and forming oneself were necessary, so therefore the experiences must also be, as was whatever Winkie did with them.
Still, he wondered sometimes why he had to see this—the child growing in its world—so many times, again and again. First Ruth, then over a period of many years and many places, the next five. Like Ruth and Dave, he had thought Ken, born five years after Paul, was the last, and before Ken he’d even begun to think Paul was the last, so Winkie was already done—but now here was Cliff, who surely was the last, and why him?
Chance decreed that there were five, and each of these five played out chance as well: They were like five possible paths, branching off from Ruth, who was the first path Winkie had been destined to follow. Not since Ruth had anyone thought to name him, not in more than twenty years—so that now he had awakened wholly as Cliff’s, just as he would also always be Ruth’s. He supposed that was chance, too.
Branching and branching. You couldn’t stop it. Cliff had drifted to sleep again and his breaths came now with perfect regularity. In the continuing darkness Winkie seemed to see the infinite growing tree of life budding and branching infinitely before him kaleidoscopically and full of light. Through the half-open window he faintly smelled the too-sweet Louisiana gardenias along the drive and wondered by what combination of steps A-not-B or B-not-A over and over (indefinitely back in time and down to the tiniest molecules) he, Winkie, had been chosen both to witness and to understand this. A car passed down in the street, and behind the closed drapes he saw the dim, brief flash of headlights. “A particular bear,” he murmured, falling asleep himself, “sees a particular this.”
2.
Cliff stood by the sliding glass door holding Winkie and twirling his legs around each other tightly, trying not to move. His brothers lay on the couch watching a game show. Upstairs Ruth’s violin could be heard, scales quickly snaking up and down.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” asked Paul, who was in charge today.
“No,” said Cliff indignantly, though Winkie knew otherwise. It wasn’t long after the family had arrived in New Orleans that the boy began shitting his pants.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
In fact, it happened at least once a week, usually more, sometimes at night, sometimes during the day, and it had been going on almost two months now. At first Ruth had simply ignored it. Then she spoke to Cliff seriously, reminding him that he was five, not three. Soon his brothers were enlisted in the cause of clean underpants.
“He’s holding it!” sang Ken, who was eleven. “Holding it! Holding it!”
“Shut up,” said Paul, trying in his lanky teenage way to be responsible, but already Winkie could feel the outrage bubbling up in Cliff’s chest, where the bear was being clutched even more tightly.
“Am not!” he shouted, and ran out of the family room.
“Now look what you did,” said Paul to Ken.
“So?”
As Cliff neared the top of the stairs, he slowed to a dawdle. Up here Ruth’s scales were louder but still muffled behind the closed door of the master bedroom. Though no one dared disturb her, the whiny notes were a familiar and therefore comforting sound. All these years, wherever the family lived, she had played in community orchestras. She hit a wrong note now, muttered, “Darn it,” and began again, just as she had done a thousand times before—so that Winkie and the boy seemed to float, timelessly, in the never ending era called Ruth.
Cliff peered down through the spokes of the banister to see if anyone had come after him. There was no one, of course, but Winkie knew the boy had to save face by waiting a little while before he actually went and did what he needed to do.
After he had gone to the bathroom, Cliff took off his soiled underpants, dropped them in the yellow wicker hamper, and replaced them with fresh ones. That was that. Then he came back downstairs again.
“Why do you take that stupid bear everywhere you go?” asked Paul. “You should stop being such a baby. You’re too old for that.”
Cliff was holding Winkie under one arm. “I’m not a baby.”
“You act like one,” said Ken. “Look at the baby with his bear.”
Winkie was about to feel outraged, but he sensed Cliff shift his weight and loosen his grasp on him just slightly, and in that instant the old bear understood, with the sad experience of so many years lived as a servant and a toy, that he had become a tainted object. The next thing he knew, Cliff had thrown him across the room. Winkie landed on the seedy brown couch with a muffled wump.
“Na-na-na, nah-nah, na-na-nah,” said Cliff, imitating Ken’s taunt. He stomped out and slammed the sliding glass door behind him.
“I’ll call Mom,” Paul warned idly.
Winkie stared down at nubby upholstery. He was still trying to focus his eyes when Ken picked him up and looked him square in the face. The bear scarcely had a chance to flinch. “Dope!” the eleven-year-old said. Then he punched him in the nose and let go at the same time, so that Winkie flew backward at the blow. He landed with a wump again. Paul snickered.
Winkie knew it was difficult to make an older brother laugh, so having succeeded once, Ken would undoubtedly try again.
“Dope!” Pow. Wump. “Dope!” Pow. Wump. After five or six times Paul’s snickers waned, and Winkie hoped
it was over. He lay there dazed and furious. Ruth was upstairs practicing, but where was Cliff? In the corner of his eye he saw the little boy wander in from the backyard again, closing the sliding door more carefully this time. He stood there near the TV not saying anything, not looking this way, playing a little game with the drapes, lifting them and letting them billow down to the linoleum again.
“Look what I’m doing to him,” sang Ken, grinning, holding Winkie up and threatening with his fist. “Loo-ook. Loo-ook.” He punched Winkie again, and the addled bear flew down to the couch once more.
Only yesterday Cliff would have cried out against this injustice, but today he just said, “So what?” and marched into the breakfast nook. Winkie could hear him opening the cabinets that held his art supplies.
Now Paul sighed with boredom and also left the room. “I need a Coke,” he muttered. In a moment Ken shut off the TV and followed, and Winkie lay on the brown cushion, forgotten. One of his eyes had slammed shut, and the other was open, so he stared up at half the plain white ceiling. Above, Ruth flubbed a fast run once, twice, three times—“Darn it!” A bad feeling built and built in the bear’s middle and it seemed he couldn’t lie there one minute longer, but still Cliff didn’t come. From the nook he heard only the faint, scratching sounds of crayons on heavy paper.
3.
Once during the long drive down to New Orleans, observing the telephone wires rise and fall while Cliff napped and Ken and Paul fought idly in the backseat, Winkie had wondered if he was this family’s guardian angel. He doubted it. But then again, maybe that was why there was so much trouble in the world: All the angels were as ineffectual as he was.
In Illinois Winkie had seen the family go through two years of bad luck. He gleaned the facts by listening through the walls. They had just moved back to Chicago when Cliff’s father lost his new job. He was unemployed for several months, and then the only work he could find was a low-paying position at a hairspray factory three hours away. The family couldn’t afford to move again, so they saw Dave only on weekends. Ruth complained a lot—to Dave, to her older children—about bills to be paid and savings dwindling, about Dave’s poor choices and his never being home. Ever since she was little, Ruth had always liked everything to be just so, and now things looked like they would never be just so. Afternoons in the kitchen, Winkie watched Ruth complain, and watched the toddler, Cliff, watching her. “Dad just shrugs,” she told Carol, the oldest sister, “and I’m left holding the bag.” The girls had to leave their private colleges and attend the cheaper public university nearby. Ruth went to work in Chicago as a Kelly girl, and on those days Cliff went to nursery school. On weekends when Dave was home, late at night, as Cliff slept, Winkie strained to hear the couple’s whispered arguments. “Well, I don’t see why you … What about the …? And I’m supposed to just …?” “I understand that, darling, but … I know, but I can’t … I’m forty-eight years old … But I have to …” A cloud of turmoil permeated everything, so that even the house began falling apart, always needing some repair that Ruth said they couldn’t afford. Then one day Dave was almost killed in a car accident; he came home with his ribs taped. A few months later, he fell off a pier and nearly drowned. Maybe these events were a weird kind of good luck, Winkie thought, for Dave had survived, and something in Ruth seemed to snap back in place. Or almost did. She complained a little less. At last Dave announced one Friday evening that he’d found a good job, and the family was moving to New Orleans. There, Ruth told the children repeatedly, everything was going to be better.
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