Winkie

by Clifford Chase

  Winkie looked at him with bewilderment.

  “You know, the ACLU?” said Unwin, lifting both hands. He sighed. “I, I, I can’t explain it all to you now and anyway, anyway, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is they all got involved, each for their own reasons, of course, and the hospital workers union, too, and, well—suffice to say.” He spread his hands and repeated with finality, “Suffice … to … say.”

  Winkie waited for more, but Unwin busied himself once again with his mounds of folders, discs, and papers. The bear tugged at his sleeve.

  “Mr. Winkie, the trial is about to begin, and I really …”

  Seeing Françoise’s name on one of Unwin’s documents, the bear began pointing to it urgently.

  “What? I just told you—all charges dropped. Except one, um, here, I’ll show you …” He unearthed the morning newspaper. “Practicing medicine without a license. She pled guilty to treating your gunshot wounds. Five-hundred-dollar fine, which PETA paid. OK?”

  Winkie tried to unknit his brow and brighten his eyes, as if he understood.

  Unwin had already resumed straightening and restraightening his various stacks. What he didn’t tell his client was that only just that morning, on the steps of the courthouse, he had refused, quite impulsively, the help of all the organizations he’d just mentioned.

  “No doubt about it, I’m very nervous this morning, very nervous,” he began muttering, “I don’t know why, well, of course I know why, ha-ha, that’s obvious, more than obvious, but so what if it’s obvious, even if it’s the most obvious thing in the goddamn world, I’m still nervous and I wish I wasn’t, I wish, I just wish …”

  “All rise.”

  Like a flock of large birds the spectators moved swiftly to their places as the judge paraded in looking even more distracted and annoyed than usual. He sat, and the ceremonial rumble of the jury and the spectators taking their own seats sounded especially ominous, the silence that followed especially full of portent. Sighing deeply and rolling his eyes, the judge said, “If Mr. Unwin will please call his first witness.”

  “If it please the court,” interrupted the prosecutor.

  The judge looked at him over his reading glasses. “Yes?”

  The prosecutor stood up, and half turned to address not only the bench but the entire courtroom. “The people move that this trial be ended now and the defendant be executed immediately.”

  Shouts of “Yeah!”

  The judge wearily began banging his gavel but the yelling only grew louder. Winkie turned to find Françoise, who gazed back at him with wide, fearful eyes. “Your—Your honor—Your—Your—” Unwin was stammering. Several men tried to rush the defense table, but the bailiffs pushed them back. Winkie pressed himself flat against his chair. “Get him!” “String him up!” “Woo!” At last one of the bailiffs shot his pistol in the air, and the yelling and whistling ceased. Dust and pieces of light fixture rained down as people took their seats again.

  “I—surely you—this travesty—we must—mistrial!” Unwin cried.

  As usual, the judge ignored him. “Mr. Prosecutor,” he said, glancing uneasily in the direction of the press, “this is a most unusual request …”

  The prosecutor rose. “Your Honor, if the accused is allowed to mount a defense, he will simply take it as an opportunity to spread more of his lies or, worse, to send secret, coded messages to his network of terrorist sleeper cells!”

  Unwin began stammering again and there was another crescendo of murmuring in the crowd.

  “Hush, goddamn it,” said the judge. Crack! He ran his hands over his face, trying to think.

  For the judge had that morning received a certain fax. There was no return address or phone number, which meant it came from his contact in the U.S. Attorney General’s office. Scrawled in thick marker, it said: “Fouad acquittal expected to result in greater press scrutiny of whole Winkie ‘affair.’ Must maintain appearance of justice. PS: You never received this.”

  But evidently the prosecution had actually never received it. Or was the judge’s own fax a mistake? Or even a trick? Or perhaps the prosecution’s request just now was intended as some kind of drama in which he, the judge, could bravely act the part of fairness? Certainly that would go over well at any confirmation hearing that might be coming up …

  “Mr. Prosecutor, while I certainly share your concerns,” he began, speaking slowly and carefully, “as well as your disgust for this defendant, I mean, for the crimes he is accused of, and while I will certainly consider stopping these proceedings at any point if I feel Mr. Winkie is using his defense merely as a mouthpiece for terrorism”—he looked sternly at the bear and was startled to see the answering rage in his face—“still, I must, by the laws of this great and gentle land, allow this trial to go forward. Mr. Unwin—” He winced at the thought of listening to this man day after day for God knew how long. “Your first witness?”

  After several attempts to speak, Unwin did then manage to move once again for a mistrial, but the request was denied, and after a short recess for the judge to imbibe more of his heartburn medication, Winkie’s defense began.

  “Penelope Brackle!” barked the bailiff.

  Mrs. Brackle was a large, round woman with orange red hair, wearing teddy bear earrings, a teddy bear watch, a plaid skirt dappled with yellow teddy bears, a sky blue blouse in a pattern of smaller bears, and a matching teddy bear tam-o’-shanter. Winkie’s glass eyes widened. She seemed like some kind of wizard of toyland, cloaked in the talismans of her particular magic. Even her purse displayed a field of bears, and she wore a huge teddy bear broach, gold with two glittering ruby red stones for eyes.

  Unwin asked Mrs. Brackle to please tell the court her occupation.

  “Stuffed bear expert and collector,” she said firmly.

  The prosecution stood. “Your Honor, really …” He rolled his eyes and lifted his hands to heaven. “Relevance?” His favorite assistant, Number Twelve, chuckled indulgently.

  “It’s it’s it’s quite quite quite relevant,” Unwin sputtered.

  “Approach,” said the judge, and the two lawyers went to the bench. Winkie couldn’t hear what they were murmuring, only the tail end of the judge’s words—“Well, if Mr. Unwin is determined to make a complete fool of himself, he may certainly do so with the full blessing of this court.” Crack.

  Winkie didn’t see why an expert on teddy bears should be seen as foolish, and he scowled at the judge all the more.

  “Now, Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. … Brackle,” said Unwin. “Please list for us your credentials.”

  “I am a past president of the American Society of Teddy Bear Collectors and have contributed dozens of articles to Teddy Bear Review and other arctophile journals. Currently I publish a monthly newsletter, Bears Anonymous, and my own collection includes more than three thousand bears from America, England, Germany, France, and Australia.”

  Winkie was impressed.

  “And were you, um, able to examine, um, the defendant?” Unwin asked.

  “The prosecution wouldn’t allow it, so I looked at the police photos that you sent, and the X-ray.”

  “Good. Good. Excellent.” Unwin began pacing up and down. “And what did you conclude?”

  She smiled broadly. “This is a very rare bear.”

  Unwin stopped pacing. “Rare?”

  “Very rare indeed!”

  Despite everything, and for the first time in more than a year, Winkie found himself feeling proud. The unfamiliar sensation almost hurt his chest.

  “But the defendant is a teddy bear?” asked Unwin.

  “Oh, yes, most definitely. Most definitely!”

  Winkie basked in Mrs. Brackle’s admiring glance.

  “And how, um, how can you determine that?” asked Unwin, beginning to pace again.

  “Everything about him says ‘teddy bear,’” she answered. “Everything. Might I show you?”

  Unwin stopped and turned to the judge. “May she explain using the defendant?”<
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  Wearily the judge nodded, and one of the bailiffs lifted Winkie up and seated him again squarely on the sill of the witness box. Any embarrassment the bear might have felt was allayed by Mrs. Brackle’s firm yet warm touch, which confirmed he was in the presence of a true specialist.

  “As you can see, the fur is blond mohair,” she said, briskly stroking his furry ears this way and that, “typical of a bear made in the first half of the twentieth century. And the stuffing,” she added, giving his middle an expert but gentle squeeze, “is definitely excelsior.”

  “Excelsior?” asked Unwin.

  “Very fine sawdust. Again, excelsior stuffing is one hundred percent teddy bear.”

  Winkie beamed.

  “Go on, go on,” said Unwin.

  She moved his arms this way and that. “The limbs are jointed, another distinct teddy bear trait. He has the large ears characteristic of a British bear,” she continued, tugging at them gently, “and I can see that the right one has been torn off and reattached.”

  Winkie shuddered to remember that day, decades ago, when Cindy the dog got ahold of him. Mrs. Brackle wasn’t only a wizard but a fortune-teller.

  “And and and were you able to identify the manufacturer?”

  “Well,” she chuckled, “that took some doing. The arms are slender and slightly curved, with long paw pads in a spoon shape, as was common with the Hugmee bears from Chiltern Toys in England. But the legs also are slender, which doesn’t match the Hugmee profile. The pads were probably felt, but the cloth is so worn that it’s impossible to tell for sure, and the claws are nearly worn away as well.”

  No human could be more thoroughly in sympathy with what it meant to be a Winkie. Indeed, the rest of the courtroom seemed mesmerized as well by Mrs. Brackle’s confident and enthusiastic expertise.

  “I can feel a squeaker, or rather the remains of it, which I had noticed in the X-ray,” she continued, gently probing the place on Winkie’s back that once squeaked when pressed. “This places him among the many novelty bears produced during the 1920s—another clue to his provenance. But of course—” She chuckled, holding her hand to her mouth—“Of course I’ve forgotten to mention the most remarkable thing of all about him—I mean, truly extraordinary.”

  Unwin smiled. “And what is that, Mrs. Brackle?”

  “Why, the eyes, of course.”

  She leaned forward and gently grasped the bear’s shoulders. “May I?” she asked, and Winkie nodded. He had complete confidence in her. “Just relax,” she said, like a very good doctor, and she tilted him backward until his two glass orbs automatically rolled shut with their distinctive click-click. Then she tilted him upright again and they clicked open.

  Mrs. Brackle giggled delightedly. “Marvelous, aren’t they? Just marvelous. I mean, we’ve all seen eyes of this sort on baby dolls—they were first introduced in 1922—the Bye-lo Baby. Her eyes closed in ‘sleep,’ that is, when you laid her down. Of course it’s very common now, but back then it was quite an innovation—part of a whole explosion in mass-produced consumer goods for children, which has continued to this day. Anyway, I’d read accounts of Bye-lo-like eyes being incorporated into a teddy bear, but apparently very few of these bears were made, so I’d never actually seen one and I wasn’t even convinced they actually existed—until now, of course.” She sighed with great satisfaction. “May I present to you, ladies and gentlemen of the court, from the Wholesale Toy Factory in North London, patented in 1921—” She gestured grandly toward Winkie—“The Blinka Rolling-Eyed Bear.”

  The courtroom murmured, the press scribbled, and Winkie blinked back tears.

  “Winkie, Blinka, Winkie, Blinka,” he murmured. The courtroom faded, its crowd and its questions, and he seemed to float down into his own essence.

  A very rare bear. Very rare indeed! But still and always a bear. Mohair. Excelsior. Extraordinary, remarkable, marvelous. Why, the eyes, of course. The bear is rare but exists. Patented in 1921. The Blinka exists.

  Not a Hugmee—a Blinka. Not just a Winkie—a Winkie the Blinka. Most definitely! Winkie the Blinka. Winkie the Blinka the Rolling-Eyed Bear.

  “If the court would please remove the defendant from the witness box,” said the prosecutor disdainfully, and Winkie was whisked back to his seat.

  “Bye-bye,” Mrs. Brackle called after him.

  The prosecutor turned to her and brusquely asked, “Ma’am, please tell us again your area of expertise.”

  “Teddy bears and toys.”

  “Ah. That’s certainly a very important field of inquiry.” The courtroom chuckled. Mrs. Brackle frowned. Winkie fumed. “And do you know anything about genetic engineering?”

  “What?”

  “You know—the ability to combine the genetic material from two or more species in order to create a new individual exhibiting new traits—such as large ears, or mohairlike fur? Do you know anything about that?”

  “No.”

  Unwin half rose. “Your, Your, Honor, I fail to see the rel—the rel—”

  The judge gave a single twirl of his hand.

  “And are you familiar,” continued the prosecutor, scarcely missing a beat, “with the many and various genetic defects and mutations, such as extreme dwarfism, hermaphroditism, and other, far more ghastly phenomena such as clothlike skin, the complete absence of internal organs, and eyeballs hard as glass?”

  Mrs. Brackle adjusted her teddy bear scarf. “No.”

  “And have you studied chromosomal damage and other ill effects from the use of illegal drugs such as LSD, ecstasy, coke, crack, heroine, or methamphetamines?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, how about the latest breakthroughs in plastic and reconstructive surgery and how those breakthroughs might be adapted by unscrupulous physicians for criminal purposes?”

  “No.”

  “Ritual scarification and other appearance-altering rites?”

  “No.”

  “And can you identify the horrible disfiguring effects of certain rare infectious agents, including and especially sexually transmitted diseases, which are all too prevalent in various remote regions of the globe?”

  Mrs. Brackle’s hands fluttered nervously. “Oh my, no.”

  “Or the horrible disfiguring effects of exposure to radiation or chemical or biological weapons—effects that can go beyond the average person’s wildest imagination?”

  “No.”

  The prosecutor sighed loudly. “Mrs. Brackle, do you have any scientific or medical expertise of any kind?”

  The witness cleared her throat. “No. But I am most certainly an expert on teddy bears, and—”

  “No further questions.”

  “Animism is the belief that, um, sentient spirits inhabit plants and other inanimate objects,” said the next expert, a gray-haired man in a baggy gray suit who, except for his silver spectacles, looked very much like Charles Unwin and who was, in fact, Unwin’s identical twin brother, Edwin. He was an assistant professor of anthropology at a nearby university.

  “Tell us, um, more, Mr. Unwin,” said Unwin.

  Not only Winkie but the entire courtroom was amazed that there were two of them in the world. It was like watching someone conduct an interview with himself.

  “Ahem,” said Unwin.

  “Ahem,” said Edwin. “Animism has been called, um, the seed of religion, and is believed to originate in how we interpret our dreams.”

  “Our dreams?”

  “As Hobbes proposed in Leviathan, the original notion of the soul stems from, quote, ‘ignorance of how to distinguish Dreams and other strong Fancies from Vision and Sense,’ unquote. Or as, as, as Edward Clodd put it in his seminal 1921 monograph, Animism, the so-called savage believes that, quote, ‘there is within himself something which quits the body during sleep, and does the things of which he dreams.’ Unquote. It follows, then, that animals have souls, and even plants and other natural objects, such as rocks or rivers.”

  “Why is that?”

 
“Well, just as the sleeper doesn’t move while his dreaming self might traverse continents, so too, so too, the motionless rock or tree must contain a similar spirit fully capable of movement and will.”

  At these words Winkie experienced a great sense of relief, as if he had just been regranted motion and speech.

  “And this belief is very ancient?” asked Charles Unwin, raising his eyebrows. “Surely no one believes it now?”

  Again Winkie grew anxious.

  “Yes, um, very ancient—animism is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, religious or, um, metaphysical system known to humankind. But its basic elements inform all religions, old and new, and, in any case, in any case, it would be wrong, terribly wrong, at least in my view, to call any religious belief, quote, primitive or, quote, outmoded. There are certainly plenty of intelligent people in the world today who believe in animism, or something like it, and not just, just so-called primitive peoples.”

  Winkie felt vindicated once more, but the prosecutor rose to object. “Your Honor, are we supposed to sit here and listen as this witness tells us that one religion is as good as another?”

  Scattered applause in the courtroom. The judge looked disdainfully at the two Unwins, as if they were rapidly multiplying vermin. “The witness will refrain from pursuing his radical, relativist agenda in my courtroom. We are here to establish facts.”

  “Certainly, oh yes, facts, of course,” said Charles and Edwin in flustered, sarcastic, perfect unison. Then, as one they blushed to have spoken exactly the same words, just as they used to do so often as children.

  Charles shut his eyes and tried to concentrate. “So, primitive or not,” he said at last, “absurd or sublime, can the notion of animism apply to man-made objects as well?”

  “Ahem. Yes. Oh, yes. Before I was, um, interrupted, I was about to mention the Findhorn Community, founded in Sussex in the late 1950s, as a modern example of people who claim to to to have communicated with, quote, ‘etheric’ forms or bodies—such as the ruling spirits of carrots, broccoli, and other vegetables, whose advice they sought regarding cultivation, or the Mole King, whom they humbly requested to forbid his subjects from ravaging their garden.”