Winkie

by Clifford Chase

  Crack!

  Both Winkie and Unwin jumped.

  “Mr. Unwin,” barked the judge, “if your client does not provide this court with his own testimony—not ridiculous phrases put into his mouth by his so-called attorney—I will hold both of you in contempt and this trial will be ended at once!”

  Murmurs of approval throughout the courtoom. Winkie shuddered.

  “Certainly, certainly,” Unwin stammered, shaking back his gray bangs with several violent jerks of the head. “Mr. Winkie,” he began, trying to resume slowly and calmly, but speeding up immediately, “um, please explain to the court, in your own words, as the judge has asked, explain to everyone gathered here, that is, to the judge and the prosecutor and the jury sitting behind that curtain there, that is, to the best of your ability, that is to say, please explain the events leading up to your, um, unfortunate arrest and incarceration, which was more than a year ago now, please, thank you.”

  Winkie wished now that he had practiced conversing, at least a little, during his time in jail. He had never spoken to anyone in his whole life except Baby Winkie, yet now he was expected to bring forth answers and explanations in front of a sea of strangers. He tried to decipher Unwin’s question, but as soon as he had, fact after fact began flooding in from the past, all in a jumble, so that he couldn’t even list them all to himself, let alone choose among them. Even the soft scratching sound of the courtroom artist seemed deafening.

  “Just start at the beginning,” Unwin prompted, as gently as he could, but sounding as impatient as ever. “And think carefully.”

  Winkie compressed his brow, trying to simplify the torrent in his head. Several minutes went by. Then, with a hopeful face, he tried: “A E I O U.”

  Though the sounds had felt strange in his throat, it had seemed like a good answer. But Winkie saw the prosecutor exchange smirks with his favorite assistant and several in the press area shake their heads. Unwin rubbed his eyes so feverishly that the bear thought they might pop out of their sockets. “OK, um, let’s try again,” the lawyer said, sighing. “OK. Mr. Winkie, please explain to the court, in your own words, to everyone gathered here …”

  Even the soft scratching sound of the courtroom artist seemed deafening.

  Hearing the question repeated, virtually word for word, wasn’t very helpful, especially not in that tone of voice. But Winkie tried to put the right expression of certitude on his face, concentrated, and boldly said: “If, but, why, surely, notwithstanding, so.”

  Unwin sighed loudly. “So, so, so—what? What?”

  The bear blinked at his tone but was determined to answer more quickly this time. “And so it was, and so it happened, and so it came to pass,” he asserted. “Therefore I say unto you.”

  Surely this was irrefutable, Winkie thought, but Unwin asked, “‘I say unto you’ what? What came to pass?”

  Winkie concentrated again. His mouth was just forming the L of Light when the prosecutor cried out, “Your Honor!” He held up his plump palms in a grand shrug.

  “I quite agree,” said the judge. Crack! “Mr. Unwin, I say unto you again that if your client doesn’t start making sense, it shall come to pass that—” Crack! Crack! Crack!

  The courtroom’s guffaws seemed strangely distant to the bear as he turned from the scowling judge to the grinning prosecutor to the blushing, sputtering Unwin. Feeling especially small and friendless, Winkie blurted out, “Once upon a time there was a bear!”

  The laughter ceased and all eyes turned to him.

  “Good!” said Unwin, less irritably, and he began making rolling gestures with both hands. “Please! Please, go on!”

  But this confused the bear more than ever. Once again he thought he’d finished with the question, but Unwin continued looking at him, imploringly, his hands slowing to a halt in the air. Winkie lifted his own paws in a shrug, jingling his chains. “The End,” he tried.

  There was more tittering and Unwin began rubbing his eyes again. “No,” he moaned. “No …”

  Winkie glared at him. “Objects. Food. Rooms,” he said defiantly. “Dust and shame and unending boredom. And so the old bear struck out for a new world!”

  Unwin perked up a little. “Keep going. What do you mean by a ‘new world’?”

  Winkie frowned and rolled his eyes. Why did he even bother? A new world was a new world. What else could you say about it? Yet he knew he had to try. “What the bear wanted. What the bear did,” he answered. “What the bear saw and ate and understood.”

  He never knew what might interest Unwin, and now the lawyer’s restless blue eyes slowed and settled on Winkie in genuine curiosity. He didn’t seem to know what to ask next, yet he didn’t seem to mind, either, and in that moment of calm the bear suddenly had a new inkling of what he wanted to say. The courtroom was quiet as he closed his eyes and spoke into the darkness. “By and by it came to pass that a little bear went to wander the world. Bushes bloomed and berried, while light came down and went back up again. He had a baby.” Winkie panted a few breaths to rest, for speaking like this was nearly as difficult as giving birth. “There were two little bears then, large and small. They didn’t know why, but each day cloth and stuffing looked and found its own. The trees breathed and hundreds of clouds went by, even when they slept. Rain or snow came down in lines or sometimes swirls, just to please them. The afternoons grew. Songs were sung. Then the big mean Blob-Man came yelling, and stole the baby away.” Winkie held back tears. “Once upon a time there was a sad and lonely bear. He lived in a hovel. ‘Come out with your hands up!’ Tingle and noise, bright and quiver. The bear fell slowly down.” Winkie rubbed sniffle from his nose and tried to concentrate again. “There once was a sad bear all alone. He lived in a cage, and he remembered everything. The End.”

  * * *

  There were a few confused titters, but otherwise no one made a sound. The spectators might have been surprised by their own sympathy, but it didn’t seem to stop them from listening.

  “And who is that bear?” asked Unwin, gentle-voiced again.

  What a stupid question, Winkie thought, it couldn’t be more obvious—and yet, thinking of the answer made him want to cry again. Why should that be?

  “Me,” he said at last.

  Unwin paused a moment before asking, “Can you tell us about your child?”

  “I …,” Winkie began, and this word, too, seemed to wound him. But he knew with the wisdom of all his experiences that he had to keep going, no matter how much it hurt. “I turned to look and her eyes looked back,” he continued. “It was Baby Winkie: her eyes, her fur, her ears, and again her eyes. They looked back at me.”

  Again there was silence.

  “And who is the ‘Blob-Man’?” Unwin quietly asked.

  “The one who stole Baby Winkie!” the bear cried, wondering how his lawyer could have missed this point, too.

  “I know—I mean, was this the man?” Unwin asked, returning from the defense table with a photograph of the old hermit. “Him?”

  Winkie startled backward at the sight of that awful face, as if the photograph itself could harm him. “Yes,” he said, nodding, and quickly handed the picture back.

  “Let it be stipulated that the witness has identified this photograph of—”

  “Of a GREAT AMERICAN HERO, murdered in COLD BLOOD by the DEFENDANT!” yelled the prosecutor. “Your Honor, this is an OUTRAGE. You cannot permit this SLANDER to continue!”

  It was indeed a risky topic for Unwin to have taken on. Several members of the press were yelling, “Here! Here!” for they had never referred to the hermit as anything other than “the kindly old man of the forest.” Six different books by that title would be arriving in supermarkets and bookstores soon, and polls showed that the public felt even more positively about the old hermit than they felt negatively about Winkie—yet Unwin pressed on.

  “I submit that not only is the hermit a kidnapper,” he shouted, “but nothing less than the mad bomber himself!”

  In a trial
marked by repeated disturbances, the mayhem that followed this assertion was surely the worst. “Christ, not again,” muttered one of the bailiffs. With his billy club he pushed back a phalanx of journalists trying to rush the defendant. Unwin ducked and the prosecutor swung. Eggs and tomatoes whizzed by in every direction. Even Françoise and Mariana were wrestling with a uniformed policeman, while the lights flickered and the judge cried, “Order!” again and again. Winkie cowered at the back of the witness box, and as the noise crescendoed to a steady roar, he was about to start bellowing, “Heenh! Heenh! Heenh”—he could already hear the primal cries echoing in his head—but instead, much to his surprise, his back straightened and his mouth began speaking loudly and deliberately, as if to the wind and rain from high atop a promontory:

  “Not so long ago I came to life. Maybe my inmost soul knows how, but I don’t. I was watered by love, and eventually I sprouted. For years, children had looked into my eyes. For years I was hugged, carried, dragged around. Wishes were everywhere. My own took their place in that deep, sparkly ocean. And when one by one the children and their wishes had all ebbed away, yet my own remained: Then I came to life. Why, why, why? Am I my own? The miracle is bigger than me, I know, but the loneliness feels even bigger.”

  Unwin and the prosecutor, a wrestling ball, tumbled past the witness stand. The bailiffs beat at the screaming crowd. But the more Winkie spoke, the calmer he became.

  “My wish now is to be free again. I ask for it—I don’t even know why. There’s no point, you’ll just say no, but if only I could be let out into the world, my story might begin again, and there could be more wishing for me and also more to give. People have always loved me. Why? So many times and worst of all when I lost my child, my eyes wanted to click shut forever—yet somehow I still had love to give, and always have. Why, why, why? Despite it all. Why was I created, and why do I love? What is it about me that survives? Despite it all, despite it all: It’s my heart: I can’t help it.”

  As Winkie paused to think a moment, a stray reporter lunged toward him with gnarled hands ready to strangle, but Deputy Walter tackled him. They struggled on the floor. And in the wild, lolling hatred of his attacker’s eyes, Winkie suddenly understood the dream he’d had that morning, and he wanted to shout it to the world.

  “A rat coasts on water,” he said. “Small waves, the rat’s wake and the horizon gleaming. The hated thing even hates itself but skims along the small waves anyway. Rat turns to bird, but really it’s both, and always was and always will be. So.

  “The flat sea and luminous sky. Light folds in on itself, out again, glittery shards fall together, with small clicks, to make the next thing you see. Even for a hated thing, light unfolds again, breaks, little waves break and seem to speak, the circle of jeweled light folds and unfolds again, and eyes click shut on tears: Could a rat-bird go free?”

  Winkie sighed. “In the dream and in remembrance of the dream, inside and outside, a hated thing might be let go, might fly off, might weep, and then the wider world could unfold again in small clicks, beautiful shard-clicks, eye-clicks—a flower opening, and a bear dives in, listens, sniffs, and in sniffing, looking, and hearing, dives in—the rose in the coloring book, the rose of the world and of hope. A beloved thing. Eyes open click upon click, first dark, then light, like gliding through an archway into sunshine: This is, and always has been, the life I was given. Thank you.”

  Winkie opened his eyes again to behold the raging courtroom and was amazed to see one person as still and calm as himself. It was someone who had always scowled and smirked at him, but now she stood in the front row just staring, lost in thought, while others exchanged blows on either side of her.

  It was the prosecutor’s favorite assistant, Number Twelve, and she had heard every word that Winkie had said. For despite every fact and argument that her boss had so vehemently put forth against the bear, she had allowed herself to wonder, on occasion, if the hated defendant might not be so guilty after all (just as she sometimes wondered if the prosecutor really loved her and, over the past few weeks, if he was seeing someone else). Her special friend had tolerated no doubts about the case among his staff, whose loyalty was legendary, and she herself had agreed wholeheartedly, not only in the office but also many times in their hotel room, that a criminal as terrible as Winkie must be vanquished by whatever means necessary. But today, hearing the little bear speak for the first time, this sensitive young woman who had never challenged any authority was thrown first into terrible confusion and then, just as Winkie had fallen silent, into the sudden rapture of a new and surprising clarity: She no longer just doubted the bear’s guilt; rather, she was convinced of his innocence—and, more important, of the need for her to act, even if it meant losing everything.

  “Rat-bird,” she repeated, thinking of both the defendant and herself. “Despite it all.” She was strangely at peace, yet full of questions. “Why must I stand alone? Is every choice an act of grief? Is every life a story and every story one of survival? Doesn’t that prove there’s hope for anyone? And how might this be verified?” She scarcely noticed the brawl that continued full tilt all around her but saw now that Winkie himself was looking at her, with sad, questioning eyes. They held an uncanny pathos for her, those shiny brown glass orbs—something pure and unmediated—and she marveled that she hadn’t seen it until now. She remembered herself as a child, holding her dolly in the darkness and pondering the infinite. She seemed almost to be dreaming, and dreamily she asked herself, “What if you give a point of view to something that can’t have one?”

  3.

  When at last the yelling had died down and everyone had brushed the egg and tomato bits from their shoulders and taken their seats again, Number Twelve remained standing, her bun half-askew from an altercation that had passed near her. The judge looked at her with twinkly curiosity, wondering with some pleasure if something was up between her and the prosecutor. Number Eleven tried to pull her back down into her chair, but she shook him off.

  “Your Honor,” she said, her voice weak yet eerily penetrating, “it is my solemn duty to report the suppression of key evidence in this case—by the office of the prosecution.”

  Unwin and the press snapped to attention. Assistants One through Eleven gasped. The prosecutor gazed at Twelve for a long moment of amazement, as if she had just turned into, say, a giant salamander. Then he said to her, quietly but commandingly, in the manner that he always used with her in private: “Judy, sit down.”

  She began to cry but stood her ground.

  The judge had no time to enjoy the prosecutor’s shock, for his mind was busy trying to decide what was expected of him. Had some kind of warning, or instructions, not reached him this morning? Fax machines could be so unreliable; sometimes they ran out of paper and you didn’t notice … “This is a very serious charge for a young lady to be making,” he ventured.

  Judy wiped the tears from one cheek. “I know,” she said.

  “And it seems to have upset you,” the judge added.

  “Yes, she’s very, very, very upset,” put in the prosecutor. “In fact, she’s gone completely mad. We worried this might happen—the stress of the trial, you see.”

  The other assistants nodded as one, but Judy was steadfast. The judge fidgeted, wondering what tack to try next, while Unwin, as baffled as everyone else, refrained from speaking just yet. Assistant Number Three handed the prosecutor a slip of paper, from which he began to read:

  “Your Honor, given the unusual volume of evidence involved in this case, it wouldn’t be impossible that some materials, materials of no consequence, of course, of no consequence whatsoever, could have been lost or overlooked by this office, but certainly I welcome the opportunity to correct the error, if indeed there was one, and …” He flipped over the paper, found nothing, and began gesturing angrily at Number Three.

  “It wasn’t an error,” said Judy. “It was deliberate.”

  Shock and murmuring.

  Unwin moved for dismissa
l but was predictably overruled. A large truckload of additional evidence was turned over that very afternoon, and the defense was given until the next morning to sift through it all. Françoise and Mariana went over to Unwin’s office to help, where the boxes overflowed into the building’s lobby and out into the parking lot. It was past three in the morning before Mariana discovered the most important body of evidence, that is, seventeen boxes containing the entire contents of the hermit’s cabin—including dozens of notebooks and videotapes in which the madman boasted of sending mail bombs to dozens of his enemies across the country and, furthermore, admitted kidnapping the strange, mesmerizing creature called Baby Winkie.

  These materials exonerated the bear completely, of course, but the judge received instructions to let the trial continue. It did so for another three weeks, as Unwin played every videotape and read each notebook aloud for the jury’s benefit. Judy had been fired and was being investigated herself for obstruction of justice. The prosecutor maintained his firm belief in Winkie’s guilt, calling the new evidence nothing more than a blip, but op-ed pieces began to appear, here and there, in cautious support of the defendant. The Free Winkie Campaign, founded by two students of Edwin Unwin, took fire and spread to other college campuses. Their colorful signs and banners soon outnumbered those of the anti-Winkie forces gathered outside the courthouse. Still, as the trial neared its close, the outcome was far from clear.

  The prosecution’s closing argument was brief and effective:

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, your duty is clear, and your choice is simple. For what hangs in the balance here today is nothing less than the American Way of Life.” He looked up at the ceiling, apparently blinking back tears. Many in the press section were also visibly moved. They held up their tape recorders with one hand and dabbed at their eyes with the other. “Therefore,” the prosecutor continued at last, “I say to you now: If there is a chance—even the slightest chance—that this defendant is guilty of even one of these terrible crimes, then you must convict him. For in doing so, you will surely save lives. Thank you.”