The Bear Comes Home

by Rafi Zabor

  "Let's see 'em," and for the second time that evening, as if someone was trying to tell him something, a knife appeared before him. This one was a stiletto, the blade six inches long and chromed. This one didn't mean anything to him beyond the perfectly obvious, but he was staring at it anyway.

  "Hey, you got the ticket right there," he told the kids, and pointing his jaw at the knife he managed a little laugh. "Just let me get your wallet out. My wallet I mean."

  They snickered at him. "Yours, mine, what the fuck's the diff you schmuck, let's have it."

  Jones took the wallet out and held it in his hand.

  It would never be clear to Jones if the kid had stabbed him outright or if he himself had walked onto the blade, but he knew it when the knife went in above his navel for its full length. He felt a powerful sledgehammer impact that expanded spherically within him like a bruise in a nightmare, the sharpness of the blade concealed in the depths of its blur. Jones, his mouth gawped open in shock, registered some preparatory tension in the knifer's arm and begged, "Please don't rip me."

  The kid's arm tension clutched. Jones saw the hatchet face, knew for a certainty the kid had meant to cut a circle through his guts to kill him but that now he was thinking twice about it.

  "What the fuck," said the kid, shoved the knife in deeper, hard, then pushed again to urge Jones off the blade. Jones obediently fell back onto the

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  pavingstones on his ass, holding his middle, tipping sideways, his head coming down, finally hitting cool city pavement, there.

  After he heard their footsteps recede, Jones, thinking it either unwise or improbable to rise, began to crawl. If he didn't reach the perimeter of the park, where someone might find him, he knew with unpanicked clarity that he was going to die. Which in many respects didn't seem an entirely bad idea, but this night came at a moment in which a number of chords hung unresolved in unspecifiable keys and in the end it didn't seem like an ideal time in which to close up shop. His left hand clutched to his punctured gut and reaching forward with his right he advanced, on the second pull noticing a sharpened edge of damage at his core, no help for it, and kept his eyes fixed on the bits of glitter worked into the concrete across which he too slowly and painfully progressed. He noticed that his concentration on the visual texture of the pavement was heightened, his mindfulness unnaturally refined. Above him, he knew, the branches of the trees reaching up to the insufficient moon also felt a curve of mortal sympathy for him. Love of life, look at it working, look at it crawling for all it's worth despite pain and loss of love, he meant loss of blood, no, probably he meant love—^we're familiar with it, we don't have a conflict with it here. Thank you. No applause please. It's not a very crowded theater. A tide of blackness was rising and if it took his head it would knock him out and that would be the end.

  I don't think I'm gonna make it, thought Jones. Too far to go, and not enough me.

  But just then the pain ceased to affect him seriously and he began to experience an entirely unexpected kind of relief.

  The odd thing was how the bits of glitter impregnated in the floorstones mirrored the glints up there in the sky, stars they called them. These stars were getting closer. The really odd thing—that hurts!—^was how more clearly legible the signs were from here. The Walk, the Dont Walk, the Fifth, the Lion, the Archer, finally of course the Scales, in which he was getting Hghter and lighter all the time. The sympathetic arms of the trees moved him, and the friendly grid of the buildings composed an affectionate formal tribute to what had always been the elevated and compassionate disposition of his heart. From up here, where he did not even need to climb, in the ease of his ascent, the lit ladder of Manhattan between its rivers, the text was so clear to read it amazed him how he had missed the point of it walking the maze down there so many years. Then of course there were the constellations, among which he was quickly drawn into the orbit of the Twins—Jaycub and Heehaw, Lucky and Stricken, Castoff and Pollinator, Omelet and Baloneyus, but no, he said to that: no no no. He was tired of dyads and of dya . . . dyadl . . . say it again . . .

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  dadl . . . one more time . . . dyadaladaladality—there!—for the simple reason that he was looking for his fiiend. Thank you thank you but what I'm looking for is an Ursa, is an Ursa something, is an Eartha something, a Birtha someone, is an Eartha Kiss, no no no, sorry, my mistake, it's not any of that.

  "Sybil?" he gasped aloud, his breath to the pavement. "Bear?"

  And protesting the duahstic insufficiencies presented him amid the varied lights, he passed upward—mortal Hfe beneath him now a slip of the tongue, a wisp of the will, a mere declension of the celestial noon, no, nume, no, noun, so this was the stuff the Bear always usedta go on about—through the heaven of the fixed stars, where he found sketched out in lights before him the astrological signs he had always most admired: the Saxophone, the Beerbottle, the Shabby Apartment, the Eviction Notice, the Deposit, and yes the Return, and finally—Jones knew the way by the big geometric tracery of light the Bear had always told him was the mnemonic of his eternal self outside the cramps and keeps of time—it seemed to him in some strange way that he had found his friend.

  There you are! Hey dig it. Bear! We're together again, dead or alive on this side or that of the Great Divide! Can't tell you how much I missed you, man. Never mind all that silly shit I said down there. Hey baby we're home. It don't bother me a bit. We finally made it! Look where we are! This is the big time! Look at that beautiful swarm of light coming to gather us home! Look at the size, look at the inconceivable beauty of the thing! Look at the love that's coming to meet me. I'm bursting with it. I'm ready, I'm ripe. Oh look at that wonderful, look at that beautiful extended arm!

  Jones began to weep at the beauty of it and at the welcome it accorded him.

  He beheld, above the smoldering LSMFT of the lower worlds and the ROYGBIV of the visible spectrum, the floodlit archway of PRNDL signifying the available range of suprasensible illumination—as every initiate understood, the letters stood for Purple, Rurple, Nurple, Durple, Lurple, Flurple and Twurple—but why, amid so much that was radiantly unific, why be so damned enumerative, eh? Eh? Can you tell me that? He saw the light change to green, he wanted to put the petal to the medal and go go Go. The Bear-mobile rides again! So why was the Bear holding him back? Jones had always been the slow one, and he was flying fi*ee. So what was the problem now? This was the last straw and it was breaking the back of his pack of Camels. You want one? What do you mean you need a light? In the middle of this? Man, you've got to be kidding.

  No, Bear, I don't want to go down there to that nightclub. I don't care who the hick is playing.

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  What I want to do is flee, I mean fly, I mean look at how much sky we got to play in and I don't have to cramp back into that uncomfortable contorted identity no more. He who made the Bear made me! And, what's more amazing, He smiled His work to see! You're no better or bigger than I am, so don't bother me, what I am right now is home.The doorstep anyhow.

  As the stars threw down their spears, Jones saw himself sketched out in a tracery of lights against the dome of after midnight blue. He saw the face he'd had before he was born, and tears poured down it in relief.

  Jones was first surprised, then reassured to find himself where he had always been—if he had ever been away, it had been for the blinking of an eye—a soul in a green wood where others like him, for the moment unseen, meditated the resolved puzzle of their being in the dappled light, aided by the trickle of a stream that ran through the middle of the garden. Mottlings of shade provided cognitive assistance, just a hint of shading and divagation. Reclaimed by the garden. Which I have never left. So this is the obverse face of time's coin, and all eternity to spend it in. Yes. He said yes to it.

  The light entered him hke honey, and if he had had arms he would have raised them and said Aah.

  Look at the size of what's coming to gather me home and help me
make my last landfall on the shores of Hght.What a party. For me? No, let me say it, you're too, too kind.

  But what I really want, thank you very much, is to lay my head down on this comforting stone. And they say the son of man has no place to rest his head. WTiat an idea. What a thought. All is provided. Soup Burg.

  What I'd like is just a little bit, it feels so sweet, of sleep.

  Give me five minutes. Give me a break. I'll get right back to you. And hey there, stop that pulHng on my arm.

  Jones laid down his head and began to die.

  A young Japanese couple found him a few minutes after he had reached the floodht cobblestones underneath the arch. Tourists. He stood over the body while she went running for the phone. They both had cameras, thank you very much, but neither of them thought to take a picture.

  Of the body pulled fetal. Of the kidney-shaped puddle of blood almost black as it spread across the stone, tilted a piece of cellophane, bore up bits of dust and city soot.

  Of that gaunt and strained and expressive face lying on its side, biting at the air.

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  Ike Bear's gums had begun to bleed again. "Tim," he said. "Come on, man, you got to get me another fish. I can't Hve on hot dogs, powdered potatoes, chipped beef on toast, side of succotash and canned string beans so Hmp they couldn't fuck a bowl of oatmeal. Look at this." The Bear hooked a claw under his upper Up and lifted. "Look."

  "You're bleeding a Httle. What a drag." Tim, a heavyset guy in a rumpled blue uniform but a scrupulously trimmed beard, nodded his slow yes and peered between the bars at the Bear. Baggy face, friendly eyes, maybe forty years old but no grey yet, didn't really look like a jailer. Tired shoulders and a flop of gut. Talked in hipster argot Hke a musician or even Jones, but his words were tugged down by a sad sagging cadence, a weariness, a famiUarity with loss. Said he was Greek but looked and sounded American to the Bear. Badge and shoulderpatch said Department of Corrections, which the Bear found pretty funny under the circumstances. Correct me if I'm wrong. Oh we will, we will.

  "Tim, I'm gonna lose a tooth. You want an amulet for your wife, is that it? Shopping around for a totem?"

  "Not at that price, Bear."

  "So?"

  "Tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow what."

  "Tomorrow a fish."

  "If possible a whole fish, not a filet."

  "Sure thing, Pierre," said Tim in his slow big lazy voice.

  "Not because it's larger but because I have to eat it raw and the whole fish has a better chance of being fresh and free of parasites."

  "Hey, the world is full of parasites, man."

  "I am not," the Bear said wearily, "a man. Bring me a bag of apples in case I can't eat the fish. Apples are cheap. I'll pay you back someday if you let me out of here." He attempted a smile.

  "Like to letcha go but I can't," shrugged Tim. "Way of the world. How it

  is.

  "No, Tim, it's you and your lack of guts mostly."

  "People like me make the world go round."

  "I know it."

  "You probly think I don't know about all that cool, creative, souly-soul

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  sensitive shit, but you're wrong. It's just that I understand the working-stiff model of reaHty too. We all got our parts to play. No one out there to maintain the form you'll get all the pretty lights but before you know it the whole thing loses track of its orbit and what generally ensues is chaos and disaster."

  "All I do is play a horn, Tim. Toot toot toot. Dangerous shit. Suppress the dormouse. I agree with you entirely. I couldn't agree with you more than I already do. I agree with you in such a way that I couldn't agree with you any more entirely than I already entirely do. I hope I make myself clear."

  "Yeah, musicians make such good legislators. Your average working stiff is tied into the big picture a lot better than you imagine. Trust to the day-today. Render unto Caesar. Miracle will take care of itself. That's how I know you're gonna be okay, see? Miracle will take care of itself."

  The Bear regarded Tim's attempt at a beatific grin and lapsed heavily backward onto the iron cot. The already overstressed springs and bands screeked in protest, then sank another increment lower toward agony and collapse. The Bear closed his eyes. "Tim," he said. "When you're right you're right. What can I tell you. You're a luminous being."

  "Tell you a story," said Tim.

  "Goody," said the Bear.

  "When I started working for the city I was with Health before I came over to Corrections. What I did basically was they had me drive the wagon for the Brooklyn morgue. I was only doing pickups, man, no ambulance facilities in the truck, couple of stretcher racks, a supply of body bags and just the one assistant. So one day after I'd been on the job a couple years I got a call to pick up one deceased indigent female in a clapboard tenement district down near the waterfront, and when I got there all kinds of shit was going on, there was a crowd on hand, and the attending physician, this young inexperienced guy, came out all embarrassed. It seemed the woman'd been dead for about an hour, then come back to Hfe. I went in there past the doctor and there on the bed was this Httle old lady with young-looking skin and nice white hair and she was lying on her back talking nonstop about food, man, about different kinds of food in this faraway singsong voice: I'm gonna buy some cantaloupes and some watermelons, some cantaloupes and apples and plums, some cantaloupes and peaches and plums and some sweet sweet melons and some tunafish and some cool clear water . . . and What the fack is this? I asked the doctor. I could have you up on disciplinary charges I told him, calling me out here and you don't know the difference between a living woman and a dead one, and we fought about it some and he swore up and down she'd been solid dead for at least an hour and he asked if maybe I could break for lunch—he would buy, okay?—so we did, and when my assistant and

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  I finished our roast beef sandwiches and orange sodas we came back and the lady was dead, and we took her body away in the truck and put it on ice back at the morgue and we were done."

  The Bear looked up at Tim ft-om where he lay, expecting to hear more, but it seemed that Tim had finished. "Tim, I'll have to work at this," said the Bear. "Let me guess. This is your story about how miracle takes care of itself?"

  "Yeah," said Tim, as if that should have been a lot more obvious than the Bear was making out.

  "What an inspiring story," said the Bear. "I've been imderestimating you all this time. You're not just any run-of-the-mill luminous being. You light the world. You light up my life. In fact I'm burning up in here because your light is too much for my poor capacity for witness. Your knowledge is not my knowledge. Your ways are not my ways."

  "Aw, gimme a break."

  "The scales are in your hand. The eye with which you see God is the eye with which God sees you. It makes wonderful sense to me now." The Bear shut his eyes.

  "Bear?" he heard Tim's voice ask him. "You okay?"

  "I'm plum apple fucking candy peachy, what you think? Just bring me a fish tomorrow and spare me all the impotent concern." No doubt about it, the Bear was getting mean. Testy at the very least. Why, in the old days he would bend over backward—no easy trick for someone of his anatomy and nothing, to his knowledge, that any of his circus ancestors had been tormented into doing in the spotlight—to avoid bruising the delicate sensibilities of another, who knows, holy subjectivity; but captivity, although it had its compensations, like privacy and time to think, had coarsened him more than somewhat, in this regard. "Tim?"

  "Still here."

  "Sorry."

  "Noted."

  "Thanks. Tomorrow a fish and half a loaf?"

  "Do what you can with it."

  "Who could ask for anything more? Rhythm I always had."

  "Look, I gotta go," Tim told him with some wist clinging to his voice. "Sorry but I gotta go."

  "See you tomorrow. In fact I'm incredibly grateful for whatever measure of kindness you can mana
ge.You're an angel. I'm just very, very tired." Which was one way of putting it.

  "Okay. Bye."

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  "Arrrh," said Tim, and retreated down the corridor tearing obscurely at the front of his uniform jacket, chest high.

  "Hmph," the Bear snorted after him, "some hipster you turned out to be." The Bear was happy to have sent him packing in at least some degree of moral anguish.

  When Tim had gone, the Bear thoughtfully sucked salt pungent blood from his gums and swallowed it down, trying to assess its current mineral content. He pushed his heavy tongue against each of his major teeth in turn. Right incisor, he decided, was the loosest, but the root runs deep so I'm probly safe awhile. With a shudder, he remembered meeting this friend of Jones' who'd been jailed on a manic jag one time; he had destroyed most of his teeth chewing on the bars of his cell. Awful to think how I'd look without mine. I'd be a sad piece of work all toothless, a target for every specious form of pathetic regard, gumming down porridge, scratching absently at my unemployed testicular dependents. There he is, the one and only Bear. Don't worry folks, those mind-forged manacles are made of mind-forged carbon steel.

  He looked at the books stacked on the table in the next cell. He had not been reading much of the good doctor's one-volume complete Shakespeare. What he had gotten into instead was a good cheap prose translation of the Iliad, and he hadn't even read much of that.

  The Bear's cell sat at the end of a side corridor of some forsaken city lockup: a precinct house perhaps, or some outlying cousin of the Tombs or the Raymond Street Jail. The Bear didn't even know what borough he was in. The facilities seemed to belong to an earlier epoch, the fifties maybe, which argued Brooklyn? Queens? the Bronx? He couldn't tell, though it seemed too quiet out there to be Manhattan. Some backwater of brick and steel. The cell's iron bars were lacquered white but flaking here and there to show earlier yellowed coats and, beneath that, stray small pits of black. Inside his cell the Bear had off-white-painted breezeblock gone yellow, and old chain mounts still hooked inquiringly at him from the rear wall—hang yourself today, sir?—but the hinged flatbed and its chains had been removed and a narrow iron-frame camp cot shoved in, followed a day or two later by a flattened blue tick mattress that was mercifully free of lice. After trying it in a couple of other spots, he stuck the bed against the bars dividing his cell from the one next door. The sheets were mostly lost to sweat and claw by now, and the mattress ticking had begun to give way and the innards to unstuff themselves, but the two brown army blankets were still pretty much intact. They lay indiscriminately rumpled beneath him now.