The Bear Comes Home

by Rafi Zabor

  "I timed it half an hour," growled Harwell, shaking a band of silver on his wrist above the crook of cane, "and then my watch died. Next time you want to kill us use a gun, all right?" He breathed out heavily, then slumped. "I'm gonna come up to Woodstock, kick your door down, insult your woman's cooking and break all your Coltrane records."

  Garrett dropped his spool of tape and it rolled across the concrete floor to the feet of the furred and guilty party and tipped over. What have I done? the Bear asked himself, looking at the fallen spool. Violence to everyone around me, the usual price of my obtaining any kind of pleasure at all. Does making an artistic statement sufficient to the fundamental questions my existence has proposed really require this much breakage? For others probably not. For me, always. I am a blot, a smirch, a . . .

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  "Maybe you could play the next set a cappella,^^ Hatwell suggested.

  The Bear was in too good a mood to sustain the hysterical note of inquisition, and Bostic had started laughing too: "Or buy us health insurance," Bostic said, and Garrett looked up from his bloody fingers to ask if he could have his adhesive tape back please.

  "Speaking of tape," said the Bear, leaning with what seemed a strange elongation of his body across the room to hand the spool to Garrett, "I wish someone had recorded that one."

  And along came Jones. "Actually Levine made a DAT off the board mix," he said, and peered into the beer tub as if he might find his reflection there.

  "Kill the bootlegging bastard," Hatwell said.

  "I'll settle for the tape," said the Bear.

  "Will do," Jones promised, holding up a bottle of Encantada.

  "Because I'd like to listen to it someday." The Bear leaned back into the sofa and allowed himself to lose track of any specificity of event. It was enough to know that things were cool between now and the time they'd have to go out there and summon up another set. Ballads, he decided. Nothing but ballads, and perhaps one businessman's bounce. He wondered what the "Pursuance" solo would sound like on tape, what trace the experience of playing it had left behind. Maybe nothing at all.

  People were coming back to shake his paw and say Nice set. He grinned at all of them and said whatever he said back. Tongue lolling out the side of his mouth again most likely but he couldn't be bothered to check. In this manner the Bear received some emissaries from the press, miscellaneous well-wishers, a few musicians—it was all pretty much a blur—and a shy tall blond gorgeous giggly patrician girl from Connecticut quickly appropriated by Linton Bostic. Garrett rose to welcome his tall elegant Ethiopean-looking friend Sistine: briefly, with an intimacy that would have been shocking had it not been informed by love—marriage was imminent, and the Bear invited— she folded her undulant form into the bassist's more angular sense of line. Momentarily, the Bear confused Garrett and Sistine with himself and Iris, until a dull interior thud reminded him of the facts upstate. Oh why wasn't she here?

  Then he remembered: Garrett had asked him to have a word with Bobby, who wouldn't Usten to any of his human friends about how his deathwish might be getting out of hand. "You know," he confided to the pianist, who appeared to be searching for a better pose with the cane, "if you could see the real object of your quest you'd know how unskillful your current means are. Bob."

  Hatwell just looked at him, and even the Bear was aware that his statement lacked sufficient context. Given those skies, those oceans upon oceans

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  of being, the ruHng blur of the current room was excusable, but still . . . "Next time it might be your hands," he added, nodding at the cane.

  "It might," Rahim allowed.

  "Don't do it. It's beneath you. It's antique. It's reflexive, atavistic. I can see you in your spiritual aspect. You're free of it on the essential plane."

  "Cats and dogs play the same game," Hatwell said, "but only rats can dance."

  "That's bullshit, Bob. C'mon, Rahim. The universe loves you. There's no end to you. Give up."

  "This is so touching I think I'll puke," Hatwell said.

  "Forgive me for intruding. I mean no condescension. You should see my problems."

  "I do."

  "Well then," said the Bear, feeling that the conversation wasn't working, "let's all get together and lose the whole fucking load."

  Jones came in holding up the tiny box of DAT cassette and jerked his head back toward the emissary from the music biz and peacock throne. The Bear looked at Badiyi and laughed at the smoothness of imposture. He knew he should slice the man into sandwich meat, but he was in too good a mood, and on too generous and elevated a plane to stoop that low just now. In short, he acted like a musician, which is to say a fool for beauty. No wonder they keep eating us for lunch. "Hi nice to meetcha," was what the Bear managed to say before letting Badiyi escape in good grace.

  He watched Jones off to one side, doing the ritual steps of the Old Get-tinpaid Waltz with Levine, who had returned from his nervous supervision of the house for a looksee behind the scrim. Jones looked at the Bear and made a steering-wheel gesture, so he guessed there wasn't enough money in the till. So what? The world had been overwhelmed, conclusively, by a far greater Accord.

  The Bear may have intended a second set of ballads, but when the band regained the stage to a ripple of applause that swelled into an unexpected wave midway through as the nonpaying house remembered what it had heard last set and perked up for more, the Bear called "Reincarnation of a Lovebird" and they played it for more than half an hour—the Bear took three different solos, Hatwell two, Garrett one long very lyrical one, and the house quieted down to hear it while Linton shaded his way through on brushes, the solos moving in and out of each other smooth as scenes in a dream; and the Bear thought through all of it. We are rich in this music, and this is the best ever, the everbest, best. The band exchanged looks, nonlooks, private grins, tacit nods. Even some of the people in the house knew it.

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  He was still grinning in the greenroom after the set when Jones came in with Sybil Bailey. The Bear thought they looked great together, the air between them bridged and harmonious with what after all might pass for love: in any case he could see a nice exchange of ions. The Bear smiled back at them. "Hello, young lovers," he said, "wherever you are."

  "You placing a third set?" asked Jones. "A short one? Miatever. We were thinking you could inite the band back to the apartment after, Sybil bought a few bottles of good champagne, there's some caiar that fell oft" the back of a truck, and then the three of us can have a late supper that needs to be warmed up in the oven and you can sleep through to tomorrow night. You must be bushed, huh." Jones put his arm around Sybil's shoulder and grinned as, only a sUght move but spontaneous, she snuggled closer into him.

  "xVctually," said the Bear, grinning wider too. "Actually ..."

  Ine Bear rubbed the top of his head with the flat of his paw again.

  "It's out," Jones told him. "You're clean. Stop it already."

  WTien they'd come out of the nightclub a seagull wheeUng on an updraft in the hghts above the bridge had crapped smack dab in the center of the Bear's head, and although he'd washed himself clean at Jones and Sybil's place the sensation of being fundamentally stained persisted. This feeling was for some reason associated in his mind with the short royalty' money from Badii and with not haing been paid for the gig and ending up with this car instead. "How's it go?" the Bear wondered.

  "Nice smooth ride."

  "You get enough road feel?"

  "Just." Jones gave the steering wheel an approing pat.

  The hght passed rapidly across them laddered with bars of treeshade, their eves slow to adjust to the rapid changes of illumination since neither of them had slept that night. Early-morning light coming from low in the east as they hauled north on the Thruway. A rough red rockface rose up on their right to grant them a respite of unbroken shade.

  "I reaUy appreciate this, Jones."

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  "Think nothing."

  "You doing okay?"

  "Only taking short naps behind the wheel. Sing me a song or something. Keep me awake."

  "I really need to see her."

  "Don't just recite the lyrics. Hum a few bars."

  The Bear turned on the radio and twiddled the dial until love began struggling toward electric triumph in D major.

  The Bear may have needed to see her, but his eyes were a little tired this morning. He should have taken a nap after late supper at Sybil's, but he'd found the energies of the night still working in him—had he really played all that music? Jones had sat up with him, swapping jokes and stories, and before they knew it first light was grey then blue then blazing sunup over the city slabs, and they hit the road. Had he really played all that music? That was the funny thing: he had no problem assimilating the experience of eternity but found it hard to beUeve he'd played that solo on the Coltrane tune—he'd Hs-ten to the DAT one day, see if it was any good. "Reincarnation of a Lovebird" hadn't been bad either. He'd never been able to frame a musical hope large or wide enough for that kind of play. Was it possible he was actually doing it? Maybe he was still blissed out, not seeing it clear. As for infinity, eternity, seas of unconditioned being: well, sure, of course. What else is there to see around here anyway? The glow was still with him, and he wanted to take it upstate while it was fi*esh and perhaps even communicable. Was he really feeling love without limit for everything that breathed and even for what didn't? Yes, it seemed he was.

  "You know, it would have been easier to take the van," said Jones.

  "Yeah but I wanted to show her my new car." The Bear knew even this much sounded fatuous, and he was ashamed to confess his still more fond and foolish ulterior motive, dared not confess that the name Accord seemed significant and hopeful, an omen, a portent—good Lord was he really thinking this?—a kind of automotive prayer. Accord! he sang absurdly to himself, and over the distance to Iris. Harmonic Resolution! Major Cadence! It was such a long chord progression. Certainly he was acting like an idiot. But there was such hope in the world, in the word, in this merciful, look at it, light. Iris! Accord! Idiot! What is a Bear that Iris should be mindful of him?

  Yes, he decided, maybe a little bhssed out, a little stupid. It's a brand name, not an omen. But it seems so generous a morning, so promising a day.

  Still, how different the ride up fi-om the ride down. Coming down to the city with his mind fogged in, worried about playing and the possibility of arrest. Going back flush with the afterglow of vision, his heart expanded

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  another couple of octaves: room enough for Iris and any number of difficult daughters. Room enough for anything to go rolling through it in a great wheel. Like that sky he'd seen. That sky he'd been.

  ''May you be an old man^'' the Bear began to sing, ''May you he as tall as I am . . ."

  "VV^at's that?" Jones asked him.

  "Something I dreamed up."

  "It's prettv' cute," said Jones. "Not your usual thing."

  "Well actually ..." said the Bear, and told Jones about the dream in which he'd heard it.

  "Wliat a beautiful dream," said Jones, and the Bear looked across the seats to his fellow struggling creature.

  "Jones Jones Jones," he said.

  "Bear Bear Bear," Jones repUed.

  "Nice to see you again."

  "Likewise, baby."

  So they were cool. This life stuff remained comphcated, didn't it, however friendly the supervening skies.

  You know, he said to the moment's partial patch of blue, leaning into the windshield to get a better look up at it, the sun some degrees higher in the east brightening the expanse with colors that were no longer winter Hght but not quite yet the light of spring, you know, you ought to show yourself for real more often. Would it hurt the overarching order of things if you'd show your true nature to us dumb motherfuckers down here on a more regular basis? It would do a power of good here in Aludvdlle, cut the war and slaughter bullshit down and vitiate the power of delusion generally. Would it hurt to see the peasantry blundering around wondering who to love first? I know you've got the conclusive argument and all, but do give some thought to what I'm sapng, won't you. Because it hurts down here even in peacetime.

  "How'd you like the guys last night?" the Bear thought to ask.

  "They were cool, but you kind of left them bleeding."

  "Sometimes you got to show the young whippersnappers a thing or two. How'd you like the solo on the Coltrane tune?"

  "Pretty energetic. Maybe a httle over the top."

  "Over the top," the Bear laughed. "That's perfect. That's what it was, all right. Way way over the top. And the kids're gonna have to get used to it."

  In a few more miles the mountains put in their first appearance, and the light above increased.

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  When they were approaching Woodstock the Bear told Jones never mind the cutoff by the creek, drive straight through town.

  "FeeUng cocky?" Jones asked him.

  "Nah. It's early morning, not too many people out."

  They passed through the supermarket-and-gas-station gauntlet without significant incident, but when they took the curve through boutiqueville and the Village Green there were some early strollers out, newspaper underarm or takeout coffee in hand, and a few of them clocked the Bear through the windshield. Some did slight double takes and one or two waved hello.

  The Bear waved back: he hadn't been in town much, and he certainly hadn't been so brazen as to play a gig there, but one way or another folks knew he lived in the area—many knew in which particular house, Iris said, and with whom—but it seemed that Woodstock offered freaks of nature the same discreet lack of fuss they afforded rock stars and movie people, and on this particular morning those who saw him took his apparition literally in stride: the merest hesitation, that's all.

  There was the guy opening up the Turkish carpet shop, where Iris had bought a couple of kilims surprisingly cheap. There was the bookshop. There was Taco Juan's—Iris had brought some first-rate burritos home for dinner once or twice.

  It was an artificial little place and at the same time a nice town the Bear felt a momentary longing to be able to hang out in like everybody else.

  On the way out of town, some character with streaming white-guy dreadlocks finally got fazed by the Bear going by and ran his bicycle face-first into the bushes.

  "My first drive-by," said the Bear, pivoting in his seat to see if the guy was picking himself up okay. "Maybe I'll get a write-up in the Woodstock Times"

  After about a mile of straight-line two-lane they arrived—the Bear still had some trouble with this—in Bearsville.

  "You want to pull up over here on the left?" said the Bear, flinging a paw in the direction of the forecourt of the restaurant complex: the Bear Cafe, the Little Bear with the tip of his tongue still stuck out on the sign. The turnoff up the hill toward home was opposite on the right.

  "You want to collect yourself before you make your presentation?" Jones asked him as the Honda ground to a halt on the roadside gravel.

  The Bear peered forward through the windshield and nodded. "I see some activity in there. They're open."

  "Whoopie," Jones said.

  "They do a nice Saturday breakfast. Iris tells me."

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  "So?"

  "What I'd like you to do, Jones, is go in there and enjoy a big one, on me, and I'll take the car up to the house. I'd like to see her alone first. Stroll up later when you have breakfast inside you. I'd like some time with her, kids permitting and if you don't mind."

  "I could drive you up and drop you."

  "I'd like to show her the car myself," the Bear said, trying not to let the absurdity of his sentiments show. Accord.

  "You remember how to drive?"

  "I used to handle the Bearmobile."

  "An experience I have yet to forget." Jones sucked his teeth. "I could do with s
ome coffee. How good's the breakfast here?"

  "Had I your tongue and eggs I'd use them so that heaven's vault should crack."

  Jones made a face and popped his door open. "You need to get out and come around, or can you sHde across without destroing the gearshift?"

  "Shde."

  Jones unhooked his shoulder belt and watched the Bear shde across without destroying the gearshift. "Next," he said, "don't crack it up and die cause I'll owe Ledne money."

  "Bye, Jones. WTiy'd they make the clutch so small?"

  "Because they're thoughtless brutes. Because they're unable to foresee so simple a contingency as you. They deserve to have their hvers eaten. Shove back over and I'll drive."

  "I can hardly . . . there."

  The Bear lurched the car across the road and got it smoothly into second on the way uphill. He scraped some branches on the right, pulled away from them and looked into the rearview mirror to see Jones holding his ears onto his head with both hands. The Bear honked the horn twice and steered the car up the middle of the road. \Tiat a lovely morning, he thought as he gained the crest and open sky emerged. He tried to set a hope stage center in the arena of his heart and give it a song to sing. It managed a few lines in a too wavery tenor. I'll see her, she'll see me and she'll feel the change. She's so sensitive she'll pick it up right away. She'll know there's more room for us than there was before. I'll walk her outside—it's not too cold a morning, is it?—show her the Accord and we'll have our talk without the kids listening in. They'll love me eventually too. How could they not? The tenor in which he sang his hopes sounded increasingly equivocal, however, as he drew nearer the house.

  What if the kids are up but she's not yet? What if they're sitting down to

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  breakfast together? WTiat—this is not gonna happen—if she's in bed with some guy? How am I gonna play this?