There wasn’t much to tell about
Jack Bophy, except that he had led a short, horribly depressing life and at the
age of 38-and-a-half he had decided he would sit on his front porch and let
nature take its course. He had, of course, a wife, a boy of about 12 and a
small girl about four-ish. But he had grown weary of them, what with his wife
constantly chastising him for his continually diminishing physical appearance,
and his son being on the cusp of adolescence and at that point where everything
Jack said was a point to argue. He still liked his daughter, but he couldn’t,
in his constant drunken haze, even remember how old she was anymore. She did
look decidedly like old pictures of his wife as a child, so he had a reason to
dislike her as well.
It was 8:30 a.m.
Thursday. Jack had just settled down to await his eventual end in a white
plastic lawn chair on his porch, clutching a packet of unfiltered cigarettes
and a bottle of cheap whiskey to his thin, haggard frame. His appearance and
carriage suggested a man nearly 40 years his senior. Watery gray eyes peered
nervously out at the world from sockets set deep in his veiny skull, which
balanced on a chicken neck. His gray long-sleeved polo shirt almost perfectly
matched his slacks, giving the appearance of prison pajamas. Jack always wore
gray.
The bottle touched
Jack’s cracked lips and a thin stream of liquid vaguely resembling baby shampoo
in both color and flavor filled his mouth. He coughed and lit a cigarette,
exhaling blue smoke. Jack knew that his wife and children would not be back
from the Hamptons until Monday. They were visiting with his in-laws, who were
disgusting, mole-like people who at one point had been the most powerful couple
in the state. Now, they never left their cavernous mansion, and always
complained to Jack that their daughter “needed to express her intellectual
side” and that his job at the Marriott Hotel on Long Island didn’t provide the
necessary funds to allow for that. Like hell it didn’t. Marleen could read
Chaucer or Dickens or that twat Shakespeare until her eyes oozed out of her
head onto the floor, and it definitely wouldn’t make her any smarter. Or nicer
at that. And what did that have to do with him? If she didn’t like it, she
could get a job. Or leave. But Marleen wouldn’t do that. She was content enough
to spend her days moping around the house, whining at the kids and shouting
Jack down every evening over the T.V. dinners that she had “painstakingly
slaved away at preparing exactly according to the directions on the package.”
He had no idea what she did at night, but he could guess – the two hadn't slept
in the same bed for years, let alone made love.
Jack had until
Monday to die. He wasn’t brave; he feared death, and he feared any pain over
that of a finger prick, so he wasn’t about to outright commit suicide. It would
have to be natural causes, which was part of the reason why Jack had purchased
nearly five cases of the cheap whiskey that he was currently choking down. His
tolerance was not very high, and after about four swigs he was already starting
to feel the effects of the alcohol.
Sammy, the
mailman, came strolling by on his daily route. Jack and Sammy and Marleen and
the kids all lived in a very nice, white-bread community, filled with row upon
row of suburban box houses, all with the exact same cream-colored walls,
sloping roofs and red-painted shingles. Jack made just enough money to be able
to rent one of these boxes and live in a neighborhood full of
upper-lower-middle class working stiffs who got off cruising their pickup
trucks up and down the street every weekend.
Sammy walked up to
Jack’s house without even the slightest interest at seeing a scraggly old man
in prison pajamas drinking himself to death on the front porch. After knowing
Jack for the past 12 years, he was pretty used to this kind of behavior. Jack
enacted this same drama about once every two months, and had never actually
succeeded in doing much of anything besides passing out on his porch for a few
hours, then going back inside to watch Lifetime movies until 3 a.m.
“Mornin’ Jack.
How’s the old ball-and-chain treating ya?”
Jack swiveled his
bony skull around and gave Sammy a hazy look. “She was kidnapped by aliens last
night. Don’t know what I’ll do with myself now.”
“Looks to me like you’ve
got a pretty good idea of what you’ll be doing with yourself for a while.”
Sammy continued to walk down the street as Jack flipped his cigarette butt in
the mailman’s general direction.
Jack was just
about to doze off when he saw something else on the horizon moving down the
road, coming back towards the house. At first he thought it was Sammy again,
until he noticed that whatever it was most definitely had wheels. The wheeled
object was moving steadily towards Jack, pausing every five seconds or so for
some unknown reason before picking back up again at a slightly faster pace.
Jack made a move as if to get up out of his chair, then decided that it didn’t
make much of a difference anyway. If whatever it was coming down the road on
wheels posed any sort of immediate threat, it might just kill Jack eventually,
which would solve all of his problems. He sat perfectly still, cross-legged,
and awaited this new doom-on-wheels.
He
became rather perplexed when a black bear on a tricycle pulled up alongside his
house. Initially he felt some disappointment, as the black bear was small and
by no means looking like it was about to maul anyone. Still, bears are bears,
and this was unmistakably a bear, on a shiny red tricycle stopped in front of
Jack’s house. The bear scratched its head and snorted a few times, looking
nearly as perplexed as Jack felt. It then rose from the tricycle and lumbered
up onto Jack’s porch. Here it comes, thought Jack. He wondered if he
should say a little prayer or make a cross over his chest or something. He
wasn't religious, but had attended a Catholic school as a youth at the
insistence of his mother. She hadn't been a Catholic, either, but felt that the
school's strict environment might do some good for young Jack, who was teased
mercilessly by his peers for his small stature and by age 8 had resorted to
locking himself in his room for days on end and playing his father's old Bee
Gees records at top volume.
But
it was too late for even a mumbled "Hail Mary." The bear took a seat
in the other plastic chair next to Jack, and clumsily attempted to retrieve a
cigarette from the packet on the plastic table. Jack stared dumbfounded for a
moment or two before taking another swig of the nauseating whiskey. He
continued to watch the bear struggle, too confused to say anything. The bear
looked up from the packet, caught Jack’s eye and gave an exasperated growl.
“Little help,
bucko? Not all of us are blessed with opposable thumbs, you know.”
The bear tossed
the cigarettes to Jack, who immediately removed one and placed it between the
bear’s waiting claws. Despite his shock, Jack knew, as well as anyone else
should, that you don’t say no to a bear. Besides, Jack decided upon hearing
this bear’s voice that he liked him. The voice sort of reminded him of one of
his old roommates from college.
"How 'bout a
light?"
Jack dutifully
held out a lit match and the bear inhaled deeply, a wet snuffling sound that
was loud enough to rattle the front windows of Jack's suburban box. The animal
exhaled and grunted, and Jack suddenly remembered a book he had read a long
time ago that might help him in this situation. He opened his mouth to speak
but was cut off.
"Before you
say anything, I don't even like John fucking Irving," the bear said,
pre-empting the next thought that popped into Jack's mind. "That man does
not know bears. I read 'Hotel New Hampshire,' and I can tell you that no bear I
know would have had the patience for any of that 'performing tricks' bullshit.
A bear is his own master. I mean, unless it's a zoo bear. Those poor guys are
kind of stuck. But they're not doing any tricks for you, believe me. If their
cages were ever opened, boy howdy!" The bear attempted to whistle, but his
mouth wasn't designed for such an action and he ended up spraying Jack in the
face with warm saliva and the still-lit cigarette. "Of course, there's
circus bears, too. Now that's a whole other breed all together. I'm convinced
that circus bears long ago gave up their bear-ness when they all decided to get
all artistic and be performers. That's right. I bet you didn't know they have a
union. Performing bears. Hrrrmmph! I'm telling you, no bear–"
"Barry?"
Jack said. He was still stuck on that voice. It wasn't a growl, like you might
expect a bear's voice to sound like, but more of a lilting sigh, as if
everything the bear had to say was so obvious that it pained him to explain it.
"Beary?
Seriously? Are you a child?" the bear sighed, more curious than
exasperated this time. "Why am I not eating you right now?"
"No,
B-A-R-R-Y. Barry was my old roommate in college. You just remind me of him,
that's all," Jack said. "And if you'd like to eat me, please do.
You'd be doing me a favor, Mr. ... Mr. ...?"
"Bear,"
the bear sighed.
"Your name is
Bear?" Jack raised a stringy eyebrow in disbelief.
"No,"
Bear replied, impatience once again rising up in his breathy sigh. "But I
can't possibly expect you to pronounce my given name with those tiny human lips
and teeth of yours."
"Well, you
seem to be doing fine speaking my language with that big bear muzzle,"
Jack said, offended now that this bear was telling him what he could and
couldn't do with his lips and teeth.
"Oh-ho-ho!"
Bear attempted to jump to his feet, but managed to only knock the open, half-full
bottle of whiskey off the table. "So now it's YOUR language? You invented
English? Is your name William Shake-spar?"
"Speare,"
Jack corrected him.
"SPEAR!?
WHERE?!?" Bear again attempted to jump up, but this time his chair
collapsed in a pile of white, jagged shards, leaving him splay-legged on the
porch.
"No, William
Shakespeare."
"William had
best not be shaking his spear at me," Bear sighed, attempting to wag his
claw "no." Jack suppressed a giggle at the phallic implications of
this declaration.
"Um,
anyway," Jack said, after Bear seemed to calm down a bit. Bear had
discovered the puddle of whiskey now pooling by the broken glass bottle he had
knocked over, and was leaning over to lick at it every few seconds.
"Up!"
Bear sighed.
"Up?"
"You asked me
'Any way?' and I chose up. I want to go up."
"No, it was –
you know what, never mind." Jack wiped Bear drool from his eye. "I
was thinking that 'Bear' is such an unoriginal name for a bear, you know? And
since you remind me so much of Barry –"
"Again with
the child speak," Bear sighed. "If I was a mouse, would you call me
'Mousey?' Do you call your wife 'Wifey?' Do you have a jobby and go to worky
and come homey and play with your kiddy?"
Jack stared at
Bear, wondering if he should once again attempt to explain the different
spellings of these two similar-sounding words. He wracked his brain trying to
remember what that was called. Homonym? Palindrome? Pseudonym?
"Fine,
'Manny,' you may call me 'Beary' if it makes you happy. And I will call you
'Manny,' since we're all apparently 3." Bear licked at the whiskey puddle,
raised his head, snuffled and sneezed, spraying Jack in the face once again.
"My name is
Jack," Jack said.
"Very well,
Manny." Lick, sneeze. Jack shivered, now fairly soaked through with bear
fluids.
"Fine."
Jack stood up gingerly. Bear was now attempting to shove his long, pink tongue
into the mouth of the broken bottle. "Barry, are you going to eat me or
aren't you?"
"For
din-din?" Bear laughed at his joke, sounding like a toddler rapidly
blowing multiple raspberries. "No, Manny, I have no interest in eating
your kind. I've never had a human that agreed with my stomach."
"Fine."
Jack turned and opened his front door.
"Wuh .. where
are you going?" Bear actually sounded heartbroken. "Here I thought we
were having a nice conversation about zoos and any ways and William shaking his
spear, and you're just leaving me?"
"Barry, I
hate myself and I want to die," Jack said. "If you're not going to
kill me, I've just got to find someone or something that will."
"Oh, I never
said I wouldn't kill you," Bear sighed. "Just that I wouldn't eat you. If you'd like me to kill you, I can provide that service,
but it will cost you."
Jack waited for
Bear to name his terms.
"I want a
Malgamaloo."
"A
... Malga ... Magamahoo?" Jack scratched his head and sat back down on the
plastic chair.
"No,
a Malgamaloo," Bear sighed, even more exasperated than before. "Don't
you know anything, Manny? You're not much of a manny, that's for sure, if you
don't even know what a Malgamaloo is."
"Well?"
Now it was Jack's turn to be exasperated. "What is it?"
"Stupid
Manny." Bear shook his long muzzle back and forth. "Stupid, stupid
Manny. I can't tell you that. I have no idea what your Malgamaloo is. That's something that every bear has to find
for himself."
"I'm
not a bear, Barry."
"Well,
maybe you should think about becoming one."
"I'm
going inside, Barry." Jack stood again, checked his watch and found that
it was already noon. He felt his stomach rumble. He hadn't eaten before he
began his suicidal adventure on the porch, and his hunger hit him suddenly,
even with the scent of bear saliva and mucus practically gagging him.
"Would you care to join me for lunch?"
Bear
thought about this for a moment, his eyes fixing intently on Jack's even while
his tongue was suspended in midair, three inches from the mouth of the
shattered whiskey bottle.
"Come
to think of it, I'd love a banana."
Bear
struggled to his feet and shuffled after Jack, claws clacking on the wooden
porch.
