The Bear Went Over the Mountain (28 page)

That’s the feeling of
Destiny and Desire
, thought one of the jurors to herself as she leaned forward to listen more closely. She’d read the book with much enjoyment and
that
, she said, is the sound of it. She looked at the person in the witness box and knew he was the author of the book she’d loved.

“Is that your answer, sir?” asked Magoon, pressing his advantage. “You’re the springtime? You’re the new buds?”

“I’m a bear,” admitted the crestfallen beast.

Yes, thought the juror, he’s the voice of Maine—the
bears, the moose, the birds, the flowers, the trees, and the forest in spring.

“You say you’re a bear?” asked Magoon snidely.

“He
is
a bear!” Arthur Bramhall came to his feet, everything clear to him now. “He’s the bear who stole my book!”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

“We have, your honor.”

The jury decision was that the bear was the author of
Destiny and Desire
. All rights in the property, past and present, remained his. They didn’t know he was a bear, in spite of his having told them. This was because they were human beings.

At the announcement of the decision, Arthur Bramhall emitted a sound that was guttural and harsh. The members of the jury took this as further confirmation of the correctness of their judgment. A man capable of such a noise could never have written
Destiny and Desire
. They watched him shuffle slowly to the courtroom door, his body swaying from side to side in his badly fitting J. C. Penney suit, which had ripped up the back seam. He gave the door a shove; it flew open and struck the wall with a bang, and he shuffled through, the courtroom deputy watching him suspiciously. The fur-bearing woman, who’d been sending him positive vibrations throughout the trial, now tried to encircle him with clear white light, but he pushed past her with a
groan. He went down the stairs and through the lobby to the parking lot, where Vinal Pinette’s dog started barking at him, the dog throwing itself against the window of the truck in which it was confined; that sucker is a bear, thought the dog, or I’m not man’s best friend.

Arthur Bramhall sat by the edge of a stream. Events from the courtroom were behind him now; he’d been able to sustain an interest in them only while his rage was fresh. But rage had died the moment he set foot back in the forest, and as the days went by, his peace of mind returned. The voice of the forest had his full attention once again. With the passing of weeks, his sense of smell became acute. A network of information became available to him, and he pursued it rapturously, sniffing his way through a layer of experience that had been sealed off from mankind for eons. The fragrant carpets of moss spoke intimately to him, as did the flowers, the pine needles, and wild grasses. The forest was hung with aromatic veils, creating numerous subtle chambers, through which he walked like a sultan in an enchanted palace.

His energy increased. When he ran, he glided, his feet striking lightly, knowing the terrain already. He fed on fish, wild plants, and berries. He needed nothing from anyone.

This is all I ever want
, he thought as he sat by the water, looking at the forget-me-nots, the golden bells, the water hemlocks. Their
scent was in his nose along with the cool moisture from the stream, which spoke of the miles of country it had crossed. He dipped a hand into the water and smiled at the sparkling drops that collected on his knuckles. He broke into a joyous dance, throwing his powerful arms into the air and stamping his feet.

Vinal Pinette stood watching from an adjacent hilltop. He missed Bramhall’s company, but he knew happiness when he saw it, and what more could you want for a friend?

The old woodsman stepped back into the trees and started back through the forest toward home. His watery old eyes glistened as he walked. There was only the sound of his boots moving softly on the forest floor.

“Hal, I’m so very glad to finally have the chance to meet you,” said the vice president, on the south lawn of the White House.

The bear sniffed the vice president, going past the aftershave to the essential scent and trying to place where he’d smelled it last. I’ve met this dominant male before, he thought to himself.

Shaking the bear’s hand, the vice president said, “I owe you a great deal.”

“I bopped him on the head!” said the bear, suddenly remembering the hotel lobby where he’d settled a territorial claim.

“You certainly did bop him on the head,” said the vice president. “You’re a genuine American hero, Hal.”

“Ursus americanus,”
said the bear, nodding.

The vice president allowed himself a momentary frown of puzzlement, but the bear did not elaborate. He was sniffing the warm scent of the flowers that greeted them as they entered the president’s private garden. There’s some excellent honey around these parts, or I’m not Hal Jam.

“The president wants to meet you too. He’ll be along in a minute.”

“Who’s he?” asked the bear.

Again, the vice president frowned, and began to understand why, at the briefing for this meeting, he’d been told that Hal Jam was odd. “My wife read your book. She’d like you to sign it for her.”

“I can sign my name,” said the bear. “Hal Jam. I’m a person.”

The vice president, maintaining his puzzled frown, continued in step with his guest, in the informal stroll advised by his staff. Hal Jam was known for celebrating nature in his work, and the vice president’s staff had decided he could be counted as an environmentalist. The presidential garden, therefore, seemed the most appropriate setting in which to say thank you to him. It was felt that Jam was probably a moderate, though there’d been talk that he might be tilting toward the far right, indicated by his meeting with the Reverend Norbert Sinkler, and the president did not want to lose another influential intellectual. So, though Hal Jam was proving to be peculiar, the vice president was disposed to be patient, and to plumb the depths of his potentially helpful guest.

“I understand that you’re from Maine,” said the vice president. “We’ve fought hard to preserve the wilderness there.”

“I prefer hotels,” said the bear. “They wash your underwear.”

The vice president smiled, feeling it was best to smile, as a photo op would be coming up, and he didn’t want to be frowning at the man who’d saved him from being exploded all over the lobby of the Ritz Carlton. But he knew he was far from plumbing the depths of Hal Jam.

“Do you like room service?” asked the bear.

“It’s all right,” said the vice president, trying to stay light.

“There’s no room service in the woods,” said the bear, nodding sagely as he dispensed this valuable information.

“Here comes the president,” said the vice president with relief, as Secret Service agents appeared at the west corner of the Executive Mansion. “We’ll be meeting him, and then there’ll be a luncheon with a number of people from the arts. I’m sure you’ll be seeing folks you know.”

The bear sniffed the air, trying to pick up the cooking smells from the White House. “Have you got candidacy on the menu?”

“Glad you asked. Because we’d like your help.”

The president came toward them, hand outstretched, smiling. “Mr. Jam, I sure am proud to meet you.”

The bear noted that all the other males were showing deference to this one. Must have kicked a lot of ass, reflected the bear.

The president did all the talking as they walked. The bear didn’t understand anything that was said, which was fine. Sometimes when he tried to understand human beings he got into trouble.

They entered through the south side of the building, Secret Service agents moving ahead of them. The president said, “We’re going to have our luncheon in the Green Room today.”

“I bet it isn’t green,” said the bear knowledgeably.

Across the president’s brow passed the same puzzled frown which had ruffled the vice-presidential forehead. “Yes, it is. The walls are green silk, and the drapes match. Mrs. Kennedy did the redecorating herself.”

The bear didn’t know who Mrs. Kennedy was. But he was glad she knew enough to make the Green Room green.

“I hope you won’t be a stranger here at the White House, Hal,” said the president as he prepared to fork away to other matters. Lowering his voice, he said, “The far right is mobilized, Hal. The fight is tougher than ever. I hope your next book will treat us as fairly as the last one did.”

“No problem.”

“Thank you, Hal,” said the president, and gave an almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction to the vice president.

“I change my underwear every day,” said the bear,
just to keep things friendly, at which point he was quickly handed over to a staff member. He followed her to the Green Room, which was filling with guests from the world of arts and letters. Eunice Cotton was there, as her angel books were popular in Washington; angels were felt to be politically neutral and gave a gloss of piety without committing anyone on Capitol Hill to anything too muscularly Christian.

“Here you are!” cried Eunice, rushing toward the bear. “There’s someone I’m dying for you to meet. He’s a saint.”

Eunice conducted them toward a frail old man standing by himself in a corner of the Green Room. “He’s been in a Cuban jail for almost thirty years,” explained Eunice under her breath. “Castro just let him go. Senator Loveman was telling me all about it.”

The old man extended a shaking hand to the bear and smiled vaguely at Eunice. His English was perfect—he’d been educated at Eton and had spent much of his life at Oxford, where he’d produced his abstruse philosophical works—but his voice was thin and weak. Castro’s prison had broken him; deep creases marked his mouth and eyes, and the skin was stretched tight to his skull. “Delighted to meet you,” he said, but his focus was on a far-off place. Eunice sensed he was seeing the angelic plane which awaited him in the not-too-distant future. But in fact he was thinking of the companion with whom he’d shared
his last years in prison, a rat of whom he’d grown terribly fond. Ratty would have enjoyed this banquet, thought the old man to himself. Such a lot of food.

“It’s a thrill for me to bring you two together,” said Eunice. “My two living angels.”

The old man listened to Eunice politely, but Ratty was on his mind. The dear little chap would have had such fun nibbling at everything today. I’d have to caution him to go slow, wouldn’t I, or he’d overeat and bloat himself.

“I don’t know much about philosophy,” admitted Eunice, “though of course my heavenly angels do.”

“How charming,” said the old man with a senile smile. Apparently he’d been an important philosopher, everyone said so, but Ratty was the philosophical one. Now, there was a brilliant mind.

“At times when you were in jail,” said Eunice, “you must have thought the whole world had forgotten your existence.”

The old man listened, in a silvery fog. After his first years of imprisonment, his philosophy had failed him, and he’d escaped grim reality by writing a fantasy, furtively, on scraps of toilet paper. It became his central focus, a work not of political revolution, but of love, a romantic story he’d set in New England, a place he’d visited only once, before returning to the wretched island of his birth, where he’d fallen foul of Castro. Because his glimpse of New
England had been so brief, it shone brightly in the novel. Having been deprived of female company, he’d created a heroine of great beauty and sensitivity, who then inhabited the imaginative spaces of his soul, helping him to cope with his overwhelming solitude and deprivation. Even so, he finally succumbed to the rigors of prison life, to maltreatment, poor diet, fever, parasites. On the day he finished his novel, he’d begun his relationship with Ratty. Oh, thought the old man, if only Ratty were here today, how much pleasure it would give me.