They said it couldn’t be done, not by one man alone, with no experience and no discernible skill set. Here they were, in my very home, my former friends and colleagues, attempting to talk me out of… well, we might as well call it what it was: my destiny.
Yes.
It was my destiny to capture a live bear.
We were halfway through the salad when I stood up and proclaimed my truth to everyone at my wife’s dinner party. Of course I’d intended to wait until at least the second course to make my grand announcement, but the combination of wine, excitement, and cocaine got the better of me.
“There’s just no way that it–” Phil Bradley started, struggling with my power. He was an average looking sort with dusty brown hair and a skin problem. He rubbed his shiny forehead. “I mean it doesn’t make sense.”
Mary, Phil’s insufferable wife, felt the need to chime in. Her small face even more scrunched up than usual Mary had the nerve to ask, “Why would someone even want to do this?” The woman had always been a problem. It bothered me greatly, but how do you tell your beloved coworker that his wife is a piece of shit?
“I don’t know, Mary,” I said to that puckered scowl in its rat’s nest of hair. “Why do people want to climb Mount Everest? What makes someone want to read a book, or create a hot new app? Because sometimes we are called.”
Janet, my wife, a pretty enough dame, asked me to sit down. I did so, begrudgingly, but slowly enough to make my point. I placed my hand on top of hers. She removed it.
Here there was a brief pause in the general conversation. Plates were scratched, food was chewed, sips were taken. I sensed an awkward tension in the air. I studied them, these so-called friends of mine, not a one of them with the guts to make eye contact with the man I had become.
Then, after a time, Ernie Simmons fixed his eyeglasses, cleared his throat, and said, “Well, why do you have to catch it first? I mean, couldn’t you just shoot it? You know, like… a hunter?”
My eight year-old daughter, Abigail, agreed with him. “Yeah,” she said. “Wouldn’t it like… be a lot easier if you just shot the bear in the face?”
Words cannot adequately express the disappointment I felt in that moment. I had always suspected the child was lazy. I didn’t think she was stupid, too.
“First of all,” I said into those vacant eyes between the pigtails, “you can’t just shoot a bear in the face. Their skulls are thick as shit. You’re actually supposed to aim for their weak spots, like their armpits or genitals. But I’m not going to do that either, honey. I’m not even going to buy a gun. And do you know why?” Abigail shook her dopey head. “Because that would defeat the purpose of everything Daddy is trying to accomplish here. You see, I don’t want to kill the bear; I want to tame it. Befriend it. I want to get to know all of its innermost bear thoughts and desires. I want to become one with the bear, for that is how we conquer our own terrible natures, sweetheart. That is the true test of manhood…” I was pounding my fist into the table with every syllable by now.
Abigail said, “Okay.” But there was no conviction in her voice. Hell, she wasn’t even looking at me. My only comfort in that moment was the knowledge that the girl was only my stepdaughter.
I retreated to the comfort of my sweet vino, silently eyeballing the traitors that sat around me. First of all, there were far too many of them. Janet always invited too many people when she threw one of these little shindigs, as though she were deathly afraid of dropouts or last minute cancellations. She was a deeply insecure person, and I took every opportunity to remind her of it.
Believing for some reason that I had spoken any of this out loud, I said, “Right, dear?” and turned toward my wife, or rather where she was supposed to be.
At some point Janet had gotten up and left. She’d always had such a tiny bladder. It was one of many things we argued about.
SPENDING TIME WITH THE “FAMILY”
After the traitors had eaten all of our food and stolen our wine they disappeared back into the night’s ether, never to be thought of again. Not a single one of them had pulled me aside to offer an apology, or perhaps even a quiet note of support. To hell with them, I thought, and poured myself what little wine the freeloaders had left us.
I put our ungrateful daughter to bed. When she asked me to tell her a story I said, “Why don’t you tell yourself a story, since you’re so good at bullshit?” I slammed the door and finished my drink. That’ll give her something to think about, I thought.
Now I had hoped the rest of my evening would serve as a gentle landing from the unpleasantness of dinner, but I was never so lucky.
The real dagger came later, when, just as I was on the verge of drifting into blissful unconsciousness in my warm bed, my wife whispered in the darkness, “I don’t think you should capture a live bear.”
My eyes snapped open. Et tu, Judas?
Here I was, pushing forty, about to divorce my third wife in two years. “What the hell do you know about bears?” I snapped. “You work in a zoo? You have a major in zoology I don’t know about?”
“I have enough sense not to piss off a bear for no reason.”
“Yeah, you might have a hearing problem, honey, because I laid out my reasons very clearly at the dinner table. Oh, wait. That’s right. You left early, didn’t you? Something to do with your bowels, was it?”
Janet said, with tears in her eyes, “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“That’s nonsense,” I said. “And I think our daughter is spending too much time around you. She’s becoming a very negative person.”
“At least take out some life insurance first,” she blubbered. “Try to leave us with something, will you?”
“I’ll do no such thing. Besides, I think you’re making too big a deal out of this. It’s just one grizzly.”
Janet sat up. “Wait a minute, what? You’re going after a grizzly bear?”
“Of course I’m going after a grizzly. What the hell do you think I’m in this for? If I’m out there hunting sharks I’m going for the great whites, baby, not fuckin’ around with some lemon shark. You know who gives a shit about a lemon shark? Nobody. Nobody gives a shit about a lemon shark. Try telling someone a story about a lemon shark. Go ahead, I dare you. Watch the light fade from their eyes in zero seconds. Watch them die inside. The hell is wrong with you anyway? You take your pills?” But the dame was in no mood for sweet talk. Frankly, she was being a total bummer so I decided to sleep on the couch.
In the morning I sulked my way into the kitchen for a plate of cold eggs. “Cute,” I said. Janet had served them scrambled; I only ate them over easy.
I decided not to let it bother me. Fine, Janet. If you’re going to be that way, then I guess I’ll just have to be a certain way as well…
Yes, I thought. Try that on for size, woman.
I sat down to breakfast and had my tea like an Englishman, and I even imagined I was one of those old timey British hunter guys with those big hats on safari… then that that kid of mine showed up.
“Hey, Dad,” she said. “Are you still going to kill that bear?”
“I told you, sweetie. I’m not going to kill anything. The bear is a symbol, and it’s going to come here and live with us.”
“Really?” Abigail said. “That would be so cool! Mom didn’t even want us to have a dog.”
“Your mother doesn’t want us to have lots of things,” I said. “Pride, namely. Hope as well. Now wish me luck.” I stood up, put on my bear-hunting cap, and started for the patio door.
“Good luck!” my daughter called after me. “I hope you catch him!”
That’s more like it, I thought. Perhaps the girl hadn’t been completely spoiled by her mother’s rotten milk.
So I went into the backyard, put some meat on the ground, and waited for a bear.
THE HUNT IS ON
Bear hunting is hard work, and I understand now why there are so many songs written about it. The sun was high and hot as it baked my naked shoulders. By noon I had entirely stripped down to nothing aside from my hunting cap and boxer shorts. The boxer shorts went ten minutes later. I just couldn’t take it, this maddening February heat. How long did it take for a live bear to wander into a person’s backyard anyway? The bait was rotting and the stench was in the wind. What honest bear could resist?
Unfortunately what answered my call that day was the worst kind of bear: a dishonest bear.
“Roar, roar,” it said, lumbering in through the gate on all fours. “I’m a bear.”
I finished the rest of my peyote and readied the butterfly net. For a quiet moment I simply observed the beast, this magnificent specimen of nature. Truly to be a bear is the highest achievement there is. I don’t know what the hell God was smoking when he invented tetanus, but surely the bear was created on that real dank Kush.
By now the great beast had made its way over to the pile of spoiled meat and picked it up in its hairy fist.
I watched the bear feed, in quiet awe…
But after a time I noticed something strange.
The bear was only pretending to eat the rotten fish heads. It would pull them up close enough to its mighty snout and then quickly recoil, as if disgusted by the stench… but then it began to chew anyway, chew on nothing, making little chewing noises, as if for my benefit.
And before long the jig was up.
“Why, you’re not a bear at all, are you?” I said. “You’re probably some other animal that’s dressed like a bear.”
“Harvey,” the bear said, removing its own head to reveal a smaller, more human head beneath it. “It’s me, Ernie Simmons, your beloved coworker. Sorry about the deception, but Janet was worried you were going to get yourself killed. Do you really not have life insurance?”
“No,” Janet answered him, who I guess had been standing there the whole time. By now the peyote was starting to kick in.
“Honey, shut up for a minute,” I said, watching the inner light of reality pour out from every angle. “I’m starting to come up.”
“There are no bears in our yard,” Janet said. “You’re going to freeze to death.”
“You’re not sleeping with Ernie, are you? For God’s sake, he wears glasses.”
“He’s concerned about you,” she said. “He says you’ve been shitting your pants at work.”
“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
“Abigail wants you to come inside.”
“This thing with you and Ernie,” I muttered, putting two and two together. “I don’t like it.”
Then by way of peyote I left my physical body behind and traveled the astral plane. I was tired of this nonsense and decided I could no longer take part in the human world.
I floated through all of time and space, until the concepts were merged together into a singular idea, until an infinite number of ideas were joined with them, life and death and life again, happiness and good and evil and the meaning of it all.
And I met God.
God was a bear.
He wore an elaborate crown of twigs and pinecones and other things born of the wood. I told him my sins. He told me all was forgiven.
When I awoke sometime the next day the divorce papers had been left in the grass beside my head. I signed them immediately.
Free at last, I thought to myself.
Free as a bear…