You can't go home again... and maybe you don't really want to

That town's not a number, it's simply gone numb

They'll finish you off there before you've begun

 

It is Sunday morning. Well, it is here. It's whatever time it is where you are, and we hope that your day/night is going well. Seems like a good time to dive into the vault...

Today we travel back to 1987. Not literally, of course, but... if only we could. I have invoked Thomas Wolfe's title because it dovetails nicely with the message Verlaine is sending with the song A Town Called Walker.  It's the same message, just with a different flavor.

Some in our audience may be familiar with Tom Verlaine and his work. I suspect that many of you may not be. 1987 was a year that saw a veritable plethora of film and music releases. Not all of it was good, in fact much of it was dreadful, but at least there were a lot of choices available. Among these was Verlaine's Flashlight LP, a release that was sadly lost within that great volume of material. Released a decade after Verlaine's debut with the band Television (1977's Marquee Moon), Flashlight garnered little commercial success or critical acclaim. Others are free to argue the contrary, but it is often true that popularity and critical approval have no bearing at all on artistic merit.

As the front man for Television, Verlaine solidly established his bona fides within the burgeoning music scene of late '70s New York. There was a legacy forged there by The Velvet Underground, and later Lou Reed as a solo artist. The family of artists to carry that tradition forward, were among others, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Blondie and Television. They were considered the darlings of CBGB, the club that was the hub for the punk scene of the time.

Television distinguished themselves in this environment with their punk inspired energy, while demonstrating an artistry atypical of the genre. Lyrically they were literate and prosaic. They were a unique sort of art-punk; not the quirky, rhythm driven variety as Talking Heads, but something all it's own. Both of these qualities were driven by Tom Verlaine. With their 1977 debut, the band received much critical acclaim and the admiration of their peers. They followed with a disappointing sophomore release in 1978, then proceeded to disband. Verlaine's solo career that followed was sporadic; thus, he never became a household name. He nevertheless continued to hold a widely respected status from fellow guitarists. 

I once owned a copy of the album, on a cassette tape I picked up out of a bargain bin, only about a year after it's release. At the time I recognized the name, and almost wondered aloud, "what has Mr. Verlaine been doing since Marquee Moon?" At that moment in time, I had to honestly say that I had no idea. So, for the paltry sum of $3.99 or thereabouts, I decided there was no harm in checking it out. I ended up doing, as I've often done, playing it to death for a while. Then losing it into a pile of forgotten media. And dust.

There were three or four songs from Flashlight that I had particularly liked, A Town Called Walker being the foremost of those. I would recommend that you find the album, by whatever medium, and give it a listen. Other tracks to recommend are Annie's Telling Me and the almost bluesy, At 4:00 AM. The album bears Verlaine's distinct vocal and guitar signature in every note. If you are someone who appreciated Marquee Moon, I could not imagine not liking this album. If it is new to you, let us know what you think.

When I learned of Tom's passing a few years ago, I went back and revisited Flashlight for the first time in a number of years. As it had years ago, this particular song, A Town Called Walker, stood out from the others. Well, the long-term consequence of this is that the song now shows up in playlist rotation. You know, the friendly algorithm at work. And listening to it with greater attention, for reasons I do not understand, I gained what is perhaps a deeper understanding of the story related in the song.

The song opens:

Janey's going back to Walker, says folks
There are happy bees. I said you remember Walker
You lookin for some misery? It's not their
Tricks that I mind... it's just the way they say
"we" all the time.
That town's not a number, it's simply gone numb.
They'll finish you off there before you've begun.

I don't know who Janey is. Maybe a sister, maybe an ex. Maybe an old classmate. She says that she is going back to Walker and paints a happy face on it. "Folks there are happy bees". The party that replies has a familiarity with the place. "...you remember Walker. You lookin' for some misery?" It's like he is saying, "Happy bees!? Are we talking about the same place?" 

Now, if this was purely a case of friendly advice, the person might have said something like, "Gee, Janey. Are you sure going back to Walker is a good idea? Let's talk about it." Instead, this person cites a memory of misery. Maybe it's the kind of friendly advice that is more urgent. You know. More like, "What the fuck is wrong with you!"

"You can't go home again", as an idea, is thoroughly explored in Thomas Wolfe's work. It's a gentle admonition. It's a piece of advice offered to someone who maybe doesn't want to hear it but needs to. It's a polite way of telling someone that they are looking for something that just isn't there. From the book: "Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don't freeze up." We know what happens to George Webber at Libya Hill. Are Janey's circumstances with the town of Walker really so different? Her friend seems to think so.

People such as I, who grew up in a rural setting, may be asked where we are from. Typically, the response given will be to reference the nearest town, even if one did not actually live in the town. In these cases that town is usually a small town. A place, I suspect, that is rather like Walker. In the song, Janey's friend offers his short and somewhat biting critique of the town. It makes me want to say that I am from Walker, and in a sense, I suppose I am.

Small towns have their charm, but with that they also have their baggage. "It's not their tricks that I mind...it's just the way they say "we" all the time". The scolds. You know the type. "Well, here in Walker WE don't approve of that sort of thing!", or "WE won't put up with that!" There are the Karens who all seem to think that they are empowered to speak on behalf of everyone: WE. Sometimes it's just some grump. Sometimes it's the nosey bitch with a liberal arts degree from fifty years ago who still thinks she knows everything.

Folks there in Walker they've got their fun.
They'll count you out there before you've begun.
Expecting exciting and new lights to be shining
On anyone who can find someone else there to blame,
Folks there in Walker are falling in love with their
Shame. 

Walker is the kind of place where accomplishment is resented rather than rewarded. It's the kind of place pervaded by a "drink culture". Nobody there cares about your honor student, but did you hear? Lonnie just got his first DUI! These are people wallowing in so much shame that they can not help but project this onto others. Folks there in Walker are falling in love with their shame.

If home is a time and place captured in warm, fuzzy memories, then no. You can't go home again. That part of "home" no longer exists and can only be recreated in your own mind. There are, however, those parts of home that still exist. Especially if you are from Walker. They are there to remind you why you left in the first place.

 What is the cost of convenience? Not a price tag; though they are related, price and cost are not the same thing. What is the cost of convenience? Most have no idea of the answer, nor even of the question.

Here at Midnight and other beasts, we have been visiting a recurring theme of "How did the world get so ugly?" Today posts the third part of an allegory, The Bear, in which we continue our attempt to answer this question. The Bear is presented in four parts; the four seasons of a bear's life, if you will. The concluding installment, Autumn, will post in June. 

The Bear, part 3 Summer

Summer

 Spring had been brief this year. It came late, as Winter refused to release her grip. There was a slow thaw and then the rains came, not over weeks but in a great torrent. After flood waters had abated, there were only a few weeks of the balmy temperatures typical of the season. Then the heat came and it stayed for the duration.

It was a full five or six weeks ahead of schedule. Every Spring had the anomalous day or two of extraordinary temperatures. This was different. After the first full week, almost into the second, all of the life in the Great Forest seemed to respond as if some great switch had been simultaneously tripped. Vegetation grew rapidly, thick and lush. The cooling, deep green hue of Summer spread across the forest floor. In the open meadowlands flowers burst open in a sea of blossoms. The sun beat down for long hours every day, without even as much as a veil of cloud for a filter. Insect and bird life likewise sprang into their summer milieu, each day a growing symphony of buzzing, clicking, chirping. Everything responded in kind.

Bear knew what was happening, or at least he had seen this before. Nature has it's own universal Gnosis, to which every part of Nature is attuned. Within this there are patterns, the delicate dance of balance. The earth had lain beneath a thick blanket of heavy snows for months. The slow thaw was accelerated with monsoon rains. The earth was soaked, waterlogged. To restore balance, Nature brought the summer sun hard and early. Hot sun, clear skies, wet earth. This was Summer's cauldron.

These seasons were a delight for Bear. The berries and honey would come early, and he knew just where to look. He wandered his range for hours, day after day, mostly within the forest. There was all manner of game in abundance. When Nature gives abundance, it is no gift; abundance only allows that more may be taken. And take he did. Bear's appetite was sated enough that he might often retire to a grassy meadow, to nap in the warm afternoon sun. Summer seasons such as this one were not rare, but they were not the norm. Bear had lived through enough to know to take full advantage.

Fortunate circumstance was accompanied by a new element, the prelude of which had come in the early weeks of Spring.  Bear's second encounter with the hairless beasts below the falls had been alarming. On that particular day, the result had been the same as when the ice dam had broken above. The beasts had fled and he was left with some lovely fish. Bear had continued to visit that pool daily for some time, and there was no further sign of the mongrels. As Summer arrived ahead of schedule, Bear had the bounty of an entire realm to explore. He had not been visiting the pool as often as he might have otherwise.

After absence of about ten days, Bear began to saunter that way one morning. He had been deep into the ridges to the northern edge of his domain, approaching from the east bank well above the falls. The path was clear save for buzzing insects and the calls of birds. The hour was still early, but the climbing sun signaled the heat to come. This would be a good day for the water.  He reached a spot on this path where the steady roar of the falls became audible. There was the smell of the spray hovering in the air, and then something more. Again now, there was that sour smell of the two-legged, hairless creatures.

From the tall grasses ahead, there was a sudden rustling, followed by a shrill whistle. It was like no bird call that Bear had ever heard. Bear did not possess the reasoning capacity to connect these two occurrences, yet he sensed a warning, nonetheless. He knew that the mongrel beasts were again at his fishing hole. The apparent loss of one of their cubs had done nothing to deter them. A blood rage boiled up behind Bear's eyes as he charged to the top of the falls.

The humans had also found the value in this fishing hole. They had since learned of Bear as having a competing interest. Where Bear is a solitary hunter, the humans worked as a pack. They had learned to scout the pool in advance, and to post sentries above and below. Bear did not yet understand this, only the defensive instinct triggered by their incursion. The last of their little party were clear of the opposite bank below, as Bear arrived at the top of the falls. He roared ferociously from a slate precipice, the volume amplified by the large cavern below. To the humans the roar resounded such that it seemed that Bear was right on their heels. 

Bear waded out into the waters, bellowing a further warning to those sour smelling beasts scurrying into the tree line. The current was soft and even as he made his way across to the opposite shore. He had chased them off again, his fury was at least partially vented. Still, he stalked down the slope after crossing, determined to check the pool and dispatch any stragglers. He growled and huffed all the way down, still in a state of agitation. After thrashing his way across the remaining vegetation, he came to the pebble strewn shore of the pool, breathing quite heavily. Bear's entire body was charged to pounce upon something and render it limb from limb. But this was not to be.

Even as they could still be heard fleeing into the brush, Bear was stopped there at the shoreline. Their stink was heavy here. In the narrow sliver of sand at water's edge, there were fresh tracks. Long paws with thick toes. He now knew them by sight, by smell and by their tracks. The tracks showed that there were four of them this time. With each encounter there had been more of them. Bear should have been growing concerned for the sanctity of his fishing hole. Instead, his attentions were lured to a solitary stick in the sand, just a few feet away from the tracks. There were three rather plump bass impaled upon the stick, one of those still wriggling against it's fate. 

Bear had no understanding of what this meant. He understood only that these were fish that, for whatever reason, were not in the water. Fish that he liked to eat. And he did. For the rest of Summer, not every time but often, Bear would come to the falls and again find fish that were left for him in this fashion. Every time he would devour them. He would ignore the unpleasant taint left by the hairless mongrels; or the fact that there were ever more of their tracks throughout the land. Though Bear still preferred the taste of a live fish, direct from the water, over time he found that freshly dead was good enough.

The heat grew and grew as weeks passed and by late summer a drought had fallen upon the land. The river, in some places, had dwindled to a mere trickle across the rocks. The water level in the pool below the falls had even dropped noticeably. There was abundance still, but a change was in the air. Not just the change of the looming season, but something greater. Something that would alter the Great Forest forever more. The change would be savage. It would not be beautiful.

Spiney Norman has left the building

 

The Piranha Brothers were dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that...

Whilst the authorities of the regime marshalled their armored cars, drones and riot police, cries of "Starmer is a wanker!" filled the streets. And it was indeed true: Mr. Starmer IS a wanker. Somewhere around 100,000 marched through the streets of London. There were perhaps more. With all eyes trained to this spectacle, another more significant event occurred at the Luton Airport.

Long believed to be dead, none other than Spiney Norman was spotted in Muslim cleric's garb, slipping off for parts unknown. My guess is Argentina, but that is just a hunch. The disguise was probably unnecessary. If the BBC was still running Ethel the Frog, we would have answers, but the "beeb" has given up on this type of hard-hitting journalism. Some might say they have given up on journalism altogether. They would be correct, but that is another discussion.

In the chaos of Britain's last winter of discontent, Spiney Norman had finally vanquished his quarry, the much-feared Dinsdale Piranha. Taking a page from Sterling Morrison's book, Norman then went under deep cover during the Thatcher years, working a tugboat on the Thames. Not surprisingly, he was right under their noses for years until fading from memory. It has been suggested by some that the Met gave Norman a free pass for taking out the Piranha crime syndicate. This would seem a legitimate theory, though no proof of this has ever been presented. Only the late Harry "Snapper" Organs could tell for certain and, like the Piranha Brothers, he is also deceased.

With the passage of time, the dimming memory and the mass importation of Islamic "asylum seekers", it was then easy for Norman to cloak himself within these sequestered cells of British society. It was easy to hide in places that no one would dare to look. This was true under the leadership of Saint Anthony the Cottager, the feckless succession of PMs which followed, and never more so than under the regime of Comrade Starmer. But then something changed.

Once the spotlight was shone upon Randy Andy, Norman knew it would not be long. He had observed the ebb and flow of British sentiment for decades and it became painfully evident that the tide was again turning. When the British establishment demonstrates the willingness to throw a royal upon the sacrificial bonfire; when a Tommy Robinson garners more and more open support; when a young Scottish lass can wield a battleaxe with impunity on a public street, it is time to go.

Spiney Norman's departure signals a sea change in majority sentiment. Britain is no longer a safe place for giant hedgehogs with anger management issues. It follows that with a little more time, the same may be true for every Ahmed and Abdul to have been deposited on that fair Isle. The Piranha Brothers would have been quite helpful in this, but they are dead. There is no doubt whatever about that.

Gee, I'm glad I didn't hold my breath waiting...

 

Well, here we are. Another year, another indictment. And another Comey. In our previous reporting from last October (St. James the Pious, M&ob 12 Oct 2025), we revealed that there are at least three Comey gholas in existence. Three that we have positively identified. Now, if you want the back story on each of these, go back to the original article. I'm not going to spell out the whole thing here. For our purposes today, we shall refer to these as:

Comey 2.0 - Stretch MC

Comey 3.0 - Huff

Comey 4.0 - Beeftits

When last we left this drama, Beeftits was shuffled through an Alexandria, VA courtroom, answering a charge that no one ever sincerely believed would be prosecuted to any conclusion. And it wasn't. No, that whole thing came and went like a Cleveland Browns starting quarterback. For any out there who are actually surprised by this, I can only ask: "New to this planet, are ya?"

Our conclusion in St. James the Pious was that Beeftits would definitely be swapped out for one of the other Comeys. At the time I put my money on Huff, the Estonian. Now, though the prize remains the same, the game has changed. New charges. New Court. From a Grand Jury, no less. Yet there is one other difference greater than all these. St. James' guide and mentor, Agent Mueller, has passed to the next realm. But not before concluding some unfinished business...

Navigating through the spirit world, Agent Mueller manifest himself in Mindanao to appear before Stretch MC.

"Gonna have to bring you back to DC, Jimmy Boy! It's for the Bureau..."

And with a long, puppy-dog face Stretch pouted and acquiesced to what he perceived to be an order. He would fly back to Washington. He knew what had to be done.

Agent Mueller manifest one more time before finally shuffling off this mortal coil. He appeared before Beeftits to break the news.

"Gonna have to send you to Mindanao, Beeftits. You're going to be Stretch MC's twin sister, Shelly. You'll be taking over as the front for the act. We'll just say that Stretch had... an unfortunate accident."

Beeftits blanched, mortified to learn his fate. Her fate? Whatever...

"Oh... I can't go there. That's a socially retarded area! I... I'm not passable yet! Do you have any idea what they'll do to me?"

Mueller shrugged. "I terminated your source material. That's a risk I'm willing to take."

And with that he was no more. Agent Mueller had executed his final rearguard in defense of his beloved Bureau. And in the unlikely event of a conviction for anything, Stretch MC will be given as the sacrificial lamb. Beeftits will eventually dissolve into the most remote jungle, where he will be worshipped as a goddess by a tribe of cannibals.

So, what of Huff, then? Comey 3.0. I really thought he was the natural. Agent Mueller knew something we didn't. It turns out that working as a quality control inspector in an Estonian boat varnish factory, is roughly the equivalent of huffing two tubes of airplane model glue per day. Huff's brains are like warm cottage cheese. And I don't think there are any other Comeys. By now, I think they have decided that it was time to break that mold.

The world is arguably a safer place than it was two years ago. Emphasis on the "er". It's still kind of a shit show, overall, but at least we can rest easy on two counts. We can be assured that the tensions of the once volatile Baltic boat varnish trade will be stabilized, in no small measure, by the presence of Huff there at his post. And secondly, we can be assured that the illusion of anyone actually being held accountable for the crimes of St. James the Pious, will remain just that. An illusion.

The Bear, part 2 Spring

 

Spring

It was rain that awakened Bear on this day. He did not awaken at once, but slowly through the pre-dawn hours. Through long winter nights, except when the winds might howl, the world outside his lair was deathly still. Now, as winter stubbornly ground to it's end, more gentle sounds began to intrude upon this sanctum. It began with the faint patter of distant raindrops. Bear dozed on. Then the volume of rain began to increase, making a steady hissing sound as steam rose from the remaining mounds of snow outside the den. There were places in the lip of ground above the entrance that water began to pool, then drip in a steady rhythm upon the ground below. Tap. Tap. Each drop seemed to sound louder than the one before it. Finally, Bear began to stir. Now there was a steady trickle of water into his den. It was time for the world to arise.

 Bear had been up and about with greater frequency for a few weeks. The boughs of the cedars had shed their coats of white and the glaze of ice upon the limbs of larger trees had melted away. In the shadowy realm of the Great Forest the snows had sunk yet still covered most of the forest floor. Here and there, in the sparse pathways, snow gave way to mud and a peek of pale green. Bear had heard the great chorus of ducks and geese returning, their calls grew more frequent with each day. All of the smaller birds, the sparrows, finches and redbirds, had come back to life in full song. The deadening blanket of Winter had finally lifted, though the Spring, like Bear, was still sluggish and slow moving.

When Bear finally poked his massive head outside his front door that morning, there were no sounds but the steady hissing of the rain falling. All about the crusty shell of the remaining snows sizzled and steamed with each drop. A dense fog hung above the still semi-frozen ground, glowing dull white in the grey light of pre-dawn. Bear's previous experience of Spring told him that this was the rain that would break the river free of ice. So it was that on this day, Bear would travel in the rain to the river, not a mile distant, and scout it's banks for the first break in the ice.

For three days it rained, each day growing a bit warmer than the day before. For three days Bear repeated his trek to the river, roaming up and down it's banks. With each day more and more snow cover melted away, yielding to mud and the soft, spongy ground of water-logged, dead vegetation beneath. The vales and ridges of the Great Forest were shrouded in the rising mists each day, until the mid-morning hours when these fog banks would lift like the white of Winter being peeled away from the earth.

By afternoon of the third day Bear found himself way up the river, some four miles from his den. It was a spot below a rocky crag, where the river parted above into a set of twin falls. With a drop of no more than thirty or forty feet, the river fell into a deep pool beneath the falls, then turned away into a great, looping bend to the south. It was a place that Bear knew well, having taken many fish there in years past. Great dams of ice had amassed at the lip of the crag, but the waters had begun to trickle through beneath. The stalagmite form of the frozen falls had melted into the pool below, allowing the waters to fall free and splash loudly onto the remaining ice. The sound echoed from this little bowl carved out of the earth, a smacking and splashing noise at once.

Bear edged closer to the riverbank. He saw that there was a growing pool atop the ice below the falls. In the middle there was a hole through the ice, maybe six feet across. He saw that there were other fissures in the surface of the ice. There was now the soft gurgle of waters rushing underneath. He could sense that it would not be much longer before these waters would run clear. There would be clear waters, full of fish.

While sniffing around this spot, having fond memories of juicy trout, Bear was abruptly startled by a loud, sharp crack from above. He instinctively backed away, looking up toward the source of the sound. The scene was frozen for a moment, until waters began gushing in greater force from beneath the precarious ice dams. There was some great static charge in the air, making the hairs on Bear's neck stand up. Something was wrong.

Bear was just ready to flee, when at once there came another crack and a long groan from the ice dam. The groan grew louder as the great mass of ice nudged forward, freeing a torrent of water to spill below it. Captivated by the gushing falls, Bear warily remained there at some distance from the riverbank. The rate of water continued to increase, and a roar was beginning to build behind the ice. The great mass teetering on the ledge shuddered, groaning louder against the rock, until it all exploded over the side and plunged into the waiting pool below. The huge sheets of ice crushed right through the remaining surface ice of the hollow. It gave a thunderous crash as the ice broke further apart on impact, and a huge wave of water rushed out and over the riverbank. Bear reflexively backed away further, though he still watched the river.

As soon as the crash had ended, the noise was immediately replaced by the roar of water from the falls. When the last crashing wave had receded back to the river, Bear could see that it had deposited a plump trout upon the matted reeds not ten feet from where he stood. The trout lay there, still stunned for a moment, then began to flap and wriggle about. The moment that trout moved Bear's instincts were triggered. He lunged and landed right atop the doomed fish, snatching it into his mighty jaws and devouring it in two bites. The attack was ferocious. Savage. And it was beautiful.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rains finally ended. The roar of the river continued for another week at least, until it's waters settled into a normal depth and current. The remaining snows and ice were gone, save for those deeply shaded spots of the Great Forest. It was now two weeks after the great ice break on the river. Violets and bluebells began to sprout; the grasses grew green again; midges, flies, ants and bees, all manner of crawling or buzzing thing had come to life. The days had grown warm, dry and steadily longer.

Bear was eating well. He had taken a young doe, a yearling not yet a mother. The wet forest floor gave dead timber in abundance, almost always a buffet of the reliable springtime staple of grubs. And now that the river had returned to normal, there would be fish. When in season, there had always been an abundance of fish. Save for the occasional eagle or osprey, Bear had no competition on the river. Nothing on land could challenge him, so Bear had enjoyed a free reign along it's banks. Bear didn't know it yet, but this condition was about to change.

After the recent event at the falls, it seemed that Nature had ordained that the waters below would be Bear's preferred spot for the season. On a day near the midpoint of Spring, Bear wandered lazily in that direction, with the rising sun at his back. Away from the Great Forest, a band of heath stretched until the river. It was full of life now. The tall grasses were coming back; the flowering varieties of trees were in their full flush; ever more bees, and even dragonflies, filled the air amid the calls of blackbirds and larks. This was Spring as Bear had ever known it.

On this particular day Bear reached the eastern bank of the river just as the sun reached full above the treetops. He turned north to head for the falls, with happy visions of clear waters teeming with fish. There were indeed fish awaiting him there, but he was to find something else first. Bear reached a point along his path when he was just less than one hundred yards below the falls. A light, morning breeze from the west came across, carrying that sour-salty smell of the strange stag skins he'd encountered in late Winter. The hairs upon his great neck stood on end, fluffing up an impressive ruff around his head. He sniffed harder at the air and snorted. He did not like this smell!

Somewhere within Bear's very simple brain chemistry an alarm was set off. He grew filled with a panic that these smelly stag imposters were at his fishing hole. Bear did not, nor could he understand the reason for this sensation. He could only react as he knew how. The silent hand of Nature dictated that the pool was now Bear's to defend. A bear, a badger, even the simple mole, all these creatures hold an instinctive understanding of the roles that Nature has assigned to them. There are rules to be followed. Unwritten, unspoken, yet no less understood. Nature provides all yet gives nothing. Survival is rooted in how much Nature allows one to take. The day that the ice dam smashed into the pool and landed the trout at his feet, Bear became obliged to defend this pool of water.

He stalked forward silently, slowly. He looked ahead through the tops of grasses and reeds, keeping low to the ground in the approach. He began to hear the soft spray of the river spilling across the falls and splashing into the waters below. He was close now, still behind the vegetation along the riverbank. He stopped for a moment, sniffing the air and peering through the gently waving stalks. Occasionally there was the bright glitter of sunlight reflecting from the rippled surface. Not quite beneath the falls yet. Bear waited there, breathing heavily.

A sudden, sharp splash struck the water, followed by a loud cry. To Bear it almost sounded like the barking "yip" of a kit fox, but it was distorted by the echo created in the cavern below the falls. Then another loud splash. Suddenly Bear was angered. They were after his fish! In a near blind rage, he charged forward through the reeds and landed astride the rocky shoreline. With all four feet firmly planted he puffed out his ruff fully, making him appear to be half as large more than he was. With his mighty head and jaws framed within that bristling crown, Bear roared, fangs bared and extending his neck to wave his head back and forth. Bear had not yet seen what beast played in his grotto, but whatever it was it was now warned.

No more than ten yards upstream, in the shallows of the opposite bank, there were three of them. After fully expending his roar, Bear saw them for the first time. Strange creatures. The way they moved was strange. They, as Bear could also, stood upon their hind legs. But more, they walked upon their hind legs. Their forelegs appeared stunted, but they could carry broken limbs, stripped down to long sticks that they somehow grasped. Their hides were bare and dark, hairless but for the shocks of black fur atop their heads. Bear was downwind of them. He could smell fear. They remained frozen there, in the shallows, where the deep pool ended and the river carried on.

Bear decided to end this encounter with minimal effort. He would stand upon his hind legs. And he would walk upon his hind legs, as they did. The moment that he arose to his full height, before wading any further, the three mongrel creatures dropped their sticks, broke and ran for the slopes and cover of the timberline above the falls. All but one. The smallest of the three had stumbled over it's stick in a panic and plunged headlong into the deep water. Bear dropped to all fours again and plodded upstream, watching for this odd creature to reappear, either in the water or climbing out somewhere on the rocks. He came upon the place where the three had been gathered. There was still no sign of the third.

There, in the gravel of the shallows, lay two sticks. There were fish impaled upon the sticks, two upon one and three upon the other. They were already dead, but they were fresh. And plump. Bear sat down there and pressed his forepaws down upon the sticks. He ripped the fish from the sticks and devoured them. It was not savage. It was not beautiful. It was just food on a stick.

 

  

Just a short thought...

 

This may, or may not be an idea to build on...

All the greatest societies, in all the history of civilization, will share one thing in common at their end. They look back upon their day in the sun, for however long or short it may have been, and they say, "you know, we really should have spent more time barefoot"