Shatner on my ceiling

 

When the hour struck to return us to standard time Shatner scaled the wall and began to crawl across the ceiling, like some manic gecko stalking gnats in the choler of a tropic night. With a reptilian prowess he stealthily zig-zagged across the surface to the center of the room where a cord descended. It had until moments before dropped to a mirror ball, but the reflective panels had fallen away to reveal an industrial strength bug zapper in it’s place. I was simultaneously impressed that a man of such considerable bulk might so defy gravity and that at the tender age of ninety-one he should prove to be so agile. He remained for some time perched above this device, studiously watching for I can’t imagine what. It’s November for Christ’s sake! The bugs are all gone, save for the stinkbugs who have burrowed into every dark crevice to be found. They come haltingly whenever that low winter sun should grace our windows and nudge the mercury above fifty degrees. That was not so at this day and hour. An inner voice warned against engaging in any way with the man while he was in this state, for surely one would do so at their peril. Who knows what kind of psychosis would infect the foolhardy who might try?

I have long suffered manic episodes of my own, these usually afflicting me in the long, dark pre-dawn hours of the morning. These are the dead hours when most of the living are wrapped in their silent repose, chasing after pleasant dreams to dull each waking nightmare. We who depart our unquiet slumber for these nocturnal vigils are privileged to witness such bizarre occurrences, though often left to puzzle what we have seen. Or why. I consider myself fortunate among this number, for it is in these hours that I am often visited by the spirits of the departed. Most only sit in the darkness in a mute communion with the night, but there is one who truly haunts me.

“God is dead.”

“He is indeed, for we have killed him.”

This is our standard opening exchange. I can not summon him; he only appears as he will.

“Wie gehts, Fritz?”

“I am well. And yourself, Thomas?”

“Puzzled. I’ll assume that is why you are here?”

“Oh dear! Reading Sartre again?”

“No, not lately. I am puzzled by this!” I gestured at Shatner’s form, still looming above the bug zapper.

“Also, naturlich! It is a man crouched on the ceiling, Thomas. Your eyes are failing you! Do you know him?”

“Not personally, no, but I know who he is. I just don’t understand why he is here.” I did not dare to add that I was also puzzled over why and how he had crawled upon the ceiling. Apparently whatever place Fritz inhabits, in whatever form that may take, it is perfectly normal for the geriatric crowd to climb about like lizards in the middle of the night.

“Have you been taking hallucinogens again? You’re getting rather old for that now, don’t you think?”

“No! Not… today. No, I am not hallucinating. You see it too!” I had to wonder for a moment. Could he share my hallucinations? And if he did, would he ever tell. I think not.

“Do you fear this man for some reason? Who is he?”

“He is Captain James Tiberius Kirk, commander of the Starfleet Ship Enterprise.”

“Kirk. Hmmm…. Kirk. Is that an Americanized version of Kirkegaard?”

“No, I don’t believe so...”

“And did I hear you correctly, did you say Tiberius? Ha! Pretentious much! What was his mother thinking!”

“Trust me Fritz, that is nothing compared to some of the names they dream up now.”

“Indeed. I lose track, friend….when is now?”

“2021 AD.”

“Thomas, have you considered asking him what he wants?”

“I had not made it quite that far, to be honest. I was resolved to do all in my power to simply ignore him. I would, however, like to know why he has suspended a bug zapper from my ceiling.”

“Ja, that is a curious apparatus. Bug zapper? How does it work?”

“It….I can’t believe I’m doing this, it has a charge in the cylinder. And a light. The light attracts the bugs and when they fly too close...ZAP!”

“Ingenious! Does it work on people too?”

“Sometimes…. Look, Fritz! I know you don’t just drop in for casual conversation. I don’t have any brandy, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Ach, nein nein! Smoke your pipe, Thomas. I will speak with him.”

In the blink of an eye Fritz appeared seated next to Shatner, sitting cross legged upside down. The tails of his heavy, woolen waistcoat of 19th century vintage hung down behind him, lending the unsettling illusion that he was a fly with wings at rest tucked behind him. I could not make out their discussion, only the muffled, distant buzzing of their low voices. They appeared to be holding an intelligent exchange with even temper and few gestures. Given Shatner’s flair for the dramatic flourish the entire discussion was surprisingly absent of much animation at all. This went on for several minutes and then, as suddenly as he had appeared above, Fritz was back at my side and Shatner had vanished. The bug zapper remained.

“Well? What did he say?”

“About what?”

“The bug zapper!”

“Oh, ja ja...the zapper. Thomas, the zapper is of no consequence. You are seeing the zapper because you are remembering a specific time in your life. This life, that you are in now...”

“I’m sorry Fritz, I’m not following this...”

“Ja, the Captain said you would not. Hör mal, bitte! The first time you ever saw one of these devices you were a boy. It was summer. Can you remember that year Thomas?”

“Vaguely.”

“Thomas, you were of the last generation of boys to enjoy play themed upon the American west. Cowboy hats and gun belts, with shiny cap guns. Your mythology was gunslingers and heroes riding to the rescue on horseback. Mock rifles and toy soldiers. The Rifleman and The Lone Ranger on your television. You do remember these things?”

“Yes. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Lieber Gott, you are an impatient man Thomas! I am arriving at the point, just hear me out. Now, your Captain Kirk arrives on your television. There is the space program, the moon landing… it was what you Americans call a “sea change”, I believe? The world changed Thomas and little boys were no longer interested in dusty old cowboys. It was the beginning of a turning, verstehen?”

“Yes… I understand what you mean. Go on.”

“Ausgezeichnet! Captain Kirk has come to let you know that he has crossed his final frontier. This turning has passed, my friend. You have entered the fourth turning and Captain Kirk is leaving now.”

“Yes Fritz, but what does it mean?

“It is like your Dylan. It means everything and it means nothing. At once. When you are dead like me you will understand.

“I see. And how long will that be?”

There was no further reply. Fritz was gone, until the next time he should decide to drop in. I will have to make it a point to stock more brandy. If not soon, then at least some time before I die.

The Bear, part 4 Autumn

 

Autumn

Never had Bear ever seen so much red clover. It was a sea of the stuff, waving gently in a growing breeze like green and purple waves. This sun-kissed meadow was new ground, a place just beyond the boundaries of his known domain. It was a plateau resting upon the shoulder of a ridge, jutting out from the spine of the main range. Like a bridge to nowhere, it terminated at a promontory of rock that stared into the dark chasm beyond. Across that space the forest resumed and spread away to fill the horizon. This was as far north as Bear had ever been, two solid days above the falls.

Very subtly, just beneath the whispering winds, a hum filled the meadow. It was something as much felt as heard; the feathery rush of tens of thousands of wings beating in unison. The bees floated like a gossamer veil above the waving stalks of clover, their wings glistening copper when captured in sunlight. Bear was much traveled about the Great Forest and it's endless spill of ridges. Within his lifespan he had ever widened his range and still, there were ever more spiny ridges to crawl to the distant horizon. Each new ground he stalked yielded it's own treasures. Where there could be this much clover and this many bees, there were surely many hives to mine. The nights had already grown cool. A great hoard of honey could not have come at a better time.

The Summer had been abundant, in ways never before imagined. The season had come early and lingered late. The days were long and hot, sometimes weeks passing with unabated sun and nary a drop of rain. Rain or no, every seed, every vine, every leafy thing under the sun is imbued with the Gnosis: grow when it is time to grow. And grow it did, thick and lush in forest and meadow alike. Bear had seen some bountiful seasons in his many years, but not like this. This season, for all of it's splendor, did what every season does. It passed.

By the third week after Summer Solstice the land had grown parched. Where weeks before there had been thick, green tangle underfoot, there became crispy, yellowed grasses, fast   turning brown. The berry thickets were full, but where they should have been dense with plump fruit, there were instead stunted berries, often dried and shriveled before even having the chance to ripen.  The water level in the pool below the falls slowly dropped, exposing parts of the cavern long unseen. By the very late Summer the waters spilling over the falls had become a mere trickle, the gravel beds beyond were exposed shore to shore, their rocks bleached dry from the sun.

The tribute rendered to Bear by the hairless creatures had continued. While the waters had remained fruitful, Bear had frequently enjoyed taking his share, but the sour smelling brutes had appeared more and more often. Each time they left their offering for Bear and each time he had taken it. This had, in a very short time, become the expectation. When the waters had slowed enough, there were no more fish for Bear to take and no more left skewered upon the riverbank. There were no more of those peculiar, long-toed tracks in the mud at water's edge. A couple of weeks before the Autumnal equinox, Bear abandoned the pool altogether, visiting it for the final time that year. 

There were clear signs that the land had begun to suffer the ill effect of the prolonged drought. Despite this, Nature continued to offer a bounty of nuts and small game. And honey, of course, had come into season. The late Summer and Autumn in Bear's life had always been a season of frenetic feeding, that last massive intake to put on before the inevitable retreat into his den. Absent the normal staples of fish and berries, Bear had continued to press his range further north, moving ever more up the river. Which had brought him here, to this remote meadow.

The Sun was brilliant, the skies a cloudless blue, the air dry and crisp. Clear, cold nights had already delivered their kiss of death to the highest leaves, showing their first tinge of color. Bear sniffed at the air from the edge of the meadow. Somewhere in this ring of woods, there was honey. The smell was strong. And there was something else on the air, a familiar scent yet one he'd not encountered in some time. A female. It had probably been four years since he had planted his seed. This place had become a true honey trap in an instant.

Bear followed his nose into the wood, slowly circling around the meadow. Along the way he looked for the hollowed trees or rotting logs upon the forest floor, always sniffing.  At about one-hundred yards in he was nearly one third of the way around the great circle. Within the wood the air had grown close. Nothing stirred on the ground, and it seemed that even the air had paused; the limbs high above were still, the leaves flat. Still, Bear could tell that he was headed the right way. The scent of honey was still strong, seeming to come from many directions at once.  Overpowering that sweet bouquet was that witches brew of female pheromones. She was closer now. 

Bear was driven on now purely by his most base instinct, that which dwells within every mortal being. There is the need to feed and a need to breed. In most circumstances the need for sustenance is overriding, while the urge to breed is secondary. When the opportunity for procreation is presented, this becomes acute and other appetites may be forgotten. Such has Nature ordained.

He plodded onward through the brush, no longer making any attempt at stealth. There was no need for that. He wanted her to know that he was there, that he was coming for her. Bear's glands grew inflamed, sending out his own potent stew of pheromones. He had traveled almost as far again into this circle when the moment struck. He could see her and she him. They were no more than twenty yards apart. The exchange of pheromones between them filled the space with a static, like a charged field before a bolt of lightning.

He stalked deliberately toward her with a low, rumbling growl. She backed away coyly at first. He rose up on his hind legs to display his dominance, towering over her with his engorged member throbbing. She cowered in submission, turned to offer herself to him. There was no persuasion required. It became immediately understood that this was going to happen. In a crash Bear was upon her, mounting her with ease, though not gently. She offered no resistance, grinding her haunches against him, matching his hunger with each thrust. It was fast and furious. And then it was over. To the casual observer it might be seen as a savage attack. It was savage. It was savage and it was beautiful.

It was not long after the consummation of this pairing, that Bear was to discover what she had been doing at this particular spot. A short distance away, deeper into the brush, there lay a rotting log amid the ferns and vines. There were bees buzzing in and out of it. She had uncovered a hive. Maybe the hive. Without even a further thought of her he lumbered toward the log. She trailed after him eagerly, still entranced by his scent. She was young and fertile, still hungering for more of his seed. 

Bear arrived at the log, could see her claw marks where she had ripped at it's rotting shell. He immediately dug in deeper until extracting a large segment of the honeycomb. It was quite a cache. She came to nuzzle at his side and thrust her snout into the expanded cavity. Bear was not generally disposed to sharing his meals, but he tolerated her intrusion. She had sated his lust yet still stirred the desire in his loins. Bears are not generally disposed to monogamy either. In fact, most bears do not breed every year. Still, there remained that irresistible attraction between these two. They remained there at the log for some time, gorging themselves on all the honey they could scrape out of it.

The two met as random strangers left this scene as mates. Not forever, but for a time. Such as Nature ordains. She led him away to a steep path down the far side of the promontory rock. The exposed cliff face stared down at them as they descended into the treetops below, into the shadows beneath the setting sun far beyond. They would travel on westward for some hours, moving off far from the river. It was all unfamiliar to Bear, but the young sow appeared confident of her way. Even after total darkness they forged on, until she brought him to a bed of mossy stones, where they would rest until dawn. 

She was taking him to her home ground, a very different world from the one Bear had ever known. Bears have a highly efficient communication system when it comes to really important matters, like "I'm ready to breed", or "Hey! Those are my berries, bitch!". Beyond this there is no nuance, no abstraction to a bear's speech. She had no way to express to Bear that she had grown up, and still lived, in a place shared with humans. Well, actually dominated by humans, those smelly, two-legged mongrels. She could not describe to him the splendor of the great silver lake that glistened in the light and never ran dry. Or the city that humans had built around it. A city so great that it encircled her forest. But none of that would have mattered to Bear anyway. She had a set of female glands screaming for him to breed her. He would have followed her into fire.

Neither of them understood Nature's grand purpose. These are not things for a bear to know. She was the strongest, fertile female of her population. It was a population of bear in perilous circumstance, facing extinction, or worse, imprisonment. If this colony of bear were to survive, they needed an infusion of new blood. Strong stock with a talent for adaptability. Bear was a boar that fit this need. He was aging and needed to spread his remaining seed. She was meant to bear that seed to the bear that would deliver all of Bearkind.

They traveled on, another day to the west, then coming upon a place where the forest thinned and the land fell gradually away into a broad plain. Bear was stunned at the sight. He had never seen a horizon so long. In the center of this vista there was the great shining lake, water as he had never seen, stretching away for miles. He began to salivate thinking of all those fish! They bedded down at the edge of the tree line as the sun sank into the lake, casting pink, violet and crimson shadows across sky and water alike. That night Bear dreamt of sunny skies and waters teeming with fish, the entire lake to himself and his sow.

An hour before dawn they were awakened by a cold, persistent rain. The air had grown cold enough for steam to form from their breath. Bear knew this rain. This was a November rain. They did not have much longer to prepare for Winter. In the grey, wet darkness of pre-dawn they scaled down the length of a long slope. In that early hour they passed unnoticed, arriving at a small stream at the bottom. The rain had increased, causing the stream to swell rapidly. Bear instinctively knew to look for a way across, up to the bare embankment of earth on the opposite side, but the sow had another plan. She padded along the narrow bank, heading further downstream.

Bear paused there at that spot, astride the growing current. He sniffed at the air and found that, even in the rain, it was fouled with the stench of those two-legged abominations. He glanced at the sow as she serenely picked her way. Then he glanced back up the long slope they had traveled. In the slowly rising light of day, through the screen of the rain, he saw the fading splendor of gold, crimson, orange melting away. It was all falling down to become shades of brown and grey with the soil. This was the final edge of the Great Forest, the very end of it all. Somehow, he knew that he was never going back. With a loud grunt, he turned and began to follow her downstream.

She led him to a place where there were more trees, but it was not the Great Forest. There were young redbuds and poplar here, smaller trees that could only survive on the margins. Their low limbs drooped heavy with the pelting rain, their golden and burnished leaves shedding in a pool below. She nosed her way under this canopy, turning back at one shoulder to grunt at him. He followed and found nestled within the strangest cave opening he had ever seen. It was perfectly round, the stream flowing into it. He could see light from somewhere at the other end and... somewhere there beyond, the sound of falls splashing down. He could not help but feel a little wary but followed all the same. Such a strange cave this was! The walls smooth and curved, a perfect round for it's entire length.

Bear followed the full length, then joined her at the exit. It was just enough space for the two of them to fit there together at the end. The water fell away from the mouth of the tunnel, only dropping about ten feet into a broader stream the rushed off into a thick stand of woods to the right. In that space ahead there were things Bear had never seen. They were perched above the fenced in yard at the rear of a heavy construction company. There were all manner of machines stored here; giant shovels and earthmovers; boring rigs; graders and steamrollers; pallets of pipe and stone. Bear had no idea what these things were or what this place was, but he could tell that it all bore the scent of that mongrel race. Before this he had considered them a minor nuisance. It had never, in the limited imagination that a bear can conjure, occurred to him that bears might live among them. Or that there had grown to be so many of them, only a few days travel from lands he had roamed for all of his years.

Despite the unease caused by this alien place, Bear could see that the sow knew her way and seemed unbothered by it all. She was taking him to something; some place that she knew. He continued to trust her lead. To the left of the tunnel end there was a small shoulder of earth that would lead down into the yard. It was a tight maneuver, complicated further by the slick, muddy surface. She went first, to show him the way. It was less than graceful, at first climbing about the ledge, then sliding through the mud to the bottom. He tried to mimic her steps, but being quite larger than she, the ledge gave way beneath his tread, and he rolled over sideways into the slope. He made one and a half turns through the mud and then quickly gathered his feet back under himself at the bottom.

Bear snorted loudly, blowing a plume of steam into the chill air. He shook himself all over in a giant shudder, throwing off the worst of the mud. Morning light grew from the east and mists rose from the earth as the steady rain hissed all around them. He looked about, for the first time at ground level with the rows of machinery. This appeared to him as a scene from some deep winter dream; some frozen nightmare of giant, misshapen monsters in a cave of ice. The sow seemed to somehow sense that he was disoriented, allowing him a moment to absorb the surroundings before gently prodding him on. There was still more to show.

She led him through the columns of machines, work trailers and materials, back deeper into the yard. All the way across, to the far fence where only materials were stored. She was aware that humans used all of these things. She was also aware that there were very long periods when humans would not even set foot back here. This sprawling construction yard was on the edges of the great city. It was uniquely situated, in a manner that provided one of the few secretive paths from the outer edges of the city, into the remaining woodland to survive within it's borders. That woodland was her home ground. Though much younger, she too knew that Winter approached. She meant to show him her lair.

The far fence of the yard was bordered by a thick stand of trees on the other side. In one darkened corner, sheltered by overhanging boughs, there sat a pile of large, pre-cast concrete forms. They were about a ten-foot diameter, the sort as might be used in building a storm culvert. They were stacked two high, so that most of the second level rose to a height above the fence. Bear looked at them, ten in total. He saw that same perfect round opening, like the tunnel they had passed through to arrive here. All stacked together as they were, they reminded him of the comb he had pulled out of that hive. He did not understand what he was seeing, wondering if perhaps this was another cave to pass through? He could only stand there in the rain, awaiting her next cue.

 Now expecting that he would still follow her lead, she deftly scaled one end of the stack and slipped into the opening of the first pipe on the second level. Once in she turned about to poke her head out, calling him to climb up. Again, Bear had a flash of the beehive. He did not understand why. There was no scent of honey. It alarmed something in him, but he was unable to process it. He climbed up into the pipes to join her anyway.

After Bear had joined her inside the concrete she nuzzled against him affectionately. She was proud of herself, having brought him all the way here, to her lair. Within moments of joining her, Bear could not be mistaken that this was her space. Well over and above the strong pheromones she was throwing off, this space was heavily marked with her scent. He nosed about, continually sniffing, finding other strange scents present. Overall, he found this to be a quite suitable lair, a great advantage in having two entrances. He went to the opposite end and saw out into the thick wood. Yes. This was a good den. Perhaps part of him could sense that his cubs would be birthed here. That is, if a boar ever thought of such things. It is generally agreed that they don't.

It was good to be in from the rain, good to have the shared body heat in this enclosed and dry space. Bear was convinced that he could certainly winter here. Just one season, then he would return to the Great Forest, with or without the sow. Of course, that could change. Spring was months away. By evening the rain ended, and the skies grew clear, the night turned cold and crisp.

The next morning everything outside was coated in a hoarfrost, the crystalline forms captured in a bright morning sun. The day would be warmer and dry, though still with a crisp in the air. A perfect day to forage. There were several such days to follow and forage they did. Bear learned the path into the wood from their pipe, expecting to find food like that to which he'd grown accustomed. While there was a bit of it, he found that there was hardly enough here to sustain them. He was to learn that her idea of foraging was quite different.

Working the perimeter of the limited woodland, she led him to the rear of grocers and restaurants. Sometimes private homes. He learned that there were all manner of vessels at these places. Some were huge metal boxes painted in bright colors, as foreign to him as the machines back at the construction yard. Some were smaller boxes in a dull brown; still others were only plastic cans on wheels. Sometimes in the early morning hours, sometimes at night, but every day there were new things loaded into these containers. There for the taking. A lot of it was inedible, but there was always something to pick out. The sow seemed to know which things were best, which places had the most and when to look.

He would share in the hunt, share in each take, learning her strange ways. These foods smelled good, they tasted good, but they were like nothing he had known before. He could not tell what they were or what they came from. But it was all there and there in abundance. It was not like the dead of Winter, wandering for hours for no more than a hare for the trouble. He could not help but be tempted by the ease of it. But there was something that kept bothering him, like the odd sensation experienced when he had that flash of the beehive. Some itch that he couldn't scratch, a persistent nagging without any known source.

He was munching on something sweet. Like honey but not honey. It was chewy yet soft...sticky, with some crinkly, red wrapping of some kind (which was not so tasty). He found it filling, not unpleasant to the palate, yet somehow unsatisfying. He chewed and chewed, spitting out the red wrapping when he could. Some of it he just swallowed. It didn't seem to matter. The sow was still rooting about inside of one of those big boxes. He just kept eating. Whatever it was.

Bear's memories drifted through his consciousness. The events of the past year proceeded, in order. The end of the bitter winter. The first encounter with the mongrels, chasing them off into the snows. And then springtime. More of them. Taking his fish. Then leaving him their tribute. A fresh fish, eaten right from the water was best. A freshly killed fish was ok. It was still good. Even if it had the mongrel taint about it. Then there were ever more of them. They seemed to have grown in around him. He found more of their tracks, more signs all around that their numbers were growing, yet he could not see that they had slowly surrounded his world. Now he found himself living in their midst, eating their...garbage.

He had found that itch, that thing that was troubling him. He finally saw that this little woodland, this mock world of his young mate, was just that. This was not a real forest. This was not a home for a bear. Everything that she had here, though it was more than adequate, was dependent on one thing: the mongrels. They were in control. Of everything. That is not a home for a bear. He had changed his mind. Freshly dead fish were no longer okay. Garbage was not okay. He wanted only fish, fish snared in his own fangs, straight from the icy cold water.

Bear wandered off. The sow did not even take notice. By the time she emerged from that bright green dumpster, he was already long gone. He was following his nose. To the lake, that great, shiny, silvery lake! He tread across gravel service lanes and grassy lots. He followed another fenceline at one point, wandering through a suburban neighborhood. Some of the mongrels were out, rushing to sweep up their young from the "mad bear". They jeered and shouted, pointing after him, but Bear paid them no mind. He was taking the shortest path to the lake. That was the only thing that mattered.

In his single-minded quest Bear was oblivious to the fact that he had indeed caused quite a stir. He plodded onward, blind to all else. The final obstacle before reaching the shores of the lake lay in front of him now. A busy, four-lane avenue that ran the length of the shoreline. Bear saw that there were many shiny boxes, like the garbage containers, but moving very rapidly across his path. They moved as fast as a hawk can fly, in both directions. He thought that he could try to dart across.

In the first lane that Bear stepped into there was enough room for the driver to stop. The brake lights and the sudden stop caused a chain reaction of screeching brakes and horns to erupt from behind. Bear narrowly escaped being struck in the second lane before landing at the grassy center strip. This caused enough commotion for traffic to slow to a stop in both directions. Bear had grown disoriented from the blaring car horns. He paced up and down the grassy strip, horrified to see the mongrels crawling out of those little boxes on both sides of the road. He glimpsed a path across between cars and bolted. At the other side he did not stop. He could smell the lake. He could see the water. If he could have just one more fish.

He was almost there when he felt the rounds enter his neck, like fire being shot through his flesh, breaking bone like a boulder. They hit at almost the same time, knocking the wind out of him and nearly taking him off his feet. He groaned in pain and roared against the booming report from the rifles. He never saw them. Bear stopped there, swaying slightly as he felt the blood pouring across his fur. It was only a few more yards to the water's edge. He struggled through those few last steps and collapsed at the shore, his muzzle resting on the water. He felt his heart slow, the blood leaving him. He was growing cold. Bear knew instinctively that he was dying. With his final breath it became clear to him where he had gone wrong. He never should have taken that trout.

It was a savage death. It was savage, but there was nothing beautiful about it. More than savage, it was sad. It was sad and it was ugly. This is how most things end. Triumphs are few and fleeting. A poet once said that "fond affections are never said, they're only sung in song". The same may be true for our lamentations.

  

 

 

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.

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.

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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.

 

  

The Bear, part 1 Winter

 Winter

Winter had taken on a tainted scent. It was the first thing Bear noticed after sloughing out of his lair that morning. Temperatures had been brutally cold for a period of weeks, though Bear could not know this. Bear did not know weeks or any other measure of time. Bear knew seasons as they were experienced, just as Bear "knew" anything. A bear's existence is entirely in the moment, blessed with the innate understanding that every event in life falls into one of two categories. There is the successful hunt, with the sating of appetite, or the unsuccessful hunt with it's resulting hunger.

Bear knew instinctively when to hunt, what to eat and what not to eat. Bear hunted without fear, knowing instinctively that he was at the top of the food chain. Bear existed in harmony with his environment, dedicated only to what he might do best: being a bear. When the sub-zero temperatures came, Bear knew instinctively to retire to his den and slow his breathing. Like a whale, drawing a deep breath but four times in an hour, his heart slowed and internal body temp dropped by a full ten degrees. It was only after the outside temperature had risen by forty degrees, and remained there for a full day, that Bear had slowly thawed and awakened.

On that morning, hunger beckoned him to depart the lair and wade into the deep snow. The ground beneath was still frozen hard and the air stung his snout with every plume of steam into the frost. Bear had been out on these mid-winter forays enough times before. He recalled a scent of Winter, and this was not it. Something was off. There was still that sharp clarity of the cold, the crispness that accentuates both sound and scent alike. There was that familiar palette of mineral and wet salt borne upon the north wind, carried from far off lands. He also detected the more immediate, the familiar oils of the cedar trees, the earthier subtlety of birch. There were faint traces of various smaller mammals, from their trails or their deposits of urine and scat. Amidst all these scent memories that matched Bear's experience of Winter, there was now one other which did not. There was the smell of fire in the air.

Fire was hardly alien to Bear; he had indeed smelled fire before, but it was not typical to his experience of Winter. Fire was common in the late Summer and early Autumn. That was peak berry season, a very active time in any bear's life, thus Bear had frequently encountered fire following the violent lightning storms which sometimes also came as a part of the season. The Great Forest was so vast in scale, that every year tens of thousands of acres would be erased by these wildfires, yet hardly make a dent in the available habitat. When these fires occurred within Bear's range of travel, he would simply move to hunt elsewhere. And always, within a few seasons after a fire, life gradually returned to the place, as Bear continued placidly in his own way. Bear knows to fear and avoid fire, while having an innate understanding of fire as a part of nature. Fire was not something, in Bear's experience, that nature delivered with Winter. This was the taint of the air. Fire did not belong to Winter!

Thus alerted, Bear tread forward warily into the sea of white. His nostrils remained flared, his ears pricked up. His breath grew labored, leaving an icy foam to form upon his snout. There was no sight of smoke or flame in the skies. In every direction the Great Forest rested, glistening with frost and ice, still deep in Winter's slumber. Bear would follow his nose to the source, despite the grumbling from his belly. He had ample fat reserves stored yet, should it be necessary to draw upon these. Such were these Winter days.

This day was still young. A pale sun strained through the veil of low cloud, so that earth and sky both radiated a dim glow. The forest was peppered by grey and black stalks reaching skyward into a sea of white. There were the occasional verdant boughs of cedar groves, also weighted by snows, but their deep green shone through the blanket. Here and there redbirds peeped from their perches. A bright scarlet flash would show for an instant in the trees, dancing amid the bare pillars as they would forage. The Great Forest was utter still, but for their minute disturbance. Like Bear, the forest had gone to deep rest; only taking breath at long intervals, waiting in sleep. Earth and sky were frozen together.

A small wind arose from the north, giving Bear a stronger scent of fire. Still distant, but now clearly to the north and east. This was the remains of fire. It had that gritty, ashy coal quality of the forest floor after a wildfire had burned itself out. Bear plodded forward through the snows, following the source of the scent. The path through the columns of trees now took a gentle grade downward. The pitch was gradual, barely perceptible at first. After the distance of some miles, Bear found himself at a convergence of slopes, which dropped further to form a great ravine. The land opposite arose to another formidable ridge, climbing to a height beyond Bear's view.

Bear halted at a distance of two to three hundred yards from the bottom of this cleft in the earth. The winds were channeled down the great ridge ahead, to sail over the bottom of the steep ravine and push up the long slope Bear had descended to arrive there. This delivered the most powerful scent he had found thus far. The source of this fire must lie ahead, somewhere below, deeper into the ravine. Bear sniffed harder at this wind. There was fire and something else strange. Something he had never smelled in Winter. Something he had never smelled at all.

Bear did not yet feel alarmed, simply alerted. Looking ahead he could see no flames, no billowing plumes of smoke cloud. He sensed that he had found the source of this recent fire. This was a fire extinguished and thus, Bear had no reason to fear. To see more up ahead, he rose upon his rear haunches, reaching a full height of seven feet. He sniffed the air again, turning his massive head this way and that, as he tried to sort out that other foreign scent. Something sour. And salty.

The birds of the Great Forest had gone quiet. Redbirds, blackbirds, the sparrows had each fallen silent in their turns. The last were a pair of doves. They had been cooing their mournful song from somewhere high above. Bear heard them for quite some while, until he had stood. Their soft cries ceased abruptly, then silently retiring their perch, they flew off into the haze. Now there was only wind through the trees, whistling as it did.

Bear dropped to all fours again and shuffled forward, edging closer to the rim of that great crevice. The wind funneling down the great slope opposite delivered the most potent scent yet. The smell of old fire was suddenly so strong, it seemed to Bear that he must be standing right atop the ash. The frigid air whistled gently as it rushed by him, but somewhere beneath this sound there were now other sounds. Strange sounds he had never heard; part grunting, part barking. 

At ten feet from the lip the earth dropped away. Bear could see over the edge and down into the bottom of the ravine. There at the floor of these slopes there was a hollow, a small bowl insulated from the howling winds. In the center there was a mass of ash and cinders, white, grey and black. Sticks, limbs and charred pieces were scattered about the space. In the center there were still embers, spiraling broken wisps of white smoke upwards. No flames, no widespread catastrophe. This was like no fire Bear had ever witnessed.

Bear continued to survey this scene with an instinctive wonder. The winds gained more force, over the gorge in a howling rush. The tips of frozen limbs clicked together high above, as the trees bent and swayed under the force. Bear was searching that other sour and foreign smell he had caught moments before. It seemed to elude him now, only there in faint traces amid the crystallized mist of snow spray. Still, he strained at the air to find it again. 

The wind biting at his nose and eyes, Bear studied the slope up from the hollow below. There were large tracks in the snow, leading away to weave between the tree trunks. His eyes followed this path, up and up further into the trees, until he spotted movement. There, nearly halfway up to the top of the ridge, there were two strange creatures climbing, struggling against the deep snows. It looked like a pair of stags, yet Bear could not smell stag. These beasts did not move like stags. They appeared to travel on all fours, as a stag would, but there was something wrong with their movement. And stags did not leave tracks so large.

This was quite curious. Bear again rose upon his haunches to stand tall against the wind. He watched and sniffed harder until he again detected the sour smell. That smell came from those strange beasts. He could not tell what they were, but he knew these could not be stags. A stag would be worth pursuing to sate his hunger. Such a feast could carry him through weeks, as surely Winter had not ended, but he would not give chase. Some sense told him that their flesh was tainted. Bear's understanding of living things in the forest told him that there were only two types: that which is food and that which is a threat.

Still raised to his formidable height, Bear let loose a ferocious, growling roar. He had drawn deep from his lungs and a great plume of steam erupted from his mighty jaws. The roar echoed throughout the gorge, rising above the howling wind. It proclaimed, "Begone, unclean beasts! Begone from My forest!" For a moment the wind ceased. The great roar reverberated again and again, pounding the dense, cold air like a drum. Bear could feel the earth groan beneath his feet as he returned to all fours.

Up on the steep slope the sour smelling creatures clumsily hastened their ascent. Now clearer than before, Bear again heard the strange grunting barks. This sound also belonged to these intruders. They would escape the clutch of his great maw for this time. He would have to see them closer the next time. He still did not know what they were, but he knew their scent and the sound of their calls. Bear would not forget these. 

Unbeknownst to Bear, he had just had his first encounter with man. He did not comprehend that man had worn the hides of stag, having little fur of his own. He was not aware that man could carry fire. Still, Bear had known instinctively that man was a threat. He would now remain ever alert to man's presence.

On this day Bear did not enjoy the glut of a freshly killed stag. He made the long, slow trek back to his den. In the general direction from which he came, he struggled against the slow grade, the wind now at his back. All the exertion redirected him to the original purpose of finding some form of sustenance. Bear wandered amid the trees, sniffing and chuffing through snows that yielded nothing. By the time Bear had returned to within a half mile of his den, half of the day's light had been spent.

 Bear came upon a small cluster of evergreens which he had not passed earlier. Their boughs were heavily weighted, the lower ones drooping near to the top of the snows drifted beneath. Some of them even lay atop the drift, as though the trees had erupted from beneath the crust. They appeared completely undisturbed, except for one small trough, one tiny breach in the whiteness that did not belong. Bear froze in his tracks, eyes fixed upon this singular point, waiting patiently.

It had passed to those hours of a mid-Winter, late afternoon, when a weak sun might have a brief reach beneath the heavy cloud bank on it's way to dusk. In one of those moments, shafts of unfiltered sunlight fell upon that hole in the snow and lingered there for several minutes. Bear remained still, watching. Something stirred behind the skirt of white, releasing a fine mist of icy crystal into the air above the hole. The shaft of light captured this spray as it drifted towards the ground.

A white hare tentatively poked it's head through the opening, it's whiskers waving in the light. The ray of sun shone directly into the hare's face. Whiskers dancing, eyes blinking, with it's long ears still laid back on it's neck, the hare crept forward. It was halfway out into the open before it even knew that Bear was there. Bear lunged and waved a mighty paw downward to crush the hare into the frozen earth, immediately plunging his snout behind to take the hare firmly in his jaws.

The hare was ripped into pieces in mere seconds, a spray of crimson blood bright upon the white-carpeted forest floor. His fearsome fangs bared, Bear chomped at his prey until nothing remained but a few puffs of fur floating about. And blood, brilliant red splashed upon this world of black and white. It was savage. And it was beautiful.

  

  

Bail, part 3

The check in had been easy. A weekday, technically still afternoon. The evening refugees from the highway, only a little more than one hundred yards distant, had not yet arrived. After presenting his Hilton Honors card, he decided to ask if they had a jacuzzi suite available. They did, room 313, for $145 a night. He booked it, paid and had a couple of key cards for the room inside of ten minutes. It was more than he typically would pay for one night's stay, but this wasn't a typical day. Today it was worth it.

When he returned to the lot Vic found Tammy, casually leaning against the side of the car, smoking a cigarette. She looked so... young! For just that instant Vic heard a scolding voice inside his head. You're old enough to be her father, you piece of shit! This was followed almost instantly by another voice inside his head replying, Yeah, don't care. She's an adult. When he arrived within earshot of her, he realized that wasn't a cigarette she was smoking.

"Hey! Hope ya don't mind I decided to start without ya. This shit's really loud, ya know? Didn't wanna stink up your ride."

"Yeah? That's real nice of you. Pass it over!"

They spent ten minutes out there, leaning against Vic's car and sharing that joint in a chill March wind. Vic now had some context for her meaning of the term "loud", though he was missing this property out in the open air. Just as most do not drink beer for it's taste, there are few who smoke weed for it's smell. Of course, the smell of beer is hardly an indicator for it's potency. As it had been quite some time since he'd had any, Vic was woefully unprepared for this. The strain that had been gathered that day was of a variety that some might refer to as "creep weed". After smoking three quarters Vic could feel that familiar buzz and was ready to tag out. He wouldn't become aware of how baked he was until they went inside Longnecks for their early dinner.

At ten of 5:00 the two of them entered Longnecks, not reeking, but certainly carrying a hint of the herb upon themselves. The first warning sign to Vic came the moment the entry door closed behind them. The inside of the establishment was reasonably well lit, but following the dun white skies it was like entering a cave. He felt frozen in his tracks as his eyes adjusted. Then suddenly, the panic seized him. All of his periphery was darkened and fuzzy, leaving him very concerned for whatever might be lurking there. The only thought that remained clear was that he wanted to reach the bar. There was a narrow tunnel of light, cast from the row of flat screens mounted over the bar. They just needed to follow the light for thirty feet.

There was a hostess seated at the cashier's station to their left. Marla. Vic had not seen her. Marla was thirty-something, had one of those cynical faces that said nothing would surprise her. She had instantly caught a whiff of them, bringing a smirk to one corner of her mouth. She looked them over, trying to sort out what was their deal. This is one of those valuable life lessons that one learns from being a hostess in a sports bar.  

They did present quite the pair. There was the tall, lean figure of a man who looked to be in his late forties. Salt and pepper hair, well-tailored wool jacket, grey slacks and some expensive looking shoes. Probably some kind of sales rep or insurance executive. And the girl. The girl didn't fit. A daughter? She looked young enough. She looked like she had dug her clothes out of a Salvation Army donation bin. Maybe a college student? Maybe this was some kind of neo-punk fashion statement. Marla was kind of digging the black converse. Could this be some kind of daddy-daughter smoke down date? 

"Hey, y'all. You folks want a table, or would you like to sit at the bar?"

Tammy and Marla both giggled a little when Vic jumped, he was so startled by her sudden appearance. He recovered quickly, didn't seem to notice their amusement.

"Yeah... we're just gonna... yeah, the bar's good." 

Marla just waved them on then. No reason to get up, no reason to think about them anymore. They were Paul, the bartender's problem now. They shuffled onward to the bar, where surely adult beverages and cooked vittles awaited them. Vic felt like he was wearing lead boots. It was taking a frightfully long time to cover that thirty feet. 

At last, they were there. Vic collapsed onto a stool; Tammy took the one on his right.

"Jesus, Vic... you okay? Don't stroke out on me!"

"No, no... nothing like that. What the fuck did you put in that weed?"

"I told ya it was some good shit!"

"Yeah... fair. You did. Holy shit!"

"Ya know what you need, Vic? You need a drink!"

Yes. Indeed. A drink and many more. The evening was young and there were great hills to be conquered. They began with two 24oz tall drafts. They both had a serious munch on, ordered a fifteen piece wings, a basket of smothered fries. When the food arrived there were two more tall drafts. And an order for a bacon cheeseburger.

For the next hour and a half they gorged themselves on draft beers and fried foods. A sparse crowd filtered in during that time, all taking seats at a distance from them. The closest of any were a pair of hard hat types, huddled over beer and shots at the end of the bar to their right. Tammy gave up on the drink after her second tall. Vic had four. Throw a few double bourbons into that mix. By 7:00 Vic was in the full throes of a crunk attack. At 6:00 Tammy had dropped two more 500 oxys. It is a good thing they closed the check when they did. Shortly after 7:00 they weaved their way to the exit and out into the waiting darkness.

It had grown colder out. The wind, which was coming right at their faces, had picked up, now spitting cold sleet. The frigid air was bracing, restoring just enough sobriety to arrive at the idea of going to the car to smoke another joint. It was another of those minor miracles to be found in mind altering substances; those fleeting moments of clarity only serve to remind that you still want more. They felt like they were racing to get in the car. It was more of a wobbly jog, comical to any who may have been watching. Thankfully, there were none.

They each slammed their doors shut behind them at the same time and Vic immediately started the engine. He set to the fan and temperature controls, ignored the wipers. They weren't driving anywhere.

"I'll roll us another one in a minute. I gotta warm up a little! Feel like my nips are gonna break off!"

"We sure don't want that."

"Right?"

That 6:00 dose was really kicking in now. Part of it was the cold, part of it was him. It had been a while since she had found herself this excited for a man. Part of her wanted to go for his pants and give him head right there in the car. But that's what you did with a John. Vic wasn't a John. She wanted to fuck him. 

"What kinda music ya like, Vic? Do ya like country?"

"Fucking hate it."

"Oh... I bet you're a classic rock guy, then? Am I right?"

"Yeah, I suppose you could say that. So, if I put some music on will that get you to roll that joint?"

She knew he was only teasing her and responded in kind. "Put on somethin' sexy, maybe I'll give ya a dance", she pouted seductively.

"Yeah? In the car? How you gonna do that?"

"I could show you...", she couldn't resist any longer, reaching over and placing a hand on his crotch, "... show you mine, if you show me yours." She purred over dramatically to keep it playful, but the way she was groping him through his trousers said she wasn't just playing.

"That sounds like a lot of fun, sweetheart, but we got a room for that. Last time I got laid in a car I was seventeen. Let's smoke that joint, then you go get your shower..."

She withdrew her hand with mock offense and then grinned. "You're right. I wanna get good and fucked up, then I am gonna do you right." She pulled out the bag and papers, improvising a tray out of the glove box. It was just beginning to warm up inside the car. When she finished the task, she held it up for Vic to take. "Here...got something else for ya...", as she replaced the bag and papers inside her coat, she fished another bag out, placing it in her lap. "Here, take a couple of these." She handed him two of her oxys and the rest of her Mountain Dew from earlier. "So, where ya wanna smoke that thing, Vic? "

He downed the pills without hesitation. "Gimme a light, will ya? We're gonna smoke it right here in the car. Too fuckin' cold out there!"

"Cool! You want me to crack the windows? I know you don't wanna stink up your car."

"It's okay. Doesn't matter anymore."

They did crack the windows, with the front panel heat at full force. Most of the smoke escaped, but they still managed to create quite a cloud inside the car. Tammy didn't think too much about what changed his mind, chalking it up to being so buzzed. She was feeling no pain herself. The fresh dose of the potent weed, atop the oxys and the drinks, was leaving her tingling all over. All she could think about was getting out of these clothes and into a hot shower. She wanted to be nice and clean for him. 

They smoked two thirds of it, until Vic had a coughing fit. It was enough, he tagged out. Both of them having achieved their stated desire to get really fucked up, they then hastened indoors, to the elevator and to the warmth of room 313 beyond. Left out of the elevator, three quarters of the way down the hall, on the left. Right where the desk said it would be. He took the key cards from his jacket pocket, handed one to Tammy, and then fumbled with the other until the familiar click opened the door. He pushed the door open and bid her to enter.

Vic stepped in right behind her and hit the wall switch on his right. It was as big a reveal to him as it was for Tammy. He hadn't taken the time to check the room earlier. In his intoxicated state he was only vaguely aware that maybe he should have, but all turned out well. The entrance was a very short hallway, with an alcove closet to the right and a full-length mirror opposite. The hall continued for ten feet, until reaching an archway that framed the room beyond. It was standard fare for a Hampton, variations on a theme of taupe, clean, well furnished.  

Tammy passed through the arch and turned to her right, then gasped in shock. After a very short wall the space opened up into the jacuzzi suite. It was a cool, blue tile throughout with a bank of mirrors, a glass doored shower and a whirlpool tub set into the floor. A toilet and sink were partitioned off in one corner with a door. Otherwise, the space was open, looking over a king with plush bedding.

"Oh! Fuck yeah! I'm havin' a bath! This is awesome, Vic!"

Vic followed her and watched on as she rushed to start the bath. It was pretty nice. Better than he'd have expected for Richwood, Kentucky. He'd been surprised they even had such a suite. This one was actually one of two on site.

He'd grabbed a gym bag from the back seat of the car, slung over his left shoulder. He unloaded it, dropping it casually on the bed, and then sat down next to it. The tap was roaring, echoing off of the tile as steam began to rise. Tammy was saying something, but he couldn't make out what it was over the water. She continued testing the water, adjusting the knobs until having it just right. Vic leaned back on the bed, drunk, stoned as fuck and now the oxys were starting to kick in.

Once she'd found the right balance of temperature, Tammy arose to stand over the tub, watching it fill. As the steam gathered, she began to methodically disrobe, keeping her back to him. He knew she was teasing him and he was enjoying the show. Stripped down to the waist she still appeared to be a very small-framed girl. Her back was creamy white skin, without a single blemish. Unlike most young women of the day, there was hardly any ink on her. She had a small, red rose tattoo on her right shoulder. Unencumbered of any top, her wiry mane spilled freely across her slender neck. When she slowly unpeeled her jeans, it was clear this was no girl, but indeed a woman. Her hips were broad and limber, her ass full and firm. Before even seeing the front of her, Vic could tell that she had given birth. At least once. She hadn't made any mention of children and he never asked.

She continued to tease, keeping her back turned to him as she stepped into the tub. He noticed one other tattoo, on her left hip. It was black, maybe a gothic script. It looked like it might be a name, but he didn't get a clear look at it before she melted into the water. She gave out a deep sigh of satisfaction as she swirled about in the tub, finding the right spot to recline before turning on the jets. She had a direct view to Vic over on that bed. Most guys would already have their pants off by now.

"Hey! Whatcha doin' over there? Plenty of room in this bath! Get your clothes off and bring that cock over here!"

Vic could not decline that invitation. Though he could barely stand up, he managed to strip bare in two steps and strut proudly into the bath with a full hard on. For the better part of the next two hours, he proceeded to defile her from head to toe. They started in the tub, moved to the bed and back again. They drained the water and dried... and continued on the bed. She straddled him, grinding against him until she had come at least six more times. She was raw. Spent. 

Vic lay upon his back with her curled up on his right side, her backside pressed against him. He examined the tattoo on her hip more closely.

"What does that say, that tattoo on your hip? Is that a name?"

"No. Just a word. Bail."

He absorbed this in silence. So fucked up. Had to wonder what it meant but could barely form the question. After several minutes it came to him in the fog.

"What... what is that? I mean... what does it mean?"

"Okay, so it's kinda like... it's like this philosophy in a word. Somethin' I got from an old boyfriend. It's like... like it's okay to fuck up, right? No matter what you do, shit will always fuck up, so stop trying so hard for other people. Accept the consequences of being who you are, just "bail" on everything else."

"Whoa! That's some deep shit. Sounds like Bukowski. So, do you believe that?"

"I don't know any more. I must have believed once. I got talked into the tattoo, right?"

Vic was nodding off, thinking. Bail. Accept the consequences of being who you are. It was completely relatable.

Vic never did decide which direction he was going to go. He didn't have to. When this day had started, he only knew he was headed south. Maybe Texas, maybe Florida. He was looking for signs along the way to tell him which.

He had taken four grand out of the bank, what he reckoned was enough for two weeks. If the docs were right, he wouldn't need any more than that. Vic was on a mission to find a good place to die.

When he was first diagnosed, it was already considered that it was likely too late. The tumor had to be classified as inoperable. It wrapped about the spine, assuring that any attempt at surgery would at best result in total paralysis. There were some "hail Mary" options with radiation and chemo, but the only thing these could guarantee were a foreseeable future of nausea and vomiting unto death. If he did nothing? Maybe a couple of weeks. He decided those two weeks were going to be his. All his. Not answering to anyone again, just walking silently into the void.

Sometime in the night Vic just stopped breathing. Tammy had drifted in and out of a slumber, never coming fully awake. She didn't notice that he had not moved until about 3:00AM, when she had to get up to pee. When she returned to the bed, he looked very tempting to her. She decided that she'd try to arouse another round, but very quickly found that something was wrong. He had begun to go cold. At the instant she realized what had happened, she uttered a reflexive "Oh fuck!"

The adrenaline rush of panic is ten times more sobering than any cold air. Tammy had no idea that Vic had been ill in any way. Her thoughts immediately leaped to the frightening conclusion that the oxys, combined with the liquor, had caused his heart to stop. She'd heard of shit like that happening. They were pills that he had got from her, pills that she had without a prescription. Oh fuck, oh fuck! Her heart was pounding. She had rapidly convinced herself to get the fuck out of this room, out of this hotel. Maybe go to Waffle House until the rest of the world woke up.

She forced herself to slow down her breathing. Calm down. Get dressed, gather up all your shit. She hadn't really done anything wrong. She met a guy next door at dinner, came back to his room and fucked him. She had to leave; he was alive when I left. I don't know where he got any pills. I never saw any pills. 

She finished dressing, looked around the room. She would hold on to the bag. Vic couldn't use it. No sense letting the damn cops have it! She looked on the body one last time. Shame. Hell of a good fuck. As she turned away, she stepped on his jacket. It made her freeze for a minute. She could not resist. She knelt down to search inside the pockets. There was a bank envelope with nearly thirty-four hundred dollars in small bills. The cops would probably pocket it anyway. She might as well take it too. 

She couldn't look at him again. She slipped out the door quietly, instinctively looking both ways in the hall before creeping to the stairwell. Once the hall door shut behind her Tammy hustled down those flights of steps and lunged at the exit door, like she was underwater, clawing to the surface. 

Cold! Cold air. The sleet and wind had ended and there was no one on the street. Just the empty, cold night. Tammy cinched up her hood and braced herself for the walk. She could probably make it over to the Waffle House in ten minutes. Fifteen tops. 

On that day Tammy accepted the consequences of who she was. She was a whore with an opiate addiction. Sometimes even a whore is deserving of some kindness. She didn't really know who Vic was, or his story. She had paid him the only kindness she had to give. She was truly sorry that he had died. She thought that maybe, just maybe, this could be a turning point for her. But probably not. She plucked a couple more oxys from inside her coat pocket and choked them down dry. Off to the Waffle House, then. Now it was Thursday.