Authors: Robert Stallman
"Get that tarp, Howie," Fat Belly says, running to the truck with a long pole in his hand. One man breaks off for the barn as another stops at the edge of the stone foundation where my cell was and begins dragging a long metal cylinder toward the truck. I have not seen such a thing before, and so I am not aware at once what is happening, but when Fat Belly and one of his companions climb onto the truck, they reveal their intentions.
"C'mon. They ain't goin' to buy no draggle-ass animal. We got to get him laid out tonight. Bring that gas over here and get the hose ready soon's we get the tarp tied down."
The men dance like heavy demons in the flickering lightning, dancing to the music of the thunder, the spanging drops that are striking everywhere now, stinging my nose and eyelids as I get up to face these dangerous men. I am not sure what "laid out" means, but I do not intend to let them gas me into unconsciousness again, perhaps to wake in some impossible situation, or not to wake at all. They have made a deal with someone, then, and are not depending on merely exhibiting me. I must not let them do this. I stand carefully, keeping the still broken leg stiff and slightly behind me. As Fat Belly tries to sweep the tarpaulin over the cage top, I reach through the bars and push him off balance so that he steps awkwardly backwards into the low sideboards of the truck, sits down and slides off onto the ground. I hear the heavy thud he makes even with the continuous bombardment of the thunder, and I hear also his curses as other men help him to his feet. There are several of them around the cage in the dark, and I cannot concentrate on more than one at a time to make them stop. Now Fat Belly stands on the back of the truck with the long pole in his hands.
"I'll keep it back whiles you tie the tarp over that end, then we'll just pull it tight from the ground. That'll be enough." He is shouting at the others, and they do not hear all of what he says. The thunder is too loud now, with many cracking and booming near misses of the lightning so that the scene is eerily illuminated as if by a vast forest fire, and the rain is pounding down now, becoming every second more dense so that the lightning is diffused and the night is turning into a frosted glass chaos where light plays tricks, people and their expressions are caught in a sudden stop-motion by each glaring lightning flash. Each action is splintered into a multitude of still pictures. The continuity of sound ceases to exist in the bombardment. Men open their mouths and gesture in frozen poses, appear caught in the flashing density of water as a series of puppet actions with no sequence to their motions or available words to explain their absurd situation. The men are half drowned with the water, and one of them staggers back against the cage, holding the tarp as the wind bellies it away like a spinnaker. I reach one claw out of the bars, close off his windpipe long enough for him to lose consciousness, and he drops to the floor of the truck, lying partly on the tarp that his companion on the other side of the cage is still trying to pull. They are like a couple of drunken housewives trying to make a giant bed in this impossible storm. And then the pole that Fat Belly is wielding hits me in the middle of my back. A pain shoots through me, for he has hammered the stick against one of my cracked vertebrae. I whirl on my one good leg, keeping the other stiff as a support, grab the pole like a lance, and in an instant of total illumination, as the lightning bursts somewhere in the trees to my right, I see the big man holding to the other end of the stick, a still picture of a large fat man, his hair streaked against his face, clothes dark with water, wrestling with a long wooden pole that he holds against his chest. His lips are drawn back from his teeth in an ape grimace, and I feel my rage against the ape suddenly bursting with the lightning and the cracking thunder that hits with it. I hold the pole tightly like a spear, thrust it hard to the length of my arm.
The lightning smashes again with its thunder. Tableau of large fat man, teeth bared to the black underside of the thunder cloud as he falls silently and in stop-motion off the back of the truck, transfixed through the chest with his wife's clothesline pole, the enemy spear that has found the life of the opposing commander. I press against the end of the cage and see the pole sticking up, swaying in the downpouring water, see the hands of the man holding it to his breast as if it were his last and best possession that he would never relinquish but would take down to hell with him, the same simian grimace peeling his lips back from his teeth, and I cannot tell if he screamed or was silent, for the thunder is still a continuing barrage of sound. I look down at him as two other men run around the truck and stand in the rain seeing an impossible sight, an unbelievable occurrence. They look up at me, stopped by the dancing lightning, caught in mid-gesture, mid-sentence that they cannot hear, mid-look at each other, mid-stride as they run for the house and are gone, leaving me with the impaled fat man lying still now, not caught in the midst of any other movement, but lying still, his grin stolidly facing up into the streaming blackness.
The air is fresh, clean, transparent in the shine of the stars after the storm has passed on. It is near morning, but no light dims the delicate banners and drifts of the Milky Way. I lie on the wet iron floor of the cage and stare upward at the stars. Barry speaks:
"I am well enough now. Pull someone here with the key. Get me out."
Your leg would break under you, and your back is weak with the cracked small bones. When you moved you would be in agony.
"I must see Renee. I am afraid for her. It has been so long since I saw her."
It has been less than three weeks, if my reckoning is correct.
"I must see her. Get us out."
You are foolish. You cannot walk without crutches, and I'm unsure your leg would stay knitted. Another few days and I will be well enough to run.
"I want Renee."
You speak like a foolish boy, like Charles.
"I am not a boy. I am a man, and I want the woman."
You must wait.
"These men will kill us both. You don't know what they are going to do."
I killed Fat Belly by mistake. But perhaps this will upset their plans and give us more time.
"They'll more than likely simply kill you - us - and peddle your strange body."
Barry, be sensible. You are much closer to me than the others. We are almost one. You know we must wait for our body to heal. To run now would be to invite pursuit and certain death.
Silence. He understands that and retires with frustration and a dying sense of rage that leaves me irritated and dissatisfied. I look back at the stars, fix on my own identity and push Barry Golden away. His name amuses me. Like the bank robber whose name was Rob Banks, the golden bear is Barry Golden. I await the outcome because I cannot move yet from the comparative safety of already being in captivity. I flex the leg, feeling the strength of the long upper bone. The muscles relax slightly with a painful tugging. The leg is not strong enough to put my full weight on. I could not run fast enough to get away from a sick dog. We must wait, unless faced with certain death. The automobiles that came and went around the house after Big Belly's death have all departed now except for the police car with the star on the door and the light on top. There is a single light that I can see downstairs in the house, but then I can only just see one edge of the house around the edge of the big barn. The guard has been replaced, but this one is asleep now too. I will sleep.
From the
Grand Rapids Examiner
, July 5, 1936 -
LOCAL FARMER KILLED BY CAPTURED BEAR
Freak Accident Takes Life
of Otis Anderson
CARVERVILLE, JULY 5. Attempting to protect a recently captured wild bear from the torrential downpour that soaked this area Friday night, Otis Anderson, 48, of Route 2, south of Carverville, was impaled on a clothesline pole he was using to keep the bear at bay in its cage. Anderson's brother-in-law, Matthew Bratten, also of Carverville, said there were two other men present at the time of the accident, but none of them observed the mishap. Bratten said the animal had not been aggressive or appeared dangerous, and he was uncertain how such a thing could have occurred. Another witness, Peter Anderson, 21, nephew of the deceased, also expressed doubt the weak and injured animal could have inflicted the death wound. Only the third man present, Howard Corley, a neighbor of the Andersons, thought the animal could have killed Anderson. Corley said the bear tried to kill him the same night by reaching out through the bars and choking him against the cage until he fainted. Corley said he believed Anderson might have seen the bear attacking him and had enraged it by hitting it with the clothes pole. County Sheriff Arnold Gross, who was called to the scene in the midst of the cloudburst, said the position of the body indicated Anderson must have been holding the pole against his chest when the bear either hit the pole or Anderson hard enough to drive the pole through the man's body, Sheriff Gross expressed amazement at the incident, calling it "a crazy thing to have happen."
The bear is a mystery animal that was captured last week in the cellar of an abandoned house on the Anderson property. A large posse of men with shotguns and rifles, acting on a tip from some local young people who had observed the animal, captured it without trouble. One observer at the time said that the bear was near death from wounds of some sort, and it was predicted the animal would not live more than a few days. However, it recovered under Anderson's care, and he had been charging admission to curiosity seekers who were allowed to look at the animal through a barn window. On the promise of payment for its delivery, Anderson had planned to sell the bear to the University of Michigan for observation after a professor of biology from that institution had pronounced the animal a rare type. The sale will be held up pending the coroner's inquest into Anderson's death.
Otis Anderson is survived by his wife Belinda, a son Orville, his mother, Mrs. Harley Anderson, and his brother, Asa Anderson of Battle Creek. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Yesterday I listened to what I thought were guns being fired, but it turns out the children on nearby farms are celebrating Fourth of July, and in the night far off over the trees I see flares and blooms of fire in the sky. Today it is hot again, and the family is replacing the signs on the road and in the lane. It is a strange family. The head of the house dead one day and they are hard at the business of exhibiting me again.
There are no cars coming in the lane today, but perhaps that is because it is Sunday. I hear in casual conversations around my cage that the death of Big Belly is considered a freak accident, but that I am regarded with new respect as a dangerous animal. Also I might infer from something the younger man said that I am not to be sold as planned until the local police determine if I was the cause of Big Belly's death. Perhaps I gain a respite after all. The young man who seems to have taken charge of things is approaching now, talking with the man who was my drunken guard that night.
"Ah, everybody knows she's just puttin' on," the young man is saying. "Aunt Bee hated his guts."
"Well, she's in her rights, but I mean, having people in here to gawk before Otis's had his funeral, well that's, what d'ya call it, unreligious."
My former guard is a short, slack looking man in late middle age with a worried face.
"She don't really give a shit for Uncle Otis," the young man says, standing at the cab of the truck and looking up at me where I am crouched with my face hidden in my arms. "And we goin' to need the money. Them professors ain't goin' to get the animal until the county gets through the investigatin', and God knows when that'll be. They might not even want it any more. You know how them big brains are. Not a lick of common sense."
I perked up my ears at the word professors. So, my fears were real.
"Well, that 'air's likely a valuable animal, but I wouldn't want it. Made my hair stand up that night. I had a couple of swigs out of Otis's bottle and I felt sleepy, and when I woke up, there I was standing beside that cage and that damn bear was almost like talkin' to me - almost." He trailed off, unable to say what he remembered. He shook his narrow gray head until the hanging skin under his chin wobbled.
"Ah, Ben," the young man laughed. "You had a dream. Talking to you?" He laughed again and looked up at me. "Hey there, bear," he said loudly, "why 'ncha do a dance for our customers tomorrow? We'll make a lot of dough and buy you a new cage." He got into the driver's side of the truck laughing, and the older man climbed in the other side.
After the truck had been pulled around beside the house, I suppose to keep the "customers" from seeing me before they paid their admission, I was left alone for a long time while it got hotter and I wondered if someone was going to bring me some water or if I would have to reach out and pull someone out of the house for that purpose.
"Let's get out." The voice was internal. Barry had become aware suddenly, as if he had been waiting somewhere without my noticing him. it was an eerie feeling, and I noticed too that my perceptions withdrew from the surrounding area as he spoke. He seemed to usurp part of my perceptions when he became present, even internally.
We can't. Now be patient. They can't sell us until the investigation is finished. I just heard that, so we are safe for a few days at least.
"We've got to get out."
Not now.
I was becoming irritated with Barry's inability to recognize the facts of his own existence. I pushed gently at his personality, pushing it down. There was an unexpectedly strong resistance.
"Get out!" he said firmly. "You can do it. Just pull the young guy out here. He's probably got the key now."
You've been listening?
"Sure. Why not? I want out."
I was surprised. I had always been aware before when Barry was present in any form. This time he seemed to have been present while I was unaware that he shared my perceptions. It makes me feel strange. I am not sure now which of us is perceiving. Too difficult. I press hard on the man, and he disappears.