Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! (10 page)

And my job? You want that too? You think it’s easy delegating to a brainless clutch of ostriches? Go ahead and try, see how long you can handle it. The Ups and the Veeps are tough birds, Baumer, who feast upon the failures of underlings. They’ll eat you for a taco salad. But please, give it your best shot. I could use a little sabbatical. Take my desk for a week or two and consider it a perk, a little reward for the initiative you’ve shown this weekend, in so cleverly and ingeniously plotting to kill me. I have to admire your gumption there, your self-startedness.

But the thing is,
Frankie,
when you took my Rover keys you crossed the line. It’s the line that separates the people I’m going to kill from the people I’m just going to scream at. I’ve been screaming and threatening and intimidating the members of Image Team for so long, I think maybe some of you have begun to suspect I’m all bluster and no bite. I certainly haven’t bitten any of you recently. I’ve been lax, Frank, you’re right there. I’ve clearly let my domination of Image Team slip a little. I, Marv Pushkin, am man enough to admit a minor failing of mine. Forgive me, team; I’ve been under a lot of stress. Keeping you worms under my heel is a tough, thankless task, but it’s my job, and if I don’t do my job well I can’t expect you to do you jobs well.

Therefore: Members of Image Team, by way of apology for my recent poor performance I am going to shoot Frank Baumer in the face, and Edna in the back of the head, and together we will skin and clean and eat them, to build team spirit. And we will tan their pelts and hang them in the executive lav, where a little backsplash from the executive urinal will only help to reinforce the message I’m trying to communicate.

And what of Mister Bear? I haven’t seen him in ages. Moved on to the next injured hunter? Died of wounds sustained while defending my snacks? Shacked up with Mama Bear in a trailer by the stream? I don’t know, and I couldn’t give an intercontinental ballistic fuck. I’m not angry with you any more, Mister Bear. You’re just a pawn in Frank Baumer’s evil game.

I’m still going to kill you, though. It’s only fair. Please understand that when I kill you, it’s not out of malice, but for the urgency of Justice. Because I am the favorite son of the universe, and when I am wronged it must be made right, and that job falls to me because I’m the only man in this god damn forest who’s got a clue about anything. Because I’m Marv Pushkin. I am judge and jury and search and rescue. I am ranger and sheriff and hangman and chef. I will get free, and I will get that shotgun, and I will have hot and cold running vengeance installed out here by this time tomorrow. The universe loves me, I always get my way, things like this simply do not happen to me. This is just a sick, demented aberration of the laws of nature, physics and the United States, and it WILL END because I will MAKE IT END because I’M MARV PUSHKIN!

10

Morning of the fourth day. This place is cold, damp, smelly and utterly inconvenient. Stuck under a car, bear ate my feet, wife treacherous, bugs biting, hip wound seeping, blah blah blah. I’m not a complainer, so enough about all that. Here’s at least one piece of good news: I finally found a use for the saw blade in my Leatherman Super Tool. It’s the one blade I never use, and I’ve always wondered if maybe it’s overkill, maybe I should have bought the smaller version, but now I know I was right to buy the biggest, most modern and most favorably reviewed pocket multi-tool on the market, because I’m going to need that saw blade to saw my own legs off. Try that with the Gerber Evolution.

A bold move, for sure. Drastic? Definitely. But I just don’t see any other way out of this pinned-under-car situation. The only HELP out here is self-HELP. All of those management guru books in the executive lav emphasize that a good manager must never be afraid to take strong measures when they’re called for. It takes bravery, sure, it takes guts, and it’ll take a couple of tourniquets. I’ll wriggle out of this jacket and rip off the sleeves of my Ralph Lauren flannel-cotton outdoorsman shirt, sure, why not, I’ve ruined every other garment I’m wearing. I’ll tie off the tourniquets good and tight, saw through the legs … it sucks, but there just is no other way. Saw the bastards right off, and they damn well better have a human leg donor fresh off the basketball court, knocked out cold and waiting on the table when I pull into the Anchorage 24-hour Neurosurgery Clinic. Somebody tall, with big feet.

Once I saw myself free I’ll crawl as best I can under the car to the front bumper undercarriage, where I keep a hidden spare key in a little magnetic box. Oh yes … did I mention that I am
prepared
? Then I’ll crawl out and around to the drivers’ side door and haul myself in. Then I will turn on the electric seat warmers and reward myself for my excellent bravery and fine guts by eating the Cliff Bar that waits for me on the dashboard, and maybe snorting some of the crystal meth that’s in the glovebox. Just to stay sharp. If I can just get in the car, get the gun, then I know I’ll make it. Once I’ve got the gun. Edna, Baumer and Mister Bear will get theirs, by shotgun or by steel belted radial.

Shit. I’m going to have to change the tire as well. But I can do that. Marv Pushkin can do it. Marv Pushkin can do anything, because the universe loves Marv Pushkin. I always win. But it’s going to be hard. I’m going to need a superhuman dose of drugs. I’ve got three OxySufnix left and four or five other pills, I really couldn’t tell you what they are but I’m sure they’re good or I wouldn’t have paid that spotty-faced Canadian air guitarist fifty American dollars for them in that alleyway in Vancouver. Here goes, I’m taking them all right now and washing them down with my very last swig of Diet Pepsi. I’ll give them an hour or so to kick in, and then: Marv Gets Busy.

Morning of the fourth day. Image Team is striking camp about now, scraping egg off the Coleman stove, scattering the beer cans and de-boning the tents, setting fire to the inflatable couch. If Frank and Edna walked here from there, how far could it be? A mile? No more than two. Will they pass this way on their drive home?

Home. When I close my eyes I see the road to freedom, the highway out to Anchorage, the pancake houses and bait shops, the trees and gravel and buckling asphalt. The mile signs speed past and shrink down the horizon in the rear view mirror like shit down a toilet. Get me to the ferry building, put me on the gigantic man-made steel boat and motor me away from this medieval third-world state. I want to hear those ferry engines roar, I want to see them frappé the ocean, chopping up sea life with their man-made splendor, I want to sit in the snack bar and watch the coastline glide away from me while I enjoy crisp, salty Lay’s potato chips from a foil-impregnated disposable plastic pouch covered with beautiful, seductive advertisements. I want to eat the kind of pre-hunted, pre-killed, pre-skinned, pre-cooked, non-dangerous food that won’t become stale or lose crispiness or bite off your legs. The bag shall be covered with joyous paeans to the remarkable flavors and textures within, serving to heighten the exquisite experience of consumption. A list of the chemical additives, a splendid display of UPC zebra stripes, and a website address will also be provided, so that if necessary my Lay’s potato chips may provide hours of reading pleasure. I will eat, savor, enjoy and consume every last crispy yellow divot of potato, save for a few greasy crumbs at the very bottom of the bag which I won’t bother to eat because I’m
rich
! Rich enough to buy another sack, ten sacks, every sack of potato chips on the boat! I could eat potato chips every day for breakfast lunch and dinner and it would never put a dent in Northwest Chemical Bank’s constantly escalating numeric representation of my societal worth. And when I’ve finished savoring those delicious, frivolously cheap potato chips I will bundle up the non-biodegradable plastic and foil sack into a little ball, walk or crawl or slither to the side railing of the ferry boat, and hurl my litter at the nearest whale, who I hope will choke on it.

Nature is a thorn in humanity’s side. Nature’s time has come and passed, and I fucking hate nature. Hate it hate it hate it. When I get home, I’m going to eliminate all nature from my life, starting with Wagner.

America almost had nature beat back in the fifties, but then those whale-hugging longhairs worked their way into the infrastructure of society and ate away at our resolve. They declared a cease-fire with Nature, but Nature doesn’t know when to quit. Nature keeps spoiling for another fight, and I swear on the dashboard of my Rover that Nature is going to get one from me. I am Homo Sapiens, a Human, and Humans run this planet. Nature is our servant and Nature is our sandwich. Nature could supply us with fresh King Crab, wild Chinook salmon and exotic hardwoods for our mini-bars, and Nature could be satisfied with that, but no, Nature won’t learn its place. Nature has to get uppity. So I say: Nature, you are fired.

Alaska, your yard is a mess and the neighbors are concerned. Your excessive sprawl of unregulated Nature must be mowed and edged. Your woods are training camps for terrorist bears; we must log them. Your tundra is full of dangerous road hazards: we must flatten, grade and pave it. Your oil and natural gas reserves might explode at any moment; it is urgent that we drain them. You need cell phone towers and 24-hour convenience stores and freeways full of cops. You need highways and condominiums and billboards, lots of billboards. You need goods and services, DMX radio and Direct TV. You need wireless Internet access in your cars. Only then will America be safe from the natural threat.

You’ll thank us later, Alaska. Look at the squalor you live in, your rotting little cabins, your mosquitoes and mud everywhere. Nature victimizes innocent Alaskans every day and you just put up with it. You deserve more, Alaska. One fine day you will go to work in modern, well-lit telemarketing centers instead of dingy dangerous fishing boats. Someday you will meet your deaths in bright clean traffic calamities instead of dirty dark forests like this one.

My brother Jimmy died in traffic. Mom was at work and Jimmy came home after school and I guess he was hungry, apparently he ate something he found under the sink, he thought it was Tang but it was more like Drano. He couldn’t breathe, he was choking, drooling blood according to the testimony from the driver of the truck that hit him when he ran out of the apartment and into the expressway. I guess he thought someone would pull over and help him.

But I didn’t get those details until years after the funeral. The first I heard about Jimmy’s demise was Dad screaming and wailing and shattering the cordless phone against the wall and stomping on the plastic pieces. Then he called me downstairs and made me sit on the sofa so he could tell me something: that Jimmy’s not coming next week, Jimmy’s never coming, Jimmy’s never doing anything any more because of my stupid mother. And then he turned away from me and squeezed his face with his hands, and then when I spoke he turned back and slapped me open handed across the mouth, and then he ran downstairs to the TV room, where he was never to be disturbed, and reclined on his reclining TV seat and whimpered. From down below me he yelled me the news through the heating ducts: Jimmy’s Dead.

Jimmy was only five and I was only six, and as I understood Death, it only happened to old people, sick people and animals in slaughterhouses. Unless someone shoots you with a gun. So I wondered who had shot Jimmy with a gun? It must have been Mom, because that’s what Dad said. Boy, I thought, Jimmy must have been very, very naughty for Mom to shoot him. And if Mom would shoot Jimmy, would Dad shoot me to get even? Getting even with Mom was all he talked about back then.

I started to wonder when Dad would get around to shooting me. As we rented our clothes for the funeral I thought he’d shoot me because I buttoned my shirt wrong and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. On the drive to the funeral I thought he’d shoot me when the car started making an unfixable noise. On the drive home from the funeral I was sure he was going to shoot me soon, because he kept talking about how brave you have to be to get along in the world all by yourself, with no family. Somehow I thought he was talking about himself getting along without me, not vise versa. I didn’t know what suicide was. But the following week at school I was called to the nurse’s office and Mom was waiting there, looking eternally tired. She made me sit down on the school psychologist’s sofa and explained to me that now I was the Last of the Pushkins.

If you weren’t so god-damned imaginary you might be wondering why I’m telling you all this. Here’s why: when I found out that Dad had died and I would live, I decided right there and then I would never allow anyone to shoot me, nor would I die for any other reason. Other people could go ahead and die if they wanted, but that was not for me. I wouldn’t die or lose or be told no, I would have it all my way every day. Other people could suffer, other people could starve or have accidents or get cancer, but not me. And I would take care of myself, because my parents obviously couldn’t be trusted. I would put myself first, for my own safety.

I was born anew that day, the day I made that decision. And it’s a strange, beautiful joke of human nature how, once you decide that you are worth a little more than other people, you start to meet other people who think they are worth a little bit less than you. The more you take care of yourself, the more others want to take care of you. Not all the people, but enough of them. The road to the top is paved with other people’s smiling faces, and those people, by and large, volunteer their faces to be stepped on. It’s a funny fact of life. Knowing that, I’ve climbed, and I’ll keep climbing. I’m climbing over Edna and Baumer and Image Team, I’m pulling myself from the twisted wreckage of this weekend and I’m not slowing down. I will not die. I will not lose. I will not starve or go mad or have accidents. I’m doing everything right from now on. I am going to win. I will return to Wilson & Saunders with the bloody trophies in hand, and ascend, Christ-like, to the gilded halls of the top floor.