The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (19 page)

Retrieving the How To book and a yellow legal pad from his car, Billy Wayne settled in on the
urine
-
scented cot to scribble out his first benediction, while the vanilla pudding was being prepared
in the cook’s tent
. He was convinced his time had finally come. He and everyone around him were here for a purpose. Billy Wayne Hooduk’s hand was not steady, but his number two pencil wrote with a flourish.

Jesper Springs didn’t give a flying rat’s ass whether or not there was some sort of God
either up there in the clouds
or yappin’ on some makeshift stage. Jesper’s life was centered around either bolting together ride parts or tearing tickets in half while waiting for the parts to loosen enough to be retightened. And he was too damn busy to wash the grease off his hands and arms seein’ they’d just grease right back up after drying off anyway.

After passing the word around about the
boss
wanting to give them a talkin’ to, Jesper took his place on one of the hay bales in the main tent, as had the forty or so other remaining performers and roustabouts. Getting the tents raised had taken priority, and the bleachers and other chairs were still strapped down on one of the big trucks. The hay bales were convenient because they were going to be used for mud control and mucking the animal
shit
.

Jesper Springs drew the extra twenty dollar
s
a week mechanics pay, but he often considered himself a magician. His one magic act was making himself disappear whenever he wanted to be invisible. Sitting right there on the hay bale, in plain sight as anyone else, Jesper slowed down his breathing and sat very still. The only moving parts were his eyeballs, and he even made them work in slow motion. Jesper could feel himself fading
;
light coming in from the big tent flap started flowing right through his sinewy, grease-stained body.

Invisible time was peaceful time, to Jesper. No worries about someone storming up from behind yelling to go clean this up, or go fix that goddamn thing he
ha
dn’t g
o
t
ten
around to fixing yesterday. Fact was, Jesper stopped hearing anything clearly when he went invisible. All the talking aroun
d him seemed far off,
like his ear was pressed up in a tin can, or something. He didn’t much care what people said, anyway. People
were
always yapping and yapping, believing everything they
were saying
without ever saying anything.

Invisibility
ought to be a high pa
id
performing act, but Jesper knew there wasn’t much hope. How d
id
you get even the dumbest of dumb, those people who slapped dollar bill after dollar bill on the counter to toss darts to win fifty cent toys, to pay
not
to
see you? That was a tough one. Once he figured that one out, he’d start on his second great mystery, which was how to keep himself invisible inside the ladies shower at the YWCA.

Jesper’s hay bale was off to the side of the contortionist’s platform he and the other mechanic had set up for the Hooduk guy to use. Jesper eyed all the smudges he’d left on its nice white paint and then looked down at his hands, a little embarrassed. He’d stuck around for the vanilla pudding and hoped nobody saw all his fingerprints. Jesper sat even more still, made himself a little more invisible.

Out walked their new boss in a shirt and tie, looking like the cat’s meow until he had to struggle his lardy ass up onto the platform. Jesper hadn’t figured on maybe getting a step stool. That hot little contortionist broad sure didn’t need any help
getting
up on that thing, no sir.

The new
boss
said something to the other mechanic standing next to the tent flap
, who then
fetch
ed
the first of three big trays of plastic cups filled up with vanilla pudding. Boxes of plastic spoons were also passed around, and everyone in the tent, including the
b
oss, dug in.

Being invisible and on the far side of the tent, Jesper was the last to get his cup and spoon, but the wait was sure worth it. Vanilla pudding might just be the best thing in the world, he thought, scooping thick yellow
spoonfuls into his piehole
. He slowed down to savor the rich flavor and remembered back to when his ma and pa were still livin’ back north of Chattanooga. His pa wasn’t allowed to drink on Christmas, and his ma used to mix up a big pot of vanilla pudding to go with the corn fritters and baked opossum. Jesper got a little misty thinking about those good days when everybody’s belly was full and pa wasn’t piss drunk, just wantin’ to slap you upside for nothin’.

Boss put his empty cup down and started talking about believing in only the things you could see
. T
hat wasn’t nothin’ hard to understand. Jesper had expected to be ignoring a lecture about not gettin’ caught knockin’ up any local girls. Or maybe he’d spout some of that fire and brimstone the travelin’ tent preachers dished out back north of Chattanooga. The
boss
had, after all, said he was God for shootin’ that homo’s tiger. Shit, Jesper thought to himself, I musta shot me a hundred coon
;
does that make me Mother fuckin’ Teresa?

“If you see me as your friend, then that’s exactly who I am,
”
Billy Wayne said
.
Jesper kind of liked that. The
boss
sure was nicer than those old Pisani pricks. Them cheap motherfuckers cheated him outta half his pay more than once for bein’ drunk and fallin’ asleep while running the tilt-a-whirl. Big fuckin’ deal
;
the kids got some extra time on the ride. And it was Jesper who had to
clean the seats they puked up o
n
anyway
.

“If you see me as your father, then that’s exactly who I am,
”
the Boss said, and Jesper figured that was a bad thing to be tellin’
these
people. Ain’t no way you should want people thinkin’ you’re just some lowdown child whoopin’ piece of shit. Jesper looked around the crowd of circus folk and felt sorry for the
boss
for sayin’ that. The
boss
don’t know circus folks.

“And if you see me as your God, then that’s exactly who I am,
”
Billy Wayne continued, and Jesper giggled. It weren’t no fire and brimstone, but somebody callin’ themselves God was a friggin’ hoot. Hey, God, Jesper thought, how’s
’
bout you raise my Shelly Girl up from the dead? Send that truck driver who ran down my dog straight to Hell and bring her back all fixed up good as new. Ain’t no real God looking down on this world who would allow a man’s best friend run over like that. No way.

“We’ll be more than performers and workers. We have a chance to be a family and fill our souls with love and kindness,
”
Billy Wayne told his audience, but Jesper Springs had his head down in his greasy hands, sulking about his dead dog. He didn’t pay any attention to the rest of what the
boss
had to say. He just sat there invisible.

The bear
cut loose an enormous fart in her sleep, vibrating the metal frame of the Jeep.

“Wow
.
”
Bagg turned the wheel out of the McDonald’s parking lot, back onto Route Nine headed north, trying his best to breath
e
the good outside air.

Bagg had used his cell phone to track down the reporter from his paper working on the fatal tiger attack in Atlantic City. The runaway bear in a tattered pink tutu, showing up on a golf course no more than ten miles away, had to be connected.

“The two men who died from the mauling were the owners of the whole shebang,
”
said the reporter, a veteran police beat reporter named Andy Cobb. He was
now
at his newsroom desk trying to gather background information on the circus and the deceased for a
follow
-
up story. “Old guys named Pisani were brothers. Uh,
Enzo
and Donato, ages unknown, but they looked to be a hundred and twenty, maybe older. I haven’t found out what town they’re from, but all the plates are Sarasota County, Florida. The only name we have for the dead human cannonball so far is Enrique. The tiger was the other fatality.
”

“What killed the tiger?
”

“Guy named William Wayne Hooduk, age thirty, from up in Asbury Park. He was a registered guest at the casino hotel that owned the parking lot. He popped the big cat with a .38 Special,
”
Cobb said,
the sounds of turning
notebook
pages in the background
. “Pretty spectacular shot, if you ask me. One weird thing about the gun
…
”

“What’s that?
”

“Hooduk claimed it was God’s .38 Special.
”

“Hard to confirm that, I guess.
”

“Oh, yeah, you’d think,
”
Cobb said. “But Hooduk also claim
s
he
i
s God.
”

“Does God have a criminal record?
”

“Just bullshit stuff. God has a history of setting small fires,
”
Cobb said. “Lots of probation and hand slapping. Looks like God mostly set garbage cans on fire.
”

“Where are they now?
”

“They be
at it out of town.
Cops took statement
s
and
told them to hit the bricks.
T
hey packed up in a big hurry and got outta Dodge. Cops didn’t say so, but I figure
there’s a stack of warrants coming back on them, you know? It’s gott
a be pretty typical for a trave
ling circus. Probably one of the reasons to run away and join the circus, am I right?
”

“I suppose,
”
Bagg said. “You know which
direction
they headed?
”

“North o
n Route Nine.
They pretty much cleaned out an all-night doughnut shop in Smithville. Something like fifteen circus trucks pulled up to the drive-thru window, scaring the shit out of the two Indian girls working the late shift.
”

“State Police looking for them?
”

“Nah, not that I hear,
”
Cobb answered. “Not unless any felony warrants came back. The Atlantic City guys were more than happy to have them out of their hair. Imagine the hassle of what to do with all the animals?
”

“Yeah,
”
Bagg said, and a big toothless yawn erupted over his shoulder as
the bear
squeezed herself down behind the back seat,
seeming to
settl
e
into a deeper sleep. “You heard about the bear?
”

“You went out on that, right? What happened?
”

“I’m still working on it
.
”
Bagg
thought
about the cop he’d just knocked unconscious and the felony warrants
that
might be out on him right now. “There weren’t any reports of a bear getting loose from the circus?
”

“Nah.
And the bear would’ve had to run down the Expressway to get anywhere near where they sent you.
My guess is that
it
was p
robably a big black lab
seen by someone who had just watched the circus story on the late news.
Hey, you line anything up, yet? A new job, I mean.
”

“No, I have a bunch of
résumés
out
.
”
It was a lie.
Bagg hadn’t bothered looking for a new job.

“Yeah, I can’t find shit, either
.
I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do. Hey, I gotta go. I got a call from Sarasota on the other line.
”

“Good luck. You’re too good of a reporter not to get picked up by somebody.
”

“Yeah, well
it’s either that
or I’m selling vacuums door to door
,
”
Cobb said. “And, hey,
one more thing
?
”

“Yeah?
”

“
With all the shit going on with the paper, I know we all forgot what you’re still dealing with.
I’m sorry ab
out your daughter.
I’m real sorry.
Don’t give up hope.
”

“Thanks
.
I appreciate that
.
”
Bagg
clicked
his phone shut to cut off the call with his old friend.

Bagg listened to the snoring bear in the back of his Jeep for a while before twisting the key and heading north on Route Nine. He shifted gears gently, trying not to wake her. The
ir
duo
could travel
a lot more incognito
without
a slobbering bear hanging out the back window.

“I could always run away and join the circus,
”
Bagg told the sleeping bear. “That’s what people do, right?
”

*
*
*

Back at the
Absecon Golf and Country Club
, Officer
Gates
finally came to, wobbling to his knees and gathering up his weapon
, glasses,
and baseball-style uniform cap. Dizzy and suffering a miserable headache, the young cop nervously checked his immediate surroundings for any sign of the beast. The last thing he remembered was taking aim as it prepared to attack, but then everything went black.
Gates
reached up and found a knot on the ri
ght
side of his head. His fingertips came away
dotted
with small spots of coagulated blood, making his stomach roll and pitch and his head swim
again.
Christ
, he hated blood. Lurching forward
on
to all fours, the young cop threw up his breakfast, then dry-heaved as tears
squeezed
through
his
clenched eyelids.

What would his father have to say about this little cluster fuck? Officer
Gates
moaned from the thought. “Norman! Norman!
”
he could almost hear the kids and their taunting chant.
Who the fuck names their kid after a psychotic movie killer? And just when the joke was getting old, the goddamn movie studios release
d
a sequel to
start
round two of the torment.

“The bear attacked me,
”
Gates
told the deserted snack shack. “I tried to fight it off, but it threw me down to the floor. I thought I was going to die.
”

Gates
got hold of his breathing and replayed the lie in his head to see how it fit.

“I couldn’t risk discharging my weapon,
”
he explained. “The newspaper guy
…
”

Gates
hit a wall right there. He figured the bear took off, but where the hell was the reporter? And what about the girl and the goddamn EMT?
Gates
climbed to his feet as the dread began to spread through his body. He shakily made his way back through the front of the snack shack, his weapon again leading the way, his hat stuffed in his back pocket. He was
half
expecting to find a mangled reporter, and then a mangled waitress and EMT. They’d be all chewed to hell,
having been
torn from the back of the ambulance and
partially
eaten.

But the only things outside the small building were singing birds and his own Absecon police cruiser. The ambulance was gone, as was the reporter’s Jeep. And not a single sign of a wild bear.

“Thin air,
”
Officer
Gates
told the tweeting birds, holstering his gun and making his unsteady way toward his vehicle.

“Fore!
”
came a distant warning, and
Gates
understood it was
shouted
in his direction. He ducked and covered his already throbbing head with his arms, cringing as he waited for impact. His first reaction was relief as the shot came up a good fifteen yards shy of him. But the ball one
-
hopped the hard tenth hole tee area and smashed through the driver side window of his cruiser.

“Just fuck me
.
”
Gates
stepp
ed
up to his car, not bothering to look
at
the golfers. Officer
Gates
had resigned himself to small things like golf balls shattering his windows. Those things were easy enough to explain and weren’t something to worry about. He had the bear and the reporter and his father to think about right now.

Opening the cruiser door,
Gates
brushed a glittering pile of safety glass off the seat and climbed in. The radio on his hip crackled as the dispatcher sent one of the other officers to meet a subject to take a report on a stolen bicycle.

Officer
Gates
fingered the microphone talk button on his shoulder but didn’t press it right away. The bear was gone and so was everyone else. If a phone call had gone into dispatch about an officer down, this place would look like Grand Central Station by now, and a bird outside his broken window tweeted to confirm it was not.

Officer
Gates
found himself at a crossroad
s
as to what to do.

“Nothing,
”
he whispered to himself, starting the cruiser. “None of this shit happened.
”

Gates
slammed his foot on the gas pedal, spinning tires throwing divots of Kentucky bluegrass high in the air, as he raced past the approaching twosome.