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  The woods are thick along either side of the dirt road, red maples shedding their leaves, tall pines dropping cones across the forest floor. We slow down to pass over a small bridge; the creek below is fogged with early morning mist, its clear waters rushing across smooth granite boulders. Jimmy Ray slurps the last of his Mountain Dew, then tosses the empty box out the window. "God, what a beautiful morning," he says, glancing up through the sunroof. "Great day to be alive." Then he winks at me. "Less'n you're a teb, of course."

  Another quarter-mile down the road, he pulls over to the side. " 'Kay, here we is." The door rasps on its hinges as Jimmy Ray shoves it open; he grunts softly as he pries his massive belly from behind the wheel and climbs down from the cab. Another few moments to unrack his rifle from the rear window – a Savage .30-.06 bolt-action equipped with a scope – before sauntering over to the back of the truck. The canopy window sports stickers for the NRA and a country-rock band; he throws open the hatch, then pulls out a couple of bright orange hunting vests and a sixpack of Budweiser.

  "Here. You can carry this." Jimmy Ray hands me the beer. He reaches into his jacket pocket, produces a laminated hunting license on an aluminum chain; briefly removing his dirty cap to reveal the bald spot in the midst of his thick black hair, he pulls the chain around his neck, letting the license dangle across his chest. He removes the chewing tobacco from his pocket and uncaps it, then pulls out a thick wad and shoves it into the left side of his face between the cheek and his teeth. He tosses the can into the back of the truck, slams the hatch shut. "Hokay," he says, his inflection garbled by the chaw in his mouth, "les' go huntin'."

  About fifteen feet into the woods, we come upon a narrow trail, leading east toward a hill a couple miles away. "Got my blind set up that way," he says quietly. "We may come up on one'a them 'fore that, but it won' matter much. This is real easy, once y'know how to do it. All y'need is the right bait."

  We continue down the trail. We're a long way from the nearest house, but Jimmy Ray is confident that we'll find tebs out here. "People git sick of havin' 'em 'round, so they drive out here, set 'em loose in the woods." He turns his head, hocks brown juice into the undergrowth. "They figger they'll get by, forage for berries and roots, that sort of thing. Or maybe they think they'll just up and die once winter kicks in. But they 'dapt to jus' 'bout any place you put 'em, and they breed like crazy."

  Another spit. "So 'fore you know it, they're eatin' up everythin' they can find, which don't leave much for anythin' else out here. An' when they're done with that, they come out of the woods, start raidin' farm crops, goin' through people's garbage . . . whatever they can find. Hungry lil' peckers."

  He shakes his head. "I dunno what people find cute about 'em. You wanna good pet, you go get yourself a dog or a cat. Hell, a fish or a lizard, if that's your thing. But there's something jus' not right 'bout tebs. I mean, if God had meant animals to talk, he would'a . . ." He thinks about this a moment, dredging the depths of his intellect. "I dunno. Given 'em a dictionary or sum'pin."

  Jimmy Ray's not particularly careful about avoiding the dry leaves that have fallen across the trail, even though they crunch loudly beneath the soles of his boots. It's almost as if he wants the tebs to know he's coming. "Talked once to an environmentalist from the state wildlife commission," he says after awhile. "Said that tebs are what you call a weed species . . . somethin' that gits transported into a diff'rent environment and jus' takes over. Like, y'know, kudzu or tiger mussels, or those fish . . . y'know, the snakeheads, the ones that can walk across dry land . . . that got loose up in Maryland some years ago. Tebs are jus' the same way. Only diff'rence is that they were bio . . . bio . . . whatchamacallit, that word . . ."

  "Bioengineered."

  "Thas'it. Bioengineered . . . so now they're smarter than the average bear." He grins at me. "'Member that cartoon show? 'I'm smarter than the average bear.' I sure loved that when . . ."

  Suddenly, he halts, falls silent. I don't know what he's seen or heard, but I stop as well. Jimmy Ray scans the forest surrounding us, peering into the sun-dappled shadows. At first, I don't hear anything. Then, just for a moment, something rustles within the lower limbs of a maple a couple dozen yards away, and I hear a thin, high-pitched voice:

  "Come out and play . . . come out and play . . ."

  "Oh, yeah," Jimmy Ray murmurs. "I gotcher playtime right here." He absently caresses his rifle as if he's stroking a lover, then glances back at me and grins. "C'mon. They know we're here. No sense in keepin' 'em waitin'."

  A few hundred yards later, the trail ends in a small clearing, a meadow bordered on all sides by woods. The morning sun touches the dew upon the autumn wildflowers, making the scene look like a picture from a children's storybook. And in the middle of the clearing, just where it should be, is a small wooden table with four tiny chairs placed around it. Kindergarten lawn furniture, the kind you'd find at Toys "R" Us, except that the paint is beginning to peel and there are old bloodstains soaked into the boards.

  "Hauled this stuff out here two seasons ago," Jimmy Ray says, pushing aside the high grass as we walk toward it. "Move it around, of course, and clean it off now and then, but it works like a damn." He smiles. "Learned it from
Field and Stream,
but this part is my idea. Wanna gimme that beer?"

  I hand him the six-pack; he rips the tops off the cartons and carefully places them on the table. "Book says you should use honey," he explains, his voice a near-whisper, "but that's expensive. Bud works just as well, maybe even better. They can smell the sugar, and the alcohol makes 'em slow. But that's my little secret, so don't tell anyone, y'hear?"

  The bait in place, we retreat to a small shack he's put up on the edge of the clearing. No larger than an outhouse, the blind has a narrow slit for a window. The only decoration is a mildewed girlie poster stapled to the inside wall. Jimmy Ray loads his rifle, inserting four rounds in the magazine and chambering a fifth, then lines up five more rounds on a small shelf beneath the window. "Won't take long," he says quietly, propping the rifle stock against the windowsill and focusing the scope upon the table. "First one saw us, so now he's tellin' his friends. They'll be here right soon."

  We wait silently for nearly an hour; Jimmy Ray turns his head now and then to spit into a corner of the blind, but otherwise he keeps his eye on the table. The shed is getting warm, and I'm beginning to doze off when Jimmy Ray taps my arm and nods toward the window.

  At first, I don't see anything. Then the tall grass on the other side of the clearing moves, as if something is passing through it. There's a soft click as Jimmy Ray disengages the safety, but otherwise he's perfectly still, waiting patiently for his prey to emerge.

  A few moments later, a small figure crawls into a chair, then hops on the table. The teb is full-grown, nearly three feet tall, its pelt black and soft as velvet. Its large brown eyes cautiously glance back and forth, then it waddles on its short hind legs across the table until it reaches the nearest beer. Leaning over, the teb picks up the carton, sniffs with its short muzzle. Then its mouth breaks into a smile.

  "Honey!" it yelps. "Oh boy, honey!"

  Jimmy Ray steals a moment to wink at me. Honey is what tebs call anything they like; either they can't tell the difference, or more likely their primitive vocal chords are incapable of enunciating more than a few simple words which they barely understand, much the way a myna bird can ask for a cracker without knowing exactly what it is.

  Now more tebs are coming out of the high grass: a pack of living teddy bears, the result of radical reconfiguration of the DNA of
Ursus americanus
, the American black bear. Never growing larger than cubs and bred for docility, they're as harmless as house cats, as friendly as beagles. The perfect companion for a child, except when people buy them for all the wrong reasons. And now the woods are full of them.

  "Honey! Oh, boy, honey!" Now the tebs are clambering onto the chairs, grabbing the beer cartons between the soft paws of their forelegs and draining them into their mouths. A perfect little teddy bear picnic. They're happy as can be, right up until the moment when Jimmy Ray squeezes the trigger.

  The first bullet strikes the largest teb in the chest, a clean shot that kills it even before it knows it's dead. The teb sitting in the next chair hasn't had time to react before the back of its head is blown off; the first two gunshots are echoing off the trees when the other tebs begin throwing themselves off the table, squeaking in terror. Jimmy Ray's third and forth shots go wild, but his fifth shot manages to wing a small teb who was a little too slow. It screams as it topples from its chair; by now the rest of the pack are fleeing for the woods, leaving behind the dead and wounded.

  "Damn!" Jimmy Ray quickly jams four more rounds into the rifle, then fires into the high grass where the tebs are running. "Quick lil' bastards, ain't they?"

  He spits out his chaw, then he reloads again before slamming open the shed door and stalking across the clearing to the table. He ignores the two dead tebs, walks over to the one he wounded. It's trying to crawl away, a thick red smear against the side of its chest. Seeing Jimmy Ray, it falls over on its back, raises its paws as if begging for mercy.

  "I . . . I . . . I wuv you so much!" Something it might have once said to a six-year-old girl, before her father decided that keeping it was too much of a hassle and abandoned it out here.

  "Yeah, I wuv you too, Pooh." And then Jimmy Ray points the rifle muzzle between its eyes and finishes the job.

  We spend another half-hour stalking the surviving members of the pack, but the other tebs have vanished, and before long Jimmy Ray notices vultures beginning to circle the clearing. He returns to the picnic table and checks out his kills. Two males and a female; even though he's disappointed that he couldn't have bagged any more, at least he's still within the season limit.

  So he ties their legs to a tree branch, and together we haul the three dead tebs back to his truck. Jimmy Ray absently whistles an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song as he dumps two of the corpses in the back of the truck; for the hell of it, he lashes the body of the biggest one to the front hood, just to give him bragging rights when he drops by the bar for a quick one on the way home.

  He's pleased with himself. Three pelts he can sell to a furrier, some fresh meat for his dogs, and another head for the collection in his den. Not bad, all things considered. He climbs into the truck, stuffs some more Red Man into his face, then slaps a CD into the deck.

  "But y'know what's even more fun?" he asks as we pull away. "Next month, it's unicorn season. Now there's good eatin'!"

  Then he puts the pedal to the metal and away we go, with a dead teddy bear tied to the hood and "Sweet Home Alabama" blasting from the speakers. It's a great day to be alive.

Fade in. (My memories always start with a fade-in, because I grew up in front of a TV set.) Night. I'm on a redeye Greyhound from Phoenix to Hollywood (see, I also remember in present tense, like a script or a rerun). The only light comes from the stars, making the bus seem like a spaceship crossing some interstellar gulf.

  The seat next to me is empty, so I'm stretched out over it, drifting off into sleep, but the bus stops in some middle-of-nowhere desert town. A big Indian gets on, walks past the family of rednecks who've been on the bus all the way from Kentucky, the black woman with a baby on her lap, several Mexicans – or maybe some type of Central American refugees – all wearing cowboy hats, and the Hindu mother and daughter who both have scorpions tattooed on their right hands to the only empty seat left – the one that my legs, jacket, and sketchbook are in.