The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (12 page)

Lennon Bagg smacked his Jeep Wrangler’s dashboard with the palm of his hand, cracking the plastic vent hinge but in no way
improving the functioning of
the struggling air conditioner. Snapping the fan lever from high to low and back again also didn’t help.

The radio still worked, so
he turned the dial until
he found the closest thing to rock and roll.

Bagg was a reporter for the
Atlantic County
Beacon
, a mid-sized daily newspaper based in Pleasantville, New Jersey, ten or so minutes west of Atlantic City, with seven small bureaus spread out around the county from Buena to Egg Harbor to Brigantine. Bagg
was in no real hurry to get to this particular spot news
assignment
. A news event
that
a few months ago would have sent him flying out of the parking lot, breaking a dozen traffic laws
,
and risking life and limb in order to get to the scene as fast as possible. A few seconds could mean everything, especially if he was ahead of the photographer,
because
Bagg also took pictures. Although it was far and away better to witness events firsthand
—
humans
being
incredibly unreliable and inaccurate witnesses
—
getting the story
was
usually
a simple matter of piecing together bystander and cop accounts. But
while
you could recreate
events
with words, once a jumper jumped or a fireman doused the fire, the best photo opportunity was
gone
.

The
dark cloud of
malaise
that
had come over Bagg was the same
one
that enveloped the entire newsroom.
The
Beacon
’s
publisher and executive editor had called a mandatory meeting for all editorial staff a week
earlier
to announce
that
the distinguished, award-winning, eighty-
seven
-
year run of the paper was coming to an abrupt end.

“It’s just about over, folks,
”
their Ukrainian-born publisher, Semen Gnatenko
,
said with
what appeared to be
a truly heavy heart. “We
have
maybe two weeks, the accountants tell me. You all have been a part of my family, and this is the saddest day of my life.
”

Mr. G, as he was affectionately known, had tried everything from raising advertising prices to slashing the hell out of advertising prices. He
had
tried pushing his editors to get the investigative reporters to uncover dirty political secrets; he
had
tried pushing the same editors into having the reporters cover up the dirty politics
to
keep everyone happy. Mr. G had tried everything, which
eventually
resulted in subscribers, business owners, and all the local politicians distrust
ing
the content of his newspaper.
Roughly half the letters to the editor these days were filled with profanities and threats against the news staff.

Not that anything the publisher could have done stood any real chance of working. Even the top newspapers in the country with Pulitzer Prize winning reporters and nationally syndicated columnists were failing, one by one. It was the Baaton Death Marc
h of words, a Trail of Tears. I
t was a My Lai without the cover up. Newspapers were sick elephants, dropping away from the herd as if
heeding the
call
of
mythical dying grounds. Like a last heavy bundle of papers tossed from the back of a delivery truck with a banner headline saying “Farewel
l,
”
the elephant
dropped
to the dirt next to the bones of its ancestors.

The staff of the
Atlantic County
Beacon
listened, some crying. This was the only working life m
ost of these people
had
kn
o
w
n,
Bagg included. There was no escape from the back of a dying elephant. If you were lucky, you just moved to the back of another, buying yourself a little more time. Bagg and
the rest
exited
the newsroom
,
left
the meeting
in shock,
squinting into the afternoon sun on what should have been a beautiful spring day.

To Bagg, though,
his stint with the newspaper
was just another
segment
of his life to mourn. And this mourning was a piece of cake compared to the last five plus years following his divorce and the disappearance of his little girl. Mom had loaded her on a plane bound from
Philadelphia International Airport
to somewhere else, probably far, far away. The police were sympathetic at first, but sympathy
meant nothing if it wasn’t followed by
action.

“She’s with her mother, right?
”
a detective had rhetorically asked Bagg.

“She’s been gone three weeks,
”
Bagg had said. “I have a court order.
”

But
to these cops,
the rolled up court order in Bagg’s hand, with the
official looking
raised seal and explicit wording
dictating
who had custody and when, might just as well
have
been a supermarket sales flyer.

“We have season passes to Sesame Place
.
”
Bagg
had
lowered
his head into his hands, slumping in a chair
in
the detective’s small cubicle. Family photos lined the walls of the miniature office.
In one
,
t
he detective flashed a huge grin while
towering
over his son, who awkwardly held out a string of brook trout. Both wore baseball cap
s
with the same insignia.
In other photos, t
he same boy
flashed
a thumbs-up while sitting in a go-kart
and
a chubby-cheeked baby girl, a pink ribbon clipped to a tuft of fine blond hair,
was cradled
in th
e arms of the detective’s wife.

Bagg’s entire life changed when his daughter was stolen away. He’d dealt okay with the divorce and
,
although it hadn’t been his idea,
he hadn’t
f
ou
ght it. There had been plenty of fighting already. He was pretty
sure
his wife had slept with one of her coworkers
,
and that was something you could never take back. Maybe they’d been in crazy mad love when they’d first married seven years before the divorce, but if someone asked Bagg about the love of his life, he’d immediately think
of
his daughter,
Morgan.

Morgan Bagg was almost five
years old and just about to finish Pre-K when she went missing. Bagg learned that when a parent
stole
away a child
in New Jersey
,
it
wasn’t
called kidnapping, but it sure felt like it. That summer was going to be perfect, with weekends spent at Sesame Place, and the
joint-custody arrangement
gave them a full week together in August. He’d collected tourist brochures in diners to
plan
the best week ever.
Trips to a wave pool, the shore, and a
real
cave. And they’d catch movies any night they weren’t too worn out.

Bagg had coached Morgan’s
soccer team, which was a little like herding puppies up and down a miniature field. Morgan
had
wanted to play again, especially after she and her teammates
had been
given trophies at the team pizza party following
the
last game.

The trophy was still on her bedroom dresser at Bagg’s apartment. Bagg knew it was there
, although he
hadn’t
looked at
it in more than five years. He’d stayed in the same apartment so she could always find him, but Bagg couldn’t go back in
to
that room. He kept the door closed but would sometimes stop outside and just
lay the
palm
of his hand on
the wood door. Once, when he’d gotten drunk off a bottle of cheap gin while watching an old black and white movie on television, Bagg had lumbered down the hall and pressed
an
ear to his daughter’s bedroom door.

He’d stood propped against the door, tears running down his stubbly face, the gin bottle dangling from one hand. Bagg
had
held his breath and listened as hard as he could. And from what seemed a million miles away, Bagg
had been
certain
he
’d
heard the ocean. Waves breaking over
a sa
ndy beach and seagulls squawking, bickering
above.

Bagg’s legs
had gone
weak and
he’d
struggled to keep his ear to the ocean as he slid down the door.
He had
sat there crumpled on the floor listening
, gin
pooling
around the seat of his pants
as the bottle slid from his grasp.

“Where are you?
”
Bagg
had
whispered, but there
had been
no answer and he
’d
eventually
fallen
asleep, taken away by the ebbing tide.

There, in a puddle of juniper scented alcohol,
Bagg
had
dreamed.
Dreamed his ex-wife had shown up with their daughter as scheduled.
After
help
ing with
dinner,
Morgan had lain on top of
her father
during the next
two cartoons then
brought up
the same dozen reasons bedtime w
asn’t
as important as the next show.

As it
had
always
been
with his daughter, time slipped away practically unnoticed.
Then came
that quiet time just after the cat had fallen asleep but the hamster had not yet awakened to activate his maddening squeaky wheel. Teeth had been brushed after a last chance on the potty, followed by the fluffing of pillows and the tucking of blankets. This was a broken home, which made the rituals all the more important.

“I have a brand new story,
”
Lennon Bagg told his little girl, as he sat on the edge of her bed, somewhere near her pudgy and scuffed knees encased in the
too
-
small footy pajamas. Despite some squeezing and sucking in of breath, these jammies
had
not
been
replaceable. So what if she
could
no longer zip them anywhere near her chin?

“I don’t
want a new story,
”
Morgan said,
sounding
a little worried that her dad m
ight
not be teasing. “Our story is perfectly fine.
”

“A story about a friendly witch wh
o only kidnaps naughty children.
”

“Our story is about a circus,
”
she said.

“Okay, it’s about a circus.
”

“And there’s a bear!
”
she squealed.

“Of course there’s a b
ear.
A proper circus has a bear.
”

“A dancing bear?
”

“Who’s telling this?
”
he asked.

“Okay.
”

“So there was this circus, and there was a happy dancing bear named Sally,
”
Bagg
beg
a
n
.

“Sadie.
”

“Okay, Sadie
.
But she wasn’t always a happy dancing bear. In fact, she’d been taught how to dance by a very bad man, in a very bad way.
”