The Bear Went Over the Mountain (11 page)

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Wheelock enthusiastically, as he was junior man in the department, and Settlemire’s study of
as if
s was already under contract with a major university press. It was inconceivable to Wheelock that anyone gave a fuck about the number of times Frost used
as if
, but he knew he had much to learn about success.

“Temporal simultaneity, you see,” continued Settlemire. “Crucial to grasping Frost. Which is where those .07
as if
s per page come in. Does one make oneself clear?”

“Absolutely.” What Wheelock was most clear on was that cutbacks in the English department were anticipated now that government funding had fallen off. Settlemire, with his six-foot swaggering frame, his handsome head, and his
as if
s, was a permanent fixture in the department. Wheelock’s own position was shaky. But if Bramhall were out of the picture …

“How I wish Frost were still alive,” said Settlemire. “I’d love to present him with my
as if
s.”

“I’m sure he would appreciate them.”

“One feels connected to his spirit anyway,” said Settlemire. “Diligence, perhaps that’s the secret. Pouncing on the
as ifs
.”

“I envy you that,” said Wheelock, who had yet to pounce on anything.

“Your work is still gestating,” said Settlemire kindly.

“I think this is Bramhall’s road.”

They took the winding unpaved road for several miles, to Bramhall’s lane. “I wonder,” said Wheelock, “if what we’ve heard about his health is true.”

“Any man who sets out to make a deliberate copy of a best-seller is flirting with ethical fragmentation.” Settlemire smiled a superior smile, but said no more, and Wheelock felt a peculiar mixture of apprehension and hope. The head of the English department had sent them out to reconnoiter the situation. Bramhall had been ignoring
all department correspondence, and his sabbatical was over. Rumors were flying around about a mental breakdown. The head of the department had to know. The question in Wheelock’s head was this: If Bramhall goes, will I replace him? Much as Wheelock had always liked Bramhall, he was hoping to find him dead or out of his mind.

They parked in front of Bramhall’s cabin and got out. Settlemire knocked loudly on the door. The knock went unanswered. “Perhaps the fields?” Settlemire led the way, through the apple orchard, along a wagon path. “He’s wasted his sabbatical, that much I can tell you. When I took my last sabbatical I worked, Wheelock. I counted
likes
. It was a grueling task, but one knew it was essential to any sort of understanding of Frost. Nowadays, of course, the computer does the counting. That’s how Pettingzoo wrote his
Numbers of Nowhere in Wallace Stevens
. One’s point is this, however—one must work. Not make a blatant copy of
Don’t, Mr. Drummond
.” Settlemire winged a stone into the woods with a smooth, graceful snap. “Modern American literature is Bramhall’s field. He could have been counting
likes
in any number of authors. I’ve broken the ground. The way is clear. A new branch of critical thought has been opened. He could have had his place in that movement. But no. He chose otherwise.”

Wheelock pointed toward the barn door. Bramhall
had just appeared in it, glancing furtively outward. Wheelock’s heart leapt.
He’s paranoid. Oh, perfect, perfect
 …

They approached their colleague, and Settlemire called, “Bramhall, how are you?”

Bramhall eyed them in silence. Peculiar ideas were sprocketing along in his brain with a speed a mad inventor would envy. By some wonderful alchemy which he was hard-pressed to understand, his perception at this moment included the presence of a groundhog whose tunnel was near where Settlemire and Wheelock were walking. Bramhall felt the groundhog’s uneasiness, even seemed to feel its thoughts—caution, suspicion—you never know who might shove a rat terrier down your hole.

Settlemire came up to Bramhall and extended his hand. “Good to see you, old man. One hears that you might be unwell.”

“A bear stole my book.”

Settlemire cast a quick glance toward Wheelock, of the sort attendants at mental institutions give each other when a new messiah is admitted to their floor. “A bear stole your book. Incredible. One didn’t know bears did such things.”

Bramhall caught the cynicism, but was not offended. His attention was on his subterranean acquaintance, the groundhog who was nervously enlarging his bolt-hole, that all-important escape hatch a prudent rodent
must attend to. Just a precaution, said the shadowy voice in Bramhall’s head, touch-up work mainly, mustn’t be taken unprepared when the hostile snout comes calling.

Wheelock said, “We’ve all been concerned for you, Arthur.”

Bramhall’s nose twitched. The smell that was coming from Wheelock was ambition, a sweet greasy smell, as if Wheelock were roasting a pig in his shirt.

“The department was wondering if you’ve had trouble with your mail,” said Settlemire.

“I don’t open mail anymore.”

“Ah.” Wheelock was noting Bramhall’s filthy pants. And he seems to be sprouting hair on his forehead. Glandular disturbance?

“Look here, Arthur, I brought along a copy of my
Qualified Qualifiers in Frost
. It’s only a beginning but it points the way. Plenty of room for more research there.”

Bramhall sniffed Settlemire’s academic self-satisfaction, the smell of dead flies baking on an attic windowsill.

“One assumes you’re finished copying best-sellers. All right, it didn’t work out. A bear stole it, whatever, anything you like. We don’t need an explanation. The point is, all is not lost.”

“Maybe Arthur doesn’t feel up to university work,” said Wheelock hopefully. “We mustn’t push him.”

Bramhall turned away, into the sweet hay smell of
the barn. Its stout timbers, its sun-dried boards, its age, steadied him against these emissaries from his former life.

“Arthur,” said Wheelock gently, “should we call a doctor?”

Bramhall lowered himself onto an old hay bale in one of the horse stalls and shook his head no. He envied the groundhog its bolt-hole, that secret place in which to vanish when unwelcome visitors disturb your tranquil meditation.

“I’m going to leave my book here on the hay,” said Settlemire. Bramhall nodded again, aware that his silence was signaling the end of his life as a U Maine professor.

“We’re going now, Arthur. We’ll tell everyone you said hello. And give
Qualified Qualifiers
a glance. It might be just what you need.”

The two professors left the barn and walked back across the field. “I’d say he’s suffering a depression,” said Settlemire. “Like Hamlet, you know. A world ‘weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.’ ”

“I think, perhaps, something a little more serious,” suggested Wheelock, his glance falling on a whitened bone in the grass, of some creature whose days of roaming had ended, precisely here.

Back in the barn, Bramhall remained on his bale of hay, gazing at the smooth poles that formed the walls of the horse stall. There were patterns on one of the poles, left by some insect that’d burrowed along under the bark.
He traced the patterns, with the sense of reading the work of an alien calligrapher, whose life story was here. The script, though impenetrable, weighed more strongly with him than Settlemire’s
Qualified Qualifiers
.

The rumble of a car sounded on the wagon road that led to the barn. Looking out the door, he saw the fur-bearing woman at the wheel. She drove to the barn, parked, and got out. The groundhog popped its head out of its hole and let out a long humanlike whistle. The fur-bearing woman turned toward it and smiled, then looked back toward Bramhall. “I love groundhogs. They’re the only ones who ever whistle at me.”

She approached the barn slowly. She’d heard that Arthur had begun living closer to the land, and this rumor had renewed her interest in him. She was wearing a heavy flannel shirt and jeans and carried a bunch of dried flowers. Entering the barn, she said, “I was picking herbs for winter and thought I’d bring you some.” She’d woven dried flowers into her hair, and her voice was as sweet as the golden apples waiting to fall from the trees of the nearby orchard. As she sat down on the hay, her jeans pulled up slightly, revealing her hairy calves. Bramhall found them irresistibly attractive.

He lay in the hayloft of his barn with the fur-bearing woman beside him. Now that her flannel shirt was off he
saw that she had fur under her arms too. She used no deodorant and an exciting odor enveloped him as she lifted her arms to unpin her hair.

Having expected cautious foreplay from the shy and timid professor, the fur-bearing woman was astounded when Bramhall spun her roughly around and bent her over.

“Arthur … my goodness …” Her personal space was being invaded too quickly. In fact, it’d just been filled up completely.

The little barn birds dived and twittered, feeling their nests of mud and sticks being shaken in the rafters. Oh, these clumsy humans, they’re so heavy, and a nest is a delicate thing.

A growl rattled in Bramhall’s throat. He bit the fur-bearing woman on the shoulder and felt an odd sensation at the tip of his coccyx, as if a tail were vigorously twitching there. Then he experienced the kind of orgasm the hero of his book had enjoyed, one that seemed to tap a huge reservoir of pleasure from deep inside the earth.

The fur-bearing woman’s toes curled around the dry stalks of hay. When the tide of her own ecstasy subsided she looked back over her shoulder and saw Bramhall gazing at her. “You’re a force of nature,” she murmured, running her hand over his surprisingly burly chest.

The little birds swooped in and out of the barn, chattering
to each other. Their nests were safe now but it’d been touch and go while the humans were humping.

“A bear stole my novel.” Bramhall muttered his mantra up at the high ceiling of the barn.

“What do you mean?”

Bramhall did not immediately respond, as words no longer came easily to him. But finally a fragment surfaced from his life as a literature professor. “Shakespeare’s
Winter’s Tale
. Stage direction, act three, scene three.” He stood, and without bothering to put on his pants and shirt walked to the barn door. “Exit, pursued by a bear,” he said, and headed toward the woods.

“Arthur!” The fur-bearing woman, though a daughter of nature, was not prepared to wander the woods naked, especially in the cold. She hurriedly put on her clothes. “Wait for me!” By the time she reached the edge of the trees, Bramhall had vanished. The fur-bearing woman looked for a path but there was none. She felt as if she’d just been initiated into a frightening mystery of the forest. He’d said something about a bear stealing his novel, but what could that mean? Was he saying that his book had been channeled by a bear spirit? Did that account for his wild sexual performance? What secret power did this man possess? And what weekend seminar had given it to him?

The bear strolled through Greenwich Village in the bracing autumn air. A lovely night for a two-legged walk, he said to himself. Getting along like a real human being. Baseball hat, clip-on tie, comfortable shoes. What more could a bear ask for?

He was starting to enjoy crowds of people, with all their perfumed smells. His book had been purchased by Universal Studios for a million and a half dollars and Elliot Gadson had taken him to his own tailor, where several new suits had been made, one of which the bear wore this evening, a gray tweed which fit him perfectly. The tailor had expressed strong objections to the clip-on tie, but there are some points on which one can’t compromise, reflected the bear to himself.

He entered Washington Square Park. The chess players were at their tables, and he paused to watch.

No one knows I’m a bear. Standing here, paws in my pockets. Just another hairy guy in the park. He walked on, with a lighthearted step. A young woman went by on roller blades,
arms swinging briskly. I should get a pair of those, he thought to himself, a contemporary bear on the move.

Engrossed in watching the roller blader, he did not see the dog exercise area until it was too late. Dogs were chasing sticks and chasing each other and attempting various forms of intercourse. A male beagle came around a tree on the run, ears back, body low and almost flying. As he did so, he got wind of the bear. He skidded to a stop, stared for a moment, then threw his head back and let out the ancestral howl. It cut through the yapping and growling of the other dogs. It was the sound of the hunt. The other dogs took up the cry and raced to the fence, throwing themselves against it as they howled and barked, hackles up, teeth flashing.

The bear quickly changed course, pulling his baseball cap down over his head and trying to blend, but after a few anxious steps he reverted to bear-walking on all fours.

“Smoke, smoke,” said a voice above him.

He forced himself to come upright, beside a man with matted hair and a ring in his ear.

“Grass, hash, crack,” said the Jamaican entrepreneur, falling into step beside him. “What you fancy, mon?”

“Potato chips,” said the bear with a nervous look back toward the dogs.