Chapter 2: The Bear

[The previous chapters of this long piece of dreck can be found here]

The green hills and sunshine seemed quite natural to Sterling. It was part of his enchantment that the fact that he had just stepped out of a bar in a crowded city into the beauty and brightness of a mid-summer day didn’t bother him at all. Not much, really, ever bothered him. He was a child of the suburbs, and more-or-less perfectly uninterested in the flora and fauna that now surrounded him. The elaborate hedgerows that segmented the rolling hills didn’t strike him as odd, nor did the great sprays of privet and honeysuckle that flowered alongside double bloom forsythia and yellow lilac. The fact that the air was simultaneously scented with the vernal vigor of new growth and the desiccated earthiness of late summer grass didn’t register at all.

The hills stretched out and down before him, and through them wound a river and a set of happy looking broad-leaf woods. The beautiful people he was following quickly outpaced him. In a moment they seemed very far away, and he thought of yelling and chasing after them, but the day was so nice, and the walking so easy, that it didn’t seem to matter, and soon they passed from his view. He found himself walking alone.

He continued walking down hill towards the woods below. It seemed like the right thing to do. There were stonewalls among and between the hedgerows, and they ran downhill, except where they didn’t, and he soon picked up a small path that carried him away from the grasses and black-eyed Susans into a grove of elm and American chestnut trees. Here, at the periphery of the woods, standing at a crossroad made by yet another small path, he saw a bear.

The bear was standing quite still and staring at Sterling with a blank expression. Sterling stopped, and noted that the bear was wearing a red basketball jersey with the number 23 on it and that he carried a painting under one arm.

Though startled, Sterling was not afraid. The blank stare of the bear was unnerving, but not frightening. A kind of discomfort ran through him. It was the discomfort of not belonging. The same sensation one gets when one walks into a room of people only to discover that they are all strangers. A bit of social panic raced up Sterling’s back. He was unsure what to do, and still the bear stared.

Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, the bear lifted its snout and sniffed the air. It sniffed for a long time. Then the bear looked back at Sterling, blinked a few times, and said “do you want to get high?”

“Excuse me?” asked Sterling.

“I asked if you wanted to get high,” said the bear.

“You mean, like, smoke pot?”

“You were expecting Turkish delight?”

Sterling was confused, and he was sure his confusion registered on his face, though he suddenly felt even more self-conscious about how he smelled. He was certain that the bear could smell his confusion.

“Well…. I… would, sure, you know, I like to get high.”

“Good,” said the bear, “then come with me. I have a friend who lives near here and we can mooch off of him.”

“He won’t mind you bringing an uninvited guest?” Sterling asked.

“No,” said the bear, “We see each other every day and there isn’t that much to talk about. You will make it a party.”

“Good,” said Sterling, pleased that his company was desired by the bear.

“Do you mind carrying my painting?” asked the bear, “I prefer to walk on all fours, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” said Sterling.

One might wonder why Sterling Macy would accept an invitation to do drugs with a pot smoking bear and be so eager to agree to holding that bear’s painting, but Sterling, though directionless, came from a stable family and had enjoyed a placid childhood. When it came to issues of trust, he was trusting. He trusted that his health insurance would work, though he didn’t have any health insurance. He trusted in his own ability to make decisions, though he had no ability to make decisions, and he trusted that others would treat him fairly, though there was no reason why they should. Given all of these other things that he trusted there seemed no reason to not trust the bear. So he did.

The bear handed Sterling the painting, then dropped down onto four feet and set off, at a slow pace, into the woods. Sterling followed, watching the great black shape in front of him. He wasn’t sure whether he should try to make conversation. He decided not to. The bear said nothing to him. It just walked along, swinging its head to and fro, occasionally sniffing the air or stopping suddenly to stare at some specific point for a while before breaking away and beginning to walk again. When the bear stopped, Sterling stopped, and when the bear started again, Sterling began walking again.

After a while they left the main path and followed a smaller trail that led steeply downhill. There were large rocks and boulders on the path that made the footing difficult. The bear stopped more frequently here, and after one long pause where he stood atop a rock looking down for a long time, the bear looked at Sterling and said simply, “I don’t like walking down hill.”

“I understand, take your time,” said Sterling, which seemed to relieve the bear.

At one point in their journey the bear said, “My name is Shash.” He had a deep, plain voice, and his name seemed to register with Sterling as if Sterling had already known it from a dream. It was as if someone had held up an egg, and said “This is an egg.”

“My name is Sterling,” he told the bear. Shash ruminated on the name for a bit. “Steeerling, Sterrrling, Ster-ling” he mumbled, as if some part of the word was hard for him to pronounce.

They came to the bottom of the hill they were descending, and then walked a bit further to the edge of a very large meadow. Just on the edge of the meadow was an enormous pine tree. The pine tree sat on a mound, and in the mound, between the tree’s roots, were little windows and a wooden door, just like a hobbit hole. Not as tidy as a hobbit hole, but just as picturesque. Certainly this hole was as worthy of being made into a paperweight or snow globe as any hobbit hole, and if someone wanted to make tee shirts or post cards with pictures of this scene on them, they would probably make a lot of money. A lot of money.

To one side of the hole was a heavy looking sign with block letters on it that read “Randy Rabbit, Esq.”

“Here we are”, said the bear before knocking. He stood up to his full height before the door and it was now that Sterling could take in how massive and beautiful he was. On his hind legs the bear stood a good half foot taller than Sterling, who was five foot eight, and, Sterling guessed, the bear must have weighed about 400 pounds. His fur was of the deepest black. His limbs and paws were massive and powerful looking. He had a musky but pleasant smell to him, and his basketball jersey, which Sterling had spent a long time looking at while they were walking, was spotlessly clean and almost brand new.

As there was no answer to the knocking, the bear began to pound on the door with more vigor. He shouted, “Randy, it’s me, Shash. I brought a friend.”

Then the bear put a paw beside his mouth and turned to Sterling.

“Randy is afraid of pigs,” he said in a kind of croaking whisper.

Sterling wasn’t sure if the bear meant by “pigs”, but he didn’t get a chance to wonder because the door of the rabbit hole suddenly swung outward with a violent crash that could have easily caught the bear in the torso, but Shash, in an impressive display of anticipation, reaction, and agility, hopped out of the way of the swinging door as if he were well practiced at this exact maneuver.

“Couldn’t you fucking call me to say you were coming over?” asked a rabbit, who now stood in the open portal. “I was just about to flush my pill stash and shred the tally book.”

Then he looked at Sterling and paused. There was a long silence. The rabbit stared at Sterling for a long time, and Sterling was reminded of meeting the bear.

“Who the fuck is this kid?” the rabbit asked.

Next Chapter: Randy Rabbit and the Discussion of Metaphysics