The Bear Comes Home Read online

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  To: the Musicians, all of them

  In memoriam Steve McCall Julius Hemphill

  Ji

  "How can you make fan of Me, you whose hopes abide in Me?"

  "My trace is Yours and my quality is Yours. . . . My inexistence implies Your existence, my avarice Your generosity, my muteness Your word, my whisperings Your discourse. . . . Everything in accord with Your gift is made into Your praise." —Ibn 'Arabi

  pari

  one

  / didn 't come here and Fm not leaving.

  Willie Nelson

  '\

  .JiM

  11 was a hot day and the Bear worked hard for his money, dancing to Jones' harmonica, a disco cassette, a couple of Austrian marches and some belly-dance music. He guzzled a bottle of beer and shambled around groaning and pawing at the air. He let Jones wrestle him to the ground and plant his foot on his deep barrel chest to let out a victory cry. He let himself be led around in a circle by a chain through the ring in his nose so that the shoppers could laugh at him and applaud. He rolled in the gutter twice without looking up. They made about forty dollars.

  The Bear was a good act. He was a muzzy medium-brown bear who looked small enough to be safe when on all fours but absolutely huge when he reared up and stretched out his arms to get the oohs and aahs, that moment of awe without which no artistic production, even one that rolls itself in the gutter twice daily, can completely succeed. It was a small transfiguration, but it was sufficient unto the day, and it was probably what the people on the corner, after they had stopped laughing and wiping their mouths, took home with them when they left. Otherwise, the Bear knew his cues, never gave Jones any trouble on the job, and didn't pee in the street. When Jones led him home toward evening, the Bear's walk rolled him shoulder to shoulder, his head swayed genial and empty, his face was vacant and his eyes were glazed. Passersby were interested of course but seldom afraid. They may even have wondered more about Jones, a lean, almost spiffy man with lank brown hair and well-drawn if subsequently smudged features, apparently attached by a chain to a dancing bear. The Bear knew how to behave in company. He had the social number down.

  When they got home and upstairs—a narrow three-flight walkup with

  lo Rafi Zabor

  bare bulbs in the hall, cracked tile floors, old red paint and roaches—Jones undid the locks on the door and went in. The Bear came in after him, unsnapped the chain from the ring in his nose and dropped into the old green armchair beside the door. Fine dust whorled up from the upholstery in response.

  "Another day," said Jones.

  "Another dollar," completed the Bear.

  "Want a beer?"

  "Whatever's right." The Bear started drumming his claws on the threadbare arm of the chair.

  Jones opened a couple of cold Anchor Steams and sat down on the worn old trunk across from the Bear. "How you feeling," Jones asked him.

  "If I have to do another day of this shit," said the Bear, "I'm gonna go out of my mind."

  "What's the alternative? You think people are gonna accept you as you are?" Jones was getting shrill more quickly than usual. Maybe it was the heat. "They'll put you in a fucking freakshow, a museum. They'll stick your head so fall of electrodes you'll think you're Goldilocks." He took some beer. "Stick with the act. The act's good, anyhow it's the best we can do."

  "It's undignified," pronounced the Bear.

  "Don't I do it? Don't I do it too? All the same shit you do?"

  "Tomorrow," the Bear told him, "I step on your belly and yell like Tarzan and you take the roll in the gutter."

  Jones composed an elaborate frown, then let it slide.

  The Bear continued regardless. "You get to wear the chain in your nose but I still drink the beer. ... By the way," he said more seriously, "I want to work another beer or two into the act. And I'd like them cold."

  Jones said nothing, with unusual clarity.

  "Whatsamatter," said the Bear.

  "I worry," said Jones.

  "About?" the Bear prompted.

  "About you."

  "About h'l ol' mey the Bear said with a servile grin and a little bow in his seat. "You think I'll be an unruly beary-poo? Sexually or otherwise assault the clientele? Crap in the gutter? Go public and break into Kiiig Lear} Why ursine, wherefore base? Blow ye winds, crack your cheeks, and break the molds that make ungrateful man? Y'all worried about mey

  "Sometimes," said Jones, "you can be a real pain in the ass."

  "Whereas the rest of the time I'm just your bread and butter."

  "Bear .. ."Jones pleaded.

  The Bear Comes Home ii

  "One more lousy beer is all I ask," said the Bear, "when I can drink you under the table four or five times over."

  "Bodyweight," said Jones.

  "Character," said the Bear. "One more beer, Jones. I don't think that's so dangerous or temperamental. You see me playing the prima donna here? I don't think so. Get real."

  "Drinking on the job," said Jones, shaking his head and taking another swig of Steam.

  "That's the kind of job it is."

  "Exactly," said Jones, and burped. "Which is why an extra bottle of suds or two is dangerous. I wouldn't want to see you getting dependent on beer to get through the day. Remember, you had a problem once."

  "I was a comic little cub back then. I fell down a couple times."

  "Bad precedent, man."

  "I ain't," said the Bear, "a man."

  A silence ensued. They drank their beers and allowed themselves to relapse back into friendship, as they generally did after the ritual tiff about work. Sometimes they wondered if they had been together too long, but where else in the world could the Bear go and what, exactly, would Jones do in it without him?

  The Bear riffled through the far of his chest and Jones wiped sweat from the pale skin of his brow and brushed a lock of his brown hair back.

  It was getting twilight out, and the world was making twiHght sounds: the calls and cries of a few kids in the street, cars prowhng for a parking spot, Brokaw or whoever doing the news on TV, someone kicking a bucket around in the gutter, someone else whanging away at a streetlamp with a stick. The smell of frying chicken wafted in.

  "What's for dinner?" asked the Bear.

  "Can you deal with spaghetti again?"

  "I can deal with spaghetti."

  "I'll get a can of salmon and some berries for you tomorrow."

  "Aarh," said the Bear, "salmon's only good fresh, and we probably don't have enough cash for a couple of pounds."

  "Not after I pay the overdue electric bill we don't," Jones confirmed.

  "You got maybe some chopmeat?" asked the Bear.

  "I got."

  "Then make me a nice steak tartare appetizer."

  "I was saving it for the sauce."

  "You make a very nice meatless sauce and I need more protein than you. Make me an appetizer."

  12 Rafi Zabor

  Jones made a pass with his hands. "You're an appetizer," he said.

  "Aarghr," said the Bear.

  "You walked into it," said Jones. "Fair is fair. You set me up. You said it tvvice: make me an appetizer."

  "Right," said the Bear, swiping idly at the air. "You're an appetizer too."

  "What kind?" Jones perked up. "Beluga?"

  "You're chopmeat, Jones," said the Bear. "At the very best a can of salmon and a couple of very small berries."

  Jones and the Bear laughed at the old jokes and opened two more bottles of Anchor. Jones Ht a cigarette and they sat across from each other as the summer evening came on outside, bringing the first cool breeze of the day in through the open window.

  "Ah," said Jones.

&nbs
p; ^^Come with me,'' sang the Bear, ^''ifyou want to go to Kansas City.'" A pause followed, to accommodate the piano break.

  ''''Vm feeling so sad and blue, and my heart's full of sorrow'' sang Jones, who did not sing well and came in three beats early.

  '^ Don't know just what to do."

  " Where will I be tomorrow?"

  ''Got to go there."

  ''Really got to go. Really want to go there."

  "Really got to go there, sorry-but-I-can't-take-you," completed the Bear. There had been some omissions and mistakes.

  "Heh heh heh," said Jones. "And heh."

  "Heh. Make dinner."

  Jones got up. "All through thick and thin," he said.

  "Parker's been your fiend," sang the Bear. "Man!" he shouted, slamming his paw on the threadbare arm of the chair. "Charlie Parker!" The Bear beamed, a rippling wave worked its way through his fur, and there was a suggestion of a subtle glow about him from from top to toeclaw. "Bird!"

  Jones busied himself with the steak tartare, grumbling at the inadequacy of the beef, and the Bear laid his case flat across his knees and unpacked his alto. He checked the reed, worked the keys and blew a couple of phrases. Satisfied that both he and the saxophone were in working order he began to play "Parker's Mood," adding his own comments and emendations as the solo advanced. After five choruses, his eyes closed with pleasure, he leaned back in the armchair. "You know," he said, "I don't even have to play a bunch of weird outside shit to be happy. There's so much wisdom in bebop it's enough for a lifetime, really. All the things you have to know just to make one chorus work right. You have to know life pretty good. Not to mention the horn."

  The Bear Comes Home 13

  "You play all right."

  "I know I play all right. Not the very first rank maybe, not world-class, but good enough to make a living in New York."

  "You phrase nice."

  "Of course I phrase nice. Bears are soulful and inventive people. We're friendly, we're creative, and we're cool. But the world," he told Jones, "knows us not."

  "I know you."

  "You. Yeah. You know me." The Bear put the saxophone to his mouth and arpeggiated his way through a typically murderous late-fifties Coltrane turnaround—C major 7, E-flat 7, A-flat major to B 7, E major to G 7, and finished on a resonant C, which he flatted slightly for emphasis. ^'You try that with paws, mutha. You develop an embouchure for a snout. Yeah, you know me. Sure. Could you do that?"

  "Steak tartare," said Jones, presenting him with a plate of raw chopmeat topped with a dusting of paprika and mixed with fresh green spices. "You're in a lousy mood."

  "I'm sorry," said the Bear. "I just get so frustrated. You want a hand with the spaghetti?"

  "Naw. Thanks."

  "I could give you a hand with the spaghetti."

  "That's all right." Jones cleared his throat and put a hand to his collarbone. "I like to cook."

  The Bear played whole-tone scales while Jones chopped onions, garlic, dry red peppers and flatleaf parsley. Jones heated olive oil and put the spices in to saute, reserving the garlic. The Bear switched to some legato phrasing in the Dorian mode and Jones eased ten fresh plum tomatoes into a pot of boiling water. "You want to go up to Woodstock this weekend and jam with Julius? Julius is cool. I could call Julius."

  "Yeah, Julius is cool," said the Bear, lowering the horn, "but when a guest comes over I have to go out in the yard and act like an animule."

  "We could go."

  "And I think JuHus is in Europe this month."

  "Good for Julius," said Jones, easing the garlic into the pan and beginning to peel the tomatoes he had spooned from the water.

  "Yeah. Good for Julius. We got any decent wine in the house?"

  "I think an okay Italian red."

  "Let's hear it for an okay ItaUan red," the Bear said dully.

  "Bored?" Jones asked him.

  "To death," said the Bear, and downed the mound of steak tartare in two

  14 Rafi Zabor

  large mouthfuls. "I mean, dance is all right, even street dance. It's the poetry of the body, flesh aspiring to grace or inviting the spirit in to visit. But music." He shook his big head side to side. "That's different. That's one level more subtle. I mean, if the universe is vibration, and after Einstein who's gonna deny it, energy sifts down matter and before it gets there it manifests as sound. So playing music—playing music well,'' he corrected himself, "it's like taking an active part in the future. . . . Jones? You with me here? Do I detect a glazed look about the eyes?"

  "It's a httle obscurant for me," Jones admitted amid rising veils of steam. "You been reading the wrong magazines."

  "Bears have a good head for metaphysics, Jones, but our feet never leave the ground. I know what I'm talking about."

  "Well that makes one of us."

  "You understand me all right." The Bear hcked his muzzle clear of flecks of beef and reattached the saxophone to his neckstrap. "You're just afraid I'm gonna wig out and get unmanageable."

  "I just don't want you getting any funny ideas."

  "Too late," said the Bear. "I got a headfal." He got up and started walking aroimd the living room, the saxophone steadied by a touch of his paw. "Man I'm restless."

  "I could give Mirelle a call," Jones offered.

  "I'm sick of hookers," said the Bear, "and they don't dig me. The ones that do dig it, I think they're sick. They wig out so much on doing it with a bear I'm not even there, me. Later for Mirelle. Maybe we should go upstate and I could nose around in the woods."

  "That's the spirit," said Jones. "A she-bear from Big Indian."

  "A nice country bear," the Bear chimed in. "No mind for ideas. A regulation roots-and-berries type. A hippie. But what'll we have to talk about after? Never read Proust or Victoria's Secret, acts territorial after you're done. . . . This world gets dull, Jones. It's a bad fit. I'm not from around here."

  "You know what your problem is?" Jones asked him, tasting a bit of sauce he had blown cool on an end of a wooden spoon. "You're too good."

  The Bear nodded vehemently. "Nail on the head. Too good. So often thought but ne'er so well expressed."

  Jones and the Bear had another little laugh on that one.

  "Remember the days I used to jam up in Harlem with those guys out of Lionel Hampton's band?" asked the Bear.

  "Who could forget."

  "They didn't know what to make of me, did they . . . Uh, where you, uh, from ..." The Bear trailed off into laughter. "Wasn't for Julius the whole

  The Bear Comes Home 15

  thing would've been untenable. But I could play, couldn't I? And I kept your ass safe in Harlem. 140th Street mind you, not just One Two Five."

  "The whole thing," said Jones, "was a calculated risk."

  "I even made that record date." . Jones, easing the stalks of spaghetti into boiling water, laughed softly, then mimicked the nasal voice of the union man. "Uh, who is that artist with the ring in his nose? He uh plays uh alto? Alto saxophone? I don't seem to see his name here on the list."

  "Julius walked up to the guy," and here the Bear did Julius' voice and towered down on the union guy to speak: "'Excuse me but have you ever wondered how the Dogon knew without the aid of a telescope how Po Tolo does its dance around Sirius and perturbs its orbit? You might inquire of the ahhhhh gentleman wearing far and as you observed a ring in his nose. He may be willing to share some facts with you. You never know.' The union man about died."

  "'The wearing of far,'" Jones continued in his own rendering of Julius' deep slow voice, " 'signifies the putting on of primal power—'"

  "Speaking of put-ons," said the Bear.

  "'—an assumption of the ritual cloak of wilderness and night. Have you really never worn the mask of God? Or do you only operate the external human form.'"

  "God that man was stupid," said the Bear.

  "But persistent. All good things," Jones said, "must come to an end."

  "Sometimes they got to begin again, don't they? Lord knows I
got the itch to go out there again."

  "Just 'cause you're round and brown," said Jones, "don't mean everyone's gonna take you for Arthur Blythe."

  "There anything on TV tonight?"

  "It's Friday. We could pick up a rerun of The Rockford Files^

  "All right!" said the Bear. "Save my life. Let's hear it for Big Jim Garner!"

  "Dinner's almost ready. You want to eat in front of the television?"

  "Does a bear shit in the woods?" asked the Bear. "Present company excepted."

  "I liked the show better before they wrote Bev out of the script," said the Bear, cleaning sauce from his plate with a crust of bread, "but even in reruns it's still about the best thing on the box."

  "Bev? Who's Bev?"

  "Rockford's lawyer, dummy. A good actress, a nice presence."

  "Her name was Beverly. Or Bess."

  l6 Rafi Zabor

  "Yeah," the Bear said derisively, "Bess Myerson."

  "Myerson?" said Jones. "Myerson? You sure? Myerson?"

  "You sure get stupid come evening," said the Bear.

  "I get tired. I'm getting middle-aged." Listlessly he shook his empty wineglass. "I get tired. Leave me alone."

  The Bear regarded Jones' hairless white chest, on which his shirt had fallen open. "That was nice spaghetti," said the Bear, thinking. Poor Jones.

  "Thanks. I like Angel," Jones said.

  "I like Dennis," said the Bear. "Rockford's friend Dennis Becker, the cop.

  "He looks like a bear," said Jones. "That's why you like him."

  "The hell he does," said die Bear, "and the hell I do."

  "Nya nya," said Jones. "I'm tired. I hke Rockford's dad. Lea' me 'lone."

  Poor Jones, thought the Bear. Poor weak Jones. Such sUm resources. Life was down. Time was up. The Bear had to get out of there. He packed his alto—nothing out of the ordinary^ in that—then went to the closet, put on bagg)^ khaki pants, a long flappy raincoat and a hat.

  "WTiat are you doing?" said Jones, sitting up, rousing himself, trying to be equal to the situation.

  ^^Sorry but I canh take you" sang the Bear. "Don't worry. I'll be back around Xyso, three the latest. '^e can work tomorrow, but tonight I got to get some air."