Are You Happy Now? (23 page)

The man yanked a long lever on his machine and waited for the Tilt-a-Whirl platform to start its rotation. “You’re looking for a strip show,” he repeated finally. He studied the boys from under the brim of an Atlanta Braves cap.

“Yeah.” John tried to sound cool about it.

“This here’s the Holmes Carnival,” the man said, “and Ted Holmes, he don’t believe in that sort of entertainment. It’s a family carnival.”

“There’s no stripper?” Will couldn’t hide his disappointment.

“Nope.” The man gave the lever another yank, raising the speed of the machine. The riders screamed from their spinning seats.

Will and John skulked away. “Fuck,” muttered Will.

“Theron must have been fucking with us, that prick,” John said.

“That fuckhead.”

They walked a bit farther, and John said, “Sumbubbabitch.” The boys laughed.

They needed to head home before Will’s dad started worrying about the car, but as they circled toward the exit, they passed a small crowd gathered in front of the tent with the wrestling bear. A barker wearing a cowboy hat was standing on a wood platform in front, bantering through a microphone, trying to lure someone to take on the animal. “Come on, I thought West Virginia was full of brave mountain men,” the barker taunted. “No one wants to make twenty-five dollars?” He held the microphone close to his mouth, so every breath and smack of his lips echoed unpleasantly out of the amplifier.

Someone down front in the crowd yelled for him to bring out the bear so they could get a look at it. The barker tossed a few more insults at the crowd, but eventually he turned and yelled something into the tent. After a few seconds, a black snout nuzzled aside a flap, and a black bear ambled onto the platform, followed by its handler, a stocky man wearing red trunks and tights. The handler held a chain that linked to a muzzle on the bear’s head. When they got to the barker, the handler yanked the chain, and the creature stood on its hind legs. The crowd whooped.

A man yelled, “That bear’s skinnier than my wife!”

“But can you pin your wife?” the barker snapped.

More laughs and hoots.

The boys edged forward to get a better look. Upright, the bear looked precarious, and it actually appeared to be smaller than the handler, though its real size was hard to gauge since its curved upper spine and bent knees gave it a stooped and almost arthritic posture. John studied the low, square hips, the rounded shoulders, the forelegs held awkwardly at the sides. He had an overwhelming sense of recognition, and he whispered to Will, “That’s no bear. That’s a man in a costume.”

“How can you tell?”

“Look at the way it moves. Look at the body. That’s an actor.”

Will stared and nodded. “You may be right.”

The barker still couldn’t lure any takers, and he tested various pitches. He said Boris came from the forests of deepest Siberia. “This is your chance to fight the Russians.” He raised the prize money to thirty dollars. He started singling out onlookers, teasing them, challenging their virility. Still no takers. Scanning the crowd, the barker spotted Will and John. “Lookee there, two college boys,” he cried. “You fellows got brawn
and
brains,” the barker taunted. “You ought to be able to outthink a bear.”

The crowd gawked and laughed. John shook his head self-consciously. A squat old man in overalls piped up, “They don’t want to mess up their haircuts.” More laughter.

The barker sensed an opportunity. “Tell you what,” he said, marching to the front of the platform so he loomed over the two of them. “Here’s the deal. I’ll let you two wrestle him together. Two against one.”

Will and John looked at each other.

“How about it?” the barker asked the crowd. “Isn’t that a deal? Two college boys against a bear!”

People screamed, urging the boys to go for it. Anonymous hands slapped their backs. Will said to John, “What the hell, it’s a man in a costume.”

John wished he could consider it for a few seconds, maybe talk it over. But the noise and the attention demanded a quick response. Besides, it was almost impossible not to slide along on the excitement and momentum. He looked up at the barker. “Yeah, sure,” John said softly.

“We’ve got a match!” the man cried as the crowd of West Virginians cheered. The barker leaned over to help hoist the boys onto the platform, and after thrusting the microphone in their faces to ask a few perfunctory questions, he announced, “Get your tickets now!” Then he led the boys through the flap into the tent.

The wrestling ring was a canvas square about twenty feet on a side contained by a fence of wire mesh about six feet high.
Plain wood bleachers rose around the sides. The bear was already squatting in one corner of the ring next to the dour handler, who was sitting on a three-legged stool. The barker, all business now, handed the boys bulky overalls. “Put these on over your clothes,” he ordered.

The overalls smelled stale and felt heavy.

“Now these.” The barker gave each of them an old, worn football helmet. John got the Packers, Will the Redskins.

“I feel like I’m in a space suit,” John said when they were fully outfitted.

The barker thrust a clipboard dangling a pen into Will’s hands. “Sign that, both of you,” he ordered.

“What is it?” Will asked.

“Waiver of liability. Just sign it.”

Frowning, Will studied the document for a few seconds, then handed the clipboard to John. “Your dad’s the lawyer,” Will said.

John glanced over the legal mumbo-jumbo. In the dim light, the small type was hard to read. “What the fuck,” he said and signed his name on a line at the bottom. Will signed right below him.

The barker wanted to make one thing clear: “Listen. It’s thirty dollars total, not thirty dollars each. You pin him, you split the money. Clear?”

The boys nodded.

“And no funny business,” he added. “No punching or kicking. Keep your fingers away from his mouth and eyes. If either of you gets out of the ring for any reason, the match is over. If you want to quit, just yell. One round, five minutes. Understand?” From under his cowboy hat, the barker scanned the tent. The bleachers had mostly filled up. “Now, let’s go.” He opened a gate in the wire mesh and led the boys inside.

John and Will moved to their corner of the ring. Surrounded by the wire fence, John felt as if he were in a cage. His heart drummed against his chest. This had happened so quickly. It
comforted him that Will was beside him, but John was only there because of Will, who had inherited a touch of his father’s flamboyance.

“How you feeling?” Will asked just then.

“Good.”

“Here’s the thing. We can take this guy. High-low. You hit him high, I’ll hit him low.”

“OK.”

The barker stood in the center of the room and bellowed an introduction for the team called the College Boys. The crowd responded with a mixture of whoops and boos. Will hammed it up, clasping his hands over his head, turning slowly, nodding and grinning. John gave a clenched-fist salute and let it go at that.

“And in this corner,” the barker continued, “we have the champion—trained in the forests of Siberia, undefeated in his last twenty-two matches, a star of stage and television—he’s tough, he’s smart, give a hand, folks, to Boris the Wrestling Bear!”

A honking chorus of cheers filled the tent. The bear just sat, its head lolling slightly back forth. The handler unhooked the chain from the muzzle and gave the creature a soft slap on the back of the head. The bear lumbered on all fours into the center of the ring. The handler said something in a guttural language, and the animal rose on its hind legs. The handler assumed a boxing stance, and for a minute or so, they danced around each other. Every few steps, the handler slapped the animal sharply on the snout, setting off an angry shake of the furry head. But the bear stayed upright and moved with a light step, lifting and placing its feet carefully, as if crossing a stream on rocks.

John was less certain now that he was watching a man, but he couldn’t fit what he was seeing—the lean, square torso, the agility upright, the nimble forelegs—into his idea of a bear.

After circling the canvas with the boxing exhibition, the animal and its handler retreated to their corner, and the barker
returned to the center of the ring. “One round, five minutes, thirty dollars if the College Boys can pin him. Are we ready?”

The crowd hollered its answer.

“Let’s have a clean fight! Here we go!”

Someone sounded a gong, and the match was on.

The boys moved warily into the ring. The bear sat on its haunches in the corner until the handler barked something and the animal roused itself and plodded on four legs toward the center. As the boys closed in, the bear planted itself in a defensive posture. Will slipped around behind. John dropped into a wrestling crouch, knees bent, hands in front, and dodged around, feinting, as if looking for an opening. In fact, he was frozen—he couldn’t for the life of him imagine attacking this muzzled creature, whatever it was. He wondered if he could eat up five minutes just pretending to prepare to make a move. But the crowd quickly grew restless for action. After several men stood and shouted insults, Will suddenly launched himself at the bear’s hindquarters, knocking the beast on its side. “Go!” he cried to John. As the bear flailed to right itself, something in John—some hunting instinct, some passion for his friend, for his species—pushed him to throw himself at the animal’s chest. He landed with a thud, bouncing on the surprisingly springy torso, scrambling to wrap his arms around a thick furry shoulder.

The bear rolled quickly on its back, kicking aside Will, then swung its hips behind John, who clung to a foreleg. The dense coat of fur had a greasy quality, and the animal, now righted, easily slipped out of John’s grasp and loped to the side. The boys climbed to their feet while jeers and cheers echoed around the tent.

The two of them glanced at each other but didn’t say anything. John could see from his friend’s face that this first encounter had hardened Will’s determination. Again they circled their adversary, Will edging to the bear’s back. Touching the beast had eased John’s wariness, and as he moved in, he stared hard into
the creature’s black, unblinking eyes. He’d grown up with dogs, and he’d played the stare game with them countless times, and always the animals grew bored and turned away. But the bear didn’t waver, and John thought he saw a glint, a depth behind the glassy blackness. A man, John told himself.

The handler called out something, and the bear rose on its hind legs. Lurching toward John, the animal caught him by surprise and planted its forelegs heavily on John’s shoulders. John tried to pull away, lost his balance, and wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck. The two staggered, head against helmet, like clumsy dancers in an intimate embrace. John’s chin pressed against the animal’s shoulder just below its ear. The fur gave off a musty, dead odor that caught in John’s throat. With the snout just inches from his own ear, John could hear deep, heaving grunts. Where was Will? This was the setup for the high-low move. The grunts got louder and mingled with screams from the crowd, the commotion muffled by the painfully tight football helmet. At last, Will saw his chance and rolled into the back of the bear’s hind legs. John and the animal tumbled together violently onto the mat, bouncing, heaving. In the frenzied crash, the grunts in John’s ear clarified for an instant: “Big shot,” the creature growled—or seemed to. “Big shot.”

The force of the impact loosened John’s grip, and again the animal twisted free and scrambled off to the corner beside its handler. Will and John pulled themselves up off the canvas. The crowd thrilled at their humiliation, screaming and stomping on the wood planks of the bleachers, inflating the tent with scorn at the cocky upstarts. Back in their corner, Will put his mouth close to John’s ear. “That thing smells like shit,” he said. He’d lost his steely face. “That’s a real fucking bear.”

“It’s not,” John shouted back over the noise.

“How do you know?”

“It was talking to me.”

Will’s eyes got big. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Of course, John wasn’t. But he thought he’d heard those words, and something familiar in the body he’d been hugging had bolstered his suspicion that human flesh and bones were hiding beneath the fur.

In the other corner, the handler talked to the bear and stroked its head. John formulated a plan. Years ago, on a children’s TV show, he’d seen a man climb into a gorilla suit that had a single zippered seam running around the waist. If John could get his hand on the seam of the bear suit or, better yet, unzip it, he could expose this act for what it was.

“I’m gonna go for the zipper,” he told Will.

“What?”

“Zipper,” John shouted, as the bear came toward them, its head back and its snout pointing to John like a gun. “Now!” John cried, and the boys pounced, Will going for the hips, John tackling the shoulder. They knocked the creature off its feet and fell on top, but the bear quickly rolled onto its side, it’s legs splayed defensively against the canvas. Will embraced a thigh and John clung to the animal’s back, his face buried in the stinking fur at the nape of the animal’s neck. Looked at close, John saw that the hair of the coat wasn’t just black, but an explosion of shades of black and dark brown.

For several seconds, the grapplers held their places, the bear solidly anchored, the boys awkwardly hanging on. Time was running out. As the crowd screamed, John reached with his right arm around the bear’s side and slowly walked his fingers through the tough hide, feeling for a zipper. Nothing. The bear lay still, as if taking measure of John’s move. The grunts stopped. John pressed, his arm extended and exposed. If only he could get to the zipper. Suddenly, the creature bucked. John bounced back and a furry right foreleg came down with a vicious karate chop on John’s probing forearm. He screamed. The bear shook free and scudded away. John lay on his back, hugging his arm to
his stomach. The pain came in waves. He couldn’t stand to look down, so he stared straight up into the bright lamp attached to the top of the tent. Will’s face appeared above him. “You OK?” Will asked.