Bearskin
by Andreas Britz
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Ned peered, horrified, through the bear-shaped hole in his neighbor’s fence. Collapsed beside the Kellogs’ above-ground pool, bleeding and drawing shallow, desperate breaths, was the brown bear. It was a big one too; eight hundred pounds at least, with three-inch claws and a head as big as a blue-ribbon pumpkin. The fur on its chest was matted with blood, and its eyes were tired and angry like the eyes of a retail worker during the holiday rush. When Ned’s gaze met the bear’s for that brief moment before it expired, he felt such a deep affinity with the creature that he actually experienced physical pain.
He wanted to teach that brute Mike Kellog a lesson he’d never forget. Which would have been pretty difficult considering that the guy was an ex-Marine. That partly explained why he used a high-capacity assault rifle when the bear strayed onto his property and decided to slake its thirst at the pool.
“You schmuck!” Ned shouted at his neighbors, his cheeks flushed and his hands making strangling motions in the air. “You could have just called Animal Control. You didn’t have to kill it.”
“But my gardenias,” Mrs. Kellog complained over her husband’s shoulder. “He trampled all over my gardenias. And Maisie’s chained up by the basketball court. We couldn’t forgive ourselves if he ate our dog.”
“To hell with your dog,” Ned snapped back. “You should have brought him inside as soon as you saw the bear.”
Mrs. K placed her hands on her ample hips and tisked, loudly. “Inside? We just had the place remodeled. You think I’m gonna undo all that work by letting the dog run amok?”
Ned flipped them off and stalked inside his house, locking the door behind him. After he drew the curtains and checked the timer on the oven — he was making a Kerry apple pie for his father-in-law’s eightieth birthday — he kicked off his shoes and sat on the couch, watching Star Trek reruns. The doorbell rang two hours later.
“Dad! Happy birthday!”
“Hey, there, bub. How’s things?”
He took Bill’s coat and hung it on a peg by the door, then ushered the old man into the kitchen. “Can I fix you a birthday cocktail?”
“I wouldn’t object,” Bill replied, doffing his ratty baseball cap and climbing onto a wooden bar stool at the kitchen island.
Ned hadn’t seen his wife’s father in over a month and, in those four weeks, the man’s appearance had changed drastically. No longer was he this gaunt and shriveled-looking gnome with liver-spots and sun damage. His skin was clear and taut, and his turkey neck no longer jiggled distractingly when he talked or chewed his food.
His posture was also much improved. When fully erect, the difference between himself and Ned — a lifelong sloucher — was negligible. They could have been mistaken for father and son if not for the former’s cleft chin and big, bristly eyebrows, features Ned always associated with Classical Hollywood movie stars like Bruce Barlow and Frederick Swede.
After setting down their wine spritzers and toasting his father-in-law’s continued health, Ned proceeded to vent about the incident that had occurred earlier. “He just mowed it down, like it was nothing,” he growled. “Like he was doing away with a skunk or a squirrel.”
When he’d finished, he got up to refresh their drinks, and Bill said, “Ned, you’re shaking. This bear really has you riled up, huh?”
“Damn right, it does!” Ned set down one of the bottles, mid-pour, and turned to face Bill. “I don’t know where this guy gets off, murdering a defenseless creature.”
“Defenseless?”
“Okay, maybe not defenseless. But certainly innocent.”
“Who knows,” Bill reasoned. “Could be that this brown bear’s notorious around town. Maybe he mauled someone’s baby to death and is wanted by the police? Perhaps this neighbor of yours is actually the hero of this story.”
Ned stared at his father-in-law, dumbfounded. “Bill,” he said as gently as possible, “rationalizing the senseless killing of an animal is something psychopaths do. Not even Judy would say a thing like that, and I consider her the Queen of Cruel.”
“That’s enough!” Bill slammed his empty glass down on the marble countertop. “I won’t stand for you badmouthing my little girl to my face.” He gnashed his dentures at Ned. “Not ever.”
Ned, sufficiently cowed, hung his head and wept.
“Oh, Christ,” Bill said. “Get a grip, will ya. It’s my seventieth. I don’t want to watch a grown man cry today.”
After he wiped his eyes and blew his nose into a paper towel, Ned said, “Seventieth? You’re eighty, Bill.”
Bill shrugged. “I know, but I’d rather tell people I’m seventy. What’s ten years when you’re as old as dirt, right?”
“Nonsense,” replied Ned. “You look great. Much better than the last time I saw you. You been exercising?”
Bill grinned, suggestively. “Haven’t stepped foot in a gym in my life and I don’t intend to start now.”
“What is it then? A new diet?”
“Heck no. Something better.” Bill looked over both shoulders in a paranoid manner, then went on. “Marcie, God rest her soul, used to spend a fortune on all those anti-aging creams, and they didn’t make a lick of difference. But I figured it out. Want to know the secret to health and longevity, Bub?”
“For heaven’s sake, Bill. Spit it out.”
“It’s right here in my pocket.” Bill reached into his cream-colored khakis, removed a Swiss army knife covered in pocket-lint and handed it to his son-in-law.
Ned turned it over in his hands a couple of times, feeling its weight and looking for clues to its importance in the vast assortment of pointed instruments concealed in the red handle. Eventually, he gave up and said, “You’ve got me. How does it help with the aging process?”
“The other day, I was on my way to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription when I happened to spot an old colleague of mine from the U. For years we were thick as thieves. We’d get lunch every day, cover each other’s classes during flu season, play squash, the whole deal. But the friendship eventually soured — I can’t remember why — and when the time came for my tenure review, his was the one dissenting voice.”
“Bastard.”
“Exactly,” Bill said, strengthening his grip on his cocktail glass. “It all came flooding back: the anger and resentment and petty competitiveness. My heart started racing. I thought I was going to keel over right there in the Walgreens parking lot. But instead...” His voice trailed off.
“Yes?”
“Instead, I waited for him to go inside... Then I slashed his tires.”
“You did what?!”
“It’s funny,” Bill laughed. “I’ve been carrying this thing around with me for close to four decades. Just a habit, I suppose. Never thought I’d put it to such use at my age.”
“So you commit a crime and this somehow makes you feel younger?”
“Not just feel younger, Bub. I am younger. Don’t ask me to explain it scientifically. But I can assure you that today I am a younger, happier man than the day I popped that smug prick’s tires. It was like all those years just sloughed off me.”
“Well, you do look rejuvenated,” Ned allowed. “Whether you could pass for seventy is another matter.”
“Don’t you think there’s a strong parallel between our two situations?”
“What situations?”
“My thing with the professor emeritus,” Bill said, “and your thing with your gun-toting neighbor?”
Ned’s face dropped. “Are you suggesting I slash his tires?”
“That would, I think, be an impotent response, given the nature of the crime.”
“I don’t get it,” Ned griped, casting a sidelong glance at the Swiss army knife on the counter. “A second ago you were making excuses for the guy. Now you’re telling me I should—”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Bill interrupted. “You’re your own person. If it were me, I’d want to make it clear to him that this reckless disregard for animal life is not acceptable in our day and age. That’s all.”
Ned was about to say something clever about their day and age when he heard a commotion next door. He and Bill walked over to the kitchen sink and stood staring out the window facing the neighbor’s front lawn. An Animal Control truck was parked in the driveway, its tail lights blinking and its rear doors splayed open, ready to receive the body.
Ned gasped at the sight of the lifeless beast being carried on a canvas stretcher by two strapping young men in matching brown uniforms. That the bear was crushingly heavy was evident in the men’s slow, lumbering gait; it took them close to fifteen minutes to make it from the lawn to the truck, stopping and starting the whole way.
Ned wondered why they didn’t cover the bear with some kind of blanket or shroud, the way they did with human beings. There was something galling in how they casually handled the big, hairy body, as if it were some roadkill they were scraping off the highway.
“Look at him,” Bill said, nodding at Mike Kellog who stood a few feet away in his shirtsleeves and sandals, petting his caramel-colored border collie with one hand and waving off the animal control guys with the other. “See how proud he is of his handiwork. And all that affection he’s showing the dog...”
Ned knew Bill was just trying to rile him up, so he refrained from comment.
They drank the rest of their GNTs in silence.
The next day, Ned drove to town for a lunch date with an old college buddy he hadn’t seen in a while. He arrived early, beating rush hour traffic and finding parking right away, and decided to spend the spare time at Ax-Man Thrift across the street. Formerly an appliance store, Ax-Man Thrift was a dusty, cluttered mess of a place where the air-conditioning didn’t work, the lighting was bad, and the salespeople only opened their mouths to yawn, eat or tell you they couldn’t help you.
After the China Buffet, it was Ned’s favorite place in town. He could spend hours in there, perusing the endless, bowing shelves of detritus with a smile plastered across his face. Whole afternoons were lost digging through milk crates full of old records, or trawling the bottoms of antique dresser drawers, his fingers plowing up layers of trash in search of that one piece of overlooked treasure.
And on this occasion, he found it. Not in a plywood dresser, or on a rickety storage rack, but on the floor. He seldom dropped his eyes below shelf-level; in his experience, the junk tended to sink to the bottom. This bear skin rug was the exception. He nearly tripped over it on his way to inspect some eye-catching trinket calling to him from across the room.
Five and a half feet long, thick, walnut brown hair, and a weirdly expressive head, the rug was a piece of décor straight out of Scarface or one of the James Bond films. What sort of person would have this in their home, Ned wondered?
Getting down on all fours, he looked inside the bear’s mouth which was frozen mid-growl, displaying two intimidating rows of sharp teeth. Its large, glass eyes seemed alive and full of accusation. The sloping pink tongue resembled a toy slide from a Barbie set.
Even though it pained him to look at it and the thought of traipsing all over it with his bare feet horrified him, Ned knew he could not leave Ax-Man Thrift without the rug.
Later that evening, after he’d got the rug home and placed it in his living room, Judy stopped by unannounced to borrow his barbecue grill.
“What the hell is that?” she asked, spotting the rug from inside the foyer.
“What’s it look like?”
Judy appeared flummoxed. “Looks like a bear. That wouldn’t happen to be...”
“What?”
“Dad told me all about it,” she said. “About your neighbor shooting that bear. He said you seemed pretty broken up over it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m fine now.”
“No kidding.”
“Got it at Ax-Man for a song. You think it could have lice?” Ned began rubbing his chin, thoughtfully. “I might take it to the dry cleaners after work tomorrow.”
Judy was wearing the canary yellow jumpsuit he had bought her for their third and final wedding anniversary. The one that made her look like April O’Neil from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He always had a weakness for redheads and women with “witchy vibes.” When they first met, she was a Wiccan and a practicing Herbalist. If he could have waved a magic wand and undone all the stress and heartache of these past two years — the accusations, the cheating both real and imagined, the petty name-calling and mud-slinging — he would have done so in an instant.
He still loved her. Loved her terribly.
“Well,” she said, placing her hand on the door knob to leave, “let me know when’s a good time to return this.”
Ned’s face was vacant.
Judy snapped her fingers. “Hello?”
“What was that?” he said, coming out of his reverie.
“The grill. Let me know when I can bring it back. I’m all out of storage space in the garage now that Rick—”
“Rick?” replied Ned. “That your boyfriend?”
Judy cracked a cheeky smile, said goodbye and left.
Copyright © 2025 by Andreas Britz
