Bisson, Terry - Bears Discover Fire

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BEARS DISCOVER FIRE

by TERRY BISSON (1993)

[VERSION 1.1 (Aug 06 02). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by

0.1 and redistribute.]

CONTENTS

Bears Discover Fire (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Aug 1990)

The Two Janets (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Nov 1990)

They're Made Out of Meat (Omni, Apr 1991)

Over Flat Mountain (Omni, Jun 1990)

Press Ann (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Aug 1991)

The Coon Suit (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1991)

George (not previously published)

Next (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1992)

Necronauts (Playboy, Jul 1993)

Are There Any Questions? (Interzone, August 1992)

Two Guys from the Future (Omni, Aug 1992)

The Toxic Donut (Science Fiction Age, Jul 1993)

Cancion Autentica de Old Earth (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 1992)

Partial People (not previously published)

Carl's Lawn & Garden (Omni, Jan 1992)

The Message (Asimov's Science Fiction, Oct 1993)

England Underway (Omni, Jul 1993)

By Permit Only (Interzone, July 1993)

The Shadow Knows (Asimov's Science Fiction, Sep 1993)

BEARS DISCOVER FIRE

I was driving with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher's son, on I-65 just north of

Bowling Green when we got a flat. It was Sunday night and we had been to visit Mother at the Home. We

were in my car. The flat caused what you might call knowing groans since, as the old-fashioned one in my

family (so they tell me), I fix my own tires, and my brother is always telling me to get radials and quit

buying old tires.

But if you know how to mount and fix tires yourself, you can pick them up for almost nothing.

Since it was a left rear tire, I pulled over to the left, onto the median grass. The way my Caddy stumbled

to a stop, I figured the tire was ruined. "I guess there's no need asking if you have any of that FlatFix in the

trunk," said Wallace.

"Here, son, hold the light," I said to Wallace Jr. He's old enough to want to help and not old enough

(yet) to think he knows it all. If I'd married and had kids, he's the kind I'd have wanted.

An old Caddy has a big trunk that tends to fill up like a shed. Mine's a '56. Wallace was wearing his

Sunday shirt, so he didn't offer to help while I pulled magazines, fishing tackle, a wooden tool box, some

old clothes, a come-along wrapped in a grass sack, and a tobacco sprayer out of the way, looking for my

jack. The spare looked a little soft.

The light went out. "Shake it, son," I said.

It went back on. The bumper jack was long gone, but I carry a little quarter-ton hydraulic. I found it

under Mother's old Southern Livings, 1978-1986. I had been meaning to drop them at the dump. If Wallace

hadn't been along, I'd have let Wallace Jr. position the jack under the axle, but I got on my knees and did it

myself. There's nothing wrong with a boy learning to change a tire. Even if you're not going to fix and

mount them, you're still going to have to change a few in this life. The light went off again before I had the

wheel off the ground. I was surprised at how dark the night was already. It was late October and beginning

to get cool. "Shake it again, son," I said.

It went back on but it was weak. Flickery.

"With radials you just don't have flats," Wallace explained in that voice he uses when he's talking to a

number of people at once; in this case, Wallace Jr. and myself. "And even when you do, you just squirt

them with this stuff called FlatFix and you just drive on. Three ninety-five the can."

"Uncle Bobby can fix a tire hisself," said Wallace Jr., out of loyalty, I presume.

"Himself," I said from halfway under the car. If it was up to Wallace, the boy would talk like what

Mother used to call "a helot from the gorges of the mountains." But drive on radials.

"Shake that light again," I said. It was about gone. I spun the lugs off into the hubcap and pulled the

wheel. The tire had blown out along the sidewall. "Won't be fixing this one," I said. Not that I cared. I have

a pile as tall as a man out by the barn.

The light went out again, then came back better than ever as I was fitting the spare over the lugs. "Much

better," I said. There was a flood of dim orange flickery light. But when I turned to find the lug nuts, I was

surprised to see that the flashlight the boy was holding was dead. The light was coming from two bears at

the edge of the trees, holding torches. They were big, three-hundred-pounders, standing about five feet tall.

Wallace Jr. and his father had seen them and were standing perfectly still. It's best not to alarm bears.

I fished the lug nuts out of the hubcap and spun them on. I usually like to put a little oil on them, but this

time I let it go. I reached under the car and let the jack down and pulled it out. I was relieved to see that the

spare was high enough to drive on. I put the jack and the lug wrench and the flat into the trunk. Instead of

replacing the hubcap, I put it in there too. All this time, the bears never made a move. They just held the

torches, whether out of curiosity or helpfulness, there was no way of knowing. It looked like there may

have been more bears behind them, in the trees.

Opening three doors at once, we got into the car and drove off. Wallace was the first to speak. "Looks

like bears have discovered fire," he said.

When we first took Mother to the Home almost four years (forty-seven months) ago, she told Wallace

and me she was ready to die. "Don't worry about me, boys," she whispered, pulling us both down so the

nurse wouldn't hear. "I've drove a million miles and I'm ready to pass over to the other shore. I won't have

long to linger here." She drove a consolidated school bus for thirty-nine years. Later, after Wallace left, she

told me about her dream. A bunch of doctors were sitting around in a circle discussing her case. One said,

"We've done all we can for her, boys, let's let her go." They all turned their hands up and smiled. When she

didn't die that fall she seemed disappointed, though as spring came she forgot about it, as old people will.

In addition to taking Wallace and Wallace Jr. to see Mother on Sunday nights, I go myself on Tuesdays

and Thursdays. I usually find her sitting in front of the TV, even though she doesn't watch it. The nurses

keep it on all the time. They say the old folks like the flickering. It soothes them down.

"What's this I hear about bears discovering fire?" she said on Tuesday. "It's true," I told her as I combed

her long white hair with the shell comb Wallace had brought her from Florida. Monday there had been a

story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, and Tuesday one on NBC or CBS Nightly News. People were

seeing bears all over the state, and in Virginia as well. They had quit hibernating, and were apparently

planning to spend the winter in the medians of the interstates. There have always been bears in the

mountains of Virginia, but not here in western Kentucky, not for almost a hundred years. The last one was

killed when Mother was a girl. The theory in the Courier-Journal was that they were following I-65 down

from the forests of Michigan and Canada, but one old man from Allen County (interviewed on nationwide

TV) said that there had always been a few bears left back in the hills, and they had come out to join the

others now that they had discovered fire.

"They don't hibernate anymore," I said. "They make a fire and keep it going all winter."

"I declare," Mother said. "What'll they think of next!" The nurse came to take her tobacco away, which

is the signal for bedtime.

Every October, Wallace Jr. stays with me while his parents go to camp. I realize how backward that

sounds, but there it is. My brother is a Minister (House of the Righteous Way, Reformed) but he makes two

thirds of his living in real estate. He and Elizabeth go to a Christian Success Retreat in South Carolina,

where people from all over the country practice selling things to one another. I know what it's like not

because they've ever bothered to tell me, but because I've seen the Revolving Equity Success Plan ads late

at night on TV.

The school bus let Wallace Jr. off at my house on Wednesday, the day they left. The boy doesn't have to

pack much of a bag when he stays with me. He has his own room here. As the eldest of our family, I hung

on to the old home place near Smiths Grove. It's getting run-down, but Wallace Jr. and I don't mind. He has

his own room in Bowling Green, too, but since Wallace and Elizabeth move to a different house every

three months (part of the Plan), he keeps his .22 and his comics, the stuff that's important to a boy his age,

in his room here at the home place. It's the room his dad and I used to share.

Wallace Jr. is twelve. I found him sitting on the back porch that overlooks the interstate when I got

home from work. I sell crop insurance.

After I changed clothes I showed him how to break the bead on a tire two ways, with a hammer, and by

backing a car over it. Like making sorghum, fixing tires by hand is a dying art. The boy caught on fast,

though. "Tomorrow I'll show you how to mount your tire with the hammer and a tire iron," I said.

"What I wish is I could see the bears," he said. He was looking across the field to I-65, where the

northbound lanes cut off the corner of our field. From the house at night, sometimes the traffic sounds like

a waterfall.

"Can't see their fire in the daytime," I said. "But wait till tonight." That night CBS or NBC (I forget

which is which) did a special on the bears, which were becoming a story of nationwide interest. They were

seen in Kentucky, West Virginia, Missouri, Illinois (southern), and, of course, Virginia. There have always

been bears in Virginia. Some characters there were even talking about hunting them. A scientist said they

were heading into the states where there is some snow but not too much, and where there is enough timber

in the medians for firewood. He had gone in with a video camera, but his shots were just blurry figures

sitting around a fire. Another scientist said the bears were attracted by the berries on a new bush that grew

only in the medians of the interstates. He claimed this berry was the first new species in recent history,

brought about by the mixing of seeds along the highway. He ate one on TV, making a face, and called it a

"newberry." A climatic ecologist said that the warm winters (there was no snow last winter in Nashville,

and only one flurry in Louisville) had changed the bears' hibernation cycle, and now they were able to

remember things from year to year. "Bears may have discovered fire centuries ago," he said, "but forgot it."

Another theory was that they had discovered (or remembered) fire when Yellowstone burned, several years

ago.

The TV showed more guys talking about bears than it showed bears, and Wallace Jr. and I lost interest.

After the supper dishes were done I took the boy out behind the house and down to our fence. Across the

interstate and through the trees, we could see the light of the bears' fire. Wallace Jr. wanted to go back to

the house and get his .22 and go shoot one, and I explained why that would be wrong. "Besides," I said, "a

twenty-two wouldn't do much more to a bear than make it mad.

"Besides," I added, "it's illegal to hunt in the medians."

The only trick to mounting a tire by hand, once you have beaten or pried it onto the rim, is setting the

bead. You do this by setting the tire upright, sitting on it, and bouncing it up and down between your legs

while the air goes in. When the bead sets on the rim, it makes a satisfying "pop." On Thursday, I kept

Wallace Jr. home from school and showed him how to do this until he got it right. Then we climbed our

fence and crossed the field to get a look at the bears.

In northern Virginia, according to Good Morning America, the bears were keeping their fires going all

day long. Here in western Kentucky, though, it was still warm for late October and they only stayed around

the fires at night. Where they went and what they did in the daytime, I don't know. Maybe they were

watching from the newberry bushes as Wallace Jr. and I climbed the government fence and crossed the

northbound lanes. I carried an axe and Wallace Jr. brought his .22, not because he wanted to kill a bear but

because a boy likes to carry some kind of a gun. The median was all tangled with brush and vines under the

maples, oaks, and sycamores. Even though we were only a hundred yards from the house, I had never been

there, and neither had anyone else that I knew of. It was like a created country. We found a path in the

center and followed it down across a slow, short stream that flowed out of one grate and into another. The

tracks in the gray mud were the first bear signs we saw. There was a musty, but not really unpleasant smell.

In a clearing under a big hollow beech, where the fire had been, we found nothing but ashes. Logs were

drawn up in a rough circle and the smell was stronger. I stirred the ashes and found enough coals to start a

new flame, so I banked them back the way they had been left.

I cut a little firewood and stacked it to one side, just to be neighborly.

Maybe the bears were watching us from the bushes even then. There's no way to know. I tasted one of

the newberries and spit it out. It was so sweet it was sour, just the sort of thing you would imagine a bear

would like.

That evening after supper I asked Wallace Jr. if he might want to go with me to visit Mother. I wasn't

surprised when he said yes. Kids have more consideration than folks give them credit for. We found her

sitting on the concrete front porch of the Home, watching the cars go by on I-65. The nurse said she had

been agitated all day. I wasn't surprised by that, either. Every fall as the leaves change, she gets restless,

maybe the word is "hopeful," again. I brought her into the dayroom and combed her long white hair.

"Nothing but bears on TV anymore," the nurse complained, flipping the channels. Wallace Jr. picked up the

remote after the nurse left, and we watched a CBS or NBC Special Report about some hunters in Virginia

who had gotten their houses torched. The TV interviewed a hunter and his wife whose $117,500

Shenandoah Valley home had burned. She blamed the bears. He didn't blame the bears, but he was suing

for compensation from the state since he had a valid hunting license. The state hunting commissioner came

on and said that possession of a hunting license didn't prohibit ("enjoin," I think, was the word he used) the

hunted from striking back. I thought that was a pretty liberal view for a state commissioner. Of course, he

had a vested interest in not paying off. I'm not a hunter myself.

"Don't bother coming on Sunday," Mother told Wallace Jr. with a wink. "I've drove a million miles and

I've got one hand on the gate." I'm used to her saying stuff like that, especially in the fall, but I was afraid it

would upset the boy. In fact, he looked worried after we left and I asked him what was wrong.

"How could she have drove a million miles?" he asked. She had told him forty-eight miles a day for

thirty-nine years, and he had worked it out on his calculator to be 336,960 miles.

"Have driven," I said. "And it's forty-eight in the morning and forty-eight in the afternoon. Plus there

were the football trips. Plus, old folks exaggerate a little." Mother was the first woman school-bus driver in

the state. She did it every day and raised a family, too. Dad just farmed.

I usually get off the interstate at Smiths Grove, but that night I drove north all the way to Horse Cave

and doubled back so Wallace Jr. and I could see the bears' fires. There were not as many as you would

think from the TV -- one every six or seven miles, hidden back in a clump of trees or under a rocky ledge.

Probably they look for water as well as wood. Wallace Jr. wanted to stop, but it's against the law to stop on

the interstate and I was afraid the state police would run us off.

There was a card from Wallace in the mailbox. He and Elizabeth were doing fine and having a

wonderful time. Not a word about Wallace Jr., but the boy didn't seem to mind. Like most kids his age, he

doesn't really enjoy going places with his parents.

On Saturday afternoon the Home called my office (Burley Belt Drought & Hail) and left word that

Mother was gone. I was on the road. I work Saturdays. It's the only day a lot of part-time farmers are home.

My heart literally missed a beat when I called in and got the message, but only a beat. I had long been

prepared. "It's a blessing," I said when I got the nurse on the phone.

"You don't understand," the nurse said. "Not passed away, gone. Ran away, gone. Your mother has

escaped." Mother had gone through the door at the end of the corridor when no one was looking, wedging

the door with her comb and taking a bedspread which belonged to the Home. What about her tobacco? I

asked. It was gone. That was a sure sign she was planning to stay away. I was in Franklin, and it took me

less than an hour to get to the Home on I-65. The nurse told me that Mother had been acting more and more

confused lately. Of course they are going to say that. We looked around the grounds, which is only a half

acre with no trees between the interstate and a soybean field. Then they had me leave a message at the

sheriffs office. I would have to keep paying for her care until she was officially listed as Missing, which

would be Monday.

It was dark by the time I got back to the house, and Wallace Jr. was fixing supper. This just involves

opening a few cans, already selected and grouped together with a rubber band. I told him his grandmother

had gone, and he nodded, saying, "She told us she would be." I called Florida and left a message. There

was nothing more to be done. I sat down and tried to watch TV, but there was nothing on. Then, I looked

out the back door, and saw the firelight twinkling through the trees across the northbound lane of I-65, and

realized I just might know where to find her.

It was definitely getting colder, so I got my jacket. I told the boy to wait by the phone in case the sheriff

called, but when I looked back, halfway across the field, there he was behind me. He didn't have a jacket. I

let him catch up. He was carrying his .22 and I made him leave it leaning against our fence. It was harder

climbing the government fence in the dark, at my age, than it had been in the daylight. I am sixty-one. The

highway was busy with cars heading south and trucks heading north.

Crossing the shoulder, I got my pants cuffs wet on the long grass, already wet with dew. It is actually

bluegrass.

The first few feet into the trees it was pitch-black and the boy grabbed my hand. Then it got lighter. At

first I thought it was the moon, but it was the high beams shining like moonlight into the treetops, allowing

Wallace Jr. and me to pick our way through the brush. We soon found the path and its familiar bear smell.

I was wary of approaching the bears at night. If we stayed on the path we might run into one in the dark,

but if we went through the bushes we might be seen as intruders. I wondered if maybe we shouldn't have

brought the gun.

We stayed on the path. The light seemed to drip down from the canopy of the woods like rain. The

going was easy, especially if we didn't try to look at the path but let our feet find their own way.

Then through the trees I saw their fire.

The fire was mostly of sycamore and beech branches, the kind that puts out very little heat or light and

lots of smoke. The bears hadn't learned the ins and outs of wood yet. They did okay at tending it, though. A

large cinnamon-brown northern-looking bear was poking the fire with a stick, adding a branch now and

then from a pile at his side. The others sat around in a loose circle on the logs. Most were smaller black or

honey bears, one was a mother with cubs. Some were eating berries from a hubcap. Not eating, but just

watching the fire, my mother sat among them with the bedspread from the Home around her shoulders.

If the bears noticed us, they didn't let on. Mother patted a spot right next to her on the log and I sat

down. A bear moved over to let Wallace Jr. sit on her other side.

The bear smell is rank but not unpleasant, once you get used to it. It's not like a barn smell, but wilder. I

leaned over to whisper something to Mother and she shook her head. It would be rude to whisper around

these creatures that don't possess the power of speech, she let me know without speaking. Wallace Jr. was

silent too. Mother shared the bedspread with us and we sat for what seemed hours, looking into the fire.

The big bear tended the fire, breaking up the dry branches by holding one end and stepping on them,

like people do. He was good at keeping it going at the same level. Another bear poked the fire from time to

time but the others left it alone. It looked like only a few of the bears knew how to use fire, and were

carrying the others along. But isn't that how it is with everything? Every once in a while, a smaller bear

walked into the circle of firelight with an armload of wood and dropped it onto the pile. Median wood has a

silvery cast, like driftwood.

Wallace Jr. isn't fidgety like a lot of kids. I found it pleasant to sit and stare into the fire. I took a little

piece of Mother's Red Man, though I don't generally chew. It was no different from visiting her at the

Home, only more interesting, because of the bears. There were about eight or ten of them. Inside the fire

itself, things weren't so dull, either: little dramas were being played out as fiery chambers were created and

then destroyed in a crashing of sparks. My imagination ran wild. I looked around the circle at the bears and

wondered what they saw. Some had their eyes closed. Though they were gathered together, their spirits still

seemed solitary, as if each bear was sitting alone in front of its own fire.

The hubcap came around and we all took some newberries. I don't know about Mother, but I just

pretended to eat mine. Wallace Jr. made a face and spit his out. When he went to sleep, I wrapped the

bedspread around all three of us. It was getting colder and we were not provided, like the bears, with fur. I

was ready to go home, but not Mother. She pointed up toward the canopy of trees, where a light was

spreading, and then pointed to herself. Did she think it was angels approaching from on high? It was only

the high beams of some southbound truck, but she seemed mighty pleased. Holding her hand, I felt it grow

colder and colder in mine.

Wallace Jr. woke me up by tapping on my knee. It was past dawn, and his grandmother had died sitting

on the log between us. The fire was banked up and the bears were gone and someone was crashing straight

through the woods, ignoring the path. It was Wallace. Two state troopers were right behind him. He was

wearing a white shirt, and I realized it was Sunday morning. Underneath his sadness on learning of

Mother's death, he looked peeved.

The troopers were sniffing the air and nodding. The bear smell was still strong. Wallace and I wrapped

Mother in the bedspread and started with her body back out to the highway. The troopers stayed behind and

scattered the bears' fire ashes and flung their firewood away into the bushes. It seemed a petty thing to do.

They were like bears themselves, each one solitary in his own uniform.

There was Wallace's Olds 98 on the median, with its radial tires looking squashed on the grass. In front

of it there was a police car with a trooper standing beside it, and behind it a funeral home hearse, also an

Olds 98.

"First report we've had of them bothering old folks," the trooper said to Wallace.

"That's not hardly what happened at all," I said, but nobody asked me to explain. They have their own

procedures. Two men in suits got out of the hearse and opened the rear door. That to me was the point at

which Mother departed this life. After we put her in, I put my arms around the boy. He was shivering even

though it wasn't that cold. Sometimes death will do that, especially at dawn, with the police around and the

grass wet, even when it comes as a friend.

We stood for a minute watching the cars and trucks pass. "It's a blessing," Wallace said. It's surprising

how much traffic there is at 6:22 A.M.

That afternoon, I went back to the median and cut a little firewood to replace what the troopers had

flung away. I could see the fire through the trees that night.

I went back two nights later, after the funeral. The fire was going and it was the same bunch of bears, as

far as I could tell. I sat around with them a while but it seemed to make them nervous, so I went home. I

had taken a handful of newberries from the hubcap, and on Sunday I went with the boy and arranged them

on Mother's grave. I tried again, but it's no use, you can't eat them.

Unless you're a bear.

THE TWO JANETS

I'm not one of those people who thinks you have to read a book to get something out of it. You can learn

a lot about a book by picking it up, turning it over, rubbing the cover, riffling the pages open and shut.

Especially if it's been read enough times before, it'll speak to you.

This is why I like to hang around used-book stores on my lunch hour. I was at the outdoor bookstall on

the west side of Union Square, the one that opens out of huge crates, when my mother called. It is tempting

here to claim to remember that I was looking at an old paperback of, say, Rabbit Run, but actually it was

Henry Gregor Felsen's Hot Rod, the cover telling the whole story through the hairdos.

The pay phone on the corner nearest Sixteenth Street was ringing and wouldn't stop. Finally, I picked it

up and said, "Hello? Mother?"

"Janet? Is that you?" My mother has this uncanny, really, ability to call on pay phones and get me. She

does it about once a month.

Well, of course it was me: otherwise, would I have answered "Mother"?

"Did you have trouble finding me?" I asked.

"If you only knew. I called three phones, and the last two you wouldn't believe." It doesn't always work.

"So how's everything?" I asked. It came out "everthang." My accent, which I have managed to

moderate, always reemerges when I talk with anybody from home.

"Fine." She told me about Alan, my ex-fiancé, and Janet, my best friend. They used to call us the Two

Janets. Mother keeps up with my old high school friends, most of whom are of course still in Owensboro.

Then she said: "Guess what. John Updike just moved to Owensboro."

"John Updike?"

"The writer. Rabbit Run? It was about a week ago. He bought a house out on Maple Drive, across from

the hospital there."

"This was in the paper?"

"No, of course not. I'm sure he wants his privacy. I heard it from Elizabeth Dorsey, your old music

teacher. Her oldest daughter, Mary Beth, is married to Sweeney Kost Junior who sells real estate with that

new group out on Leitchfield Road. She called to tell me because she thought you might be interested."

It is well-known that I have an interest in literature. I came to New York to get a job in publishing. My

roommate already has one at S&S (Simon and Schuster) and I called her before I went back to work. She

doesn't go to lunch until two. She hadn't heard anything about John Updike moving to Owensboro, but she

checked PW (Publishers Weekly) and found an item saying that John Updike had sold his house in

Massachusetts and moved to a small Midwestern city.

That bothered me. Owensboro sits right across the river from Indiana, but it's still the South, not the

Midwest. The northernmost statue to Confederate heroes sits on the courthouse lawn. I'm not touchy about

that stuff but some people are. Then I thought that if you just looked at a map, as they might have done

fact-checking at the PW office, or as Updike himself might have done, looking for a new place to live, you

might think Owensboro was in the Midwest since it's much closer to St. Louis than to Atlanta. Then I

thought, maybe Updike was just saying "Midwest" to throw people off. Maybe he was, like Salinger, trying

to get away from the world. Then I thought, maybe he didn't move to Owensboro at all, and the whole thing

was just a mistake, a coincidence, a wild flight of fancy. The more I thought about this theory, the better I

liked it. "Small city in the Midwest" could mean Iowa City, where a well-known writer's workshop is held;

or any one of a hundred college towns like Crawfordsville, Indiana (Wa-bash); Gambler, Ohio (Kenyon);

or Yellow Springs, Ohio (Antioch). Or even Indianapolis or Cincinnati. To a New Yorker, and all writers,

even when they live in Massachusetts, they are New Yorkers (in a way); Indianapolis and Cincinnati are

small cities. Or if you wanted to get really close to home there is Evansville, Indiana, at 130,500 definitely

a "small city" (Owensboro at 52,000 is only barely a city) and one that might even attract a writer like John

Updike.

With all this, I was eleven minutes late getting back to work. But what are they going to do, fire a temp?

That was on Thursday, May 18. I had the usual weekend, and on Monday night, right after the rates

changed, Alan, my ex-fiancé, made his weekly call. "Found a job yet?" he asked (knowing he would have

heard from my mother if I had). Then he added, "Did you hear Saul Bellow moved to Owensboro?"

"You mean John Updike," I said.

"No, that was last week. Saul Bellow moved here just yesterday." Alan runs two of his father's four

liquor stores. He and I still share an interest in books and literature.

"How could that be?" I said. I would have thought he was making it up but Alan, to his credit (I guess),

never makes things up.

I thought about calling Janet but I am always calling her, so the next morning I called Mother from

work. I was temping for an insurance adjuster with a WATS line. "Mother, did Saul Bellow move to

Owensboro?" I asked, getting right to the point.

"Well, yes, dear, he did. He's living out in those apartments on Scherm Road. The ones where Wallace

Carter Cox and Loreena Dyson lived right after he got his divorce."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, you didn't seem very excited when John Updike moved here, dear, so I thought you didn't much

care. You have made a new life for yourself in New York, after all."

I let that go. "It sure is mighty nice of you to keep up with where everybody lives," I joked.

"When a famous person moves to a town like this," she said, "everybody notices."

I wondered about that. I didn't think people in Owensboro, outside of Alan, even knew who Saul Bellow

was. I'll bet not twenty people there have read his books. I have only read one, the most recent one. The

other Janet reads only nonfiction.

The next week Philip Roth moved to Owensboro. I found out from Janet, who called me, a new thing for

her since it's usually me who puts out the effort, not to mention the money, to stay in touch.

"Guess who we saw in the mall today," she said. "Philip Roth."

"Are you sure? How did you know?" I asked. I couldn't imagine her recognizing Philip Roth.

"Your mother pointed him out. She recognized his face from a story in People magazine. I'm not sure he

would be considered handsome if he wasn't a famous writer."

"Wait a minute," I said. "Was he just visiting or has he moved to Owensboro too? And what mall are

you talking about?"

"What mall!" Janet said. "There's only one, out Livermore Road. It's so far out of town that hardly

anybody ever goes out there. I couldn't believe it when we saw Philip Roth out there."

"What were you doing out at the mall with my mother?" I asked. "Is she bothering you again?"

"She gets a little lonesome. I go by and see her, and maybe we go shopping or something. Is that a

crime?"

"Of course not," I said. I'm glad my mother has friends. I just wish they weren't my best friends, with the

same name as me.

Mother called me at work the next day. I have asked her not to do this when I am temping, but

sometimes she can't make the pay-phone thing work. Most companies don't like for temps to get calls, even

from family. E. L. Doctorow had moved to Owensboro and was staying in Dr. Crippen's house on

Wildwood Drive, only two blocks away.

"He has a little beard," Mother said, "He has a little dog and walks it regularly every day. He's renting

the house while Dr. Crippen and his wife are in Michigan."

"So he hasn't exactly moved to Owensboro," I said, somehow relieved.

"Well, he's out here every morning," she said, "walking his dog. Call it whatever you want to."

I know the house very well. The Crippens are not ostentatiously tacky the way some (indeed, most)

doctors are. It was the Crippens who had encouraged me to go ahead and move to New York if that was

what I wanted, when everybody else in my class was getting married. It's not an older home, of the kind I

prefer, but if you had to live in a suburban-style house, theirs would do.

All day I imagined E. L. Doctorow watering the plants and looking through Dr. and Dr. (they are both

doctors) Crippen's books. They have the most books of anybody in Owensboro. The next day at lunch I

went to Barnes and Noble and looked through Doctorow's novels in paperback. All together they made a

neat little stack the size of a shoebox.

I decided I was glad he had moved to Owensboro.

It's hard to make friends in New York. I wondered what it was like in Owensboro for famous writers.

Did they ever meet? Did they know one another? Did they pay visits, talk shop, drink together? I asked

Alan when he called Monday night (right after the rates changed) but he seemed embarrassed by the

question.

"Apparently, they have all moved here independently," he said. "They're never seen together. I wouldn't

want to speculate."

When William Styron moved to Owensboro the last day in May, I wasn't so surprised. At least he was

from the South, although two more different regions than the lower Ohio Valley and the Tidewater of

Virginia could hardly be imagined. May and even June are nice in Owensboro, but July and August were

coming, and when I thought of Styron blinking in the fierce muggy heat, he seemed even more out of place

than the urban Jewish writers like Roth, Doctorow, and Bellow. And Updike, a New Englander! I felt sorry

for them all. But that was silly. Every place now has air-conditioning.

When I called Janet, she reminded me that Mother's birthday was coming up. I knew I was expected to

fly home. Janet told me all about how she and Alan were planning to take her out to dinner. This was to

make me feel guilty. I wasn't planning to fall for it like I did last year, at the last minute.

It is very hard to make friends in New York. My roommate and her ex-roommate had shares in a house

in the Hamptons (well, almost the Hamptons) and I had been invited out for the weekend. "You can't go

home for your mother's birthday every year," I tell myself.

Mother called me a few days later -- a pay phone again, this one near a deli on Thirty-ninth Street where

she had gotten me once before -- to announce that J. D. Salinger had moved to Owensboro.

"Wait a minute," I said. This was getting out of hand. "How come no women writers ever move to

Owensboro? What about Ann Tyler? Or Alice Walker? Or Bobbie Ann Mason, who is actually from

Mayfield (not that far away)? How come they're all men, and all these old guys?"

"I suppose you expect me to ask them that!" Mother said. "I only found out the author of Catcher in the

Rye moved here because Mr. Roth told Reverend Curtis."

"Mr. Roth?" So now it was "Mr." Roth.

"Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus? He's renting Reverend Curtis's son Wallace's house out on

Livermore Road, and you know how Reverend Curtis won't take checks, and they saw this strange-looking

man at the cash machine, and Mr. Roth whispers, 'That's J. D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye?' Man said he

looked like some hillbilly in town from Ohio County."

"How did Alan get into this?"

"He was standing in line behind them at the cash machine," Mother said. "He just happened to

overhear."

On Monday night, Alan told me Philip Roth had seemed as surprised as the rest of them to see J. D.

Salinger in Owensboro.

"Maybe they had all moved to Owensboro trying to get away from him," I said, trying to be funny.

"I doubt that," Alan said. "Anyway, it's hardly the kind of question you can ask."

It's Mother who should marry Alan, not me. They think exactly alike.

As Mother's birthday approached, I tried to concentrate on my upcoming weekend in the Hamptons. I

knew what I had to guard against was the last-minute temptation to fly home.

When I called Janet later in the week from a lawyer's office -- they never watch their phone bills -- she

said, "Do you know the movie Bright Lights Big City ?"

"Michael J. Fox has moved to Owensboro," I said, astonished in spite of myself.

"Not him, the other one, the author. I forget his name."

"McInerney," I said. "Jay McInerney. Are you sure?" I didn't want to say it because it sounded so

snobbish, but Jay McInerney didn't exactly seem Owensboro caliber.

"Of course I'm sure. He looks just like Michael J. Fox. I saw him walking down at that little park by the

river. You know, the one where Norman Mailer hangs out."

"Norman Mailer. I didn't even know he lived in Owensboro," I said.

"Why not?" Janet said. "A lot of famous writers make Owensboro their home."

Make Owensboro Their Home. That was the first time I'd heard it said like that. It seemed to make it

official.

Janet's call made me think, and for the first time since I broke up with him, I called Alan. At least he

knew who Jay McInerney was, although he had never read the book. "The other Janet said she saw

McInerney and Mailer down there at the park," I said. "Does that mean the famous writers are starting to

meet one another and hang out together?"

"You always want to jump to conclusions," Alan said. "They might have been in the same park at totally

different times of the day. Even when they do meet, they don't talk. The other day at the K Mart, Joe Billy

Survant saw E. L. Doctorow and John Irving both in Housewares, and they sort of nodded, but that was

all."

John Irving? But I let it go. "Housewares," I said instead. "Sounds like folks are really settling in."

"We're taking your mother to dinner at the Executive Inn for her fifty-first birthday Friday night," Alan

said.

"I've been invited for a weekend in the Hamptons," I said. "Well, almost the Hamptons."

"Oh, I understand," he said. Alan likes to imagine he understands me. "But if you change your mind I'll

pick you up at the airport in Evansville."

Evansville, Indiana, is thirty miles from Owensboro. It used to seem like a big city to me, but after

eighteen months in New York, it seemed pathetic and insignificant: all trees from the air, and hardly any

traffic. The one-story terminal looks like a shopping-center bank branch. You climb down out of the plane

on a ladder.

There was Alan in his sensible-with-a-flair Olds Cutlass Supreme. I felt the usual mixture of warmth

and dismay on seeing him. I guess you might call it warm dismay.

"Who's that?" I asked, gesturing toward a bearlike figure at the USAir ticket counter.

Alan whispered, "That's Thomas M. Disch. Science fiction. But quality stuff."

"Science fiction?" But the name was familiar, at least sort of. Although Disch isn't exactly famous, he

seemed more the Owensboro type than McInerney. "He's moving to Owensboro, too?"

"How should I know? He may have just been here in Evansville for the speedboat races. Anyway, he's

leaving. Let's talk about you."

We drove back home on the Kentucky side of the river, through Henderson.

That whole weekend in Owensboro, I only saw three famous writers, not counting Disch, who is not

really famous and who was in Evansville, not Owensboro, anyway. Tom Pynchon was at the take-out

counter at the Moonlight, buying barbecued mutton. He bought three liters of Diet Coke, so it looked like

he might be having a party, but on the way home from the Executive Inn we drove past his house on

Littlewood Drive and it was dark.

For dinner, we had steak and salad. Mother was a hoot. Alan insisted on paying as usual. We were home

by ten, and by ten-thirty Mother was asleep in front of the TV. I got two cans of Falls City out of the

refrigerator and sneaked her Buick out of the garage. I picked up the other Janet, just like in the old days,

by scratching on her screen. "The Two Janets," she whispered melodramatically. She said the cops were

rough on DWI (Driving While under the Influence) these days, but I wasn't worried. This was still the

South; we were still girls. We cruised down Griffith, out Frederica, down Fourth, down by the river. There

was hardly any traffic.

"Has Alan asked you to marry him again?" I asked.

"Not yet."

"Well, if he does, I think you should."

"You mean you wish I would."

The streets were still and dark and empty.

"Sure isn't New York," I sighed.

"Well, nobody can say you haven't given it a shot," the other Janet said.

At midnight we went to the all-night Convenience Mart at Eighteenth and Triplett for two more cans of

beer. John Updike was looking through the magazines (even though the little sign says not to). At 12:12

A.M. Joyce Carol Oates came in for a pack of cigarettes, and surprising us both, they left together.

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

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BEARSDISCOVERFIREbyTERRYBISSON(1993)[VERSION1.1(Aug0602).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]CONTENTSBearsDiscoverFire(IsaacAsimov'sScienceFictionMagazine,Aug1990)TheTwoJanets(IsaacAsimov'sScienceFictionMagazine,Nov1990)They'reMadeOutofMeat(Omni,Apr19...

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Bisson, Terry - Bears Discover Fire

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