Bears Discover Fire

“How terrible! On your birthday! Andrew, I know exactly how you feel.”

“As a matter of fact, you’re both a couple of assholes!”

NO NAME CALLING

PLEASE EMILY AND ANDREW,

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO TREAT YOU TO A BIRTHDAY DINNER AND A FILM

“A hundred dollars!”

“It says it’s treating us. Take it, Emily.”

“You take it, Andrew; I think the man should handle the money. And you can call me Em.”

“I can’t fucking believe this!”

“We’d better hurry. Excuse me, Bruce, old pal, do you have the time?”

“It’s 6:42. Asshole.”

“If we run we can catch the 6:45. Then, how about Sneeky Pete’s?”

“I love Tex-Mex!”

PLEASE REMOVE YOUR CARD

DON’T FORGET TO TRY THE BLACKENED FAJITAS

“You’re all three assholes! I can’t fucking believe this. She left with him!”

WELCOME TO CASH-IN-A-FLASH

1324 LOCATIONS

TO SERVE YOU CITYWIDE

PLEASE DON’T KICK THE MACHINE

“Go to hell!”

PLEASE INSERT YOUR CASH-IN-A-FLASH CARD

“Fuck you.”

GO AHEAD, BRUCE

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?

THANK YOU

IT WASN’T ‘EATEN’ AFTER ALL, WAS IT?

“You know it wasn’t. Asshole.”

NO NAME CALLING PLEASE

WOULD YOU LIKE—

• SYMPATHY

• REVENGE

• WEATHER

• ANN

“Excuse me.”

“Jesus, lady, quit banging on the door. I know it’s raining. Tough shit. I’m not going to let you in. This is a cash machine, not a homeless shelter. You’re supposed to have a card or something. What?”

“I said, shut up and press Ann.”

THE COON SUIT

I’m not much of a hunter and I don’t care for dogs. I was driving out Taylorsville Road in Oldharn County one Sunday, when I saw this bunch of pickups down in a hollow by a pond. My own old yellow and white ‘77 Ford half-ton was bought from a coon hunter, and it could have been the truck as much as me that slowed down to take a look.

Men were standing around the pickups, most of which had dog boxes in the beds. I saw a Xeroxed sign stapled to a telephone pole, and realized I had been seeing the same sign for a couple of miles along the road.

COON RUN, SUNDAY, CARPENTERS LAKE.

If this was Carpenters Lake, it was not much more than a pond. I could hear dogs barking. I pulled over to watch.

There was a cable running across the water. It ran from a pole where the trucks were parked into the trees on the other side of the pond. Hanging under it, like a cable car, was a wire cage. While I watched, two men took six or eight hounds out of the back of a half-ton Ford and down to the bank. The dogs were going wild and I could see why.

There was a coon in the cage. From where I was parked, up on the road, it was just a little black shape. It looked like a skunk or a big house cat. It was probably just my imagination, but I thought I could see the black eyes, panicky under the white mask, and the handlike feet plucking at the wire mesh.

A rope ran from the cage, through a pulley on a tree at the far end of the cable and back. A man pulled at the rope and the cage started across the cable, only three or four feet off the water. The men on the bank let the dogs go and they threw themselves into the pond. They were barking louder than ever, swimming under the cage as it was pulled in long slow jerks toward the woods on the other side.

My wife Katie tells me I’m a watcher, and it’s true I’d generally rather watch than do. I wasn’t even tempted to join the men by the pond, even though I probably knew one or two of them from the plant. I had a better view from up on the road. There was something fascinating and terrifying at the same time about the dogs splashing clumsily through the water (they don’t call it dog-paddling for nothing), looking up hungrily at the dark shape in the wire cage.

Once the cage was moving, the coon sat dead-still. He probably figured he had the situation under control. I could almost see the smirk on his face as he looked down at the dogs in the water, a sort of aviator look.

On the bank the men leaned against their trucks drinking beer and watching. They all wore versions of the same hat, drove versions of the same truck, and looked like versions of the same guy. Not that I think I’m better than them; I’m just not much of a hunter and don’t care for dogs. From the boxes in the truck beds, the other hounds waiting their turn set up a howl, a background harmony to the wild barking from the pond.