Bear v. Shark (20 page)

Know that paper I wrote on Bear v. Shark?

The one you got off the Internet?

Yeah.

The one about how the bear is the ego and the shark is the id?

Yeah.

Froyd.

I got a D.

Jesus, that was the best paper out of all of them.

Teacher said he couldn’t follow my
train of thought
.

What’s a train of thought?

My train of thought, that’s what he said.

A train.
Of thought
.

Yeah, he couldn’t follow it.

And he wanted to?

Follow it?

Yeah.

I guess so.

He wanted to follow your so-called
train of thought
, but he couldnt.

Hold on, I got another call.

A train of thought, it would seem, is a positive thing. One wants to have a train of thought so that others can follow it. A train made entirely of thought. A thought train, with teachers in tow.

I’m back. You there?

What is
porridge
, anyway?

What’s a train got to do with it?

A train is an outmoded form of transportation.

That’s what I’m saying.

It’s slow and smoky.

Heavy, loud.

Well if slow and smoky thoughts are good, then I’m a damn idiot severe.

It’s true.

Damn boy genius, if smoky thinking’s the yardstick.

What we’re talking about here is number one, why would I want a train of thought, number two, why would he want to follow it, and number three.

Number three is why would you want a damn train of thought in the first place when there’s all kinds of thought vehicles out there that are faster and more efficient and constructed especially for the modern reader.

Today’s hectic world.

Who the hell wants to sit still at a thought crossing and just watch those linked ideas roll by?

Hold on, I got another call.

It’s on to the Museum of Las Vegas Secession, remember, that huge and impressively amusing educational complex. But it’s hard for the Normans to get very excited about the museum, what with the Event looming in the near future.

It seems that the thousands of other people at the museum feel the same way. People are nervous, on edge. Everyone is just wandering around, killing time, waiting.

Who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark?

I mean, think about it, if a bear (with a normal-sized head) and a shark had a conflict that they could not settle peaceably . . . who would win?

I’d eat broken glass for a ticket, I would.

The Virtual Water Park is fun because you don’t get wet for real.

The Original Gambling Monkey is pretty amazing. He plays blackjack and poker, mostly. But here’s what they never tell you in the ads: The monkey is a
terrible
gambler. He almost always loses, it’s like he doesnt even understand the rules or the purpose.

The World’s Largest Billboard is immense, to be sure, but a bit of a letdown. It’s not as big as it looks on the Internet. Pictures can lie.

Mr. Norman holds Curtis’s hand as the family walks around the museum, which is a nice thing that he hasn’t done in a long time.
Curtis walks slowly and a bit unsteadily, staring straight ahead. He seems to be getting much better. He eats cotton candy and rubs some of it in his hair. Not once at the museum does he run off or get lost or get shot.

There is a petting zoo with a toothless, sedated bear with glassy eyes and tangled fur. It lies on its side taking shallow breaths while the children poke it. There is also a shark, apparently, but it won’t come out from behind a plastic rock.

Mr. Norman leans down to Curtis and says, “You ready for tonight, little man?”

Docents in animal masks make children run and cry.

He (Mr. Norman) says, “You think the shark will get what’s coming to him?”

Curtis doesn’t say anything.

Matthew says, “No way, Dad.”

A sign says, “The brave men and women who settled this country came here seeking a better way of life.”

A sign says, “Coming tomorrow: Bear v. Shark II: A Historical Perspective.”

A man on a pay phone says, “You fucking
promised
me youd have the detonator.

Matthew says, “Sucks you have to wait for history.”

There is a shark out there in the ocean called a cookie-cutter shark.
Isistius brasiliensis
. Even though it is pretty clearly an Internet hoax, I’m going to assume that it’s real, as I assume American astronauts landed on the moon, as I assume Greenland exists, as I assume the biological experts in Chapter 88 really have their Ph.D.s. Call me gullible. Ive seen Internet pictures of the cookie-cutter shark. This is not a pretty animal creepy eyes and a godawful mouth but still, it doesnt look like some terror of the deep. Not the great white, the so-called man-eater, not 50 feet long like the whale shark. Its cigar-shaped, eel-like, about 50 cm in length, max. (As any decent dashboard will tell you, thats about 20 inches long.) And cookie-cutter shark is such a harmless name, a fun name, even, who doesnt like cookies?, my friends and I love them, except heres the thing: do you know why it’s called that? What this shark does is attach itself to some much larger creature, sometimes another shark, with its thick, suctorial lips and long, sharp teeth, and then it spins hard in order to rip out a cookie-shaped plug of flesh from the larger animal. This plug is sometimes referred to as a flesh cookie. Cookie-cutter sharks have very strong basihyals (see above) and mighty rectus cervicis throat muscles in order to create a powerful oral vacuum. A recent theory suggests that the cookie-cutter sharks markings trick other, larger fish into thinking it is a very small fish. When the larger fish attacks this very small fish, the
cookie-cutter turns and lunges at the lunger, using the larger fishs forward motion to help rip out the plug of flesh, the cookie. I might add that at one site there is talk of cookie-cutter sharks cratering the sturdy sonar domes of nuclear submarines.

So say you’re a big fish. This seemingly harmless creature with the fun name lies to you, assaults you with a powerful oral vacuum, and then makes a hole in you forever.

Damn right it’s a metaphor.

Tell about the Big Afternoon leading up to the Big Event.

Five hours, four hours, three hours, two hours . . .

Slow down. Use some striking images, some poignant details. What’s the weather like?

Sunny. Hot. Hot as . . . I don’t know.

What else?

What’s to say? I’d skip it if you’d let me.

I won’t let you.

I know.

Tell it.

I don’t know, a nap. Yes, a family nap. Boy, they sure are tired, those Normans.

C’mon.

It’s true. It’s really true, now that I think about it.

Boring.

So.

Boring is bad.

Not all of life can be so entertaining.

What about art? What about novels?

Depends.

Tell about Curtis.

He’s asleep like the others.

Somethings wrong with him. Theres a problem here. Theres a crisis, a conflict.

We’re adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

What’s going to happen to him?

I, like sharks and most other fishes, cannot see the future.

They’re all asleep.

Yes. Well. Mr. Norman isn’t asleep. He can’t sleep. He keeps looking over to see if Curtis is still breathing.

And is he?

Breathing?

Yes.

Yes.

Boring. But outside, on the streets of Las Vegas, it’s like a big party or something, right? People tailgating and drinking and celebrating and getting ready. A festive, jubilant atmosphere. Some fights breaking out between bear and shark factions. Right?

But see, that’s the thing, it’s not a party. Nobody is out on the street, almost nobody. It’s hot and bright and empty out there. Kind of creepy. People are lying low, staying quiet. It’s never like this in Las Vegas, but today it is. It just doesn’t look right. You need people to make this place look right. Without people, it looks.

Deserted?

Worse than deserted. Egregious. At BvS: The Theme Park there are no lines. It’s never been easier to ride those upside-down rides. There are three people on The Mama’s Den and maybe three more on The Unlevel Playing Field. They’re all screaming with their hands in the air like you’re supposed to, but you can tell their hearts aren’t in it. One might say that a
pall
has
descended.

Hey you’ve got your religion and I’ve got mine.

Of course.

Family nap and empty streets.

That’s what I’m saying, yes.

No wonder nobody reads anymore. So what should I do the rest of the day?

I don’t know, flip through a celebrity magazine or watch a sporting event.

I can’t. I’m too antsy and restless about tonight.

Oh well.

Hey, would you care for a flesh cookie?

No thanks.

Didn’t someone die one time on The Mama’s Den?

You’re thinking of Goldilocks’s Nightmare. The guy was too tall and his head just.

Say, who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark?

Stay tuned, I reckon.

A free, crowded, and eerily quiet shuttle ride down to the Darwin Dome.

These are common folk on the shuttle, the lottery winners. Their T-shirts are loud and brash, but their faces are blank, even grim.

Grim, with one hour remaining before Bear v. Shark II: The War of Nature. What gives?

Mr. Norman wonders if
his
face is grim. And if his face is grim, does that mean he’s
feeling
grim, too? He intentionally makes a grim face, and then thinks about how much work it took. If it was relatively easy to make a grim face from his regular, ground-state face, then maybe his face was already pretty far on toward grim, and thus maybe he is feeling grim. If his face had to go a long way to make a grim face, then maybe he is the opposite of grim, happy or something.

Step One: Make a grim face.

Step Two: Measure the difference between regular face and grim face.

Step Three: Determine your emotional state.

Mrs. Norman says, “Honey, what are you doing?”

This isn’t easy, and it really isn’t as scientific as it seems. There’s room for human error here. Subjectivity creeps back in.

Curtis sits in his father’s lap. Under each of his eyes is a shiny blue crescent of bruise. Blue and shiny, like an insect’s wings. Back at the
hotel Matthew swore he heard Curtis say something, some words, not English words, really, but an utterance of some type. The child is coming around.

If you are faced with a bear in a threatening situation, remain calm and still. Sometimes playing dead works. The
last
thing you want to do is run away. Bears are fast.

A T-shirt says, “Real men have coarse, thick fur.”

Another T-shirt says, “Hibernation is for pussies.”

Grim faces.

Darwin, the nineteenth-century scientist, says, in the penultimate sentence of his
On the Origin of Species
, Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

Civic Leaders and Captains of Industry say, “I don’t much care for Darwin on origins, but I like what he has to say about competition.”

And there it is, folks, the Darwin Dome, brilliant in the August sun. A cathedral and a crucible.

The shuttle driver, an anarchist with some vague cult ties, says, “Well, here we are.”

Mrs. Norman says, “Isn’t it something?”

From his father’s lap, Curtis stares out the bullet-proof shuttle windows at the desert arena.

The dictionary says dome means house of God.

abortion
Adams, Grizzly
Agassi, Andre
American ear, broad, flapping
American Vacation
announcement, public service
Antichafe Flap, patented
Aristotle
Ark, Noah’s
Asians,
Astroturf
Atlanta, Carolina
atmosphere:

festive and jubilant
foreboding
grim

author’s apartment

Babble Blocker
baby, lost
back to you, Brock
Backacher, Chris
Badchildren, Chris
Bandleader, Chris
Barthelme, Donald
Barthes, Roland
bears:

Bear Killer
cabaret
churlish
fur
head, large
head-lugged
head, small
hibernation
invisible
meat
milk
paws
pipin’ swords
porn
running downhill
sark
slippers
speed
swimming
syrup, love of
teeth
verbs

Bear v. Shark:

I
II

III
action figures
Blues No. 3
Breakfast Cereal, The

Classic Game of Strategy and Entertainment, The

cone, the
essay, the

How to Talk to Your Children about Bear v. Shark

index, the
insider’s story, the
license plates, personalized
logo, the
novel, the
On Ice
origins
parties
preface, the
question, the
quiz, the
rising action, the
Tale of the Tape, The
Talk Radio
Theme Park, The
T-shirt

bees, killer
birds, fake
bivouac, scenic
Blackletter, Chris
boards:

bill (
see also
Jesus) dash

bombs

boot, cowboy
boy:

crippled
drowning

breakfast:

analytic
Continental
on a stick

brother-in-law, my
Buffalo, Baltimore
butt, perfect
’Bye, Dale

cake, chocolate
Calvino, Italo
carrots, wavy
chinchilla
chlorine
Cleveland, New Orleans
cockfights
Comedy, Situation
context, pseudo
cookies:

flesh
ginger

costumes, furry
cricket, dead
cults
Curtis’s knees

Darwin, Charles

Darwin Dome

Debate, Ten-Second
delay, seven-second
democracy
Denver , Minnesota
depression

desire, refracted, despot, beneficent (
see
boards, dash)

dew point (
see
weather)
disaster, passenger train
disciples, the
disease:

cancer
Dutch Elm
freshwater
gum

dog:

Last Folksinger’s
wiener,

Dorfman, Ariel
Dutch, the

earplugs, complimentary
Edison, Thomas
electronic equipment, fake
entertainers, homeless
entertainment exhaust
experts
eyes:

funny
weird

face, grim
feelings, palpable
fisherman, well-read
Florentine, banana
Folksinger, Last
Food Marts
footage:

interesting,
stock

fork fork fork
French and Indian War
Freud, Sigmund
Frost, Robert
Frozen Dinner Rolls, Insta-Bake (
see
Curtis’s knees)

Gambling Monkey, World’s Original
gardener (
see
Dutch, the)
gas, inert
gaskin
ghost
gills, bleeding
Goldilocks’s Nightmare
grace, shredded
Green Bay, Seattle
Green Paint
guarantee, four-minute
Guard, National
guy:

from other booth
from Pump

hair, unwanted
hand:

invisible
of the diligent

HardCorp
Hart, Owen
hash, canned
Hernia Soda
hoax (
see
Internet)
hoboes
hockey team, U.S. Olympic
hogshead
Hollis, Rev.
Holmes:

Oliver Wendell
Sherlock

hookers
hoosegow (
see
prison)
horse, pommel
human spirit, triumph of
Huxley, Aldous

ich
Indianapolis, Dallas

Internet

irony

Jacksonville, Cincinnati
Jesus:

on a billboard
on the Darwin Dome

join join join
jokes
judge, TV commercial
jump, Curtis

Kansas City, San Diego
King, Martin Luther
knitting, electronic
knock, knock
knot:

Accordion
Gordian
Gordon
granny
Guardian

koan

Las Vegas

lawn, chipped and faded
lawyer, lady
license plates, personalized
Lindbergh, Charles
Link, Breakfast
linoleum
Lloyd
Lloyd’s mother
Look past the violence, Jack
love, flood of

marble, lucky
Meredith, Dr. Sara
Miami , Chicago
microcoils, interlocked
Mindy’s ex-boyfriend Nate
mockery
Moody, Rick
Moore, Lorrie
moralism
motorists, drunk
mouse:

dead
foolhardy

Munson, Rev. Marty
Museum of Las Vegas Secession, The

Namath, Joe
nausea
neon
Net Nook
New England, Arizona
New York Giants, Philadelphia
nine yards, the whole
noggin, bump on the

oriole bolus
outing, father-son

pains, fruitless
Pants, Sexy
parlor
Personality, Television
Petty, Richard
pillow:

cordless vibrating
UnPillow

Planet Peanut Brittle
plumbers
police
polls, recent
porridge
Postman, Neil
posture
Princess Adelaide
prison:

cabbage
Las Vegas
sex

Pynchon, Thomas

racehorse
Razor, Ockham’s
rhetoric
Richards, I. A.
Round-Eyed Sons of the Knightly Order

sandwich, dick
satire
Saunders, George
scrotum, underneath the
sequitur, non
sex (
see
prison)
Shakespeare
sharks:

belly
bite radius
cookie-cutter
dogfish
erogenous zone
fins
hat
maw and gulf
neck
pajamas
ravined
skin
sleep
swimming backward
teeth
tongue

shower cap
Shut up, Helen
silence, moment of
Siskind, Murray Jay
snacks:

cheese
meat

Spartacus

Sport Utility Vehicle

squirrel eater
Sterno
St. Louis, Tennessee

Taft, William Howard
Tampa Bay, Detroit

TeleTown

Television:

commercials
ESP TV
old
Outrageous Accomplishments Network
PayView
Prison Network
Pundit Network
on staircase
see also
weather

Television Room:

small
large

Thigpen, Elton
Thoreau, Henry David
toga
tongue, swollen
topiary, artichoke
truth, bloody meat of

unrest, civil

Van Buren, Martin
vertebrae (
see
posture)
village:

French
global,

Virtual Water Park, World’s Funnest
visit, conjugal,

Wallace, David Foster
Wall of China, Great,
War of the Worlds, The
Washington, Los Angeles
waterfall
weapons:

battle-ax
gun, derringer
gun, lightning
gun, turquoise
halberd
harpoon
ice pick
machete
pocket knife, contraband
scythe
see also
bombs

weather:

Bear Index
clouds, cumulative
dew point
Extreme Weather
fish-clouds, bloated
hot as . . .  I don’t know
sun, chemical
Tsunami Tsurvival!
Weather Europe
Weather Network
Weather Network Plus

Welles, Orson
Wells, H. G.
Wittgenstein
world:

arid
dog-eat-dog
hectic
natural
violent

wrestling, professional

yes, ma’am

Zen, Extreme
zoo, petting