Setting Free the Bears - Page 49

'Why, smarty,' said Keff. 'That's real good listening.'

And now it was out of the town; it took our road. A hoarse man clearing his throat, many closed rooms away - clearing a great hoarse throat, not momentarily but eternally; going on forever, coming toward us forever.

'Oh yes!' said Keff.

Oh yes, I would have known it from a million others. Oh, the good sounds of the throggy beast my Siggy rode!

'Ha!' said Keff. 'It's him, smarty. It's him, the queer!'

And, Keff, you were almost done then. A third-tier bee box for you, Keff, right where your neckless head looms almost level with the humming stack; right where you lurk on your high seat, Keff, a bee box for you. And perhaps another, perhaps a whole toppling row come down on you, thick Keff. If I dared, Keff, and if I thought it would make any difference or do any good.

How many bees would do for you, Keff? A strapping fellow like yourself - how many bee stings could you take? What's your quota, rotten Keff?

Uphill and Downhill, Hither and Yon

AND WAS IT Gallen's cold hand that brought me back? That crouched me by the trailer end, thinking: What now, Siggy? How do I stop you from meeting the mountaintop with the blinking-blue Volkswagen, and the snapping, black-gloved fingers therein, therein?

Up the mountain, where Keff and I had wound down from the gravelly switchbacks are sharper; three S-curves above the bee-wagon was the very best S-curve of them all. It was as sharp as a Z. Well, I thought, he'll have to slow down for that one - even Siggy, even the beast, will have to come down a gear or two for that one. Maybe even first gear; he'd be going slow enough to stop, or at least slow enough so he'd have to see me in the road.

I ran, and I didn't decipher Keff's shouting; no, I didn't heed his woolly voice.

You always think you run so fast at night, even uphill; you can't see how slowly the road slips under you or the trees come by. The old night-shapes loomed and hovered; I could hear the beast rage louder.

Is it looking back that makes me fill in all the pieces, and make the facts come out so tight? Or did I really hear them then? The bees. Their million, double-, triple-million voices, urgent and impatient and abuzz.

But this I'm sure of: it was three S-curves up the tumbling mountain, and then the Z. Was it so perfectly worked out that I saw the headlight hit the tree clumps around me, precisely when I turned the Z? Or was it really somewhere in the last S, approaching the Z? Or did I really have to wait in ambush, long before the throg and thump of valve and tire slap bent into the Z itself?

At least I was there; I saw his rider shape come slithering out of the S below me - could hear that his gear was third - and saw the jerking headlight wash me a moon color and fix me forever to that spot on the road.

Then, hearing the gears come down to first. Into the elbow of the Z - was he coming at me sideways? Was the headlight jogging along all by itself?

'Frotting Graff!' he said, and the beast coughed itself out.

'Oh, Siggy!' I said, and I could have kissed his shining helmet - only it wasn't his helmet. It was his bare dome, bald as the moon and bared for the night of his escape. Cold as a gun.

'Frotting Graff!' he said, and he struggled to kick the bike out of gear. He lifted his foot for the kick starter.

'Sig, they've a roadblock for you at St Leonhard!'

'You've a roadblock in your brain,' he said. 'Let me go.'

'Siggy, you can't drive out. You'll have to hide.'

But he got his foot back again; I joggled him off balance so he needed both legs to hold the bike up.

'Frotting Graff! Messing things up, you ninny-assed lover of that girl!'

And he wrestled the bike up steady, kicked back with his starting foot. But I wouldn't let him.

'Siggy, they're laying for you. You can't go.'

'Have you a plan, Graff?' he said. 'I'd like to hear your plan, frotting Graff!'

Why no, there wasn't any plan. Of course, there wasn't.

But I said, 'You've got to stash the bike. Drive off in the orchards, lay low till the morning.'

'Is that a plan?' he said. 'Is there any good plan coming from you, Graff? Until every maidenhead on earth is taken, will you ever have a worthwhile plan?'

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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