The Bear

The ceiling thumped, thumped, thumped because the bear was walking around upstairs.

I sat on the bottom step, looking up the dark stairway, trying to imagine what lay beyond the box of light around the doorframe. Sometimes I was brave enough to go up the steps on my hands and knees, which didn’t creak because they were carpeted, and put my ear to the door and listen, trying to hear what the bear was doing. I heard belly rumbling snoring. I heard glass tingling and hair brushing against wood. Mostly the bear, so bored and lonely, traveled in a big circle, room to room, looking for someone to play with or something to do. Sometimes when I was brave enough, I put my head to the floor and tried to see under the crack in the doorframe when the bear passed by.

I really wanted to see the bear’s paw. One time I saw it. The bear’s foot was black, furry, the paw of a big dog. Its pink rubbery nose sniffed the carpet. Its bristly belly dragged the carpet and passed like the moon, and I saw no more.

I tried the door. The knob was cold, worn to silver. Locked, as always. I cried over why my grandparents kept the door locked. I tapped on the door a triple beat that meant friend so the bear would come sniff. But I scared the bear. It sounded like the cows galloping after feed. The bear thundered down a hallway, knocking things over.

The door jamb was clawed up. Times the bear chased my grandma.

One day my grandpa, arms covered in black greasy fur, came in from working on his tractor to make himself a Pickle Dog Sandwich. My grandpa’s tractors were always breaking down. That’s what they did. Break down. Whole afternoons he’d sit on a stump or an upside down five-gallon bucket and stare into the bowels of a tractor he’d taken apart piece by piece, body up on jack-stands so he could stare into it. I think he liked it best when tractors broke down. So he could fix them. Which meant taking them apart, talking to himself, wandering around his tool shed, opening drawers, searching for a wrench he couldn’t find and cussing that J.J., the farmer down the road, stole his wrench. My dad called it “pittling,” which meant doing nothing, wasting time. My dad and my grandpa didn’t get along. Sometimes when my dad came in from the fields and would see my grandpa pittling on his tractor, pieces scattered about like Legos, he’d start yelling. And my grandpa would get red in the face, say, “by hell I ain’t pittling,” and start yelling. And then I’d go hide.

Anyway, my grandpa came in from working on his tractor to make himself a Pickle Dog Sandwich and I pressed myself flat against the wall, like in Batman, so he wouldn’t see me, because if he did see me he’d make me eat Pickle Dog Sandwiches with him. My grandpa loved pickle dog. He had three big red-capped jugs of pickle dog sitting on the counter. Big meaty tubes, wound in circles like giant earthworms, floating in green water. The green water stunk like the pond below the milk barn, which is where all the cow shit ended up. Pickle dog looked like a snake monster in a test tube. I didn’t want to eat Pickle Dog Sandwiches.

But he came up the steps and caught me, butterknife in hand. I’d seen my grandma open the door. She used a butter knife. She stuck it between handle and the wall and poked around inside the door. She twisted the knob and stuck her tongue between her teeth. Sometimes she got rough with it, the heavy door, and smashed it with her shoulder. Eventually the door would open. Then she’d be upstairs for a while, feeding the bear. So I was up there trying the butter knife when my grandpa caught me. I could never get the door open. His big red face loomed over me like a balloon and started to laugh, first a giggle, then his donkey laugh. It made me so ashamed of myself.

He said, “What are you up to, little boy blue?”

I wanted to die.

“What’s that in yo hand?”

I said, “I want to see the bear.”

“That bear will eat you up. Don’t bother that bear. Come down here. Let me make you something to eat.”

His boots squeaked on the kitchen floor. He carried a jug of pickle dog under his arm. He got a plate from the cabinet. The whole time saying, “wait a minute, wait a minute,” which is what he does when he feels rushed. He sat the supplies on the table. He unscrewed the red cap, and out came the smell of cows feet. He grabbed the pickle dog by the tail. He whipped out his pocket knife, the knife he used for everything, and cut. Singing, he peeled off a plateful of pickle dog patties. Next he grabbed the saltines, which were stale. He speared a pattie with the tip of his knife and laid it on a saltine cracker and put another saltine cracker on top. That was a Pickle Dog Sandwich. His greasy black fingers gave it to me, and then he waited, with his three crooked teeth and big smile, to watch me eat it.

As always, it numbed my mouth, and then it tingled.

I went into the bathroom and puked. Then I cried. I held it in as long as I could. Long enough for my grandpa to go back to his tractor and leave me alone. My grandpa turned off all the lights behind him, like I wasn’t there. 

I sat at the bottom of the stairs, looking up the stairway at the box of light around the door. I didn’t hear any more thumps in the ceiling. The bear was sleeping.

Just then a lot of things were confusing me, and I was sick.

Why did my grandparents live in the basement when there were two upstairs floors? Why did my grandparents give the upstairs to the bear? 

Why wasn’t the bear our friend? Didn’t they know the bear must be lonely all alone upstairs, or did they not care?

But I knew the answer. They didn’t care. 

The ringing started in my ear. At first it sounds like a little chime. A little dot of dark fills my ears when it’s too quiet. The little dot gets bigger, darker, it sounds like something is flying through outer space. 

I don’t know which was scarier—the dark, or when I turned on the lights and saw my grandma frying eggs and bacon. The floor was green and white and chunks were missing like someone took a ho and started digging for turnips. The wallpaper looked like fat leeches from water coming through the walls when it stormed. We had a drop ceiling, which is just like the white cardboard ceiling at school, filled with evil. One time at school, a panel dropped on Sally Dugan’s head. It didn’t hurt her. It was just cardboard. But the rat shit and spiders that poured over her in a white fog made everyone scream and cry. So I had to watch the ceiling. The bear, who walks hard, might knock the ceiling loose. The evil will pour like a black fog. That was the ringing in my ear. It was a warning. Something was going to get me. 

I was sick. The pain started. The pain lived in a big piano in the center of my chest. A little version of me played the piano, in a spotlight. The tiny me, small as my pinky, clenched its little fists and bowed its little legs and strained its neck and opened its mouth. The only time I didn’t hear it was when I was at school or playing Mario or trying to meet the bear. When I was in the basement, alone in the dark, all it did was play the piano and scream, very loudly, and you can’t get it to stop crying.

The only thing to do was run away, find a nice place, like with some grass or dogs, but there was nowhere to go. I wanted to go to California.

It was one of those dried up days where nothing feels good. Not even sticking my head under the blazing cold water of the spigot and letting the icy well water run down my neck and turn my shirt floppy and my pants wet. Afterwards, I go wring myself out on top of the carport by laying on the hot gray cement and tossing myself back and forth, imagining I’m a pancake. The piano screaming was unbearable. 

I started running to California. I stopped at the silage barn. I wasn’t supposed to go there. A tornado knocked down the side shed, caused the whole thing to slump over. Now the barn was no good and my grandpa couldn’t fix it because he was working on his tractor and my dad was out in the fields cutting tobacco. I guess the barn was going to slump. I had a rest spot behind a ripped blue tarp that overlooked the field. I liked to go there and watch cows. I sat on the dirt, a soft powdery brown dirt, and dug a hole with a stick I kept there, hidden behind a wooden post. I wished I were like a cow. Just eat grass and not be lonely. I wondered if the bear felt like this. The bear with no one to talk to. No one to rub the bear’s shoulders. No one to tickle under the chin, scratch the bear’s ears.

Sometimes I want to ask my mom, “Why did you have kids?” My mom works at E-Z Stop, and I don’t ask her because I already know the answer. Life is boring and awful, kids are something to do. I was a kid, even though I didn’t want to be, and this screaming followed me everywhere I went. I am eight years old. I’m never going to make it to California. So I decided to let the flies eat me. 

I ran up the long gravel lot, back to the house, with its cement columns and big crocodile snout of a carport. The sun beat on the upstairs windows. I wondered if the bear ever looked out the window, if the bear could see me now, its only friend, about to die. I hope the bear was smart enough to not look outside. I hope the curtains were a wall of black sand. Poor bear. 

My grandparents kept everything on the carport. They never threw anything away. There was an orange arm chair, big tufts of spongy gray foam littered about its feet like potato chips. The dogs liked to pile onto that chair at night, all four of them, a snoring, yawning pile of mangy mutt that nobody wanted. People always dumped dogs in our driveway at night. People treat dogs like garbage. I didn’t know where the dogs were just then. Probably rambling. I wish I was a dog. Let my tongue hang, wag my tail, and ramble. I threw myself into the chair. I closed my eyes. I didn’t breathe. 

I liked letting the flies eat me. A moment or two, the ceiling-fan-helicopter-blades whoosed. The grasshoppers and cicadas shaking like rattlesnakes in the high grass. Prickly dotted feet crawled about my arms. Little hoses sucked my skin. Cold wet nozzles drained me. It didn’t hurt, being eaten alive. Their soft, fuzzy black bodies tickled. It was hard not to laugh or itch.

Then my grandmother ruined everything, like she always does. First, she slammed the door. My grandma had a bad hip, so she lumbered about like a pirate with a wooden leg and slammed things, like doors. About three times a day she slammed the door and emptied a can of fly spray into the carport. She didn’t have good eyes, so she didn’t see me, and she sprayed me in the face with fly spray.

The hissing white cloud killed all the flies and I fell to the floor, choking. I thought I was dying, really dying, choking and burning in my throat. Dead flies on the floor like black bullet casings, legs curled up. It took me a while to realize where I was or what had happened. It was sad realizing I wasn’t dying, just hacking on my grandma’s fly spray.

My grandma loved fly spray. She had boxes and boxes of fly spray stacked on each other on the carport. Cans were sitting around everywhere on the carport. White-capped, skull-and-crossbones tubes. You never knew which were full or empty. You had to shake them to find out.

My grandmother stood to the mouth of the carport and began to cow call my brother. 

“Ah Arny! Ah Arnold!” 

The carport was a giant microphone. Her rackety, wrinkled high pitched yazoo rolled the hills, split to pieces, sniffed you out like a coon dog. It didn’t matter where you were hiding—you could’ve been down in the holler catching crawdads, in the loft pitching hay, cat fishing—and it wouldn’t have mattered because you’d hear my grandma’s cow call and would have to stop whatever fun you were having or whatever work you were doing and trudge up to the carport to see what she wanted, usually nothing. 

She stood at the lip of the cement, peering over the blinding white gravel lot, and shouted, “Ah Arnold! Ah Arny!”

My brother cried, “What!” His scream was raw and red.

She stopped, puckered her lips. “What are you into?”

“Nothing!”

“Don’t lie to Nanny. You’re into something.”

“Am not!”

From the sound of my brother’s shouting, I guessed he was in the tobacco barn. His yells spilled blood over the whole yard.

“You quit getting into things and come see Nanny.”

“I’m not doin’ nothin!”

Like that they shouted.

My brother came dribbling a basketball with one hand. In his other hand, he was waving a tobacco stick like a samurai sword. I hated when my brother had a tobacco stick. He’d want to sword fight. Which always left bruises on my arms and legs. One time he whacked me across the head and I fell over dead. He shook me and shook me until I woke up. I wish he hadn’t done that, the shaking. He said, “If you tell mom or dad I’m going to cut your head off.”

“You put that ‘bacca stick back,” my grandma howled. “I said stay out of them sticks.” 

My brother hurled the tobacco stick into the Johnson grass. It was gone forever.

“I’m gonna light you up with a switch if you don’t start actin’ right,” my grandma cried.

My brother ran, did a lay up. A cloud of white gravel dust followed the basketball. Gravel crunched like broken glass under his Nike’s.

“I’m going to town for a gallon of milk!” my grandmother shrieked. “You boys watch the house and be good! Don’t let anybody in the house!”

My brother shot a fade away.

Her Grand Marquis fired up, backed up, and she was gone. She was going to be gone a long time. When my grandma goes to town for a gallon of milk, she’s gone a long time. She comes home with the trunk and the backseat full of Aldi’s food. Aldi’s food is the worst.

I wondered why my brother had to be so mean. Did God make him that way? My brother was like a chained up Rottweiler. Better stay back.

He was always in trouble at school. Always going to Mr. Rice’s office. My mother was always going to school to talk to Mr. Rice.

The kids at school didn’t like him. He was fat. He had glasses. He was smarter than everyone else. The teachers loved him. So, my brother got in a lot of fights. He beat everyone up. 

Why did God make my brother so mean and put a piano in my chest? Why did God put the bear upstairs to wander and suffer alone? Why does God let my grandparents live in a basement? 

My brother cried my name real loud.

“Sam!”

I jumped up from behind the trash barrels where I had been hiding.

He threw the dusty basketball at me, smooth and bald.

“I’m going to teach you how to shoot. C’mon.”

“Nooooo,” I whined. He said he wanted to teach me how to shoot, but really he just wanted to beat me so he could get good enough to beat dad, who’d been kicking his ass in HORSE and in twenty-one. But it’d be no help to him to beat me. I was no good. He just wanted to beat me.

Plus, I didn’t want to go out in the sun. I hated the gravel. I hated playing basketball with my brother. But I knew if I didn’t, he’d yell at me and call me stupid. And if I continued to say no, he’d bite his lip and clench his teeth. Then his head would start to shake uncontrollably, and he’d breath harder and harder. And then he’d grab me by the arm, raise his fist, and shout, “Don’t make me, don’t make me,” and if I still said no, he’d throw me down and hit me and yell at me and call me stupid. That’s what he did if I didn’t do what he said. So I dribbled on the carport, lifting the ball above my head and slamming it down as hard as I could to make it shoot up like a rocket to the ceiling and fall back down like a leaf. The difference amazed me.

“Stop that,” my brother said. “You’ll break something, and then dad will kick my ass.”

He took the ball from me, and began stroking back and forth with his arms out like Usher and moonwalking, dribbling the ball between his legs with his lips puffed. He practiced a lot. He wanted to be famous. “Try this,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Try it,” he said, and his teeth grew big and sharp. “Don’t you want to be good?”

“I hate basketball,” I said, “Let’s go see the bear.”

“You stupid idiot,” my brother said. “C’mon.” He never wants to do what I want to do. Never. We can have the same idea, but if I want it, he won’t want it. He had to have his way. He strode into the driveway, a big circle of gravel blazing in the open sun. Cloud of gravel dust puffed where the ball hit. Suddenly he broke into a dash, zagged left, faked right, leapt an inch off the ground, faded backward. The ball hit the bent orange rim and rolled down the hill toward the milk barn. He started screaming, “Stop! Stop! Sammy, go get the fucking ball! Sam!” He watched the ball roll, roll, roll, and disappear in some weeds. He screamed. Then he ran after the ball.

I just wanted to see the bear. I just wanted to let the flies eat me. But now the flies were dead, and I had to hide because my brother was going to kick my ass for not getting the ball for him. I had to hide. I knew a spot. He never found me in this spot. It was in the back bathroom, in the shower. Nothing was in the shower except a mop bucket and the clothes my grandpa hung there. The door was a cloud of white dust you couldn’t see through, and he never looked in the shower. He didn’t even know it existed.

So I sat in the shower, knees to my chin, and listened for the basement door to slam and my brother to scream, “Sam! Get out here! Now!”

Heavy, lumbering thuds cracked through the ceiling. The bear was upset. A table fell over. I looked up, but I couldn’t see anything because all the lights were off. I was in complete darkness. I wished the bear would come down stairs and stick up for me. If anyone was going to help me, it was the bear. But that door was locked and I couldn’t get up there. And bears can’t open doors, I don’t think. Not unless they smash through, or use their teeth. I don’t know.

The shower door rattled like when my grandpa makes me get in the truck with him and he has buckets of wrenches in the back of the truck. 

“Sammy! I said go get the ball! Why didn’t you!? Why didn’t you go get the ball!? Where are you!? Why are you hiding!?” His yelling burned, like being on a bike and slamming the brakes and the back tire skids and whines, leaves behind a smelly black line. He’d go hoarse, yelling like that. He went hoarse a lot. 

He went into the kitchen and opened all the cabinets. His sneakers skinned the linoleum, room to room. He tipped over the couch, as if I was small enough to fit under a couch. He slammed the front door over and over. He did everything with such emotion I could feel him breathing. He went silent and his breathing hit the floor. He choked on his breath. He suffered and stammered. He began wailing. His crying was like a newborn calf, blind. I could hear the tears and his runny nose. His face was a wet, snotty rag. “I’m sorry!” he shouted. “Why are you hiding? Come out, please. I’m all alone. I can’t stand being alone. Please, come out! I’m sorry! I won’t hurt you.”

I wasn’t going to fall for it. When I did, when half my face showed up in a dark door way, seeing if it was safe to come out, he’d lift his face from his hands, his lips would jerk around and his eyes would get red, and then he he’d grab my arm, drag me out, and push me down. That’s how it went. 

The bathroom light turned on. He opened the closet with the towels in it, and I heard the soft thud of the towels hitting the floor. Sometimes I hid in that closet. It looks small, but there’s a hole in the wall on the bottom right. So I would crawl in the hole and leave a stack of towels over the hole. It was a good hiding spot. I don’t know how deep the hole was. I didn’t like hiding there. I was afraid of spiders. My mom almost died from a black widow bite. Black widows are everywhere. Especially in good hiding spots.

He opened the cabinets under the sink. He opened the washer and the dryer, slammed them. Then the lights flipped on in the back bathroom, where I was hiding. It was like hearing a bull pant. Then the lights flipped off. But he didn’t move. He was in the doorway, listening.

“Sam!” he shouted. “I’m sorry!” Then he took off running.

He searched every room in the house. He kept screaming. Either he’d find me or I’d give up.

What was I going to do?

I had to get somewhere he’d never find. I needed a way to fight him. I needed the bear. I wasn’t scared of the bear. If it wanted to eat me, that would be fine. But I didn’t think the bear would eat me. I would hold my arms out for the bear. The bear wanted a hug. And, like a dog, it would lick my face. Then I’d ride on the bear’s back.

I ran to the kitchen. I grabbed a butter knife. I ran to the top of the stairs. I had to be quiet. My heart sounded like the bear walking across the ceiling, thump, thump, thump. I was sure my brother would hear my heart eventually. I didn’t want my brother to hear me. He was tearing apart the back room, shouting he was sorry, shouting he was going to rip my toys up, shouting he was sorry. I also didn’t want the bear to hear me and come investigate.

I didn’t like going to church. People at church were mean. They could tell I wasn’t as smart or Christian as my brother, who went to church every Sunday and Wednesday night. He prayed at the altar on Sundays. He played basketball with the preacher and the other big boys. Not me. I was too small. When they looked at me, their faces were sad because I wasn’t like my brother. So, I didn’t like going to church, but I prayed to Jesus anyway. I said, “Jesus, guide my butter knife.”

I stuck the butterknife in, but the handle wouldn’t turn. I could see a thick silver stub, the lock. Usually I stuck the knife toward the door handle. But Jesus answered my prayer just then. Jesus said, “Stick the knife toward the lock, and pull backward.” The knife chipped at metal. Gears started to turn.

“What are you doing?” My brother was at the bottom of the stairs. “Get down here! I said I’m sorry.”

Someone opened the door for me. The bear opened the door. I opened the door. No, the bear.

“Stop!”

I locked the door behind me. My brother slammed into the door. “Open this door or I’m going to beat it down! Don’t make me.” I backed away. I looked left. I looked right. Dark hallways. He put his shoulder into the door. He grunted and shouldered the door. The wood cracked and split. I ran.

Everything felt very soft and cold. I figured the bear would be like a cow and shit wherever it wanted, but I didn’t see or smell any shit. I figured I’d follow the shit to the bear. But there was no shit. The floors were clean, spotless, smelled like my grandma’s bleach. She used bleach on everything. And there were Lysol cans, everywhere. On shiny tables. There were giant mirror walls filled with plates, bowls, forks, spoons, knives, and towels. All the beds were made. All the couches were made. I found a big dinner table with snow white cloth on it, and a big glass bowl of fake fruit. Plates, napkins, forks, spoons, and knives set out for dinner. All the arm chairs had chickens and roosters on them.

I went up another set of stairs. 

I heard heavy breathing from behind a cracked door. I put my ear to the door and listened. Snoring, whimpering. I went inside. There was a bed with a big hump in the middle. The bear was hiding. I went up to the bedside, my footsteps all staticky on the stiff carpet, and I whispered, “Hello?” The hump didn’t move. It was a big bear, curled up in a ball, asleep in this strange bed. I’d never seen a headboard that big. It looked like a gravestone for all the leaves and angels carved into the dark wood. In the middle was a large round mirror. I was pale in the mirror. The sun must’ve been going down over the hill because I was all orange, purple, and pale. That was when I saw it, the piano, in the far corner. I turned around. I almost screamed. If the bear hadn’t been sleeping, I would’ve surely screamed and cried and ran. I knew that piano. It was the one I played, the one that lived inside me, and keys were starting to churn in me like heavy gongs. I know pianos can’t talk, but I had to know why. So many questions I have for you, piano, why do you live inside me and clatter everything I do, everything I think, everything I feel with your shrieks? I went to the piano and sat down on the velvet stool that was there for me. I lifted the case on the keys. White row of teeth and black eyes. My hands lifted themselves and sat themselves on the keys.

I thought I heard a creak from the bed, so I turned around to see if I’d woken up the bear. The hump wasn’t there anymore. Just me and the piano in the mirror. In the doorway there was a big shadow, as big as a bear, heaving. It roared. And I roared back, my fists coming down hard, so hard, on the piano. Bang bang bang I raised my fists high as mountains and brought them down like hammers. I wasn’t going to take it anymore. Not no more. I was going to bang and scream and cry no! until the world stopped, and I could walk free. Yes I was. No more lonely farm. No more tobacco sticks. No more fly spray. I was going to be free, I am going to go to California. Bang bang bang. 

The high-pitched, thundering thump of the endless piano playing in my chest poured out my mouth and into the air between us, startling Arny, starling me, until all there was was silence.

Matt Chelf was born and raised in rural Kentucky, lived in West Virginia for his early adulthood, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches reading and writing at Portland Community College. Matt completed his M.A. in English at Lehigh University in May 2016. His fiction has been featured in Random Sample Review and Fluent Magazine.