Wake Forest Magazine September 2003 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

APPENDIX: The Soundand the FurryThese were human:GOLDILOCKS. Slim blond avatar of unreasoning womankind: wholoved not the porridge itself, nor even the act of reiving it from whateverunknown animal might have been responsible for its preparation (and thatwas her third mistake: the first being forcible or at the very least unlawfulentry into the house, the second being her disturbance of the food; for whatmight have seemed her third mistake—falling asleep in the bed of theyoungest of the household—was actually not a mistake at all, being that noself-respecting bear would harm a sleeping prey, any more than he wouldhave harmed young Ike McCaslin once he had relieved himself of the compassand the gun, and tracked Old Ben without malice or even curiositythrough the as yet undespoiled square of ground which old Ikkemotubbehad, knowing it was not his to grant, nonetheless ceded to whatever GreatWhite Father had chosen to accept it, knowing it was not his to take): evenso, that was a different bear and another novel, and I can no longer rememberthe subject of my sentence. No, her mistake was loving her hair, lovingonly her hair, until she was named for it, and then at last subsumed by it.And so disappeared: whatever bed she occupied would be bereft of ursinecompanions; whatever bowl she ate from would contain no porridge.These others were not human. They were bears:PAPA BEAR. Lumbering hibernating slow uncomprehending caricatureof his species, bearlike only in his clumsiness when presented with eventhe simplest of tasks either deductive or locomotive, failing even to noticethe missing food and the unmade beds, dependent on an offspringunweaned and virtually presentient to detect the presence of the femaleintruder; who, indifferent as he was inept, would not then have harmed thegirl even had the notion occurred to him, differing as he did from a slothonly in the respect of having more than three toes.MAMA BEAR. Fecundfertile primoprogenitive matriarch of theclan, who each day carelessly and without ratiocination made the beds andprepared the bowls of liquefied cereal, forgetting in her imbecility that notonly her husband and child but she herself, and indeed all others of herspecies, were carnivores.BABY BEAR.They endured.CLASSNOTESSeptember 2003 61