Setting Free the Bears

Going Somewhere

THERE WAS A frost in the morning, and the grass reflected a thousand different prism-shapes of sun; the meadow-bank to the river gorge was like a ballroom floor, catching the patterns of an intricate chandelier. I lay on my side and squinted through the frost-furry grass to the gorge wall. The groundcloth was cool on my cheek, and the grass spears seemed bigger than the trees; the frost-melt lay in bright pools between the spears. There was a cricket coming along, using the grass for stilts to span the droplets - lake-sized, for a cricket; its joints were frosty, and it seemed to be thawing as it walked.

When you're level with it, a cricket can be fierce - a giant anthropod come bending down the jungle, stepping over oceans. I growled at it, and it stopped.

Then I heard bells, not far away.

'Cowbells!' said Siggy. 'We're going to be trampled! Oh, pushed down the gorge!'

'Church bells,' I said. 'We must be near a village.'

'Well, frot me,' said Siggy, and he peeked out of his bag.

But my cricket was gone.

'What are you looking for, Graff?'

'A cricket.'

'A cricket's quite harmless.'

'This was an especially big one,' I said. But it wasn't under the groundcloth, so I got out of my bag and stepped on the frost-stiff grass.

Well, the dew made me dance, and with that giddy gorge close by, I got much more interested in dancing than finding my cricket. But Siggy watched me coldly, and not for long; he huffed himself out of his bag and began stomping around the groundcloth - not at all the same sort of dance I was doing.

'You don't have to get up yet,' I said.

'Well, I don't recommend watching you in the nude,' he said.

'Well, be careful with your stamping,' I said. 'You'll get my cricket.' But I stood oddly embarrassed in front of him.

'Let's have some coffee and find a more fishable part of this river,' he said, like a frotting scoutmaster. And I forgot about my probably trodden cricket - watching him load the motorcycle, like a frotting sergeant.

So we left for the next town.

Hiesbach was less than a mile up the road; it was a town piled against a hillside - old, rounded, gray-stone buildings heaped like egg boxes, with the usual, outstanding, squat and onion-headed church that hunched beside the road like an old, toothless lion who wouldn't attack any more.

When we got there, Mass was over; stiff, crinkly families milled on the church steps, creaking their once-a-week shoes. The smaller boys bolted for a Gasthof opposite the Holy Onion Head: FRAU ERTL'S OLD GASTHOF.

Siggy rapped the sign as we went in. 'Graff,' he whispered. 'Beware of the Ertl.' So we came in agiggle.

'Well,' said fat Frau Ertl, 'you're very welcome.'

'Oh, thank you,' Siggy said.

'Coffee?' I asked the Ertl. 'Is it hot?'

'And a place to wash our hands?' said Siggy.

'Oh, of course,' she said, pointing us out the back door. 'But the light bulb's burnt out, it seems.'

If there ever could have been a light bulb. Because the pissoir was a dirt-floor stall in back of the Gasthof and next to a long, narrow pen for goats. The goats watched us work the pump. Siggy pumped the water over the back of his head; when he shook his head, the goats bleated and butted against the gate of the pen.

'My poor goats,' said Siggy, and he went over to the pen to tug their chins. Oh, they loved him, it was easy to see. 'Graff,' he said, 'step inside and see if anyone's coming.'

Inside it was filling up - the families together with their coffees and sausages, the lone men together at a long table with their beers.

'Ah,' said the Ertl. 'I've your coffees by the window.'