Well… onceuponatime waybackwhen
longlongago at the very beginning of things, man and bear used to be a bit
more…civilized with each other.
Oh, it wasn’t like it
is now, the bears is raiding our chicken coops and our honeyhives.
No, in fact it was
the bears that taught us how to treat them honeybees all nice-like to get ‘em
to work for us. They knew just the right
time to get the smoke going under the hives to put those bees to sleep. Ah, but once they wake up and get to work:
what happy honey those hives harbor.
But enough about the
bees for the moment. Though the bears
lived in the mountains and man lived in the cities, they was still
friends. The bears knew all about
hunting and honey and woodworking while men knew all about farming, building
and mechanicals.
They worked hard in
those days (much harder than some do now, mind me) and there’re even some folk
say the bears worked twice as hard, it being their job to tend to all the flora
and fauna of the forests they was responsible for. And man, well, let’s just say they got fat
and slow, like most of them farm animals they gots to take care of.
Yet no matter where
you hailed from, hills and valley or anywhere in between, the thing that they
all had most in common was baseball.
They held their
tournaments here, Haven being the center of all of Clint, and the same distance
for just about everyone to get to from everywhere. Keating Mountain Keggers, Spangler’s Spokes,
Hammer’s Mill—you name ‘em, this is where they played.
Petty’s has always
had their ball fields here, but what is now apple trees was once rows upon rows
of the freshest sweet corn you ever did taste, better than that over in Logan’s
Valley, mind me. Corn over here stretchted
up both sides of the magical Sus’kenna River, back when its magic waters still
ran pure.
The season had gone
well (as well as it ever could with a team like the Cubbies bumping everyone
out of the brackets) and the home field advantage went to Haven’s own Petty’s
Punch against the mythical Cubbies Clubber’s.
The stands were
packed, and the crowd was throwing a big hullabaloo—chanting, cheering, mascots
chasing each other about the field. The
crowd was getting rowdier, the ballads bawdier, and the moonshine flowing
fine.
But what really moved
them was the game. It looked as if the
Cubbies were going to clinch it again this year, but as the Punch took to the
dugout, there was an air about the boys that was hard to ignore.
It didn’t take long
until it was the bottom of the ninth, and though the bases were loaded, there
were two outs and the Punch was still down by three. Now…the air that was hard to ignore…well, it
had blown out of the Punch’s sails.
But…up to the plate
swaggered Sullivan Slugger. Well,
Sullivan didn’t let that first pitch go by without swinging. Strike one.
And the second? You guessed
it: strike two. But
the third?
Well, ‘ol Slugging
Sullivan lived up to his namesake, and boy-howdy connected with a loud CRACK that
split the bat in half and tore the hide clean off the ball. The Cubbies could only watch in disbelief as
the ball flew over their heads, knowing all was lost. Both sides cheered and greeted the Punch on
the ball field while the Cubbies lowered their heads in defeat, and retreated
to the cornfield to search for the missing baseball.
The game had taken
most of the evening, and by now it was getting late, but there was a full moon
rising, and they went deeper into the cornfields…it had to be around there
somewhere, right? Now on top of getting
awful late, the Cubbies were getting a might tired and hungry to boot. They’d been walking a long time.
Harvest had come and
gone, and the crop had been especially high that year on account of the Great
Flood after the spring thaw, and ‘sides, all had had their fair share of corn
for awhile. Yet with their tum-tums
rumbling, them industrious bears smelled something better.
It was in that
instant that they saw it, as if their rumblings and ramblings had opened up the
earth. There before them grew a gi-normous
tree, branches ripe with buds near-big as the baseball they were a-searching
for. Having not been there mere moments
ago, not to mention being a superstitious people, the bears assumed that the
magic of the full moon on Hallow’s Eve coupled with the fertile land and the
pure waters of the Sus’kenna—anything could happen. And as in this case, it usually did.
As the bears
approached the tree, the buds exploded, opening into the dazzling white apple
blossoms. And even though the night air
was chilly, heat radiated from the tree, pulling warmth from the good
earth. Hot sap pumped through the tree’s
veins, they could hear it’s lifeblood beneath the bark, now joined by a chorus
of bees.
The bears looked up
in awe as the bees made their way in and out between the branches. Blossoms fell upon the bears as the
temperature dropped outside the canopy of the apple tree and snow blanketed the
outer world.
Patiently, they
waited. It was by instinct, and their
protesting stomachs longed for the fruit that was bound to form before long. The bears eyed the limbs hungrily,
heavy-laden with apples, mouths watering as the fruit reddened in the night
air, and the bees lit upon the bears’ shoulders saying:
Pleez
eat from the treez, but do not dizturb our honey hivez within the hollowz
of
our homez.
One was only to
harvest from the hive, as the bears had promised no to even longer ago. The bears promised again not to (in typical
bear fashion) and the bears stuck to eating of the tree. They ate and ate and ate until the apples
filled the bears’ bellies to bursting.
But bears being bears, hungry and tired as they were, made the move to
eat something sweeter. Hmph—and you
thought the apple was the forbidden fruit.
Though the bears knew
how to treat them bees, they waited for ‘em to fall into a restless sleep, even
though they didn’t have any smoke to put ‘em down. So there they were, sticking it to them bees,
the bears’ arms up to the elbow in honeycomb.
A-course, the bears getting stuck was the first of their problems. It didn’t take long for those bees to wake
and take flight once they found out they’d been stung.
But the bees stung
back. And it didn’t take long for the
bears to realize they were on the wrong end of the deal. The sheer number of bees sacrificing their
lives for the cause decimated the population, but they won out in the end.
The bees attacked,
over and over again, until the bears freed their paws from their prison. As much as those stingers stung, there was
nothing worse than one getting stuck under the thick skin of the bears. The bears pawed and clawed at the bees and
the stickers, running back through the fields for their lives. Running, this way and that, swarms of them
bees confusing the bears. And the bears
having eaten too much of the apples and defecating all over the place, it
wasn’t long until they all lost their way.
Now, even more tired
than before, sluggish from their feast, and the honey sticking to them, slowing
them down, the bears couldn’t help but pass out in the snow, sleeping that long
slumber that we call hibernation. Upon
waking, the bears were a might testy, what with their rearends all stung and
hurting from the apples and the bees.
We never do see much
of them anymore, keeping to the woods, except for when they come to rob us of
our honey.
