Terry Bisson: Bears Discover Fire

I went back two nights later, after the funeral. The fire was going and it was the same bunch of bears, as far as I could tell. I sat around with them a while but it seemed to make them nervous, so I went home. I had taken a handful of newberries from the hubcap, and on Sunday I went with the boy and arranged them on Mother’s grave. I tried again, but it’s no use, you can’t eat them.

Unless you’re a bear.

I’m not one of those people who thinks you have to read a book to get something out of it. You can learn a lot about a book by picking it up, turning it over, rubbing the cover, riffling the pages open and shut. Especially if it’s been read enough times before, it’ll speak to you.

This is why I like to hang around used-book stores on my lunch hour. I was at the outdoor bookstall on the west side of Union Square, the one that opens out of huge crates, when my mother called. It is tempting here to claim to remember that I was looking at an old paperback of, say, Rabbit Run , but actually it was Henry Gregor Felsen’s Hot Rod , the cover telling the whole story through the hairdos.

The pay phone on the corner nearest Sixteenth Street was ringing and wouldn’t stop. Finally, I picked it up and said, “Hello? Mother?”

“Janet? Is that you?” My mother has this uncanny, really, ability to call on pay phones and get me. She does it about once a month.

Well, of course it was me: otherwise, would I have answered “Mother”?

“Did you have trouble finding me?” I asked.

“If you only knew. I called three phones, and the last two you wouldn’t believe.” It doesn’t always work.

“So how’s everything?” I asked. It came out “everthang.” My accent, which I have managed to moderate, always reemerges when I talk with anybody from home.

“Fine.” She told me about Alan, my ex-fiancé, and Janet, my best friend. They used to call us the Two Janets.

Mother keeps up with my old high school friends, most of whom are of course still in Owensboro. Then she said:

“Guess what. John Updike just moved to Owensboro.”

“John Updike?”

“The writer. Rabbit Run ? It was about a week ago. He bought a house out on Maple Drive, across from the hospital there.”

“This was in the paper?”

“No, of course not. I’m sure he wants his privacy. I heard it from Elizabeth Dorsey, your old music teacher. Her oldest daughter, Mary Beth, is married to Sweeney Kost Junior who sells real estate with that new group out on Leitchfield Road. She called to tell me because she thought you might be interested.”

It is well-known that I have an interest in literature. I came to New York to get a job in publishing. My roommate already has one at S&S (Simon and Schuster) and I called her before I went back to work. She doesn’t go to lunch until two. She hadn’t heard anything about John Updike moving to Owensboro, but she checked PW (Publishers Weekly) and found an item saying that John Updike had sold his house in Massachusetts and moved to a small Midwestern city.

That bothered me. Owensboro sits right across the river from Indiana, but it’s still the South, not the Midwest.

The northernmost statue to Confederate heroes sits on the courthouse lawn. I’m not touchy about that stuff but some people are. Then I thought that if you just looked at a map, as they might have done fact-checking at the PW office, or as Updike himself might have done, looking for a new place to live, you might think Owensboro was in the Midwest since it’s much closer to St. Louis than to Atlanta. Then I thought, maybe Updike was just saying “Midwest” to throw people off. Maybe he was, like Salinger, trying to get away from the world. Then I thought, maybe he didn’t move to Owensboro at all, and the whole thing was just a mistake, a coincidence, a wild flight of fancy. The more I thought about this theory, the better I liked it. “Small city in the Midwest” could mean Iowa City, where a well-known writer’s workshop is held; or any one of a hundred college towns like Crawfordsville, Indiana (Wabash); Gambler, Ohio (Kenyon); or Yellow Springs, Ohio (Antioch). Or even Indianapolis or Cincinnati. To a New Yorker, and all writers, even when they live in Massachusetts, they are New Yorkers (in a way); Indianapolis and Cincinnati are small cities.

Or if you wanted to get really close to home there is Evansville, Indiana, at 130,500 definitely a “small city” (Owensboro at 52,000 is only barely a city) and one that might even attract a writer like John Updike.

With all this, I was eleven minutes late getting back to work. But what are they going to do, fire a temp?

That was on Thursday, May 18. I had the usual weekend, and on Monday night, right after the rates changed, Alan, my ex-fiancé, made his weekly call. “Found a job yet?” he asked (knowing he would have heard from my mother if I had). Then he added, “Did you hear Saul Bellow moved to Owensboro?”

“You mean John Updike,” I said.

“No, that was last week. Saul Bellow moved here just yesterday.” Alan runs two of his father’s four liquor stores.

He and I still share an interest in books and literature.

“How could that be?” I said. I would have thought he was making it up but Alan, to his credit (I guess), never makes things up.

I thought about calling Janet but I am always calling her, so the next morning I called Mother from work. I was temping for an insurance adjuster with a WATS line. “Mother, did Saul Bellow move to Owensboro?” I asked, getting right to the point.

“Well, yes, dear, he did. He’s living out in those apartments on Scherm Road. The ones where Wallace Carter Cox and Loreena Dyson lived right after he got his divorce.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, you didn’t seem very excited when John Updike moved here, dear, so I thought you didn’t much care. You have made a new life for yourself in New York, after all.”

I let that go. “It sure is mighty nice of you to keep up with where everybody lives,” I joked.

“When a famous person moves to a town like this,” she said, “everybody notices.”

I wondered about that. I didn’t think people in Owensboro, outside of Alan, even knew who Saul Bellow was. I’ll bet not twenty people there have read his books. I have only read one, the most recent one. The other Janet reads only nonfiction.

The next week Philip Roth moved to Owensboro. I found out from Janet, who called me, a new thing for her since it’s usually me who puts out the effort, not to mention the money, to stay in touch.

“Guess who we saw in the mall today,” she said. “Philip Roth.”

“Are you sure? How did you know?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine her recognizing Philip Roth.

“Your mother pointed him out. She recognized his face from a story in People magazine. I’m not sure he would be considered handsome if he wasn’t a famous writer.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Was he just visiting or has he moved to Owensboro too? And what mall are you talking about?”

“What mall!” Janet said. “There’s only one, out Livermore Road. It’s so far out of town that hardly anybody ever goes out there. I couldn’t believe it when we saw Philip Roth out there.”

“What were you doing out at the mall with my mother?” I asked. “Is she bothering you again?”

“She gets a little lonesome. I go by and see her, and maybe we go shopping or something. Is that a crime?”

“Of course not,” I said. I’m glad my mother has friends. I just wish they weren’t my best friends, with the same name as me.

Mother called me at work the next day. I have asked her not to do this when I am temping, but sometimes she can’t make the pay-phone thing work. Most companies don’t like for temps to get calls, even from family. E. L. Doctorow had moved to Owensboro and was staying in Dr. Crippen’s house on Wildwood Drive, only two blocks away.