HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me! - Mykle Hansen [12]
I finished peeing all over nature and returned to the Rover. We slid a few more inches downhill when I slammed the door.
“Marv, are you trying to get us killed?” Edna bitched.
“Not entirely,” I said.
“Remember? Remember what the doctor said about impulses? Don’t you think you’re acting just a teensy bit selfinflictive?”
I threw it in low gear and put the hammer down. The wheels spun as we slid farther down the ridge, flinging rocks and twigs in all directions. Marcia from Product Dialogue let out the tiniest little whimper, like she does when she comes. Sexy!
“That’s crazy talk, baby. I love me. I would never hurt me.” I rocked the steering wheel left, then right, sort of randomly plowing around the gravel we were swimming in, trying to drill down into something bite-able. The car slid and twisted around in place like a hovercraft, throwing up an epic cloud of dust around us as the engine roared with automotive excellence. Finally we snagged something and sprang, caribou-like, up the side of the so-called cliff and back on to boring flat land — where I just barely spotted some little surprised animal dart under the front wheels, a beaver or dog or something, I don’t know what exactly but the girls had their eyes closed so I decided to neglect to mention it — and there we were, horizontal again, “safe.”
Marcia squealed with delight and clapped her little hands together. Edna rolled her eyes.
Edna: “Maybe you should go vegan, Marv. Just drive to the supermarket and back, hunting tofu.”
“Baby? Did you smoke crack while I was out there with Walter?” Edna huffed. Marcia giggled. (I should explain: Walter, obviously, is my cock; Edna knows this; Marcia also knows this; Edna does not know Marcia knows this. Or maybe it was dawning on her, but that was starting to matter less and less as we got deeper into Bear Country.)
“Vegans have ethics, Marv. They care about others.”
“I care about others. I care how they taste!” Badda-bing! I crack myself up. But no giggle from Marcia … no, I suppose Marcia actually cares about others from time to time herself. Silly girl. In the mirror I saw her little mini-pout, eyebrows slightly furrowed, head bent forward, chin pointing down toward her slender neck and her big, tight funbags jutting from the underwire bra and the camo lycra action halter I bought her. Her body said Fuck Me Sideways, but her face said Apologize First.
“Hey, ladies, listen, I have a lot of respect for nature,” I lied. “Why do you think I brought you out here? Look out the window! This is nature! The grandeur and the mystery and the cuteness all here in front of us now. We came here to pay our respects to Mother Nature, and to rediscover our human relationship with her.”
“Oh, I’m relieved,” sneered Edna. “All this time I thought you came up here to shoot guns at bears.”
“Baby, that is the human relationship. Hunting is a nature thing. Animals hunt other animals, or else they hunt plants, but everything hunts something. As hunters we must respect our prey, get to know them, study them, learn from them. Hunting brings us closer to nature, that’s just a fact.”
“Marv, you’re not honestly going to eat this bear?”
“Baby we are going to skin, clean, fillet, marinate and barbecue this bear, yes. No part will be wasted. We will take no more than we need in order to have an authentic bear-hunting experience, and then we will respectfully leave this place and return to the city to share the wisdom we have gained,” I said. Or some such bullshit.
“What does bear taste like?” enthused Marcia from Product Dialogue.
“The pizzle,” I said, “is considered a delicacy.”
There was no more grousing after that. Soon enough the dashboard chimed succinctly to announce we had reached the coordinates of the official Alaskan Bear Baiting Station — just