February 2008

Just in time for Valentine’s Day:
a hopeful tale for the lovelorn

Anton Browning broke up with his girlfriend, or rather she broke up with him and he drove up to the scenic overlook in his father’s Impala and sat there with the engine running and all the windows rolled down. The stereo was playing Elvis songs. An Elvis Presley tape had been stuck in the tape deck of the Impala for well over fifteen years and there was no way to pry it out without destroying the whole mechanism. Anton’s father had stated repeatedly that listening only to Elvis Presley music was better than listening to no music at all.

The view from atop the scenic outlook truly was astonishing, but Anton didn’t bother looking. He had seen it before and his young heart had already had more beauty and pain than it could properly bear, so he just sat in the Impala, weeping, both his hands atop his chest, working hard to convince his heart that it was a good idea to stay in the world.

"Don’t go, don’t go,” Anton said. He was speaking mostly to his heart but also to his girlfriend, who was, of course, long gone.

The backseat of Anton’s father’s Impala was filled to overflowing with fast food wrappers and in some of those wrappers, there were bits and chunks of food, pieces of hamburger bun or teeny pieces of taco meat, wizened French fries and partially consumed cookies, because both Anton and his father were in the habit of eating fast food and then tossing the remains into the backseat of the Impala, thinking that they would pick the trash up at some later date but never quite getting around to it

The smell of the backseat of the Impala, the collective whiff of wrappers and hamburger buns and seasoned taco meat and dried up French fries and half-eaten cookies, called to a bear who lived in the woods on the verge of the scenic overlook. The bear came loping out of the forest and stood for a good long while watching Anton beat himself on the chest.

If Anton’s peripheral vision had not been severely impaired by his tears, he surely would have noticed the giant bulk of the bear as it approached the Impala. But Anton was caught up in the particulars of his grief and did not even register the bear as it walked across the parking lot and came up to the car and put its nose directly into the open window of the Impala and took a deep and satisfied sniff.

It wasn’t until the bear had squeezed half his body into the open window and the car shifted under his weight that Anton realized something was amiss. He took his hands from his chest and turned his head and saw the bear half in and half out the back window at which point Anton threw his grief aside, put the car into drive and stepped on the gas.

The bear, as he saw it, had two options. He could let go or he could hold on. He opted for holding on, and after awhile, he managed to pull himself all the way through the open window. He settled himself comfortably on the backseat, amidst all the wrappers and started to work sorting and sniffing and chewing. He let out a low grunt of pleasure.

This noise alerted Anton to the fact that the bear was now in the car. He slammed on the brakes and before the car had even come to a proper stop, Anton was out of it and running down the hill. In this way, arms up high over his head, laughing and screaming and running away from something and toward something else, Anton cured himself of his broken heart.

As for the bear, he stayed in the Impala and searched through the wrappers until he was satisfied he had located every last crumb. The whole while, the music played; and for the rest of his life, if the bear heard a song on the radio of a car at the overlook, he would stop what he was doing and step to the edge of the woods and stand at attention, his features contorted with the power of longing and remembrance, hoping to hear the voice of Elvis one more time.