Free Bear v. Shark by Chris Bachelder Page A

“Maybe I should call the office.”
    Mrs. Norman, who at one time had touched Mr. Norman in extraordinary ways, in extraordinary places, who at one time had taken Mr. Norman’s hand and guided him to places on her body, the existence of which he had previously heard about, sure, but never until those precise moments of contact quite believed in and which he now doubted once again because of the fallibility of memory, the corrosive work of the years, to tell the truth it might have been not Mrs. Norman at all but another woman, a previous girlfriend, a secretary at his place of employment, if it indeed happened at all, might have been a Television program, says, “Why?”
    Mr. Norman says, “What?”
    Mrs. Norman says, “Why should you call the office?”
    Mr. Norman says, “I said I would.”
    Mrs. Norman says, “Then by all means.”
    Mr. Norman calls the office.
    In the backseat Matthew says, “I’ve said it before: A shark is a killing machine.”
    In the backseat Curtis says, “Listen, have you
ever
seen a bear when the water is roily with salmon?”
    A man at the office says, “Hello.”
    Mr. Norman says, “This is Larry Norman.”
    The man says, “Hey, Larry.”
    Mr. Norman says, “I’m just checking in.”
    The man says, “OK, thanks.”
    Mr. Norman says, “OK.”
    In the backseat Matthew says, “The shark is perfectly adapted to killing. Essentially it has not evolved in millions of years. God rendered it artfully.”
    In the front passenger seat Mrs. Norman says, “What do you mean by essentially?”
    In the foreword, Aldous Huxley says, “Today it seems quite possible that the horror may be upon us in a single century.”
    Mr. Norman says, “How is everything?”
    The man says, “Some high school principal in Wichita just ordered thirty fake laptops for his computer lab.”
    Mr. Norman says, “The kids will like those.”
    The man says, “Why don’t you give us another call tomorrow, about the same time.”
    Mr. Norman says, “Will do.”
    The man says, “Listen, Larry, before you go. What kind of feeling are you getting out there in America?”
    Mr. Norman says, “I don’t know, a pretty good feeling.”
    The man says, “Yeah? Is the feeling palpable?”
    Mr. Norman says, “Palpable?”
    The man says, “Yeah, can you feel it?”
    Mr. Norman says, “Can I feel the feeling?” The man says, “Yeah, can you cut the feeling with a knife?”
    Mr. Norman says, “I guess the feeling is fairly palpable.”
    The man says, “I just bet it is.”
    In the backseat the Television Personality says, “The latest polls show that of the 39 percent of Americans who know who Martin Van Buren is, 72 percent think that he was either ‘better’ or ‘far better’ than William Howard Taft.”
    In the backseat Curtis says, “Tafty Taft needs some PR.”
    In the office the man says, “Good-bye, Larry.”
    In the backseat Matthew says, “
Roily?
”
    In the driver’s seat Mr. Norman knows: A quick jerk of the wheel and it’s all over.

45
Brevity is . . . wit
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46
From Scene to Shining Scene
    The American family just keeps driving the American vehicle across the American interstate system. Destination: the Sovereign Nation of Las Vegas.
    There are specious skies, fruitless pains.
    There is