Free Revenge of the Lawn, the Abortion, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away by Richard Brautigan

Uncle Jarv's. They had played together on the high school football team during the Depression.
    A woman came by. She had a sack of groceries in her arms. She stopped and looked at the bears. She got up very close, leaning over toward the bears, shoving celery tops in their faces.
    They took the bears and put them on the front porch of an old two-story house. The house had wooden frosting all around the edges. It was a birthday cake from a previous century. Like candles we were going to stay there for the night.
    The trellis around the porch had some kind of strange-looking vines growing on it, with even stranger-looking flowers. I'd seen those vines and the flowers before, but never on a house. They were hops.
    It was the first time that I had ever seen hops growing on a house. That was an interesting taste in flowers. But it took a little while to get used to them.
    The sun was shining out front and the shadow of the hops lay across the bears as if they were two glasses of dark beer. They were sitting there, backs against the wall.
    "
Hello, gentlemen. What would you like to drink?
"
    "
A couple of bears.
"
    "
I'll check the icebox and see if they're cold. I put some
in there a
little while ago ... yeah, they're cold.
"
    The guy who shot the bears decided that he didn't want them, so somebody said, "Why don't you give them to the mayor? He likes bears." The town had a population of three hundred and fifty-two, including the mayor and the bears.
    "I'll go tell the mayor there are some bears over here for him," somebody said and went to find the mayor.
    Oh, how good those bears would taste: roasted, fried, boiled or made into spaghetti, bear spaghetti just like the Italians make.
    Somebody had seen him over at the sheriff's. That was about an hour ago. He might still be there. Uncle Jarv and I went over and had lunch at a little restaurant. The screen door was badly in need of repair, and opened like a rusty bicycle. The waitress asked us what we wanted. There were some slot machines by the door. The county was wide open.
    We had some roast beef sandwiches with mashed potatoes and gravy. There were hundreds of flies in the place. Quite a crew of them had found some strips of flypaper that were hanging here and there like nooses in the restaurant, and were making themselves at home.
    An old man came in. He said he wanted a glass of milk. The waitress got one for him. He drank it and put a nickel in a slot machine on his way out. Then he shook his head.
    After we finished eating, Uncle Jarv had to go over to the post office and send a postcard. We walked over there and it was just a small building, mors like a shack than anything else. We opened the screen door and went in.
    There was a lot of post office stuff: a counter and an old clock with a long drooping hand like a mustache under the sea, swinging softly back and forth, keeping time with time.
    There was a large nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe on the wall. The first one I had ever seen in a post office. She was lying on a big piece of red. It seemed like a strange thing to have on the wall of a post office, but of course I was a stranger in the land.
    The postmistress was a middle-aged woman, and she had copied on her face one of those mouths they used to wear during the 1920s. Uncle Jarv bought a postcard and filled it up on the counter as if it were a glass of water.
    It took a couple of moments. Halfway through the postcard Uncle Jarv stopped and glanced up at Marilyn Monroe. There was nothing lustful about his looking up there. She just as well could have been a photograph of mountains and trees.
    I don't remember whom he was writing to. Perhaps it was to a friend or a relative. I stood there staring at the nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe for all I was worth. Then Uncle Jarv mailed the postcard. "Come on," he said.
    We went back to the house where the bears were, but they were gone. "Where did they go?" somebody said.
    A lot of people had gathered around and they