I picked up Grandpa Bear. He was the largest and rattiest-looking. One of his eyes was missing, and an ear was crooked. He had been Mindy’s, which had to make him close to twenty-seven.
“Passing gas like that! You a disgusting excuse for a human being,” Grandpa Bear said in his Morgan Freeman voice.
“Hey, Gramps, I’m not a human being, in case you haven’t noticed! I’m a stinky, farty teddy bear. I’m not apologizing. I say what I think. I’m brash. I’m crass. I’m Stinky Bear, baby!”
“What kind of grandson are you? You embarrass me, and embarrass the family.”
“Sing!” Ethan demanded.
“No, I don’t think I’m in the mood.…”
“Sing!”
“I don’t think I can muster the strength.”
“Sing!”
Ethan, I knew, would not be deterred, so Grandpa Bear dutifully cleared this throat and launched into the politically incorrect “Old Black Joe.”
I’m comin’
I’m comin’
For my head is bending low.
I hear the gentle voices callin’,
“Old Black Joe.”
Before Ethan could demand a second verse, I picked up Red Bear. She had been a gift from one of his speech therapists some ten years before, and he was still wary of her. I suspected it had something to do with the tone of her British accent, which could be intimidating and condescending, even though she was pretty much a tramp.
“Oh please, not that insufferable song.” She sighed.
“Oh, what’s the matter with you now, another one of your mysterious headaches?” Grandpa Bear asked. He made quote marks with his paws when he said the word headaches.
“A touch of the flu, I believe.” Red Bear coughed.
“More like a touch of Sutter Home Chardonnay. More like a case. You didn’t even come home last night. What kind of mother are you? Out carousing all hours of the day? Out gallivanting. Leaving your young son with me, an old bear. If your mother could see you now, God rest her soul.”
“Oh, please,” Red Bear said. “I was hardly gallivanting. I just stopped off at Rafferty’s Pub for a simple glass of wine. I was parched, what with the heat and all. The next thing I knew, it was morning, and I was waking up in a pool of vomit in the parking lot with my skirt down at my ankles.”
“That definitely sounds like the flu!” Stinky Bear said.
Ethan didn’t understand much, if any, of the dialogue. It had been developed over the years more to amuse me more than anyone. Regardless, he always seemed to appreciate the effort, the various accents, the voice inflections, and, of course, the farting, something Stinky was quite proficient at.
This morning’s bit was an old routine, however. Since I was performing without the aid of my muse, bourbon, I was not particularly inspired, and could tell his interest was quickly flagging. Ethan could be a tough audience; he demanded fresh material, so I redoubled my efforts.
“Hey, Daddy-o, where are we going?” Stinky Bear asked me.
“We’re going to Karen’s wedding in Charleston, South Carolina.” I answered this in my own, John Nichols, voice. “She’s marrying Rich Roger. Roger with the big jaw.”
“South Carolina. Lord help us!” Grandpa Bear said. “That’s the epicenter of racial hatred! The very vortex of bigotry. I remember when they fired on Fort Sumter. Lord, I was just a young little bear, workin’ in the cotton field. I looked up and I seen the cannonball like a comet shooting in the air, and I turned to my massa and I say, ‘Mr. Massa, sir, you went and got Mr. Abraham Lincoln all mad at you now, and he gonna ride down here and fry your ass. Then I picked up a shovel and hit him right square in his white racist, George Wallace face.…’”
I was about to embark on a historical and hopefully educational tale about Grandpa Bear’s perilous journey through the Underground Railroad, when my phone rang. Ethan, who was clearly growing tired of the routine (there wasn’t enough farting), leaped over me and snatched it.
“Hello! Hello! Hello!”
I sat up. “Ethan, give me the phone. Give it to me.”
He turned away. “Mindy! Mindy! Mindy! Mindy!” He then handed me the phone, and I put it on speaker.
“Dad? It’s Mindy.”
“I figured that out.”
“Where are you?”
“Champaign, Illinois. In a hotel. A Marriott Courtyard, to be exact. I just used up twenty thousand points. Six hundred thousand to go.”
“Are you driving with Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alone with him?”
“No. I’m with Stinky, Red, and Grandpa Bear. We’re splitting the gas.”
“I can’t believe you still have those three things.”
“Funny, just this morning, Stinky said the same thing about you, Karen, and Ethan.”
Mindy didn’t hesitate. “Put Stinky on. I want to talk to that bear.”
“Yeah, baby!” I said in Stinky Bear’s voice. “What’s up, Mindy?”
“What’s up, Stinky Bear? How’s Ethan doing?”
“He’s doing good, real good.”
“What do today, Stinky Bear?” Mindy asked.
“Well, we got in late to the hotel, and we slept very late, all the way to seven.…”