Stephen Dobyns
This is how it started: a man needed work.
He hadn’t had a job for weeks so he took
the civil service exam and got a position
at the Detroit zoo, way down the totem pole,
right at the bottom. He wore blue coveralls
and a blue cap. He looked like a cop without
the badges and hoopla. His work was to feed
the zebras, feed the ibex, feed the bears.
The bears’ cage looked like a stone cave
without a roof, but it had a ledge six feet
off the ground. His boss said: Sometimes
a bear likes to get up on the ledge and jump
on the keeper giving him food. Oh, it hasn’t
happened much, but it’s happened. So keep
an eye out. The next morning the man fed
the zebra; he fed the ibex, but when he came
to the bears’ cage, he paused. No bears in sight.
Where were they hiding? The man entered
the cage and stared at the food trough. Only
ten steps to go. Weren’t a few of those furry
ruffians bound to be sneaking around? He took
a step toward the trough and heard a noise; maybe
a bear, maybe a bus on Woodward Avenue.
The man’s legs weighed fifty pounds. He thought
of his wife and six kids. He wasn’t very big.
He knew what bears could do to little guys
like him. They would chew up even his buttons.
Time passed. People paused to watch the keeper
frozen like a statue. As shows go, it was pretty dull.
The bears were off gallivanting someplace else.
Could the man run to the trough, dump the food
and run back? Sure he could, but he was a thinker,
that was his problem. He had a gift for picturing nasty
scenarios. As in a movie, he could see the bear
leap from the ledge. That would be just the start.
Back behind a rock a bear woke up. It was past
feeding time. He was hungry. He took a peek
over the ledge. No food. He reared up on his hind
legs and roared like mean grizzlies on TV.
Hadn’t the man known this would take place?
He dropped the pail and ran to the bus stop. Don’t
even ask if he shut the gate, that’s another story.
Close call, he told himself. It wasn’t exactly courage,
but it would do the trick. After all, he was alive,
but out of work. He began to tell people the story
of how he’d saved himself from a bear. With each
telling the bear grew bigger, then it was two bears,
then three. His excuse became his new work.
The man showed a scar on his arm from an old
bicycle accident. This was where a bear clawed him.
The man believed every word he said. Although
modest about being a hero, he projected an aura
of quiet strength. He developed a convincing vibrato.
His kids looked up to him. His wife baked him
an apple pie. Dinner invitations proliferated.
These reversals of bad luck that fate drops
on the seemingly unworthy, what does it matter
what really took place? The man’s stories
formed a path to help him through future dark—
lies, lies, the lullabies to help us sleep at night.