It kind of reminded me of being at the Memphis Zoological Gardens one time, years before, before puberty hit me. I was walking around with a balloon on a stick in one hand, a cone of cotton candy in the other. I was just wandering, and wandered over near the bear pits, where a large group of people had gathered. They were large bears, I don’t know, brown, or maybe grizzly. Something was going on, you could tell. The bears were down in a large pit with rocks and an artificial pool and an artificial cave, living out their artificial lives. People were pointing down into the pit and grinning. I pushed my way up through the crowd to see what was happening. Fathers had children sitting on their necks, holding them by their legs. There were two bears down in the pit, big fuzzy things. One of them was standing and the other one was lying on its back with its front paws up in the air, waving its head around and looking at the people. It looked a little drunk.

I looked at the bears and looked at the people and then looked at the bears again. The bear that was standing put its nose between the hind legs of the bear that was lying on its back and took a long hard sniff. The bear that was lying on its back raised its head and curled its lips out in a long tunnel and said ROOOOOOOOOOOO! real loud. The bear that was standing raised its head and shifted its feet and stuck its nose between the other bear’s legs again and the bear on its back waved its forepaws when the other bear took a long hard sniff and said OOOOROOOOOOO! MOOROOOOOOO! GROOOOOOOO!

The people grinned and pointed and the bear that was standing wiggled its nose and stuck it back between the other bear’s legs and took another long hard sniff and the bear on its back closed its eyes and waved its head and said BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Then the bear that was lying on its back got up and licked the other bear for a little bit, they both did, then they slowly turned together and went into their cave and out of sight. The crowd kept looking. I did, too. The bears didn’t come back out, though. I felt, even way back then, that something strange and mysterious was going on, something we weren’t going to be allowed to see. The crowd drifted away after a while, in ones and twos, then threes and fours, until I was the only one left. I kept watching the dark mouth of that cave, but there was nothing to see except the black air inside it, and shadowy forms slowly moving in there. After a while I went away, too, and left them alone.