The Fable of Bing Read online

  Rosemary draws her phone from her jacket pocket and checks for messages. She does this roughly twelve times an hour, which puts her close to the national average for people in her age and economic demographic. She keeps the ring tone off always. When a call comes in the phone vibrates. With a text message or e-mail, it doesn’t vibrate but a red light blinks on and off. Because Rosemary turns off the ring tone for calls and the buzzer for messages, she thinks the phone does not control her.

  This time, there is a message from her boss, Turk Palisades, wanting to know where his call sheet is. Turk runs a radio station and he gets so many phone calls he has to delegate keeping up with them to an employee. Rosemary texts Turk back, telling him the call list is where it is supposed to be and where it always is, although those aren’t the words she uses. What she says is Look on my desk.

  After texting Turk, Rosemary checks her sister’s location on the GPS. This is something else she does twelve times an hour. Rosemary’s sister Sarah tends to wander and Rosemary is driving herself sick for fear Sarah will wander away forever. Rosemary feels this is a possibility and only her constant vigilance can keep Sarah safe.

  As Rosemary walks down the boardwalk toward the exit two teenage boys come crashing down along behind her. Thundering over the boards, racing to no end point, the one in back shouts a slang term for homosexual to the one in front, who doesn’t seem to mind. Rosemary freezes in place as the boys veer right to clatter past. Black hooded sweatshirts, bizarrely oversized shorts, ankle high black tennis shoes; the boys wear the uniform of their time and place.

  Like so many women Rosemary’s age — 26 — she observes the boys closely and asks herself if she has a child, would he or she grow up to look and behave like those two. The answer, of course, is God, I hope not.

  The boardwalk slopes down a fairly steep incline through overgrown greenery — not quite Rosemary’s idea of a jungle, but lush as a forest in a warm, wet climate. At the base of the hill the path passes a murk-filled pond shaded by overhanging cypress and acacia before crossing a hanging bridge and starting back up the other side. At the pond, Rosemary comes upon a groundskeeper — late 40s, mustache favored by Latinos of his generation, sea green uniform, hip boots such as worn by irrigators as opposed to fly fishermen.

  The man wades the shoreline, using a net to scoop trash from the water. With each scoop, he flips the trash over his left shoulder into an orange plastic bag held open by a thin hoop. He’s very good at what he does.

  Rosemary feels the usual upwelling of resentment against people who throw garbage at beauty. Trashing a place as nice as this goes beyond thoughtlessness to mean-spirited aggression. She wonders if Turk would care to do a show on the yang elements of litter.

  The man looks up the rise at her and smiles. He tips his hat, causing a rivulet of rain water to spill into the pond.

  He says, “Pleasant day.”

  Rosemary takes in the drops striking the pond surface, like tiny bombs. “If you’re a goose.”

  The man laughs. Then he scoops an M&M wrapper from the water and flips it over his shoulder.

  A thin, gold-to-brown banded snake falls from an overhanging acacia and lands on the groundskeeper’s shoulder where the snake sinks its fangs into the man’s neck. The groundskeeper grabs the snake in a two-handed chokehold and throws it into the pond.

  It happens so quickly at first Rosemary isn’t certain it has happened at all. Like blinking your eyes and seeing a dream, then flashing back to present tense. But the man’s face has gone bruise purple and the snake is slalom skimming across the water. What happened is real.

  Rosemary steps off the path toward the pond, her hand out as if to hold the groundskeeper aloft. His chest heaves for breath with an asthmatic wheeze, then his right hand gropes for his neck. He staggers two steps toward the shore, one step back. His eyes go to Rosemary’s, pleading a question she can’t form. He seems to hold the eye lock for a long time, before falling backward, slowly, buckling from the knees. As Rosemary watches — fascinated, repulsed, terrified — the groundskeeper’s body rotates over, face down in the water.

  She looks up the path and sees the two teenage hoodie boys watching from atop the ridgeline, toward the main entrance.

  Rosemary shouts, “Get help!”

  The boys stare, mutely, not moving.

  Rosemary stumbles down to the pond’s edge. She kneels on one knee and reaches out for the groundskeeper’s foot, but he is in too deep to grasp from shore and the snake slithering through the rank water off the man’s elbow frightens her. She knows she should go in. It is the right thing to do, only she is afraid.

  She looks back to the boys, who have vanished, then she claws her phone from her jacket pocket and punches nine-one-one.

  The snake’s head V comes closer. Rosemary backs, away and upright.

  “Nine-one-one. What is your name and location?”

  A boy drops into the pond.

  Rosemary goes rigid. Physically and mentally, she seizes up at the sight of the boy who seemingly fell from the sky, although he’d come out of the same acacia as the snake. Nothing makes sense to Rosemary. Her suspension of disbelief backfires.

  The boy — more young man now that she can focus on him — slogs though waist deep water to the groundskeeper’s side where he slides both arms under the body and turns it around. As water courses off the face that is more black now that purple, Rosemary can see twin tracks of blood from the nostrils and another track off the lip crease. She knows he is dead, probably from a heart attack that led to a drowning. Surely a snake bite can’t kill that quickly. This is America, for God’s sake. Not some Amazonian jungle.

  “What is the nature of your emergency, please?”

  The boy lifts the groundskeeper in his arms, baby-style. Water pours from the top of the rubber boots, leaving a stream in their wake as the boy wades to shore. He passes right by the snake without a glance. As the boy kneels to gently detach the hoop and trash bag device before sliding the groundskeeper to the dirt, Rosemary gets her first good look at him — the boy. She’s already seen the groundskeeper.

  Worn out t-shirt, canvas shorts, bare feet, dark blond hair in need of a haircut sticking out from a train engineer’s cap, water streaming from cheeks, chin, and chest — the expression on his face is nearly unique in Rosemary’s experience. She recognizes it though. It is the alive look of a person — generally a woman — who’s fallen madly in romantic love sometime in the last twenty-four hours. Rosemary had an irritating college roommate who took on the new-love gawky look once every couple of weeks. It’s definitely not an expression Rosemary has ever seen in a mirror.

  Bing — for that’s who the boy is although, of course, Rosemary has no idea of that — straightens the groundskeeper’s legs and traces an arc in dirt around his head.

  “Nine-one-one. Do you need assistance?”

  Rosemary hangs up the phone. She drops to her knees on the opposite side of the groundskeeper’s body, away from Bing. “Is he dead?”

  Bing runs his hand from the groundskeeper’s breastbone over his throat and holds it, palm down, over the nostrils that give no sign of breath. Bing’s other hand hovers over the man’s navel.

  A low, guttural hum strums from Bing’s throat. Like a garbage disposal full of coffee grounds, Rosemary thinks, or Turk when he’s winding up for a final run at climax. Bing’s hum grows quieter, smoother, now more of a ceiling fan sound. Rosemary almost speaks, but she bites off the words. They don’t matter. Something is going on here and her questions or asides hold no relevance. She is one rare person who knows when the appropriate time has come to shut up.

  The rain falls. The wind whispers. Far away, a lion roars. Bing hums. Rosemary sees a V slide through the pond, off into a cypress root. She thinks about the mystery of death. What happens in that special moment with a person leaves their body behind? The spirit and body separate. The body goes from alive to being a thing, an inert object. Where does the spirit land? Turk would want her
to note her impressions.

  The groundskeeper opens his eyes.

  Rosemary flinches. “Holy moly!”

  Bing’s humming tapers to silence. He and the groundskeeper stare at one another, as if not certain what comes next. The groundskeeper is flabbergasted at being alive. Bing is more fascinated than surprised. Now, it is Rosemary’s turn to stop breathing.

  The groundskeeper smiles. Bing nods. The groundskeeper nods back.

  Rosemary says, “I don’t understand this one iota. What just happened?

  She needs answers, right now, and both men are ignoring her. Rosemary reaches across the now-live groundskeeper and touches Bing on the upper arm.

  The boy explodes. Imagine sticking a cattle prod to an innocent child. He jerks away, an expression of livid horror in his eyes. Rosemary would later think about that instant change — from beatific love to terror in the space of heartbeat.

  Bing stares at his arm, the spot where her fingers brushed his skin. He looks back at Rosemary.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re cool. I don’t bite.”

  Bing leaps to his feet and runs into the forest.

  5

  Rosemary watches Bing bound away, like a deer vaulting through ground cover. He goes straight up the hill opposite the pond, making long leaps on the steep slope. She watches until he vanishes into the gloom, then she turns to see the groundskeeper has sat up next to her. He also watches Bing run. The only evidence of his ordeal is the blood track from his nostrils and lips. She can’t locate fang marks on his neck.

  He says, “Water.”

  She twists the top off her blue cylindrical water bottle with the Centered Soul logo in white and hands it to the groundskeeper, feeling a certain smugness for not minding that a person of a different ethnic group is going to drink after her and she will soon be drinking after him. Then she calls crap on herself. Her pride at a lack of squeamishness is just as bogus as if she’d been squeamish because the enlightened person would be so enlightened she wouldn’t notice that the man is a different ethnic group, much less feel smug for behaving like a human should. Finally, the moral nuances snarl so badly Rosemary gives it up.

  When the groundskeeper tips his head back and pours water down his throat she notices a nametag sewn into his uniform — CARL FLORES. Now, she can at least think of him as Carl instead of a nameless member of the service industry.

  Rosemary says, “I’m lost here. Why aren’t you stretched out there dead?”

  Carl drinks till water runs off his chin. Drops glisten against his mustache.

  He says, “I have never felt such thirst.”

  “Were you thirsty before —” She hesitates, wondering how to word it “— whatever happened to you happened?”

  “I do not recall. I think not.”

  “So what did happen, I mean, after the snake? I’m pretty clear on events through the bite and falling into the water.”

  He drains the entire bottle. “I was dead. Maybe. I think I was dead for a period of time.”

  “Did you see a light or a tunnel? Maybe your passed-on mom?”

  “My mother is alive. At least, she was this morning.” Carl isn’t taking anything for granted.

  “Did you see any passed-on loved ones?”

  He shakes his head. “I was gone away to someplace else.” Carl studies Rosemary, as if memorizing her features. “You must know more of what went on than I do. While I was gone.”

  Rosemary leans back on her heels. She looks at the pond. The rain has stopped. The acacia drips along the edge, but the center of the pond lies flat. There is no movement from within the cypress root where the snake was last seen. She looks up into the acacia, as if searching for something else to fall from the sky.

  “Let’s start with — who was that kid?”

  Carl the groundskeeper makes it to his knees and, with a grunt, upright. Rosemary stands with him.

  “I wish I had a cigarette,” he says.

  Rosemary pulls her pack from her purse and offers Carl a Kent 100. She says, “Keep it hidden. The zoo doesn’t allow smoking.”

  “They bend the rules for dead men.”

  It takes Rosemary more than a moment to realize Carl has made a joke. She wonders if she would be able to joke if she had been dead and come back. It would be such a life-changer. How can you emerge out of that the same way you went in, and, therefore, isn’t it pathetic not to take into account the possibility? Shouldn’t we all pretend we’ve died and been given a second chance, whether we have or not, for the sake of prioritization.

  Rosemary loans Carl her lighter. He lights up, draws deeply and says, “I’ve never seen him and I don’t know his name, but I believe he is the Park wild boy. He lives here. Hides out. No one has ever had a good look at him. Before today.”

  Rosemary says, “Jesus. The Tarzan of Escondido.”

  Carl walks to the pond and, looking carefully for snakes, he wades back in to fish out his hat. Rosemary thinks he is braver than she would ever be. She would have kissed that hat goodbye.

  Carl talks through the cigarette between his lips. “I have heard stories since I began work at this place. There was a trainer in Condor Gardens claimed he lives in the hills up there.” Carl made a vague motion toward the hill backing up the zoo. It is mostly bare rocks and juniper scrub.

  “Vivian down at the gift shop says he stays in the closed off part of the Park, with the primates. She says he has mated an orangutan.”

  Rosemary peers into the undergrowth where Bing disappeared. She wonders if he is still watching her.

  He is.

  “Thousands of people pass through, on most days, anyway. How can a person live in the park without anyone knowing?” Rosemary asks.

  Carl grabs his hat and turns to slosh back. He comes ashore healthy and strong as he’d been before the snake.

  He says, “Same way he made me breathe again, I think.”

  “This is the other thing I can’t wrap my mind around,” Rosemary says. “How did he do that?”

  6

  Bing stands at the short side of a rectangular table with a cutting board top, catching fruit Dr. Lori hacks with a cleaver the size of a machete.

  WHACK! A mango cleaves into two equal chunks. WHACK. A cantaloupe. WHACK! WHACK! Grapefruit. Melon. After each chop Dr. Lori sweeps the halved fruit toward Bing. Her left arm swings forward horizontally in counterpoint to the right wielding the cleaver vertically. WHACK! Sweep. WHACK! Sweep.

  The fruit flies to Bing who grabs each juice-laden section and tosses it into a plastic laundry basket on the floor. As each basket fills, he uses his bare feet to maneuver a full basket out of the way and an empty basket into position.

  Bing says, “I want an iPhone.”

  Dr. Lori pauses in her chop motion. Dr. Lori is a tall woman, 58, although she looks older due to severity and skin brown from years outdoors and a disdain for sunscreen. She has cropped grey hair and fingers with practically no fingernails. Bing often thinks of her as a tree.

  “You can’t have an iPhone.”

  “You have one.”

  Dr. Lori splits a watermelon, like firewood on a stump. She falls into her wise woman voice. “Why of the sheep do you not love peace.”

  Bing considers the sheep that climb boulders up next to the condor habitat. They eat and crap. Is that peace? He isn’t good with abstractions along the lines of peace. Dr. Lori never explains words.

  “Can I play a game on your iPhone?

  “How do you know about games?”

  “The Outie adolescents. They hardly look at exhibits. They play on their toys.”

  Dr. Lori sweeps watermelons halves to Bing. Pink juice glistens on the hairs of her left arm. “You touch my phone and I will neuter you.”

  Bing dunks the halves into a fresh basket. “Is that an example of exaggeration?”

  “Don’t try me.”

  He thinks sadly of the thousands of post-puberty children his own age, their concentration fixed on the box machin
es between their opposable thumbs. Sometimes they focus so hard on the boxes that they walk into light poles. He’s never been close enough to see the games they play, but their vocalizations indicate great joy and frustration.

  “Where do Outies go when they leave the zoo?”

  Dr. Lori has known the day would arrive when Bing asks that question. Since his toddler time, she’s come up with hundreds of answers. Now, with forethought, she says, “They cease to exist, outside our walls, until it is time to return.”

  “You go out. Do you cease to exist?”

  “I am an administrator.”

  Bing has never doubted Dr. Lori’s word. How could he since she is his sole source of information? He has no one to compare with her.

  “I saw an interesting Outie today,” Bing says. “She burned paper.”

  Dr. Lori stops at the top of her backswing. She turns her glare on Bing. She means to be menacing, but he misses it. He is looking into the basket at watermelon seeds. Several appear to move.

  Bing says, “She had shiny hair.”

  Dr. Lori lets loose a vicious chop. “You stay away from Outies.”

  “They can’t all be foul, disease-ridden vermin.”

  “Bing.” Dr. Lori reaches across the table and pokes his sweatshirt with the back side of her cleaver. “If you touch an Outie your flesh will rot off your carcass, you will bleed from boils. You recall the boils on the hippopotamus?”

  Bing nods, mutely. The hippo smelled like week-dead worms.

  “You will bleed from open sores and die in agonizing pain.”

  Bing puffs out his lower lip — bonobo fashion. He pouts. “Outies touch each other.”

  “And they die in agonizing pain.”