(Images by The Drifter)
“I’m so tired because I’ve been driving for almost eleven hours straight in a row with hardly a break at all,” he told himself out loud while continuing to drive his small car down the abandoned-looking highway in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
All of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is the “middle of nowhere.” There is really nowhere, he told himself, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that is not the middle of nowhere. And, after all, that is why you have traveled here, Sir (for some reason he called himself Sir inside his head although it was not a term he usually applied to himself; but she (who was now gone) had sometimes used to call him Sir; sometimes tenderly; sometimes satirically; and now that he was alone and far from her he was carrying on the tradition).
You are here, Sir, because it is the middle of nowhere. That and HEMINGWAY.
“Big Two-Hearted River” is one of the greatest American short stories ever written. It is set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In the story, Nick Adams, Hemingway’s alter ego, travels to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to get away from civilization because his body, mind, heart, and soul have been damaged by his service in WW1.
Hemingway himself got blown up over there. Over two hundred pieces of shrapnel in the legs at the age of eighteen while working as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. Anyone who thinks Hemingway loved war is wrong. Sometimes he thought it was necessary. That is a very different thing, and a very questionable belief. But Hemingway was not a war monger. He also worshiped the animals he killed in the way Native Americans did and some still do. He once wrote, of an animal, “It is not a sin to kill him if you love him.” Crazy Horse said the same thing. Such a statement has a different weight when it’s said with utter, deadly seriousness. Everyone who eats meat is a killer even if they don’t actually do the killing themselves. Too many animals have been killed and we are in the most massive age of extinction the world has ever known (except for the dinosaurs) and all of it should stop. Should stop, not will. But Hemingway was born when McKinley was president. It was a different era…
These are the kind of thoughts he kept having as he drove down the road, chain-smoking Marlboro Light cigarettes and chain-drinking black truck stop coffee. Later he would have a small stroke and develop stage one emphysema before he was sixty because of such habits as these (and the drinking in the bars (which were so loaded and thick with second-hand (and first-hand) smoke that it was like sitting in the middle of a cloud of beautiful poison for years), and the drugs, and the depression, which he called The Triple D’s) (and tonight alone in the cheap motel outside of Sault Ste. Marie, this shit would give him a panic attack; that and not having eaten any food (almost) in two days); but right now he was thirty-three years old and strokes and emphysema were the last thing on his mind; and he would never regret a single thing, which is, after all, what badass Nietzsche really meant by the thought-experiment concept of Eternal Return…
He took a drag of his cig’ and a healthy slug of the lukewarm coffee.
He had one hand on the steering wheel and the burning cigarette was in his other hand between his cigarette-stained fingers as he slumped there, exhausted and alert, behind the wheel.
The abandoned-looking road here was literally crowded with pine trees right up to the edge of the road, making a darkness, but sun fell down, between the trees, all over the road, making the road a bright yellow ribbon (follow the yellow brick road) of possibility for a few moments at least.
He drove with his knees and lit another cigarette with the smoking butt of the last one. Then he poured more black coffee from the thermos into the cup between his legs, and in doing so, he spilled a bunch of the coffee all over his crotch and felt the warm wetness all over his shorts (it was summertime) and all over his…
He laughed and called himself “Sir” again, almost hearing her voice out loud as he did so. She had also sometimes called him “Bear,” because his last name sounded like it had the word “bear” in it (even though it was spelled differently).
So he called himself Bear, there, alone, in the car, while driving, smoking, meditating, and drinking coffee, and just as he called himself “Bear” (like she had done), he looked up to see a bear standing in the middle of the road right in front of him. And it was a WHITE BEAR!
He slowed down fast then slammed on the brakes so he didn’t hit it because it wasn’t moving, at all.
It just stood there on all four gargantuan paws in the middle of the empty road (there had been no other cars for a very long time) staring at him.
And how the fuck was there a white bear in the middle of the road in the middle of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula!?
He knew that black bears lived here. Not only did they live here, many places in Michigan’s U.P. have more bears than people in them, by far.
He’d studied polar bears in books and documentaries, and at the zoo, and he’d seen wild grizzly bears from a Jeep in Alaska (the guide had said they weren’t too close). He knew enough about bears to know that this wasn’t, surely, a polar bear, a grizzly bear, or a panda bear who had escaped from a zoo (or something). He also knew that not all black bears are black; some are brown, or cinnamon-colored, etc. etc.
But this bear was utterly WHITE, as white as freshly fallen snow, as white as Snow White, as white as Moby Dick, as white as the whitest hair on the oldest person who ever lived (there was probably someone somewhere in the world who’d once lived to be 130), as white as heaven, as white as you can think of, or imagine. (He also knew that albino creatures have pink eyes and noses, and he could clearly see that this white bear’s eyes and nose were dark – very dark.)
And within that split instant of time that stretched itself out like a pink light beam shooting out to the edge of the universe (and then beyond) he knew that this might get him killed, mauled, sent to the hospital, whatever, as he opened the door of his stopped car and stepped out into the road not too far away from the white bear who was standing there in the middle of the road, looking at him.
And he and the bear stood there and stared at each other as the sun fell down into, and upon, the brightly yellowed road between them.
Then the bear stood up, massively, on its hind legs and sniffed the air in his direction.
Then it dropped back down onto all fours, and with its head lowered, it stared, and stared, and stared, at him.
They were about forty feet away from each other and black bears can run faster than horses.
And as they stared at each other, the man (the young man) felt the power of the bear SURGE through him – marking him for life.
And then the bear swung around and ran away into the trees.
The Drifter
Saragun Springs 
Drifter
The very unwise decision can also be the bravest. Talismanic (perhaps) Bear? This fits in with the works you have published lately in a crazy way, with the Snake as well. And with “She” who too, if not feral, is wild. And the reckless young man in the car. And of course Ernest. Still, it is unfair to a work new to me to sum it up in under five minutes after reading it. Only the bad stuff can be met that way, not the meant stuff, like this. Meant stuff is art.
Sometimes when I (still) get into smoking I wonder “how will this end?” but I let it go.
Leila
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Good morning, Sunshine Leila
You brought up a great point. The dialogue/s that commenting creates can often be wonderful, and they can also be a great way to improve one’s own writing, and maybe more than this, they are a modern-day way of creating human connection in an inhuman world.
But everything in this (seemingly) “imperfect” world also has a downside, and sometimes that downside can be when people comment too quickly without thinking it through first, or without having fully digested (or even understood) the story or poem.
Still, commenting and reading comments is a blast (usually), and the feedback it provides the writer is, as you pointed out somewhere, “the wages” for this kind of work. It reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft and all the writers and editors he worked with. None of them were doing it for the money (although some of them made a pittance here and there at times). Thank you!
The D
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A significant, maybe even a life-changing encounter, well-reported. I was reminded of an encounter I had once, rather the worst from drink, on a deserted road on a bright moon-lit night in the Cambridgeshire countryside: I came upon a bunch of ducks roosting in trees. When I disturbed them, they began quacking at me. It lost its significance when, some years later, I discovered a breed of ducks called ‘Muscovies’ regularly roost in trees – they have claws on their feet that enable them to climb up the trunks.
So perhaps, some time in the future, you’ll discover the explanation for your white black bear. Maybe an albino?? But by then, it will have served its purpose in your life. And will have mightily entertained your readers!
bw
Mick
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Mick
I would have been freaked out by clawed tree climbing Ducks! Makes me wonder what other kinds of life there are out in the stars–Ten headed Magpies? Who knows.
Leila
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Hopefully not too many creatures like some of the ones H.P. Lovecraft imagined, but I wouldn’t be surprised, although I would be terrified!
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Hi Mick
Thanks for sharing this anecdote from across the Atlantic! Drinking and ducks don’t go together, or do go together. Human and animal encounters were (probably) the very first stories humans ever told each other, and the tradition continues (and will continue with all real storytellers).
Dale
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Hi Drifter
I love the atmosphere. The emptiness of the upper peninsula with the pines crowding the road and the deserted highway adds so much to the story.
The way the MC interacts with himself creates a wonderful and compelling inner dialogue. The use of “Sir” and it’s reference to his lady is a great way to reveal his character.
Exploring Hemingway was also really interesting and his views on animals. The White Bear is almost like a mythic creature. It seems to almost come up from his subconscious mind, but when he is marked by the bear for life. it leaves the reader wondering with a mystery.
Great story!
Christopher
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CJA
Thanks for breaking this story down into three main categories: Atmosphere; Character; and Theme/s.
Reading (and studying) your short stories helped me develop a new voice for my own fiction. And your passion for the form of the short story itself has also been inspiring.
One thing I like about short stories is how one can focus on things like atmosphere, character, and theme, to the exclusion (almost) of outward plot elements, AND get away with it!
Such a thing can be done in the novel too (but not really, or not as much, or only if your name is James Joyce or Marcel Proust).
And it’s funny how many writers, even novelists, have done their best work in the short story (or the novella).
Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad and Henry James, DH Lawrence and Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O’Connor, Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were all novelists who wrote best in the short story (or very short novel) form. Shirley Jackson is (of course) best known for a single short story of around 3,500 words.
And even James Joyce did his BEST work in the short story (“The Dead” and “Araby” and “Eveline”).
“D”
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Drifter
Wow that’s really kind to say!
I’m definitely enjoying your series of short stories! The way that you allude to the fact that the White Black Bear didn’t have the pink nose and eyes–made it very haunting. It couldn’t be an albino. Man that almost gave me the chills–because I thought, Spirit Animal! To write a story that gets that kind of reaction is pretty dang good!
Hemingway’s Nick fishing “The Big Two-Hearted River is an incredibly vivid scene! The mind fills up with cold rushing water and the snap of a fishing line.
You have introduced me to these stomping grounds of E.M. And it’s terrific that you wrote about the Upper Peninsula! Perfect descriptions of this other worldly wilderness.
I agree with what you’re saying about short stories. The form to me is the greatest form in literature. Franz is the man! To know, is Poe! I’ll have to check out those short stories by JJ. Thanks for the tips. They always pay off!
CJA
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Dale, another intriguing entry in the episodic peregrinations of The Drifter. Did you ever speculate on why your appetites–alcohol, pot, other drugs and particularly tobacco–held you in their grip? I’m glad you slipped free of the booze and the Marlboro Lights prior to their doing you in.
You speak often of your journeys to Michigan and northern Illinois; did you ever visit the American Southwest, like Arizona. I imagine you would have hit it off with Carlos Castaneda back in the day. I read all his books in the late 1970s, when they were a counterculture rage.
The books recount his mentor Don Juan and Castaneda as they stayed strung out for seeming weeks on end on psychedelic plant life. Carlos died nearly three decades ago, disgraced, in some quarters, as a purveyor of bogus anthropological factoids. Enjoyed The Drifter one more, my friend. Take care.
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Hola Bill
Yeah, I spent what amounts to years contemplating all of my addictions, which have included addictions to opioids, alcohol, nicotine, benzodiazepines, marijuana, sugar, and probably several other items I’m forgetting.
I was partially raised by my grandparents and most of them were heavy smokers and drinkers. So it’s in my blood. (One side German American, one side French Canadian, with healthy amounts of Iroquois Indian thrown in.)
Then I started reading about all the writers and artists who were smokers, drinkers, alcoholics, drug users, addicts, and such, such as: Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Herman Melville, Hunter S. Thompson, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Harrison, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Goethe, Shakespeare, William S. Burroughs, Stephen King, and many many others far too numerous to mention and I was inspired to get drunk and high because of them.
I used to consider it all as exploration and adventure and I had many adventures because of it. I do not consider that I was doing any of it because I was trying to fill a hole in my soul. That line of thinking by the therapeutic establishment is Bullshit, at least for some of us.
I have been to every state in the nation except Hawaii. I once hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon: nine hours down, and eleven hours back up, all on the same day (and night)! (No joke.)
I haven’t looked at the Don Juan & Castaneda books for a long time, but those are great reference points.
I have an article about Magic Mushrooms coming out in the Springs this Tuesday.
Thanks, Bill.
D
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Drifter
I was only three fifths awake when I commented before. But hosannas for Boo, as always. I believe that these stories you have published the past few weeks all relate due to the mind of the questing MC; that’s why I think of it as a novel, much like many published over the years–the individual sections not necessarily directly linked nor even linear. The MC holds it together, as a human theme, so well, that even brief POV switches here and there might easily work with it. There’s no way in hell I could write a traditional novel, but in a form like you display, I’m all for it. I guess we should try new things, but when we discover we hate doing them, then no need to waste further time. Great work!
Leila
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LA
Yes, so many of the world’s great works are story collections that are also like vast novels, such as The Bible, The Thousand and One Nights, The Decameron by Boccaccio, The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, etc.
Sherlock Holmes and Watson, too, are mostly linked short stories (with a few novellas thrown in).
And at some point, it all coheres into a kind of novel when there are through-lines.
In the fragmented, fast-paced modern world, the short story (and the short short story or flash or micro fiction) should be seen as both a NEW and an OLD form. As old as The Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan, and older, like Aesop’s Fables and all the Buddha stories.
And it’s funny to think that Shakespeare’s longest single work is Hamlet, at a mere 30,000 words, i.e. novella-length.
All of Macbeth is only 18,000 words long! Something that only a writer could or would get excited about!
It’s also VERY WILD that short stories used to be where the $$$ was at. Both Fitzgerald and Vonnegut (and many others) filled their pockets and got mad that they had to write more short stories for the money (but the mag’s they were sending to would only pay for CERTAIN KINDS of stories, i.e., cheesy ones)…
Now the short story is where the ART is at…I find (almost) all traditional contemporary novels to be overwritten and full of shit. Yes I mean you Jonathan Franzen and Dave Eggers!
D
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A piece that’s mysterious but feels lived. The UP is an excellent place and a wonderful setting for something a bit magical. Very nice.
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