Ancient Chinese Stories:

The Year of the Bear

            by Avi Samelson

 

Today

 

For some reason, I was in jail.  Ok, fine, I was a murder suspect and had been placed in jail on $500,000 bail.  I didn’t think anyone I knew would bail me out.  All the friends I had made, in the hope that one or maybe two would turn out to be fantastically rich, were poor or in some foreign country on the beach.  In any case, I was in jail for the murder of a “young woman,” a seventeen-year-old girl.  I had never seen her, but she lived on the other side of the small creek that ran between our houses.  The creek was opened in the late 80’s as part of a renewal project, and suddenly all the backyards on the 1800 block of Leona Zornes Lane and Sacra Point Street (they run parallel to each other) had a nice little creek running through them.

That year, rain was as common as rice in Chinatown, and our small creek (which usually never was more than two inches deep and a foot across—even that’s pushing it) was two feet high and a healthy three feet across (my little tomatoes were destroyed, I planted them right by the bank, so I wouldn’t have to water them.)  If I was brave enough, or if it ever stopped raining, I would have been able to swim in it.  The whole creek is covered by trees, mostly oak trees, and so it was usual (at least during that particular incredibly rainy year) to find garbage or random scraps of clothing out among the branches of the trees—don’t ask me where the clothes came from, but they did come.  One day, I was sitting outside, painting a portrait the little creek, trying to find myself some inspiration on this sunny day, and I saw a pant leg.  The pant leg was struggling to get free of the water and gave the illusion that the leg was kicking up stream.  I walked over to it and took it off the branch that it was stuck to. 

It was then that I realized that this was no normal scrap of clothing– there was a leg in it.  Being the artist that I am, I decided to leave it on the tree and paint my scene, complete, of course, with the severed leg and then I would examine the leg.  So I painted, and when I was done (by the way, it was a fantastic water color painting) I took the leg off the branch and fished into the pockets of the American Eagle blue jeans and found a cell phone and a key.  The cell phone, very surprisingly, not only worked, but was hardly wet.  Now, every artist doesn’t get a chance to paint something as bizarre, or as natural as a dead leg, so I took it inside, lay it down on my kitchen table and started to paint. Soon after, I realized that it would look better as a charcoal drawing, so I picked up some charcoal and started drawing.  I drew the torn bones and ligaments at the base of the thigh, where it would have attached to the hip.  I saw the huge vein that my lifeguard instructor said caused so many problems for people sticking out the end (how I remember my lifeguard class from 50 yeas ago, I don’t know).  It looked as though it had been bitten off, but at a closer glance it appeared to have been cut crudely with a saw or a knife.  I drew the small trail of blood that ran down the pant leg from the knee to the base of the foot, which was perfect in everyway (the foot, not the blood, I’m not a sicko), if it had only been attached to a living human being.   

That charcoal turned out to be my first mistake.  I guess that the moment you find someone’s leg, or arm or ear, even if you are an artist, you should call the police IMMEDIATELY (as the kind protector of the citizenry later told me once I had called).  The kind police woman also told me that there was a “young woman” (this part of the story is tragic) by the name of Liana Sorb-Munson who had disappeared, and who lived at 1869 Sacra Point Street (across the creek from me) and that I had found her.  I told the kind police woman that no, I had not found all of Liana Sorb-Munson, but that I found her leg, and that her cell phone still worked and that I was going to call her house.  The police woman said that I should probably not touch the leg and that she would send an officer out to my house to survey the scene and that I should DEFINITELY NOT call the family because if this turned out not to be Liana, but some random homeless person who was brutally murdered, which, by the way, I should have known about (according to her) because it was in the paper, Liana’s family would be even more distraught than they were now and that would be especially bad, because Liana’s story was getting a lot of press as well.  I told her that I would wait for the crime scene officer to come and she said that he was already on his way.               
       I waited and waited, and put off my afternoon walk to meet this police officer and when he finally showed up, an hour after he was sent, he asked if he could come into my house and I told him that it was much faster to just go around the back and if he wanted anything to drink.  So we went around the side into the back and I had put the leg back where it was when I found it, and it was kicking upstream just like when I saw it.  I gave the police officer the girl’s, excuse me, “young woman’s” cell phone and my card and asked if he wanted to buy any paintings.  He surveyed the scene, took the leg off the tree with some gloves and put it in a clear plastic bag that he labeled “5/13/03” and told me that he would take it to the police station to be identified; DNA and fingerprints.  I told him nervously that I had handled the leg, and I was sweating because the leg had started to creep me out.  I told him that yes, I did take it inside my house and I did do a charcoal of it because you don’t get to draw something like that everyday.  So he took my number down and said that I should have IMMEDIATELY called the police because something that got this much press should not be fouled up with my fingerprints.

I got a call from the police a few days later, while I was making some special Chinese-Taiwanese-Yoga-Acupuncture-Herbal Tea and they said that I should come down to the police station for questioning.  I came to the police station and was instantly arrested and put in a holding cell with some black man who asked me what I did and I said I tore off someone’s leg and he said I did that once, but I’m in here for throwing a lamp at my wife, even though I was aiming at the robber right behind her.    

And that’s how I ended up in jail on a $500,000 bail, for a crime I didn’t commit, and without me, Liana’s parents would still be crying and wondering and in that state of unknown, like when you call someone up and it rings for five or six times and you wonder if you’re going to get the answering machine or a person and then the answering machine clicks on and it says: “Hi!” and you think that it’s someone actually talking to you and so you say “Hi!” back and then realize it’s just a message.     

After I waited around for, oh, about an hour, what the black man said was a very short wait, a police officer opened the cell, said some very harsh words that I will not repeat to the black man, and pushed me out of the jail cell.  He spoke to me in that cordial manner that police men speak with lots of emphasis on shouting and bad manners and, well, you know what I’m talking about.  In any case, what he told me was that I was being held for the murder of a certain Liana Sorb-Munson and that the media was waiting outside for my name to be released and that I needed to sign a release because I had no court date yet and I told him that if he were in my place, especially considering that all I did was find this little girl’s leg, would he want the media and the whole city to know who I was and where I lived and that I was an artist who just wanted to paint?  He said, after threatening to hit me (who could hit an old man like me? –well, you’d be surprised) that no he wouldn’t want that to happen and that he would tell the press that this certain suspect, who they’re so absolutely sure committed the murder could not be identified at this time.  And that was that I he took me back to my cell, where I asked him if the tests on the leg had been done yet to see if it really was Liana Sorb-Munson and he responded that no the tests hadn’t been done, but that the cell phone was hers because some people called it looking for a code for some vault and the police answered and said that they had reached the wrong number. 

Now, what you must know about little Liana, is that her father and mother are both very wealthy bankers and are sitting on top of one of the largest unused stockpiles of money in the world.  Not a real stockpile of course, but they live across the creek from me, and are rich enough to afford two hundred thousand houses across the creek from me.  So I asked him if they think maybe someone was trying to steal Liana’s parent’s money and killed Liana to take her money and he said that all the information that I tell him can be used in court and I said that I was happy enough painting the creek behind my yard and that even if I could afford a bigger creek and a bigger house that I one wouldn’t buy one and two I was an economics major in college and I remembered a little of it and so I could make money by myself (and no I don’t have time to tell you how I became an artist two years after I graduated with a BA in business). 

 

The Next Day

           

The next day arrived and I woke up after sleeping in a not-so-uncomfortable bed to find that the black man’s charges have been upgraded from lamp throwing to possession of crack-cocaine, which he says the robber dropped on the floor after he threw the lamp at his wife.  I told him that at least he wasn’t up for murder and he told me that tomorrow they would probably upgrade his charges again and he would be charged with a double homicide, but that was life and they had no proof and that if he could afford a lawyer that he would get off with less than a year plus community service, but he doesn’t so he’ll be sitting on death row for forty years until his bonds mature and he collects $200,000.  I asked him how he knew all this and he said that unlike most people he had actually seen it happen (to his brother he said), unlike how everyone who thinks that everyone in the mafia always talks like in the Godfather I, II and III, and has stupid passwords and is ruled by some guy and two thugs playing pool or watching skiing on TV is stupid and that whoever embraces those clichés must be crazy and ought to be shot, or at least have someone throw something at them.

           

Later That Day

            A man came into our cell and took the black man out and said that he had good news. 

 

Later Later That Day

            The police officer who took me to the station met me in a room that I was taken to by a different police officer.  When I got into the interrogation room I was told that I was going to be taken back to my house and that I would show him the inside of my house and any place that might have a chainsaw or large serrated knife and that I should show him the drawings of the leg and that after that I would be taken back to my jail cell and I could sleep there.  I said ok and we got into the police car and drove back to my house and back to the creek which is sometimes known to have deer or other wild animals feeding in it and on occasion I would see fish (but that was only this year, because the creek has increased in size exponentially this year).  So we went into my house, which was a little dustier than usual.  I showed him the pictures and he picked them up with his gloves and put them into plastic bags and admired my watercolor saying that he thought it was very well done and that he was actually serious about saying that.  He talked on his walkie-talkie for a little bit and then we went out into the backyard and saw some large tracks.  We followed the tracks up the creek all the way until we found the huge pipe (a huge pipe, a bear could fit through it) that extended the creek on the road and I asked him, why the hell are we following these tracks and he said that there was some genetic code on the leg that was definitely not human DNA and that even though the leg was Liana Sorb-Munson’s, there was no evidence of a knife or chainsaw cut and that when they X-rayed her leg (after the DNA sampling of course) they found absolutely no metal filings and so we are following these tracks because maybe someone walked down the creek to try and find the leg.  Well, we kept walking along the over flowing creek bank, which, by the way was very, very, muddy and reached a cave.  A real cave.  It could have had bats in it if the police man hadn’t used his flashlight.  So we walked deep into this cave and found nothing but some leaves in places and some fur in others, and we wondered what, if anything was living here and we got our answer right away.  A bear, of all creatures complete with black fur and beady little eyes walked growled at us from behind.  The police man, and I know this is real cliché, but he did draw his gun and shoot the bear a few times in the head and I saw the blood dripping down the bear’s forehead and wished that I could draw something so beautiful but so distraught with my watercolors.  So he called the police to inspect the bear and we found out that no, I had not killed Liana Sorb-Munson, but one night she had been doing some illegal drugs, perhaps it was heroine, or maybe crack, and she snuck around the back of her house because she was late that night and had forgot her key and she bumped into a bear who ate all of her except that leg that I so wonderfully drew, that leg which put me on $500,000 bail and… damn, I kind of miss that black man’s company.