Yulan, New York

So I walked up to the entrance of Yulan’s Crossroad’s Bar fairly drunk to begin with. And it was cold , damned cold, but as I approached the doors a large Black Bear ran up and blocked my entrance. Then he reared up and stood 9 feet in the air and he roared. He was like a terrible furry T-Rex blocking me from alcohol.

And I said to him: “So it’s a fight you want? Bully!”

As if in confirmation, the Black Bear roared at me again in front of that bar, and so I charged him with a patented bull-rush. I caught him right around his massive torso and began a vicious assault of punishing body blows to his kidneys and one swift left to the solar-plex. But it did not deter him in the least. Shrugging off my attack he grabbed me around the shoulders and threw me thirty-feet in the air, and I skidded across the top of a Ford Fusion. I slid to a stop and laughed wildly.

“You call that being a bear?” I said.

I charged him again, but this time I jumped up towards the Black Bear’s massive head and connected a clean right to the jaw (like the upper-cut that Ryu and, to a lamer degree, Ken can do in Street Fighter II: Tournament Edition). And the beast was stunned, and he stuttered into the outside wall of the Crossroad’s and collapsed in a heap. When the Black Bear regained himself he slowly walked up to me, still on his hind legs, towering over me like a fleshy street-light, and I remained in fighting stance.

But the Black just stood in front of me, looking solemn, and said: “Yub eht tekcit, ekat eht edir,” and then he galloped off into the night.

So forget all that. And I victoriously kicked open the doors to Yulan’s Crossroad’s and demanded whiskey. I said to the dull-eyed, petite bartender with dark eye liner around her eyes, “Give me all the whiskey you have, and don’t spare a drop you crazy swine”.

She chuckled at me and rambled off: “All the whiskey, black bear or not, Yankee’s are down 3-0, and C.C. is a pilot whale without even a beach to land on.”

Then she gave me some whiskey. And as I stood there at the bar the man in the Mark Teixeira jersey started crying and babbling.

“Make that a Yueng-ling instead,” I said, and then slammed the Yankee fan’s face into a basket of pretzels. Blood and bits of pretzel exploding out of different parts of his face like a kamikaze water balloon, and he went spinning into the deepest corner of the bar. But I ran over and extended an arm quickly, picked him up, and told him that I’d like to bet him $50.00 (US) dollars that the Yankee’s would win that game.

“$50.00 dollars?” he exclaimed. “Game one, ALCS, down 3-0, on the road in Texas, up it to $250.00 you dumb lunatic and it’s a bet”.

“Make it $500.00 and we have a bet you stupid mountain savage,” I said.

And he did. We shook hands. Five-hundred dollars, Yankee’s down 3-0 on this dank Friday night (it would become 5-0 at one point), and the whiskey began to swill.

I rubbed my temples and closed my eyes. And when I opened them I was in the bar from The Shining. Bright white light, no one else there, and the bartender, neatly dressed, stood in front of me rather expressionlessly. He stared through me, looking for something, and I couldn’t tell if he was finding it.

“What’ll it be hombre,” the bartender from The Shining said.

But lo things are never that easy, and I’ve been through to many rodeos that’ll prove it. It caught my attention that sitting next to me were Google Mercenaries Number Four and Six. Stout, stern and serious.

“You bastards can even follow me here?” I said.

“Of course,” Number Four said casually.

“Who’s that watching the door?”

“Agent fifteen.”

“Christ that’s lazy. Fifteen? I didn’t even warrant a top ten Google Mercenary?”

Then Number Six breathed in heavily and laughed. “Not the old days anymore kiddo, we have a light handle on you. Not that were not impressed with the hits, but where are the runs?”

“We need more runs,” Four hissed into my ear in that old hotel bar. Bright lights, Jack Nicholson running around somewhere, lurking, sharpening his axe.

I sulked and shivered. “I can’t write like that anymore.”

“Write like what?” Six sparked back.

And he added: “It’s been five months and no mention of the words Sink or Quayle in any post. And we’ve got a full blown witch running for senate, and not a peep out of you. Not. A. Peep.”

In the bar I fought fear and searched for truth.

And Number Four added: “You don’t even write about drinking anymore.”

“I’m drinking right now,” I retorted.

“You call that drinking,” and then Google Mercenary Number Four grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose that appeared on the bar and began chugging. It was like a awful tornado vortex of the Russian poison funneling into his system in front of me. Horrifying. And when he was done, with the bottle, the whole bottle, he pushed it back gently to the bar and said, “cute”.

Then he grabbed me by the collar and pulled me in close.

“Write like you used to.”

“When you had potential,” Number Six chimed in.

“When everything was a joke.”

“All is fair in love and war.”

“William McKinley was the first president elected during an Olympic year.”

“We all die on the same bed”

“Hunt for October you stupid slug.”

And after their rotating verbal attack I shook my head back and forth violently and said: “I just can’t be funny or interesting anymore you terrible Google Mercenaries”.

And Number Four said quietly, but with severity, into my ear: “Says you.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my aching temples again. And when I opened them there I was, back in Yulan’s Crossroad’s bar, and looking up I saw that the Yankee’s were now up 6-5. Of course. So I swung around looking for my ALCS bettor like a osprey looking for a fat deaf mullet. And there he was, the loon, happily trying to have sex with the right corner pocket of their blue felt pool table.

“You crazy southern hick,” he yelled at me as he humped away, “how did you know?”

I picked up the pool cue next to me and cracked it over his head. It dislodged him from the pool table and knocked him onto the glass of a nearby Back to the Future II pinball machine. Then I grabbed him by the shirt and demanded my five-hundred dollars.

“You dumb punk, you southern fool,” he said. “It’s the middle of the ninth inning. Mo Rivera is just coming in. The game’s not even over.”

So I put him in a vice like headlock and said: “How can you still not get it?”

Then I ran him to Crossroad’s double-doors (which blew open for me) and tossed him into the cold night air. And as he rolled down the mountainside you could hear the trailing echo of the words Middle of the Ninth bouncing around every cavern and crater. I didn’t get my five-hundred dollars.

I walked back into the bar and the doors stayed wide open. A cold artic wind blew around every corner, sweeping up every soul in its path, pieces of paper and dirt whipped around hauntingly and without destination. And the same bartender’s thin blonde hair stood on edge, as if she were being shocked by static electricity, and I assumed she was about to start yelling Beetlejuice over and over. But she didn’t and instead said: “If you leave the doors open the bears will come in. And they’ll demand gin. Lots of gin.”

I raised my hand high in the air, as all the locals stared, and snapped my fingers. The doors slammed shut.

The bartender nodded. Her make-up was running, her hair went back to normal, the paper and dirt stopped flying around, but she didn’t smile. She instead set down a bottle of whiskey before me, leaned over the bar, and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

It was in the Crossroad’s, in Yulan, New York, on this dark sad Friday night, and I started drinking that whiskey.

And finally I looked to my left, and next to me, unnoticed for sometime, taking up a huge portion of bar real estate, and with a bottle of gin, was the very same Black Bear that I had fought in the parking lot earlier. He looked happy now though.

“You a Yankee’s fan?” I asked.

And he looked at me and nodded. The Black Bear even grinned a little; a long line of sharp bright white teeth. He used both paws to hold his gin (no thumbs) and drank deeply. And we sat there together and watched as Mariano Rivera mowed down three pathetic Rangers in workman like fashion. Through the pixels I watched as Nolan Ryan started weeping in the stands. I toasted him with another shot of whiskey.

And then the Black Bear turned to me and said, “Ni eht dne, eht evol uoy ekat si lauqe ot eht evol uoy ekam.”

“Cheers to that,” I said.