Polar Bear
Written by A.F. Knott“He was looking for something, no doubt in my mind.”
The man sounded like a hedge trimmer to the clerk. He heard hedge trimmers every day now, when he wasn’t at the store, out the window of his upstairs room. The hedge trimmers and lawn mowers were the reason he asked for the early morning shift, so he could be at the store before all of it started up. He didn’t so much mind the man’s voice sounding like one of them as he did the real thing. The real thing went on and on and on, and every day it went on. That was the difference.
When the man came up to the counter, the clerk had just started smelling himself. He was wearing the chain’s vest with the red and blue patch and had left his name tag on the bed. He’d forgot to wash the vest because he started watching a comedy on Netflix, then watched a second and stayed up until midnight. The vest’s armpits got soaked in sweat the day before when he was unloading the truck. When the man walked up, he was thinking about having to wash the vest that night. The man put his things on the counter and started yacking like a hedge trimmer.
“Seen him move over onto the yellow median and I’m thinking he’s going to make a left, but he didn’t make a left. He kept inching along the median. I slowed down because I was afraid to pass him on the right. Me, afraid. I’m following him and he keeps driving along the median, and I’m thinking, son of a bitch, he’s getting me irritated. I kept watching the car and getting more irritated. Red Taurus. And he wasn’t drunk. The car wasn’t moving like a drunk was driving it. So, what I was saying—it moved like he was looking for an address, slowing down, speeding up, like a zoo animal. You seen a polar bear at the zoo, what they do? They pace. They pace and they tear fur out. You see what zoo polar bears look like? It looks like it has some kind of disease, but it doesn’t. Well, it does, I take that back. It’s a mental disease. They all look like that from tearing their fur out with their teeth.”
The man finally stopped talking, and the clerk looked at what he had on the counter: a roll of toilet paper (their generic brand), a wrapped cheese Danish, and a pint of the yogurt culture drink, strawberry. The man pointed with his chin over the clerk’s right shoulder.
“You hear the gulls?”
“They’re here every morning,” the clerk said.
“I know they are. They shit on my car once. You hear what they sound like? All of them together, and there’s about fifteen on your dumpster. I counted them. Karrkarrkarrkarr, like the world. They sound like the world.”
“Could be,” the clerk said, but he said it softly.
“Could be, right? Could be,” the man said, then stopped talking, scratched behind his ear, and asked the clerk, “You know something?”
The clerk didn’t answer but met the man’s eyes. The man’s eyes were narrow, blue all around, his skin tight, his face tight, and there was no difference that the clerk could tell between the man’s sclera and the man’s pupil, both of them black. The clerk had been learning his medical words. He’d been studying parts of the eye that week.
“That red Taurus is parked right outside your store, right out in your parking lot, same one. By the ice machine.”
The clerk craned his head only a little and looked over the man’s left shoulder, over the magazine rack at the ice machine outside, and saw the red Taurus.
“And you see that crow on the post there?” The man turned and nodded to the bird on the parking post just outside the front doors. “You see what he’s picking at?”
The clerk turned his head again and saw the crow the man was talking about. The man was right. The crow was picking at something.
“Something elongated, right?” the man asked.
“What is that?” the clerk asked. “A hot dog?” The bird was half blocked by one of their signs on the door, their Fourth of July sign the manager hadn’t taken down.
“Do you see any mustard on that hot dog?”
The clerk turned and looked again, leaning forward a little more.
“No… just…”
“Just what?” the man asked. The man cocked his head.
The clerk leaned a little farther forward, putting both hands on the counter. This time he squinted.
“Just… is that even a hot dog?”
“You tell me,” the man said.
The clerk saw what it was in the crow’s mouth just as the store manager came out from the back with a few cartons of cigarettes. The manager came behind the counter and stood, back to the clerk and the man, opened the first carton, and began restocking the packs. The clerk was about to say something to the store manager, changed his mind, and rang up the man.
While he was doing that, the man said, “You ever see a buoy—a channel buoy—in the current, how it moves? It tilts, the channel buoy tilts with the current and rocks back and forth as the water runs around it.”
“Will that be all?” the clerk asked the man.
“No,” the man said and nodded toward the crow again. The clerk turned and watched the crow tilt its beak up in the air, the finger sticking out of its mouth.
“Looks like he’s got a cigar in his mouth, from this angle, the way the sun is hitting it. Like that bird is leaning back in an easy chair enjoying a smoke, maybe even grimacing a little. Am I right?”
Because the finger was in the light now and clear as day, the clerk turned around—he almost jerked around—and took the manager’s left shirt sleeve in his right hand and tugged on it. He was about to say something to the manager when the crow tossed the finger up in the air and opened its beak. The finger dropped down the crow’s throat half an inch. The crow opened his beak again, tossed its head up, and the finger slid down the crow’s throat.
“Like the Titanic, right?” the man said.
“What the fuck, man,” the manager turned when he felt the clerk’s hand on his sleeve and was looking down at the clerk’s hand. The clerk let go as the crow lifted into the air, flapped its wings, and flew away. The clerk turned back to face the man.
“Did you see any mustard on that hot dog?” the man asked.
The clerk watched the crow grow smaller and smaller, flying away over the highway, and said, “No mustard. You want all this in a bag?”
“Bags are five cents now,” the manager spoke over his shoulder. “Be sure to charge for bags, man,” the manager said. “Bags aren’t free.” He kept pushing cigarette packs into the empty slots.
“Yes, please,” the man said. “I would like a bag, thank you.”
The man looked past the clerk, over his left shoulder at the back of the manager’s head, and asked, “What do you think is in the trunk of the red Taurus? And it is red, isn’t it? I’m a little color-blind.”
The clerk nodded, but only slightly, the man watching him.
“Thank you. I thought it was. You remember the King of Sparta in the movie, when he turned and looked at his wife? He didn’t have to say anything, but he needed to know if he should kick the Persian messenger into the bottomless pit. She didn’t nod, exactly. She did what you just did, but the message was clear in her eyes. Her face moved, I would say, ever so slightly.”
The man shaped a fork from the second and third fingers of his right hand, placed his palm over his mouth so the two fingers rested on his cheeks, either side of his nose, pointing at his eyes. “She answered with her eyes, ‘Yes, this is what you have to do.’ And both of them knew full well what kicking that guy into the bottomless pit would mean. You remember that scene?”
“Yes,” the clerk answered.
“I bet you do. I could tell you were a fan,” he said. “She didn’t exactly nod, is what I am trying to say—like you didn’t exactly nod.”
The clerk did the same thing, almost nodding.
“Ok then,” the man said and pulled up his shirt, taking hold of the gun’s handle. He pulled up and kept pulling up because it was a Buntline. He had to lift his right hand almost level with his right shoulder and bend his wrist. The barrel was fifteen inches long. The pulling up took all of a second and a half, then another long second as he rested the barrel on the clerk’s left shoulder. The man then made a chsh chsh sound, like someone might make calling a squirrel over in a park, holding a peanut. The clerk dropped to the floor as the manager half turned—but not fast enough—the bullet passing first through his left temple, out the other side, through a pack of Marlboro Lights, across the aisle behind the cigarettes, through the coffee cups beside the Jakarta thermos, across the aisle behind that, through a plastic-wrapped microwaveable double cheeseburger, and into the cinder block wall.
The clerk stayed down, smelling the burning powder, and saw the manager’s blood pooling around a carton of Virginia Slims that had fallen on the floor. The clerk heard the man rattling the plastic on the counter and knew he was bagging his items.
“Well, sir, I guess that’s about it for today,” the man said.
The clerk felt the man’s hand lay on his head for a moment, then give him a pat.
“I bought this Buntline at a show in Missouri, and they didn’t even ask me for my driver’s license. And that’s a good thing. You know why?”
The clerk answered straight away, “Because you didn’t have one?”
The clerk couldn’t tell if the man was laughing exactly but didn’t know what else he could be doing. The laugh sounded like someone turned on the garbage disposal in the sink at his mother’s house.
“That is exactly right. I didn’t have one. Good. Now, son, could you please reach down right quick and grab me a pack of Virginia Slims—one of the ones in the carton by your foot—before they all get sopping wet.”
The clerk tore into the carton with both hands, smearing himself with the manager’s blood and brain, as he wasn’t being careful with the tearing. He brought the pack across and over his head, still in a crouch, and his face got splashed and he had to close one eye.
“You’ll need to hold your head over the faucet and get all of that out of your eye and off your face. You know that, don’t you? That man might have had kuru. You know what kuru is?”
“Mad cow.”
“They’re similar,” the man said.
With one eye, he watched the man open the cigarette pack and asked, “Matches?”
“Please,” the man said.
The clerk reached into the white box of matches they kept under the counter and pushed one pack of matches across the counter with a finger that wasn’t as bloody—his pinky on the right hand.
“Obliged,” the man said, and the clerk listened to the match strike. He smelled the man’s first lungful as he exhaled it all over the counter. “Smells good, don’t it?”
The clerk said, “Not as good as gasoline.”
The garbage disposal started up again, and the clerk was looking down, waiting for what was going to happen next. He listened to rustling, then the door’s bell tinkle and heard the man say, “I’ll call 911. You don’t have to worry about that. Go wash your face. Kuru. You don’t want that.” The bell tinkled again, and there was quiet. The clerk stayed down until he heard the red Taurus start. He listened to the tires on the asphalt.
He stood up, leaned over the counter, and took up one of the water bottles in the rack, twisted the top off, and poured it over his head. The water and blood got his smelly vest wet, as well as the shirt underneath and the front of his pants. He didn’t think about that before he poured. He just poured. He tore off two paper towel sheets from the roll under the counter, dried his face off, and dropped the wad on the counter and stood, facing away from the manager. After about a minute, he heard the sirens getting closer and just kept standing.
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Date Modified: 11-07-2025
