Bugbear Went over the Mountain
When we named him we knew we might be creating a monster. That was during a time of relative innocence when we lived in Memphis on Watauga Avenue. My mother found him in a box just beside Jack Pirtle’s Chicken. The other puppy in the box was a female. Daddy had been talking about wanting a male puppy; one to grow up alongside me like a brother.
My mother knew about bugbears from all the videogames she played. In the Harry Potter world they are blood sucking bears. We moved to Kentucky when I was in sixth grade and Harry Potter movies were big as trains.
When we crossed into Kentucky, I accidentally closed the automatic window on his head. He had been sniffing the rich air over the top of Jellico Mountain. Bugbear’s black head poked out the side like a gargoyle on a church. Even then he looked evil and menacing. He yelped as we crossed the state line for the very first time. I was trying to fetch a quarter that fell into the door handle when the misdeed took place. I let that window down as my father called out, “What the devil did you do this time?”
Bugbear and I rough housed like true brothers. He ate what I didn’t like. He ate my underwear too. We lived first in a rental house on Broad Street then bought a home on Moonflower Lane. No fence can hold Bugbear. He is like International Harvester and John Deere put together. So, believe it or not we kept him inside. With my mother designing video games and components from home, Bugbear is no trouble. He is that elephant in the corner. He watches Animal Planet.
Now that Dad has left us, he is like the patriarch. Dad went back to Memphis after a few years up here. Claimed he couldn’t hack teaching at the community college. He is a short –tempered man who moves at warp speed. We should have known Hazard was no place for a guy like Dad. He is back at the junior college in Memphis. I guess he’s happy.
I plan on going to Christian Brothers College there next year. Mom will cling and hang on here she says like the English Ivy that creeps all over our property. The house is paid off thanks to Dad’s big lottery win. All that money and he chose to go back to Memphis. At least my college is paid for but leaving Mom is not the hardest part. Leaving Bugbear is the challenge.
Whenever I go out anywhere, he runs from one window to the next for hours. He never slows down. It is like a tennis game that goes on forever with all that back and forth. Mom is afraid he will do it until he makes a fault line in the surface and the house folds up. So we need to train him or trick him into believing I’m still home. He is no blood-sucking bear but may make her blood boil with all that pacing.
With all her computer skills Mom has found a way to make a virtual me. We bought a Wii too and she has created a character like me but put my best photo, the one of me on the Senior trip to the Bahamas, in the mix. She plans to keep a pair of my smelly jeans and socks under the plasma television. To be honest, I don’t know how it will work. She has some bugs to work out.
Maybe it will help her get over missing me too. She could market this thing for empty-nesters everywhere. Now if she could make it fart and play poker, it would be perfect. She won’t let me see her creation. I wonder if she is playing God but if anyone could do that she would. When I get to Memphis, she can compete with me in every sport on Wii. She plans on wiring it to play automatically. I am afraid she will try to feed it meatloaf.
So, Bugbear give it a chance. You came with us over the mountain. Let me return to the city of my birth. Mom likes it there in Hazard where halfway up the mountain, you feel like you are in Sherwood Forest. You are a country dog now, even though you sleep on the couch most of the day. If Jack Pirtle’s is still open I will eat there in your honor. Dad got a Malti-poo and married that little college librarian.
In medieval England the Bugbear was a creepy gigantic bear that lurked in the woods. Incite fear in the hearts of intruders, you hear me? I dread leaving you. In Memphis I may need a scarecrow like you around. Keep Mom safe in her castle.
Let me get through this first semester. You can have my room. Honest.
