The Bear in a Muddy Tutu by Cole Alpaugh Page A

filtering through the nearest window.
    Warden Flint had come to love his silence, which was now being broken by a line of slow moving trucks that had rolled past the drive way to the fish and game shack . The trucks made a wide left turn toward Fish Head Island’s bridge. Flint watched as one by one the truck headlights tilted up into the black sky, each vehicle crawling across the old wooden bridge that must be shaking and swaying from the enormous load.
    “Goin’ in the drink. ” Flint took a long swig off the vodka bottle, as each vehicle tested the dilapidated structure. Flint shook his head each time one made it across, counting one after the other, and then losing track of what and why he was counting. Miraculously, the bridge survived , and nothing but angry red taillights stared back in the distance, disappearing somewhere behind the tall grasses of the outermost island of Flint ’s jurisdiction.
    Flint leaned back against the door of the shack, meaning to close his eyes just for a second, maybe fi gure out a plan of action for doing some investigating regarding these new developments out on Fish Head. Lots of things to be done, Flint thought, yawning and rubbing his stubbly face. He tilted the bottle in his right hand to see how much was left and then brought it toward his face, sloshing the rest down in one final, wet gulp.
    Flint entered that satisfying spinning time, when all the pains and wo rries had left his reach, yet he sensed he was still alive. He imagined this was how a man felt when his life turned out good, with a stash of money in the bank, a real house, and maybe a decent woman. It wasn’t so much the alcohol that he’d become addicted to, but the chance to catch a glimpse of this good life, if only for a minute or two before passing out. And what did it cost him? Less than four bucks a bottle, and the occasional han g o v er to kick him in the balls the next day.
    But tonight, his moment or two in the good life was different. He was a kid again, back at the arcades he used to haunt with his friends in Seaside Heights, burning through quarters, sharing smokes , and passing around French fry filled paper cups drowned in catsup. It was the music, Flint decided. His drunken head loll ed to one side against the back door, ear turned like a satellite dish to collect the sounds drifting on the gentle sea breeze. A kind of music a kid never even thought of as music. It didn’t play on the radio or at birthday parties. You didn’t hear it in grocery stores, or coming from behind the band room door at school. It was music that meant one place and only one place to Clayton Flint. M usic that smelled of cotton candy and caramel apples, and the baby wipes moms used to scrub their kid’s hands. I t smelled of pepperoni pizza, sour garbage cans , and cocoa butter glistening on the untouchable skin of the older girls in stiff new bikinis.
    The music was a link to the past . The rising and falling whistles of the circus calliope became a lullaby for Warden Flint in the otherwise silent night.
     

Chapter 12
    Fish and Game Warden Clayton Flint was used to treating hangovers. It was a matter of picking one’s self up off of the floor and trying to avoid too many obstacles en route to a fresh, unopened bottle of inexpensive Russian vodka. God help you if they ever stop manufacturing cheap Russian vodka , he thought, shielding his eyes from the brutal morning sun and groping for the shack’s rusty doorknob.
    Flint ’s back was a knot of razor blades and broken glass , which shot sparks of bright white pain up his shoulders and neck, onward to his thudding brain. He stepped blindly into the sparsely furnished, one - room building and decided his first task would be to pull the shades. His second would be fin d ing the sh ort, dorm-sized refrigerator . H e yanked the door open so hard it nearly toppled forward. The clanking glass jabbed at his skull, and he flicked his tongue across dry lips, tasting a hint of