Baccano! - Volume 20 - Chapter 4.2

Interlude

“Your name’s Cookie. Yeah, that’s it.”

There was no telling how the hairy creature had taken the redheaded boy’s remark; in the next instant, without so much as a growl, it sank its fangs into the kid.

1920s In a circus tent somewhere in America

A moment later, the grizzly bear who’d been dubbed “Cookie” froze.

Ordinarily, he would have torn the flesh away and the bone with it, then used his claws and fangs to shove his opponent to the ground.

Instead, Cookie stiffened.

His teeth, which could easily bite through a tree, didn’t sink any deeper into the boy’s arm.

A moment later, Cookie’s jaws sprang open as fast as they’d snapped closed, and he rolled on the ground, flapping his arms, almost as if his upper half had been burned.

When they saw that, the people standing outside the cage shouted and whooped.

The whole group was patently odd: There was someone dressed in European armor, and a muscular man who was built like a ball, and another who was as tall and thin as a wire, and another who wore Japanese-style armor.

That said, in a circus tent, none of them looked terribly out of place.

“Nee-hee-hee, what’s the matter? What happened, Claire? Hee-hee-hee,” asked a clown who was laughing behind a “sad face” mask.

“Oh, I slathered my arm in Tabasco sauce,” Claire answered casually.

“He bit you real good, though, didn’t he? Didn’t he bite you just now?” asked a girl in a spiderweb leotard; she sounded worried.

Claire smiled at her. “Yeah, but it’ll heal right up. A little deeper, and he would’ve broken the bone.”

The boy was talking as if he’d been bitten by a dog, and a young man who’d been watching from a distance burst out laughing. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! You win that bet, Claire!”

The guy’s right eye had been badly wounded, and the socket held a red crystal instead of his eyeball.

Chuckling as if it was nothing, Claire reminded his employer: “You promised, Ringmaster! No getting rid of Cookie!”

“All right, all right. I won’t turn him into bear stew. Well, you don’t want that getting infected. Go get some cooking sherry from Mr. Gregoire and pour it on there!”

“Yessir!” the kid said energetically, and the surrounding circus folk cheered.

“That was really somethin’! You actually let him bite your right arm.”

“And he didn’t tear it off… What kind of muscles have you got in there, huh? Hee-hee!”

“That’s incredible! Geniuses come off looking slick no matter what they do!”

In response to the compliments, the boy just sighed and shook his head. “I keep telling you, I’m no genius. I work hard for this.”

At that, the ringmaster grinned. “For you, hard work can accomplish anything. That’s a mighty fine talent, Claire.”

Whether that conversation had reached him or not, he felt the burning in his mouth finally ease.

Even among grizzlies, he was a bit unique.

Maybe he’d eaten well; he’d been growing bigger than most of his kind when, one day, humans had captured him. Just when they were about to kill him, a circus troupe had picked him up. Caged as an enormous beast, he’d grown more savage by the day, until he’d even tried to attack his trainer.

At that point, the redheaded newbie had said “I’ll settle him down” and marched into his cage. The rest of the troupe hadn’t stopped him, which meant they were definitely crazy, too. In the end, the kid had survived, and he’d ended up rolling around the giant cage.

He didn’t understand any of these human circumstances, though.

From that day on, he started to behave for his trainer.

He knew: If he obeyed the instructions the trainer and the boy gave him, and the big crowds of humans cheered, his daily meals would get bigger and better.

Over the next several months, “Cookie” came to understand three things clearly…even if some of them weren’t entirely correct.

First: When people cheered, it was a good thing as far as his own survival was concerned.

Second: The creatures known as “humans” were poisonous to eat.

Third: The redhead who hadn’t struck back after being bitten was his pal.

After that, he spent several years with the boy, the circus troupe, and the lion, tiger, anaconda, and other animals that were in the cages next to his. Cookie was satisfied with that state of affairs. At some point, meals stopped being part of the equation for him, and the mere sound of the audience’s cheers began to make him feel something like happiness.

After another several years…

When the circus broke up, the beast tamer had taken Cookie all around America. At least until they were eventually separated.

As a result, he’d ended up wandering the woods of upstate New York, all by himself.

It wasn’t clear what was going through his mind, but he hadn’t let any humans notice his presence.

He just kept on wandering through the forest.