Moose can be aggressive any time, especially in early summer when a cow feels her very young calf is in danger.
A charging moose often kicks forward with its front feet, knocking down the threat, then stomping and kicking with all four feet.
—WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE
Some forty-three years later, posting toward my last New England event before heading, like Melville’s Ishmael, into uncharted waters, I had to admit that the first weeks of my trip had not been an unqualified success. True, I had signed, and even sold, a fair number of books. All over New England, I had met some of the most knowledgeable and dedicated independent booksellers anywhere. They were not only keeping writers like Harold Who going, but they very well might be keeping “the book” itself, as we knew it, alive. At the same time, I had lost a gas tank, been pilloried as a madman in an important early review, and kicked the hell out of my own parking space at a bookstore that looked like a Walmart. I couldn’t help wondering whether any other MacArthur recipient had gotten a fellowship period off to such an unpropitious start.
Encouragingly, my event that evening in Vermont at the excellent Norwich Bookstore was standing room only, and I had a whole day to get to my next engagement, in New York City. Why not celebrate the end of my saturation tour of New England by treating myself to a cholesterol-saturated breakfast at the McDonald’s in White River Junction? Defiantly, I ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit and a large cup of Newman’s Own with two creams, to go. Breakfast in hand, I started back across the vacant lot separating the restaurant from the Comfort Inn—a misnomer if there ever was one—where I’d bivouacked the night before. As I dawdled along, nattering pleasantly to my many invisible friends, a large bus painted a violent lavender hue and adorned with foot-high scarlet Chinese characters pulled up to the entrance of the motel. Fifty or so tourists with luggage milled around, preparing to board the bus for a day of sightseeing.
At that moment, out of the June mist hanging over the lot stepped a gigantic cow moose, with a wobbly spring calf in tow. The mama moose gave a displeased snort. Harold Who stood stock-still, looking at her over his steaming coffee.
“Hello, moose.”
This salutation did not cut much ice with Madame L’orignal, as the early French explorers named our good friend the North American moose. She snorted again, louder this time. Except for the low, burbling sound of the idling lavender bus and the whining of the long-distance semis on I-91, a few hundred yards away, this little tableau of me, moose, and tourists was unfolding in complete silence. The mother animal began angling my way.
I edged backward. But now the moose-child took it into its outsized head to get between me and the McDonald’s, cutting off my only avenue of retreat from the increasingly agitated mère. When it comes to l’orignals, one never wishes to be in this particular situation: trapped between mother and offspring. In the meantime, some of the Chinese tourists had begun videotaping this bucolic Vermont scene.
The toddler gamboled a few steps toward me. On came its mother, not gamboling. I took a last gulp of Newman’s shade-grown java and held out my half-consumed biscuit toward the angry adult animal, now pawing the daisies and paintbrush in the meadow.
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I put my head down and made a break for the motel. Some of the tourists applauded as I sprinted past the bus. Others were busy filming my dash for life. Glancing over my shoulder, I was relieved to see the moose mother and her child galumphing off toward the scrubby woods at the far edge of the field.
“I see it all from right here,” the ancient desk clerk said. “You shouldn’t fool with them animals.”
“I wasn’t fooling with them. I was trying to get away from them.”
Some of the tourists had drifted back inside the lobby. A smiling young man began videoing the exchange between me and the clerk.
“He trying to get away,” the cameraman said, staunchly taking up my part. “Trying to get away from big deer small deer.”
“You’re lucky to be alive, bud,” the clerk told me.
“Very fortunate to be alive,” the Beijing filmmaker agreed.
One of his compatriots said something in Chinese. “He ask, what you do for work,” my videotaping friend said.
“I’m a writer. On a book tour.”
My interlocutor turned to our growing gallery and translated my reply. The man who had inquired about my occupation said something funny. At least I judged it was funny because several of the other tourists laughed.
“He say,” my personal translator told me, “now you go hotel room write all about being chase by big deer small deer.”
Whereupon the desk clerk favored me with a baleful grin.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. I think that now I’m going to get in my car and head straight home. End of the book tour. End of the writing career. QED. Time to go fishing.”
In the event, of course, it wasn’t that easy. After more good-natured laughing, photo opportunities, and handshaking all around, after returning to my room and showering and shaving, after checking out of the goddamn Comfort Inn in White River Junction, I discovered, somewhat to my relief, that the Loser Cruiser simply refused to take me home.
As the Cruiser and I huffed, chuffed, and, every time we hit 58.5 miles an hour, shimmied our way south, I was ashamed of my wavering. Rejuvenated, I stopped at a rest area outside Albany and jotted down the following lines, my first ever attempt at something like haiku:
Big deer small deer chase
Vermont writer born under
Sign of jackass.
“Not bad for a beginner,” I said after reading my haiku aloud to my uncle in the catbird seat.
“Stick to fiction,” he said. “Let’s roll the wagons.”