“Oh.”
And so she did. As she took the key from the lock and closed her door, she could still see Johnson Johnson standing in place, his hand finally lifted in farewell.
The interior of her tiny house was cheerful, even incandescent, with bright yellow doors, orange walls and fiery red baseboards. Somebody in its past had had color-courage. She put her things away and dumped canned chicken noodle soup into a pot, encouraging the front burner of her little Pullman stove to choose life. Chances were excellent that she would stand right there and eat her soup directly from the pot once it was heated. For years she had resisted her mother’s efforts to teach her to cook. You can only eat tuna casserole so many times, Neva, she had told her a hundred times. Sooner or later the body will rebel.
In the end it hadn’t been the body but Neva’s ex-husband Howard who had rebelled, not against her tuna casserole but Neva’s refusal to choose a different career path. He’d wanted to know how she could be passionate about jobs that listed shoveling shit as one of their major duties. When Neva was promoted out of the San Diego Zoo’s African savanna exhibit to become a full-time elephant keeper, he’d said, So, what—you go from small shit to bigger and more dangerous shit, and that’s the dream of a lifetime?
As she ate her soup, Neva thought about Samson Brown. She’d never met a keeper with so little training. He knew nothing about protected contact, operant conditioning, environmental enrichment, or any of the other cornerstones of modern animal husbandry and training. Still, it was clear that he had enormous natural gifts. His work with Hannah showed flawless instincts as well as obvious devotion. By taking Hannah for walks around the zoo each day, he gave her feet some relief from the unyielding concrete in her barn and small yard. It also gave her a change of scene, a relief from the sameness of her exhibit. Her diet was good, her appetite excellent, and her attitude seemed positive, even in light of the poverty of her surroundings and her complete and nearly lifelong isolation from other elephants.
And though Hannah’s feet were ugly and she already had arthritic knees and hips, they weren’t nearly as bad as some she’d seen. Maybe there was something to Sam’s wife’s homeopathic remedies. They had certainly done the animal no harm, which was probably more than could be said of the zoo veterinarian, a local DVM who, she’d learned, spent most of his time working with cows.
“Truman, come here for a minute,” Harriet called from her office as Truman tried to slip past her door to go home. He stopped with a sigh: she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in preventing him from leaving on time. Nevertheless, he stepped into her office and shut the door part way, raising his eyebrows at Harriet: Close it? She nodded, and he pulled it to. Outside the door, Brenda would be all ears. Truman had known her to turn the entire switchboard over to auto-answer if she thought she might overhear something juicy.
He stood in front of Harriet’s desk, or in front of what he assumed was Harriet’s desk if only he could see it beneath the mounds of paper. The office was squalid with half-filled coffee mugs and partially eaten nachos teetering dangerously atop shifting dunes of paper. Mess notwithstanding, she seemed to know the exact location and content of every single memo, report, spreadsheet, and phone message, right down to the bare wood.
Harriet nodded toward a visitor’s chair that was relatively clear of debris. A single pink message slip had floated down from above to rest there, but it was an old message so Truman just sat on it. He needed to be out the door in no more than ten minutes if he was going to pick up Winslow from his piano lesson on time.
“I’ve been looking at this,” Harriet said, holding out a financial statement he had prepared for her earlier in the day. “Are you sure about the numbers?”
“Very sure,” he said. “A number of school groups cancelled last month.”
“Do we know why?”
“Evidently the Pumpkin Patch had a corn maze.”
“We’re losing business to a farm stand?”
“Apparently so.”
In disgust, Harriet tossed the sheet of paper on top of a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich.
“Look,” Truman said. “I’d like to ask my father to review the old City files pertaining to the zoo.” Matthew Levy was a retired federal court judge and lifelong Bladenham resident. “Maybe there’s money we’re entitled to that no one remembers anymore. Special funds of some kind, or maybe a small endowment. With the kind of administrative turnover the zoo has had in the last decade or so it’s a long-shot, but I think it’s worth looking into.”
“Well, I can’t pay him,” Harriet said. “That’s the first thing.”
“No, that’s just fine.”
“Tell him to go ahead, then.”
Truman smiled. You didn’t tell Matthew anything. You laid out a case as carefully as you could and then you stood back to see if it stuck. He stood up. “I’m sorry, Harriet, but I’ve got to go pick up Winslow. You’re leaving soon, too, I hope?”
“Eventually.”
“It would probably do you good to take the evening off.”
“Maybe when things slow down,” she said vaguely, already mining her desk for a buried document. She didn’t seem to have much of a home life. He gathered that she lived alone, and kept birds—finches, as he remembered.
As he closed Harriet’s office door behind him, he saw the hem of a coat whip out the main door. Brenda, with her sly sense of timing, was done for the day.
Winslow was in the front window of his piano teacher’s house, watching for him. Truman could see the boy’s pale moon face, framed by curtains, sweeten with relief as he saw Truman’s car pull into the driveway.
“Hey,” Truman greeted the boy as Winslow climbed into the car. “How was Mrs. Leahey? How was the lesson?”
“It was okay. She gave me a new piece.”
“Still Mozart?”
“Yeah.” Winslow nodded. “It’s hard.”
“Well, she’s always going to give you something hard,” Truman said. “She warned us.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“Homework?”
“Math.”
“Ah.” The day’s inventory behind them, Truman fell into a reverie for the rest of the drive home. The boy might have the demeanor of an accountant, but he had an artist’s soul. Shortly after Rhonda left them, Mrs. Leahey had called him at work and said, He’s very musical, Mr. Levy. With your permission, I’d like to push him, see what he’s capable of. Truman had agreed, of course, and on the wings of Mozart, Winslow had risen and soared. Truman often sat just outside the den while he practiced, listening. In Winslow’s playing the boy was all brilliant hues and soft, rich shadows. Truman wondered sometimes whether, if the two of them had been outwardly vivid people, Rhonda would have stayed with them. But he was not a colorful man. Winslow was not a colorful boy. Their riches were subterranean.
Once home, Truman sent Winslow upstairs to begin his homework while he thawed a Tupperware container full of spaghetti sauce he’d prepared over the weekend. His freezer was neatly stocked with chili, stew, chicken tetrazzini, beef stroganoff, all meticulously labeled and dated. He liked to cook and got a quiet satisfaction from maintaining order and readiness in the household. If he had been a caveman, he would have been the one awake late into the night, taking inventory of the spear-points and stone axes.
Rhonda had been a disorganized, impulsive woman as likely to leave discarded pantyhose on the living room floor as in the dirty clothes hamper. She prided herself on being a strewer. Order is for mediocre minds, Truman, she had often told him. She mocked the absence of clutter in the house now, mocked the way Truman and Winslow arranged the books alphabetically, stored CDs by musical genre and composer. My god, she’d told him after she’d moved out, it’s as though dead people live here.
It was true that Rhonda was not an easy woman to survive.
When the pasta was ready, Truman called Winslow and while they ate in companionable silence, Winslow patted his foot on an imaginary piano ped
al, keeping time to some piece of music shining in his head.
The Beauty Spot hair salon was in the half-basement of Sam and Corinna Brown’s small white clapboard house. Corinna had fixed it up with gingham curtains and a pink salon chair and big mirrors on the walls that had little etched doodads in their corners. Her sink was pink, too, and her customers’ protective smocks were black with pink musical notes spilled all over them like someone had had an accident with a tune. No one she knew could read music, so she’d never figured out if the notes went to a real song. Not knowing was fine with her, though; in her opinion, it didn’t always do to know the exact nature of things. The best moment for a box of chocolates was before you bit into one. Once you knew it was coconut, the magic was over.
“How are you doing under there?” Corinna hollered, thrusting her hand under the hairdryer hood and poking at Bettina Jones’s curlers. Bettina was half deaf anyway. Put her under a hair dryer and she became a gently smiling imbecile.
“Honey, you’re just about done!” Corinna shouted.
Bettina smiled expansively and without a shred of comprehension. She’d been one of Corinna’s customers for nearly forty years. When Corinna had first started doing her hair, neither one of them showed a single sign of wear, and now look at them—Corinna with her stout bosom and Bettina with all that gray, which Corinna could never talk her into coloring. I’m exactly the age I am, girl, and I’ve got nothing to apologize for, Bettina was always saying. As a beautician, Corinna thought Bettina had plenty to apologize for, Bettina being a naturally homely woman who failed to even attempt improvements, but she’d learned to keep her thoughts to herself.
“Let’s comb you out, honey,” Corinna said now, flipping up the hairdryer hood and clicking it to off.
“Whew,” Bettina said. “You could drop an atom bomb and I wouldn’t hear it under there. It’s kind of peaceful. You ever sit under there, Corinna? It might be a good idea from time to time. You never know—you might just find God under there, honey.”
“I may not know a lot,” Corinna said, “but I do know God doesn’t live inside a hairdryer. If He’s worth His salt, He’s living right out in the open where anyone can find him.” Corinna unwound Bettina’s curlers and tossed them into her disinfectant soak.
“He works in mysterious ways His miracles to perform,” Bettina said primly. “You just haven’t been of a mind to see them.”
“You’re right about that, honey.” Corinna fluffed Bettina’s hair to cover up her receding hairline with a puff of bangs. Bettina might have laid down a good foundation with the Lord, but she sure was losing the war with her hair. Sometime soon, Corinna was going to have to talk to her about Rogaine.
“How’s Sam doing?” Bettina asked. “He keeping that diabetes under control?”
“He’s doing the best he can, but it’s hard on him. He always was one for an apple brown betty or a fudge cake.”
“He set another date to retire?”
“Naw. Not yet.”
“I’m telling you, if that man isn’t careful he’s going to kill himself.”
“He’s not ready to retire yet. When he’s ready, he’ll go.” Corinna looked at the clock. Sam should be getting home in fifteen minutes, and she didn’t like him waiting too long for his supper. “Looks like you’re all done, honey.” She whisked the nylon smock off Bettina and brushed the little hairs off her neck with a badger brush.
“Let me just get you a check.” Bettina grabbed her purse and wrote a check in record time, including a two-dollar tip. Bettina was always good that way, even though she lived on Social Security. One day Corinna and Sam would be living like that, too, but it didn’t look like it would be any time soon.
Corinna set a plate of meat loaf, peas, and mashed potatoes on the table for Sam—good food, country cooking like they’d both grown up on.
“Thank you, Mama.” Sam lifted his fork as though it was a heavy weight. He must be having another bad day. He worried himself sick; worried even when he said he wasn’t worried. When he said he was worried, Corinna knew he’d be sitting up in his chair all night. Her heart ached for him.
“How’d it go with that new girl?” Corinna asked.
Sam chewed thoughtfully. “Went okay, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I don’t know—she knows a lot of things I never heard about before. At least she’s not like that Harriet Saul, always bossing everybody around like they’re some fool.”
“Sugar, you know everything there is to know about Hannah.”
Sam set his fork down, his face full of heartbreak. “What if there was something the baby’s needed all these years, and I didn’t know it?”
Corinna pressed his hand hard. “You’ve done the best you could for that girl, sugar. No one would say any different.”
Sam nodded and lifted his fork again. “Sure is a good meal, Mama.”
They ate in silence.
“What did Hannah think of her?” Corinna said after a while.
“I think she’ll take to the woman. Ate a yam right out of her hand already.”
“You think it helps that she’s a woman?” Corinna asked.
“Don’t know.” Sam started clearing the table. “Could be.” He brightened a bit. “She says she’s got some ideas for us to try, things that’ll be fun for the girl.”
“You tell her about TV?”
“Nah. She already looks at me like I’m crazy because I talk to shug like I do.”
“Don’t you stop talking to her, now,” Corinna warned.
“Nah. There’s nothing out there that can shut me up, you know that. Hannah knows it, too. It would probably scare her half to death if I came in quiet.”
“What kind of donuts did you bring her?”
“Custards, plus the strawberry jelly.”
“Uh huh.” Corinna spooned out some sugar-free ice cream for them both. It tasted like hell, but they pretended to like it. “You didn’t cheat, did you? Take a little bite?”
“Nah.”
They finished their ice cream in silence. When they were done, Corinna went into the kitchen and came back with a tongue depressor, some bandages, and a little plastic jar. Sam took off his left shoe and sock and untaped a square of gauze on his foot and lower leg, exposing a wet, livid, diabetic ulcer.
“Looks a little better,” he said.
Corinna just looked at him and he looked away. “You can’t keep going like this, honey,” she said softly. “You think maybe this girl’s the one?”
“I don’t know, Mama. It’s awful soon.”
Corinna scooped some ointment from the jar and put it on the wound gently. Not that she had to. He hadn’t been able to feel that foot right in almost a year. It might be ugly, but there wasn’t any pain.
“Comfrey root,” Corinna said, deftly screwing the lid back on the little jar.
“Thank you, Mama.”
Corinna taped new gauze over the wound and said, “You talk to her at all about maybe getting another elephant?”
Sam put his sock and shoe back on. “It came up.”
“What’d she say?”
“Said it would take a miracle.”
“That’s one thing that’s in short supply, honey,” Corinna said dryly. “Guess we’ll have to figure out something else.”
That night, for Sam, was a dream night. As always, he found himself in a meadow full of high grass and rolling hills, with a pond deep enough for an elephant to belly down in. It smelled like summer, like a tonic made of growing things and sunshine and bugs and good rich dirt, though he’d also dreamt that meadow in every season and all kinds of weather. No matter when it was, he always found himself there with a joyful heart. Not that he was himself. No, he moved in a herky-jerky sort of way, so that even when he was going forward, he was also swaying from side to side. It was like being on a hayride, way up high, but there was no hay, no wagon. When he looked down he saw perfect feet, healthy feet. Elephant feet.
And as always,
he ambled around the dream-meadow smelling everything, feeling the warm sun on his head and the cool earth underfoot as he browsed. When he was done he wallowed in the pond, pinching up gobs of good thick mud that he flung over every part of himself. And then he heard a trumpeting, a rumbling, the low thrumming of elephants; first one, then a second and a third. As they ran towards him he could feel the very ground shake. His heart filled to nearly overflowing, every beat sending out a prayer of thanks: O Lord, for giving me this place, these elephants, I will worship at Your feet forever.
Next morning, like all the mornings after the dreams, he felt the way he always did after a sickness, heavy and slow and filled with the unyielding knowledge of all the things he couldn’t do, couldn’t give; knowing, too, that he would go back to the zoo to find his sugar chained to the wall in her little barn at the zoo, waiting patiently for him to come back to her one more day. It was on those mornings, not being able to bear showing up empty-handed, that he brought his baby donuts.
chapter 4
When Sam arrived at work the next day he saw that Neva Wilson had gotten there before him. She waved gaily from the elephant yard as he pulled in. He didn’t see his baby, though. Hurrying into the barn, he found her still standing in her overnight mess and shackled to the wall, rocking back and forth in great agitation. And her tire was gone. How could he have forgotten to bring her the tire last night? It was usually the very last thing he did, and in all these years he’d never forgotten it.
He laid hands on, murmured quietly, “Hey, sugar; c’mon now, baby girl. How’s my sugar this fine morning? How’s Papa’s girl? Come on, sugar, come on now. Let’s get that chain off.” He leaned down and unclipped the heavy chain from her shackle as she continued to rock beside him, swaying back and forth rhythmically like some kind of broken thing. The skin under the metal anklet was rubbed raw again after a month of healing, and every time she swayed it got just a little bit worse. Goddamn. Sam kept his voice soft, though, as he murmured and worked around her, crooning and petting and clucking and soothing; bringing her down. Later he’d have to do the same for himself. Right now, he was steaming.
Hannah's Dream Page 4