“That woman talk to you at all? What in hell was she thinking, leaving you chained up in here when she’s out there all sunny and smiling like some damn Florida orange juice commercial?” Sam muttered, moving around Hannah with his hand on her the whole time so she knew where he was; talking and talking, until he finally got her still and calm. He made sure to save out a word or two for the young lady, and not a kind word, either.
“Good morning!” she sang from the door leading out to the yard.
“No, it’s not,” Sam snapped. “What in the name of God were you thinking, miss, leaving Hannah in here in her own filth while you were out there doing whatever it was you were doing? The girl’s been in here all by herself since six o’clock last night.”
Neva winked at him. Winked. “Can you keep her busy for about five more minutes? I’m just about ready.”
“Girl, you and me are going to have some words, and they ain’t gonna be pretty, neither.”
“Okay, but first give me five more minutes.” And damned if she didn’t sail out to the yard again, leaving Sam muttering things it was good that no one but Hannah could hear. He forked down a flake of hay from the loft, and was about to start getting the day’s fruit and vegetables ready in the kitchen when he found two big pans already filled with cut-up produce.
“Okay,” Neva called from out in the yard. “Let’s have some fun. Go ahead and bring her out!”
“C’mon, sugar. Let’s get you out of this mess and into some fresh air,” Sam said to Hannah, clucking a little to encourage her. They both blinked as they stepped into sunshine as powerful as a searchlight after the fetid gloom of the barn.
Neva was solidly planted next to the door with her arms folded across her chest, grinning like a fool. She put a finger to her lips to shush him. He was about to let his words fly when she motioned for him to turn around quick. When he did, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Hannah was rushing around the yard. Bewildered, he looked at Neva, who just smiled and said in a low voice, “Watch. Just watch! She’s already figured it out. She’s a smart girl, your elephant.”
So Sam watched as Hannah lumbered over to one of the trees and found her tire in the highest notch in the branches. She ran her trunk around the outside of it, and then around the inside—withdrawing a banana, which she neatly ate. Then she went back to the outside of the tire again, working on something Sam couldn’t see.
“Peanut butter,” Neva said. “She’s found the peanut butter.”
Sam just stood there.
“Just wait,” Neva said, clapping her hands. “Wait until she starts finding the pumpkins. There are eleven of them, and I filled them all with raisins and jelly beans.”
“A scavenger hunt,” Sam said in wonder. “You’ve given shug a scavenger hunt.”
Neva grinned. “It’s one of my all-time favorite things. The animals light up just like it’s Christmas.”
Sam shook his head. Hannah was hustling around pulling bananas from branches, a pumpkin from inside a hollow log, squashes from the little wallow Sam kept for her. “Looks like Christmas came early this year. What time did you get here to do all of this?”
Neva shrugged. “Six, six-thirty.”
“Lord.”
Neva shrugged again. Sam watched as Hannah polished off a cache of bananas.
“Guess I owe you an apology, miss.”
“No you don’t,” Neva said. “How could you have known?”
In the beginning, Max Biedelman had checked on Sam often. He would be hosing Hannah down or cleaning her with a scrub brush when he’d see the old woman out of the corner of his eye, resting on the little folding stool she carried wherever she went. Sam thought the eyes of God must be something like Miss Biedelman’s, bright and all-seeing, snatching things up as quick and strong as a rat-trap. It had occurred to him more than once to wonder whether Max Biedelman was an emissary of the Lord, sent down to protect His earthly creatures.
Sometimes she brought Miss Effie with her, and those were good days when Sam could count on the old woman smiling, showing the yellowed ivory of her excellent teeth. She introduced Miss Effie to Sam as her personal secretary. Effie was nearly as old as Miss Biedelman, but still a beautiful flower, small in her bones and figure, skin like fine silk crepe: a lady. She always carried a perfumed white lace handkerchief as insubstantial as a spider web, which she kept tucked inside her cuff. When they visited an animal that was especially strong-smelling, Miss Effie held the scented lace to her nose.
“Effie was brought up in genteel surroundings,” Max Biedelman told Sam on a day when she came to visit alone, her eyes full of hell and wickedness. “She would have done very badly in Africa, don’t you think, Mr. Brown?”
“Don’t know, sir. I’ve never been there.”
“If I were a younger woman I’d take you. I think you’d find it quite splendid. The world is simpler in Africa, Mr. Brown. Not in all ways, of course, but in the important ones. You eat when you’re hungry and sleep when you’re tired and you know you’re nothing more than a gnat, a visitor, forgotten even before you’re gone. Africa belongs to the land and the animals. It’s no place for the high-strung. Effie did not find it to her taste.” The old woman smiled fondly. “But I would have enjoyed showing it to you, Mr. Brown.”
“Thank you, sir. I see it in my mind as plain as day from your stories.”
“You’re just humoring an old woman.”
“No sir.”
“Well, I thank you just the same. Talking makes it seem real again.” She sighed. “I do miss it, but Effie is happier keeping me at home, now that we’re in our dotage.”
“I’ve never been anyplace but Korea and here, and I sure didn’t think much of Korea,” Sam said. “Course the circumstances weren’t what you’d call inviting. I came home alive, though. Me and Corinna never took that for granted. A lot of men came home the other way.”
“War is dreadful, Mr. Brown—a male vice, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. Tell me, do you believe in reincarnation?”
“I might, if I knew what it was.”
“Ah. Hindus believe that after we die, we are reborn—reincarnated—as another being.”
Sam frowned. “The Bible doesn’t say anything about that.”
“And you believe in the Bible, do you, Mr. Brown?” Max said. Her sharp old eyes twinkled.
“Mainly.”
“But it’s very limiting, isn’t it?”
“Corinna would probably agree there. Ever since the baby died Corinna hasn’t had much use for God or the Bible. She says when God lets you down like He did to us, He doesn’t deserve our respectfulness. Corinna’s got high standards. High standards and an unyielding nature.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
What a picture—his Corinna and Max Biedelman together, two towering priestesses toe to toe, and no telling what wonders they could perform. Sam shook his head admiringly. “If you’ll pardon me for saying so, we’ve never met anyone like you before. Probably never will again.”
“Thank heaven for that, Mr. Brown.” The old woman had chuckled, clapping him on the back with a dry, hard hand. “Thank heaven for that.”
By noon Hannah was dozing peacefully in the sun, sated with treats and happiness and hay. Neva hoisted herself onto a counter in the tiny office inside the elephant barn. It was a small room to begin with, more like a glorified closet, and it was furnished with a rickety old desk and a rolling wooden chair that tilted dangerously to the right. She’d had furniture just like it for years—had it and abandoned it in four cities and three states. Howard had laid claim to most of their good things when they split—the rope bed they’d found and refinished, the washstand with the Delft tile backsplash, a rocking chair with beautiful acanthus-leaf arms. Neva’s mother had been appalled, but as far as Neva was concerned Howard had been welcome to it all. She’d never been any good at decorating or at organizing belongings. Better to just give things away or throw them out and start over again later. Th
ere was something cleansing about abandonment.
She unwrapped a Milky Way bar. “Want some?” She held out the candy to Sam. “I can split it.”
“Can’t, miss—diabetes. Found out last year. It’s a damned shame, too. I sure do miss my sweets. Me and Hannah, we could go through a bag of Hershey’s Kisses in a day. Baby Ruths, too. And Paydays.” Sam’s eyes took on a dreamy, faraway look.
Neva knew other old zookeepers who, like Samson Brown, had been hired right out of the military by municipal zoos and animal parks in the 1940s and 1950s, but most of them were so unsuited to their work that they had been transferred to park maintenance or food preparation on graveyard shifts—anything to get at least a minimal return out of them while keeping them away from the animals. Neva remembered one man who was so terrified of the bears he took care of—sun bears, strict vegetarians; sad, sleepy, fly-blown old animals—that he insisted on carrying a switchblade with him at all times. You would have to shoot flaming darts into those bears at point-blank range to get a rise out of them, but the keeper only shook his head and whispered to Neva, I see them watching me—I see them watching me all the time. You look in those eyes and you can see murder, plain as day. Mercifully the man had been transferred, eventually finishing out his working life taking care of butterflies.
Neva chewed in companionable silence while Sam finished entering food records for the morning—how much fruit Hannah got, how many vegetables, how much hay. “So how do you think this morning could have gone better?” she asked when he was finished.
“I haven’t seen her playful like that in an awful long time, kittenish that way.”
Neva smiled.
“But she gets real upset if somebody gets here in the morning and they don’t unchain her. It makes her feel bad, and then she starts rocking, and once she’s rocking it’s hard to get her to stop. She can keep it up for days, I’ve seen her do it. When she does, that metal anklet of hers just digs up her leg something awful. Took three months to heal, last time.”
“Has she always done that?”
“Long as I’ve known her. When she first came over from Burma, I guess the only thing that calmed her down was old Reyna, the elephant Hannah was supposed to keep company. Course, Hannah was nothing but a little tiny thing then, especially compared to Reyna. Reyna was a big old cow, and she’d stand right next to shug in the barn for hours, right up against her, not enough room between them for a flea to pass. Guess it made Hannah feel secure, having old Reyna plastered on her like that. She quit rocking after a while.”
“How old was she then?”
“Shug? Course nobody knows for sure, but Miss Biedelman figured two, three maybe. And you should have seen her run in those days. We used to use golf carts to take care of the grounds, take weeds to the back lot, bring new bushes, animal chow, like that. Well, Hannah, she liked to charge at that golf cart when it came by outside her fence. Her stumpy little trunk would be up and she’d just be trumpeting away.” Sam laughed. “The girl was afraid of her own shadow, but she wasn’t going to take no guff off that golf cart, no sir. Sometimes me and Miss Biedelman got Little Jim to bring that cart around just to give the girl some exercise.”
Neva laughed. Sam subsided, saying quietly, “My Hannah’s a good girl, miss. She’s never done anything bad, never hurt anybody even when she was scared.”
“I can see that.”
“It was awful bad for her when old Reyna died. Shug didn’t stop rocking for two weeks; girl even rocked in her sleep. Miss Biedelman was almost as bad off, slept with Reyna for three days and nights before she passed, then stayed with the body another whole day before she’d let them take it away. That was a long time ago and I wasn’t working with shug then, but I remember it as plain as yesterday. The baby rocked and Miss Biedelman wouldn’t come out of the house—wouldn’t talk, either, not even to Miss Effie, and that was saying something. A couple of weeks later was when she asked me to take care of Hannah. Been doing it ever since.”
“She has some bad scars on the sides of her head and on her shoulders. Do you know why?” Neva asked.
“Miss Biedelman thought someone beat her on the boat that brought her over here from Burma. Miss Biedelman said the mahouts would never have done it, but no mahouts came with her, just somebody hired to stay with her on the boat so she didn’t make trouble.”
Neva sighed. “Even keepers beat elephants sometimes. It used to be an accepted way to establish dominance over them.”
“Nobody’s got the right to beat an animal,” Sam said quietly. “No more than they’ve got the right to beat a child.”
Neva agreed. “How does Hannah do when you go away for a few days? Is there anyone else she trusts?”
“Hasn’t been anyone who stuck around long enough for her to get to know. Anyway, I don’t take much time off. Longest time was when I was in the hospital last year. That’s when we found out about the diabetes. It took me nearly a month to get back on my feet. Sometime in through there, somebody left shug chained up in the barn for three days straight. Like I was saying, she gets real spooked now being in that barn too long, especially when someone besides me comes around and doesn’t unchain her.”
“And that’s why she was rocking this morning?” Neva said.
“Uh huh.”
“Damn it.”
“Next time you want to do some game, just let me know ahead of time and I’ll come in early and keep Hannah company, let her know things are okay while you set up.”
“You’re very good to her,” Neva said.
“Well,” said Sam, “I had a good teacher.”
“Miss Biedelman? So who was Mr. Biedelman?”
Sam grinned. “Wasn’t one. Maxine Leona Biedelman’s the whole name, except she never used the Leona part except as an initial. It sure made her mad when someone called her Maxine. Real mad. She was a fine old lady.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to work with other elephants besides Hannah?”
“Nah. Miss Biedelman asked me to take care of Hannah for her, and that’s what I’ve done. Can’t imagine caring for any other elephant, though.”
“But don’t you want variety?”
“Nah. If me and sugar want variety, all we have to do is go for a walk. There’s plenty of variety out there. She sure does like her look-around.”
“And that’s enough? Doesn’t it make you want to see what’s out there beyond the zoo?”
“I did that, miss. Before you were born I was in Korea. I saw that. Don’t need to see any more.”
Neva touched him on the shoulder lightly. “You’re a very good man,” she said, and then flushed. She hadn’t intended to say it; she hadn’t even been aware of thinking it until it slipped out. But she’d meant it. This morning she had been arrogant enough to plan on teaching him all she knew about elephant care and zookeeping in general. Now she understood that it wasn’t going to be like that at all.
chapter 5
For Winslow’s eleventh birthday Truman Levy had agreed to get him a pig. Possibly to counter Rhonda’s knee-jerk negativity, he hadn’t been able to come up with a credible reason to say no, except that he didn’t want a pig in the house, which didn’t seem good enough even to him. So he’d said yes, despite the fact that he knew nothing about pigs in general or potbellied miniature pigs in particular; and despite the certainty that he would come to regret this decision in ways he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
So Sunday afternoon, in a light drizzle, he and Winslow had driven to a pig breeder at a rundown farm, squished through the muck, and surveyed the squealing piglets. The farmer pushed a few piglets aside to reveal one sitting calmly amid the chaos.
“That little male’s a good one,” the farmer had said.
“How do you know?”
“He ain’t runnin’, is he?”
Though far from reassured, Truman paid $125 in crisp new bills and they became the owners of a twelve-pound potbellied piglet named Miles. Miles was black and white, had tiny, wicked bl
ack eyes and a nose like a tin can hit head-on by a truck. His coat felt like something between human whiskers and toothbrush bristles, and he rode home beside Winslow in a cat carrier.
On the boy’s other side was nearly a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of essential pig-nursery items he and Truman had purchased that morning. These included a sack of feed, a hoof trimmer, an untippable food dish and water bowl, a dog bed with fleecy liner, a collar and harness, a litter box with wood shavings to fill it, rubber balls in an assortment of sizes, rawhide chew treats, a selection of stuffed toys, and a book called Miniature Pigs and You: A New Owner’s Guide to Love and Happiness. Truman had also signed up for the store’s preferred customer program, written down the Internet address of several informational Web sites about miniature pigs, and bought Miles a small engraved ID tag shaped like a heart.
Distantly but with perfect clarity he heard Rhonda’s voice say, Oh, for god’s sake, Truman. Really. You could have simply said no.
Yesterday they had created a pen with wire fencing that would be Miles’s outdoor domain, reached from the den through a dog door. Now, while Winslow kept the piglet busy out back, Truman closely consulted the Guide to Love and Happiness and arranged a cozy living space for Miles in the den. Per the instructions, he artfully strewed old towels around for Miles to root through, this evidently being a pig behavior as elemental as eating, only far more destructive when mishandled. With growing horror Truman read that if the pig was allowed to become bored he could be expected to tear up carpeting, eat drywall and baseboards, tip over and root through potted plants, and generally destroy at will any luckless object or architectural feature upon which he chose to lavish his attention. And, the book made clear, it would be the owner’s fault for his lack of foresight and imagination in meeting the pig’s basic needs, never mind keeping its superior intellect more productively engaged.
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