Did Not Survive

by Ann Littlewood

  I hid out at lunch time, avoiding Denny and the rest of the curious, and tried to hold up my end of the work despite a head full of leftover dread. Calvin left two hours before quitting time, when we were caught up. I clocked out the minute my shift ended and fled to my truck.

  My new house was a welcome sight, even if it didn’t feel quite like a real home. Winnie and Range, my dogs, were world-class therapists. I threw dirty zoo coveralls—Calvin’s, since they fit me and mine didn’t—into the washer, and we all bolted our dinners. Theirs was expensive kibble, mine was of the previously frozen variety. I managed a stroll around the block so that they could check their smell phone messages and tossed two tennis balls in the back yard for half an hour. Winnie, mostly shepherd, romped after Range, a sturdy black lab mix, but wisely let him collect both balls. Happy dogs goofing around cheered me up and dozing in front of the television set shut off compulsive rehashing of the day’s crisis. Nonetheless, I slept badly, dreaming of slithery gray trunks whuffling elephant snot all over me while giant round feet came down way too close. I woke with a pounding heart and got up early rather than risk falling back into it.

  I drove to work still unsettled and edgy. Mr. Crandall was waiting at the time clock, which was pretty much unprecedented. Mr. Crandall arrived in his office at eight in the morning. You could set your watch by him, Jackie claimed. It was also Sunday, which was officially a day off for him, along with Mondays. But there he was in his charcoal suit, white shirt, and polished leather shoes at seven thirty at the Commissary where we clocked in. When the roster of brown uniforms was assembled—Denny was five minutes late—Mr. Crandall squared his shoulders and began. “As I said, my intention is to keep you informed during this challenging period. Kevin Wallace remains in critical condition. As you should already know, I have assumed his duties. Are there any concerns over scheduling or your job responsibilities?”

  “Could Nakri have whacked him?” Denny asked. “Instead of Damrey? I hear the door between the stalls was open a little. Could she get her trunk through?”

  Mr. Crandall never allowed himself to look disconcerted or annoyed. Instead, he eyed Denny and paused, as though waiting for him to come to his senses. That wouldn’t happen any time soon.

  As the closest thing to a witness, I felt obliged to field it. “I don’t see how. Nakri couldn’t reach him where he’d fallen, and she tried. It would be pretty peculiar for him to walk over to her, get clobbered, and fall so far away.”

  “He could have staggered around,” Denny argued. “Or Damrey dragged him away.”

  That was remotely possible, but I kept quiet, hoping to hear whatever Mr. Crandall had to say. But before he could reclaim the reins, Arnie Bertram, the bear keeper, said, “Nah. Old Damrey went berserk and smacked him.”

  Where was Sam to jump to her defense? Ah. Sunday, his day off. Ian was present but silent. Not so Denny. Mr. Crandall opened his mouth, but Denny said, “What did the doctors say about his injuries? Could someone have attacked him? Not an elephant, I mean.”

  Every now and then, Denny’s compulsive hypothesizing came up with something useful, but this was not one of those rare occasions. “Denny,” I said. “All the indications are that Damrey flipped out for some reason. No conspiracy required.”

  That earned me a brief, forced smile from Mr. Crandall. “Iris is correct as of our current knowledge. More information may be forthcoming, and I will share that with you as it becomes available.” He added, as an aside, “I’m sure you know that medical information is confidential by federal law.”

  Denny wasn’t deterred. “What was he doing there alone? Maybe an experiment on Damrey or he was meeting someone secretly. Maybe it had to do with those animal rights activists. Or blackmail. There’s a lot we don’t know about Wallace’s personal life. Blackmail gone wrong…”

  Linda yanked the conversational ball away. “What’s going to happen to Damrey? If she’s really that dangerous, can we still keep her here? We’re not exactly state-of-the-art in elephant facilities.”

  I checked out Ian and caught a tiny, rigid nod of agreement.

  Mr. Crandall took a breath and resumed our regular program. “No decisions have been made in regard to either elephant. I am sure answers about the incident will be forthcoming as a result of the police investigations and the National Association of Zoos committee visit, which is being scheduled. I will keep you informed as I learn more.” He picked up steam—a tiny frown and the voice of authority. “I’ve been assured that with the new protected-contact procedures, no keeper is at risk from the elephants. Please let me know if you have safety concerns. Some of you may be interviewed by the police as well as by the NAZ committee, and I expect you to cooperate fully. The zoo will re-open today with normal hours. Again, please refer all questions to me and avoid speaking with the press.” He nodded in farewell, took a step toward the open door, then turned back with an actor’s precision. “Be safe out there, all of you.” Another nod, this one for emphasis, and he walked to the steps that took him down off the Commissary dock and strode with dignity toward the Administration offices.

  He hadn’t promised any more early morning updates. Perhaps he had taken away a new understanding of why Wallace was so often irritable after meeting with keepers. I scuttled out quickly, evading the bull session that was sure to follow. No one knew any more than I did, and reliving my experience trying to shift Damrey was the last thing I needed.

  Sunday was a day off for Calvin. “Real” weekends off were a prize available only to the most senior keepers. Saturday and Sunday, I normally worked Birds all day alone. On the three days a week that Calvin and I overlapped, we undertook the big jobs, such as draining and cleaning the penguin pool, or, if Calvin didn’t need me, I was assigned elsewhere, usually Primates.

  Today I wasn’t at top efficiency, thanks to a lousy night’s sleep, and the extra weight I was packing was starting to slow me down. But without Calvin around, I had nothing to prove and could go at my own pace. I settled into the familiar routine. The kitchen smelled of fish and fishy excrement and the air periodically rang with penguin brays.

  I stepped over the baby gate and handfed penguins while I inspected them for lack of appetite, lameness, or any other sign of decline. I checked out Mrs. Green, so named because she had a green wing band for identification and a well-established gender from years of laying eggs. She had become widowed about the same time I had, but was much farther along the path of grief and acceptance. As Calvin had pointed out, she was undeniably putting the moves on Mr. Brown. Despite Mrs. Green’s age—advanced for an African penguin—Mr. Brown was responding. Mrs. Brown, on the other hand, apparently held to the “mated for life” rule. I hoped nobody lost an eye.

  Zookeeping has its share or more of boring work, and today I was grateful for that. I felt too twitchy and nervous to face any challenges. Wallace and the elephants intruded as I pushed a steel cart loaded with food pans along asphalt paths. He was an experienced elephant person. Damrey had been at the zoo for decades and never hurt anyone. What had gone down? I hoped Sam would figure it out soon. I hoped Wallace was recovering.

  The zoo was open, a sliver of normalcy. Visitors arrived and wandered about. Delivering food to the duck pond set off the usual avian food riot and drew a crowd, almost all moms with strollers or toddlers or both. The older kids were fascinated by the mass of wild, uninvited mallards shoving aside the zoo’s mandarin ducks, pintails, and wood ducks in a grand display of oafishness. The mute swans rose above the fray, literally. Tall and long necked, they outcompeted the free loaders and scarfed their share.

  I checked out the variety of kid carriers, an excellent distraction. Strollers ranged from Porsche to Hummer. How did women get these contraptions in and out of cars? The backpack carriers with sleeping or fussing infants looked good for climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Did Goodwill have an infant department or did I need to refinance the house to buy this stuff?

  One woman hoisted a toddler, a l
ittle boy, up on the guardrail to see the waterfowl better. Her belly bulged even more than mine. The prospect of managing a pregnancy and a kid at the same time made my knees weak. The little boy wiggled and his mother set him down. She missed a grab for his hand and he shot off. She called after him in a voice thick with artificial sweetener, “Cecil, Mommy wants you to stay close. Come back now or Mommy will have to come get you.”

  This was a world I must master and somehow I would, but no child was ever going to hear me refer to myself in the third person.

  Next up was cleaning the owl and hawk exhibits. Usually that was a simple matter of picking out the casts—tidy regurgitated pellets of bones and fur—and raking the wood chips until the droppings were hidden. Today the exhibits were due for a more thorough cleaning. The old spectacled owl was unaggressive. I pulled a little white mask over my nose and started shoveling chips into the wheelbarrow.

  Shoveling was mindless work and my brain soon wandered. Wallace on the floor…Damrey rampaging…My heart rate and breathing ramped up. Clutching the shovel, I hoped fervently he wouldn’t die because, logical or not, I would feel somehow responsible. I willed away the image of his limp body. His and Rick’s, months ago in the lion exhibit…A peacock yelped nearby and startled me out of grief. I straightened and stretched and wrapped an arm under my belly. I couldn’t bring back my husband, but our child felt like another chance.

  By lunch time, Birds was in decent shape, and I’d eaten all the food I’d brought. Time to forage. Time to see whether more information had come in about Wallace. Maybe connect with Linda and get an update on cats.

  As luck would have it, Linda and I converged outside the café, and we walked in together. I played it safe with a beef burrito, and she opted for a turkey sandwich and potato chips. The day was nice enough to sit outside, and we got a good table, one that didn’t wobble, with chairs not adorned with peacock droppings. Visitors wandered in and out of the entry gate and the gift shop. They didn’t ask us any questions about Wallace or elephants so we didn’t send them to Mr. Crandall.

  Linda had replaced me as Feline keeper about five months ago. The rough transition was not her fault—I trusted her competence utterly. She was grounded and sensible, although she’d developed a bluntness that was at times unsettling. The Linda I first knew was a little shy, a little cautious about speaking her mind. Maybe it was hanging out with the big cats. Her hair had grown out a couple of inches from the last time she’d whacked it off. The tips were blond and the roots were her natural dark red. She kept adding metal rings to her ear rims, something a cat keeper could afford to do. Anyone who worked Primates was likely to have them yanked off. Linda was average height, a few inches shorter than I, and square shouldered. No one worried about Linda injuring herself picking up a bag of feed.

  Denny joined us, and, after hesitating, Ian pulled up a chair as well. We formed a loose circle, with Ian and me facing toward the zoo’s entrance.

  Denny and Ian shared a lean body type, and that was about it. Denny was blond and lithe with intense gray eyes, radiating energy and—I hated to admit it—a sexuality that I could never quite ignore. That last characteristic had led us to a brief period as a couple, before I met and married Rick Douglas, now deceased. Given a choice, I might have fled permanently from Denny’s restless delight in all ideas bizarre, conspiratorial, or both. But we worked together and he was dating, as in “with benefits,” my best non-zoo friend, Marcie Altman. Denny had his virtues, but this was a doomed relationship. I regretted introducing them, but neither had any interest in my blessing.

  “You know they had the veggie burgers today,” Denny said. “That red meat is setting up the kid for obesity and heart disease.”

  Hang me for eating a burrito. “Denny, zoo burritos have about a teaspoon of real meat. It’s 98% beans.”

  “Here’s some goji berries. They’ll balance out that stuff. Awesome antioxidants. Are you using the whole salt I got you?”

  I stuffed the packet of dried fruit into a pocket and wondered if three more months of Denny’s helpfulness would lead to the headline “Woman In Labor Slays Co-Worker With Fetal Monitor.”

  Ian’s was a different style of odd. He was built like a runner or mountain climber, all sinew and bone, strength without bulk. His face was narrow, with a long thin nose that looked as though it had been broken and left to heal at an angle. Murky brown eyes, ordinary brown hair. The peculiar feature was his ears. They were small and round and stuck out from his head at right angles, cupped forward like those of a panda or a baby rhesus monkey. Maybe he could hear better than those of us with flat ears. He was not a talker, and no one had learned much about him in his few months at Finley Memorial. He had thwarted our highly functional gossip machine, and I found that intriguing.

  “What do you think happened to Wallace? Why did Damrey go nuts?” Denny asked him.

  Ian shook his head. “No idea.”

  “You must have a theory. You know those animals. You know Wallace,” Denny persisted, not yet wound up, asking nicely.

  Ian shook his head and kept his eyes on his burger. “Nope.”

  “Did you know elephants used to be executioners? They called it ‘crushing’. Rulers in Asia would train them to kill prisoners. They would—”

  “Denny!” “Stop it!” Linda and I spoke on top of one another.

  “I’d think you’d want to know,” Denny muttered, subsiding. “I also found out that—“

  Arnie pulled up a chair, and we all scooted over to make a space. He leaned toward me, beaming. “Hey, Fertile Myrtle. How’s your parasite doing? Need any more pickles or ice cream?”

  This ragged give-and-take was the reason Linda and I often ate in the Feline kitchen in bygone days. The Feline building was forbidden territory for pregnant people, so we lunched with our co-workers, like it or not. Maybe “annoyed” was a good state of mind. It beat “panic stricken,” also “irrationally guilty and anxious.”

  Arnie was short, even with Western boots adding a couple of inches. His cheap cowboy hat was dark red with a ring of tarnished silver conchos around the brim. His smile was toothy and clueless through a brushy mustache.

  “I’m fine.” I short-circuited his grilling on the state of my womb by asking Linda about Rajah.

  She shrugged. “Some days he eats, some days he doesn’t. He’s drinking a lot of water. Doesn’t move around much.”

  “That old tiger has a lot of miles on him,” Arnie chimed in. “He’s what—twenty-five or six?—about at the end of the road.”

  Linda and I exchanged a look. Raj was a favorite with both of us. It was going to be hard when his time came.

  “Losa’s in some kind of holding pattern,” Linda said, not waiting for my next query. “Nothing happening that I can see. Maybe she reabsorbed all the cubs, and we’ll watch and wait for months until we catch on. She’s toying with us.” She picked at her potato chips.

  I’d already inhaled most of my burrito. “Nah, you have to earn cubs by suffering. We haven’t suffered enough night shifts yet. Who’s on watch tonight?” My own belly transmitted a tiny squirm.

  “Me. And I am going to be pissed if she doesn’t pop.”

  “I’ll let Losa know.” I headed back to the cafe for another burrito. I said “hi” to Olivia, the Children’s Zoo keeper, settled at another table with her crew of four volunteers. They had their own slice of the zoo and it didn’t overlap much with the rest of us.

  When I returned, Arnie was expounding on how unreliable elephants could be, interspersed with a lecture from Denny on musth. Since musth applied to male elephants, a condition in which they suffer from self-generated testosterone poisoning and become aggressive, I didn’t see the relevance. Ian kept his mouth shut.

  “Anyhoo,” Arnie said, “I’m sure glad I don’t have to work with that Damrey. Once they go rogue, there’s no going back.”

  “She’s not a rogue,” Ian said softly.

  We pricked up our
ears, but that seemed to be all he had to contribute.

  “Here’s what I think happened,” Denny said.

  “Fasten your seatbelt,” I muttered.

  Denny didn’t notice. He learned forward, jabbing a finger toward the rest of us, all enthusiasm and energy. “Damrey and Nakri have some sort of issue going on, and Wallace tries to break it up. Damrey aims for Nakri, he gets clobbered by mistake. That’s one possibility. Another is that those animal rights people broke into the barn and planned to turn both elephants loose. Have them roaming all over the zoo to get a lot of press coverage. Wallace tried to stop them, they hit him and ran away. But it could be that Wallace was involved in some sort of corruption with the bond measure money and got wiped out for a double-cross. The hit man dumped him in with the elephant so that she’d take the blame. I think that’s the most likely.” Denny paused to lick catsup off his fingers. He’d managed to consume a mushroom burger while free-wheeling. “And,” he added pointedly, “I hope he wakes up soon and tells us.”

  Hearing Wallace’s injury processed through Denny’s mental cyclone somehow made the accident less the stuff of nightmares, closer to everyday reality. Denny’s fantasies aside, wild animals were always dangerous. Accidents happened. I shivered anyway, seeing that hand twitch as Damrey’s trunk tip plucked at his jacket.

  Ian, by contrast, looked at Denny about the way he might look at a goldfish in a hay bale, but he didn’t say anything. Kayla, the veterinary technician, tugged a chair over from another table and perched on the edge of our circle next to him. A lacey lavender shirt contrasted with her lab coat and our dull uniforms. Today’s jewelry—her signature—was a necklace of big silver links. “Do you guys know yet what happened with Kevin Wallace and that elephant?” she asked.

  “No!” said several voices.

  Kayla recoiled. “Just askin’! Good grief! What’s up with you guys?”