QUAGGA—HUNTED TO EXTINCTION—DO NOT TOUCH!
Walter did not touch them.
He heard the sad, low howls of the Honshu wolf. They were small and spotted. Their ears flexed back against their skull. It looked like they were grinning at him. Walter grinned back. So did Pops. He pulled at the corners of his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and made the best Honshu wolf grin that he could. And then they both began to howl together. They just threw back their heads and let the noise come pouring out of them.
HONSHU WOLF—DIED 1905 FROM RABIES—KEEP BACK!
Walter was getting sweaty and hungry, but he didn’t want to stop.
“C’mon, champ,” said Pops. “We need to take a break. Just a quick one, okay?”
“A quick one,” Walter repeated.
“That’s a good boy.”
Pops tugged him inside the shelter of one of the main buildings. The blast of air was cool and welcome. The air conditioner rattled like a tin can.
“Here?” said Walter,
It didn’t look like a reception area. The walls were painted bright yellow. The trim was the colour of dried blood.
“This way, champ.”
The hallways were narrow. They were lit by fluorescent lights and filled with the buzz of overworked air conditioners. There were pictures hung up, dusty, unlit. Walter could still make out the shape of a bird’s skeleton in one. It looked like a picture in a science book. There were rocks with bones poking out of them. Fossils. Walter wanted to stay longer to look at these, but Pops was pulling him along now.
“Pops,” Walter said. “My feet hurt. Can I take a rest?”
“Just hang on there, champ,” he said. He pulled Walter up short in front of a door that looked no different than most of the doors they had passed, with the word GRANT stencilled onto it.
Pops stared at the door. Walter stared at the door too but he didn’t know why.
“Pops?” he asked, but he was hushed with a flapping of his hands.
“Quiet there, champ. There’s just a thing I have to do. Okay? Just one small thing? Will you let me do this thing?”
Walter looked at his Pops’s face. It was flushed. There was a strange twist to his lips.
“Sure,” Walter said at last. Then Pops knocked very loudly three times.
The door swung wide open. Behind was a very thin, very tall man. His face looked like a melted wax candle. His cheekbones were sharp. He made a soft whicking sound when he inhaled.
“You are Mister Crewe,” he said in a nasal voice (whick, whick, whick went his lungs). “I believe we have been in correspondence?”
“I was hoping you might,” Pops stuttered. “That you could. This is a very special facility, isn’t it? And I understand, well, that is I wanted to talk to you about—” Pops trailed off as if he had forgotten what he was going to say next. Then he unslung the travel pack and started to open it. When he caught Walter watching, he stopped. “Could we speak inside your office?” He hesitated, looked at Walter again. “I couldn’t leave him at home. My wife isn’t well.”
“Yes, fine.” The man ushered Pops inside with a wave. Walter tried to follow. “Not you. You can stay out here.” He placed a hand on Walter’s shoulder and gave a little push.
“Is that all right, champ?” Pops asked. His voice was small. It might have been scared.
“Yeah,” Walter said, at last. Pops patted Walter on the head.
The door began to close behind them and suddenly it wasn’t all right. The door reminded him too much of the hospital door. The hospital where he had lost his sister. Walter didn’t want Pops to go in there alone. “Wait,” he called out, and the door opened an inch. That fleshy, drippy face appeared in the crack.
“Yes?” (whick whick)
Walter didn’t know what to say. Pops had gone in there. Pops had asked him to stay out. Walter knew that he wanted him to stay out here. He wanted him not to know what was happening in there.
“Please,” he said. He tried to poke his head through the door. He could see something on the table. A dress. His mom’s dress—the one from the hospital. It was covered in blood. Pops was clutching at it. He was sniffling.
But then there was the man standing in front of him.
“Stay,” the man hissed. “This is not a place for children.”
The door slammed an inch from Walter’s nose.
Pops had left him in the hallway. There was a chair. Walter didn’t want to take the chair. He started to walk.
He didn’t know where he was going. Not really. There were rooms coming off the hallway. Each one was labelled with a name—BARROW and ZEIGLER and DENNISON—but Walter didn’t know those names or whom they belonged to. They reminded him of the animal pens.
At the end of the hallway were two rooms with open doors. The room on the left side contained a skinny, dark-haired woman. Her face was covered with red blotches like strawberry jam. She didn’t look at Walter. The sign read KIST.
In the other room was a woman who was fat. Very, very fat. Walter had never seen a woman so fat! Great rolls of flesh flubbed off her stomach. The fat woman looked at him. Her eyes were small and wet. They peeked out from underneath the flesh. She said nothing.
“Where did you come from?” he asked. The question just popped out of his mouth. The fat woman said nothing. The question hung in the air between them.
At last the fat woman smiled and her jowls quivered with tiny little vibrations of laughter.
“From my mother,” she snorted, “who do you think?”
Walter wanted to leave. He wanted to go back to the chair, but he had talked to the woman. She was peering at him curiously. Like she had never seen a boy before. He knew he was in it now and deep too. He scuffed his shoes.
“Me too,” he said at last.
“My mother was a lion tamer.”
“She tamed lions?”
“Until the lions ate her.”
Walter again was silent. He watched the fat woman. Her stomach rippled and bulged. He wondered if she was hungry. He wondered if that’s why her stomach was moving like that.
“I like lions,” Walter said.
The fat woman shifted on her chair. It was like watching a tower of jelly move. Every part of her seemed like it spread in a different direction. She rippled. She fanned out.
“I like the lions as well.”
“Even though they ate your mom?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what lions are there for. To eat things. Not much good a lion does otherwise.”
“Oh.”
Walter turned to leave.
“Wait,” she said. “Do you want to see something, kid? Something special?”
“Sure,” Walter said uncertainly.
“Close the door.”
Walter went to the door. He thought about leaving. He thought about running back to his Pops and pounding on the door until they let him in. He thought about going home. He wanted to go home very badly. But he closed the door. He turned back to the woman.
“Good,” she said. “Now watch.”
She squinted her eyes until there was barely anything left of them. She stuck out her tongue. For a moment, Walter thought she was holding her breath. Her face began to turn red. There were bright red splotches just below her eyes. Her neck was flushed. But now she was grunting. It was a deep, guttural sound. The sound a warthog makes.
And then the flesh of her stomach began to move.
Walter gasped.
It wasn’t just that she was shaking. It was that it was moving. It was crawling. Her shirt was pulled so tightly that Walter could see the way it rippled. There was a bulge. It pressed against the fabric. The woman let out a mighty grunt, and then a whoop.
But Walter was watching her stomach in wonder. The bulge became something recognizable. A nose. A nose pressing against the inside of her stomach. Suddenly another divot. Two. The
re were little knobs in the centre. Three of them. Like knuckles. And then the straining became more intense. The knobs pushed further and further until Walter could count toes.
“Bugger,” said the woman and she heaved herself out of the chair. She was shivering. The veins were standing out in her neck. And as she moved, the fabric of her shirt finally gave with a tremendous ripping sound. Walter wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t. He was fixated. He was rapt. He could see her breasts hanging like old rucksacks. The nipples were round and brown and thick as rope.
Then, slowly, slowly, the ripping sound began again. But this time it was not fabric. No. Her shirt was in tatters from her shoulders. The tails fluttered as she heaved the breath into her lungs.
And the ripping continued.
And Walter could see the woman’s flesh beginning to split. Slowly. Slowly. An inch. Another inch. And through the tear came a tiny black nose. No bigger than a puppy’s, but with two giant nostrils pushed. And then an entire snout. The jaw was blunted. The lips flexed like a camel’s. A long tongue—as long as Walter’s hand!—darted out to taste the air. Then came the rest of the head. It had great jowls, furry, slicked with blood and slime. And Walter could see an ear matted into the fur, twitching.
“Watch—” grunted the woman. “She’s coming!”
And this time Walter did turn away. He didn’t want to watch anymore. He ran to the door, gulping at the air. He couldn’t breathe. The door wouldn’t open. His hands trembled on the handle. Slicked around it. He couldn’t get the thing to turn.
“There!” screamed the woman, “there! There!”
There was a popping sound. A deflation. The sound of a slow, wet fart.
“Boy,” the woman called. “Here, boy. Look.”
Walter turned.
The woman’s stomach was torn open, and her eyes were white and round with pain. But she was pulling safety pins from the table beside her. A long string of them. And she was poking them through the skin. Her hands worked fast. She was very good at it. She barely had to look.
“Ugh,” said Walter.
And the woman gave a giant belly laugh that made the vast surface of her torn skin twitch and shudder.
“Pass me a blanket,” she said hoarsely. “There, in the cupboard. Go on.”
Walter went to the cupboard and he pulled down an old grey blanket. The kind he had seen in the chimpanzee enclosures. The fabric was rough against his fingers, but the woman took it easily enough. Draped it around her shoulders. Her fingers pulled her stomach together.
“She’s a beauty,” the woman muttered.
At first Walter didn’t know what she was talking about. But then he followed her gaze, forced himself to look properly at the . . . thing. The roly-poly ball of fur lying between her knees. It blinked at him, the eyes still unseeing. Or seeing for the first time.
The tongue darted out and touched his knee. Walter let out a yelp and leaped away from the beast.
“Careful,” the woman said. “She’ll startle easy. Keep down the noise, would you?”
“Okay,” Walter whispered. “Okay.”
“You can touch her if you like.”
Walter shook his head. He didn’t want to touch it.
“Go on then.”
Walter shook his head again, but this time he knelt down to get a better look. It looked something like a bear, but not quite like a bear. The size of a German Shepherd, maybe. Maybe an anteater. Its eyes were close to its smooth, brown snout. Two pinpricks in a giant heap of fur. It looked a little like it was smiling. It looked a little like the fat woman.
Walter put out his hand carefully. The little thing reached up one of its own paws. It had three long claws and they curled very carefully around Walter’s thumb. He giggled. He couldn’t help it.
“What is she?” he asked. “It’s a she, yeah?”
“Megatherium,” she said. “The giant sloth. Died out, oh, ten thousand years ago. I’m mostly good for the Pliocene era. Mammoths. Stegodonts. Three-toed horses. Jeanine in the room over does cats.”
“Whoa,” said Walter. He tilted his head. The sloth-thing tilted its head as well. Puckered its lips. “She’s beautiful!”
“I know,” said the woman. She reached down and she plucked the sloth-thing into her massive arms. She pulled it close to her face. Slowly. Slowly she began to lick at it. Walter knew it should be gross but somehow it wasn’t gross. It was delicate. Like she was eating an ice cream cone. Lovingly she began to clean the sloth-thing with her tongue. Its eyes blinked. It let out a tiny murmur. It reached its spindly upper arms around her neck and nuzzled its head against her chin.
Walter watched in fascination. He wanted to hold the sloth-thing himself. He wanted to cradle it in his arms and feel its animal weight.
He reached toward it but the fat woman pulled away.
“She needs sleep now,” the fat woman said. She wiped her mouth across her wrist. She rested her chin down. Smiled when the sloth-thing’s long tongue touched the bottom of her cheek.
“Thank you,” Walter said, “for showing me that.”
The woman said nothing for a moment. Then she got a look on her face. “Well,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t have. But. You know.”
“What?”
“I know why your dad is here.”
Walter thought about this for a moment. He didn’t know why Pops was here.
“It’s a survival instinct. You never lost a parent so you don’t know what it’s like.”
“You mean your mom? And the lion?”
The fat woman blinked. “I guess I do. It’s bewildering, you know. To realize that you are next. Link by link, generation by generation, the chain of your people are yanked into death. And you are next—the link before you? Gone. Your last protection. But losing a child is different. It’s like seeing the end of the chain. Watching it dangle over the abyss. Your dad, well. He’s lost. But what we do here only works with animals. Not people. I’m sorry, kid.”
“Why?”
“Do you know how many mass extinctions this earth has seen?”
Walter stared at her. “What’s a mass extinction?”
“That’s when everybody dies. Everybody. All the animals. Wiped out. Just like that. An asteroid maybe. Or climate change. Whatever. It’s happened five times.”
“I don’t believe you,” Walter said.
The woman shrugged. “Fine,” she said. She gave a tremendous yawn. The sloth-thing stretched against her. Curled its snout into her giant breasts. It made little whimpering noises from time to time. “Whatever, kid. This little one here? Starved to death. Her mother died. Hunted by our ancestors. Maybe one of mine even. Ha. And she couldn’t feed herself. Not even with that great big tongue of hers. Every species has a last one. And this is it. The last Megatherium.” The woman sighed. “But that was ages ago. Ages and ages.” She tickled the fur underneath the sloth-thing’s chin. “Just you wait. She’ll get big enough to knock down trees. Four tons. Like an elephant. Can you imagine that?” She bopped the sloth-thing on the nose. The creature scrunched up its face, pawed at the air. “People are different than animals. There are so many of us, right? Six billion! But there will be a last human. Maybe not now. Maybe not for a while. But there will be.”
Walter watched as the woman’s eyes drifted shut. Her thick lips let out a snort. Almost a snore.
And he thought about the hole that had swallowed his mom. Had almost swallowed him. It had a name now.
Extinction.
He knew it was silly. Nothing had changed, had it? Not really. His family was exactly the same as it had been before: his mom, Pops, Walter. The three of them. But it meant something different now, didn’t it? That was why his mom wouldn’t come out of her room.
Because, one day, there would be the last kid on earth.
Right then he missed his mom with a viciousness that reminded him of one of the baby�
��s kicks. He wanted to curl up next to her. He wanted to nestle his head underneath her chin.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered.
Walter went to the door. It was time to find Pops.
“Hey, kid, wait.” Walter turned back. The fat woman blinked her eyes fuzzily. Waved a hand toward him. “Just a second. Just a second, kid, you hear? What was your sister’s name?”
“I don’t have a sister,” he said.
“But you were supposed to, right? That’s why you’re here. What was her name going to be?”
“I don’t know,” said Walter. Then: “Emily.”
“Okay,” she said. “Emily is a pretty name. You wave goodbye to Emily.” The sloth-thing yawned delicately. Walter could see the white nubs of its teeth. “And come back soon, you hear? Then you’ll see something special. Emily’ll be something then.”
“And she is sleek, gorgeous and deadly—this thing I know is my own death.”
THE SLIPWAY GREY
For Hugh William Knyvet-Knevitt
Sit by me, my bokkie, my darling girl. Closer, yes, there.
I am an old man now, and this is a thing that happened to me when I was very young. This is not like the story of your uncle Mika, and how he tricked me in the Breede river and I almost drowned. It is also not like the story of my good friend Jurie Gouws whom you called Goose when he was alive, which was a good name for him. He used to hitchhike all across Rhodesia until he blew off his right thumb in that accident at the Selebi mine, which I will say something about. Afterward the trucks would stop anyway, even when he wasn’t trying to hitch a ride, because of the ghost thumb, he used to say, which still ached with arthritis when it rained.
These are what your father would call fables or fancies or tall tales, and perhaps he is right that they have grown an inch or two in the telling, but the story I will tell you is a different sort of story, my bokkie, because it is my story and it is a true story. It has not grown in the telling because I have never told anyone about what happened except for your Ouma, God rest her soul, to whom I told all the secrets of my heart and let her judge them as she would. Still, even she did not know what it meant, and neither of us could ever come to much agreement on this.
Gifts for the One Who Comes After Page 27