Marvin and the Moths

by Jonathan Follett

  The elephant had let out a snort to indicate that, yes, indeed, he did eat hot dogs, but the family had already turned away. He felt a wave of melancholy that started in his flapping ears and washed all the way down to his large, padded feet.

  He was still feeling that melancholy when one of the zookeepers called out to him. “Come on, Big ’Un—time for bed.” As the final aspect of his humiliation, after they had transferred him from the Bronx to the PLI Zoo and Aquarium, they had renamed him Big ’Un, after the Pork Loaf product. At least it was better than being named Pork Punch, which is what they called the chattering colobus monkey across the way. But no matter what they called the elephant, he would never forget that his real name was Bruno.

  As the zookeepers latched his cell door shut, the nearby animals began to act up. The baboons, Lovable and Loafable (after the Pork Loaf “Lovable Loafables” lunch packs), were howling and climbing up and down the rope ladders in their cage. Log Roll, the elderly lion, was pacing back and forth, shaking his patchy mane and growling softly, while the giraffe, Pork Slims, was inexplicably pawing at the wall with his hooves.

  “Whoa, easy there, Slims,” said the senior zookeeper. “You just simmer down, now. Ain’t nothing to worry about in here. No more kids throwing peanuts at your head today. Just get yourself some shut-eye.”

  “Boy, they’re all really agitated,” said the junior zookeeper.

  “Must be a storm coming,” his boss said. They turned off the lights and shut the outside door behind them as they left.

  Bruno settled himself down to sleep. Outside his cell, the other animals were still chattering and roaring. But it was all right—the noise reminded Bruno of the hubbub of New York City. He was just closing his eyes, preparing to dream of the old neighborhood, when Log Roll let out an exceptionally loud roar. Bruno hoisted his head up and looked across the way to see a large, shadowy shape in the cage with the lion, backing the old, toothless animal into a corner. Log Roll unsheathed his claws—which were still sharp, despite his age—and leaped at the threatening shape. But his opponent was too quick and dodged to the side, sending the lion crashing into the bars with a loud clatter.

  The old cat lay there in an exhausted heap, breathing heavily as the shadowy shape closed in for the kill.

  Bruno had seen enough. He got back to his feet, strode over to the door, and reached through the bars with his trunk to unlatch his cage—something his dim-witted keepers never suspected he was capable of. Bruno flung open the door and let out a mighty bellow that shook the walls and stopped the dark menace in its tracks.

  “Ah!” said the monster, scuttling out the door of the lion’s cage. “At last, an opponent who can stand against me.” As the creature stepped into the moonlight, Bruno could finally see his enemy for what it was.

  It was a spider. An enormous spider.

  The spider’s body and legs were covered with bristling hairs, like an angry push broom. His many eyes gleamed and glistened with reflected light. His fangs were—strangely unimpressive. In fact, even though the creature was the size of a horse, it seemed tiny next to Bruno. The elephant wasn’t worried.

  Bruno swung his trunk in a wide circle and smacked the spider into a wall. The spider let out a surprised shriek, then laughed as he regained his footing.

  “What, lost in the labyrinth of thy fury!” the spider cried out. “Shall the elephant carry it thus? He beats me, and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction!” He let loose a fearsome battle cry, and reared back on four of his legs. “Alas, that your mighty strength will be no match for my knowledge of the arts of combat.” The spider’s four front limbs spun around his head in geometric patterns unknown to man or elephant, whirring as they arced through the air in a strangely mesmerizing way that foretold death.

  Bruno, tired of his opponent’s nonsense, grabbed one of the spider’s spinning legs with his trunk and yanked it off.

  The spider screamed in pain. He comes apart pretty easily for such a bigmouth, Bruno thought.

  The many-eyed monster backed into a corner, nursing his wound. Time to squash this spider, Bruno decided. He flexed his mighty legs and charged.

  He steadily built up speed, his legs propelling him forward, his head bent down, his tusks out, the full weight of his massive body moving toward his foe like an unstoppable freight train.

  But at the last moment, the spider zipped up a nearly invisible silken thread to the ceiling, leaving Bruno to crash headlong into the concrete wall, knocking himself unconscious.

  “My dancing soul doth celebrate this feast of battle with mine adversary,” the spider said as he descended his silver cord, settling onto the elephant’s motionless body. “In other words, chow time!”

  On Tuesday of the week following the lunchroom experiment, Marvin retired to his attic bedroom after school to do homework. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out his textbooks and notebooks. As he did so, a small, forgotten envelope fluttered to the floor. Marvin looked at it for a moment, then picked it up gingerly, as he might handle a bad report card he had to bring home to his parents. Or nuclear waste. In either case, you didn’t really want to touch it, but you were afraid of what might happen if you lost it. So it was with this envelope, which contained the tickets to the Harvest Dance. He let out a long sigh, then placed the envelope in the top drawer of his dresser. Marvin distractedly worked on his algebra problems for a few minutes, unable to take his mind off the approaching dance, before his mom called him down to dinner.

  The next morning, Marvin ran into Lee just outside their science class. It was the day of the big demonstration.

  “Good morning, Marvin!” Lee said brightly. “Isn’t it an amazing day to be alive?”

  “Hey, Lee,” Marvin said. “Why are you blowing sunshine up my shorts?”

  “I feel great!” Lee said, a wide grin on his face. “All the fasting I’ve had to do for this experiment has brought me a new clarity of mind. I feel like I’m reaching a higher level of spiritual awareness.”

  “You don’t say,” Marvin said.

  “Plus, I don’t smell!” Lee said. “It’s incredible!”

  “Well, after today, you won’t ever have to eat Pork Loaf again if you don’t want to,” Marvin said.

  “Yeah, that’s the only problem,” Lee said. “My grandmother’s really mad that I refuse to eat Pork Loaf at dinner. I told her it was for my education, but she didn’t believe me. So last night she made me scrub the floor with a toothbrush.”

  “That’s a bummer,” Marvin said.

  “Yeah,” Lee said. “But you know, doing humble work like that really opens your eyes and makes you think about your place in the wider world.” He paused. “Of course, it wasn’t so great later, when I had to brush my teeth.”

  They went into the science lab and sat down near Fatima, who was going over the notes for their presentation. The bell rang, and Miss Sweeney stood up in front of the class.

  “Who would like to talk about their experiment?” Miss Sweeney asked. “Do we have a volunteer to go first?”

  Fatima’s hand shot into the air. “Ooh! Ooh!” she cried, waving her arm frantically. No one else’s hand was up.

  “Amber?” the teacher said, looking right past Fatima. “Is your team ready?”

  “Yes, Miss Sweeney, we’re fully prepared,” Amber Bluestone said, smiling. Amber and Stevie went up to the front of the room, and Roland Offenbach brought up the rear, carrying a large piece of foam-core posterboard and a plastic bread bag.

  Fatima, attempting to hide her irritation, said, “No worries, guys—you always have a warm-up act before the main event.”

  Roland placed the foam-core board on an easel at the front of the room and set the bag of bread on a lab table. He stood to the side with his arms folded and looked menacing. It was his natural state.

  Amber stood beside the poster, smiling, and gestured at the words written there as if she were a model at a boat show. The board read:

  OUR SCIENCE EXPERIMENT:

&n
bsp; “THIS BREAD IS MOLDY”

  Our Blue-Ribbon Team:

  Amber Bluestone, Stephen Upton Jr.,

  Roland Offenbach

  Suggested Grade: A++

  In the center of the board was a crudely drawn outline of a slice of bread with a question mark in the middle.

  Stevie slowly paced back and forth in the front of the room, stroking his chin as if deep in thought, then began his speech.

  “What leads man to explore the limits of the universe?” he asked. “To question the status quo, the natural world, indeed, the very fabric of our reality, and ask: ‘Why is stuff like that?’”

  Stevie’s classmates—with the exception of Lee, Marvin, and Fatima—were rapt. Stevie continued. “Like Newton and Einstein before us, we, too, sought to slake an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. A burning thirst nurtured by our own Miss Sweeney.” Stevie gestured to Miss Sweeney, who smiled and blushed a little. “So without further ado—say it with me, now—THIS … BREAD … IS … MOLDY!” The class shouted the words along with him and cheered. “Roland!” Stevie said, turning to his teammate. “The bread!”

  Roland, apparently unable to work a twist tie, simply tore the bag open and removed a slice of moldy bread. He walked over to the easel and stuck the bread to the foam-core board with a pin.

  Stevie aimed a laser pointer at the bread. “We found several different strains of mold,” he said, pointing first to a patch of blue mold. “Over here you see Moldus Blueus—to use the Latin—and over here is some Moldus Greenus. And lastly, the most elusive of all, Moldus Whiteus.” He aimed the red laser dot at a furry blotch that was nearly the same color as the bread itself.

  Miss Sweeney stood up and clapped wildly. “Wonderful! Just wonderful!” she said, beaming. “Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how you conducted your experiment.”

  “Yes, certainly,” Stevie said. “Good question!”

  “We left the bag in Roland’s locker over the weekend,” Amber said. She gestured to the bread and smiled, showing off her perfect teeth. “And you can see the results!”

  Stevie nodded soberly. “That’s right,” he said. “Using observation, and the power of thinking, we knew it would get moldy. That was our insight.”

  Fatima asked, “Were you trying to grow penicillin?”

  Amber frowned. “What’s penicillin?”

  “Hmm,” Stevie said. “A good question, Amber. Indeed, what is penicillin? But I’m afraid that a thorough discussion of such a weighty scientific mystery is beyond the scope of today’s presentation.” He bowed. “Thank you all for your time! Good night!”

  Miss Sweeney began clapping again, and Roland walked back through the rows of desks, shouting and hooting, “Give it up! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” The class clapped and cheered.

  “We’re next! We’re next!” Fatima shouted, running to set up their presentation. She connected her laptop to a projector and called up the first slide:

  An investigation into the cause of

  negative olfactory stimulation by a young

  adult male subject, age 12 years.

  Lee sat facing the class in a chair at the front of the room, and Marvin stood beside him. Fatima clicked to the next slide. It was a photograph of Lee with a black bar over his eyes. The caption read, Anonymous Subject, L.S.

  Lee craned his neck around to look at the slide and then leaned over to whisper to Marvin. “Is that me? He has the same initials as me.”

  Fatima cleared her throat. “Upon interviewing Subject L.S., our team formulated an initial hypothesis that the subject’s condition—an odoriferous emanation similar to putrefaction—was not endemic, but rather the result of a foreign agent.”

  Someone in the class called out, “You mean a spy?”

  Fatima ignored the question and continued. “Subsequent testing revealed that the causative agent was in fact a porcine-derived edible substance. The research process that brought us to this conclusion is the subject of our presentation today.”

  The class looked befuddled.

  “Speak American!” Roland shouted.

  Miss Sweeney stood up. “Now, Fatima, if you don’t have any findings, you don’t need to try to dress up your experiment with fancy language. You could take a lesson from Amber’s team.”

  Marvin cut in. “Oh, we have findings,” he said, earning an irritated look from Fatima. “In fact, we’ll demonstrate them now.” He picked up a tray of food from the lab table.

  “As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, Lee has … an odor,” Marvin said. Two dozen heads nodded. “In our experiment, we decided to find out what causes this odor. We quickly eliminated personal hygiene as a factor. Lee showers every day and has worn deodorant since he was five.”

  “I also wear this baking soda charm!” Lee said, pulling from his shirt a necklace on which a linen sachet hung.

  “Exactly,” Marvin said. He turned to the class. “So, what else could have caused this smell?”

  “Does he never wash his clothes?” someone shouted.

  “Does he have moldy cheese in his pockets?”

  “Does he live in a barn?”

  “Does he ride to school in a garbage truck?”

  “Does he have a pet skunk?”

  “Does he dabble in the dark arts?”

  “What? The dark arts? No!” said Fatima. “Are you insane? This is science class.”

  The last questioner mumbled to himself grumpily, “Well, he smells like he’s haunted.”

  “Does he have a fungus?”

  “Yeah, athlete’s butt,” said Stevie, to general laughter.

  “Does he have—um—digestive problems?” someone in the back asked.

  “Yes!” Marvin cried, pointing to the questioner. “We hypothesized that he might be allergic to something in his diet. So, we first had him fast, in order to clean out his system, and then reintroduced different foods under controlled conditions. Observe.”

  Marvin stabbed a cube of white bread with a toothpick and popped it into Lee’s open mouth. Fatima clicked a stopwatch to begin timing the 60-second observation period. At the end of a long minute, she clicked it again, and nodded to Marvin.

  “As you can tell,” Marvin said to the class, “there is no significant odor change. So we were able to eliminate the bread.”

  Marvin went through each of the sandwich items one by one, as the class grew increasingly bored and irritated.

  “What is this, a buffet?” one of the kids finally screamed. “Get on with it, already!” Everyone muttered and grumbled in agreement, including Miss Sweeney.

  “All right …” Marvin said, and he and Fatima began to suit up. They clamped nose clips in place, and pulled on safety goggles as well as full plastic face shields. They stepped into white disposable hazmat suits and donned heavy rubber gloves. Fatima—with her thick glasses beneath her safety goggles and face shield, and her pinched-shut nose above her formidable headgear—looked even more awkward than usual.

  She turned to face the class, beaming with excitement. “Now,” she said in a ridiculous nasal voice through her nose clip, “as you can see, we’ve come to the last and most crucial ingredient.” She gestured with her gloved hands, squeaking with every movement. “Allow me to demonstrate—”

  “That’s an improvement on your usual look, Fatima,” Stevie yelled, interrupting. “Maybe you could do us all a favor and complete the ensemble by putting a bag over your head.”

  The room erupted in laughter and Fatima’s face paled. “I—I—” she stammered amid the guffawing, too shocked to continue, too embarrassed to think of any comeback. She turned with a squeak of metal and looked to Marvin for help.

  Marvin narrowed his eyes. He could think of a comeback.

  On an impulse, he grabbed the plate of Pork Loaf cubes and, instead of placing just one into Lee’s mouth, shoveled them all in at once. Lee’s eyes opened wide and he gagged on a muffled gasp of protest.

  Fatima turned to Marvin as she realized what he was doing. “No, wa
it … !” she said, too late to stop him.

  Marvin turned back to her and shouted above the noise of the laughter, commanding, “Start the timer.” Fatima fumbled for her stopwatch and clicked it. Miss Sweeney shook her head in irritation and jotted down notes in her grade book.

  As the seconds ticked away and Lee swallowed his last gulp of Pork Loaf amid hoots and catcalls from the audience, Marvin strode across the front of the room and grabbed Fatima’s elbow, bringing her along with him as he ducked behind the safety of a lab table.

  “I don’t think you should have done that,” Fatima said to Marvin in a shaky voice.

  “No one ever broke new ground without taking risks,” Marvin said.

  Lee shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. His cheeks turned rosy. “I’ve never eaten so much Pork Loaf so quickly,” Lee said. “I don’t feel so good.” His eyes glazed over, and a low moan escaped his lips.

  “Thirty seconds!” Fatima shouted from behind the lab desk.

  On the windowsill, the classroom’s pet hamster, Sorbet, began running frantically in its exercise wheel. The birds in the bushes just outside the window squawked in alarm and flew away. Marvin felt the hair standing up on his arms, as though an electric charge was building in the air.

  “Forty seconds!” Fatima said.

  “I can’t breathe,” Lee said, pulling at his collar. All his exposed skin had a distinctive reddish tinge now. His shirt was drenched with sweat.

  “Is it getting hot in here?” Miss Sweeney asked as the students’ laughter died down. Indeed, the temperature in the entire room seemed to be rising. A faint shimmering haze, the kind you see above asphalt on a hot summer day, was visible above Lee’s head. The paint on the wall behind his chair began to blister and peel. In an ever-widening circle with Lee at its center, the linoleum tiles on the floor buckled and curled.

  “This is a totally uncontrolled experiment,” Fatima said. “I ran computer simulations, but not for a quantity of Pork Loaf this large. The rate of absorption into his bloodstream has to be astronomical. If his body can’t buffer the reaction, there are going to be serious—”