Fear No Evil

by John Gordon Davis

  Queenie flung out her great ears to increase her size, and she curled her trunk under like a battering ram, and she charged, trumpeting and thundering straight at Lonnogan’s car. Lonnogan scattered backward, aghast, his six-gun held up before him in both hands, and he fired wildly. There was stunning brightness in Queenie’s head; and her legs gave way, and she crashed.

  Queenie collapsed onto her chest in the middle of the railroad tracks, and the animals blundered over her, leaping in the lamp-lights. Now Rajah was in front again with Davey desperately bellowing ‘Don’t shoot!’ Ahead was Main Street; Davey bellowed ‘left,’ and slapped Rajah on the right ear to turn him. Rajah swerved and went thundering up Main Street, straight toward Professor Ford’s car.

  Jonas Ford was coming down the hill from the mission when the animals came into his headlights: a sudden mass of hides and hooves pounding up the tarmac in a terrible stampede. All he felt was sheer animal terror despite the protection of his automobile. He slammed on his brakes and swung his rented car desperately across the street, and there was a blinding jolt as the car crashed into a telephone pole. Jonas Ford gargled in horror and tried to open the door, and the animals were on him. They were leaping and swerving, and pounding, panic stricken, in a terrible mass, and Tommy roared and sprang onto the hood and off the other side; then all the big cats followed, tawny bodies outstretched and jaws agape, so the whole car shook. Next came the gorillas—galloping and screaming, fangs bared in black contorted faces—and the bears, a huge mass of muscled fur leaping. Ford crouched behind his wheel, arms clasped over his head. Then he saw the big male gorilla.

  King Kong was galloping up Main Street like a giant humanoid dog when he saw Jonas Ford’s face at the window. He opened his big fanged mouth and roared, jumped up onto his hind legs, and beat his hands on his black chest; Jonas Ford flung himself flat.

  And down at the railway tracks, Queenie lay spread-eagled in the lamplit dawn. Lonnogan and the deputies were cautiously peering above the sandbag; Ford uncurled his arms and began to raise himself. Then Queenie began to get up.

  She clambered to her feet with a snort, blood running out of the hole in her forehead as she lurched and squealed and flapped her ears. Lonnogan and the lawmen scrambled for cover again, and Queenie realized that she had lost the other animals and she screamed in terror and ran.

  She staggered up Main Street, throwing her great head to shake out the agony, running from the terrifying human beings. She only knew she had to catch up with the others, and she raised her trunk and trumpeted desperately for them to hear her; then she saw the car across the road and Jonas Ford’s frightened face, and she shied.

  She swung aside, ears out, and turned, her massive hindquarters tucked in. She started running back toward the river, and the lawmen scattered for cover again. Lonnogan crouched, held his six-gun in both hands, and fired again. Queenie lurched and ran back up Main Street. Jonas Ford frantically twisted the ignition, rammed the car into reverse and it roared to life. It leaped backward, and crashed into the pole on the other side.

  Queenie saw the terrible machine across her path of flight, and she filled her lungs and screamed. She flapped her ears back, curled her trunk, lowered her bloody head, and charged at the car. Jonas Ford saw the enormous bloodied head thundering down on him, the most terrible sight he had ever seen. He jerked out the clutch and the car leaped forward. It stalled, and the elephant hit him.

  Queenie hit the car at full charge, and there was a crack like cannon. The glass shattered, the car reared up onto its side, and then went over with a bone-jarring crash. Ford was thrown on his head. Queenie screamed in fury and lashed her trunk at the car like a sledgehammer; more glass shattered and metal crunched, and then she charged it again, hitting the side with all her remaining might. The car skidded across the road. She screamed after it, head down like a bull, and hit it again. The car crashed over onto its other side, and she hooked her tusk under the chassis and heaved. The shattered car went rolling and smashing onto the shoulder of the road. Jonas Ford was thrown around, shocked senseless, and the car plunged into the drainage ditch. Queenie turned and started blundering up Main Street as Lonnogan grabbed a deputy’s rifle, and another shot rang out.

  The bullet smashed through Queenie’s spinal column just above her tail, and her whole hindquarters gave way beneath her. She collapsed onto her chest, both her hindlegs paralyzed behind her; she screamed, her eyes wild, and tried to scramble up; and she collapsed again, onto her side. She squealed and twisted onto her chest, and her trunk lashed the road, groping for something to drag herself forward by. Her forefeet pawed the tarmac, and she moved herself forward twelve inches, frantically trying to flee from the terror behind and to follow the other animals. The terrified elephant heaved and thrashed, dragging her bloody hindquarters, and then Lonnogan and the deputies were running up the road, guns ready.

  At the top of Main Street appeared the car of the sheriff of Hot Springs, awakened by the gunfire. Cars full of journalists were swinging down the bend from the Jesuit Mission, and citizens of Hot Springs were tiptoeing up the sidestreets in their nightwear and hair curlers, armed with guns and garden rakes, peering incredulously. In the drainage ditch the battered car’s door creaked open, and Professor Ford began to crawl out.

  Queenie saw them all and screamed, and she threw up her great bloodied head and her trunk, and lunged her forefeet as she tried to heave forward. Her chest was dragging raw on the tar, her paralyzed hind legs were sprawled behind her. The people converged on the street, ready to run for their lives, and the journalists’ flash bulbs started popping. Sheriff Lonnogan dashed into the middle of the road, his rifle at his hip, and through her terror Queenie knew that he was going to kill her. She squealed and tried to scramble to her feet again. Lonnogan leaped backward and hollered at Ford, ‘I give you one minute to do something about this here elephant!’

  Six hundred yards away, Elizabeth was running down the road from the Jesuit Mission. Queenie flapped out her ears and threw her trunk at Lonnogan. She tried to scramble up and crashed back onto her chest while the photographers darted about; with each blinding flash the elephant thrashed. Sheriff Lonnogan was walking backward in front of her, his gun leveled on her, while Jonas Ford stumbled around her trying to assess her injuries. Then Lonnogan hollered, ‘Your minute is up!’

  The flash bulbs went, and his shot boomed down Main Street in the dawn.

  part six

  twenty-four

  The Great Smoky Mountains are only about thirty miles from Hot Springs, down the Appalachian Trail.

  Not until nine o’clock that Thursday morning was the Operation Noah team assembled, because the Wildlife Department trackers had spent the night in the forest around Allen Gap, fifteen miles away, and had to be air-lifted out. At sunrise Professor Ford had sent other trackers ahead up the mountain looking for spoor, but it was nine-thirty when the principal team set out, following the spoor out of Hot Springs.

  Timmons, the Department’s best tracker, was in the lead, carrying a Cap-chur dart rifle, followed by Dawes, another tracker, and Professor Ford, also carrying his own Cap-chur rifle and the zoo’s tranqu-pistol. Behind him was another wildlife officer called Milton, who knew these woods pretty well, and behind him was Frank Hunt, nursing a hangover. He had his .45 six-gun in one holster and his C02 pistol in the other. All of them were carrying walkie-talkies. There were also three staff members of the Bronx Zoo, one of whom was old Ambrose Jones. They were carrying water bottles, knapsacks of high-energy food, and cooking utensils. Behind them came three troopers carrying rope, axes, saws, and a field radio. Straggling behind were a journalist and a television director with his cameraman. The remainder of the press and television people were back at the Mission, awaiting their turns.

  Elizabeth was one of the zoo personnel, toiling behind Frank Hunt, carrying her doctor’s bag. Apart from her fury over the killing of the elephant, she felt like hell. She too was nursing a hangover. In fact, Hunt was to blam
e, and Eric Bradman.

  She had intended to go to bed early last night, but had ended up drinking a bottle of wine in the refectory after dinner with Eric and Barbara Bradman and a priest. They had discussed environmental problems, then the morality of zoos, from there the morality of what David Jordan had done, and finally—with a third bottle—metaphysics in general. Eric Bradman had opined that ‘animals share with us the privilege of having a soul,’ quoting Pythagoras, and the priest had been inclined to agree, because ‘Scripture fortells for animals “a glorious liberty, and the compassion of heaven will not be wanting to them.”’ And the lion would lie down with the lamb; we would beat our swords into plowshares. It had been good, heady stuff, and it had been late when she had gone to bed.

  But she had been unable to sleep, worrying about the animals. She still agonized about the horror of the Devils Fork slaughter. She also was still under the spell of that beautiful day in the glen. And now she was surrounded by guns, hardware, and roadblocks; sandbags, lawmen, troops; and excitement and fear in the air. She desperately wanted the animals safely recaptured, but she resented all these people; she dreaded their incompetence; she didn’t want them manhandling and terrifying her animals. She could not dispel a sense of foreboding. Finally she had got up and gone to the bunkhouse kitchen to make some hot milk to try to put herself to sleep.

  Sitting there was Frank Hunt, with a bottle of whisky. Elizabeth did not like what little she had seen of Frank Hunt, and she detested circuses. But she had had to be polite while her milk heated. While that happened, however, she had to admit that he was pretty amusing, with his dry comments about The World’s Greatest Show, with that Dean Martin twinkle in his eye and his unabashed cowardice. Did Mrs. Mickelfield’s little boy want to go in there and try to capture adult lions and tigers? Hell, no.

  ‘Who’s Mrs. Mickelfield?’

  ‘My mother,’ Frank had said. ‘My mother would never have been dumb enough to christen me Frank I. Hunt even if she had been Mrs. Hunt. Chuck Worthy figured that “Morris Mickelfield, The Great Lion Tamer” didn’t have quite the right ring about it.’

  ‘Morris? …’

  He held a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t tell the press.’ Then he added conspiratorily, ‘You can call me Mo, but only in private.’

  She had accepted a shot of whisky in her hot milk in the hope it would help her to sleep, and she had had to talk to Frank while she drank it. She had kept her distance. But she did want to know about circuses.

  ‘But is it a case of you risking your life every day?’

  Frank nodded morbidly. ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘But aren’t the animals used to you? Tame?’

  ‘Trained, sure. But tame? … The lions and tiger?’ He sighed. ‘You have to watch them all the way. Especially that bitch, Kitty, the young one. Only just got her licked, only bought her a year ago. She’ll kill, I’m sure.’

  She had a flash of Kitty romping in the glen, and for a moment her eyes burned. ‘Would she try to kill the other animals?’

  Frank looked grim. ‘When she gets hungry. And she’s always hungry. She’d sure eat me if she got the chance.’

  ‘But surely all the other animals are too big for her to tackle?’

  ‘Your gorillas? That wolf of his? They better watch out. And,’ Frank said, ‘that male lion, Tommy. Lazy sumbitch, and ornery. And that bull elephant, Rajah. Believe me, when they’re defying you to make them do a trick because they’re fed up about something, I tell you, Doc, they’re very, very impressive.’

  Which made her indignant. Why were those animals truculent and dangerous? Obviously because they were bullied into submission. She knew that neither lions nor elephants molest human beings in their natural state. But she did not want an argument right now.

  ‘You go into the ring armed, I presume?’

  ‘Isn’t a trainer I know who doesn’t.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘A .45. That’s only because they don’t make a .55. And I’ve got a CO2 pistol. Knocks them out without killing them.’

  ‘But you’ve surely never had to kill any?’

  ‘Once. A tiger. Bad brute.’

  ‘What did he do?’ she demanded.

  ‘Just tried to kill me. Just suddenly gave this friendly roar and sprang at me. No rhyme or reason. First thing in the morning, as I walked into the ring.’

  She was fascinated, despite herself. ‘Did he get you?’

  ‘Somebody up there likes me. I got him right between the eyes. And I was a bad shot then. Now I can shoot the eye out of a busy blue-tail fly. Boy, do I practice. But that’s the only time. The trick is to dominate the situation.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By showing no fear. That’s the law of the jungle. I’ve got to show him that I’m a bigger and stronger animal.’

  ‘But you are neither bigger nor stronger than a lion.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I feel about it, ma’am.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  He smiled. ‘I’m smarter.’

  ‘But you can’t train them with a gun. What else do you use? A whip?’

  ‘Sure. And an electric prodder.’

  She grimaced. ‘Do you whip them?’

  ‘A school teacher sometimes has to punish his kids.’

  ‘And when the animals do what you want, what do you do?’

  ‘Reward them,’ Frank said. ‘With a tidbit.’ He knew what she was getting at, and he didn’t care.

  ‘You don’t train your animals just after they’ve been fed, do you? You train them when they’re hungry so that they’re eager to win the reward. You use a fear-reward system.’

  ‘It sure licks the hell out of them eating me.’

  She was not amused. She said, ‘Davey Jordan—what do you make of him?’

  Frank sighed, and puffed on his cigarette.

  ‘That guy … Who understands him? Nice guy,’ he added. ‘Hard worker. But …’ He shook his head. ‘Who can put a finger on it? He’s something else.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  He sighed. ‘Meaning he’s crazy, I guess. You’ve got to be, haven’t you, to do the things he does—getting into the lions’ cages with them and all that. And the bears. He’s sort of … like a guru. He looks normal, sure. But he just isn’t. Not only in the things he does with animals, it’s an … air about him. Sort of …’ He waved his hand back and forth. ‘Aloof. As if his mind’s elsewhere, thinking about something else.’

  ‘On a higher plane?’ she heard herself say.

  He said, ‘Hey, I really dig your accent.’

  She was brought back to the present.

  ‘Oh? It’s quite ordinary. British.’

  ‘Beautiful …’ Frank smiled. ‘You married?’

  She was about to say no, but changed it in her mouth.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  Frank looked mildly disappointed. To divert from herself she asked, ‘You’re married? Children?’

  ‘Divorced. One child. But he lives with me.’

  ‘Oh … Is he going to join the circus too?’

  ‘Afraid not. He’s got polio.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  They were silent a moment.

  ‘Your husband English too?’

  She did not want to talk about him.

  ‘No. He’s Australian.’

  And, oh, at that moment she wished with all her heart that he was there. With all her heart she longed just to feel his arms around her, just to lie next to him in their bed, and know that tomorrow when she woke up he was going to be there. Oh, how wonderful, when all this was over, to go back to New York and find him in the apartment waiting for her. How wonderful to get a letter from him telling her he had returned to his senses and wanted her back home in London …

  Oh, God, her life was a mess …

  Jonas had made one of his usual censorious remarks this morning. ‘Nobody’s going to wait for you, my dear, if you can’t keep up because you were up all night imbibing.’ She f
elt like death, now, toiling up the mountain. What kept her going was her outrage about that poor elephant, and her furious determination to get this recapture on the road at last.

  But she had to admit that Jonas was doing damn well.

  In fact, she was amazed. Almost fifty years old, black and blue from being beaten up by an elephant only a few hours ago, yet he was climbing doggedly like a young man. Despite all the criticism, his organization now was good. He seemed to have thought of everything. His knowledge of what animal capture entailed, the experiences of other zoological expeditions, had been encyclopedic, revealed last night when he addressed the recapture team and assigned duties. Also, he had spoken of the animals with a concern for them as individuals, instead of as zoological specimens. He had admitted his mistake in using troops, and for not anticipating the animals’ movements down the Appalachian Trail. She had looked at Jonas Ford with new eyes, last night. She could not blame him for the terrible debacle this morning: who could have anticipated that David Jordan would have had the audacity to cross that bridge guarded by all those deputies and risk going through the town?

  twenty-five

  David Jordan lay beside the stream while the animals drank. His gut was quivering, his legs spread-eagled. He was trying to squeeze rest out of every moment, trying not to feel grief for Queenie, trying not to worry about Sam and Smoky. There was going to be plenty of time to grieve for Queenie; right now he had to worry about the living.

  Sam would find him, he told himself. He had a nose like a bloodhound. And Smoky at least was in black bear country; he was no worse off over there than over here …

  But, oh, Queenie … He squeezed his eyes and ruthlessly pushed those thoughts aside, and tried to think constructively.

  Hot Springs was eight miles back. The Pigeon River, and the Great Smoky Mountains were only about twenty-three miles on, down the Appalachian Trail.