Thomas Pierce - Hall of Small Mammals - Stories

The mammoth loses interest and wanders into the kitchen.

“You’re missing it,” Mawmaw calls. She can hear its tusks knocking against the walls as it migrates to the back of the house.

• • •

Shirley stops losing hair. Gray scabs form a light crust over the bald patches, which break apart under a wet washcloth. But Mawmaw is still concerned about her patient. Shirley isn’t drinking enough water. She seems lethargic. She comes down with diarrhea. Mawmaw discovers it, the dark green puddles across the tarp. She leads Shirley back to the dog pen so that she can clean up the mess. She tosses the whole sheet of plastic in the trash and lays out a new one.

“What can I do for you?” Mawmaw asks, leading Shirley back inside. “Would Pepto help? More sunlight?”

The next morning Mawmaw wakes up to find even more diarrhea. The mammoth is trying to hide behind the washing machine, her tusks tapping the metal side.

Mawmaw gets on the computer and searches for “elephant + flu,” but the sites aren’t especially helpful. She dips her fingers in the water bowl and presses them to the mammoth’s wrinkled gray lips beneath the trunk.

“Come on. You can do this. Just a little. You need this.”

She wets her fingers again and this time the mouth opens a little to receive them, but when the water drops pass Shirley’s lips she shuts her mouth tight again, as if the liquid were toxic. Mawmaw strokes her tusks and knobby forehead, brushing loose strands away from her dark eyes.

She calls Tommy’s cell, but gets his voice mail again.

“Tommy. Shirley Temple is dying. I just thought you should know. I’m doing the best I can, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough. Maybe Samantha should have put her down like they asked her to. Maybe something really is wrong with her. I don’t know why you brought this goshdern thing to my house.”

Mawmaw imagines finding the mammoth dead, its blond hair stiff with dried excrement, its eyes white and milky. She won’t be able to lift it. She’ll have to carve the mammoth into chunks to get it outside again. She imagines the jagged saw blades, the mess.

This is all Tommy’s fault. What kind of a fool son did she raise up? This mammoth doesn’t belong here, or anywhere. Back from Extinction is a cruel television program. The cruelest. Shirley is a clone, and that means ten thousand years ago her exact copy walked the earth. The original Shirley had parents, and maybe even children. The original Shirley probably died in some kind of ice pond or avalanche or tar pit. Ten thousand years from now scientists could make a Mawmaw clone. What would the world be like then?

Then a terrible thought: What if today is still God’s seventh day and He still hasn’t woken up yet from His rest? That would explain why He’s been so quiet lately. What if, when He wakes up on the eighth morning, He decides He doesn’t like what we’ve been up to down here? Maybe He’ll be grumpy with us and stamp out all the lights again, return the world to darkness. In ten thousand years, the earth could be cold and barren, an endless frozen wasteland more suitable for mammoths than for humans. If they — whoever they are — do grow a new Mawmaw out of a petri dish, she can only hope that someone will set her up in a nice warm room. And if that Mawmaw gets sick she can only hope that they’ll do what’s right and call a doctor.

She finds a vet in the yellow pages. His name is Dr. Mark Sing. She promises to double his fee for a house call, and he comes over that evening. His hair is dark and shiny. He has a leather bag that she hopes is full of instruments and medicines. He takes off his tan blazer, then puts it on again. The house is still cold. Mawmaw’s last electricity bill was astronomical. “You have to swear to me that you won’t tell a soul what you see here,” she says, and he shrugs like he’s heard this all before.

“I’m serious,” she says, and across a blank sheet of paper writes, I won’t tell a soul. “Sign this. I want to have it in writing.”

The man looks tired. He removes his glasses and rubs his left eye with the palm of his hand, the gold watch snug around his wrist. He signs the paper, and she leads him down the hall and opens the door. The mammoth is nested in the bath towels. Mawmaw has done her best to clean the room. Vanilla candles burn on the washer. The plastic tarp crinkles under their feet. Dr. Sing opens his mouth but doesn’t say a word. He kneels down by the mammoth, runs his hand through the hair, caresses its knobby forehead. Shirley doesn’t seem to mind, and Mawmaw considers this a good sign.

“Can I ask you where it came from?” he says. “How long you’ve had it?”

“I’m sorry, but no. She going to be all right?”

He opens his bag and removes an electronic thermometer. He taps it a few times against his palm, as if uncertain whether he should proceed. Finally he lifts the mammoth’s thin hairy tail and inserts it quickly. Shirley’s head jerks around and the tusk collides with the doctor’s left shoulder, almost knocking him over. The thermometer beeps. He looks at the reading. Mawmaw asks if it’s high, and he says he’s not sure exactly, because he doesn’t know what’s normal. He says what he really needs is a blood sample, to run some tests, but Mawmaw can’t permit that. He gets up off the floor and goes into the hall. On the wall he sees a framed picture of Tommy in his khaki duds.

“He’s the one from that show.”

Mawmaw doesn’t answer.

“Could be a mammoth flu, for all I know,” he says. “She definitely seems dehydrated. I suppose I could give her fluids intravenously.”

Mawmaw agrees that he should, and that’s the plan. Fortunately, Shirley doesn’t protest when he inserts the needle. Mawmaw pays Dr. Sing triple his usual fee and shows him the piece of paper again. “Who would believe me anyway?” he says, and takes the check.

The next morning the mammoth has her appetite back. Mawmaw cooks her rice and yogurt. She lets her out into the yard and runs a stiff wire brush through her matted blond coat. The mammoth seems to like being brushed. Then she wanders to the edge of the property to root around. Mawmaw pulls the excess hair out of the brush, stretching and curling the strands between her fingers.

“I could make a Shirley sweater. I bet it’d be warm.”

That night Mawmaw is in her bed when she hears the first wail. She’s taken a pill, but she’s wide awake now. The mammoth lets out a long guttural cry that almost shakes the house. Maybe her cries are a reaction to the vet’s visit and the fluids he administered — or maybe the fever and the dehydration were only early symptoms of some deeper crisis. Mawmaw waits for another, but it doesn’t come. She might have dreamed it. She’s on the verge of sleep when it erupts again, that slow mournful bellow. Pulling the top blanket over her shoulders, she sticks her veiny feet into her Goofy slippers and flips on every light switch on her way downstairs. In the laundry room, Shirley is staring at the floral-print wallpaper, as close to the wall as her tusks will allow.

“What’s going on in here?”

The mammoth doesn’t move.

“You need to drink more water. That’s all it is. You’ve got some kind of flu. You need sleep.”

Mawmaw has an extra pill in her pocket. She takes it into the kitchen and coats it in a gob of peanut butter. The peanut butter sticks to the food bucket when she brings it out to Shirley. The mammoth’s trunk grabs the gob and tucks it into its gray mouth.

“Whatever’s bothering you, we can talk about it in the morning.”

She gets back in bed and nestles under the weight of the blankets. A few minutes later, the mammoth repeats the sound, but this time, instead of trailing off into nothingness, it ends with several shrill, trumpetlike staccato bursts. Mawmaw considers turning on her television but doesn’t. She’s worried. Maybe it’s mating season. If so, how tragic. Shirley is separated from her closest mate by ten thousand years. Then comes another wail. The mammoth lets up only at the first hint of sunlight.