Thomas Pierce - Hall of Small Mammals - Stories

“But,” the boy said, somewhat alarmed, “how’d it get here ? On my daddy’s farm?”

“Same way as you and me. The evidence suggests there were multiple Creations before our own. You’ve heard of Noah’s Ark? The Flood? Well, before the Flood, there was a different set of creatures here on earth. And before them, there was an altogether different set of creatures that were wiped out by a different and earlier Flood. Each catastrophe makes way for the next Creation, you see, and each Creation is a little better than the last. We’re the latest. And hopefully the last.”

The child ran his hand along the jaw, hard and gray as stone, bits of rock still clinging to it, and asked what the creature would have eaten and what it might have looked like with the skin attached, and Anders — though aware that to make such physiological inferences was well beyond his expertise — guessed that it ate both plants and animals and that it might have had the smooth, scaly skin of a snake. “Yes,” he said, “I’m very sure that it did. It stood upright like us, ate plants and animals like us, and when it craned its long neck skyward it saw the same yellow sun as us.”

The child looked up into the rafters.

“Ink, please,” Anders said, and Temp scurried toward the satchel, already proving himself a useful assistant.

• • •

The morning that Mr. Dubose arrived in town to collect his prize, Anders was out on one of his early peregrinations. His walks were imperative. In addition to his leg injury, Anders suffered from poor circulation and a weak heart, and a strict routine of exercise was of vital importance. After his walk, he took a bath — always cold with two tablespoons of castor oil over his head. His delicate system demanded that he ingest only a simple breakfast of water and plain whole wheat bread. Butter was a gross injustice to the constitution.

Mrs. Lang, the owner of the boardinghouse, didn’t care for his diet. “But wouldn’t you like some fruit, Doctor? I have all these lovely apples. It’s such a waste,” she said, eyeing his crusty bread. She was a beautiful if odd red-haired woman who insisted Anders take all his meals with her in the dining room.

“I’m afraid the fruit would upset my system,” he explained. “But thank you.”

She couldn’t understand why he’d only munch on hard bread when her cook had prepared them such an elaborate breakfast. She ate the apple with a fork and knife and dabbed the corners of her thin lips with a fresh white linen napkin. Mrs. Lang had traveled to London and Paris as a small girl, and Anders gathered that her childhood had been full of such luxuries — trips abroad, new dresses for every season, tutors. It seemed her father had played a minor role in brokering the Louisiana Purchase, a fact that somehow found its way into more than one conversation. (Mr. Jefferson, it should be noted, was an early member and supporter of our Academy. During Jefferson’s administration, one room at the White House was dedicated entirely to the fossils collected by Mr. Clark on his famous western expedition!) But since those days, Mrs. Lang’s family had come down in the world. Their fortune had been lost in poor investments, though she was hazy on the particulars. Her parents had all but arranged her marriage to a businessman with roots in Golly, but now, fifteen years later, both her parents and her husband were dead, and Mrs. Lang lived alone, childless and perhaps a bit lonely. She took in the occasional lodger, she said, for the company and not for the income.

“Forgive me,” she said, “we never even blessed the food.”

“I don’t mind, really,” Dr. Anders admitted, but she grabbed his hands anyway and bowed her head, waiting for him to speak. After a considerable pause, he muttered a succinct but sufficient blessing. She released his hands slowly.

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “Will you be visiting that barn again today? I suspect so, but I’d hate for you to leave town without seeing what else Golly has to offer besides a dirty old barn. Have you seen the waterfall down at the end of Dempsey Road? It’s a very nice place to take a lunch.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“But you want to look at those bones.”

“That’s correct.”

“What’s so interesting about those bones? They probably just came from a big old buffalo. They used to roam all the way to the Atlantic, isn’t that so?”

Anders smiled. “Perhaps, but these are not buffalo bones. They belonged to a much more fascinating creature than that. If you study the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, you will find many clues that the world is very old and very vast. In the beginning, it was filled with gigantic animals that would have towered over us. These bones are the proof of that.”

“Interesting,” she said. “You know, my father used to tell me stories about the Cyclops. Do you know about the Cyclops? Well, my father would make up his own silly stories and tell them to me before bed. He told me that the Cyclops’s name was Figaro, and that he was very lonely giant. Poor Figaro wanted a mate, but there were no female Cyclopes on his island. There were only the normal, two-eyed variety, and these women wanted nothing to do with Figaro. They thought he was so hideous. And big. And malodorous.

“One day Figaro got a grand idea. He picked the most beautiful woman on the island and used a slingshot to knock out one of her eyes. It was very gruesome, and she was utterly depressed, as you can imagine. She had to wear a patch over the hole. People no longer called her beautiful, but it was all she’d ever known how to be. She threatened to throw herself off a cliff. But then Figaro showed up with his one giant eye. He called her beautiful. He said he loved her one blue eye. She saw no other options but to run away with him. So they married and moved into his cave. She was embarrassed about all of it. She imagined her old friends laughing at her misfortune. That night Figaro lifted her into his big bed. He had to be careful he didn’t crush her, but—” Mrs. Lang blushed a little, but pushed ahead with the tale. “Well, let’s just say, after that night, she no longer cared what anyone thought about them.”

“It’s been a while since I read my Homer, but I don’t believe I’m familiar with this particular myth,” Dr. Anders said. “And your father told this to you as a little girl?”

“Something like it. So is it a Cyclops in the barn?”

Anders assured her it was not.

“Shame,” she said, and blinked across the table. “By the way, I meant to tell you, your little assistant is downstairs waiting to speak with you.”

“Temp is here? In the house?”

She nodded with a quick stab of her chin.

“For how long?” he asked, irritated she hadn’t mentioned it sooner. He had instructed Temp to come and retrieve him upon the arrival of Mr. Dubose.

Temp had been downstairs, she said, ever since Anders had returned from his morning stroll. He excused himself and dropped his napkin on his chair. The child was waiting for him in a plush red chair at the base of the stairs, hands folded in his lap. He sat there frozen like a museum exhibit, perhaps overwhelmed by Mrs. Lang’s home, its fine white curtains and vases with fresh-cut flowers and crystal figurines and oil paintings in gilded frames. Seeing Anders on the stairs, he stood like a soldier at attention.

Dabney Dubose had arrived, Temp reported in a rush, and now something strange was under way in the barn.

• • •

“I could use someone like you,” Dabney Dubose said to Anders outside the barn. He was a dough-faced man with icy blue eyes, his dark hair receding but wild and curly where it did grow in tufts. He seemed amused by Anders. By everything. “I’m told you’ve been examining the bones over the last few days? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on them. Until now what we’ve seen has been so… preliminary. Bits of this, bits of that. I never knew what to make of it. I couldn’t see it. And as a man who prides himself as a visionary, that’s quite an admission. But what we have here, well, now. It really is spectacular. I can almost imagine it.”