Hannah's Dream (5 page)

“And that’s why she was rocking this morning?” Neva said.

“Uh huh.”

“
Damn
it.”

“Next time you want to do some game, just let me know ahead of time and I’ll come in early and keep Hannah company, let her know things are okay while you set up.”

“You’re very good to her,” Neva said.

“Well,” said Sam, “I had a good teacher.”

“Miss Biedelman? So who was
Mr.
Biedelman?”

Sam grinned. “Wasn’t one. Maxine Leona Biedelman’s the whole name, except she never used the Leona part except as an initial. It sure made her mad when someone called her Maxine.
Real
mad. She was a fine old lady.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to work with other elephants besides Hannah?”

“Nah. Miss Biedelman asked me to take care of Hannah for her, and that’s what I’ve done. Can’t imagine caring for any other elephant, though.”

“But don’t you want variety?”

“Nah. If me and sugar want variety, all we have to do is go for a walk. There’s plenty of variety out there. She sure does like her look-around.”

“And that’s enough? Doesn’t it make you want to see what’s out there beyond the zoo?”

“I did that, miss. Before you were born I was in Korea. I saw that. Don’t need to see any more.”

Neva touched him on the shoulder lightly. “You’re a very good man,” she said, and then flushed. She hadn’t intended to say it; she hadn’t even been aware of thinking it until it slipped out. But she’d meant it. This morning she had been arrogant enough to plan on teaching him all she knew about elephant care and zookeeping in general. Now she understood that it wasn’t going to be like that at all.

F
or Winslow’s eleventh birthday
Truman Levy had agreed to get him a pig. Possibly to counter Rhonda’s knee-jerk negativity, he hadn’t been able to come up with a credible reason to say no, except that he didn’t want a pig in the house, which didn’t seem good enough even to him. So he’d said yes, despite the fact that he knew nothing about pigs in general or potbellied miniature pigs in particular; and despite the certainty that he would come to regret this decision in ways he couldn’t even begin to imagine.

So Sunday afternoon, in a light drizzle, he and Winslow had driven to a pig breeder at a rundown farm, squished through the muck, and surveyed the squealing piglets. The farmer pushed a few piglets aside to reveal one sitting calmly amid the chaos.

“That little male’s a good one,” the farmer had said.

“How do you know?”

“He ain’t runnin’, is he?”

Though far from reassured, Truman paid $125 in crisp new bills and they became the owners of a twelve-pound potbellied piglet named Miles. Miles was black and white, had tiny, wicked black eyes and a nose like a tin can hit head-on by a truck. His coat felt like something between human whiskers and toothbrush bristles, and he rode home beside Winslow in a cat carrier.

On the boy’s other side was nearly a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of essential pig-nursery items he and Truman had purchased that morning. These included a sack of feed, a hoof trimmer, an untippable food dish and water bowl, a dog bed with fleecy liner, a collar and harness, a litter box with wood shavings to fill it, rubber balls in an assortment of sizes, rawhide chew treats, a selection of stuffed toys, and a book called
Miniature Pigs and You: A New Owner’s Guide to Love and Happiness
. Truman had also signed up for the store’s preferred customer program, written down the Internet address of several informational Web sites about miniature pigs, and bought Miles a small engraved ID tag shaped like a heart.

Distantly but with perfect clarity he heard Rhonda’s voice say,
Oh, for god’s sake, Truman. Really. You could have simply said no.

Yesterday they had created a pen with wire fencing that would be Miles’s outdoor domain, reached from the den through a dog door. Now, while Winslow kept the piglet busy out back, Truman closely consulted the
Guide to Love and Happiness
and arranged a cozy living space for Miles in the den. Per the instructions, he artfully strewed old towels around for Miles to root through, this evidently being a pig behavior as elemental as
eating, only far more destructive when mishandled. With growing horror Truman read that if the pig was allowed to become bored he could be expected to tear up carpeting, eat drywall and baseboards, tip over and root through potted plants, and generally destroy at will any luckless object or architectural feature upon which he chose to lavish his attention. And, the book made clear, it would be the owner’s fault for his lack of foresight and imagination in meeting the pig’s basic needs, never mind keeping its superior intellect more productively engaged.

Filled with dread, Truman opened the sliding glass door into the backyard and summoned Winslow and Miles. The boy came in first, followed closely by the pig, which emitted a steady stream of old-mannish grunts, snorts, and general muttering.

“I think he likes me,” Winslow said.

“Thank god.”

The pig approached a pile of towels, buried his nose, and began sorting through and rearranging them. Truman had had an Aunt Tilda who did the same thing when presented with a pile of partygoers’ coats in a back bedroom.

“What’s he doing?” Winslow said.

“Rooting. Either rooting or wallowing.” Truman thumbed through the guide. “Yes. This would be rooting.”

“Why?”

Truman sighed deeply. “Because he’s a pig. We can’t always expect to understand these things, Winslow.”

“So what’s wallowing?”

“Technically, rolling in mud and filth. According to this, though, a mainly indoor pig will be satisfied wallowing in blankets and towels.”

And then, purely by chance, Truman’s eye fell on a page of
the book subtitled
Screaming
. “Good Christ. It says here that if we pick him up he may scream. Evidently pigs don’t like to be picked up—it makes them think they’re prey. It says here that the scream of a pig has actually been recorded at higher decibels than a jet engine at takeoff. Oh, but here’s the good news: if he’s properly socialized, he’ll only scream for ten to thirty seconds.”

“What if he isn’t socialized?”

“The neighbors will turn us in.” Truman regarded the small pig, appalled.

“Maybe we should have gotten a dog,” Winslow said.

Oh, for god’s sake,
said Rhonda.

“Let’s give him some time, Winnie. Let’s just give him some time.”

Harriet Saul had recently
commissioned a marketing study that would help her revitalize the zoo. She wanted to know who came to visit and why; when they came, what they saw while they were there; how long they stayed; and how much money they spent per capita in the gift shop and food concessions. She intended to double the zoo’s attendance and triple its income within the next two years. It was ambitious, but Harriet had turned far less promising organizations around. At least the zoo had animals, and animals brought people—people with money to give away.

Finches were her own—and only—true love in the animal kingdom, though they weren’t pets in the sense that you could hug them or take them for a drive in the car. No, they were miraculous little fairy-creatures, all air-filled bones and fluff and down and feathers that resolved, however improbably, into a
creature that could take flight. They were, in every way, not human. She loved that about them. Harriet didn’t share the prevailing worship of wolves and whales and dogs of all descriptions. They looked out of eyes just like hers.

Now, sitting at her desk on Sunday morning, she reviewed the marketing firm’s preliminary report. It told her what she had already assumed: Hannah was by far the zoo’s biggest draw. Parents brought their children to the zoo, but children brought their parents to see Hannah. An incredible one out of every three children under the age of twelve in the greater Bladenham area had visited Hannah, either with a school group, a family member, or both. Twenty-eight percent of all monetary donations to the Biedelman Zoo were made directly or indirectly to Hannah. Hers was the only animal’s name the majority of those interviewed could remember. The elephant
was
the Max L. Biedelman Zoo.

Thus armed, Harriet intended to put Hannah’s picture on billboards, print ads, mugs, hats, T-shirts, sweatshirts, posters, postcards, trinkets, balloons—the works. She intended to make Hannah the most famous elephant on the West Coast. She’d already selected a Seattle ad agency that she would ask to execute an ad campaign pro bono. For the agency, the campaign would be the perfect platform for innovation, and innovation won national awards, which in turn lured new clients that would more than pay the agency back for the time they donated to the zoo.

Closing the report summary and locking duplicate copies in a desk drawer, she pulled on a baggy Biedelman Zoo cardigan and left the office—a walk would do her good. It was a glorious October day. The smell of burn piles, apples and dying annuals made a perfume more intoxicating than springtime. Harriet had always seen the waning days of autumn as times of hope
and renewal. School was back in session, and winter clothes hid her hefty figure. Her Aunt Maude, with whom Harriet had lived from her ninth birthday until she was eighteen, used to tell her to cover up, for God’s sake, as though the big bones and dumpy figure she’d inherited from her father’s side of the family were her fault. Harriet would often hear Maude looking through wastebaskets for wrappers that would prove Harriet was sneaking candy bars—which she was, although Maude never caught her because Harriet put the wrappers between the pages of her textbooks and threw them out at school.

Maude had also looked to see if Harriet was discarding the tubes of her acne medicine before they were completely exhausted.
We do not waste in this house,
she’d sniff if she found something that offended her.
Despite what you may think, I am not made of money
. Maude had made no secret of her displeasure at being stuck with Harriet after her mother, Maude’s sister, died of a brain aneurysm.
She always was one for passing off her work to others,
Harriet once overheard Maude say about her mother. Maude disliked children, especially large, messy girls like Harriet. As a senior in high school, Harriet had saved her money for months to have a beauty makeover at Nordstrom’s. The beauty consultant had cracked a tiny piece of gum as she’d circled Harriet’s high barstool with her brushes poised, sighed, then circled again. At the end of the hour Harriet had spent one hundred and thirty-two dollars on a pore minimizer, skin tightener, ultraviolet blocker, under-eye concealer, eyebrow lightener, six complementary shades of eye shadow and two complementary lipsticks. When she got home Maude’s single comment was,
Dear god. I assume you intend to demand your money back.

Now, as Harriet walked down the path past the elephant barn, en route to the employee parking lot, she saw the new
girl, Neva Wilson, out shoveling a thick layer of sand onto the concrete pad of the elephant yard. When she looked up Harriet lifted her hand in greeting and called, “How’s our elephant this morning?”

“Actually, the abscess is a little better,” Neva called back. “Plus this sand should give her a softer substrate.”

“Excellent! Anything to keep our star happy!”

“How about another elephant?”

Harriet pretended Neva had said something amusing and walked on. The girl was far too intense for Harriet’s taste, too ready to point out a shortcoming or an unfilled need. On her third day at the zoo she’d sent Harriet a handwritten note, requesting petty cash for jumbo bags of jelly beans and raisins—snack food. Harriet had declined the request with a written note advising her that vending machines were located both in the employee lounge behind the zoo cafeteria and near the food and gift concessions; and that an institution belonging to a municipality had to be especially careful about impropriety, or even perceived impropriety, including making purchases that benefited employees who were already fairly compensated. It surprised Harriet that the woman had made the request in the first place. Neva had come with an excellent background and the most glowing references, but Harriet was still reserving final judgment. Either she had pulled off a coup by hiring someone with Neva’s experience for the low salary she could offer, or the woman was on her way down for a reason Harriet hadn’t managed to determine during the selection process. If she turned out to be a drinker or drug abuser, Harriet wouldn’t hesitate to let her go. She’d already explained this to Truman, who seemed unnecessarily attentive to her—and on zoo time, one of Harriet’s pet peeves. She was paying her people a fair
living wage, and expected them to earn it. They could socialize on their own time.

Harriet walked the entire loop through the zoo, picking up trash here and there, fluffing up some new landscaping she’d had installed and greeting the few visitors in attendance—most people were still in church. According to the marketing summary, which confirmed Harriet’s own observations, the numbers would spike between twelve and one o’clock, especially on such a beautiful day. Harriet had never been a churchgoer, herself. She found the praying and hymn-singing bizarre, like a collective, delusional belief in Santa Claus.

Back in her office, she stood at her window, pink-cheeked and too full of energy to settle down. On a sudden impulse she grabbed her bundle of keys, including the heavy old skeleton key that supposedly unlocked any door in the house, and headed up the grand staircase to the second floor. She’d been saving this exploration for just the right day. She had very little family memorabilia of her own—Maude considered scrapbooks and old yellowing photo albums maudlin and irrelevant.

The first three rooms seemed to be bedrooms, with handsome mahogany beds and dressers, huge armoires and little else. But a fourth door led into a room furnished with huge old oak file cabinets and a map case that held sixty or seventy old maps. Harriet glanced at maps of southern Africa, India, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia. Someone had clipped slips of paper to them, with code numbers printed in a firm, dark hand. A methodical thinker herself, Harriet turned to the oak filing cabinets and found each drawer labeled with corresponding code numbers. In those cabinets she found hundreds and hundreds of photographs, old sepia prints, gorgeous black and white studio shots, and more modern color snapshots.

She dragged over a heavy oak desk chair and, one drawer at a time, brought the photographs out into the light. Early pictures showed a sturdy little girl, handsome rather than pretty, standing outside a canvas tent or near a camp table. In some she wore the clothing of a Victorian schoolgirl, but in others—the most striking ones, Harriet thought—the girl wore a pith helmet and boy’s safari costume: baggy shorts, low sturdy boots, a khaki shirt, and incongruous hair ribbons, indifferently tied.

The girl was in the habit of looking straight and intensely into the camera lens, her light eyes as clear as rainwater. Many of the pictures also included a man whom Harriet assumed was the girl’s father—an exceedingly handsome man, hard and fit-looking and very much at his ease, with the same light eyes as the child’s. In most of the pictures he appeared to have glanced at the camera only coincidentally, as though caught in a momentary interlude.

Curiously, neither the man nor the girl carried guns, though guns could be seen in some of the pictures leaning against tents or tables, or in the hands of the guides who accompanied them. Instead, the man—her father, Harriet guessed—held a large pair of binoculars and the girl, who must be Maxine, sometimes wore a pair of smaller opera glasses on a ribbon around her neck. According to the maps, these photographs had been taken in the Ngong Valley in Kenya in the late 1870s and throughout the 1880s.