“I thought, you know. For your elephant,” he explained.
“My god, they’re beautiful,” Neva breathed. “Can you play them?”
“You can.”
Neva gonged one of the drums tentatively. It returned a perfect C major. “You’ve calibrated the entire drum to play true tones?”
Johnson Johnson blinked anxiously. “Well, it’s supposed to be for music.”
“You’re amazing.”
“You think maybe she’ll like them?”
“How could she not like them?”
“Well, I mean, she’s an elephant,” he pointed out.
“Listen.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s take them down to the zoo together,” Neva said.
“Me?”
“Sure. Don’t you want to see her play them?”
“Okay.” Johnson Johnson hadn’t ever been to the zoo. As far as that went, he hadn’t ever seen an elephant, either, at least not in person. He went into his room and pulled on a sweatshirt. When he came back out, he found Neva reading his bathroom sink, which was painted in a swirling pattern and was accompanied by sayings like, THEN IT ALL WENT DOWN THE DRAIN and WE’RE REALLY GOING TO CLEAN UP, AREN’T WE?
“So you did this, too?”
“Uh huh,” Johnson Johnson nodded. He hadn’t ever had anyone up here before. He wondered if the real reason he’d made the drums was because he’d have to make them under the yellow light bulb, which meant he’d have to show them to Neva up here, which meant she’d see his bathroom. He wasn’t sure.
“Come see this,” he said, pulling her into his bedroom by the arm. She looked alarmed, and tried to pull away. He quickly closed the door behind them to make the room dark.
“No, let me—”
“Look up,” he said, letting go of her arm.
“What?”
He pointed to the stars. Neva looked up and did a double-take. “You did this, too?”
“It’s not done yet, though.” They both stood still, heads back, mouths slightly open, watching the evening stars. Then he opened the door and switched on the light again in case she was afraid of the dark. The walls of this room, too, were fully outfitted with a funhouse of ramps, stairs, launching platforms, hammocks, and perches for the cats. Chocolate popped up like a gopher through a hole in the floor.
Neva looked at Johnson Johnson, paused momentarily for effect, and said, “What would you think about getting a pizza?”
“Pizza?” Johnson Johnson breathed, unsure of what else to say in the face of such an unexpected gift.
“Pizza,” Neva confirmed. “I’ll order it. There’s something I want to ask you first, though, and it’s got to be a secret for now.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“You know Hannah’s the elephant I take care of.”
“Course.”
“Well, here’s the thing. The zoo’s not a good place for her anymore, and it won’t ever be again. She needs to be moved to a big elephant park in California, but it’s really expensive.”
Johnson Johnson nodded, wondering if he was supposed to say something yet. Neva kept going, though. “I mean really expensive.”
“Okay,” he said. He could see Neva inhale. He thought she should really breathe more.
“So here’s the question. Would you be willing to make more drums like these, or maybe something like your sink or toilet, and let us sell them to raise money for Hannah? We’d buy the materials for you, so you wouldn’t be out any money, just time.”
Johnson shrugged. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Really?” Neva rocked up on the balls of her feet like he did himself when he was excited about something. “You can think about it. I mean, are you sure?”
“Uh huh.”
She brought her hands to her mouth and said, “You just don’t know.”
He looked down at his feet. No, probably not. He usually didn’t.
She grabbed his wrists and squeezed. “No, no, what I mean is, you have no idea how much this means. There’s someone I’d like you to meet, and I’d like to do it here, if you don’t mind, so he can see your work.”
“Okay.”
“Can I ask him to come over now? Would that be okay?”
“Okay. He can have pizza.”
Neva went down to the kitchen and called Truman, who promised to be there as soon as he and Winslow had eaten dinner. She told him not to bother; they’d have food waiting for them. Then she called another number from a magnet on Johnson Johnson’s refrigerator and ordered an extra-large pizza with everything. When she looked up she saw him standing in the doorway, nearly shivering with pleasure.
Half an hour later—five minutes behind the pizza delivery guy—Truman and Winslow knocked on Johnson Johnson’s door. Neva introduced them all around, passing out paper plates she’d fetched from her apartment. Johnson Johnson extended the pizza box to them with the utmost dignity.
Neva tore through her own slice. “I can’t wait to show you these drums Johnson’s made for Hannah. And his sink.” She caught the look Truman gave her. “I know. Just wait until you see them. Let’s show you now. It won’t take long, and then we can finish eating.” She turned to Johnson Johnson. “Is that okay with you?”
“Okay,” he said. They’d already sampled perfection; eating the rest could wait.
Neva led the way upstairs. Johnson Johnson trailed behind. When they reached the landing, Neva put her hands over Truman’s eyes until he was in position, then pulled her hands away. “Ta-dah!”
Truman looked, tapped, gonged. “These are extraordinary. Really—they’re beautiful.”
Johnson Johnson flushed with pleasure.
Truman turned to Neva. “You know, folk art has really come into its own in the last decade or so.”
“Any idea what they might sell for?”
Truman frowned. “Well, if people knew they were to benefit Hannah—or, say, an anonymous but needy elephant—I’d bet a set like this could sell for two thousand, twenty-five-hundred dollars. Maybe more. I have friends who own an art gallery in Seattle. They could give us a better idea.” He turned to Johnson Johnson and said, “Would you be willing to make some of these for us to sell?”
“He’s already said yes,” Neva cut in.
“We couldn’t pay you at all,” Truman continued. “You understand that.”
Johnson Johnson pulled himself up to his full height and said, “Course.”
“Look,” Neva said. “Why don’t we get dinner over with and bring the drums to Hannah? I want Johnson to see what she does with them. Harriet won’t be there this late, will she?”
Truman consulted his watch. “Probably not,” he said. “Though with her, you can never be sure.”
“Can I use your phone?” Neva asked Johnson Johnson.
“Okay.” He watched her, liking the way she went around his kitchen absently touching everything. Blind people did that. Johnson Johnson did that, too.
Neva called Sam and Corinna’s house. She let the phone ring eight times, but no one answered. Then she dialed the elephant barn. After four rings, Sam picked up.
“Sam? Is Corinna there, too?”
“Uh huh. We’re watching Laurel and Hardy. Shug likes them, though I’ll be damned if I know why.”
“Well, stay even if the movie ends. We’re bringing something for Hannah.”
“We?”
“Just wait for us.”
“Now you’ve got me wondering.”
“You’ll never guess,” Neva said, and hung up.
Johnson Johnson followed her down to the elephant yard. Neva carried one drum and Johnson Johnson carried two. Truman and Winslow had headed off to the mansion to make sure Harriet Saul wasn’t there.
“You’re sure Hannah won’t ruin them if she hits them too hard?” Neva asked as they set the drums down while she unlocked the gate.
“Well, if she re-tunes them it’d probably be so she can play her own songs better. Maybe elephant music doesn’t sound like people music.”
“Huh,” Neva said, amazed anew by the cottage industry that was Johnson Johnson’s mind. Sam met them at the barn door and helped them bring the three drums inside. Once they were safely through, Neva introduced him and Corinna to Johnson Johnson.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Sam said, shaking hands and then turning to inspect the drums. “Just look at these,” he said. “Shug, come over here and see what this man’s made for you. Music!”
Hannah shambled over from the television, cradling a small rock in the crook of her trunk. Neva patted her. “Johnson, meet Hannah. Hannah, this is Johnson Johnson.”
Johnson Johnson held out his hand to shake, Hannah put down her rock to stretch her trunk, and they met someplace in the middle. Then Hannah walked her trunk up Johnson Johnson’s arm, sniffing.
“Cats,” Neva explained.
“She’s big,” he said.
“Well, she’s an elephant.”
“Uh huh.”
Truman and Winslow slipped in the door. “We’re all clear,” Truman said. “How’d she like them?”
“She hasn’t actually noticed them yet,” Neva said. “We’re still making introductions.”
Done assessing Johnson Johnson, Hannah stretched her trunk toward Sam, nosing around his pocket. “No treats left in there, shug,” he said. “Here’s your treat, right here. You sure you’re okay with her giving them a test drive?” he asked Johnson Johnson.
Johnson Johnson just colored and hugged himself a little tighter. Sam gave Hannah one of the mallets, and she wrapped her trunk around it and swung aimlessly.
“Baby girl, you’ve got to try banging it on Mr. Johnson’s drum like this.” Sam brought the second mallet down on one of the drums, producing a ringing G major. Hannah opened her eyes wide and lifted her trunk in great excitement. Sam slapped her shoulder supportively. “You can do it, too, shug. Go on, now.”
Hannah hit the drum once, and then again, and soon there was a halting chain of notes, all perfectly pitched. Johnson Johnson rose up on his toes and bounced. Sam turned to him and grinned. “You’ve done something awful nice, Mr. Johnson. Sugar’s never made music before.”
“Well, you know.” Johnson Johnson tucked his chin in embarrassment and pride. Sam clapped him on the back reassuringly.
Truman leaned toward Winslow and said, “What do you think Miles would make of this?”
“He’d probably wish he had a trunk.”
Sam said, “Is Miles your pig?”
“Yeah.”
Sam chuckled. “Most pigs think they’re God’s gift. You put one of those drums on the ground, I bet he’d just pick up that mallet in his mouth and whale away.”
Neva watched Hannah play a riff between the two drums. It might have been music. Even if it wasn’t, the notes were pleasing.
“I think we might want to talk about something,” Neva said.
All eyes turned.
“I think we need to talk about money.”
“The bad word,” Sam said.
“I know, but I think it’s going to be up to us to get started. Even if we got the okay to move her out tomorrow, we’d need two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the sanctuary to take her. Plus whatever it’ll cost to transport her.”
“That’s a whole lot of money,” Corinna said. “We’re ready to give what we’ve got, but it won’t look like much against that kind of need.”
Truman cleared his throat. “Let’s wait before we have this conversation. It’s getting late, and I’ve asked my father to do a little snooping. I don’t want to say anything more at this point, because it’s too soon to get our hopes up.”
Hannah had wandered off to find her tire, and everyone else began yawning and searching for jackets and car keys. Sam shackled Hannah to the wall for the night, whispering reassuring words Neva couldn’t make out.
As Neva let the door swing shut behind her she looked back at Hannah, alone and chained to the wall in the gloom. The elephant was already rocking slowly from side to side, silently and relentlessly. By morning, Neva knew, her ankle would be bleeding beneath the shackle, as someone might cut bright, secret wounds with a razor blade.
chapter 16
Martin Choi had a plan, and that plan did not include covering a beat for the Bladenham News-Gazette for the rest of his life. He was going places, and to do that he needed page-one bylines, unexpected story angles, scoops. He felt that his newfound access to the inner workings of the Max L. Biedelman Zoo might help him get there. Harriet Saul had made it clear that he would be on the inside of breaking news. That didn’t mean he was going to sell out and become her boy, though. He would use his investigative skills, look around, develop inside sources. He was twenty-four years old. He wanted to be working for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by his twenty-sixth birthday. He had sixteen months to get there.
“So where’d Brenda go?” he asked the new girl behind the zoo’s reception desk.
“Dunno. She was canned.” The girl cracked a piece of gum. Her fingernails were two inches long—wicked, curved things that Martin regarded with a certain amount of horror. She was pretty, though, at least prettier than Brenda, who’d had a surgically repaired harelip. This one might have an incipient weight problem, though. He couldn’t tell for sure.
“You like working for the zoo?”
She shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s a job.”
“Yeah.” Martin shifted on the uncomfortable plastic chair in the zoo’s waiting room. Harriet’s door was still closed, and he could still hear her on the phone. “So, hey,” he tried. “You read the News-Gazette much?”
“Nah.”
“I had a page-one story a couple of days ago.”
“Huh.”
“It was about the landfill, and how people are throwing away more and more stuff instead of donating it to charity. Kind of a different angle, you know?” He’d worked hard on that story, even going so far as to rummage around for a couple of hours to document a sample of what was there: two working black-and-white television sets, a perfectly good exercycle, four coffee tables, and a clock.
He’d kept the clock.
“So you think she’ll be done pretty soon?” he said, jerking his chin over his shoulder toward the closed office. “I mean, I’ve been here for half an hour.”
“I don’t know,” the girl said. “She can talk, I’ll tell you that.”
Martin subsided, promising himself he’d wait just fifteen more minutes. He had his limits.
The phone rang and the receptionist picked it up, nodded at it, and put it down. “Mrs. Biedelman will see you now.”
“I didn’t think Maxine Biedelman ever married.”
“Yeah? Well, anyway, Herself is in.”
Martin lifted and stood in stages: first his camera bag and accessories, then his cameras and several lenses, finally his bandoleer of film canisters. It took a while. The office door opened and Harriet appeared looking impatient.
“Hey, yeah, great to see you again,” Martin said, freeing a hand and extending it. “I appreciate your taking the time, you know, on so little notice.”
“It’s fine.” She led him into the surprisingly grimy inner sanctum of her office, showed him to a chair, and sat down herself like royalty behind her desk. “What story are you working on?”
“Tell me about the drums,” he said.
“Drums?”
“Yeah. The elephant was playing a couple of steel drums, real fancy. Drew a big crowd and everything.”
“When?”
“Now. This morning.”
Harriet’s left eye twitched. “Why don’t we just go down there and see?” she said ominously. Martin wouldn’t want to work for the woman; wouldn’t want to work for either of them, Maxine Biedelman or Harriet Saul.
Clanking like Marley’s ghost, he set off after Harriet, who was steaming ahead so fast Martin lost her in the crowd when they got to the elephant exhibit. By the time he found her, she was talking through the fence to a woman em
ployee inside the exhibit—hissing, really. “And when did you think you’d let me know about this?”
“Look, it was strictly spur-of-the-moment,” the woman said. “No one planned it. The man who made them is my landlord. I didn’t even know he was working on them until he gave them to me last night.”
“Did anyone else know about this?”
“No.”
“I’ll bet. I’m going to have Truman put a letter in your personnel file, documenting that you’re now on probation.”
“You’re kidding.”
Harriet turned her back and walked away.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” the woman called after her.
“So do you care to make any comments?” Martin said, trotting up beside Harriet.
“What?”
“Comments about the drums.”
Harriet gave him a withering look. “I think you can see for yourself that Hannah’s received a set of drums, which she’s using. It’s all part of our environmental enrichment program, to improve the quality of Hannah’s life.”
“Has there been something wrong with her quality of life?”
“Don’t get smart with me, Martin.”
Martin subsided. “Sorry.”
“You have enough for a story,” Harriet said. “Stay as long as you want to, but don’t interview my employees. If you need any more comments, come to me, not to them.”
“Hey, sure, okay,” Martin said, and watched as Harriet’s sizable khaki haunches receded from the exhibit and up the hill to her office. Then he looked around and took stock. A crowd of visitors was still watching Hannah bang on the drums. Two boys stood on the periphery of the crowd, kicking dust at each other.
“Hey! You guys have a minute or two to talk to a reporter?”
The boys exchanged looks, then shrugged. The African-American one said, “Yeah, sure. You gonna take our picture, too?”
“I might. So tell me what’s going on here.”
“Hannah—she’s the elephant—she’s playing these cool new drums someone made for her.”
“Johnson somebody,” said the other boy, a pale kid with a few extra pounds on him.
“That his first name or his last name?” Martin asked him, taking notes.
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