“Oh, come on, Harriet,” Truman said. “What are you going to gain? You have no legal basis for keeping Sam from her. Or Neva.”
Sam could tell Harriet was smiling, one of those mean, pinched little smiles. “I do, as a matter of fact. Neva Wilson no longer works here.”
Sam couldn’t stand by for that. He pushed through into the office suite. Truman was standing in the door to Harriet’s office, his back to Sam. “You’re kidding,” he was saying.
“I knew I shouldn’t have hired her. She’s been trouble since the first day she got here. I blame myself.”
Sam could see muscles tighten in Truman’s back. “Harriet, as the director of this zoo your first obligation is to the animals. You can’t keep that elephant chained up.”
Harriet’s voice got tight and shrill. “Oh, so you’re an animal expert now? Don’t you dare get sanctimonious with me, Truman. You’ve taken her side ever since she got here, and I won’t have it.”
Truman turned around and saw Sam standing by the reception desk. Truman beckoned for him to follow.
“Truman!” Harriet yelled. “Don’t you walk away from me!”
“Go back to the barn and wait for me there,” Truman told Sam in a low voice. “I’ll call my father and see what we can do. We’ll get you in.”
“Shug’s going to hurt herself if she’s left in there. She doesn’t understand.”
“I know,” Truman said. “We’ll fix this.”
Neva was waiting at the elephant yard fence when Sam got back. Truman must have called and warned her. She trotted to meet him.
“She said you don’t work here anymore,” Sam said.
Neva waved that off. “Look, this is crap. I’m going to call down to the sanctuary and ask Alice to get emergency clearance from her board so we can bring Hannah down as soon as we can get the permit through the USDA.”
“How long’s that going to take?”
“I don’t know. A week. Maybe a little longer.”
“Shug ain’t got a week.”
Truman pulled into the parking lot by the barn and he and Winslow hopped out of his car.
“Shug’s going to hurt herself if she’s left in there,” Sam said to him again. “You hear that noise, sounds like a hammer on an anvil? That’s shug tearing up her leg. She doesn’t understand.”
Truman bowed his head. “I know, Sam. My folks are working on it. They’ll get you in as soon as they can. They’re sure it’ll be by this afternoon, and hopefully sooner.”
Sam looked at Neva in despair.
“It’s going to be okay,” Neva said with as much confidence as she could muster, though the only card in her hand was the certainty with which she wished it. She walked away to her car and pulled out her cell phone.
Sam, Truman, and Winslow settled down behind a hedge outside the fence line to formulate a plan and keep an eye on the relief zookeeper. As soon as he left, locking the gate after him, Sam gave Winslow a nudge and the boy dashed to the twelve-foot-high chain link fence, climbed over the top, and dropped into the elephant yard. He came back to open the gate from the inside. Sam rushed into the barn and to Hannah’s side. Blood was running down her ankle and had made a sticky pool beneath her feet. Sam unfastened the shackle, retrieved the girl’s tire, and started petting and talking as reassuringly as he could manage with his own heart nearly broken.
“It’s okay now, sugar, Papa’s here. You’re going to be just fine. It’s over now, sweet thing, we’re going to get you out of this nasty place. Come on, sugar, let’s get you out of here into some daylight.”
Sam threw open the barn doors, picked up Hannah’s tire, and started walking with it. Hannah came out of her trance and trudged after him.
Winslow came over. “Is she okay? She’s sure bleeding a lot.” He pointed to her ankle.
“She’ll be better once we get her out of here,” Sam said.
It was two fifty-eight—two minutes before Harriet’s afternoon performance.
Truman backed his car up to the gate to the elephant yard and Neva pulled up behind him. She hopped out of her car and disappeared inside; a minute later the hayloft door opened and she pushed out four bales of hay. Truman loaded two in his trunk, then two in Neva’s car. While he was doing that, Neva reappeared with two huge plastic totes full of uncut produce. Truman loaded these in the back seat of his car.
“Go,” Neva told Sam. “Go! We’ll see you there.”
“Let’s go now, shug,” Sam said quietly. “We’re going on a little adventure.”
Reginald Poole appeared at the top of the hill. “Hey, wait up, you guys!” he shouted.
Sam put his finger to his lips. Reginald ran down as fast as he could.
“You going on a walk?”
“Yeah, we are, but it’s going to be a longer walk than she’s used to. You got your aunt’s permission to be here?”
“She says I can stay until five.”
“Fall in, then. We got to make some tracks today, though. No dawdling. And no sassing, either. I’m not in the mood for any sassing.”
“How come?”
“No reason you need to know. You got on a pair of comfortable shoes?”
Reginald looked down at his Nikes. “Yeah, they’re comfortable.”
“Okay, because between the girl and me, we got enough bad feet already to last us ’til Judgment Day.”
Sam brought Hannah out of the gate, but he headed in a different direction than Winslow was used to.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“You just give the girl a yam now and then and be patient,” Sam said.” You’ll see.” And that was all he would say.
Harriet put on her pith helmet with grim determination. Her zoo was hemorrhaging like a leaking dike, spewing money, personnel, control. It couldn’t go on. But first she had a performance to give. She gave her clothes a grim little tug and walked onto the front porch with her portable amplification system, riding crop, and large-format camera. Several hundred visitors were gathered at the foot of the stairs.
She raised the microphone. “Good morning, friends!” she called. “I am Maxine Biedelman. Welcome to my zoo!”
Light applause broke out. Martin Choi, clanking with his usual excessive gear, pushed forward through the crowd, which parted to let him up onto the stairs with Harriet. He seized the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Harriet Saul, the director of this terrific zoo of ours.”
Harriet hissed, “Martin, for God’s sake.”
He kept right on going. “Let me tell you about this woman,” he said into the mike.
“What?” Harriet said. She tried to grab the microphone away, but Martin lifted it high over his head and spun away, out of her reach.
“This is a wonderful woman, ladies and gentlemen. A brave woman. Do you all know Hannah, our elephant?”
Sounds of concurrence rose from the crowd.
“Well, this woman is going to save Hannah’s life. That’s right. Hannah lives alone and in lousy conditions—nobody’s fault, just the truth, and Harriet Saul knows it. So here it is: she’s working to relocate Hannah to someplace better, someplace where she can get healthy and live with other elephants.”
A general gasp rose from the crowd. Martin went on. “Friends, you are looking at a woman who’s putting it all on the line to make sure Hannah can go to an elephant sanctuary. It’s where Hannah should be, not here, and this woman”—and here he actually grasped Harriet’s hand—“is big enough to see it. That’s integrity! That’s courage! Folks, you are looking at a hero. A hero.”
Harriet struggled to free her hand, but Martin kept it in an iron grasp. He was rolling, now. “I’ve had the privilege of interviewing Ms. Saul a number of times recently for the News-Gazette—which you can buy at all major area supermarkets and street corner vending machines—and I can attest to her bravery, her dedication. She’s a woman who’s doing something not because it is easy, not because it’s popular, but because it is right. Right, ladi
es and gentlemen! And I, for one, am proud to stand here beside her!”
And to her astonishment, he lifted her sweating hand high overhead in a victory salute.
Sam walked beside Winslow, with Hannah on his other side; and beyond that, Reginald. Hannah carried her tire and she moved fast—faster than she had in a long time. The Lord only knew where she thought she was going. She hadn’t come this way, up the far side of the zoo property, in thirty years or more.
Sam asked Winslow, “You got the fruit like I asked you to bring?”
Winslow held up a gallon-sized zip-lock bag of yams and carrots. Sam knew the boy had it; he was just talking to calm his nerves.
“You bring some for me, too?” Reginald called. “I didn’t have time to cut anything, what with you all being so damn secretive.”
“When we get there,” Winslow said.
“Get where? What’s the big damn secret?”
“You watch your mouth, boy,” Sam warned, and Reginald subsided. Sam looked over at Winslow beside him, and thought the boy looked a little peaked. “You okay?” Sam asked him. “Did you have a good time with your mama?”
Winslow shrugged.
“Nah?”
Winslow hunched his shoulders. “We didn’t have that good a time, but now I miss her anyway.”
“When are you going to see her next?”
“Dunno. She doesn’t usually say. She travels a lot now so, you know.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“She’s going to Ecuador next week. She’s doing sculptures based on countries in Latin America. She says it’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t get dysentery.”
“You ask her to bring you back a souvenir?”
“No. She’ll bring me back something, though.”
“Yeah,” Reginald called. “A tapeworm, maybe.”
Sam chuckled. Bright kids. Winslow didn’t have as much to prove as Reginald, though. Nice boy, too. He’d been real well-behaved at Thanksgiving, listening to the grownups, not wisecracking. Neva had kept watching him like she knew him real well, maybe, or like she was trying to figure him out. Too bad that girl had such a shell around her. Inside she was nothing but sweetness and butter, but she made people punch through the crust to get at it, and he guessed a lot of them didn’t have the strength.
“You think someone’s going to come after us?” Winslow asked Sam.
“Nah. They probably won’t even notice we’re gone for a little while yet.” He hoped he sounded more convinced than he felt. All they could do was keep walking straight and as fast as the girl would go. “So tell me something about your mama,” he said to Winslow, to keep his mind off worrying. “What’s she like? Besides being a famous artist.”
“She’s not famous.”
“Tell me what she’s like anyway.”
“I don’t know. Tall. She’s tall.”
“What would she say if we walked by her right now?”
“‘You don’t always have to tuck your shirt in.’”
“Odd thing to say.”
Winslow sighed. “Yeah.”
They’d arrived at a chain link fence. Sam brought wire cutters out of his jacket pocket and, working fast, cut the links until he’d freed a section of fence wide enough for Hannah to fit through. They walked on, into the woods now, farther than either Winslow and Reginald had ever been.
“Is this okay?” Reginald called from Hannah’s far side.
“Is what okay?”
“Our being here. I didn’t think we were supposed to come here.”
“Today is different,” Sam said. “Today it’s okay.” Hannah padded ahead of them now, following the same route she’d often walked so many years before.
“Do you like living with your daddy?” Sam asked Winslow.
“Yeah. Miles does, too.”
“The pig.”
“Yup.”
“Wouldn’t normally picture your daddy with a pig,” Sam said.
“Miles likes him, though.”
“Pigs have a good sense of people. Old Hilda, she’s the sow here, she doesn’t like kids, but that’s because she can’t see too good and she’s afraid they’ll sneak up and throw something at her.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Someone tossed a firecracker in with her once, just one of those little poppers, but it scared her so bad she didn’t come out of her shed for a week.”
“That was mean,” Winslow said.
“People are, sometimes.”
“My grandpa told me Hannah’s not going to live at the zoo anymore,” Winslow said.
“Yup. Shug’s going to go to a retirement home for elephants.”
“Do you think she’ll be okay down there?”
“Yeah, I do. Course, she’s going to miss us at first, like we’re going to miss her. But it’ll be good for her, all the same. She’ll get her feet nice and healed up, get to roam around where there’s grass and trees and a pond. And other elephants, of course. She’s going to be better than okay. I expect she’s going to think she landed in the Garden of Eden.”
Reginald came around. “It’s lonely over there,” he said. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Heaven,” Sam said. “You boys want to switch sides? Winslow, take shug’s blind side for a little while and let Reginald come over here. Remember to keep your hand on her, so she knows you’re there.”
Winslow crossed over and Reginald took his place.
“So tell me something about yourself I don’t already know,” Sam said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Tell me about your daddy.”
Reginald’s shoulders hunched up a little bit. “I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“You talk to him, though?”
“Nah. My aunt says the less I have to do with him, the better.”
“That right?”
Reginald seemed to reach a decision. “He’s in prison. He broke into a liquor store in Bothell. Said he didn’t mean to hurt anything, just needed a little something to take the edge off a bad headache. Why would you break into a liquor store for that? He should have broken into a drug store. He probably wouldn’t have been caught, there. No one cares about drug stores. They probably figure if someone’s desperate enough to steal aspirin or something, they must really need it.”
“Sometimes people do wrong things, son. Bet he’d take it back if he could. He’s probably real sorry he isn’t around to watch you grow up.”
“Yeah,” Reginald said without conviction.
“People can do all manner of stupid things. Doesn’t mean they’re bad people, necessarily.”
“My aunt says my dad’s a worthless piece of junk.”
“Women can be hard sometimes,” Sam acknowledged. “I can’t imagine what Corinna’s thought about me over the years. Probably be right, too. We’re just people. We get up some days and do something we shouldn’t, and we can’t even explain why. That’s human nature. Maybe that’s the way it was with your daddy.”
They walked along quietly, listening to the sound of Hannah snapping twigs underfoot. Sam said, “You know, sometimes the folks we’re given at the beginning don’t end up being the ones who raise us. Someone loves you, why, then they’re raising you. You got your aunt. Hannah, she found Miss Biedelman, and then she found me and Corinna. She’s been lucky that way. And now she’s got you, too.”
That perked Reginald up. “You think she knows me? Because I can call her, and she’ll come right over.”
“Of course she knows you, son. She might have a buggered-up eye, but she’s not blind, and even if she was, she’s plenty smart enough to recognize the people who’ve been good to her. You’re the man with the treats. Plus she trusts you. There’s something about you she just likes.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure.”
“How about Winslow?” Reginald asked.
“Not so much,” Sam said in a voice too low for Winslow to hear. “At least, not yet. But he’s got Mi
les, so there’s that—Hannah doesn’t necessarily like to share.”
“So she chose me.”
“Yep.”
The boy spread his chest, walked a little higher on his toes.
Sam elbowed him lightly in the side, grinning. “She also likes handsome. You think you’re handsome?”
Reginald grinned back. “I know I’m handsome.”
“Couple of more years and you’re going to be hard to be around,” Sam laughed.
“Hey, you guys!” Winslow called. “It’s getting creepy in here.” Dusk was well underway. “Can I come over there with you?”
“Yeah, just tell shug where you’re going and keep your hand on her when you cross behind her, so she doesn’t startle,” Sam said.
Winslow circled around and joined them. “Either of you ever have nightmares?” Sam asked.
“I do,” Winslow said. “I dream my mom’s mad at me.”
“Why’s she mad?”
Winslow shrugged. “I don’t know. She was always mad about something. It was more at my dad than me, though.”
“How about you?” Sam asked Reginald.
“Nah.”
“Hannah, she dreams,” Sam told them.
Reginald rolled his eyes at Winslow. Sam just smiled. “Everything dreams, son.”
“Aw, you don’t know that.”
“Sure I do,” Sam said. “If you look in her eyes you can see it there as plain as day. Shug dreams about grass. Grass and elephants.”
chapter 20
Harriet closed herself in her office with a pounding headache. The Trojan Horse had wrought less havoc than Martin Choi’s declaration on Havenside’s front stairs. Within an hour of completing her show she had declined interviews with the Associated Press, the Tacoma News-Tribune, Northwest Cable News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times, and Reuters. She had had the receptionist tell them all she would return their calls after four p.m. She figured by then she’d either be dead from a stroke or her blood pressure and pulse would have returned to a sustainable range.
She checked the wine bottles at the back of the closet in vain.
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