Hall of Small Mammals

by Thomas Pierce

  “Give me some skin,” the villain said at one point, spear raised. The line stuck out because it was something I often said to Val, ironically, palm raised for a high five, though of course in the context of this scene, the line must have had a different, more ominous meaning. Prehistory X was not very subtle in its intentions. I had no trouble working out what was going on. The villain was me, clearly, and I was probably going to die before the end of the movie. I should have hated the script, I suppose, but partly I was honored to be included at all.

  “I think the pace is picking up,” the woman behind me said, and when I looked up, I saw that she was right. We were really moving now. I could see the entrance to the Hall of Small Mammals, its brown double doors open wide to receive us. But where was Val? I scanned the crowds. Had I been wrong to let a twelve-year-old go off on his own at a public zoo? I was beginning to suspect that I’d made a poor decision. My experience with children was and is fairly limited. I have two nieces that I rarely see in person, though my fridge is plastered with their childhood photos and printed emails. My older brother, the girls’ father, once said that being a parent is the most important thing he’s ever done with his life. I’ve never had the nerve to ask him what that says about my life.

  “Here we go,” the woman said. “I can’t wait. I’ll bet they are so adorable. I wish we could touch one.”

  I stepped out of line and gazed back at the man and woman and all the people behind them. I didn’t see any sign of Val. He’d been gone for more than twenty minutes.

  “Would you mind holding my place?” I asked the couple.

  The woman said of course they wouldn’t mind, but my request agitated the man. He rotated his fanny pack from right to left hip. “Well,” he added, “we can try.”

  I set off for the bathrooms with Val’s blue backpack over my shoulder. Children streamed by eating cotton candy and peanuts and hugging plush animal toys—pandas and giraffes and hippos. Before the Elephant House, I turned left up the paved path to the Hall of Great Apes, just in case Val had gotten distracted. Overhead, along cables that connected the Ape Hall to what looked like a cell phone tower, an orangutan bounced up and down on the lines. Long sinewy muscles, pouting mouth, thin orange hair—the orangutan had the look of an aging body builder, a creature long past his prime but presiding over the crowds from his cables. He tracked my progress toward the door.

  With everyone in line for the Pippins at the Hall of Small Mammals, I was alone with the bigger apes. In the first room, behind a wall of glass, five well-mannered chimpanzees played sluggishly in stooped fake trees. They regarded me coolly. In the next room, I discovered the Gibbon Monkeys, white and shiny coats, all of them silent and unblinking. In the final room were the Orangutans. Three sat in some straw on the concrete floor, shoulders hunched, a semicircle. Had one of them thrown down an Ace of Spades and said, “Read ’em and weep,” I wouldn’t have been much surprised. From a shaft at the top of the enclosure, a fourth orangutan descended on a network of metal crossbars. He was the one I’d seen outside, and sure enough, he sat apart from the others, chin jutting out, eyes recessed in his wrinkled face, cheek pads gray, cracked, and bulging. He wasn’t staring right at me. It was more unsettling than that. He was more like someone you see out at dinner one night whom you almost recognize, the person who keeps sneaking glances at you over the wine menu, a don’t-I-know-you-from-somewhere expression on his face. One solitary creature regarding another, I guess you could call it.

  I didn’t linger. I couldn’t. Val was not in the Hall of Great Apes. My detour had been another bad decision. I was beginning to panic. I imagined the boy in the trunk of a kidnapper’s car, red brake lights across his helpless, tear-streaked face. I imagined him convulsing on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, the oxygen mask over his mouth. I walked faster. Maybe the zoo was going to have to make one of those announcements over the loudspeaker that has shamed so many parents over the years, but in the end, Val was the one who found me.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. He’d run up behind me, his glasses slightly skewed, hair wet in front.

  “I was looking for you,” I said. I was relieved but also a little irritated to see him again.

  “Just great,” he said. “Wonderful. I leave you alone for ten minutes. Was I not clear enough? Didn’t I tell you not to get out of line?”

  I admitted that yes, those had been his instructions, but I’d had my reasons for disobeying. He was only twelve after all and as his guardian for the day, my first responsibility was his safety and not holding his place in line. Hearing this sent Val into a rage. He called me useless. He called me hopeless and worse. He spoke with such authority that I almost believed he was right. When he grabbed his backpack from me and started back toward the Hall of Small Mammals, I fell into step behind him.

  “Actually,” I called up to him when I remembered it, “someone is holding our place.” If Val heard me, he gave no indication. His blue backpack was flush against his neatly pressed short-sleeve checkered shirt. He stomped ahead, resolute, tight pink corpuscle fists at his side, thumbs jammed through his belt loops. When we got to the Hall, the couple holding our place had already gone inside. Val was two seconds behind me in putting it together. I had no idea what to do next, and Val despaired.

  “You do realize this is a limited-time exhibit?” he said.

  Not for the first time Val’s obsession with these creatures was beginning to bother me. What was so fascinating about them? Even if they all died out one day, we still had plenty of other monkeys to admire—Spider Monkeys, Squirrel Monkeys, Marmosets, and Howlers. I found it difficult to care much about an animal with so little regard for itself and for the survival of its own species that scientists had been forced to extract semen from unwilling males for insemination in the unwilling females. I wasn’t going to miss the Pippins when they disappeared from the earth. But I suggested to Val that we get back in line. Maybe the zoo would stay open late to accommodate all the extra people. He was doubtful but agreed that we should at least try. We turned to walk, and just when I thought I’d finally brought him around to my side again, a zoo official in khaki duds came out of the Hall of Small Mammals. He was a short, plump man with messy dark hair. He counted off twenty people—“One, two, three,” his finger pointing—and then announced that everyone else was out of luck.

  “I’m sorry,” he said over the groans and complaints, “but that’s the way it is.”

  The crowd began to disperse, grumbling. Val was not dissuaded. He got in line behind the twentieth person.

  “Sorry, buddy,” the official said to him. “Only these twenty. Line has to end somewhere.”

  “Right,” Val said, “and it ends behind me.”

  Perhaps assuming I was the one in charge here, the zoo official appealed to me for help. Do something about your kid, his face said. But I had no intention of getting involved. I didn’t budge or say a word.

  “Listen,” the zoo official said. “I get it, kid, I really do, but you have to understand that I just turned away a hundred people. If I break the rules for you, then where does it end?”

  “With me,” Val said, arms crossed, mouth so tight and dense it exerted a gravitational pull on the rest of his face. He was even bold enough to meet the man’s gaze. They locked eyes and stood there, two angry mannequins.

  The official was the first to look away. He turned sideways and scratched behind his red ear. I thought maybe he’d given up, but he hadn’t. “No,” he said, and stepped into line ahead of Val. “The line ends here.”

  “Get out the way,” Val said, and tugged at the man’s arm, and for the first time in this exchange, he gazed over at me. I could see how upset and desperate Val was. He seemed to be on the verge of tears, though whether or not those tears were strategic, I wasn’t entirely sure. Anything was possible with this kid. But I sensed an opportunity. Maybe the tribal chieftain wouldn’t have to d
ie at the end of Val’s movie after all. Maybe he wouldn’t even have to be the bad guy.

  If you’d asked me then why I cared so much about what happened with Val and why I wanted him on my side, I probably would have lied and said I didn’t care one iota. It wasn’t as though I was in love, and I certainly didn’t have plans to stick around for the long haul. Val’s mother was beautiful though a bit uptight and officious. I recall one night, especially, when she insisted on super-gluing back together an entire stained-glass lamp we had accidentally rocked off the nightstand, a project that required hours of Zen-like concentration on her part and bored me enough to turn on the television. Plus, I’d never dated a woman with a kid, and she was reluctant to leave Val with a babysitter for more than a night or two a week, which seems more admirable to me now than it did at the time. I was suspicious of Val’s complete lack of interest in me. I worried he was bad-mouthing me when I wasn’t there. That’s why I’d volunteered for the zoo trip, of course.

  I’ve long been something of a serial dater, I’m the first to admit that, and I do have a bad habit of giving up at the first hint of difficulty or complication, but I don’t believe in regret. I believe it’s important to face forward. And yet, sometimes I do find myself thinking about Val and his mother, curious about the course of their lives after I moved on. What are the chances that Val, wherever he is, still thinks about our day together at the zoo?

  “Now, wait a minute,” I said to the official. “Wait. Can we talk for a minute?”

  He pretended not to hear me, but a few other people ahead of him in line turned to see what all the commotion was about. I slipped my hand into my back pocket and felt for my wallet but didn’t take it out yet. “We’ll follow the rules,” I told the official, “but first just talk to me. Okay? Just hear me out.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

  “Talk to me over here,” I said. “Please.”

  Reluctantly he stepped out of line and toward me, one hand in his pocket, the other scratching his red ear again. I wondered if it was infected. “You need to get a handle on your kid,” he said quietly.

  “I know,” I said, wallet out of my pocket. “You’re absolutely right. But listen, the thing is, he’s not even mine. He’s my girlfriend’s kid, and I won’t lie to you. He can be a real pain in the ass, okay? The other night I caught him spitting in my red wine. He hates me, okay? But listen, he’s got to see these monkeys. If you don’t let him—” I handed him two twenties. “If you don’t, I’ll never hear the end of it. Please, help me with this.”

  The official shoved the money back at me. “No, no, that’s not what this is about,” he said.

  “Then what is it about?” I asked.

  “It’s about respect. He doesn’t have any.”

  While that was true, I wasn’t going to say so to this guy.

  I needed a different approach and quickly settled on pity. “This isn’t his fault,” I said. “I’m the one who lost our place in line. No need to punish him, right?”

  The official didn’t say anything.

  “The kid has problems, okay?” I continued. “He’s a sick kid. Check his backpack. He has to carry around his medication. He has to give himself shots, all right? I’m pretty sure that’s why he wants to see these baby monkeys. I think he relates to them on some level.”

  The official’s ear was so red I thought it would burst open. He stopped scratching it and considered this new information.

  “What’s wrong with him?” he asked.

  As far as I was aware, diabetes was the extent of it, but I told him it was lots of things, that I couldn’t say exactly what it was because his mother didn’t like for me to talk about it, but it was bad.

  The official shook his head back and forth, his mouth a rigid line. “Regardless, he needs to apologize,” he said.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “Definitely.”

  We walked over to Val, who had never abandoned his place in line.

  “Val, apologize to this gentleman,” I said.

  Val was about to say something—something offensive, I was sure of it—so I made a face that I hoped he would understand, my eyes wide, lips pursed. He fidgeted with his backpack straps, uncertain. “Okay,” he said, and looked up at the official. “Sorry. I am. I was just excited.”

  The official nodded and said, “You can’t just go around doing whatever you want to do. That’s not how life works.”

  Val didn’t respond. This was a lesson that he probably needed to learn, and now, because of me, maybe he never would. He looked up at both of us with the same cool stare, waiting to see if he was going to get what he wanted, and of course he did.

  “He can go in,” the zoo official said, then turned to me. “But just him. You’ll have to wait outside.”

  “Why?” I asked. “We’re together.”

  “Take it or leave it,” the man said. “I’m only letting in one more person. You or him. Up to you.”

  Val looked up at me victoriously, apparently not doubting that he’d be the one to go inside. That’s the way it is with kids, I suppose: they take it for granted that the last cookie on the tray is for them. I told the guard thank you, though I suspected this was all his way of clinging to the little bit of authority he had left. He was being petty, but I let it slide and took my place beside Val. A few people tried to join the line after that, but the official shooed them away. He brought over an orange cone and dropped it directly behind us. Val watched that procedure closely, happy of course to be on the right side of it. If the boy had any new respect for me, he certainly didn’t show it.

  “I’m glad it’s working out,” I said, and raised my hand unconvincingly for a high five. But Val didn’t want to meet my hand up high. He stuck his palm out low, and when I tried to slap it, he snatched it away at the last second.

  “I’m still sensing some hostility,” I said, trying to be funny, and, in the absence of any laughter, mine or his, feeling more upset. “To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t mind a little more appreciation, pal. I just got you into this party.”

  “Thanks for that,” he said. He was such an easy kid to dislike.

  He got out his phone and double-checked that the flash was disabled. We were quiet until, finally, it was his turn to enter the Hall. Inside I could hear a movie presentation about the Pippins, the narrator’s British accent. Cool air gushed out of the dark hall in powerful and pleasant waves. It felt wonderful and inviting. I still had no love for the poor baby Pippins, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing what all the fuss was about.

  The zoo official was holding open the door with his back, his hand on the horizontal bar, ready to swing it shut behind Val. Without exactly intending to, I’d come very close to the entrance. For a moment I wondered if he was actually going to let me pass as well, if maybe he had forgotten or no longer cared about this part of our agreement. But as I approached, he shot me a hard look, almost daring me to take another step, and I knew that if I pressed forward, he would stop me, or possibly even the both of us. Val shoved his backpack in my direction as though to prevent me from trying.

  “Don’t lose this,” he said. I watched him go forward, hands deep in his pockets, and then pass through the door alone. He didn’t turn back to say Thank you or I’ll see you on the other side or anything else. He acted like I wasn’t even there, like he’d already forgotten me.

  We of the Present Age

  To prevent the newest discovery from winding up in yet another showman’s dime exhibit, we decided to send one of our own to bring it back for safekeeping. Tall, cheerful Dr. Anders was the first to volunteer for the trip, though among the naturalists in our Academy interested in vertebrate fossils, he was by all accounts the least qualified. The young doctor had recently caused a stir by mistaking an adolescent mastodon jaw as proof of an entirely new genus and species. A laughable idea. But what Anders lacked i
n credentials, he made up for with his unwavering enthusiasm—and (it need be mentioned) with his political connections. By luck or by connivance he had become engaged to a woman from one of the city’s wealthiest families, and that family, thanks to Anders, had made significant contributions to our esteemed Academy. Those kindnesses considered, we could find no reason why it shouldn’t be Anders we sent to procure what was rumored to be the most complete specimen yet unearthed.

  On the morning of Anders’s departure we accompanied him to the station, the trains steaming and hissing all around us as we clapped him on the shoulder and wished him well. “You won’t be disappointed,” he said, confident. “Because when I return, I will come bearing gifts millions of years in the making.” Prepared remarks, no doubt. It was winter and we stomped our feet to keep out the cold. “Very well,” we told him, and watched his train crank away and disappear into a gauzy rain.

  He traveled twenty hours south to a provincial town called Newton, where we had arranged for his transfer to a stagecoach. Unfortunately the promised coach did not manifest (its driver, we later learned, had fallen down drunk and been trampled by his own horses), and Anders was forced to finish the journey on the back of a mule cart that happened to be on its way to the town of Golly, his final destination. If not for this setback, perhaps history would have been quite different for Anders, for our Academy—and for science.

  These events transpired many decades ago, before we had a name for many of the fossilized creatures that once populated our planet, before we even had a name for their particular field of study; in the days before we’d completely mapped the wilds between East and West; before Mr. Morse sent his first electrical message whipping across two miles of wire; when a young Mr. Darwin was still filching finches for his sketches in the belly of HMS Beagle. The world was on the verge of a great transformation, to be sure, a scientific awakening, and we were the agents of that coming and necessary change.