by Bill Broun
Cuthbert unfolded and flattened the wipe out. It was dated from the day before yesterday.
He’d heard of these wipes, but he’d never seen or used one. He felt curious. It felt dry and papery, yet slightly sticky somehow, too. He suddenly recalled that, the day before yesterday, Astrid had gently wiped a bit of cake from the corner of his mouth at tea, using what he thought was a serviette. He hadn’t thought twice about it until now. She had looked oddly uncomfortable, he realized, not herself. The wipes were used to establish or prove familial genetic relationships, and this one indicated that the chance of a direct genetic connection between whoever had been swiped was roughly 5 percent. Cuthbert began to refold it, but he couldn’t keep the folds straight, and this—and the sudden dread that she would reject him—caused such anxiety, his hands shook and the refolding process failed again and again.
Such was the weakness of Cuthbert’s hearing, and his distracted state, that when a scrabbling at the flat’s front door began, and Astrid came in, he hadn’t a clue she was behind him.
“No,” she said. “Don’t look at that. Please, Cuddy.”
Cuthbert reeled back, utterly humiliated, his mouth gurning with shame.
“Oh blessed,” he gasped. “Oi’m a sorry yam-yam, I am. A’m sorry, a’m sorry. I’m so desperately sorry.” He held the DNA wipe up. It was balled and slightly torn. “I’ve just cocked up this important document of yours or whatnot, dear, the one with the fives all over. I just—I wanted—I was just curious . . .”
“It’s all right,” she said, speaking with a shaky voice. “It doesn’t matter. But come out of there, you silly old rascal. Let’s have a nice tea now, shall we? Cuthbert? Cuthbert?”
But Cuthbert Handley had fallen down. His big, stupid, cardiomyopathic heart had trilled into a lethal ventricular arrhythmia.
“No!” Astrid cried. Without a moment’s pause, she blinked 999 over her corneas, and sent out emergency double-orange-freqs.
Cuthbert lay on the floor, looking up at the white ceiling, struggling to breathe, but not feeling any real pain. His mind began to travel.
He and Drystan had been so perfectly happy, so rarely happy, ambling on a different scalding day in the Wyre Forest. 1968. He remembered again a little detail from that afternoon, how Drystan quite inadvertently stepped on a young snake—an adder—and killed it—oh, they should have turned back then, Drystan had said. It was a complete accident, blameless—the snake had been totally hidden—but Cuthbert instantly saw Drystan’s recognition that he had tread upon a living forest creature. Drystan had jumped in horror, drawn himself back.
“Oh no,” Drystan had said. “I hurt something, Cuddy. Oh, no.”
The venomous adder hadn’t bitten him, but the thought of what he had done seemed to annihilate him.
“It’s only a snake,” Cuthbert had said. “Wasn’t you, Drystan. It’s like a cricket or something, that’s all. A snake is a snake. It’s not even a good animal.”
But no consolation seemed to touch Drystan.
Cuthbert remembered how he had run his finger down the cool scales of the snake, whose upper body had been given a grotesque crook. The string of black diamonds on its back were so perfect and ordered, like some optical art. But Drystan would not touch it. He looked devastated, clutching his cheeks and pulling his own ears.
The two boys had buried it quickly, dug a little hole and covered it in pink mallows and purple betony, but Drystan would not stop weeping. Cuthbert had almost forgotten that, and now he could see Dryst’s face above him, weeping again. He was a brilliant child, and could go from hard lad to sensitive so quickly, Cuthbert remembered—he could be so terribly sincere. He was a good boy, a very good little lad.
“A’m worse than evil,” Dryst had said as they brushed soil over the snake, so genuinely remorseful. “I’ll pay for this—yow’ll see. Them Boogles will get me. Maybe both of us.”
After the burial, they went on exploring the forest. Drystan did seem to lighten up a bit—just a bit, at first. Cuthbert found pieces of old charcoal around some of the old woodland hearths, and he beaned Drystan with them a few times rather beautifully, and eventually Drystan fought back, and they were having fun again. Then they were laughing again, running down that hill in the forest like young puppies, not minding their bearings, speeding through the waist-high maidenhair and bracken, and they ran and laughed and ran and laughed and it was as if they were carving a path through a flood of green and fields of glee that would go on and on and on. Drystan turned around and looked at Cuthbert, and it was the last time he saw his brother’s face alive. He was smiling, but he looked sad, too, as if he knew.
He went back in his memories to the terrible walk back to the cottage, after Drystan vanished. He saw, on its hind legs, the same giant river otter he’d seen and heard under the water with Drystan, trying to save him, or to take him to the animal world. There, near a bend in the brook he could see and hear, again, more softly now, more sweetly, how Drystan had called out underwater to him, and how the words sounded like gagoga maga medu, at least as Cuthbert came to remember them.
There had been an inquest by the county authorities. The death was ruled a “misadventure.” Cuthbert, only six years old, could not be persuaded that “Boogles” hadn’t murdered Drystan. His granny said it wasn’t so, again and again, until the day she died, soothing Cuthbert as best she could.
“Inna wasn’t them Boogles, Cuddy. It wasn’t nothing with the forest.” But he never wholly believed it, and he didn’t think his granny did either.
He thought of his gran for a moment as he gazed at the whiteness above. He wondered if he might see her in the next world. Winefride Wenlock had leaned even more heavily upon “owd” Wyrish folkways after Drystan’s drowning. She used to tell Cuthbert that she had been careful to make sure neither his brother nor he had gazed at a looking glass before age one, but somehow she must have failed with Drystan, she must have. She claimed that white birds were a sign of death, and if Cuddy were playing alone in the garden and a seagull or white owl appeared, he was to “scrobble indoors” right away. One time, when Cuthbert was down with bronchitis, his gran came into his room late at night with scissors. Her Alfie had died of pneumonia, and lung ailments in general obsessed her. He felt her bend down and carefully clip hair from the nape of his neck. He asked her, the next day, why she had taken the hair, and she related that she counted out twenty pieces of the sweet brown strands, folded them into a slice of buttered bread, and fed it all to a stray dog. The dog would take the disease “back to the Boogles,” she said.
“Astrid,” Cuthbert gasped, raising his hand up toward this stranger, this kind soul who had come to love him, for no apparent reason, at the end of his life. The cat, Muezza, sat on the bed, paws in front, looking puzzled and detached.
“Yow, love,” said Cuthbert. “Yow. My answer to gagoga maga medu. My answer is . . .”
But he was gone.
“Gagoga maga medu,” she said. “I hear you.”
It was the life-phrase, the blessing, the secret otterspaeke of visions. It came from the same eternal underwater world of the forest, where Drystan and his gran and his lost grandfather’s body lived, where the Wonderments lived, and where Cuthbert could now return.
It said, take this dream, take this prayer of otterspaeke, take this phrase of a new tongue and new tales, and beneath the many-colored bows in the clouds of the whole world, let not the voices perish.
acknowledgments
WRITTEN ACROSS FOURTEEN YEARS, THIS NOVEL left a deep elephant trail of indebtedness to many people around the world. I suspect that some of those who helped me may have, understandably, long forgotten this project—but I haven’t them, I hope.
I wish especially to acknowledge Sheikh Ahmed; Rachael Ashton of Chester Zoo (UK); my brother Patrick Bracken; the late American art historian Bruce Chambers; Hans Coster; James Gardner; Professor Andrew Goldstone of Rutgers University; zoo planner and consultant David Hancocks; my H.P.; linguist and
folklorist Alf Jenkins; Mike Jordan of Chester Zoo; Traugott Lawler, professor emeritus of English at Yale University; Dr. Edward Lundeen; Dr. Bryan Serkin; the Royal Parks; founder of the London Emergency Services Liaison Panel, Anthony Speed, CBE; Catherine Slater; and the participants of the VillaTalk.com online forum, who offered generous insights into West Midlands speech and usage.
I thank Brad and Lynn Thompson of Galveston, Texas, for providing a place to write for two summers; and Robert “T” Farris Thompson of Yale University, who adopted me as a resident fellow at Timothy Dwight College, allowing me time and lodging to write.
In Britain, special thanks to Alan Hollinghurst, my thesis committee director and a great general encourager. Certain editors in London offered me interesting and flexible employment while I lived in Finsbury Park, wrote, and hung around the zoo: Paul Finch, of the Architects’ Journal; Tim Lusher, of the Guardian newspaper; and Lindsay Duguid, formerly of the TLS.
Three of my colleagues at East Stroudsburg University—Peter Hawkes, Nancy Van Arsdale, and Andi McClanahan—gave the drafting of this novel a legitimate place in my work-life.
I shall remain forever appreciative to my dear friend Marian Thurm, who so reassuringly read early drafts of the novel.
In England, my cousin Kimberly Shaw gave me critical insights into Midlands history, culture, and language. Her father and my friend, Richard T. Elsmore, helped me understand the depth of my own connections to an England of long ago and of tomorrow. My cousin Mary Finnegan assisted unforgettably in helping me travel to London.
The many stories of my father, William A. Broun, mostly set in the Worcestershire and Birmingham of the last century, form the basis of some of this novel’s inner mythology.
Lavish credit, served on the best china, must be given to my longtime friend Pamela Diamond for daring me to take on such a vast story and for reading early drafts.
At Ecco, I am deeply thankful (and such phrasing sounds far too trifling) to Megan Lynch, whose ingenious editing and unswerving encouragement have answered many a prayer; to her talented, diligent assistant editor, Eleanor Kriseman; and to the rest of the editorial and art teams.
Almost inestimable gratitude is owed to my mentor, Mary Gaitskill, who has remained an indefatigable friend, and who read and critiqued several drafts of this novel.
Mary also introduced me to my brilliant and life-changing agent, Jin Auh, of the Wylie Agency. I also thank Jin’s wonderful assistant, Jessica Friedman, and indeed all the Wylie staff.
I thank my sweet son, Tobias, who taught me much about the two boys at the center of this story, and who put up with a distracted dad far too often. (And I assure you, Toby, that the promised novel about English setters who battle in intergalactic space is coming—someday.)
Above all, I thank my wife, the poet and translator Annmarie Drury. She lifted me up from despair again and again, gave up so much, and inspired me to follow these animals and ghosts out from their cages and into the starry night.
about the author
BILL BROUN was born in Los Angeles to an English father and an American mother. He was educated at University College London and Miami University (Ohio). He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston. He is associate professor of English at East Stroudsburg University.
While writing fiction in his spare time, Broun spent many years as a news reporter, music journalist, and news editor, including long stints as editor in chief at several weekly newspapers in Texas. In London, he was employed as a copyeditor at a host of British newspapers and magazines, with staff positions at the Guardian and Architects’ Journal. His own writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Times (London), the Times Literary Supplement, and more, as well as specialty publications such as the Architects’ Journal and Publishers Weekly. He was appointed a resident fellow at Yale University in 2002, where he lectured in fiction writing, advanced composition, and journalism for four years. His short fiction, which often explores the lives of the urban underclass and “working poor,” has appeared in journals such as the Indiana Review, the Kenyon Review, and Open City.
Broun lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, and Night of the Animals is his first novel.
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credits
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover art: “Reading Night Comes to the Cumberlands on the Back of the Bear,” 2015 © Sarah McRae Morton
copyright
Epigraph from The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints. Compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, 1275. First edition published 1470. Englished by William Caxton, first edition 1483, edited by F. S. Ellis, Temple Classics, 1900. Excerpt slightly edited for clarity.
NIGHT OF THE ANIMALS. Copyright © 2016 by William Douglas Broun. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-240079-6
EPub Edition July 2016 ISBN 9780062400819
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*Welfare benefit
*A buttered bread roll stuffed with French fried potatoes, i.e., chips, often served with brown sauce or ketchup
*To obtain for free, often by trickery
*A form of public mass transport with bosonic particle-based engines
*Canals
*Missing or dead
*Using or being intoxicated by Flōt
*Can’t
* . . . you’re onto something
*Any way
*I didn’t
*Peculiar
*Mad man
*Doss houses
*Hands
*Kiss
*From “Brum,” i.e., Birmingham
*Can
*Insane
*Of weak character
*People from Shropshire
*Sinks for dirty water
*Beasts
*Flatlanders, i.e., people not of the Clee Hills
*Rendered giddy
*Beatings
*Angry about something
*A famous hill and landmark in east Shropshire
* “All the twinkling stars say, all through the night”
*Polish: “You pig!”
*From Ted Hughes, “Crow’s Fall”
*Good-bye
*London
*Awesome!
*Optical head-mounted display, e.g., Google Glass
*A person from the Black Country; can be contemptuous
*Nicknames for West Bromwich Albion
and Wolverhampton football clubs
*Sorry
*How are you?
*Dead
*Annoyed by
*In this case, translator
*Breaking and entering
*An addictive and dangerous recreational drug of the future that causes a characteristic snicker
*Grievous bodily harm of the earhole, i.e., something painful to hear
*“Out there,” crazy, etc.
