Back in the Thirties, all Grandpa had needed to do was let people look at his dinos. By the Fifties he added some circus acts, and now in 1980 the show included a laser light display, disco music, a man in an explorer costume doing magic tricks while riding one of the triceratopses, a dance number by the girls, a motorcycle jump over five dinosaurs, and the baby trikes racing around a fenced track to the tune of a speeded-up William Tell Overture.
Amid all the glitz the dinos still did their turns; the hadrosaurs could do half a dozen stunts. An alert viewer would have noticed that the ankylosaur and the allosaur just stood around tethered to ringbolts set in the pavement. Alice was known to snap at fast-moving mammals even when she did have a full belly, and Andy was so damned stupid that standing in one place eating heads of cabbage was his best trick.
Brenda normally took a major part in the show. Jackie would pirouette atop her head forty feet above the ground, and Grandpa would pick children from the audience to come down and form a human chain as long as Brenda. Tonight she just stood at one end of the arena, looming impressively but doing nothing.
Sullivan's Dinosaur performances always ended with a chorus of dino music from the hadros, trikes, and Brenda. Tonight Mr. Duckbill and his two females gave their glorious French horn calls while Tony and Tina made their odd high-pitched cries. But the bone-vibrating infrasound of Brenda's song was missing. Only when the dinos fell silent and the applause swelled did she bend her long neck forward from the shoulder, as if taking a bow. Then she vomited twenty gallons of Dr. Pepper and cooked lettuce onto the pavement.
* * * *
Brenda was no better the next morning. Grandpa Sullivan and two of the other trainers were trying to get her to drink more potion as Sean waited by the gate for his father. It was far too late to call and cancel, and it would make everything more complicated if his father knew the dinosaur was sick. So when the beige copcar slowed to turn in at the gate, Sean ran out and got the door open before his father could even pull off the paved road.
"Restaurant okay? It's too far to go all the way back to my place. There's a pretty good cafeteria up on Fifty-Third.” He got the car back into traffic, then asked, “How's the boss?"
"He's okay."
"Seriously? I worry about him. He's too old to be on the road in this heat."
"Nobody else can run the show."
"Because his only son shirked his duty and ran off to be an electronics engineer. I've heard it. Which reminds me—what colleges are you applying to?"
"I'm not going to college,” said Sean.
"Oh, really? Does your mother know about this?"
"She says I should trust my heart."
His father made a noise. “How about using your head? What'll you do if you don't go to college?"
"I want to work at the Dino Park. Grandpa says I can start full-time next summer."
"So you can spend the rest of your life shoveling hadrosaur manure and eating State Fair midway food? That's crazy, Sean."
"No it isn't. It's, like, the family business."
"You've been listening to your grandfather too much.” They left the car in a pay lot and walked to the Valois Cafeteria. A large sign proclaimed see your food! Even though they were early for lunch, the place was already filling up, and they had to wait holding their trays while a table full of Chicago police finished up.
His father didn't try to compete with a teenage appetite, and ate his own meal silently while Sean tore through a big plate of chicken pot pie, macaroni, and beet salad. But just when Sean began to hope they could let the subject drop, his father resumed the conversation. “Look, Sean, this isn't an either-or choice. If you go to college you'll have more options. You might find something else you want to do."
"I know what I want to do! I want to work with the dinos! And when I've learned enough I can take over running things and Grandpa can retire. That's a pretty good career right there."
"I read the business pages—ask your grandfather how long he's going to be able to afford to go on touring. This could be the last year. The railroads are all going containerized. You'll be stuck at the park in Florida, running a glorified alligator farm."
"Well, so what? I'll keep it going somehow. I can carry on the tradition. Expand the park, maybe. Dinosaurs live a long time—maybe my grandkids will take over when I get too old."
His father finished a piece of pie, and when he spoke again his voice was softer. “Sean, everything changes. Even the dinos. Sure, Brenda could live another hundred years—or she could drop dead tomorrow. You weren't born when Bob died. He was about a year old when your grandfather bought him, already as big as a cow. God, he was a magnificent animal. At the end he was bigger than Brenda. Eighty tons and fifty feet high at the top of his head."
"I saw some of the movies Grandpa made."
"They don't do Bob justice. When he gave his call it made windows rattle all over the county. He was the biggest animal on Earth. And then some damned drunk idiot in Cleveland threw a firecracker at his feet during the parade. Bob bolted, tripped over a car, and fell down. Broke his leg and six ribs. Did your grandfather ever tell you about trying to move Bob? That was a nightmare. We had four cranes for the job, and when they lifted him he screamed. You've never heard a dino scream. It was like the door to Hell opened up."
Sean shuddered.
"Your grandfather and I rode in the boxcar with Bob all the way back to Florida, but we knew he was dying. Pneumonia. When we got back to the Dinosaur Park there were three carloads of biologists from Yale and the Smithsonian waiting for us. Your grandfather wanted to chase them off, but I talked him into letting them help. They tried antibiotics—they were still new back then and nobody knew the right dosage for a full-grown bull brachiosaurus."
"Grandpa says they were just waiting to cut him up."
"Oh, probably they were. Nobody had ever gotten the chance to dissect a large sauropod. Tengkorak Island was already off-limits by then, so Brenda and Bob were the only brachiosaurs in captivity. The scientists were desperate to get samples before Bob spoiled. It was pretty gruesome. They used big butcher knives and pruning saws to cut through Bob's hide. I remember there was one guy over in the corner with an electric grindstone, just sharpening knives all night while they worked. Everybody went for a different piece, depending on their scientific specialty. They were cutting out organs and muscles and dropping them in big tubs of iced formaldehyde. Even so, the liver and intestines rotted before they could get them out. You never smelled anything so bad in your life."
"Was the creek really full of blood?"
"It was everywhere. Tons of blood—literally, tons of it. All around the carcass the ground turned to red mud a foot deep. After the museum people got the bones cut free there was nothing but a big pile of rotting meat, so we just got a couple of truckloads of fill dirt and some sod and buried him where he was. Your grandfather kept some of the hide—I remember he tried to find someone interested in making dinosaur-skin boots or bags, but it was too thick for that. We wound up slicing it into rectangles and silk-screening a picture of Bob onto each one. There's probably still a couple of hundred in one of the old trailers."
Sean looked at the wall clock. “I need to get back."
"Sure. Let's go."
Sean spent part of the next morning standing on a ladder, running a metal detector over Brenda's abdomen to see if she'd swallowed anything.
"Any luck?” his grandfather called up.
"Nothing. Can this really work through something as big as her?"
"Oh, sure. Why do you think I have it? Happens once or twice on each tour—dino gets a pop top or a bucket handle or something. Sometimes some of these no-good kids will put a nail or a razor blade in an apple."
"So what do we do if I find anything?"
"If it's at the crop or in the gullet, get her to throw up again until it comes out. If it's back in the intestines—get the hose."
"What?"
"Give her an enema! Flush out her ins
ides!"
"Jesus,” said Sean.
It took him more than an hour to work the metal detector over both sides of Brenda, and the search turned up nothing. They put the ladder away, then Grandpa Sullivan led Sean back to the trailer and got out the big pot.
"C'mere and help me with this batch. If you're going to be taking care of the dinos, you'd better know how to make it."
"She just threw it up last time. We've got to do something, Grandpa."
"I am doing something. This'll fix her right up. It's never failed."
"Maybe she's got an infection, or she's egg-bound, or—"
"She passed an egg just the other day. Her chest sounds fine, her crap was normal before she quit eating, and her eyes are the right color."
"Is there anyone you could get to help?” Sean was thinking of his father, but didn't want to mention him directly.
His grandfather snorted. “I tried calling up some guys I know at Sinclair—figured maybe they could use a little nice publicity, helping save a sick dino. Ship her back to the Park and go on with the tour. Nothing. Cheap Mormon bastards. The ads with Bob and Brenda made that company. They'd be nothing but a two-bit gas station chain without Sullivan's Dinosaurs. Hell, the stupid dino on their signs used to be green, for God's sake!"
"What about—"
"No! I said no scientists and I mean no scientists. They don't know squat anyway. Most of ‘em weren't even born when Mr. Cooper went to Tengkorak. Now why don't you stop yakking and help get this batch of tonic ready?"
So Sean helped chop lettuce and open Dr. Pepper cans while his grandfather stirred the mix. The matinee began at the stroke of noon, and this time Brenda vomited it all up as she made her entrance.
* * * *
Sean went to get takeout for the crew from a fried-chicken place in a scary-looking neighborhood at Halsted and 102nd Street. The chicken cooks and cashier were sealed off from the customers by inch-thick bulletproof plexiglass, and the food came through a kind of rotating airlock. While he was waiting for them to finish putting together fifty orders he dropped a quarter into the pay phone by the door.
"Dad?"
"Hello, Sean! I didn't expect to hear from you so soon. Everything all right?"
"I'm not sure.” He looked around to see if anyone was listening. “The big girl is sick."
"Brenda? How sick?"
"Hasn't eaten or drunk anything since we got on the train in Saint Louis."
"That doesn't sound good. Has the boss been giving her that damned tonic?"
"She couldn't keep it down."
"Probably a mercy. He used to dose me with that when I was a kid. What can I do to help?"
"I don't know. He won't let me call anyone at the Field Museum because he's afraid the Smithsonian people will hear about it and take the herd."
"They wouldn't know much anyway—the only dinos they've got are fossils. Other than your grandfather the only people who know much about keeping dinos healthy are the vets at the Smithsonian preserve at Front Royal, and the Disney people in Anaheim."
"Do you have phone numbers for anyone?"
"I can get them."
"I'll call you back after tonight's show."
"Sean—if you'd like, I could make the calls and explain the problem. It would save trouble with your grandfather. He gave up on me when I realized I like designing circuits better than shoveling dino dung."
Sean thought about it for a couple of seconds. “No, I'll do it. If they've got any ideas I can try them out on Brenda."
His father started to argue, then stopped himself. “Okay. Call me when you get the chance—don't worry about waking me up."
Sean ate fried chicken with the crew and helped get things ready for the evening show. His grandfather drafted him to help give Brenda an enema, but even after her colon was flushed out for half an hour she still wouldn't eat.
Mike Sullivan was getting desperate. He kept Brenda out of that evening's show and kept thumbing through his reference books—a very beat-up and much-annotated copy of Reptile Keeper's Handbook and a Depression-era WPA guide to chicken-raising. Sean even noticed a rosary on his grandfather's bunk when he went to the trailer to change for the show.
With no dinosaur to ride, Sean served as a spare trainer, feeding the ankylosaur cabbages during the show and trying not to spook the beast. He passed the time thinking about some of the things his father had said.
Did he really want to spend his life with the show? Most of the crew were short-timers, making one or two tours before moving on to something else. Johnnie the ringmaster was going back to college in the fall, with plans to go into television. There were a couple of veterinary students among the trainers, and all the laborers were only hired by the season anyway. Ironically, it was only the hard-bitten old carny types who came back every year.
Andy snuffled and Sean handed him another cabbage. He watched the beast take the whole thing into its mouth and chew on it like a baseball player with a wad of tobacco. This was the part he liked best—not the frantic activity of setup and breakdown, not the forced enthusiasm of the performance. Just being with the dinosaurs.
As soon as the beasts were secured for the night, Sean borrowed one of the pickup trucks and went in search of a pay phone. There was a single phone at the show site, a temporary line to the ticket office. When the office was closed, Grandpa unplugged the phone unit and kept it under his bunk. “Or else every deadbeat on the crew's going to be making long-distance calls on my nickel as soon as my back is turned."
He wound up at an all-night currency exchange on King Drive, where he had to wait for a man to finish a long and apparently emotionally devastating conversation in Spanish before he could get at the pay phone. His father answered on the second ring.
"Okay, here's what I've got. These are reasonably current—I heard from the Smithsonian last year when they wanted to see about trading breeding stock. The boss wouldn't hear of it, of course. Got a pencil?"
Sean scribbled down names and phone numbers in a free souvenir dinosaur coloring book left over from the 1974 tour. “Okay, thanks. Do you think I should wait till tomorrow to call?"
"No, do it now. If Brenda's not getting any better you don't want to waste any more time."
"Right. Thanks, Dad."
"The boss is going to blow a fuse when he finds out about this, you know. If you need a place to stay give me a call."
"Thanks."
He changed a ten-dollar bill into quarters and made his first call: James O'Reilly, in Front Royal, Virginia. No answer. The next name had a phone number which was the same except for the last digit, so Sean figured these were all office numbers. He stared glumly at a poster warning of the dangers of catching herpes from unprotected sex, then fed his quarters back into the phone and called Information. There was a residential listing for a James O'Reilly in Front Royal. Was midnight too late to call someone at home? Probably.
He put more quarters in the phone and dialed the number. After the fifth ring he was sure it was too late, and was about to give up when a hoarse voice said “Hello?"
"Is this Dr. O'Reilly of the National Dinosaur Center?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"I'm sorry to wake you. My name's Sean Sullivan. I'm with the Sullivan Dinosaur show. We've been having some trouble with our sauropod and I was wondering if you've seen anything like this in your herd."
"Just a moment.” He could hear a lamp click on and a sleepy protest from someone in the background at the other end. “Your sauropod?"
"A brachiosaurus. Brenda the brachiosaurus. She's forty-seven years old, one of the original batch from Tengkorak Island. We're on tour in Chicago right now, and for the past couple of days she's been sick. She won't eat or drink anything, and just stands there. She throws up everything we give her. We've already checked for any foreign objects in her gut, and she's not egg-bound.” He tried to keep from sounding scared and desperate.
"Could be a virus. They can jump from one species to another, a
nd in their native habitat dinosaurs don't get exposed to many diseases. We think that's one reason for the population decline on Tengkorak since the war. Especially from birds—was your animal at a state fair when she got sick?"
"No, we were in Saint Louis, at the speedway. The fair circuit doesn't really begin for another month."
"It might even be a human virus, then."
"Yeah, well, I'm not really worried about where she got it. I'd like to know what I can do to help her get better. She's not drinking and I'm afraid she's going to get dehydrated or something."
"That is a concern, although fortunately dinosaurs seem to be able to go without drinking much longer than most mammals."
"Dr. O'Reilly, I know all that. My family's been raising dinosaurs for fifty years.” There was a clicking noise on the line and Sean fed a couple more quarters into the phone. “Have you seen anything like this at NDC, and what works to treat it?"
"Let me consult with the rest of the veterinary staff and see what we can come up with. I'll call you in the morning—what would be a good time?"
"Any time after nine.” Sean gave him the ticket office number. “Be sure to ask for Sean."
* * * *
He hardly slept that night, and gave up trying by six. To pass the time he went on the big early-morning coffee-and-donut run, then did his usual chores—clearing dung with the little Cat mini-loader, and putting out fresh bales of fodder for the animals. The dinos didn't eat grass or grains, so the Sullivan show bought up waste produce from supermarkets, bags of peat moss, truckloads of pine needles, and whatever leafy odds and ends the advance men could find at garden shops and landscaping companies.
Once the ticket office opened he spent as much time as possible loitering nearby, but his grandfather didn't like loiterers on his crew, even family members who weren't getting paid. So Sean was packed off to help clean up the concession area, and he was still scraping gum off the pavement when he heard someone call his name.
FSF, July 2008 Page 17
