In her negotiations with the City of Bladenham, Max Biedelman had arranged for an exemption to the normal burial regulations that required all human remains to be interred in one of two small cemeteries on the outskirts of town. Instead, she was given a variance to be buried on her own property, beside Hannah’s little elephant barn. The site was identified only by a discreet brass plaque on the barn’s north wall: MAX L. BIEDELMAN, 1873–1958. FOREVER WITH THE ANIMALS SHE LOVED.
There were many days when, if Max Biedelman was watching over her zoo from the hereafter, she’d be appalled. Most of the exquisite landscaping had been replaced by asphalt and concrete. Nocturnal animals like the slow loruses, difficult to see by daytime visitors, were no longer replaced when they died. One by one their areas were converted into snack or trinket kiosks. When the last zebra succumbed to hoof-and-mouth disease, the zebra yard had been turned into a petting zoo of common goats, sheep, and a large, bad-tempered sow named Hilda. By 1995, what had once been one of the country’s foremost private exotic animal collections had become a seedy third-rate zoo.
Harriet Saul had been hired five months earlier to change all that. In middle age she was stocky, shrewd, and focused: fifty-two years of plainness had tempered her like hand-forged steel. She knew by then that it was her lot to fall in love with institutions instead of men. Her previous love affairs had been with a regional science museum, a library system, and a dairy cooperative. Now, when she closed her eyes at night, she dreamt about the barns and huts and pavilions of the Max L. Biedelman Zoo.
The zoo’s offices were on the ground floor of Havenside, the old Biedelman mansion, long past its glory days. Bladenham was not a city with money to spare for beautification unless it was backed by local business interests. The zoo, though a venerable institution in the minds of the town council, returned relatively little in the way of taxes, prestige or tourism revenues. When it came time to allocate the city’s public works budget each year, installing handicapped-accessible curbs, repairing roads, upgrading the wastewater treatment plant and buying new play equipment for the parks all came before the massive investment that would be needed to properly renovate the old Biedelman home. It was enough that the city council allowed the place to run in the red year after year.
In its halcyon days, Maxine Biedelman’s home had been as exquisite as it had been out of place. She’d kept an office on the second floor, overlooking the grounds. After her death, however, as the house continued to age and maintenance fell woefully behind, the second floor had been closed off and the offices moved into what had once been a large library on the first floor, now divided into Harriet’s office and a half-dozen cubicles.
This Monday morning, she yelled through her office doorway, “Has Geneva Wilson showed up yet?”
Truman Levy, her director of operations, sat in a cubicle no more than ten feet from her office door. He glanced up from his paperwork. “It’s only five past eight,” he said.
“Well, I’m here,” she said. “You’re here. Even Brenda’s here. Neva Wilson is late. Has she called in? Brenda, has she called in?” The receptionist maintained a stony silence. She and Harriet detested each other, and their latest battle was over Harriet’s insistence that Brenda wore too much makeup. People can see right through it, you know, Harriet had recently told her. You’re not fooling anyone.
Truman stood and walked six steps to the reception desk. In a modulated voice and with exquisite politeness he asked Brenda if Neva Wilson had called in yet.
“Nope,” Brenda said, smiling at him nicely.
Truman took four steps to the doorway of Harriet’s office and said, “Apparently she hasn’t called in.”
“I am not pleased,” Harriet intoned.
“She’ll be here,” Truman said. “It’s her first day, and she doesn’t know the area yet. She might have gotten caught in traffic, or forgotten the way.”
“I don’t care.”
Truman withdrew to the relative asylum of his cubicle, where he chewed his first antacid of the day, reflecting gloomily that it was the earliest he’d taken one yet, beating by ten minutes his previous record. Ever since he’d gone to work for Harriet Saul he’d been buying Tums in bulk from Costco. There had been a time when he would have earnestly, even passionately, argued that appearances—especially appearances as unprepossessing as hers—shouldn’t matter. Several years ago Truman’s ex-wife Rhonda, a sculptor, had challenged that opinion. She’d said, Let me tell you something, Truman. You know the only people who really believe appearances shouldn’t matter? Ugly people.
She’d been right, of course, about this and many other things. Last year, when she left him and their eleven-year-old son Winslow, she’d accused him of being the least memorable person she had ever known. And it’s not just me, she’d said. You’re the least memorable person anybody’s ever known. You know I’m right about this, Truman.
It was true. People sitting directly across a dinner table from him for an entire meal consistently failed to recognize him the next time they met. This had happened not just once, but time after time. He seemed simply to disappear from people’s memories. Rhonda had taken to calling him Truman the Bland. You’re rice pudding, cream of wheat. I want jambalaya, paella. Is that too much to ask?
Truman had thought that, as a matter of fact, it was too much to ask. He didn’t say so, of course. One didn’t, with Rhonda. She’d asked him once if he thought she was destined to accomplish great things, and he’d said probably not. He’d only meant that the statistical probabilities were against her, but she’d thrown an expensive dried flower arrangement at him and stalked out of the house; a prelude, as it turned out, to leaving them for good. Truman had appealed to her to stay, if only for Winslow’s sake. The boy was then ten years old; he needed his mother. Rhonda had sighed, He’s your son, Truman. He takes after you. You’ll know what to do with him. I’d just lose my temper.
After she’d brained him with the dried floral wreath and left, he’d been sitting glumly in the living room when Winslow approached to ask why he had bits of dried bachelor buttons in his hair. Truman said a wildflower fairy had swooped in unexpectedly and anointed his brow with blossoms, but Winslow hadn’t bought it. He was, indeed, Truman’s son, the sort of analytical boy who weighed the possibility of being struck by lightning while riding his bike; who wondered if you could create a robot that would dress you from head to toe while you were still in bed. He could sit perfectly still for an hour or more, roaming the galaxy inside his own mind. He kept his room spotless, his socks neatly paired in his designated sock drawer and his closet organized by color. He’d driven Rhonda to frenzy. She used to scream at him, You’re a child! You’re supposed to be messy! To Truman she said, My god, he’s like an accounting savant.
Rhonda had left them just over a year ago, several weeks after the debacle of the flower arrangement. At no time since then had Winslow commented on her absence except factually and in passing. He did not require heart-to-heart, father-son conversations, nor had Truman heard him weeping when the boy thought he was alone. He didn’t have nightmares or act out either at home or at school. He seemed perfectly satisfied with the way things were, and for that, as much as for anything else, Truman loved him fiercely.
Neva Wilson arrived at last, forty-two minutes late. She was slight and tensile, red-haired and freckled, with the thin, smart face of a fox. Truman winced as she stepped into the minefield that was Harriet’s office. Neva Wilson was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, screwed.
“Am I late?” he heard Neva say.
Dead silence. Harriet would be looking pointedly at her watch.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Neva say, clearing her throat. “I made a wrong turn, and by the time I figured it out, I was ten miles out of town.”
“Well,” Harriet said; and then, no doubt having made her point, her voice lightened beneficently. “When did you get to town? Are you all settled in?”
“Yesterday. And settling in is never a problem. Everything I own fits in my car.”
Truman quietly approached with a stack of Max L. Biedelman Zoo uniform shirts and paperwork, announcing himself by knocking on the wall outside Harriet’s doorway.
“Excuse me,” he said. Harriet, sitting at her desk with her hands clasped, nodded that he might approach. He handed the clothes and papers to Neva, whose coloring was livid, and said, “You can fill these out anytime today. Just leave them with me before five. You’ll have a locker at the elephant barn where you can put your uniforms for now. Shall I take you down there? I’m sure you’re anxious to start.”
“I can find my way.”
“I don’t mind.” Ignoring a disapproving look from Harriet, he quickly stowed his work as they passed his cubicle. It was nothing more sensitive than employee timesheets—he’d been working up the payroll—but Harriet made a point of sitting at his desk when he was away from it, gathering intelligence. She was not beyond docking an employee fifteen minutes of pay, claiming she saw him or her malingering someplace on the grounds or in one of the outlying zookeeper workrooms.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met,” Neva said, holding out her hand once they’d emerged into the watery fall sunlight. Truman took it.
“I was on your interview panel,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
“God, I’m sorry.” Neva clapped her hand to her forehead.
“Please don’t be. It happens all the time.” Truman smiled sadly.
“No, it’s me. I do this. And here’s the weird thing: I can remember the face of every animal I’ve ever worked with. I don’t mean just general features, either—I remember the exact markings and the way their ears feel when you rub them between your fingers and what their favorite foods are and whether or not they like to be sung to. But I never remember people. Introduce me to a new person and within ten minutes it’s like I was never there. I think it’s some kind of learning disability.”
Truman smiled as Neva gabbled a little at a passing peacock, a moth-eaten specimen fanning his ratty tail beside the path.
“So tell me about Harriet Saul,” she said.
“Ah,” Truman said. “She can be a bully, but her heart’s in the right place. She was brought in by the city to turn the zoo around. We have some financial challenges.”
“You’ve got a charismatic mega-vertebrate, though. That always helps.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Charismatic mega-vertebrates,” Neva repeated. “Whales, dolphins, elephants. They’re the money animals. They’re what people come to see. Of course, you’ve only got one, and she has some problems.”
“Her feet, you mean.”
“For starters.”
“Something about her toenails, I gather.” Neva looked at him and smiled. “I know, you’re probably thinking it’s no big deal, like a hangnail. But foot problems are one of the primary causes of death for a lot of elephants at older zoos like this one.”
“Death?”
Neva nodded. “Mother Nature didn’t take concrete into account when she designed the elephant. A three-or four-ton animal is going to break its feet down if there’s nothing soft to stand on.”
“What does that mean?”
“Say you have a sore foot, right? What are you going to do?”
“I suppose I’d try to stay off it.”
“Exactly. But if an animal this heavy lies down for more than a few hours, it crushes its internal organs. So they have to stand up, bad feet or no. And if you’re kept indoors all night, which Hannah is, you’re standing in a toilet, which leads to intractable infections and blood poisoning. Which leads to death.”
“Good Christ.”
They completed the walk in silence. Truman thought that walking beside Neva Wilson was like walking beside a high-voltage electrical transformer. He could almost hear the hum, feel the heat.
Just as he pulled open the door to the elephant barn, the wall phone rang. He saw Harriet’s extension flashing on the console, and picked up the receiver.
“You need to come back,” she said.
“Yes, I was just ready to.”
“She could have found her own way, Truman.”
Truman sighed. It was only two minutes after nine, and it was Monday.
Sam was in the elephant yard, looking at Hannah’s bad foot in the sunlight. Even through the ointment he’d slathered on, he could see that the foot was worse. “Okay, baby girl,” he murmured, patting her foot down gently. “Guess Papa’s going to have to find something different to try.” He stood beside her, reaching up to stroke the back of her ear. She touched his face with her trunk, blowing lightly and smelling of guavas. Someone had sent a tropical care package, guavas and papayas. The zoo got gifts like that all the time. His girl had thousands of friends and well-wishers.
“Good morning.” Neva Wilson came out of the barn and into the yard, wearing a zoo sweatshirt so new it still had fold marks.
“Morning, miss. I didn’t hear you come in. Me and Hannah were catching up on the day.”
She nodded at the foot. “That’s a pretty nasty abscess.”
Sam remembered thinking the woman was a tad high-strung when he met her after her interview three weeks ago. Then again, that Harriet Saul had only let her stay in the barn a few minutes—big, bossy thing.
“Hey, baby girl,” he said softly to Hannah. “Look who’s here. Hannah, this is Neva Wilson. Miss, meet Hannah.”
“Please don’t call me miss,” Neva said, flushing. “I hate formality.”
“All right, miss.”
Neva sighed. “Is that getting worse?” She nodded at Hannah’s foot.
“Yeah, a little bit. Nothing new about it, though. Seems like she always has some foot problem. Shug’s worse than an old woman with bunions.”
“May I see?”
“Foot, sugar.” Hannah lifted her bad foot again, looking nervously at Neva. “It’s okay, sugar, she’s just going to take a look.”
Neva looked at the shattered nails and underlying abscesses. “What medication’s she on for this?”
To Hannah Sam said, “It’s okay, baby, you can put your foot down now.”
Hannah put her foot down.
“Right now, nothing. We tried everything the zoo doc recommended, but it seemed like none of it made any difference, plus it put the girl off her hay. So me and Mama—that’s my wife, Corinna—we’ve tried some homeopathic cures, you know? Looks like they haven’t helped much this time, though.”
“Homeopathic cures? Like what?”
“Well, Mama could tell you more about that than me, but let’s see.” Sam leaned against Hannah, thinking. The elephant wrapped her trunk around his head affectionately. “Ointments and creams, mostly. Baby doesn’t like to stand still for poultices. Right off the top of my head, there was witch hazel and ribwort, calendula, comfrey, and that’s about all I can remember. We’ll have to ask Mama. We were thinking about trying echinacea tincture, but I don’t think shug would take to that. Her stomach gets upset real easy.”
“Did any of them help?”
“The comfrey helped some. The witch hazel seemed like it was soothing, but I don’t know if it had any healing powers.”
“Have you tried applying Copper-Tox over the top of them?” Neva said.
“Don’t know that one, miss,” Sam frowned.
“It acts as a sort of liquid Band-Aid, sticky so it stays on for a long time. Stuff smells to high heaven and it’ll give you one hell of a headache if you’re around it too long, but I’ve seen it make a difference at least in keeping medication in place so the abscess has a chance to heal.” Neva put her hands in her pockets.
“I’ll ask Doc. Maybe he doesn’t know about that one.”
“Who’s the vet here, again?”
“Doc Richards.”
Neva frowned. “I guess I don’t know him.”
“’Bout my age, ready to retire soon. He worked for Miss Biedelman when she was still alive. He’s been around here longer than anyone but me and Hannah.”
“Is he a good vet?”
“He never killed anything, at least as far as I know. He usually comes to see Hannah every week or two.”
“Has he ever had you give her footbaths of peroxide, beta-dyne, and chlorhexidine?”
Sam frowned again, raking his fingernails up and down Hannah’s side. She made a low, contented rumble and put her trunk into the canvas treat bag Sam wore strapped around his waist, fetching up two chunks of apple and popping them in her mouth like candy. “Not those, miss, but we’ve tried Epsom salts,” Sam said as he pushed her trunk away. “Warm water and salts a couple times a day. She took it all right, but it didn’t seem to do anything besides make her sleepy. By the time the ten minutes was done, why she’d be sawing logs.” Sam chuckled gently. “Breaks my heart, seeing the girl in pain.”
“Does she limp?”
“Not much. I believe she has a touch of rheumatism in the joints, though—she takes after me that way. Seems like she stands still more than she used to. Except for our walks, of course.”
“You walk her?”
“Sure,” Sam said. “It does her good, gives her a chance to see some things, stretch out a little, let her poor feet touch some grass. Plus you meet people. Yesterday we met a real nice boy, lives with an aunt. Too many kids out there are bringing themselves up these days. My folks never did have a lot, but there was plenty of love to go around. My mama used to say to all us kids, You help yourself to a hug whenever you want one, sugar. They’re warm, and they’re free.”
Neva smiled. “Do you ever put sand in her yard?”
“Never have. Just hay.”
“So how does she show pain?”
Sam smiled. “She doesn’t show it, she just comes right out and says it. She’s a talky thing, talks all day long.” His smile faded. “I love my girl, miss. Me and Hannah, we’ve been together forty-one years. Miss Biedelman trusted me to take good care of her, and I’ve done the best job I could. It’s about time for me to be retiring, been time for a couple of years already, but I can’t do it unless I know my baby’s in good hands. You show me you’ve got those hands and I’ll do anything I can to make the rest easy on you. I will, and Mama will, too.”
Neva folded her arms and regarded him for a minute. “If you could give Hannah anything in the world, what would it be?”
Sam rubbed his cheek along Hannah’s leg absently. “That’s easy. I’d give her a good place to live and someone who’d never leave her.”
“But she could easily live for another twenty years. No keeper’s going to commit to being in one place that long.”
“Didn’t say anything about keepers, miss,” Sam said quietly.
“I’m sorry?”
“I meant other elephants.”
Neva sighed. “Well, given what I know about this zoo, that would take a miracle.”
“I dream about it sometimes,” Sam said before he could think better of it.
“Sure. We all dream about having more money and better living conditions for our animals.”
Sam nodded, but it wasn’t what he’d meant.