Did Not Survive (6 page)

She shrugged. “Cranky, constipated, and conspicuously absent.” She smiled at her own wit. Sentimentality was not Jackie's thing. “I have to get back to work. Come on by when you can and tell me what that old cop wanted to know.”

“Will do,” I lied. I bought a veggie burger to go and met Linda halfway back to the Penguinarium. She was even later to lunch than I was. “How's it going?” I asked.

“Still three, all nursing. Losa looks pooped. She's sleeping. You look wrecked.”

“You, too. You won't forget to tell everyone to keep the activity down near her den? Maintenance, too?”

“Nope. I won't forget. If I hear so much as a nail drop, blood will be spilled.”

Satisfied, I hiked back to my herring-perfumed refuge and settled in for a cold pseudoburger in solitude.

I sat alone at the little table and chewed and stared into space, trying to recapture the elation from seeing those shapeless little cubs, trying to override the scene the police officer had made me reconstruct so thoroughly. Lack of sleep, the grueling interview, pregnancy hormones—for whatever reason, my defenses failed. I was back in the elephant barn trying to get Damrey away from Wallace. The elephant barn morphed into the outside lion exhibit, Wallace's limp body merged into Rick's…A different police interview, that one from a woman. Going home to a house that I would never share with him again. Rick gone forever, maybe because we'd quarreled and so I wasn't with him that night.

I lived in a new house now, one I'd bought with Rick's life insurance, but I perched uneasily in it, unable to turn it into a nest. We are a species that pair bonds and I was a female with no mate. All I had left of Rick were a few possessions, his big-hearted dog, and our last tangible connection—a flutter in my belly. Those, and shards of guilt that sometimes didn't stay buried.

The kitchen door opened, and I lurched back to the present. Dr. Reynolds squished through the foot bath. “Hi, Iris. Could we talk for a minute?”

In my experience, zoo vets didn't ask to “talk” to keepers. They requested information and gave instructions. I got her a cup of coffee in the guest cup and sat back down, wondering what was on her mind. I offered her an orange and peeled one for myself.

Today she seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. I broke the awkward silence. “I saw Linda a few minutes ago. She said Losa was doing fine with the cubs.”

“Yes. It looks good so far.” Short finger nails carefully stripped the rind from the orange. “These cups are lovely.” She broke off a segment and ate it.

“Linda's a potter on the side.” I chewed on my own orange and tried to guess her mission. Second thoughts about hand rearing the cubs? She would talk to Linda, not me. Changes to bird management? That would be Calvin.

Her fingers methodically tore the rind into small squares. She shifted in her chair. “The accident—Kevin Wallace's accident—has caused some disruption. Mr. Crandall has banned non-keepers from the elephant barn. It has to do with the zoo's insurance policies. Kayla can't collect urine samples for a research project.”

“She mentioned that at lunch yesterday. She's worried about the project.” Why couldn't I escape talking about Wallace and elephants for one little lunch break?

Dr. Reynolds pushed a strand of long brown hair back over her shoulder and stacked up the bits of orange peel. “This study is our first significant collaborative research with other zoos. I think we have useful data to contribute, and a research program is required for the National Association of Zoos to give us accreditation. This project started with antelope, looking at nutrition and phosphorus levels. The project head recently added elephants and asked us to participate, along with about a dozen other zoos that hold elephants. Kayla has good experience with domestic animals, but Mr. Crandall perceives her as inexperienced with exotics.”

I nodded, wondering why she was explaining this to a bird keeper. The orange scent masked the fishiness. Maybe I should ask Calvin about trying a citrus-oil cleaner.

“I'd like to ask you to collect the samples until the incident is resolved or until the study ends next month. Mr. Crandall has approved it.”

“Me?” I hadn't seen it coming. “I'm not good with elephants. I don't know anything about them.” And I didn't want to go back there. Not even a little bit.

“It's not at all difficult. You were Sam's first choice.”

“I see.”

Dr. Reynolds relaxed and smiled a little as though I'd agreed. “Ian trained the elephants effectively, and they urinate on command. You reach through the bars with a cup on a stick, collect a sample, and refrigerate it. I pick it up later. That's all there is to it. It's only on your regular work days. If you could start tomorrow…”

“Why don't the elephant keepers do this?”

The vet spoke with a careful absence of emotion. “Sam says that they don't have the time, especially since he is helping design the new exhibits for Asian antelope and deer. He says that elephants plus the zebras, giraffes, and other animals that he and Ian are also responsible for don't leave time for sample collection. I agree that the staffing level is too low.”

“Kayla was the logical person to do it.”

Dr. Reynolds nodded, her face still carefully neutral. “Kevin said Kayla could do it if a keeper were present at all times, and Mr. Crandall agreed.” She pushed the bits of peel aside. “Kevin Wallace said that if we want to breed Nakri, we must track her cycle. Sam accepted that the training was a reasonable investment of Ian's time.” She let her frustration show. “For a simple procedure, I've invested hours in setting this up. It would be quicker to do it myself, but I need to set the precedent for future research projects. I can't do it all.”

“So you need some keeper to show up and do what Sam won't do himself or let Ian do.”

“That's the size of it. Sam prefers that it be you. He assures me that whatever happened with Kevin was a fluke and that Damrey is acting normally. I don't see any risk to you as long as one of the keepers is present, and you follow the procedure. Otherwise of course I wouldn't request this. Would you rather not because of your pregnancy?”

“No, that's not a problem.” I was pregnant, not disabled. “It would put me behind on work here at Birds, though. I've had a lot of disruptions lately.”

“The procedure takes only a few minutes, but I'll get an authorization for overtime. Mr. Crandall is quite supportive of this study.”

Being paid overtime generally required Congressional intervention. This was compelling evidence that the veterinarian and director were serious about the study. Sam had tagged me. Refusing without a persuasive reason was unwise. Why couldn't elephants carry some disease pregnant humans were required to avoid? The flesh-eating bacteria Denny talked about…No, for now I had to go along. “Um, afterward, could you maybe put a little note in my personnel file? I kind of need to balance out some…stuff…that happened a while ago?”

“Of course. I would do that anyway. Your help is greatly appreciated.”

So it was settled.

I circled back to something she'd said before. “You're thinking about breeding Nakri? Artificial insemination? I know we can't keep a bull.”

“Perhaps. Assuming a new exhibit is constructed, one big enough for a calf and, of course, a modern elephant restraint chute and a scale.”

“I don't understand why it's been delayed.”

The vet shrugged. “We may be out of the elephant business anyway, depending on the NAZ committee investigation. I hope they can figure out what happened and why.”

I hesitated. “When Wallace wakes up, he can tell us, right?”

After a little silence, she answered quietly. “I don't think that is going to happen.” She looked away, the corners of her mouth pulled down.

Kevin Wallace was more than her coworker.

Pieces came together. He'd lost much of his excess weight in the last several months. We thought he'd had a health scare. He'd been unusually cheerful. I'd thought it was due to the new exhibits going up. He and Dr. Reynolds held regular meetings in his office. We thought it was because she'd been hired only a few months before. Wallace in a relationship with a woman fifteen years younger? I was pretty sure no one else had put two and two together either, or the gossip mill would have been red-lined.

“I'm sorry to hear he's in such bad shape. I didn't realize.”

Dr. Reynolds didn't say anything.

She flipped her hair back again. I pulled the Styrofoam cups containing routine penguin fecal samples out of the fridge. She took them, thanked me for the coffee and orange, and left to finish her rounds.

I started toward the aviary, late again. I picked up litter, examined the birds, and pondered. The vet thought Wallace was going to die or stay in a coma forever. The police were conducting a serious investigation. Sam wanted me to go back into the barn and work with the elephants. I didn't like any of it.

Chapter Five

My hand shook a little as I put the key in the door to the elephant barn, adrenaline detritus from my last way-too-dramatic visit. This morning, however, the morning after Dr. Reynolds' request, I found Peaceable Kingdom. Damrey rocked gently at her hay rack masticating a big wad of hay. Nakri's rump was visible through the gap in the door to the back stall. No roaring, no trumpeting, no limp body. The work day had barely begun, the stalls hadn't been cleaned yet, and the atmosphere declared the barn was full of herbivore—strong, warm, and humid. Science must march on, and so I marched in.

Ian nodded “hello” as he stretched a fire hose down the keeper alley toward the elephant door to the outside yard. He was careful to keep the hose close along the visitor window. I knew why after more episodes than I cared to remember of cougars chewing on hoses I'd left within reach. “The girls” would love to entertain themselves by snagging the hose with their trunks.

Through the open keeper door, I spotted Sam standing at a counter in the work room. Like Ian, he wore a green polo shirt with the Finley Memorial Zoo logo. A thick twist of red twine cut from hay bales stuck out of the rear pocket of his brown uniform pants. No shoulder holster, no bulge at an ankle. I relaxed a little.

I wouldn't be back in zoo pants for months. It was baggy brown coveralls until the baby came, with the name of someone built thick sewn on the pocket, like “Calvin.” I peeled off my zoo jacket, also brown, and draped it over a chair in the little office area. “Hi. I'll be your Kayla today,” I told Sam. “Today's breakfast special is warm piss.” Nothing like smart-mouthing to cover up the jitters.

Sam handed me a five-foot broomstick with a funky wire loop in one end and two unused paper coffee cups. “Here.” He demonstrated how a cup fit in the loop. “This is the official scientific pee collector. Ian will demonstrate the technicalities of operating it. Thanks for doing this.” He handed me a pair of disposable white gloves and waited for me to leave and get started.

Sam was sensible and careful and had mentored me kindly when I was new. It was Sam who taught me to be aware of each animal's agenda and not just my own, Sam who told me not to take Wallace's growling personally, Sam who first welcomed me to the lunch gatherings. He was an old friend, and nothing bad would happen while he was in charge. I swallowed and walked through the door and toward the front stall.

Ian was waiting near Damrey's hay rack. He held out a hand to show me a fistful of raisins mashed together to make a lump. “Stand here. Watch her. Don't be where she can grab at the stick.” He studied me to make sure I was digesting this. I nodded obediently. He added a final precaution that sounded as though someone once said it to him and he had memorized it: “Most dangerous time is when you know the routine and it's all working good. People get careless.”

I nodded several times. No carelessness. Not me.

“Damrey,” he called.

Damrey wheeled to face us. The bars near the hay rack were too close for her to reach her trunk through, but she tried. A little pointed beard of long hair hung from her lower lip. “Pee,” Ian said quietly. The elephant rocked from side to side, ears flapping gently, as she sniffed in my direction, then the trunk swung toward Ian's hand with the raisins. She turned away and walked toward the other end of the stall and circled back. Her footsteps were almost silent, only a shushing noise as her feet scuffed straw and wood chips out of the way. Each step seemed deliberate, not like the nervous tapping of a blackbuck antelope or a deer. I wondered how many ribs those feet had broken when she was mauling Wallace.

“Has to get her mojo working,” Ian said, which was the liveliest thing I'd ever heard out of him. He seemed almost relaxed around the animals, and his words flowed more easily.

Damrey circled back toward us, checked again that Ian really did have raisins, and turned around to present her butt to the bars. Ian took the stick from me and waited. Instead of urinating, she turned around and sniffed at us again with her gray and pink trunk tip, the wet little finger on the end working. She blew a long snort, picked up some straw, and threw it on her back. She walked to the far end of the stall, rubbed her side against the rough wall a bit, and then stood rocking from side to side with her back to us. Ian didn't say or do a thing.

I felt as though I were deaf. Damrey was fairly shouting at me with body language, and I had no idea what she was saying, except that she didn't feel like standing near me and emitting bodily fluids.

After a minute or so, Damrey walked to the door to Nakri's stall and squeaked. Nakri squeaked back. Damrey ignored us some more.

“Come on,” Ian said to me. “Time out.”

Damrey wasn't cooperating, and he was withdrawing his offer to trade a treat for pee. We walked into the work area, where Sam was measuring quarts of grain into five gallon buckets.

“No pee?” Sam asked. “We haven't got all day.”

Ian didn't say anything.

We stood around for three or four minutes watching Sam work and went back out. Damrey stood at the far end of the stall next to the bars with one hind leg stretched behind her and rocked, shifting her weight from front to back. “What's she doing?” I asked.

Sam answered from the doorway behind us. “She does that when she's upset. She spent years in a circus, and they chain their elephants most of the time when they're on the road. She's pretending she's chained by that leg.”

It was weird, watching her tug on that invisible chain over and over. For the first time, I noticed the faint pink line circling her ankle. An old scar.

Ian said, “Damrey. Pee.” Damrey stopped her repetitive motion, came right on over, and started in with the smelling again. Her deep-set little eyes seemed filled with suspicion, the long, sparse lashes waving as the wrinkled gray eyelid moved. Sam stepped up to the bars to our right, where they were wide enough apart for a person to slip through sideways.

“It's me, isn't it?” I said.

“She doesn't know you yet,” Sam said.

“And I'm associated with Wallace's body.”

Neither elephant keeper said anything.

Damrey turned toward Sam and draped her trunk over his shoulder. He rubbed the trunk, his hand moving firmly over the rough, wrinkled hide. It looked like old friends comforting one another in a tough time, trying to get each other through. Would she really turn on a person she knew, who'd been careful and gentle with her? It could happen, I knew it could happen. But this particular elephant? “See?” Sam said. “She hasn't got a mean bone in her body. Wait till you get to know her.”

Huh. So that was why Sam tagged me for this job. I was the chief witness against her, and he wanted a chance to show me the Damrey he knew. I didn't like being manipulated, but I wasn't going to hold it against him. The facts would speak for themselves. But I wished he'd get out of her reach. Hadn't Mr. Crandall forbidden physical contact? Had I misunderstood that?

“Pee,” Ian said quietly, holding out the raisins for her to smell again.

“Have Iris give her the raisins, and we'll try again tomorrow,” Sam said, still touching the elephant.

Ian ignored him.

I kept my eyes on Damrey, trying not to feel the tension between the men, trying to conceal my uneasiness.

Sam stepped back out of her reach, and I relaxed a little. After a few more moments of watching the swaying and tail swinging, he commanded, “Enough. Drop it. We need to get this place cleaned up.” He was talking to us, not Damrey.

Ian didn't move. I glanced nervously at Sam and, while I focused elsewhere, Damrey swung her rear toward us and unleashed a flood of pee. Ian stuck the stick through the bars into the deluge and pulled it back. He blew a toot on the whistle he had on a string around his neck and handed the raisins to me. Damrey stepped away from the puddle and stuck her trunk in the bottom of the hay rack, fishing around. “Toss them in,” he said. I calculated the trajectory through the bars and tossed. And missed. The clot of raisins hit the floor. Damrey searched the hay rack thoroughly while I winced. She gave up on that, swept her trunk over the floor beneath it, and soon sucked them up. She stuffed the lump in her mouth and chewed it with huge teeth.

Sam said, “If Nakri gives you any trouble, cut it short. I mean it. This has got to be quick or not at all.”

Ian carried the stick and cup to the work area, put a standard plastic coffee lid on the cup, pulled it out of the wire loop, wiped it off with a paper towel, and pressed a piece of tape over the sippy opening. He handed me a pen. I wrote “Damrey” and the date on the cup. He nodded and pointed with his chin toward the fridge.

On to Nakri. I pushed a fresh cup into the wire loop. “Dried mango slices,” Ian said. “You use the pole.” We walked through the work area to come up on her stall from the back. The hay rack in the back stall was similar, also with closely-spaced bars, and Nakri seemed ready for business.

“Nakri, pee time,” Ian said.

Nakri didn't waste any time checking me out or working through performance anxiety. She swung her rear around and let go. I wasn't expecting such rapid production and was lucky to catch the last of it. Ian tooted and handed me a big sticky slice of dried mango. I flicked it into her hay rack, spilling some of the urine in the process. About an inch was left in the cup. We looked at it and shrugged. Nakri chewed her treat and scratched an eyelid with her trunk tip.

“As good as we're going to get,” I said, and carried the cup into the kitchen to process like Damrey's.

I heard the squeal and grate of the big doors operating. Sam was opening Nakri's door so that she could join Damrey and also opening the outside door. The two buddies greeted one another and ambled outside. Sam shut the door to lock them out so the keepers could clean the stalls.

“Be consistent with Damrey,” Ian said quietly. “Routine-bound. May take a week to get used to you, like with Kayla. Faster if you do everything the exact way I do. Nakri's not so fussy.”

“Will you walk me through it again tomorrow?”

Ian nodded. “They'll be together.”

That should make my task even more interesting. I was late to my real job, stressed out from close contact with an animal I'd seen almost kill someone, and tomorrow I'd need to avoid getting swatted by both elephants at the same time. “Why back together?” I asked.

Ian looked surprised. “Nakri had an abscess on her hip. Damrey messed with it at night. Healed up now.”

Of course. The elephants would want to be together. They were herd animals, social, and were separated only for a medical reason. That was why the door between was left a little ajar at night, so they could visit with one another.

Sam caught me as I was on my way out. “Iris, this situation with Wallace is a misunderstanding as far as Damrey goes. You'll see when the committee gets here, and we have all the facts. Just don't go calling her a rogue, okay?”

“Of course I won't call her that. But come on, Sam!” I softened my voice. “No wild animal is totally reliable. You taught me that. They have their bad days and pet peeves like we do, except that when an elephant gets crabby, somebody ends up smashed flat because humans are small and breakable. You know that way better than I do. Everyone wants the real story, everyone wants the best for Damrey. And there isn't much you can do to steer this.”

“All I'm asking for is an open mind,” he said, not quite snapping at me. “I'm not asking for the moon, only a little help saving an animal's life. She didn't attack Wallace.”

“Sam, if you're wrong and you keep giving her the chance, she might kill
you
.”

Sam's shoulders sagged. “Iris, you're not hearing me. You are
not
hearing me.”

This was so not worth Dr. Reynolds' gratitude.

Outside the barn, I stopped to view the yard where the two cows he cared so much about were enjoying the morning. The pink tops of their ears glowed from the low sun shining through, a benign contrast to their other-worldly silhouettes. They really were something else. Strong, smart, sociable, complicated. I loved big cats, which were at least as dangerous. I could appreciate elephants as well.

Wallace might wake up. The NAZ committee would figure out what happened. Sam would be proved right or not, and we would all cope. Calvin must be wondering what was taking me so long.

“Don't you wish you could do better than this?”

My head jerked around. Two scruffy men, both with picket signs, stood near me. The one that had challenged me said, “Every day you work here is a day these elephants suffer. Isn't it time you took a stand for better living conditions?”

He spoke from a thicket of beard, another bush radiating out from his head. He was a little shorter than I. Whether that was fat or muscle filling out the denim overalls and dark red jersey shirt, I couldn't tell. His sign said, “Sanctuary from Suffering,” and a blue and gray backpack sagged on his shoulders. The other man was a boy, maybe eighteen, in regulation jeans, dark sweatshirt, and muddy running shoes. His black hair was too straight to make a good bush, but he was trying hard by leaving it long and not combing it. “Prisons drive animals Insane” proclaimed his sign. He looked familiar.

“How did you get in? The zoo's not open yet.”

Bushy Hair said, “The front gate's unlocked. I know you're not an elephant keeper, so maybe you can be objective. Is this any way to keep those majestic animals?” His arm sweep took in Damrey and Nakri minding their own business, idling about the yard. “Wouldn't you rather see them roaming grassy hillsides?”

“I assume you mean an unaccredited sanctuary with no oversight, where the public has no idea what's going on. No, that doesn't sound all that wonderful.”

“I could show you pictures. It
is
wonderful,” he said.