Mastodonia

  We finished the drinks and Rila said to me, “And, now, Mastodonia. I’m dying to show it to you.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was spring in Mastodonia and everything was beautiful. The mobile home stood on top of a little ridge no more than a half-mile or so from where the time road brought us through. Just down the slope from the home, a grove of wild crab-apple trees was ablaze with pink blossoms, and the long valley that lay below the ridge was dotted with clumps and groves of crab apples and other flowering trees. The open places were a sea of spring flowers, and the entire area was swarming with songbirds.

  Two four-wheel drives were parked to one side of the mobile home. From the front entrance, an awning extended outward, and just beyond the awning was a large lawn table, a gaily striped umbrella sprouting from the center of it.

  Overall, our new home had a distinctly festive look.

  “We bought a big one,” said Rila. “Sleeps six, has a nice living area and the kitchen has everything you’d want.”

  “You like it?” I asked.

  “Like it? Asa, can’t you see? It’s the kind of hideaway that everyone dreams about—the cabin by the lake, the mountain hunting lodge. Except that this is even better. You can practically feel the freedom. There’s no one here. You understand? Absolutely no one here. The first men to reach North America won’t cross from Asia for a thousand centuries. There are people in the world, of course, but not on this continent. Here you are as alone as anyone can manage.”

  “You done any exploring?”

  “No, not by myself. I think I’d be afraid alone. I was waiting for you. And how about you? Don’t you like it here?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. That was the truth; I did like Mastodonia. But the concept of aloneness, of personal independence, I knew, was something to which one would have to become accustomed. You’d have to let it grow upon you.

  Ahead of us, someone shouted and it took a moment to locate the place where the shout had come from. Then I saw them, the two of them, Hiram and Bowser, rounding the slope just above the grove of blooming crab-apple trees. They were running, Hiram with an awkward, loping gallop, Bowser bouncing joyously, every now and then letting out a welcoming bark as he bounced along.

  Forgetting any dignity—and in this world there was no need for dignity—we ran to meet them. Bowser, running ahead, leaped up to lick my face, gamboling around in doggish raptures. Hiram came up panting.

  “We’ve been watching for you, Mr. Steele,” he said, gasping for breath. “We just took a little walk and missed you. We went down the hill to see one of the elephants.”

  “Elephants? You mean mastodons.”

  “I guess that’s right,” Hiram said. “I guess that’s the name for them creatures. I tried to remember the name, but I forgot. But anyhow, we saw a real nice mastodon. It let us get up real close. I think it likes us.”

  “Look, Hiram,” I said, “you don’t go up real close to a mastodon. It’s probably peaceful enough, but if you get too close to it, you can never know what it might do. That goes for big pussycats, as well—especially those that have long teeth sticking out of their mouths.”

  “But this mastodon is nice, Mr. Steele. It moves so slow and it looks so sad. We call it Stiffy because it moves so slow. It just shuffles along.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” I said, “an old beat-up bull that has been run out of the herd is nothing to fool around with. It probably has a nasty temper.”

  “That’s right, Hiram,” Rila agreed. “You steer clear of that animal. Or any animal you find here. Don’t go making friends with them.”

  “Not even with a woodchuck, Miss Rila?”

  “Well, I guess a woodchuck would be safe enough,” she said.

  The four of us went up to the mobile home.

  “I have a room all my own,” Hiram said to me. “Miss Rila said it is my room and no one else’s. She said Bowser could sleep in it with me.”

  “Come on in,” said Rila, “and see what we have here. Then you can go out in the yard …”

  “The yard?”

  “The place with the lawn table; I call that the yard. Once you look around inside, go out in the yard and look around. I’ll make lunch. Will sandwiches be all right?”

  “They’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll eat outside,” said Rila. “I just want to sit and look at this country. I can’t seem to get enough of it.”

  I looked through our new home. It was the first time I’d ever been inside one of them, although I had known a number of people who had lived in them and seemed well satisfied. I particularly liked the living area—seemingly plenty of space, comfortable furniture, large windows, thick carpeting on the floor, a bookcase filled with books Rila had taken from my small library, a gun rack beside the door. The whole thing was a lot more luxurious, I had to admit, than the house back on the farm.

  Going outside, I walked down the ridge, with Hiram striding along beside me and Bowser bouncing ahead.

  The ridge was not particularly high, but high enough to give a good view of the surrounding countryside. There below us to the right flowed the stream, the small river which had flowed in the Cretaceous and still flowed in the twentieth century through Willow Bend. Through millions of years, the land had changed but little. It seemed to me that the ridge was somewhat higher than it had been in the Cretaceous, perhaps higher than it would be in the twentieth century, but I could not be certain.

  The river valley was fairly open, broken only by the scattered clumps of flowering shrubs and smaller trees, but the ridges other than the one we stood on were heavily timbered. I kept an eye out for game herds, but there seemed to be none. Except for a couple of large birds, probably eagles, flying high in the sky, there was no other sign of life.

  “There he is,” Hiram called, excited. “There is Stiffy. Do you see him, Mr. Steele?”

  I looked in the direction of Hiram’s pointing finger and made out the mastodon in the valley just below the ridge. He was standing at the edge of a clump of small trees, stripping leaves off them with his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth. Even from the distance at which we stood, he had a faintly moth-eaten appearance. He seemed to be alone; at least no other mastodons were in sight.

  When Rila called to us, we went back down the ridge. Plates piled high with sandwiches and cakes were set on the lawn table. There were dishes of pickles and a jar of olives and a large carafe of coffee. For Bowser there was a large plate of roast, cut up in small pieces that would be easy for him to chew.

  “I put down the umbrella,” said Rila, “so the sun can shine on us. The sun seems so nice here.”

  I looked at my watch. It said five o’clock, but the sun said noon. Rila laughed at me. “Just forget the watch,” she said. “There are no watches here. I left mine on the bedside table the first day that I was here. By now, it’s probably run down.”

  I nodded, pleased with the idea. It was good enough for me. There were not many places where a man could cut free of the tyranny of timepieces.

  We ate in the sunshine, unhurriedly, and lazed away the afternoon watching the shadow from the western hills creep across the river and the valley.

  I nodded at the river. “There should be good fishing there.”

  “Tomorrow,” Rila said. “Tomorrow we’ll go fishing. Take one of the cars and go exploring. There is so much to see.”

  Late in the afternoon, we heard far-off trumpeting that could have been mastodons. In the middle of the night, I was wakened by a sound. Lying tensed in bed, I waited for it to come again, a vicious but muted squalling from a northern ridge. A cat, no doubt of that. A sabertooth, perhaps, or some other cat. I told myself that I was hung up on sabertooths, fascinated with them, curious about them. I had to get the idea of them out of my head; there must be cats of many other kinds in this world of the Sangamon. The crying in and of itself was a chilling sound, but I felt little actual fear of it. I was safe. Beside me Rila slept, undisturbed by the squalling from th
e north.

  After breakfast, we packed a lunch, put two 7 mm. rifles and some fishing gear in the car and set out to explore, Rila and I in the front seat, Hiram and Bowser in the back. Several miles down the valley, we came upon and circled a herd of about a dozen mastodon. They lifted their heads to look at us, flapping their ears, seeking our scent with upraised trunks, but made no move toward us. At noon, we parked beside the river and I went fishing for not more than five minutes, coming back with three good-sized trout, which we cooked over a driftwood fire. While we ate, a half-dozen wolves trotted out on a bald bluff that rose across the river and watched us. They seemed to me larger than the usual wolf and I wondered if they might be dire wolves. We flushed deer, which went bounding off ahead of us. We sighted a tawny cat on a rocky hillside, but it was cougarlike and was no sabertooth.

  We returned home well before sundown, tired out and delighted. It was the best vacation that I had ever had.

  Over the next two days we made other trips, setting off in different directions. We saw a number of mastodons, one small herd of giant bison, much larger than the buffalo of the historic western plains, with great spreading horns. We found a marsh where ducks and geese rose in clouds at our approach, and a bit beyond the marsh came upon our greatest discovery, a colony of beavers that were as large as bears. They were working on a dam that had created the marsh that was home for the ducks and geese. We watched them from afar, in fascination.

  “One beaver, one fur coat,” Rila observed.

  I lost all track of time. I forgot everything. I envisioned endless days of wondrous exploring, gorgeous loafing stretching out ahead of us.

  But the idyll came to an end when we returned on the third day. Ben was waiting for us, sitting at the lawn table. He had glasses and a bottle waiting for us.

  “Here, drink up,” he said. “We’re going into business. Courtney is flying in the Safari bunch tomorrow. They’re ready to talk. Courtney says they’re eager. Pretending not to be, but eager.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  I woke the following morning feeling vaguely apprehensive, not knowing why I should feel that way. It was just one of those feelings that you sometimes get, without any reason. So I crawled out of bed, careful not to wake Rila. But I failed to accomplish that, for as I was sneaking out the door, she asked, “What’s the matter, Asa?”

  “Probably nothing at all,” I said. “Just going out to have a look.”

  “Not in your pajamas,” she said. “Get back here and put on some clothes. The Safari people are coming today and they may arrive early. Their clocks are running some five hours earlier than ours.”

  So I got dressed, with the horrible feeling that I was wasting time. Then I went out as quickly as I could without seeming to be in too much of a hurry. But once I had opened the door and had a look, I ducked back in again and grabbed one of the 7 mm. rifles from the rack beside the door. Just down the ridge, not more than five hundred feet away, stood this old mastodon that Hiram had named Stiffy. There was no mistaking him, for he had that moth-eaten look about him, more apparent now than the other day, when he’d been much farther off.

  He was standing in a sort of woebegone manner, with his trunk hanging listlessly between his two great tusks, and in spite of the fact that he stood nine feet tall or so, he was not particularly prepossessing. Standing in front of him, not more than fifty feet separating them, stood Hiram. Standing beside Hiram, wagging his tail with all the good nature in the world, was Bowser. Hiram was talking to this great beast, who was waggling in reply the one ear that I could see—not the great flapping ear one would find in an African elephant, but still an ear that had some size to it.

  I stood petrified, grasping the rifle in my hands. I didn’t dare to yell at Hiram nor to call Bowser back. All I could do was stand and hold the rifle ready. In the back of my mind, I was remembering that many years in the future, in the nineteenth century, old Karamojo Bell had killed hundreds of African elephants for their ivory with a gun no bigger than the one I had in hand. Even so, I hoped I wouldn’t have to try it, for most of Karamojo’s shots had been to the brain, and I was not absolutely sure where to aim to hit the brain.

  Stiffy was just standing there and then he made a move. I thought he was going to come at Hiram and I brought the rifle up. But he really wasn’t going anywhere; he didn’t move forward at all. He just lifted up first one foot, then another, in a ragged sort of sequence; then he put them down again, as if they hurt and he was trying, one after the other, to get his weight off them. This business of lifting up his feet and then putting them down again rather tenderly imparted a slight rocking motion to his body, and it was the silliest thing I ever saw—this stupid elephant standing in front of Hiram and rocking gently back and forth.

  I took a quick step forward, then thought better of it before I took a second step. So far, everything seemed to be all right, although perhaps a trifle touchy, and I didn’t want to do anything that would change it.

  Out in front of me, Hiram took a short step forward and then another. I wanted to yell at him, but held it back somehow, for I knew I had better not. If anything happened, I had the rifle and I could put three or four slugs into old Stiffy so fast you couldn’t count them. I kept hoping, though, that I wouldn’t have to. Hiram was still inching forward, step by careful step, but Bowser didn’t move. I swear to Christ that Bowser had more sense than Hiram had. Once this thing was over, I told myself, I was going to kick hell right out of Hiram. I had told him and told him to leave that mastodon alone, and here he had sneaked out in the morning before I was out of bed and was cuddling up to it. But that, I knew, was the way that Hiram was. Back home, he had talked with woodchucks and robins, and had a grizzly bear come along, he would have talked with it. Take him back to the Cretaceous and he’d get chummy with the dinosaurs.

  By now, Hiram was a lot closer and was holding out his hand to the beast, which had quit its rocking. Bowser stayed where he was, but no longer wagged his tail. Apparently, he was as worried about all this as I was. I held my breath and watched, wondering if, maybe, after all, I should have yelled at Hiram to get back. But it was too late. If the mastodon made a single lunge, that would be the end of Hiram.

  The mastodon put out its trunk, sort of leaning forward on its toes, and Hiram stopped dead still. The mastodon sniffed at Hiram, running the tip of its trunk up and down his body, from his head down to his feet. It made a gentle snuffling sound as it smelled him. Then Hiram put out his hand and stroked the inquisitive trunk, rubbing back and forth and making scratching motions. That great silly beast made a sort of moaning sound as if it liked the scratching, so Hiram took another step and then another one until he was standing underneath Stiffy’s head, which bent forward. Hiram ran his hands up and down the trunk and reached one hand high to scratch underneath the ridiculously small lower lip of his mighty friend. Stiffy groaned with pleasure. That goddamn mastodon was as crazy as Hiram could ever hope to be.

  I heaved a sigh of relief, hoping that it was not premature. It didn’t seem to be. Stiffy kept on standing there and Hiram kept on scratching him. Bowser, with some disgust, turned around and trotted back to sit beside me.

  “Hiram,” I said, as quietly as I could. “Hiram, listen to me.”

  “You don’t need to worry, Mr. Steele,” said Hiram. “Stiffy is my friend.”

  I’d heard that ever since I’d returned to Willow Bend and renewed my acquaintance with Hiram. Everything was Hiram’s friend; he had no enemies.

  “You better be sure of that,” I said. “He’s a wild animal and he is awful big.”

  “He’s talking to me,” said Hiram. “We talk with each other. I know that we are friends.”

  “Then tell him to get out of here. Tell him to keep his distance, to stay off this ridge. First thing you know, he’ll be butting at our home and tipping it over. Tell him that if that ever happens, I’ll take a two-by-four to him.”

  “I’ll take him down to the valley,” said Hiram, “and tel
l him that he has to stay there. I’ll tell him that I’ll come and visit him.”

  “You do that,” I said, “and then get back here as fast as you can. There’ll be things for you to do.”

  He put out his hands and pushed on Stiffy’s shoulder and Stiffy set himself in motion, shuffling around, taking mincing steps, heading down the slope, Hiram walking beside him.

  “Asa,” Rila called from the door, “what is going on?”

  “Stiffy wandered up here,” I said, “and Hiram’s taking him back where he belongs.”

  “But Stiffy is a mastodon.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “He’s also Hiram’s friend.”

  “You better get in here and shave,” she said. “And, for goodness sakes, comb your hair. We have company.”

  I looked down the ridge. Five figures were walking in line, one behind the other. Ben was leading. He wore boots, khaki pants, and a hunting coat, and carried a rifle. The others were dressed in business suits and either were carrying briefcases or had portfolios tucked beneath their arms. One of them was Courtney. The other three, I figured, must be the Safari people. It struck me as hilarious—these staid business types carrying their badges of office through this howling wilderness.

  “Asa,” said Rila sharply.

  “It’s too late,” I said. “They’ll be on us in a moment. This is the new frontier. They’ll have to take me as I am.”

  I ran a palm across my chin and the whiskers rasped. I had a fairly heavy and untidy growth.

  Ben came up to us and said good morning. The others ranged themselves in line expectantly. Courtney stepped forward and said, “Rila, you know these gentlemen.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Rila. “But none of you have met my partner, Asa Steele. You’ll pardon his appearance. There was some mastodon trouble this morning and …”

  The military-looking old gentleman at the end of the line said, “You’ll excuse me, madam, but am I seeing right? It appears to me there’s a man and mastodon going down the ridge together. The man has hold of the mastodon’s trunk, as if he were leading it.”