supplements seemed most helpful. There were practicalities to running a zoo. He dumped a bucket of corn on the cob into the pigahump’s cage. It snorted, then lumbered out of the doghouse it stayed in, not looking much like a pig, or any other animal Trevin knew. Eyes like saucers, it gazed at him gratefully before burying its face in the trough.
He moved down the rows. Mealworms in one cage. Grain in the next. Bones from the butcher. Dog food. Spoiled fish. Bread. Cereal. Old vegetables. Oats. The tigerzelle tasted the rump roast he tossed in, its delicate tongue, so like a cat’s, lapping at the meat before it tore a small chunk off to chew delicately. It cooed in contentment.
At the end of the row, closest to the river, two cages were knocked off their display stands and smashed. Black blood and bits of meat clung to the twisted bars, and both animals the cages had contained, blind, leathery bird-like creatures, were gone. Trevin sighed and walked around the cages, inspecting the ground. In a muddy patch, a single webbed print a foot across, marked with four deep claw indents, showed the culprit. A couple of partial prints led up from the river. Trevin put his finger in the track, which was a half-inch deep. The ground was wet but firm. It took a hard press to push just his fingertip a half-inch. He wondered at the weight of the creature, and made a note to himself that tonight they’d have to store the smaller cages in the truck, which would mean more work. He sighed again.
By eight, the softball fields across the park had filled. Players warmed up outside the fences, while games took place. Tents to house teams or for food booths sprang up. Trevin smiled and turned on the music. Banners hung from the trucks. DR. TREVIN’S TRAVELING ZOOLOGICAL EXTRAVAGANZA. SEE NATURE’S ODDITIES! EDUCATIONAL! ENTERTAINING! By noon, there had been fifteen paying customers.
Leaving Hardy in charge of tickets, Trevin loaded a box with handbills, hung a staple gun to his belt, then marched to the ballfields, handing out flyers. The sun beat down like a humid furnace, and only the players in the field weren’t under tents or umbrellas. Several folks offered him a beer—he took one—but his flyers, wrinkly with humidity, vanished under chairs or behind coolers. “We’re doing a first day of the tournament special,” he said. “Two bucks each, or three for you and a friend.” His shirt clung to his back. “We’ll be open after sunset, when it’s cooler. These are displays not to be missed, folks!”
A woman in her twenties, her cheeks sun-reddened, her blonde hair tied back, said, “I don’t need to
Trevin said, “We were in
“Maybe we’ll come over later, fella,” said the player on the ground.
Doris popped a can open. “It might snow this afternoon, too.”
“Maybe it will,” said Trevin congenially. He headed toward town, on the other side of the fairgrounds. The sun pressured his scalp with prickly fire. By the time he’d gone a hundred yards, he wished he’d worn a hat, but it was too hot to go back.
He stapled a flyer to the first telephone pole he came to. “Yep,” he said to himself. “A little publicity and we’ll rake it in!” The sidewalk shimmered in white heat waves as he marched from pole to pole, past the hardware, past the liquor store, past the Baptist Church—SUFFER THE CHILDREN read the marquee—past the pool hall, and the auto supply shop. He went inside every store and asked the owner to post his sign. Most did. Behind Main Street stood several blocks of homes. Trevin turned up one street and down the next, stapling flyers, noting with approval the wire mesh over the windows. “Can’t be too careful, nowadays,” he said, his head swimming in the heat. The beer seemed to be evaporating through his skin all at once, and he felt sticky with it. The sun pulsed against his back. The magic number is five-seventy-eight, he thought. It beat within him like a song. Call it six hundred. Six hundred folks, come to the zoo, come to the zoo, come to the
When he finally made his way back to the fairgrounds, the sun was on its way down. Trevin dragged his feet, but the flyers were gone.
Evening fell. Trevin waited at the ticket counter in his zoo-master’s uniform, a broad-shouldered red suit with gold epaulets. The change box popped open with jingly joy; the roll of tickets was ready. Circus music played softly from the loudspeakers as fireflies flickered in the darkness above the river. Funny, he thought, how the mutagen affected only the bigger vertebrate animals, not mice-sized mammals or little lizards, not small fish or bugs or plants. What would a bug mutate
Every car that passed on the highway, Trevin watched, waiting for it to slow for the turn into the fairgrounds.
From sunset until midnight, only twenty customers bought admissions; most of them were ball players who’d discovered that there wasn’t much night-life in Mayersville. Clouds had moved in, and distant lightning flickered within their steel-wool depths.
Trevin spun the roll of tickets back and forth on its spool. An old farmer couple wearing overalls, their clothes stained with rich, Mississippi soil, shuffled past on their way out. “You got some strange animals here, mister,” said the old man. His wife nodded. “But nothing stranger than what I’ve found wandering in my fields for the last few years. Gettin’ so I don’t remember what o-form normal looks like.”
“Too close to the river,” said his wife. “That’s our place right over there.” She pointed at a small farm house under a lone light, just beyond the last ball field. Trevin wondered if they ever retrieved home-run balls off their porch.
The thin pile of bills in the cash box rustled under Trevin’s fingers. The money should be falling off the tables, he thought. We should be drowning in it. The old couple stood beside him, looking back into the zoo. They reminded him of his parents, not in their appearance, but in their solid patience. They weren’t going anywhere fast.
He had no reason to talk to them, but there was nothing else left to do. “I was here a few years ago. Did really well. What’s happened?”
The wife held her husband’s hand. She said, “This town’s dyin’, mister. Dyin’ from the bottom up. They closed the elementary school last fall. No elementary-age kids. If you want to see a
“Or whatever you want to call them,” added the old man. “Your zoo’s depressin’.”
“I’d heard you had somethin’ special, though,” said the woman shyly.
“Did you see the crocomouse?” asked Trevin. “There’s quite a story about that one. And the tigerzelle. Have you seen that one?”
“Saw ’em,” she said, looking disappointed.
The old couple climbed into their pickup, and it rattled into life after a half-dozen starter-grinding tries.
“I found a buyer in Vicksburg for the truck,” said Caprice.
Trevin whirled. She stood in the shadows beside the ticket counter, a notebook jammed under her arm. “I told you to stay out of view.”
“Who’s going to see me? You can’t get customers even on a discount!” She gazed at the vacant lot. “We don’t have to deliver it. He’s coming to town next week on other business. I can do the whole transaction, transfer the deed, take the money, all of it, over the Internet.”
One taillight out, the farmer’s pickup turned from the fairgrounds and onto the dirt road that led to their house, which wasn’t more than two hundred yards away. “What would we do with the animals?” He felt like weeping.
“Let the safe ones go. Kill the dangerous ones.”
Trevin rubbed his eyes. She stamped her foot. “Look, this is no time for sentimentality! The zoo’s a bust. You’re going to lose the whole thing soon anyway. If you’re too stubborn to give it all up, sell this truck now and you get a few extra weeks, maybe a whole season if we economize.”
Trevin looked away from her. The fireflies still flickered above the river. “I’ll have to make some decisions,” he said heavily.
She held out the notebook. “I’ve already made them. This is what will fit in one semi-trailer. I already let Hardy and the roustabouts go with a severance check, postdated.”
“What about the gear, cages?”
