Endangered Species (21 page)

Anna laughed aloud.  Feeling blessed, she watched in stillness,

expecting this wilderness apparition to vanish with the usual alacrity

of wild things.

This little fellow stayed.  He poked his head several inches furtheir

around the gate and cocked it to one side.  A pink tongue flicked out

and wet a black nose.

Like most women her age, Anna had been raised with the animated

classics.  The good and pure, the Cinderellas and Snow Whites, could sit

down and all the gentle creatures of the forest would come and nestle in

their skirts.  Drawn by this childhood fantasy, one that wouldn't die

regardless of the number of squirrels, raccoons, and armadillos that

rejected her advances, Anna climbed slowly from the truck.

Leaving it parked in the lane, driver door open, she worked her way

toward the fawn.  Her voice slid into the upper registers, and even as

she cooed sweet nonsense, she wondered what it was about babies,

regardless of their species, that made people talk funny.

Head lowered, looking at her through impossibly long lashes, the fawn

watched.  When Anna was less than six feet from him, she felt a wave of

dizziness and realized she'd been holding her breath .

She let it escape in a rush and the tiny animal turned and ran, not as

if it was afraid, but as if it wanted to play.

Enchanted, Anna followed.

Inside the walls nestled a cottage.  Once it had probably been the

gatekeeper's quarters.  A row of potted plants in the window and a

bicycle leaning against the plaster wall attested to more modern

inhabitants.

The mansion and grounds had been allowed to deteriorate .

Weeds recaptured what had been lawns.  Bushes, run wild, tangled up

close to the kitchens at the rear of the mansion, much as the curse of

thorns had wrapped around Sleeping Beauty's castle.

The mansion itself was not so grand as Plum Orchard, being smaller and

boxier, built with the feel of a Mediterranean villa yet retaining an

American hardiness to withstand Atlantic storms .

There were no vistas dotted with live oaks, but a long rectangular lawn

in the process of being reclaimed by nature.  Wide steps built to usher

visitors up to the front doors were crumbling.  Stones loosed by time

and weather lay scattered in the weeds.

It was to this doorway the fawn ran, trotting up the stairs to pause

beneath the veranda and look back at Anna.  Laughing, she ran after,

careful to keep her footfalls quiet and her aura benign.

The clatter of hooves gave away the fawn's direction as he scampered

down the long porch and around the corner of the house .

Seconds later, Anna rounded the same corner.  The fawn was nowhere to be

seen.  Weed-eaten lawn stretched empty in three directions.  The

northern wing of the mansion, housing the kitchens and servants'

quarters, walled off this half of the garden from the entrance gate and

cottage.

Nothing moved, not even the crawling heat.  For reasons Anna had never

been curious enough to ask about, the heat on Cumberland didn't create

the shimmering curtains of mirage that heat in the desert did.

At her feet were concrete stairs leading to a cellar door that stood

open eight or ten inches.  Unless the deer was equipped with turbojets,

there was no other place he could have reached and secreted himself in

the time he'd been out of her sight.  Though she'd never seen a wild

animal bolt into a human habitation for safety, she pursued him down the

steps.  Engrossed in a fairy tale, it didn't even strike her as

particularly odd.

The cellar was as big as the house, wings disappearing into the gloom,

one north and the other east.  Anna found a switch by the door and,

without much hope, clicked it on.  To her surprise, half a dozen dim

bulbs cast an inadequate light.  The ceiling was low-she could reach up

and touch it with the palm of her hand-and coffered into countless

recesses by beams, pipes, and exposed wiring .

The floor was of smooth concrete.

Over the years bits and pieces of jumbled lives had made their way into

these catacombs.  History, a lot of junk, and some convenient storage

were tucked away in the shadows.  From behind an old coal furnace, with

as many arms as a Jules Verne nightmare, peeked a classic baby buggy

with huge wheels and a tattered bonnet.  Fragments of derelict furniture

were piled against the walls.

A bleat, like that of a lamb, caught Anna's attention.  Beyond the

furnace, in one of the alcoves in the eastern wing, she could just make

out the form of the fawn.  A bleat: she realized that though she'd seen

a goodly number of fawns, she'd never heard one speak .

Its voice carried the imperious helplessness of all babies and she

similed ." You gonna run, little buddy?" she said coaxingly.

The fawn vanished, swallowed by shadows.  She followed deeper into the

labyrinth of cellar.  Around an abutment of concrete, amid white PVC

pipe lying in unstable piles and plastic containers of fertilizer and

herbicides, he was waiting.

Anna folded down onto the floor and there in the artificial dusk of a

turn-of-the-century cellar, she got her Snow White dream.  The fawn

pushed his nose against her, licked her chin, and let her pet the

graceful spotted are of his neck.

So absorbed was she in the magic of the moment that when a perfectly

friendly voice said: "Oh there you are," she nearly jumped out of her

skin.  The fawn skittered away to take shelter behind the stout legs of

the intruder.

An elderly woman, probably in her seventies, with tightly permed

iron-gray hair and thick glasses framed in blue plastic, blocked what

little light leaked from the bulb in the next alcove.  In this twilight

her skin was ageless but her voice spoke of wear and tear and her body

had settled into the comfortable lumps brought on by too many years'

exposure to fried chicken and gravity.

see you've met Flicka," she said pleasantly, and reached behind her so

the fawn could butt his head against the soft of her palm.  When Anna

said nothing, the woman went on ." 'Flicka." E6 Pretty silly, I guess,

but'Bambi' seemed too cute.  Mona and I aren't very imaginative when it

comes to names."

Anna recovered her equilibrium.  The abrupt switches from Dis they to

Stephen King to the real world had taken some adjusting to .

Rising from the dust, she said: "Anna Pigeon, fire crew," and stuck out

her hand because she couldn't think of anything else appropriate to do.

" Dot," the woman said, and captured the proffered hand, holding on to

it as if Anna were a lost child.  Short of jerking rudely back, there

was little Anna could do but submit ." Mona and I are VIPS Volunteers in

Parks-working on turtle inventory and related subjects. A step up, I

must say, from our first assignment ."

" What was that?" Anna asked politely, trying to think of a dignified

way to get her hand back.

" Cellar inventory.  That's when Flicka first came.  He got into the

habit of playing down here." Dot laughed ." We volunteer for six weeks

of sun and fun on the Golden Isles in our golden years and we get stuck

with cellar inventory." Despite the words, Dot's good cheer seemed

undiminished.

" Maintenance saved us.  They decided to use the old place for storage."

She waved at the pipes and bottles and Anna's hand escaped. She hid it

in her pocket lest it again be snatched ." That ended our troglodyte

period," Dot said ." Coffee?  It's on."

Meekly, Anna followed her from the cellar, the fawn trotting along at

the older woman's heels like a well-trained pup.

Mona, the other half of this marriage-and from the dear and comfortable

way the women treated one another, Anna guessed it was a relationship of

long standing-was slight and strong, with broad hips and the flat butt

that comes with age.  Her hair was brown with stark white streaks at the

temples ." Bride of Frankenstein , she said, and laughed when Anna

complimented her on them.  Her face was wrinkled and soft with the

agelessness of elves in old drawings.  Either her eyesight was keen or

she wore contacts; nothing filtered the warmth from eyes as dark and

liquid as Flicka's.

Mona and Dot were retired schoolteachers from West Virginia .

Summers they volunteered for the National Park Service.  They'd worked

in Yellowstone, and Hovenweep, Rocky Mountain, and Fort Pulaski.  Their

tastes were eclectic and their store of knowledge vast and varied.  At a

rough estimate, Anna guessed between them they had over a century of

experience.  They were as much national treasures as the parks

themselves, and Anna was content to snuggle down in their cluttered

kitchen and drink their coffee.

As was inevitable in an island society, the talk turned inward, to the

airplane wreck and the ripples it continued to send through the isolated

colony.

"I liked Slattery," Mona said, taking Anna by surprise.  She'd had the

impression everyone hated the man.  On reflection, she realized the only

person she'd spoken to about Hammond was Alice Utterback and he had a

lawsuit filed against her ." Slattery was a real charmer," Mona went on,

offering a package of store-bought cinnamon rolls to Anna.

"A man gets extra points for being charming to horrid old women , Dot

said.

"Yes indeed.  Smacks of genuine good manners.  Nothing to gain."

"Unless he's a pervert," Dot said.

"Unless you're a pervert , Mona returned pointedly, and Dot was

chastened.  Precisely for what, Anna had no idea.

"Slattery was an amateur marine biologist.  The life cycle of the

loggerheads fascinated him.  He spent a lot of his spare time poking

through the old files," Mona said.

"That's how we got to know him," Dot told Anna ." Poking became our

second assignment, right after Morlock duty."

"We're putting all the back files in some sort of order and entering the

data on the computer." Mona took up the story.

"A mad dash into the twentieth century," Dot added ." A mere handful of

years before it ends."

"Money makes all things possible.  Some clever soul got a hundred and

twelve grand out of the U.S.  government to study the loggerheads.  Pays

our room and board," Mona said.

"Not board, just room.  Maybe board next year.  The second half is due

come September.  Hull wants all the files squeaky-clean and high-tech by

Labor Day."

"It'd be easier with assistants," Mona said.

"You just want someone besides me to boss."

"On the rolls but never showed."

"Kids today .  .  ." Dot clucked.

"A mess.  A nightmare," Mona said ." If we didn't possess the patience

of job-"

"And nearly the same number of years on the job-"

"We'd be more or less completely nuts'-"

"Instead of incompletely nuts-"

"By now," Mona finished.

Yup, Anna thought, old married couple.

"And Todd was a good enough fellow, " Mona said, as if feeling she'd

been remiss ." He hadn't much time for a couple of senior citizens."