Your Mother Was a Neanderthal (6 page)

F
red led the way in an all-out sprint. Sam followed him. I followed Sam. One large, angry woolly mammoth closely followed us all.

We were just about to become woolly mammoth toe jam when Fred yelled, “There.” He pointed to two trees about five feet apart. Fred dove between the trees. Sam dove between the trees. I tripped, jumped, hopped, and felt the tip of one giant tusk push me between the trees.

The woolly mammoth’s head followed us, but the rest of its monster body didn’t. It slammed into the two trees and wedged there fast. The mammoth trumpeted and shook its tusks, but it couldn’t move forward or backward. We took one look and ran until we couldn’t hear its mad blasts anymore.

We finally collapsed and sat under a giant fern, just trying to breathe and stop our hearts from pounding.

I searched the prehistoric and unfamiliar forest all around us. “Man,” I said. “What next?”

Sam studied the small patch of sky that showed through the branches overhead. “By the look of the overcast sky and setting sun, I would say next we better find shelter before night falls.”

“Oh, great,” said Fred. “Mr. Brainpower is back with more bright ideas like ‘Find shelter before night falls.’ I liked you better when you just drooled and said ‘Woo woo woo, ma ma ma.’ ”

“So whose bright idea was it to poke a woolly mammoth with a pointed stick?” said Sam.

“Whose bright idea was it to come to the Stone Age in the first place?” said Fred.

“You almost got us killed.”

“You got us lost.”

“Nat-Li.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“You’re a Neanderthal.”

“Wait a minute, you guys,” I said. “Who just said ‘Nat-Li’?”

We all looked at each other.

“Not me,” said Fred.

“Not me,” said Sam.

“Nat-Li.”

“Over there,” said Fred.

We crawled over fallen trees and around smashed rocks, following the sound of the voice calling Nat-Li.

In a few minutes we were standing on the edge of a familiar clearing.

“It’s Ma and her clan,” I said. “We’re back at the cave.”

“Yeah,” said Fred. “But what happened to the cave?”

Ma and the rest of the women stood next to a huge rock at the base of the cliff. Lin-Say and Jos-Feen pounded on the rock with their fists. Ma called, “Nat-Li.”

“The quake must have loosened that boulder and sealed the entrance to the cave,” said Sam. “And Nat-Li’s trapped inside.”

“This is our chance,” said Fred. “We push away the stone, save Nat-Li, and become heroes. Then we can ask for anything we want.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Remember—”

But I was too late. Fred was already in the middle of the clearing calling, “Time Warp Trio to the rescue.” We didn’t have much choice but to follow him.

Fred didn’t even give anyone a chance to be surprised. He walked right up to the rock and started calling out instructions. “Lin-Say, Jos-Feen, Sam, and Joe on this side. Push on three. One, two,
three.”

We pushed. The stone rocked about an inch and fell back.

“More muscle,” called Fred. He waved the other women over to push. “One, two,
three.”

The stone rolled about two inches, then fell back.

“We’ll never be able to move this,” I panted. “It must weigh a ton.”

“Ma,” a voice called faintly from behind the stone.

“We just need more muscle,” said Fred. “Duh! That’s it. They can’t be too far away.” Fred cupped his hands and yelled into the forest.
“Duh, Duh! Boog, boog!”

Ma, Lin-Say, and Jos-Feen looked at Fred like he had lost his mind.

“Duh, Duh! Boog, boog!”
yelled Fred.

And you won’t believe it, because Sam and I didn’t either, but like magic, Duh and his whole band of guys appeared out of the trees.

Fred dragged Duh out into the open and over to the rock. The whole time he kept making pushing motions and talking about boog. The rest of the guys followed cautiously. And in less time than it takes to say “Operation Rescue,” Fred had Ma, Duh, men, women, Lin-Say, Jos-Feen, Sam, and me on one side of the boulder.

“All together now,” yelled Fred. “One, two,
three.”

Everyone pushed.

The stone rolled slowly up ... up ... up ... and then fell back with a thud.

Everyone collapsed to the ground. Shadows grew longer as the sun sank lower.

“It’s no good,” said Sam. “We can’t all push in that small of a space.”

“Ma?” Nat-Li called through the rock.

“But she’ll die in there,” said Fred.

I looked at Ma. I looked at Duh. I knew they didn’t speak our language. But the look on their faces said the same thing.

W
ait a minute,” said Sam. “Let’s figure this out.” Sam started pacing back and forth and talking to himself. “Nat-Li is trapped behind the rock. If 5 people can move the rock 1 inch, how many people will it take to move the rock 24 inches?” Sam grabbed a stick and scribbled in the sand. “5 people for every inch times 24 inches equals ... 120 people.”

“So let’s do it,” said Fred.

“There are only two small problems,” said Sam. “One: we don’t have 120 people. And two: even if we did, we couldn’t fit 120 people on one side of the rock. We need a more simple solution.”

The word
simple
rang a bell in my head.

“What about your pal, Archimedes?” I said.

“He won’t be around for another 39,000 years or so,” said Sam.

“No, I mean what about that lever thing?”

“Joe, you’re a genius,” yelled Sam. “Give us a fulcrum, a long enough lever, and a place to stand, and the Time Warp Trio will move the world ... or at least one very large rock.”

Fred grabbed a sturdy-looking branch.

I rolled a small stone near one side of the boulder.

Our Stone Age audience watched us closely. We jammed the stick under the boulder and over the smaller rock. The three of us pulled down on our lever. The boulder rocked and then slowly rolled up. The stick creaked, bent, and snapped. We landed in a heap, holding half a lever.

Duh looked carefully at the broken stick. He walked off into the woods and came back carrying a log ten feet long and twice as thick as our original lever.

“Now you’re thinking,” said Sam.

Duh wedged the lever under the boulder just like he’d seen us do. He pulled down. The boulder rocked.

We grabbed the lever and pulled down. The boulder rolled up. Lin-Say, Jos-feen, and Ma pulled the lever down. The boulder rose up, teetered, and suddenly rolled off to one side, crashing down the hill.

Nat-Li raced out of the cave and danced around hugging everyone in sight—Ma, Lin-Say, Jos-Feen, Fred, Sam, me, and even Duh. I couldn’t tell for sure through the wild beard, but I think Duh’s face turned an embarrassed red.

Ma made hand motions and gave orders to her clan. All the women nodded and smiled. Duh and his men nodded and smiled. We had absolutely no idea what was going on, but we nodded and smiled.

 

 

 

 

T
hat night we had the greatest party ever thrown in the Stone Age. The women showed Duh’s men how to build huge roaring bonfires. Ma’s clan brought out a feast of fruit, nuts, flat bread, stews, and a dark fizzy drink.

“Caveman Cola,” said Fred. He took one of the fresher-looking pieces of meat from one of the men and held it over the fire on a stick.

“Boog?” asked Duh.

“No. Cooked boog,” answered Fred. “Burger.”

“Booger?”

“Burger.”

Fred folded a piece of the bread around the cooked meat and handed it to Duh.

Duh took a bite and smiled.
“Burger.”

Sam finished fitting the last of four circular pieces of wood onto the ends of two sticks he had tied to a small log. Lin-Say and Jos-Feen watched closely. “Wheels,” said Sam. “These are wheels. We need these on our skateboards so we can do three-sixties.”

“Three-sixties?” said Lin-Say.

“That’s right,” said Sam. “That stands for the three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle, but I think we’ll have to invent numbers and circles before I explain all that. For now we’ll just stick with skateboards.”

“Three-sixties,” said Jos-Feen.

I found my straw and played a kazoo kind of version of “Three Blind Mice.” “Music,” I said. Nat-Li clapped, and then honked her own tune on the straw.

Someone started drumming. People started dancing around the fire. Then Duh acted out the rescue.

Nat-Li played herself, crouching off on one side of the fire, looking afraid.

Three guys played the rock. Ma tried to push them. Fred and Ma tried to push them. We all tried to push them. They wouldn’t budge.

The drums beat faster. Sam and Duh pretended to wedge a stick under the rock guys. Duh and Sam jumped. The drums stopped. The three guys rolled off into the darkness and Nat-Li jumped triumphantly into the firelight.

The drums started up again. Everyone laughed and danced, and then we did the whole thing over again. And again. And again. And again. And again until the bonfires dimmed low and the full moon began to sink in the lightening sky.

“Hamburgers, music, and parties—not a bad start on civilization,” said Fred.

Sam doodled A, B, C, and 1, 2, 3 in the sand. “There might be some hope for the species after all. Tomorrow we’ll start numbers and letters. Who knows. By 39,999 B.C. we may be able to put together a book.”

“I still can’t believe there were no paintings in the cave,” I said.

“They took us everywhere and we saw everything,” said Fred. “It must be in some other cave.”

Sam traced three stick figures.

Nat-Li looked at Sam’s scribbles and then suddenly jumped up and ran off.

“Was it something I said?” asked Sam.

“No,” said Fred. “I think it’s your ... problem dandruff.” Fred laughed and punched Sam in the arm.

Nat-Li came back dragging Ma by the arm. Ma took one look, said something to her clan, and we were instantly surrounded by women half-leading, half-pushing us into the cave.

“I didn’t mean it,” said Sam.

“I didn’t do it,” said Fred.

Someone lit torches. We were swept through the main cave and back to the entrance of the small cave with the bars.

“Not again,” said Fred.

Ma took a torch and motioned for us to follow. We looked at the prehistoric crowd in the weird torchlight behind us. Duh held up one hand. Nat-Li waved her straw. “Three-sixties,” said Jos-Feen. Lin-Say cupped her hands to her mouth like a megaphone and called, “Joe Sam Fred, o-kay o-kay.”

“It doesn’t look like we have much choice,” I said.

And we followed Ma into the dark cave,

T
he little cave turned out to be much bigger than we thought. A narrow passageway, only big enough for one person at a time, spiraled back, deep into the earth. The noise of the main cave fell away, and we followed Ma in spooky silence. The passage spiraled tighter and tighter until we were at last forced to crawl on our hands and knees. We followed the flickering torch and listened to the sound of our own breathing. We squeezed through one last crack in the rock, and suddenly found ourselves standing in an immense underground room.