Hall of Small Mammals Read Online Free PDF Page A

you add my dog?” she interrupts.
    â€œOf course,” he says. “Do you want to bring her out?”
    â€œShe’s at the vet.”
    Pastor Frank smiles and gives her hands another squeeze. He speaks softly, almost in a whisper. He asks God to keep watch over sweet little—what’s the dog’s name?—to watch over sweet little Shirley Temple. “Lord,” he says, “we praise all the beauty in Your creation, the fish and the birds and the turtles and the squirrels and the cats and the dogs and even the possums.”
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    The wailing at night does not stop. A neighbor calls to complain about the noise, and Mawmaw blames the television, her badhearing. She tries a night-light in the laundry room. She tries stuffing towels under all the doors to muffle the sound. She prints out pictures of the tundra and other mammoths and tapes them to the walls. Some nights, half asleep, Mawmaw worries that the noise is emanating from within the catacombs of her own body. Opening her mouth she half expects the cries to amplify. She is able to sleep only in spurts. She dreams that Shirley is her guide through a world of snow and ice and unidentifiable landscapes. Every direction looks the same, but Shirley knows the way. Where they are going is important, but in the morning Mawmaw can no longer remember why.
    One night, she gives the mammoth three pills. The next night, four. But, no matter the dosage, they don’t seem to have any effect.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asks, downstairs again, desperate, the lights flipped on. “What do you need from me? Is this mating season? I’m sorry to tell you this, but you got no one to mate with. You’re on your own. You got to hush up. I’ve tried everything I know to try. I’m going out of my mind.” She steps backward into the hall, the door to Shirley’s room still open. “Is this what you want? You want out? Here.” She opens the door to the backyard. “Do whatever you need to do.”
    She stomps back up the stairs and climbs into bed. A little after midnight, thank God, the cries downstairs finally stop.
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    What wakes her in the morning isn’t a noise but a light. Bands of gold and yellow sunlight crawl slowly across the end of herbedspread. She’s quite certain no morning has ever gleamed in this particular way. She feels like she’s been asleep for a thousand years.
    Only once she’s on the stairs in her bathrobe and slippers does she remember leaving all the doors open for Shirley. The mammoth isn’t in the laundry room—or anywhere else in the house.
    â€œCome on out, wherever you are. Don’t play tricks on me.”
    She steps outside into the sunlight and peeks under the edge of the porch, just in case Shirley managed to squeeze herself underneath. The far corner is where the dog went to be alone in the end. But the mammoth is not there. Nor is it anywhere in the yard or the dog pen. Shirley has escaped.
    Of course, there’s no one to call for help but Tommy. His voice mail picks up after a few rings.
    â€œCall me back. It’s about Shirley,” she says vaguely.
    As soon as she hangs up, she regrets the message. Her son doesn’t need to be involved, not if his solution is poison-laced candy or a bop on the head with the shovel. An unsettling image begins to take shape: her Tommy, no longer handsome but totally devolved, a swollen caveman’s brow, hunting spear in his grimy hand, bits of broken leaves in his long and matted hair.
    She climbs into her car and drives up and down the block, too afraid to actually yell out Shirley’s name. Two streets over she spots a hulking shape beside a brick house, but when she gets closer the shape is only some yellow pampas grass. On a cul-de-sac, a white-haired man in a blue tracksuit is walking his Jack Russell terrier. The sight of the