Dinosaur Summer (3 page)

Peter could not read on trains or in cars. It made him queasy. Writing in the notebook had been bad enough. He had been waiting for this moment, however, to open the thick, heavy book with all of its pictures:The Lost World, by Sir George Edward Challenger, as told to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle had written the Sherlock Holmes books and many novels. Peter had readThe Lost World when he had been eight or nine. Now he had his own copy instead of one from a library, and this one was the deluxe illustrated edition. The bookseller at the Strand had told them it had been out of print for more than five years. People were not very interested in dinosaurs anymore.

Peter scanned the glossy pictures first. He flipped past portraits of the explorers and their Indian guides, stiffly posed in the fashion of 1912, and stopped when he came to a sepia-toned picture of an overgrown marsh with a lake beyond. Looming over the lake were the highland mesas that formed a barrier to the wind on the northern edge of El Grande, the Grand Tepui.

Like most young people, he had grown up hearing about El Grande, biggest of Venezuela's ancient sandstone plateaus. Twenty miles north of Brazil's Monte Roraima, El Grande rose as high as eight thousand feet above the Gran Sabana, and stretched eighty-five miles from end to end. This was the last place on Earth where dinosaurs still lived.

He read the text beneath the picture: The Lake of the Serpents, as seen from the south. The mountains in the distance squat atop the Grand Tepui, plateaus piled upon plateaus, and protect the entire elevated region from the cold northerly winds. They are more than fifty miles away, yet visible on this remarkably clear day. Between the Lake of the Serpents and the southern end of the Grand Tepui lies the south-central lake, called the Lake of Butterflies, or Lake Akuena. In all, there are six lakes on the Grand Tepui, the largest of them being the Lago Centrale, or Central Lake, which connects with the Lake of the Serpents by a narrow strait.

Peter was a quick reader, and in the next hour he re-lived the 1912 journey of Edward Challenger and his crew and Indian porters up the Caron�iver to the Grand Tepui, called Kahu Hidi by the Indians. They were blocked by mile-high falls and impenetrable rapids, and had to circle around to the Pico Poco, the "little mountain," where an ancient overgrown Indian switchback trail allowed them and a few burros to climb six thousand feet. They arrived at the top of Pico Poco, which was only a mile or so wide, but level with the Grand Tepui. The gap between Pico Poco and the Grand Tepui, at its narrowest, was one hundred feet. Challenger ordered the construction of a rope bridge . . .

Peter read through to the chapter that described the rock maze on the southern end of El Grande, and the swamp beyond the maze, where lurked huge crocodile-like animals with heads longer than a man was tall and teeth over eight inches long. "Yet far more dangerous and enchanting than these fresh-water Krakens," Challenger wrote, "are the cobra-necked, turtle-bodied saurians of Lake Akuena, supposed by some to beplesiosaurs. Though less than a fourth the size of the largest crocodilians, they are as vicious as the fabledpiranha. They sit on the shores of the lake and hoot and chirp maddeningly throughout the dark, wet nights, hideous sirens inviting their victims to join in fatal reptilian play. They allow no rest, no thoughts but of death and rubbery hooded necks and broad grinning mouths full of slashing teeth . . ."

Peter rubbed his eyes. It was nine o'clock. He was hungry again despite their supper on the train. Traveling always sharpened his appetite. He leaned across the bed and shook his father's shoulder. "Dad."

"Mmmfgk."

"Dad?"

"Huh?" Anthony jerked his head up from the pillow and stared owlishly around the room.

"Are you hungry?"

His head flopped back. "You want to try room service?"

Peter grinned.

"How about a steak . . . rare? One for each of us, and baked potatoes with sour cream and chives. I'll have a glass of wine and you'll have a cola."

"That would be terrific," Peter said.

Anthony dialed the phone for room service and pointed to the book. The cover was stamped with the gruesome image of a black-and-white-and-green-featheredStratoraptor velox in its native rain forest. "Like to run into one of those?" "No, sir," Peter said. "Nor anAltovenator. But I'd like to see both of them in the wild." But his father was talking to someone in the kitchen, ordering their steaks. When he finished, he put down the phone and grinned wolfishly at his son.

"They don't take kindly to nosyNorteamericanos down there. Not anymore."

"Why not? What happened?" Peter asked.

"It's a long story . . ."

"We have time," Peter said.

"It's a tragedy, really," Anthony said. "Professor Challenger followed in the footsteps of half a dozen explorers-- like Shomburgk and Maple White--but he was the first to actually make his way to the top of El Grande and live to tell about it. That began the big dinosaur craze. Everybody sent teams into El Grande and started catching dinos and exporting them for zoos and circuses. Things got out of hand, of course, and some animals started getting scarce.

"It was high time that somebody with good sense stepped in. In 1924, the Muir Society told First Lady Grace Coolidge--Calvin's wife--that bringing down all those animals, just to put them in zoos--or letting big game hunters journey in and shoot them--just didn't make sense. President Coolidge had a son who loved dinosaurs. The boy was sick, dying actually, and before he died, he asked his father to help save the animals on the tepui. Like me, ol' Silent Cal had a soft spot for his son, made even softer by knowing the boy wasn't going to be around much longer . . .

"So Coolidge put pressure on the Venezuelan dictator, Juan Vicente G�. The next U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, kept up the pressure because he and Coolidge were friends. That was before Black Monday brought on the Depression.

"The Muir Society wanted to turn El Grande into a nature preserve. But G� got angry. He didn't like gringos telling him what to do. Instead, he stopped lettinganybody go in there.

"Then there are the Indians. They think of El Grande as a sacred place, and send their warriors and future chiefs there to prove themselves. The Army doesn't like that, because the tribes get uppity when heroes lead them, and that makes trouble.

"The Venezuelan army still guards the place. G� is gone, but they let in only two or three people each year, Latin American scientists mostly, and they won't let them carry guns. Well, of course, without guns, a lot of them die.

"Meanwhile, up north, most of the circuses and zoos didn't know how to take care of the dinosaurs they had. They lost them and couldn't get replacements. The only circus that kept its animals alive and healthy was Circus Lothar, and they're just about broke."

Their dinner arrived on a rolling cart pushed by a tall, smiling black man in a white jacket. Everything was covered by silver trays. The steaks were grilled to perfection, thick and rare.

Peter loved hearing his father speak. His precise diction, like an actor's, and his pleasant if somewhat clipped tone reminded him of the times when they had lived together with his mother, and Anthony had read newspapers and magazines to him before dinner.

"Dad, who's the fiercest predator on this planet?" Peter asked as they finished the last cooling, still-succulent bites of beef. He wiped a dribble of juice from his chin. "The butcher who sliced up this steer, I suppose," Anthony said.

"You don't thinkpeople are?"

"Somepeople," Anthony said. "Not me. If I had to shoot my own cow to eat meat, I'd become a vegetarian."

"Isn't that hypocritical?" Peter asked. He fluffed his pillow and lay back on the bed.

"Sure," Anthony said. He tapped his fork on the plate and got up to roll the cart to the door. "Dollars to donuts a carnivorous dinosaur is a whole lot more honest than any human being."

"Better dressed, too," Peter said.

"Yeah, well, we'll take care of that tomorrow morning. It's time we get some serious sleep. We're due at the circus to meet Gluck and Shellabarger at three p.m. And the last, gala performance starts at seven."

Anthony opened the door and pushed the cart outside.

Chapter Three

They went shopping as soon as the stores opened, taking a taxi to a men's clothier, then walking down the street with their parcels to a big camping and Army surplus store. In a couple of hours, they had dungarees, light wool coats and khaki jackets, new lightweight cotton underwear, two pairs of hiking boots apiece and six pairs of wool socks, bush hats, two new belts, two all-purpose hunting knives and two pocketknives, and two compasses. Peter had never owned a knife before and immediately wanted to find a stick and test the blades, but Anthony said they barely had time to get to the circus.

Peter did not ask why they needed all the rugged clothing, and his father did not volunteer any information. Anthony wandered up and down the aisles, filling his basket with item after item. He treated it as a long-delayed and well-deserved shopping spree, all on the tab of the National Geographic Society. Peter realized they could never carry all this stuff, and challenged Anthony: "What are we going to do with five kerosene lamps? Or with a box of tent stakes?" Usually, his father relented with a smile, and Peter put the items back on the shelf. On a few items, Anthony simply said, "Keep it. We'll need it."

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At two-thirty, four miles outside the city, the green and white taxi dropped them off by a railway siding on the edge of a broad field covered with long, wet, trampled grass. Anthony paid the driver and they stepped out. The driver removed their luggage and bags of new clothes, then tipped his cap with a sly smile, the same kind of smile he might have given to two gentlemen being dropped off in a red-light district. The taxi rumbled away and they stood for a moment on the edge of the field.

A long line of flatcars, Pullmans, and boxcars pushed up beside a concrete loading platform. Across the field, a big top had been erected, and two connected smaller tents formed the wings of a Y. North of the tents, a gray awning sheltered five large diesel generators that coughed smoke into the afternoon sky. Four long trucks were parked alongside the generators, and roustabouts busily loaded and unloaded equipment from the rear and side doors of their trailers. Three wide white searchlights sat dark like big blind eyes between the siding and the big top. From around the eastern tent paced a dozen horses on a jaunt with their grooms. Concession carts and a few game booths stood unattended and sad beside the path to the big top. Peter did not see any dinosaurs.

A banner sagged wearily over the ticket booths near the closest wing of the tents. On the banner, in vivid green letters adorned with painted scales and feathers, stretched the name CIRCUS LOTHAR, and below that, in smaller letters, LOTHAR GLUCK'S DINOSAUR CIRCUS, and on a second banner below that, Beasts from the Edge of Time!

Peter had not been to a circus since he was five years old, and he remembered only a confusion of bright colors, large cages with bored-looking animals, a huge woman in a frilly dress, and a clown in a spotlight with a bouquet of flowers. This circus, he saw immediately, was different.

A few big drops of rain pattered from the gray sky. "Gluck hasn't made money in more than six years," Anthony said as he popped a tattered black umbrella over their heads. "I guess the public's gotten tired of hearing about dino disasters. Thirty of them died of worms at the World's Fair. Big disgrace. Cruelty to animals. Before that, in 1935, a venator got loose in a circus in Havana and killed twenty people. The newspapers blamed everybody in the business. So Lothar Gluck is at the end of his rope, through no fault of his own."

They walked past the concession stands and the sideshow tent to the ticket booth. A husky bearded attendant who might have doubled as a strongman checked them against a list and nodded permission for them to go in.

Immediately, they stepped from mud onto dry sawdust and the air went from warm and moist to dry and musty with a sharp smell that made Peter wrinkle his nose. He had smelled horses on his uncle's ranch in Kentucky and cows in a dairy barn, but he had never smelled anything like this. Then he remembered visiting a big pet shop in Chicago and the rich sour odor of parrots and macaws. This was more primal, alarming; it stirred deep memories.

Peter wondered if it was actually thesmell that kept people away from the circus.

They came to the cages, eight of them arranged in two rows on either side of the end of the first tent. Most were covered with tarps. Whatever was inside the cages was quiet and still. Ahead, through a canvas flap furled and tied to a cross-bar between two poles, Peter saw the third ring under the big main tent, and bleachers in shadow beyond. A man and woman were riding a dappled gray gelding around the small ring, taking turns standing on its back and leaping off as the other leaped on. No music, no sounds but the pounding hoofs and the grunts and comments of the performers. The man wore loose pants and a white shirt and the woman nicely filled out what looked like a black swimsuit.

Of course, Anthony noticed her. Peter noticed her as well.

As they walked between the cages, a tall powerful-looking man ducked under a lifted cut in the canvas. "You the photographer?" he asked in a voice stuck somewhere between black velvet and gravel.

"And writer," Anthony said.

"I'm Vince Shellabarger."

"This is my son, Peter. He's my assistant." Anthony and Shellabarger shook hands, and then the big dinosaur trainer turned to Peter and glowered down at him. His judgmental sea-green eyes glinted with bits of turquoise. Straight white-blond hair stretched thin over his brown scalp. He had a long chiseled jaw and prominent cheekbones, a solid barrel gut and broad heavy shoulders. A brilliantly white shirt strained across his chest. Gray curly chest hair billowed over the V in his shirt and thick biceps threatened to rip the rolled-up sleeves. For a moment, he scared Peter.

"Hello, Peter," Shellabarger said. He stuck out his hand and smiled warmly. Suddenly Peter was no longer afraid, but proud to shake hands with the man.