Dinosaur Summer (9 page)

The crane operator quickened the lift. The cage seemed to soar over their heads, swaying a yard back and forth now, above the level of the ship's gunwale. The venator screamed like a furious woman. More staccato protests followed like the cawing of a monstrous crow. Peter saw Harryhausen elevate the lens of the big camera, focusing on the swaying cage.

Gluck wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

Shellabarger sniffed and watched the cage come into position above the hatch to the number one hold. The plywood ten feet up on one side of the cage suddenly splintered and a long brown and yellow arm thrust through, claws snatching at the air. As the cage was lowered into the hold, the arm continued to seek for something to kill, to vent the animal's rage.

Men shouted inside the hold, but Shellabarger appeared unconcerned. "He's fought that cage for fifteen years," he muttered. "Once he's stowed, the rest will be a piece of cake."

***

For a moment, there was little going on that interested Anthony. He stood by Peter. "Looks like it's really going to happen," he said.

"What's going to happen?" Peter asked, his voice cracking. "What are we going to do?"

Anthony put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "Grosvenor came up with an idea. `Close the circus down,' he told Gluck, `and I'll get the Muir Society to pay you to take the dinosaurs back.'" Anthony puffed out his chest and stuck his fingers in his suspenders--though he was not wearing suspenders--just like a posturing bigwig. "Everybody makes money, everybody's happy."

"Back to the Grand Tepui?"

Anthony nodded. "Ford heard about it. He told Cooper and Schoedsack. They all thought it was a swell idea, so they approached the government. They have a lot of muscle in Washington, I guess. The State Department wasn't too keen about the idea, but Cooper told everybody to get ready anyway. And to keep it secret. I'm sorry, Peter. It isn't that I don't trust you."

"I didn't say anything to Mom," Peter said.

"I just didn't want to get your hopes up if it all fell through. Maybe I was wrong not to tell you everything."

"You were wrong," Peter said.

Anthony accepted this with a slow nod. "The sticky part is getting the Venezuelans to go along. It's dicey down there now. But I guessel Presidente Betancourt likes movies. He's agreed--but he and the army generals don't see eye-to-eye."

"It's going to be dangerous . . . isn't it?" Peter asked again.

"It could be," Anthony said. "If we aren't careful."

Peter stared at him, full of one question he could not ask.

Anthony solemnly asked it for him. "So why take my only son along? Because . . . We're not actually going to set foot on the Grand Tepui itself. There's the Pico Poco, on the southern end."

Harryhausen, eavesdropping to one side, ambled closer. Anthony continued: "We take the old Indian switchback trail the hunters and entrepreneurs carved into a road in 1913. The old motorized steel bridge is still there. We swing it across to El Grande and let the dinosaurs return to the Lost World. We take our pictures and get paid like kings. And then we go home. And you get a little experience of the world you can't get in New York."

"Jeez," Peter said. He had always loved reading about dinosaurs and about the Grand Tepui. Going there would be something special in any man's life. But going there with a circus, with live dinosaurs . . .

His father was brave--that was a given. But Peter had always preferred home and a good book to rugged adventures. A hiking trip with Anthony was like going on safari with a restless cheetah. Anthony always outdistanced him in a few minutes, then doubled back and tapped his foot impatiently. Peter preferred to study things slowly and carefully.

"Is it really going to happen?" Harryhausen asked. He seemed to be feeling the same qualms as Peter.

Anthony said, "Keep your fingers crossed." He clapped Peter on the shoulder, then lifted his camera and walked off to snap more pictures.

"I didn't bargain on making a long trip," Harryhausen confessed. "I'm not an explorer. I like my monsters to sit on a table and do what I tell them to, one frame at a time."

Peter tried to put on a bluster. "You don't think it's exciting, going to El Grande?"

"Maybe too exciting," Harryhausen said.

***

Two black cars, a hump-backed green De Soto and a long black Packard, drove up as Sammy the centrosaur was being led down the ramp from his train car and into his cage for loading. The struthios, Dip and Casso, and the avisaurs had already been put aboard. Shellabarger had ridden alongside the Aepyornis in its cage, soothing her with his voice. He returned with the empty platform to the dockside and stepped off, eyes on two men in long black coats and gray hats, who stood by the De Soto. They looked like the men who had come to the train the night before. Ippolito watched from the wing of the ship's bridge, leaning on the rail.

The two men walked over to the Packard.

Schoedsack and Cooper stepped out of the Packard and conferred with them, took a sheath of papers, and carried them to Shellabarger and O'Brien. Schoedsack held the papers just a couple of inches from his thick glasses, flipping them back crisply. Cooper guided him. Peter stood beside Harryhausen near the dolly.

"It's go all the way," Schoedsack said. "Foggy bottom has no objections."

"Give our regards to Carl Denham," one of the men from the State Department called to Cooper. They smiled and got into the green De Soto.

"Yaaah!" Cooper said, waving his hand at them.

Schoedsack turned to O'Brien. "You heard what Ford said. Get a story for us, something we can really fly with . . ." "Indians, dinosaurs, rivers, jungles, mountains," O'Brien said. "What more can an audience ask for?"

"We'll be getting the rushes on the circus tomorrow," Schoedsack said. "You'll be under way by then. I'll radio you, tell you what they're like."

"They'll be good," O'Brien said evenly.

"Well, it's in your hands now," Cooper said. He shook hands with O'Brien and watched the centrosaur's cage being lifted into the hold. "Remember, if anything happens to you--"

"I'll be fine," O'Brien said. He waved Cooper and Schoedsack back into the Packard and slammed the door on them. "You're just jealous," he said, leaning on the doorframe.

"I'd give my eyeteeth to be on that ship with you," Cooper drawled. Schoedsack grunted agreement and looked longingly through his thick glasses at theLibertad.

"You've got lots of responsibilities," O'Brien said with a twinkle in his eye. "Movies to produce . . . airlines to run . . . government committees . . . no time for big adventure."

"Don't rub it in." Schoedsack winced, leaned back in his seat, and waved. "Anything's easier than making movies in a studio nowadays." O'Brien closed the door with a solidthunk. The big black car rumbled down the pier. O'Brien walked past them, shaking his head. "Monte and Coop won't let us have all the fun, believe me."

"Which cage do you want to ride?" Anthony asked Peter.

"Huh?" Peter swiveled to face his father.

"Just fooling. We should get our bags aboard now." Anthony looked Peter over. "You look pensive."

"I still think we should call Mom," Peter said, eyes lowered. "Let her know we're leaving the country, at least."

"If we do, she won't let you go," Anthony said, two thin lines forming beside his lips. It had always been a bone of contention between his mother and father that when she did spend time with Peter, she coddled him. Anthony always expected him to pull his own weight, and that had started any number of fights before his mother and father had parted.

Peter thought of the caged venator and of the big black ship with its hold full of wild animals. He had never been at sea before. He wondered if he would get seasick. Worse things could happen.

Anthony watched him intently, the lines still present at the corners of his lips.

Peter took a deep breath. "Let's go," he said.

"My lad," Anthony said.

***

That night, wrapped tightly in blankets in his narrow bunk in the small, neat ship's cabin, Peter wrote:

My stomach still hurts. Maybe I am a coward. My father and I explored the ship all afternoon while the animals were being stowed and the cages locked down. The captain and crew ignored us and got ready for the voyage. I am just getting used to what it feels like to be aboard a ship. The deck is steady enough but not as steady as land. When another big freighter went to sea and passed our pier, the ship rocked a little. Tomorrow we'll be going to sea ourselves.

Loading all the animals took a long time because some of the cages aren't strong enough to be lifted. The venator cage and the centrosaur cage are strong enough, but the ankylosaur cage needed to have new braces welded to the sides and bottom, I guess because the ankylosaur is heavier than she is strong. I mean the cage was lighter on the sides because Sheila doesn't rush the bars like the venator, or butt them as Sammy sometimes does. That meant the animals had to be transferred to wooden pens on the wharf while the welders went to work.

Father took some pictures looking over the side of the ship. The ankylosaur turned and turned in her pen as the arc welders flashed and hissed and snapped. She must have thought there were some very funny animals that she could hear but not see.

OBie and Ray Harryhausen spent the day exploring the ship, when they weren't stowing their cameras and other stuff as it arrived. Mr. O'Brien (all his friends call him OBie, with a capital O and B) seems to be a nice man but sometimes a little sad. His face lights up when he sees the animals, and he stares at them with such concentration.

The ship is clean but a little old, rusty in places. The engines are big, though Dad says they aren't nearly as big as the engines in an ocean liner like theQueen Mary.Dad wason the Queen Mary during the war. It was hit by a big wave and nearly capsized, he says.

The ship's insides are painted white and green and everything smells of fried food and diesel oil and bilge and other things I can't identify--some really funny smells that I will never forget, but not unpleasant. All together, it smells like a big iron ship, Dad says.

There is lots of polished brass on the bridge. The captain takes pride in his ship. This evening, at dinner, he said he had served on much larger ships in the war. He had two ships sunk from under him by German submarines, one off the coast of New York, the other off Florida. His English is fine, but I'd like to learn to speak Spanish.

On the ship, the sailors speak Spanish and Portuguese, and some know German and French. Most speak at least a little English.

Our cabin is amidships, two decks below the bridge, with a porthole on the starboard side. I'm talking like a sailor already! We're about twenty feet above the water. It's dark outside now. The provisions have been loaded, including the meat, hay, and alfalfa, and all the expedition supplies. (Is that too many commas? Father says commas slow things down.)

The captain told OBie that we had received clearance from Venezuela to put into Boca Grande, on the south side of the Orinoco Delta. We should be there in less than a week. It's not hurricane season and the weather should be good.

Shellabarger did not have much to say at dinner. He was quiet, but he had a fierce, angry look. He didn't come out of his cabin when we gathered on deck this evening after dark to talk about the day.

I guess I'm looking forward to tomorrow. I feel a little better now. Writing helps. Dad's getting great pictures and I likeOBie and Ray Harryhausen a lot. I've always wanted to learn how to draw.

Peter put down the fountain pen and looked at the pages he had covered. Except in school, he had never strung so many words together in one sitting.

Chapter Six

TheLibertad was not designed to comfort landlubbers. At sea, she would roll thirty degrees, then slow her roll, give an alarming shudder, and right herself, continuing over to the other side until she shuddered again: back and forth, hour after hour, over the dead calm sea.

Anthony, OBie, and Harryhausen were seasick after a few hours; Peter, to his surprise, joined Vince Shellabarger in feeling chipper.

The sky was clear from horizon to horizon and the sun warmed the ship's decks until they were almost too hot to walk on barefoot. Still, Peter reveled in the sensation of strolling from end to end of this little world, smelling the paint, the oil, the salt water, the warm and pure air. The dull steady pounding of the engine vibrated the deck, and any interruption of this reassuring rhythm seemed ominous. It was so totally unlike New York that he might have been carried to another planet.

He leaned over the wooden rail on the starboard wing of the bridge, using his hands to block his peripheral vision until he couldn't see the ship, and became one of the seagulls that wheeled and glided beside him.

Anthony recovered from his seasickness by the second day, but after a few quick turns around the ship with the Leica, there wasn't much left to do except remain vigilant. "If the ship sinks, or if a dinosaur escapes, I'll get some good shots," he told Peter.

Peter played shuffleboard and Ping-Pong with Harryhausen, burly, sandy-haired Rob Keller, who was in charge of the roustabouts and reported directly to Shellabarger, and Osborne from the camera crew. Keller and his men would travel with them all the way to the Pico Poco, to provide whatever was needed for the care and confinement of the animals.

Ping-Pong on the rolling ship was a real challenge. Harryhausen and Keller played a few games, and then Harryhausen handed his paddle over to Peter. Peter played against Osborne and quickly whacked two balls over the side. Harryhausen and Keller joined them at the rail to see if they could spot the balls in the flat sea. "If we roll far enough, I'll just pluck them out and we'll play another game," Harryhausen said.

It was at this point that Harryhausen insisted Peter call him "Ray." "Anything else makes me feel ancient, like C. B. De Mille," he said, eyes crinkling.

The roustabouts and camera crew ran around the ship to keep in shape, or read paperback books on the few deck chairs, or hung out with the sailors, trying to pick up information about the ports they would be seeing. Sailors knew a lot of things that Peter found fascinating. Anthony warned him against some of those things.