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Shirley screamed from her cage as she always did when she saw Rupert. Luna told her to shut up, and she fell silent. Like the other local denizens, the big hyacinth macaw almost always did what Luna said. Scotty arrived and sat down next to Luna. He had his social face on now, he made light remarks about the weather, about pruning the fruit trees, received the usual compliment from Rupert about the flowers, and the breakfast got under way, with everyone telling everyone else what they were going to do with their day. Rupert and Luna spoke about a mailing, and the purchase of mailing lists from other enviro organizations, and then some computer stuff she couldn’t follow. There was an environmentalist letter-writing campaign about the S-9 pumping station up north that was pumping polluted water into the Everglades and killing all the wildlife. Scotty talked about the rototiller being out of whack and other repair and plumbing stuff and then they got into a little argument about what was compostable and wasn’t. Je
“Unless you’d like to help Scotty with the rototiller,” Luna added pointedly.
“Oh, no, ma’am,” Kevin replied, “driving’s just fine with me. I always hoped that when I grew up I would get to drive people so they could hand out little brochures. Chopping down trees to make paper to stop people from chopping down other trees. Makes perfect sense to me.”
“The brochures are printed on recycled paper,” said Luna with her typical exasperated sigh.
“I know it, Luna. And that’s good. I’m sure our recycling program throws terror into the hearts of the fucking corporate bastards and the lumber barons that’re killing the rain forest. They’re shaking in their boots.”
“Then what would you like us to do, Kevin?” asked Luna. “Blow up the Panamerica Bancorp Building?”
“That’d be a start,” snapped Kevin.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Kevin, grow the fuck up!” said Luna.
There was a silence around the table, as there always was when Kevin gave vent, which Rupert broke by saying in his calm, slow voice, “Je
Je
Nigel Cooksey occupied the whole southeast corner of the house, a small bedroom and bath and the larger room adjoining the Alliance offices that he used as a study-cum-depository. He was a professor and knew everything about the rain forest and had lived down there for many years: this much Je
What Cooksey was she had not figured out yet, maybe hewas gay, but he didn’t seem to do anything about it, maybe not all that interested in sex, although when she entertained that idea her mind skidded a little. Sometimes she thought there was something, like,wrong with him because he was the only one of the inhabitants who did not bathe nude in the pool, and so no one there had seen his equipment. It was huge, purple, with spikes and blades on it, like they drew on demons in underground comix, so said Kevin, but Je
She knocked on Cooksey’s bedroom door and, receiving no response, went to the next room on the hall, his study, where she poked her head in. Cartons, crates, barrels, teetering piles of books on the floor, bookcases almost to the ceiling, stuffed animals and mounted skeletons of animals atop these, a row of filing cabinets of different sizes and vintages, a wicker fan in slow rotation above, light from the windows greened by passage through the mango orchard illuminating the dusty air, and in the center, Nigel Cooksey leaning back in a wooden swivel chair, sandaled feet and thin knotty legs up on the cluttered worktable, arranged carefully among half a dozen soiled tea mugs and a stuffed hoatzin on a stand. The room had a peculiar, penetrant odor compounded of old paper, bachelor, formalin, whiskey, and incompletely preserved organic materials.
Je
“Rupert said he wanted to meet with you?”
“Oh, dear! It can’t be nine already!”
There was a wooden clock on a bookcase shelf, whose face was nearly obscured by stacked journal reprints. Je
“Oh, not at all, no, I was in a kind of brown study.”
Well,yeah, thought Je
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing, my dear. Musing is all. Well, I must stir myself.” He placed the cast on the desk.
“What is that thing, a foot?”
“Yes. Of a tapir,Tapirus terrestris. You can learn a lot about the larger mammals by their footprints. Weight, of course, and sometimes sex and age. This is a male, perhaps two years old.”
“How do you know?”
“How? Why, it’s written here on the base of the cast.” He laughed, a dry chuckle, and after a slight pause, Je
“Gosh, and I thought science was hard.”