Mastodonia

TWENTY-ONE

It was spring in Mastodonia and everything was beautiful. The mobile home stood on top of a little ridge no more than a half-mile or so from where the time road brought us through. Just down the slope from the home, a grove of wild crab-apple trees was ablaze with pink blossoms, and the long valley that lay below the ridge was dotted with clumps and groves of crab apples and other flowering trees. The open places were a sea of spring flowers, and the entire area was swarming with songbirds.

Two four-wheel drives were parked to one side of the mobile home. From the front entrance, an awning extended outward, and just beyond the awning was a large lawn table, a gaily striped umbrella sprouting from the center of it.

Overall, our new home had a distinctly festive look.

“We bought a big one,” said Rila. “Sleeps six, has a nice living area and the kitchen has everything you’d want.”

“You like it?” I asked.

“Like it? Asa, can’t you see? It’s the kind of hideaway that everyone dreams about — the cabin by the lake, the mountain hunting lodge. Except that this is even better. You can practically feel the freedom There’s no one here. You understand? Absolutely no one here. The first men to reach North America won’t cross from Asia for a thousand centuries. There are people in the world, of course, but not on this continent. Here you are as alone as anyone can manage.”

“You done any exploring?”

“No, not by myself. I think I’d be afraid alone. I was waiting for you. And how about you? Don’t you like it here?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. That was the truth; I did like Mastodonia. But the concept of aloneness, of personal independence, I knew, was something to which one would have to become accustomed. You’d have to let it grow upon you.

Ahead of us, someone shouted and it took a moment to locate the place where the shout had come from. Then I saw them, the two of them, Hiram and Bowser, rounding the slope just above the grove of blooming crab-apple trees. They were running, Hiram with an awkward, loping gallop, Bowser bouncing joyously, every now and then letting out a welcoming bark as he bounced along.

Forgetting any dignity — and in this world there was no need for dignity — we ran to meet them. Bowser, running ahead, leaped up to lick my face, gamboling around in doggish raptures. Hiram came up panting.

“We’ve been watching for you, Mr. Steele,” he said, gasping for breath. “We just took a little walk and missed you. We went down the hill to see one of the elephants.”

“Elephants? You mean mastodons.”

“I guess that’s right,” Hiram said. “I guess that’s the name for them creatures. I tried to remember the name, but I forgot. But anyhow, we saw a real nice mastodon. It let us get up real close. I think it likes us.”

“Look, Hiram,” I said, “you don’t go up real close to a mastodon. It’s probably peaceful enough, but if you get too close to it, you can never know what it might do. That goes for big pussycats, as well — especially those that have long teeth sticking out of their mouths.”

“But this mastodon is nice, Mr. Steele. It moves so slow and it looks so sad. We call it Stiffy because it moves so slow. It just shuffles along.”

“For goodness sake,” I said, “an old beat-up bull that has been run out of the herd is nothing to fool around with. It probably has a nasty temper.”

“That’s right, Hiram,” Rila agreed. “You steer clear of that animal. Or any animal you find here. Don’t go making friends with them.”

“Not even with a woodchuck, Miss Rila?”

“Well, I guess a woodchuck would be safe enough,” she said.

The four of us went up to the mobile home.

“I have a room all my own,” Hiram said to me.

”Miss Rila said it is my room and no one else’s. She said Bowser could sleep in it with me.”

“Come on in,” said Rila, “and see what we have here. Then you can go out in the yard …”

“The yard?”

“The place with the lawn table; I call that the yard.

Once you look around inside, go out in the yard and look around. I’ll make lunch. Will sandwiches be all right?”

“They’ll be fine.”

“We’ll eat outside,” said Rila. “I just want to sit and look at this country. I can’t seem to get enough of it.”

I looked through our new home. It was the first time I’d ever been inside one of them, although I had known a number of people who had lived in them and seemed well satisfied. I particularly liked the living area — seemingly plenty of space, comfortable furniture, large windows, thick carpeting on the floor, a bookcase filled with books Rila had taken from my small library, a gun rack beside the door. The whole thing was a lot more luxurious, I had to admit, than the house back on the farm.

Going outside, I walked down the ridge, with Hiram striding along beside me and Bowser bouncing ahead.

The ridge was not particularly high, but high enough to give a good view of the surrounding countryside. There below us to the right flowed the stream, the small river which had flowed in the Cretaceous and still flowed in the twentieth century through Willow Bend. Through millions of years, the land had changed but little. It seemed to me that the ridge was somewhat higher than it had been in the Cretaceous, perhaps higher than it would be in the twentieth century, but I could not be certain.

The river valley was fairly open, broken only by the scattered clumps of flowering shrubs and smaller trees, but the ridges other than the one we stood on were heavily timbered. I kept an eye out for game herds, but there seemed to be none. Except for a couple of large birds, probably eagles, flying high in the sky, there was no other sign of life.

“There he is,” Hiram called, excited, “There is Stiffy. Do you see him, Mr. Steele?”

I looked in the direction of Hiram’s pointing finger and made out the mastodon in the valley just below the ridge. He was standing at the edge of a clump of small trees, stripping leaves off them with his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth. Even from the distance at which we stood, he had a faintly moth-eaten appearance. He seemed to be alone; at least no other mastodons were in sight.

When Rila called to us, we went back down the ridge. Plates piled high with sandwiches and cakes were set on the lawn table. There were dishes of pickles and a jar of olives and a large carafe of coffee.

For Bowser there was a large plate of roast, cut up in small pieces that would be easy for him to chew.

“I put down the umbrella,” said Rila, “so the sun can shine on us. The sun seems so nice here.”

I looked at my watch. It said five o’clock, but the sun said noon. Rila laughed at me. “Just forget the watch,” she said. “There are no watches here. I left mine on the bedside table the first day that I was here. By now, it’s probably run down.”

I nodded, pleased with the idea. It was good enough for me. There were not many places where a man could cut free of the tyranny of timepieces.

We ate in the sunshine, unhurriedly, and lazed away the afternoon watching the shadow from the western hills creep across the river and the valley.

I nodded at the river. “There should be good fishing there.”

“Tomorrow,” Rila said, “Tomorrow we’ll go fishing. Take one of the cars and go exploring. There is so much to see.”

Late in the afternoon, we heard far-off trumpeting that could have been mastodons. In the middle of the night, I was wakened by a sound. Lying tensed in bed, I waited for it to come again, a vicious but muted squalling from a northern ridge. A cat, no doubt of that. A sabertooth, perhaps, or some other cat. I told myself that I was hung up on sabertooths, fascinated with them, curious about them. I had to get the idea of them out of my head; there must be cats of many other kinds in this world of the Sangamon. The crying in and of itself was a chilling sound, but I felt little actual fear of it. I was safe. Beside me Rila slept, undisturbed by the squalling from the north.

After breakfast, we packed a lunch, put two 7 mm. rifles and some fishing gear in the car and set out to explore, Rila and I in the front seat, Hiram and Bowser in the back. Several miles down the valley, we came upon and circled a herd of about a dozen mastodon. They lifted their heads to look at us, napping their ears, seeking our scent with upraised trunks, but made no move toward us. At noon, we parked beside the river and I went fishing for not more than five minutes, coming back with three good-sized trout, which we cooked over a driftwood fire. While we ate, a half-dozen wolves trotted out on a bald bluff that rose across the river and watched us. They seemed to me larger than the usual wolf and I wondered if they might be dire wolves. We flushed deer, which went bounding off ahead of us. We sighted a tawny cat on a rocky hillside, but it was cougar-like and was no sabertooth.

We returned home well before sundown, tired out and delighted. It was the best vacation that 1 had ever had.

Over the next two days we made other trips, setting off in different directions. We saw a number of mastodons, one small herd of giant bison, much larger than the buffalo of the historic western plains, with great spreading horns. We found a marsh where ducks and geese rose in clouds at our approach, and a bit beyond the marsh came upon our greatest discovery, a colony of beavers that were as large as bears. They were working on a dam that had created the marsh that was home for the ducks and geese. We watched them from afar, in fascination.

“One beaver, one fur coat,” Rila observed.

I lost all track of time. I forgot everything. I envisioned endless days of wondrous exploring, gorgeous loafing stretching out ahead of us.

But the idyll came to an end when we returned on the third day. Ben was waiting for us, sitting at the lawn table. He had glasses and a bottle waiting for us.

“Here, drink up,” he said. “We’re going into business. Courtney is flying in the Safari bunch tomorrow.

They’re ready to talk. Courtney says they’re eager.

Pretending not to be, but eager.”