Dinosaur Summer Page 4

  "Lotto, this is Anthony Belzoni and his son, Peter," Shellabarger introduced. Gluck stuck out a thick pale hand, and Anthony shook it first as Gluck murmured certain standard phrases, "Pleasssed to meet you, delighted, yesss . . ." Then he came to Peter. Gluck's hand felt soft and slightly damp, like bread dough. He kept glancing over his shoulder, as if expecting someone else to arrive.

  Though he was a U.S. citizen—and had been since 1913— Lothar Gluck still spoke with a German accent. He hung on to many of his s's as he said them, as if unwilling to let his words loose.

  "Sso, Mr. Shellabarger hass given you a small tour?" Gluck asked.

  "We've seen a few of the animals," Anthony said. "It's a thrill to get this close, isn't it, Peter?"

  Gluck focused on Peter, sized him up, and smiled sunnily. "Esspecially for a youngsster. I have built my career on thrilling young folks with the beassts."

  Peter felt he was expected to say something. "They're great," he said. "I mean, they're big."

  "Both great and big," Gluck said. "Sssome bigger than others." He cast a sad, glassy eye on Sammy. "Will Ssammy be performing tonight?"

  "He wouldn't miss it," Shellabarger said.

  "Sammy was the first dinosssaur I brought down from El Grande. I first went up the rivers to the tepuis when I was thirty-one yearss old, in the expedition of Colonel Fawcett himself. He ordered me to take Sammy and two other beassts down the Carom, back to civilization. Colonel Fawcett stayed behind, and was never seen again. After Professor Challenger, he was the greatest explorer of that region . . . But then, Challenger wass a dynamo, a genius, and something of a monssster himself."

  "Cardozo was better," Shellabarger said. "He knew his stuff."

  "If you get the impression I am waiting for somebody," Gluck said, glancing over his shoulder again, "I am. The producers, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Schoedsack, and their photographer, O'Brien, should be here soon. They are going to film the circus tonight."

  "We always enjoy publicity," Shellabarger said dryly.

  Lotto waved his plump hand. Three gold rings glittered on his thick fingers. "I think we may alsso have John Ford. He has always been a loyal patron. They will arrive in time for dinner, I hope. Already the movie truckss are here." Gluck turned to Peter again. "Shall we take a look at more beassts? It is wonderful, the way Vince has with them . . ."

  Gluck accompanied them to one more cage. At the end of the row, near the entrance to the tent, a large, sluggish animal stood asleep on its four pillarlike legs. Heavily armored, the tail tipped with a large ball of bone, with spikes poking from its sides and shorter spikes in rows along its back; even its eyelids were covered with plates of bone. It looked like a cross between a horned toad and a Sherman tank and was longer than Sammy, almost thirty-one feet.

  "This is Sheila," Shellabarger said to Anthony and Peter. "Sheila's a southern ankylosaur."

  Peter bent over to examine the underpinnings of the cage. Big curved steel shock absorbers were mounted on each wheel axle and the cage rolled on truck tires.

  "Vince, she seems to sleep all the time," Gluck said. "Whenever I look at her."

  "I doubt Sheila knows the difference between being asleep and awake. She's not asleep, exactly. She's just got her eyes shut."

  Anthony stepped forward and was surprised by a sudden swing of the tail against the cage. The ball of bone made a hideous whack against the bars and they all jumped back. The ankylosaur opened her small brown eyes, blinked with translucent membranes, opened her beaked mouth, stretched her neck, and made a shrill clucking noise, like a huge bass chicken.

  "You startled her," Shellabarger said, grinning. "See, not exactly asleep." Anthony had almost dropped his camera. He looked at Peter with chagrin.

  "You big lummox," Shellabarger said to the animal. Sheila clucked again, swung her head slowly back and forth, and rasped her big side spikes against the bars, making a fierce racket. "Just about the only fun she has is walking around the ring. She's a good platform. Just wait."

  "Let us see the titan," Gluck said.

  Shellabarger shook his head firmly. "Not when there's a show to do," he said. "She's as sensitive as a wild horse."

  Gluck looked irritated, but shrugged; Shellabarger was master of the beasts.

  "Titan?" Peter asked.

  "Aepyornis titan," Gluck said proudly. "We call her Mrs. Birdqueen."

  "Our young visitor hasn't seen the show yet, and you haven't done much publicity lately, Lotto," Shellabarger said. "Let it be a surprise for him."

  Chapter Four

  A crowd of bigwigs and celebrities stood around outside the tent, most dressed in gray suits and fedoras and smoking cigars and cigarettes. Two seemed out of place, standing a few yards apart from the rest: a thin young man, balding prematurely, and a grandfatherly-looking fellow with a pleasant but discerning expression. Their suits were almost slick with wear. The thin young man seemed to have inherited his clothes from an ancient male ancestor, they gleamed so at knees and elbows.

  Gluck waded in among the celebrities, shaking hands, smiling, enthusing about this or that. Behind the men, Peter saw three women preening and displaying their cigarettes in long thin holders. Their high heels, sheer gowns, and fur coats seemed odd on the sawdust floor. One of them glanced at Peter, looked away, glanced back, and smiled. They were heart-stoppingly beautiful.

  Anthony, Peter, and Shellabarger followed Gluck. Shellabarger knew the men in good suits, and he nodded and shook hands with them, introducing them in turn to Peter and Anthony. "This is Merian Cooper," he said. "Coop did King Kong, what, ten years ago?"

  "Fourteen," Cooper said with a thick Southern accent. He was plump, middle-aged, of medium height. At first, he did not seem very impressive—but then Peter caught his direct gaze.

  "You made Kong?" Peter asked, suddenly awed.

  "You betcha. OBie, over there, created our big ape." Cooper pointed to the older man in the worn suit. " Some of our dinosaurs we put together from footage we shot for Plateau. The public, bless 'em, didn't much like the mix."

  "I saw it last year," Peter said. "I thought it was great."

  "A good story has some staying power . . ." Cooper said with a shrug and a grin. "But it damned near broke us. Ever since Kong, Monte thinks I'm a jinx. He refuses to work with me."

  Peter wondered who Monte was, but they moved on. Shellabarger steered them toward Gluck, who was standing next to the grandfatherly fellow. They and the balding young man were in conversation with a tall, slender fellow with a thick stand of wiry salt-and-pepper hair. "Monte, may I introduce our writer and sstill photographer, from the National Geographic, Anthony Belzoni, and his son, Peter . . . My friends, thiss is the great director Ernest Schoedsack. Everyone calls him Monte."

  "Only if I say so," Schoedsack said gloomily, and then gave a small smile. "Glad to meet you." He had a tall, square head. His ears stuck out on each side like handles and he looked half blind; he wore very thick glasses. "This is O'Brien, my camera and effects man. And this is . . ."

  "Ray," the balding young man said, quickly catching that Schoedsack had forgotten his name. "Ray Harryhausen."

  Peter and Anthony shook hands all around. Schoedsack took Gluck aside and Anthony struck up a conversation with O'Brien and Harryhausen.

  Peter tuned in first to what Gluck and Schoedsack were murmuring.

  "Last time we went in there, to make Plateau, we lost a plane and three men. Damned near lost OBie when a boat went the wrong way down a rapids. That Carom is a bitch of a river, Lotto."

  "Don't I know it," Gluck said.

  Peter felt his neck hairs tingle.

  O'Brien and Harryhausen examined Anthony's Leica. O'Brien described a new portable 35-millimeter movie camera and the newest Technicolor film stock. "Whole thing weighs less than thirty pounds."

  " Sounds like a good dance partner," Anthony said pleasantly. "Hope I'll be able to squeeze a few snaps in between."

  "This isn't my strong suit, y'know," O'Brien confided, shak
ing his head. "Oh, I'm good; I've been filming live action since before Kong, but Ray and I have been hoping we could get enough money together to try again."

  "Try what again?" Peter asked.

  "A fantasy film," O'Brien said. He pulled a wry face. "All this focus on real animals. Not that I don't like dinosaurs. They're swell. I put some of my own together for Creation."

  Harryhausen chuckled. In a soft, deep voice, he said, "We've been put in the shade by real life."

  "Yeah," O'Brien said. "But it was sound killed that old beast, not live dinosaurs. Silent movies aren't worth the gun-cotton they're printed on."

  "Nitrocellulose," Harryhausen explained to Peter.

  "Oh," Peter said.

  Harryhausen smiled. At first glance, his face and expression seemed affable, even simple—sympathetically angled eyebrows, quick smile, a low-key manner. But when Harryhausen looked directly at him, Peter sensed keen intelligence, real determination—and almost infinite patience.

  "Ray would like to animate things we've never seen before, creatures from Venus and Mars, Greek gods and fire-breathing dragons. But dinosaurs spoiled the public for any of our imaginary monsters." O'Brien raised his hands in resignation.

  "Fickle," Anthony commiserated.

  "At least we've got work," Harryhausen said softly.

  "Yeah, moviemaking is about the public's dreams, not our own," O'Brien said with a sigh.

  A long table and folding chairs had been set up in the center ring of the big top. The dinner was brief, not very lavish, but at the end, everybody toasted everybody else. Peter toasted with a glass of milk. Looking around the table, he realized with a creeping numbness that his father and he were sitting with half a dozen circus performers, a ringmaster, a dinosaur trainer, and Lotto Gluck himself. John Ford sat at one end flanked by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack; to the right of Cooper were Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, three beautiful actresses— one blonde, one brunette, and one redhead—and . . . he had come back around the table to Anthony and himself. Anthony was deep in conversation with the redhead, the one who had smiled at Peter. She wasn't much older than Peter, either.

  Ford, a pleasant but ordinary-looking man with thinning hair and round horn-rim glasses, stood to deliver his personal toast and wishes for the expedition.

  "Damn, I wish I was going with you," he said, aiming his glass around the table. His other hand clutched and worried a napkin.

  Peter looked at Anthony. "Going where?" he whispered.

  Anthony held his fingers to his lips.

  "When I was just breaking into movies, I read about the explorers following after Challenger. I remember the newsreels of Roy Chapman Andrews. Andrews divided his time between El Grande and the Flaming Hills in Mongolia. Monte, you ran into Roy once, didn't you?"

  "That grandstanding S.O.B.," Schoedsack said. Behind his goggling glasses, he seemed perpetually irritated.

  "He coulda made a hell of a lot of omelets," Ford said. "Some of them would have been pretty tough, of course."

  Harryhausen leaned across the table and said to Peter, "Andrews found fossil dinosaur eggs in Mongolia and real eggs on El Grande."

  "Oh," Peter said, realizing he had a lot to catch up on.

  "I remember the headlines when Colonel Fawcett went missing. Lotto, you knew Fawcett personally."

  "Another prima donna," Gluck said under his breath.

  "I heard that," Ford said. "Well, it takes one to know one."

  "Too right," Gluck said. He mopped his face with a handkerchief and took another swig of wine. Then he looked down at the table sadly.

  "And who could forget Jimmie Angel cracking up his airplane on El Grande and having to walk thirty miles to the bridge at Pico Poco? That was after it was supposed to be closed . . . I wanted to make a movie of that, even had Gary Cooper set for the part, but the studios were kinda cold on the idea, and other things came along." His eyes sparkled as he turned toward O'Brien. "OBie, you've been itching for years now to make another monkey movie."

  Everybody around the table but Schoedsack laughed. OBie shook his head wryly.

  "Well, I tell you what. Get these dinos into retirement"—he paused, then glanced around the table, smiling—"down in Tampa. Bring me back some great scenes, well blocked and with lots of drama, like you did for Kong but in color, and we'll make that monkey movie. Only this time, the ape'll be smaller so it'll cost less. I'll even rope in Monte."

  "Never again," Schoedsack vowed darkly.

  Shellabarger got up and said he must excuse himself. The circus performers—including the ringmaster and the man and woman who had practiced with the horse—stood up with him. Everybody had to get dressed and ready for the final show, which would begin in an hour.

  As the table was cleared, the guests milled about. The ringmaster's assistant ushered everybody out. The tent was to be closed to bring in the performing cages. "Wouldn't want any of the animals to find you here!" the assistant said with a wolfish smile.

  "My beassts," Gluck said sadly, standing beside the ring, one hand on a guy wire. "All right, we go to the third tent. Come, we have photographers and newspaper people to talk to."

  The crowd of reporters in the third tent was not what Gluck had hoped for. There were only five, and two of those were from the society pages hoping to snag interviews with the actresses and Ford. Nobody seemed much interested in Gluck himself. He walked from group to group with a hang-dog expression.

  Peter had a chance to talk with Harryhausen some more. The actresses aside, Harryhausen was the closest in age to Peter— twenty-seven.

  "How long have you been a moviemaker?" Peter asked.

  "Just a few years," Harryhausen said. "Haven't had the chance to do much yet. How about you?"

  Peter shook his head. "I'm a writer, I suppose."

  "Is that what you want to be?" Harryhausen asked, catching the uncertainty in his voice.

  "I suppose," Peter repeated. In a quiet rush, Peter said, "What's all this secrecy? Mr. Ford seems to know something, and my dad—he's holding something back, too. What are we going to do?"

  Harryhausen made a face and held up his hands. "Damned if I know. We're going to follow the animals south to Tampa and make a movie about the trip, is what I've been told. I don't dare hope for anything more."

  The big top opened forty minutes later and they entered to take their seats in the front rows beside the center ring. The public was allowed in, and after half an hour, the big top bleachers were only three-quarters filled. Anthony leaned over to Peter and whispered, "What's wrong with Americans these days? Doesn't anything get them excited?"

  Clearly, his father was worried. If the last performance of the last dinosaur circus was not a sellout, standing room only, then who could tell what Mr. Grosvenor might think back in Washington, D.C.? Maybe he'd cancel the whole article, photos and all.

  Large cages with thick black bars had been erected at each side of the center ring and two smaller cages had been placed in each of the outside rings. Steel-bar tunnels covered with tarps led from the side tent into the cages. One of the tunnels stood over fifteen feet high.

  Outside, a wind started to blow and the canvas of the big top flapped and snapped, letting in little gusts. Peter could smell fresh air and rain. The crowd seemed expectant and cheerful. Big spotlights switched on and the ringmaster came into the center ring, followed by his assistant.

  The ringmaster's name was Karl Flagg. He stood ramrod straight in his red coat and high black hat and black jodhpurs, a thick black belt cinching in his stomach, broad shoulders tapering without interruption past his nonexistent waist to his knees. He looked imposing in the ring, but at the dinner Peter had noticed that Flagg was only a little taller than he.

  "Ladies and Gentlemen!" The ringmaster's voice boomed through the tent without help from a loudspeaker. The audience quieted. "You are here to witness an historic performance, a performance of which we are all immensely proud. Tonight, we will show you some of the most wonderf
ul and terrifying animals on Earth, and with sadness in our hearts . . . we will bid them farewell.

  "Lothar Gluck's Dinosaur Circus first performed on this very date two decades ago, in 1927 . . . and quickly grew to be the biggest dinosaur circus in North America, Europe, and Asia. We have performed for presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens . . . celebrities and tyrants!

  "Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, for your delight, and yours alone, and for the Very. Final. Performance! Lothar Gluck presents . . .

  "Animals from the edge of time!

  "Beasts transported at great peril from the fabled and horrifying Lost World of El Grande, the last of their kind!

  "Performing...

  "In CIRCUS LOTHAR . . .

  "Lothar Gluck's world-renowned DINOSAUR CIRCUS!"

  The tarps were rolled back from the caged runways and spots swung to highlight an animal running toward the two cages in the center ring. Peter saw that it was Dip, the male Struthiomimus that had pecked at Shellabarger's hand. Simultaneously, a clown in a ridiculous green dragon suit with broad floppy red wings jumped and stumbled into the ring and slapped up against the cage door. The door swung open as the clown stared at Dip in stupefaction. The ostrich-like dinosaur pushed at the door with his three-clawed hands, pulled his head back on his long neck, and stepped through.

  Another clown dressed as a mighty hunter—oversize pith helmet, a gun six feet long, floppy jodhpurs—ran from the opposite side of the ring. He aimed the gun not at Dip, who scratched his jaw idly with one claw, but at the dragon clown. The dragon shrieked, ran away, and was pursued by the hunter. As the hunter ran past Dip, the Struthiomimus neatly lanced out with his jaws and plucked the helmet from the clown's head. A big wad of brilliant red hair spilled out, and the hunter heaped unintelligible abuse on the animal. The struthio deftly flipped the hat out of the ring.