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Brooke Biaz Heloise Finds a Mammoth |
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1 Heloise has found a mammoth. She
has found it in the fresh, exposed earth of the new Mulholland
shopping mall development. In the late afternoon. On her way home from music
practice. Heading down Heloise has found a mammoth. 2 At first, stepping onto the soft
dark turned soil, she didn’t notice it. The distant dusty churning of a
mighty cement mill, and the men busily working up high on the steel skeleton
of what will one day probably be the Claims Department of a chain store, held
her attention. But as she stepped in, further onto the dark moist expanse of
the construction site, she noticed a tusk protruding from a newly bulldozed
mound and, from there, something kicked in. Perhaps the word ‘tusk’ though,
is too great a leap. Better: a white hard node of intrigue; a suture or a
slice in the soil. Smooth and fixed at a sharp angle. Not so much poking out
as forming a clod of its own, halfway up the mound, exposed by the tumbling
of the earth as nearby the last half-tracks of the day rumble out with their
humped chocolate-coloured mounds. The new mall site
looking, from that angle, like the diggings required for a monstrous swimming
pool, or the expanse of a war zone. Heloise entering at the shallow end where
the earth was smooth, dry, but not so steeply sloped, and the mammoth
appearing on the sunken, moist gouge of the next, deeper level. She stoops down slowly to peer
way across the soil toward it, the exposed point of its tusk like the point
on a tooth, only there is no tooth, just the point, a tuft of strangely
orange bristle, like the innards of one of those old striped mattresses,
springing from around the side of the tusk itself, and the vague, disturbing
suggestion in the bulging curve of the mound that something much larger and
more encompassing lies beneath. 3 Heloise has found a mammoth. In
the distance. There in the dusk light of the Mulholland
Mall development. It seems entirely unaffected by the construction going on
around it. Partly uncovered maybe, but fixed still in the earth. Untouched. She approaches it gingerly. The construction site is busy
even for that time of day. They are planning to open the new mall in summer
and as it is already April it seems almost impossible that they will meet
their schedule. So, night and day, the construction goes on, against this
impossible timetable. Huge banks of floodlights elongating the day, as if
somehow light converts minutes to hours and men themselves are renewed in the
process. The lights cast strange shadows
over the site. A tall bare skeleton of heavy steel. The rolling drums of the
cement mill. A criss-cross of high hung wires. The
rumbling phantom of a dump truck. Heloise creeps in under the
broken fence. She has found a mammoth. 4 Coming home from violin
practice, Heloise has found a mammoth. At the Mulholland
mall development, which she passes, on the way. Every Wednesday afternoon she
practices violin. Her first finger. Her second. Her third and fourth. The
E-string. The G-string. Scales and arpeggios. Morningtown
Ride. She has a vision of joining a symphony orchestra. Mrs Aubrey, who runs the Yet, at the moment, she rides
this vision of a place in a symphony orchestra like a seagull riding an
afternoon sea breeze. She carves her way along the current of it, high over
the head of all others. It separates her from her school friends, when she
wants this, and makes her unique among them when she doesn’t. She likes it
that they think she is odd. Determined. Artsy. Destined. Out in the twilight of the
construction site she imagines she has stepped from the world of Mulholland, with its small, old wooden stores and fibro
cement houses, its rumble of old ruralness in the
half-built land and rusty outcrops of what was once dairy sheds and cattle
yards, into some new world, lit like a stage, dark and loud, enormous and
demanding, her breath catching at the roar of engines and the clang of
hammers. Heloise has found a mammoth and
this makes perfect sense. 5 ‘The thing about music,’ thinks
Heloise, as she creeps up on the mammoth across the moist tumble of upturned Mulholland soil, ‘is that it changes your perspective.’ Without realizing it, she sounds
these days a lot like her parents, who said these things once, but have been
caught up, lately, in ordinary life. Her mother teaches History at nearby In fact, if her father were here
he would perhaps imagine the upturned soil and tangle of grass, bush and
fallen trees, birch and fig and beech and the like, as the beginnings of a
long job. While her mother, playing to type, would recall that it was on this
acreage of Mulholland that the first local sawmill
was built, slicing the birch and beech, and cedar and whitewood as well into
the long shanks of homes, which sprung up soon after across the valley, and
provided the impetus for the establishment of towns, and brought the railway,
and encouraged the development of the nearby port, and attracted tourists,
and saw the highway grow wide across the old farms and gave rise to a
hospital, a race track, a returned serviceman’s club, a gaggle of
churches, several schools, and the Mulholland
District Sports Arena. But their daughter is different.
Heloise, of course, has found a
mammoth. 6 A mammoth is the ancestor of the
elephant. First appearing in In Mulholland
Heloise has found a mammoth much more recently. She imagines its hefty
shoulders, rising up twenty feet or more above her. And further, above that,
the hump of its back. Its coat hung over its body like a throw on a mighty old
lounge chair. Something her round and rollicking grandmother might own.
Smelling of musk and tobacco and shoes. Its tusks curving up in a gigantic
white bow, and its black eyes, small and sparkling with curiosity, blinking
nervously into life. Whereas once a mammoth might
have covered the frozen expanse of Siberia or stood proud in the Pleistoscene regions of Sardinia, here in Mulholland Heloise imagines it standing over her like a
frightened infant, soil shivering in dust and clumps from its huge coat,
steadying its bulk on its plate-sized feet, suddenly, unexpectedly, wrapping
its soft bristled trunk around her shoulders, hiding its eye in the wisps of
her auburn hair, holding its breathing against her tiny chest as it steals a
breath from the air around her. 7 Heloise has found a mammoth and,
as she comes home from violin lessons, she creeps up on it gingerly with
scales and arpeggios, her first finger and her second, the E-string and the
G-string, on her mind. The Mulholland
mall development whirls in the dark and artificial light around her. Great
banks of floodlights on tall metal poles, spiked
into the earth and connected by webs of wires. The strong steel skeleton
rising way up in front her, adding to its tangle of
machinery and men. Cranes looping sheets of metal and faggots of steel across
the black horizon like bell ringers pealing out tunes. The trucks growl and
smoke below, being loaded with yards of Mulholland
earth and grass, that old underbelly. There has never been a mall in Mulholland. The stores of Mulholland
so far have been wooden and small, all along There are these feelings, in
part, around Mulholland. But then there are those
others who watch too, and who think about something else. Who wonder if the
new Mulholland Mall will have a Tandy Electronics
Store, a Macy’s, a K-Mart. Will there be a snow-cone
counter? A play area for the kids? Big Macs? A Tall and Short store? Ice-capades? Free car-parking? Will the new Mulholland Mall be a future to behold? Heloise has heard people talk. 8 ‘I have found a mammoth,’
Heloise thinks, as she creeps in over the upturned soil. She is due home
shortly and if she stays out too long her mother will be worrying. Her father
will come looking. In his utility truck, the tray piled with wheelbarrow and
shovels, soil rakes and chicken wire, decorative paving stones in ochres and greens, sheets of black plastic, hedge shears,
trowels, a turf roller. She wonders if her parents would
be thinking, if they were with her now, that
nothing, much, is ever fixed. Yet, at the moment, she rides a vision of her
place in a symphony orchestra like a seagull riding an afternoon sea breeze.
She is carving her way along the current of this, high over the head of all
others. It separates her from her school friends, when she wants this, and
makes her unique among them when she doesn’t. She likes it that the kids in Mulholland think she is odd. Determined. Artsy. Destined.
It plays to something inside her which she can’t at this moment fathom, and
yet can’t deny. Mrs Aubrey, of course, who runs the
9 Up over the hump of the dozer
tracks, the sun now almost down in the distance, and the new mall site lit
only by its own, artificial light. She stumbles on clod made by
heavy metal tracks. Catches herself from falling. Heaves out a breath. There are trucks leaving now and
others arriving. Full and empty in long rumbling sequence. Up high on the illuminated
scaffolding a man is waving, calling forward a piece of machinery, a cement
mixer perhaps, that is hanging precariously on the
hook of a crane. He seems no bigger than a mouse up there, and the machinery
so flimsily attached that it might at any moment let go from the hook and
plummet into the dark below, taking him with it. A back hoe swings
hydraulically from a dozer and draws several heavy tined fissures through the
soil. Beyond that, three men are unloading beams in long single lengths from
two articulated trucks backed up side by side to the tiny porta-cabin
site office. A utility truck rumbles past. A buzzer sounds. A
load of bricks heads upward, ten by ten by ten, on a conveyor belt. She makes it over the first clodded rise, and keeps her target in sight. Once onto the site she notices
that the noise is much louder. The earth seems to be moving, slightly, but
disturbingly below her. The soil smells of damp and, strangely, of burning.
There’s dust in the air but, being almost night now, she cannot see it, only
taste it. Chalky and woody. The second rise is small, but
cut deep, and she slides down the back of it. Now the ground flattens. She
sees again where she’s heading and lurches forward, sure someone now has seen
her. A construction worker. From out of town. But there are no voices, just a
mangle of sounds, and she keeps on. One final surge. To the mound. Here she stops. Dropping down to
her knees. Then rolling onto her side. The soil damp but strangely warm from
the day’s heat. She peers again, close now… It might be a stone or a lump of
pale painted metal. It might be a piece of wood once laying out on the Mulholland field and in that way bleached by the sun, or
a rag of clothing long lost and now matted into the earth. Or a portion of a
milk jug. Or a tile from a long abandoned bathroom. Or a clock face left over
from a disintegrated mantel clock. Or an old porcelain door handle. Or a piece
of broken crockery or… Heloise knows, however: she has
found a mammoth. |
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Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
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GC&SU is a member of |
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