The Triggerman Dance

The dioramas teem with figures that were once alive and now, almost, seem to be living again. Greater Kudu stand alert, on guard for danger, their horns gently tapering and their beards full and pale. A black rhinoceros moves through the veld, one huge foot raised, mid-step. A pride of lions lounges in the savanna, watching a splendid female drag down a fleeing zebra. Hippopotami loiter in a lake while bongo and wildebeest and hartebeest and gnu race past. Water buffalo bathe; tapir drink; a leopard jumps from the jungle, tail trailing up and back, ears back and mouth open, feet extended and claws out, eyes focused on the startled axis deer in front of him. A grizzly bear towers and bares its teeth. A Marco Polo's ram stands at the highest point of Central Asia, his horns curled up, back and out in a spiral more stupendous than any John has ever seen or imagined. Many of the animals are beyond his experience. Tiny red antelope spring through a meadow; spotted, yellow-eyed cats lounge in an Asian treetop; a pure white buck with an eight-point rack peers over his shoulder with an indifferent, patriarchal majesty.

John moves within the world, a tourist. He meanders, walking sometimes forward and sometimes backward, lost in a state of amazement, unwilling to miss anything, eager to see it all at once. Standing in front of the Africa diorama, he begins reading the plaques.

He is even more astonished when the general introduction to Africa blurb instructs him to push the red button on the stand before him when he's finished with this scene. Though unfinished, he pushes the button anyway. His heart jumps as the entire ceiling-high display begins to rotate, smoothly and almost noiselessly disappearing into the wall as another tableau circles forward to take its place.

A bull elephant looms above him, trunk up and tusks hooking toward the sky. His ears are extended—each one, John thinks—the size of a bedsheet. He looks ready to charge, because the taxidermist has captured the huge shift of weight to the animals' columnar rear legs, leaving the front legs lighter, their flesh looser, one mammoth knee just now bending and one immense foot almost ready to leave the grass.

John pushes the red button again and the original diorama returns, like an alternate world gliding into place.

He stands there, heart thumping, ears buzzing, amazed. Then he tries more red buttons. He moves through the great shifting room, pushing one after another. The world is a kaleidoscope.

Australia becomes Montana.

China becomes Kodiak Island.

A wolfpack tears down an elk.

A Cape Buffalo tilts a Jeep.

And perhaps the most interesting thing of all are the little horizontal platforms beside each information plaque. They are tall and narrow as candleholders. And topping each, like a golden flame, is a rifle cartridge. In the light of the trophy room John can see that the casings contain written information. He leans forward to read the engraved brass that is displayed in front of the Cape Buffalo.

.458

Win.

Mag.

500 gr.

Silver tip

He notes that the engraving looks very much like the engraving on the shells Joshua showed him, with the cursive script so similar to the Declaration of Independence.

Leaning in with his camera, John shoots several of the gleaming, textual brass casings.

Finished and sweating harder now, he presses the red button again.

But when the last diorama rotates, he's not looking at wildlife at all.

Now, to John's continuing astonishment, he is staring at the front of what might be a pub. In fact, John can see a bar, a long mirror and a row of empty barstools through one of the mullioned windows. The front door is wooden also, with a large window in its center. Green curtains hang on brass rods inside. He thinks of the alcohol he's drunk this night and rubs his eyes. No, the pub remains, and it is inviting.

John steps up to the door and opens it. He feels as lost and curious as Alice herself. The lights go on automatically as he enters. It is indeed a little pub. There are three stools at the burnished bar, and plenty of bottles lined along the opposite wall mirror. There are three thick cardboard coasters on the counter and three clean ashtrays, each with a boxes of matches in it. John leans across the wood of the bar and sees the duckboard behind it, the small refrigerator, the ice bin with a folded hand towel on top of it, the little overhead glass rack. It is all genuine and real. It is neither facade nor mock-up. John feels almost dazed, pulled between the illusion of wildlife—animal and human—"outside" and the reality of the "civilization" in which he now stands. He feels as if he is in some last outpost.