Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [187]
“That’s a loincloth, Anthony,” Alice said.
“That’s a loincurtain, is what that is.”
Everyone laughed, even Alice.
“Ta-dah! It’s my dick!”
“Boys,” she said, “no cursing, please.”
The aboriginal people of Malaya, the plaque read, were admired for their commitment to nonviolence.
Semai people have lived in long pole houses sheltering several families … Today separate houses are common. It is the rule that people who live together must get along well; there must be a bond of mutual liking and respect.
Malaya was somewhere off the tip of Thailand, Pepin thought. So after diving for days along the Great Barrier Reef, he and Alice could head due north out of Brisbane, take a hard left over Indonesia, and cross over Malaysia to land in Kuala Lumpur, then settle for a while with the Semai. Think of all the weight he’d lose blowpiping. It’d be hard to get fat on just rice, let alone on food you had to hunt with a weapon like that. Think of how little there would be to worry about. Live in a pole house together. Tend the rice paddies. Renew their bonds of mutual liking and respect. Those would be their rules.
He thought he saw Mobius’s black form reflected in the glass, but when he turned around no one was there.
“Downstairs,” Alice said at the landing. “Stick together, please.”
“It says dinosaurs is up,” Anthony said, holding up the floor plan.
“The dinosaurs are up, Anthony, but first we’re going to see the hominids.”
“The fuck’s a homonid?”
His friends doubled over in laughter.
“You are, Anthony.”
The class busted out in high fives and exclamations, the girls covering their mouths at the dis.
“And I’m a hominid. We’re all hominids. But if you curse once more,” she said, waiting for the class to pass by, “you’re going to go sit in the bus with the hominid driver.” She put a hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “You understand?”
The boy waited for the rest of the class to descend out of earshot. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Apology accepted,” she said.
Downstairs and past a huge canoe, a giant dugout at least fifty feet long, hung from the ceiling to better display the artwork on its underbelly, the bird designs a kind of paleocomic book in reds and blacks, and the images running from its prow reminding Pepin of the fanged mouths and squinting shark eyes by the props of P-51 Mustangs. He then followed along into the Hall of Human Origins, its entrance also the exit, and his sightlines into the Hall of Meteorites were good, so anyone appearing there would stand out brilliantly, though Mobius was nowhere to be seen.
Alice called the class to gather before an exhibit of skulls of various shapes and sizes, the dotted lines interconnecting them and then branching off to terminus, extinction, and while the boys and girls huddled, Pepin read:
OUR FAMILY TREE
Humans are the only remaining descendants of a once varied family of primates called Hominidae … Most of these species became extinct, and only one—modern humans, Homo sapiens—ultimately survived and flourished.
“Have a look at this,” Alice said to the class. “Do you understand what these are? They’re our cousins—”
“Not mine, they ain’t.”
“Eugene,” she said, and shot him a look. “They’re versions of us—Homo sapiens—that came before we did but didn’t survive. See? They’re grouped by region, but follow the lines to where they end. Look at the different sizes and shapes of their skulls compared to ours. What does that tell you?”
“We coulda had some small-ass heads,” Eugene said.
Anthony smacked the boy’s cap forward. “Listen to Mrs. Pepin, fool.”
“Boys,” Alice said. “Now, seriously, what does this chart tell you?”
Everyone stood looking, and then Anthony raised his hand. “That we’re lucky,” he said.
“Really? That’s interesting. What do you mean?”
Anthony looked at Eugene threateningly before he spoke. “Well, look at all those Homo … whatevers that didn’t make it. It doesn’t say why, does it?”
Alice looked. “No.”
“And we don’t know why, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“See, we’re just lucky to be here.