VINNY AND MARVIN

Book #1: The Incredible Shrinking Mastodon

CHAPTER 1:

Every so often the wind would change direction and Marvin would smell the two-leg hunters. For three days they’d pursued him along the glacier, and now they were closing in. To make it worse, snow was falling heavily and it was hard to see. Maybe it would fill in his tracks. Or maybe he could escape by crossing the glacier. There were trees on the far side; he would have a better chance of losing them there. But crossing the glacier was dangerous for a young mastodon weighing ten thousand pounds. One false step could send him hurtling into a crevasse.

Struggling to shake the frightening thoughts from his mind, Marvin pushed on. It seemed like he had been running for years, ever since the coming of the two-legs. His mother, his father and his sister were gone. Only he, his Uncle Murphy, and a handful of others had escaped the day of the fires. For safety, they had split up, planning to meet again in the far north, near the pole, at the place of the Winter Bright celebrations. He’d been heading there when the two-legs found him. Now he was tired. Three days of running were taking their toll.

Out of the heavily falling snow, a boulder loomed, the narrow path he’d been following along the side of the glacier was blocked. A huge rock fall extended fifty yards out onto the ice and there was only one way around it.

‘Not good,’ thought Marvin, eyeing the flat, white expanse.

As he was contemplated his chances, the cry of a two-legs drove a blade of fear through his heart. He whirled and saw them, half a dozen or more swarming across the ice, their long spears outthrust and deadly. There was no time to think. He ran out onto the glacier and heading for the trees on the far side. If he could make it there he had a chance of losing them! The shouts of the two-legs grew louder. Then, halfway across, the snow gave way beneath him.

All was quite when Marvin came to. No sound from the hunters. No sound even from the wind. He was surrounded by ice and unable to move.

‘It’s happened,’ he thought. ‘I’ve fallen into a crevasse. Now, I’ll never make it to the North Pole. I will never find the others.’

Marvin wept, but nobody heard him. Above on the glacier the snow continued to fall, and fall, andfall. Soon he was completely covered, and very, very cold. The year was 6327 BC.

*    *    *    *

Vinny Costanza slumped in the back of the rented SUV wondering why good things always had to come with bad things right next to them. He was on his first vacation ever, and in Alaska, no less! It was a humongous place with more mountains and trees and greenery than he’d seen in his entire life. Of course, coming from New York City that wasn’t saying much. Pigeons and squirrels were pretty much it for wildlife back home. Here he’d counted up to 48 different kinds of birds and animals in just 8 days and some of them were huge! Driving North on the Dalton Highway they had to stop the car for thirty minutes while an endless herd of caribou filed across the road. And at the Yukon River, he’d seen a Bald Eagle swoop down from a towering pine tree and snatch a salmon from the rushing waters. Best yet, ever since having that moose steak for dinner his dad hadn’t been complaining as much about the heat. Everybody thought Alaska was cold, but somehow, he and his parents got there during the biggest heat-wave in the state’s history.

Anyway, that was the good part. That, and the fact that when they headed home to New York in a couple of days, they’d be on the ground in time for him to play in the biggest ballgame of the summer.

The bad part was that when he got to that ball game he was certain to have a run-in with the school’s meanest bully, Big Biff Dowling.

*    *    *    *    *

Miles from the Dalton Highway, in the blistering air of the heat-wave’s day ten, there protruded through the side of a melting glacier, two tusks, a furry trunk, and a massive forehead.

Marvin’s head spun as he squinted into the brightness. Sun! Where did the sun come from? He closed his eyes and waited for his thoughts to clear. Something had happened, something scary, but he couldn’t remember what. Then it came to him. Two-legs! He’d been running from them across the glacier and had fallen into a crevasse! Was he dead? If so, heaven was very pleasantly warm. Marvin stopped trying to think and let himself enjoy the sensation of sun beating down. Imagine, only yesterday he’d been freezing! He listened to the sound of dripping water for a while, then opened his eyes a crack. Yup, no doubt about it, yup, everything was melting like crazy. In fact, the way the perspiration was pouring off his trunk, it felt like he was melting. This must be what they meant by sweating buckets!

After what seemed like a long while, Marvin took a tentative step forward and noticed that the glacier had gotten a lot bigger since the last time he looked. Deciding he was still woozy he shook his head. Water flew everywhere. Another peek. The glacier was definitely growing – which was impossible – unless! Marvin had thought that was really scary – unless the glacier wasn’t getting bigger, but he was getting smaller! ‘This can’t be happening,’ he thought. ‘Mastodon’s don’t shrink!’ But he was shrinking, and fast too! Looking down, Marvin saw his toes coming closer and closer. He could feel it now – a squeezing, shrinking sensation, and water pouring from him by the quart, as his once huge form grew smaller and smaller. ‘What if it doesn’t stop!” he worried, “what if I get so tiny I drown in this puddle I’m making?’ For indeed, the puddle, which had seemed so insignificant before, was beginning to look like a lake.

Marvin panicked and the cry that issued from his now tiny body shattered the peaceful, afternoon quiet:

Haloom! Haloom! Haloom!

(Which means, “Help! Help! Help! in Mastodon.)

The earth shook and the puddle he’d been so worried about vaporized.

“Oops,” whispered Marvin, as a herd of elk on the nearby mountainside began stampeding toward the valley pursued by an avalanche. “That couldn’t have been me... could it?”

Finding it incongruous that such a loud sound could come from someone as diminutive as he now was, Marvin decided to test his voice again, and called out a loud, “Hello!”

ELLOOOH!

Birds fainted and fell from the sky; chunks of the melting glacier shattered like glass, and the echo returning from the mountainside knocked Marvin flat.

‘It was me!’ he thought, as he scrambled to his feet. “Cool!” Clearly, whatever Marvin had lost in stature he had gained in loudness. ‘A talent of questionable usefulness,’ he thought. ‘Still, it would be wise to keep the old voice down.’

*    *    *    *

Vinny Costanza slumped in the back of the rented SUV imagining what Big Biff Dowling would do to him when he finally got home to New York:  First it would be a gooey, wet, spit covered finger being pushed into his ear, Big Biff’s way of saying “hi.” Following that would come the demand for money. Two days before they left for Alaska Biff had cornered him in an alley and explained that ten dollars was due him.

 “Come on, Biff, it’s summer vacation!”

“Which is why I’m cutting you a deal. Ten bucks now, and you don’t hear from me for two weeks.”

“But I don’t get lunch money during the summer!” Vinny had protested loudly. During school Biff had taken his lunch money every Monday. Biff didn’t seem to care.

“Tough! Try your mom’s purse.”

“But that’s stealing!”

“No, that’s life, Costanza. Either you take care of me or I take care of you!”

Biff had then held up a mustard jar full of bugs and Vinny felt like puking. When Biff ‘took care of you’ the big, wet, spit-covered finger was only a preliminary. Next came what was now referred to as getting “bugged,” when Biff and his enforcers, the MacGregor brothers, emptied a jar of mixed bugs down the back of your pants, a twitchy potpourri of squirmy meal-worms from Mr. MacGregor’s pet store, and whatever else the three of them had dug up around the neighborhood: earthworms, earwigs, centipedes, silverfish, sow bugs, spiders, and cockroaches. First the MacGregor’s undid your pants, then Biff pulled them back and dumped the bugs while you screamed, and launched into what the recess crowd called “the bug dance.” After that... Vinny didn’t want to think about after that. Because by then everybody in the neighborhood would be watching.

It was what Vinny’s cousin Anthony called ‘an elementary school version of a “protection” racket,’ and most kids paid. But most kids had more money than Vinny. He was racking his brain for some way to stave off the inevitable when his mother screamed, “my God Jake, what’s that?” and the car screeched to a halt.

Vinny looked up to see a large black bear ambling toward them down the center of the road.

“Wow!” he said, mentally adding number 49 to his list.

“Oh, my gosh!” cried his mom, “What if it gets in the car?”

“We’re perfectly safe in here,” said his father, nervously.

Vinny thought so too, until the bear stood up and put its paws on the hood of the SUV.

“Crap on a cranberry!” shouted his dad, pounding on the horn. “Get away from there! Shoo! Shoo!”

The bear cocked its head, eyed Vinny’s mom, and licked its chops, which prompted her to begin screaming uncontrollably. People said bears didn’t smile, but Vinny was sure this one had. After that, it snorted, dropped back down on all fours, and continued slowly across the road.

It was the first time his dad ever burned rubber. Yup, no doubt this was the best vacation he’d ever had. Of course, it was the only vacation he’d ever had so there wasn’t much to compare it to. Still, bears, eagles, moose, the smell of burning rubber on the highway, the kids back home were going to eat this up! Almost as much as when Vinny began doing the bug dance.

*    *    *   *

Marvin tallied up the situation as calmly as he could. OK, things had changed. He was a tad smaller than he used to be, ‘but still taller than a mouse,’ he told himself, without much enthusiasm. He was surrounded by puddles that looked like lakes, and, for all he knew, there might still be two-leg hunters in the vicinity -- although under the circumstances they were far more likely to step on him than stick him with a spear. As for his surroundings? Nothing he remembered was the same. The hills were totally changed, the enormous glacier and its crevasse had disappeared, and a long valley he’d never seen before stretched off into the distance. Even the sky was a different color blue.

Given this, it seemed his best move would be to continue north toward the pole where things would be cooler and there was a chance he might find his Uncle Murphy and some of the others. The problem was figuring out which way was north. He had no idea. And since it made little sense to stand around trying to guess while the puddles got deeper, he said a prayer for guidance to the Spirit of His Ancestors, and began the long trek up the valley.

Hours passed. It was hot, it was wet, it was muddy; and the farther Marvin walked the hungrier he became. Day turned into night and almost immediately, back into day again. He was dreaming about the world’s biggest salad when he heard a deep and powerful rushing noise.

‘Sounds like a stream,’ he thought, and hoping there might be some grass to nibble at it’s edge he picked up his pace. Soon Marvin was standing on an ice shelf looking out at the most enormous river he’d ever seen.

Forgetting what happened earlier, he exclaimed, “Oh, Wow!”

HO HOW!

There was a crack and a splash, and the next thing Marvin knew he and ice shelf were floating slowly into the river’s swift central current.

“Got to remember to keep the old voice down,” Marvin reminded himself as the shore got farther and farther away.

With nothing to do but watch the shore and listen to the grumbling of his stomach, Marvin settled in for a long ride. During the first hour he saw nothing but ice, snow, and mud, but then slowly the landscape began to change. Patches of green appeared, then meadows of wildflowers, and small groups of trees.

“What I wouldn’t give for a mouthful of flowers!” thought Marvin hungrily. He was seriously considering a swim to shore when he saw his first two-legs and decided against it.

As the countryside became greener, the sightings of two-legs became more numerous. Everything about them was different from what he remembered. Few wore furs, and not one carried a spear! Nor did they live in teepees made from animal hides, but enormous structures crafted from wood and stone. The most bizarre things were the turtle-like contrivances in which they rode!

“This world is completely different from the one I was in a few days ago,” he thought. “None of it makes any sense!”

More hours passed. The river had widened and the raft, moving slower now, was drifting toward the bank when Marvin spied yet another field of wildflowers.

‘That’s it!’ he thought hungrily. “I’m going in!” And with a splash he plunged into the icy waters.
After an invigorating swim, Marvin scurried up the bank into a shady forest of flowers, pulled down a big yellow daisy, and took his first bite of food in 10,375 years. It was scrumptiously, mouth wateringingly, wonderfully delicious! Back he went again and again, savoring each bite, and just as he was reaching up for one last taste something clamped onto the end of his trunk and yanked him off his feet.

“Ow, Let go!” he cried. But instead of coming out in his new booming voice, the words emerged as a tiny “Plip!” and he found himself looking into the suspicious eyes of a hungry Alaskan robin.

“You’d better let go,” said the bird. “This is my worm.”

“It’s not a worb it’s my trunk!” said Marvin, forgetting to translate his speech into Birdish. All that came out was, “Plip, plip, plip!” ‘Oh, no!’ he realized. ‘I cad talk wid my node squeed shut!’
Then came another hard yank and he found himself airborne.

*    *    *   *

They were halfway to the airport stuck in bumper to bumper traffic and the AC had just cut out. To rub it in, Fairbanks radio was playing, We’re Havin’ a Heatwave. Vinny’s dad leaned on the horn. “We’re going to miss the plane!” he bellowed. “This is worse than the Cross Bronx Expressway at rush hour!”

The mention of home made Vinny wince. Imagining a jar full of creepy bugs being poured down his pants, he gritted his teeth, leaned on the front seat, and asked the question he’d been avoiding all vacation. “Dad, can I borrow ten dollars?”

“Can you borrow what?” His father glared into the rear view mirror.

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ thought Vinny, dropping back down out of view. “Nothing, dad.”

“What do you need ten dollars for?” asked his mom.

Since he couldn’t think of any reason other than the real one, he muttered, “I was just joking,” and turned to stare out the window.

“You can buy a lot of nothing with a nickel,” his dad said. “You want a nickel?”

“No thanks.”

“Ten dollars! You believe that Velma? We take this kid on his first vacation and while we’re heading home he asks for ten dollars! Why not ten thousand? When I was a kid...”

Vinny shut out the sound of his dad and tried to think of something else. Maybe before they got to the airport he could add another animal sighting to his list and make it a nice round fifty. He eyed the field of flowers they were creeping past for some sign of life when a robin rose up not five feet away from the car. No good. He’d seen about a zillion of them. But this one had something hanging from its beak and it wasn’t a worm! It was a tiny, tiny, furry elephant!

Lunging forward for a better look Vinny smashed nose-first into the window.

"What’s the matter, a nickel not enough for you?” growled his father.

“Eunphff,” said Vinny, clutching his nose, trying desperately to see between the spots that were dancing in front of his eyes. He whirled and peered out the rear window. The bird and the elephant were gone.

“Honey, are you all right?” asked his mother.

No, I’m going crazy! Vinny thought, pulling out his handkerchief and holding it against his seriously aching nose. “I’m fine,” he muttered, slumping down in the seat. “Just bumped my head.”

But he wasn’t fine. His mind was working overtime trying to cope with having just seen the tiniest elephant in the history of the world. It couldn’t have been more than two inches high with cute little tusks and all covered with fur. Fur! Vinny dropped his handkerchief. What he’d seen wasn’t an elephant at all but one of those prehistoric mastodons, just like the picture on the flag outside the Museum of Natural History back in New York! A mastodon! But how could that be when the Ice Age had ended thousands of years ago? And how could it be only two inches high? None of it made any sense. The only thing he was absolutely sure about was that it had been real. Either that, or worrying about Biff had finally driven him nuts.