Your Mother Was a Neanderthal (5 page)

“I think it does,” said Sam.

Duh pointed outside. “Caa?”

“You said it,” said Fred. “Ready, set, go!”

And the meanest two-horned, three-headed, straw-honking beast on the planet charged outside to face down one saber-toothed prehistoric cat.

O
ne of our horns stuck between two logs and stayed there. Sam tripped and fell between Fred and me. We didn’t really charge outside. We more or less fell outside.

Then I saw it.

Caa, the cat, was crouched next to a tree not thirty feet away. Fred was right. This was no cat. This was five hundred pounds of muscle, big claws, and long, sharp saber teeth. And it was staring at us like we were its next breakfast snack.

I turned into a statue. I couldn’t get my muscles to move. My throat dried up and refused to push any air to my straw.

Sam crawled around under the fur honking, yelling, and trying to find a spot to poke his head out.

The giant cat laid his ears back just like I’ve seen my cat do before he pounces. Fred blew his straw and waved one fur covered arm. The cat lowered into a crouch. I squeaked and waved one arm. The cat was just about to jump, when Sam found an opening and poked his head out next to our feet. He blew one piercing straw honk.

The surprised cat jumped straight up and kind of half flipped backward in midair. A two-headed beast was one thing. But a two-headed beast suddenly growing another head was something not to be messed with.

The cat gave us one last look, then took off into the woods.

We threw off the smelly fur and jumped around tooting our straws and slapping high fives. Duh and his caveguys peeked out of the pit.

“Come on out and breathe the fresh air, Duh,” said Fred. “The three-headed, one-horned honker beast has won!”

“Caa?” asked Duh.

“Caa
voom,”
said Fred.

It felt so good to be alive and out of the smelly pit. We all laughed and hopped around like crazy men.

Duh slowly crawled out, checking all around him. The rest of the men followed him. They all stood blinking in the sunlight, not quite sure what to do.

“So much for point C,” said Sam. “But perhaps we should consider a way to reach our ultimate goal, point B, without returning to point D for E.”

Duh, the cavemen, and Fred looked at Sam like he was crazy.

I translated. “He’s glad we got rid of the cat, but he doesn’t want to go back to the cave to look for the cave painting.”

“Come on, you chicken,” said Fred. “If we all march to the cave we can take on Ma.”

The caveguys suddenly got very wide-eyed and quiet.

“You guys look like you saw a ghost,” said Fred. “All I said was
Ma.”

Three guys dove back under the log pile.

“Ug Ma,” said Duh. “Ug Ma.” He held his hands up like claws and showed his teeth.

“Ah, that’s just a bearskin and a head. Just like the dinosaur head,” said Fred. “I’m not afraid of those fakes.”

Duh shook his head. “Ma.”

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Maybe Duh knows something we don’t know.”

“They probably have the cave painting, and they definitely have my hat,” said Fred. “So let’s go. »

“Let’s not and say we did,” said Sam. “Maybe we can make our own
Book.”

I looked at the scrawny bunch of caveguys blinking in the sunlight. “These guys are our ancestors. And they don’t know anything about fire, clothing, or shelter. The women have figured out all that stuff. Even if we don’t find a cave painting or
The Book,
we should at least get the men and women together. Otherwise we might not have a human future to go back to.”

“Excellent point,” said Sam. “In the interest of survival of the species, I guess we should get these guys out of their pit and help them meet a few girls. But how are we ever going to get these prehistoric nerds to help? They’ll run away if you even say ‘Boo.’ ”

“You’re right,” said Fred. “But what if we said something else?’ Fred jumped up on a stump. “Okay, caveguys, listen up. We are going to the cave. You are coming to help us.”

“Very convincing,” said Sam. “They look
real
interested.”

“But what’s in it for you?” said Fred. “Boog.”

The men looked up.

“Lots of
boog.
Bit heaping piles of
boog.
Squirming, stinking mountains of
boog.
All the boog you can eat.” Fred pointed toward the volcano. “Onward to
boog,
men!”

The men milled around. They looked at Fred. They looked at their leader, Duh. You could almost see Duh thinking. He furrowed his brow, and then finally walked toward Fred.

Fred chanted, “Boog, boog, it’s good for your heart. The more you eat, the more you—”

The caveguys joined in. “Boog, boog ...”

Sam and I honked our straws. Everyone followed Fred and Duh down the path toward the cave. We were on our way to boog,
The Book,
and Home Sweet Civilization Home.

And we probably would have made it. But something rumbled.

“What was that?” I said.

The something rumbled again. The ground shook beneath our feet. It wobbled and jumped and shook like jello, throwing everyone down.

“Earthquake!” yelled Sam.

T
rees shook.

Rocks crashed.

The ground wiggled and suddenly split open right behind us.

The cavemen’s logpile home fell into the cracked earth and disappeared. Then everything stopped. No birds, no bugs, no prehistoric beasts made a sound.

I sat up and dusted off my animal skin. “That could have been ... I mean, that was almost ... we were almost ...”

“Smashed into little bits and buried under a ton of prehistoric garbage!” screamed Sam.

“Calm down, Sam,” said Fred. “Things could be worse.”

“Oh yeah? How?” said Sam, looking a little wild-eyed and crazy. “We’re trapped 40,000 years in the past. Everything we meet tries to eat us. And now even the ground underneath us is falling apart. And you say things could be worse? How could things be worse?” Sam smacked himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand.

Duh and his men stood up carefully and moved to the edge of the new ravine. They looked down at the pile of broken logs at the bottom. They looked at Sam. Duh let out a wild yell, then smacked himself in the head. And all at once, all of the guys started yelling, moaning, and smacking their heads.

“That’s how,” said Fred.

Sam yelled. The caveguys yelled. Sam moaned. The caveguys moaned.

“And how,” I said.

The noise of Sam, Duh, and the caveguys grew louder and louder, and suddenly
much
louder.

Duh stopped beating himself up, listened, and then yelled something that sounded like “Woo Maa! Woo Maa!” Everyone ran for the trees and left Fred, Sam, and me staring at each other.

“Woo Maa?” said Fred. “What’s Woo Maa?”

Sam stood frozen, looking off into the space over our heads.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we’ve lost Sam.”

Sam croaked, “Woo ... woo ... woo ... ma ... ma ... ma—”

“We’ve definitely lost him,” said Fred.

Sam raised his arm to point and croaked again, “Oh, no. Woolly mammoth!”

“He’s snapped. He thinks we’re the cavewomen,” I said. “It’s okay, Sam. It’s me, Joe.”

And right then I was stopped by an ear-popping trumpeted blast of noise. Fred and I turned to look behind us. There, standing at the edge of the clearing, not twenty feet away from us, stood the largest and most crazed-looking beast you will never want to see as long as you live. You’ve seen them in books. And you’ve seen their relatives in zoos. And I’m telling you, you don’t need to see them any closer.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“Woolly mammoth!”
yelled Fred.

At that moment I understood where the word
mammoth
came from. This thing was huge. It was gigantic. Enormous. Mammoth.

The mammoth jerked his head back and fixed us with one tiny eye. Fortunately, he seemed just as surprised to see us as we were to see him. Unfortunately, he stood about ten feet taller and weighed about two tons more
than us. And most unfortunately, we were standing in his way.

We stood face to face, not knowing what to do. Fred bent down slowly and picked up a stick that
had
broken off to a point.

“Let’s not do anything that
might make him mad,” I whispered. “We could turn and run,” said Fred. Sam inched backward. “That sounds good to me.” “But we’d probably get trampled from behind.”

“That doesn’t sound so good to me.” Fred eyed the huge, hairy ancestor of an elephant in front of us. He raised his stick and then rew it as hard as he could. The makeshift spear sailed through the air and stuck the mammoth right between the eyes.

The mammoth blinked and slowly shook its gigantic head and pointy tusks. Fred’s spear fell to the ground like a used toothpick. The mammoth lowered those pointy tusks in our direction and trumpeted.

“Time for another disappearing act,” I said. “Because now I think you made him mad.”

The hairy monster shook its mammoth head again and raised one mammoth foot.

And that’s the last thing I saw because we turned and ran for the trees. We dodged around bushes and rocks. The mammoth smashed through the bushes and rocks. We were running as fast as we could, but the mammoth was still gaining on us and there was nowhere to hide.

We ran. Mammoth footsteps shook the ground behind us. We ran. Hot, smelly, mammoth breath blasted the back of my neck. I knew we were goners. But I wondered if our math teacher would believe the note from home: “Dear Mr. Dexter, Please excuse Joe, Sam, and Fred for not doing their math homework. They got run over by a woolly mammoth.”