"Dat man was cra—"

"Why you say he 'as crazy?" The young girl stared up at dyed silver curls. Rolled her deep brown eyes. Everybody's crazy that don't agree with her.

Her older companion frowned. "What sane man'd ask for his brother's brain? And spend his life's savings on animals t'—"

"Well, I thought 'e was sweet, t' try an' keep a bit of his brother alive." She held her arms tightly against her body.

The taller woman sniffed. "In animals? Ain't natural! Injected a bit of his brother's cerebral cortex into every animal 'e could get!"

"Seh bah what, Granny?"

"Ce-ree-bral cor-tex, Flo. Where people keep their mem'ries." She frowned. "That fella put some o' his brother's mem'ries into animals. Not a lick o' sense."

Flo looked up sharply. "You didn't expect him to do it to a human bein'...?"

Curls flew out at an angle as she looked away, down the hall. Her elbows were angles. And her knees, covered by the black triangle of her Sunday dress. "Y'wouldn't think a piece of brain'd go that far, even in soup—"

"'Course it wouldn't! He cloned it. Four million animals, most of 'em cats and dogs. Finally got a animal that acted like his brotha' –"

"An animal." She glared down at her granddaughter. "Eighteen animals! A cow that tossed her 'ead like his brother did when she got mad! A frog that jumped exactly the length of his stride. A cat that slept seven hours at a stretch. What an insult! I wouldn't like to be remembered by how long I—"

Slowly, the young girl smiled. "Yeah, but the African Gray Parrot that sang his brotha's song..."

Two generations shared a long sigh, a reluctant smile, a look of brown-eyed truce. The grandmother's shoulders went down. Slowly they walked again into the museum's clothboard-covered exhibit room. Granny let granddaughter push the button.

Again, the wobbly videotape played. The rapt expression of the tanned scientist, white hair awry, as he watched the parrot. Gray eyes regarded him quietly from its cocked head. Tail feathers spread wide as the wings shivered and feathers fluffed. "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child...." The baritone voice reached across the wide high-ceilinged hall of the oldest part of Anniston Museum of Natural History. Both had rapt expressions. Granny wiped a tear. Split screens compared voice analyses of man and parrot. Flo assumed a smug expression. Brown eyes spat fire.

"It's faked," the old woman crooned.