Half Brother (25 page)

With every mention of Zan’s new home, I felt like the walls of my chest were collapsing until no air was reaching me. Some of the students were looking at me, so I stared at the carpet.

“What kind of facility is it?” Peter asked.

“Well, I can tell you, the chimps have twenty-five acres of land and more facilities and professional support staff than we had here. Zan would also have company. They’ve got some adolescents as well as some adults. And the director, Jack Helson, is very knowledgeable. Zan will be in good hands.”

No one said anything.

“Now, I just want to assure you all,” Dad said, “that none of this has anything to do with your performance on the project. Project Zan was not a failure, ladies and gentlemen. This is science. A pursuit of the truth. It’s not wish fulfillment. It’s not fantasy. It told us the truth and we have to accept that. Now, as it happens, I have a relatively new experiment underway, and it’s likely to get a great deal larger very soon. I’d be happy to welcome any of you as research assistants, if you’re interested.”

“The rats,” said Peter.

“Correct,” Dad said. “It promises to be a very fruitful project.”

It was Monday, mid-April, beautiful outside, but everything was colourless to me. In two weeks, Zan would be going to his new home. I didn’t care about school. Sometimes I didn’t even bother handing in my homework. I became a clock watcher. I didn’t talk to anyone. Jennifer started looking like someone I’d known a long time ago. A few times David tried to talk to me, but it made me embarrassed, like he just pitied me. I didn’t talk in class. I stayed out of people’s way.

When I got home from school, Peter was outside with Zan. When he saw me through the sliding glass he waved me out.

“What’s up?” I said.

He smiled. “I’m going with him.”

It was like the blue in the sky, the green in the trees, had suddenly come back a bit. “You mean to Nevada?”

He nodded. “I told your dad I wanted to keep working with Zan, and I applied to grad school at Siegal. Your dad wrote a letter of recommendation for me. And he helped me put together a proposal for working with Zan, to see if he’d teach the other young chimps to sign. I guess Jack Helson has all sorts of projects going on down there and he seemed to think this would fit in with some of them.”

“Dad
helped
you?” I said.

“A lot.”

I didn’t want to like Dad right now, but I couldn’t deny he’d done a nice thing, a good thing. Zan wouldn’t be alone. He’d have his favourite friend with him. It wouldn’t be me, but it would be the next best thing.

Peter grinned. “So after I finish up the term here, I’m heading down to Reno.”

My throat suddenly felt thick. “You’ll look after him,” I said.

Peter looked me straight in the eye. “Why do you think I’m going down there? You think I’m crazy about Nevada? It’s desert.”

“You love him too, right?”

He exhaled through his nose and nodded. “I sure do.”

I hugged him hard, pressed my face into his musty jean jacket so he couldn’t see my face get all red and snotty and crumpled.

“Thanks, Peter,” I said, and when I could talk properly again, I added, “I wish I could come too.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Things are going to be all right.”

Three days before Zan had to go, he learned his last sign from us.

It was the sign for his own name. He’d always understood it when
we
made it. He knew it meant we were talking about him, or to him. But it was a tricky sign to form—probably a bad choice on our part.

But that day, in the sandbox, he made it.

He took his hand and zigzagged it across his chest and made the Z.

Zan,
he said.

I smiled and nodded and signed it back to him several times, and he seemed very pleased with himself and started using it in all sorts of phrases.

Zan eat. Zan drink. Zan play.

It was like we’d just given him his name—and now we were taking it away from him.

T
he sign for
love
is very similar to
hug.
You just cross your wrists and place them over your heart.

That was not a word on our teaching lists. It never got written on the big wall chart in our kitchen.

We dressed Zan in our clothes, and fed him our food, and let him sleep in our beds. We told him to call us Mom and Dad and brother.

He lived with us and trusted us, and we lied to him every day. We fooled him into thinking we were his real family, and that we would always love him and take care of him. We did this so he’d perform all his tricks for us.

But later, when his tricks weren’t useful any more, we locked him in a cage, and got rid of him.

T
rying to pack for Zan when he was around was hopeless. I’d put some of his favourite things in a suitcase, and he’d come and grab them out and run off, wanting me to catch him and tickle him.

In the end we had to wait till he was asleep and then I moved through his room like a thief, selecting things. On his bed he was all wrapped up in his favourite blanket, with his pig and his cow and his G.I. Joe action figure. For a few seconds I tried to wiggle them away so I could pack them, but in the end, I just gave up and settled down beside him and slept the night there.

The next day at lunchtime, when Mom put the tranquilizer in Zan’s milk she started to cry, and she couldn’t stop. Dad
was worried she might upset Zan and he wouldn’t drink the bottle, so he told her to go upstairs.

Nearly two years ago they’d tranquilized Zan’s mother so Mom could take Zan. Now she was putting him to sleep so she could abandon him.

Dad finished pouring the milk into the bottle, gave it a good shake, and passed it to me. “Why don’t you give it to him, Ben.”

“You do it,” I said. “It’s your show, Doctor.”

His eyes had so little warmth. He offered the bottle and Zan took it and drank eagerly, pausing only right at the beginning, probably because he noticed the taste.

He must have thought it was weird we hadn’t put him in his high chair first, so he climbed up onto me and drank his bottle on my lap. I held him close, looked over the top of his head, and felt like a traitor.

I held him till he’d finished, and held him as he got very quiet and still. He fell asleep in my arms.

The doctor had given him a big dose. It was supposed to be totally safe, and would keep him asleep for eight hours. Just to make sure, we had a backup dose packed for the flight.

“Let’s go,” Dad said.

Mom came down, her eyes all red and swollen, and we got into the Mercedes. We’d packed our own bags the night before too, and they were already in the back. The drive to the airport didn’t take long. No public airline wanted a chimp bouncing around, so the university had paid for a private plane. The last of the Project Zan money.

The plane was waiting on the tarmac. It was little, with
two propellers and not much room in the cabin. A little door separated us from the pilots in the cockpit. Mom held Zan in her arms, wrapped in a blanket. No one talked much.

It was my first time on an airplane, and I should’ve been excited, checking everything out, but I didn’t enjoy it. After we took off I looked out the window and saw the island and then the water and then we climbed above the clouds and it was like we were in some nowhere land.

About an hour into the flight it got really bumpy, and though I was scared, part of me thought it would be good if we crashed, because at least we’d be all together. And then I wouldn’t have to hand over Zan and say goodbye, and see the look in his eyes as he realized we were leaving him behind.

My mind kept shutting down then. I couldn’t think beyond that moment. It was like nothing could possibly exist afterwards.

The plane didn’t crash, and a couple of hours later, we landed in Nevada. I carried Zan down the steps to where Peter was waiting for us beside a station wagon.

It was really good to see Peter. He’d arrived the week before and was getting settled.

“Dr. Tomlin,” he said, shaking Dad’s hand. “Sarah. Hey, Ben, how’s sleepyhead?”

“He’s all right,” I said.

“Still out cold, eh? Okay, let’s take you guys out to the ranch.”

Ranch
sounded good: big and clean and wholesome. The people who worked there would all love animals and just want to take care of them as best they could.

“So, it’s going to be a bit of a change for Zan,” Peter said as he pulled onto the highway. “I just want to warn you. It’s certainly been a change for me.”

It was sunny and hot, but I didn’t care about what was outside the car windows. Didn’t care about the desert or the cactuses or the birdsong.

Zan, warm in my arms.

“This will go easier for Zan if we act as normally as possible,” Dad said.

In the back seat I shook my head in disgust. Maybe Dad could do it, because he didn’t feel as much as me—he never had. Mom looked out the window, silent.

The plan was, we were going to stay five days to help Zan settle in. Dr. Helson had been against it. He’d said a clean break, cold turkey, was the best way to do it. Don’t drag it out. But Mom had insisted, and Dad had backed her up. We’d booked a motel on the outskirts of town and would spend the days at the ranch with Zan. I got to miss a week of school.

“How do you find working with Dr. Helson?” Dad asked Peter.

“He’s very …” Peter paused. “He knows a lot about chimps; he’s been working with them a long time. And Zan will have company here, which is really good. Chimps form pretty close bonds.”

All I could think about was how we’d torn apart the only bonds Zan had ever formed in his life. Twice.

Outside: a long country road lined with power poles, going on forever. The land looked hard and dry but there were a few trees and shrubs, close to the ground and kind of scraggly-looking.

“We’re just coming up on it here,” Peter said, and turned onto a dirt road. There was a little rise and then I could see the chain-link fencing, topped with tilted rows of razor wire. I felt a lump form in my throat.

“There’s a lot of land,” said Peter, “so Zan’ll have plenty of space outside. I’ve been talking to Dr. Helson about building a kind of elevated playground for them, you know, poles with rope bridges, and platforms they can climb, like a more natural forest environment.”

There were more trees and bushes now, and we were coming up on what looked like a farm. I saw a couple of barns, then a large concrete building with high barred windows on all sides. Beyond that was a pretty farmhouse with a white veranda and picture windows. It looked like something from a storybook.
Old Macdonald had a farm.

It was late afternoon, the light starting to slant beautifully on the buildings and trees, making long shadows across the ground.

We parked on the gravel drive, and the moment I opened the car door I heard the chimps.

“That’s the main colony,” Peter said, nodding at the big concrete building. “There’re thirteen of them right now. Feeding time, by the sound of it.”

I’d heard Zan make a ruckus when he was having a temper tantrum, but he was one little chimp. The sound of so many
chimpanzees together made my knees weak. They sounded big, and they sounded powerful, and suddenly I felt like I didn’t know anything about chimps at all. I didn’t want to go in there.

Luckily, from out of the pretty farmhouse, an entire family was coming to meet us. A man and a woman and two kids, a girl about my age and a boy about ten or so.

Mom was carrying Zan now, still fast asleep. I grabbed his suitcase. I saw Peter glance at it and look kind of sick, but he didn’t say anything.

“Richard,” said the man, striding towards Dad with his hand outstretched. “Jack Helson, welcome.”

Helson was tall and thin, but broad shouldered. With his sleeves rolled back, his forearms seemed way bigger than they should have been, all bulgy muscle and vein. He had close-cropped hair, a high forehead, and very intense green eyes. He didn’t look much like a professor to me; he looked like a soldier.

Introductions were made out there on the gravel drive, and then he asked us to come inside and have dinner.

“What a little sweetheart,” said Dr. Helson’s wife, Barbara, looking at Zan. “He’s a good size.”

“He’s a good eater,” Mom said.

“Bring him inside,” Dr. Helson said. “Lord knows, our house is no stranger to baby chimps.”

I liked the way he called Zan a baby. Like he was something vulnerable and worth taking special care of.

Mrs. Helson said, “He’ll probably start to rouse in an hour or two, and then we’ll get him settled. The other chimps will be
sleeping by then.” She was big boned and had a pleasant face. I knew from Peter that she was a vet, so she was a doctor too, really. The boy, Winston, looked like a miniature version of his dad, with a near shaved head and piercing eyes. Sue-Ellen, the girl, was sort of pretty—blonde and curvy, with a sunny smile.

The Helsons’ house was nice. Their dining table was already set for us, and there were all sorts of prints hanging on the walls, historical etchings of apes and chimps. I saw Mom and Dad look at them appreciatively and could tell they thought Helson was a cultivated man.

Sue-Ellen brought out a playpen for Zan, set it up in a corner of the dining room, and expertly took Zan from Mom’s arms and laid him down so he could sleep comfortably while we ate. I remembered that very first barbecue in Victoria, when Zan was just days old, and everyone had wanted to hold him and coo over him. For a weird moment I felt like we were safe and all together, but I knew it was a lie.

It was a good meal—Dr. Helson liked to cook apparently—but I couldn’t eat much. I kept glancing at Zan sleeping in his playpen, wondering where he was going to be spending the night.

“They’re fabulous creatures, chimps,” Dr. Helson was saying. “Intelligent. Empathetic. Murderous too. They’re no angels.”

“Neither are we,” said Mom.

“That’s why we have so much in common,” said Helson, nodding. “But we’re much, much smarter. The mistake is when we allow our human sentimentality to contaminate the experiments.”