Half Brother (26 page)

“I would agree,” said Dad.

Helson tapped his fork at the air. “Our craving to anthropomorphize them is remarkable.”

Anthropomorphize.
I’d heard Dad use that word before. “What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Pretending animals are human,” said Sue-Ellen, giving me a smile. “That they’ll act just like us.”

Her father chuckled. “And I can promise you, they don’t. But people have a great deal of trouble realizing this, especially with the young ones. Even the people who work with them. Fascinating psychological process, to watch it happen. The delusion can be therapeutic for some. I do quite a bit of work in that area.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, and he didn’t elaborate. He seemed to like looking at Mom an awful lot. He addressed most of his comments to her, and once I thought he was looking down her blouse.

“But of course, all babies grow up, and that’s when the problems begin.” Helson turned his gaze on me now. “You’ve seen the movie
101 Dalmations?”

I nodded.

“Well, the movie was popular, and the dogs were adorable. All those little puppies. And apparently, after the movie came out, everyone wanted a Dalmatian. Now, as it turns out, these dogs have superabundant energy, and they’re not ideal house pets. They destroy houses. So people started getting rid of them in the droves. Pounds were glutted with them. I suspect many were put down. Fantasy can be a dangerous thing.”

I moved food around my plate. I got the point of Helson’s
stories, and I also got the sense he thought we’d messed up Zan.

“Have you spent any time with mature chimps?” Helson asked us.

“Briefly, at Borroway, when I got Zan,” Mom said.

“Ah-ha, and you?” he asked my father.

“Unfortunately not,” said Dad.

“Well, you’re in for an education after dinner.”

I could tell Dad didn’t like to be talked to like this. He probably thought he’d had more education than Helson, down here on his ranch in Nowheresville, Nevada.

“Excellent meal,” he said. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”

“Not at all,” said Helson. “It’s been a trying day for you. Now, Sue-Ellen and Winston, help your mother clean up while I take the Tomlins out to the colony.”

The night air was warm. Bugs pulsed over the fields. As we neared the big, ugly concrete building, I could still hear some hoots and pants and wails, but it was much quieter than when we’d arrived.

We reached a door. Not steel, not like a bank vault or anything. Just normal. Inside we went, Zan still asleep in Mom’s arms, though starting to stir. I carried his suitcase.

The smell came first: humid, intense. Nothing as bad as the pigpen I’d visited once on a class trip. But right away you knew you were in the presence of big animals.

Helson switched on a single, very dim light.

All around the perimeter of the room were big cages, separate but connected to each other with tunnels. I was aware of dark shapes within the cages.

An incredible noise suddenly came at us, hoots and shrieks and barks and cries, rising to a crescendo that hurt my ears.

“Not too used to visitors after dinner,” said Helson.

Inside the cages the great shapes stirred. Some stood on two legs, some pressed their bodies right against the bars, arms raised; and a few of them howled, their vast mouths all teeth and red gums. They were massive. Their faces and hands and fur were much darker than Zan’s. They were not beautiful. Zan was just a baby and I was terrified for him.

Peter was beside me, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he whispered in my ear. “They just like making noise. They’re not so bad. I’ll introduce you properly tomorrow.”

“We’ll put Zan in here for now,” said Helson, leading us to one of the smaller cages in the corner of the building. “It’s sealed off.”

A cage.

Not a room, but a cage.

There was a concrete floor with a drain in the middle, nothing else.

Helson unlocked the door and swung it wide. I looked at Mom, who held Zan swaddled in his favourite blanket.

“Bring him in,” said Helson. He smiled, but sounded impatient.

Reluctantly Mom went inside. I followed her with my little suitcase. The moment I walked through the cage door, I felt queasy. The cage was about ten feet by ten. I could see there was a tunnel, but the gate was locked for now.

In the next cage over were two big chimps. One sat very
still, watching. The other was banging against the bars and hollering.

Helson nodded at Zan. “Take his clothes off,” he told Mom. “Why?” she asked.

Helson chuckled and waved a hand to the next cage. “Do you see any of the others wearing clothes?”

“He’s grown up with clothes,” Mom said, frowning.

“The other chimps won’t accept him,” said Helson simply. “Take them off.”

Zan was still asleep, and I helped Mom gently lift his T-shirt over his limp arms. I pulled his shorts down over his legs. That left only the diaper. I undid the clasps and pulled it off. It was warm and damp. Zan looked so much smaller now, so much more vulnerable, and I kept swallowing so I wouldn’t cry.

I opened Zan’s suitcase and started taking out some of his things.

“No,” said Helson, fixing me with those piercing eyes of his. I’d been in the middle of spreading Zan’s favourite fleecy blankets on the floor. “There won’t be any of that here. Do you think chimps use blankets in the wild?”

“But Zan wasn’t raised in the wild,” said Mom. “He grew up with blankets and a bed.”

“So I understand,” said Helson. “But that’s not the way my chimps live. We don’t pretend they’re humans here. They’re chimps and they live like chimps, and there’s a lot more dignity in that than dressing them up in children’s clothes. The sooner Zan realizes he’s a chimp, the better. Now lay him down on the floor.”

I looked at all the things I’d packed for Zan in his suitcase. His G.I. Joe and his duck and chimp and cow: his babies. He loved these things. I looked at Mom, wanting to hear her protest.

Mom said, “Dr. Helson, surely, for the sake of easing his transition, he can have a couple of his favourite blankets.”

“And his G.I. Joe,” I said. “He likes that one best.”

Helson exhaled impatiently. Dad, who was standing outside the cage, nodded. “I see no benefit in traumatizing Zan on his first night,” he said.

The two men looked at each other. “One blanket, nothing more,” said Helson.

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hurt him.

“That’s his favourite,” Mom said to me quietly, nodding at the one I’d already put out. She carefully laid Zan down on it. I folded it over him. Mom headed out of the cage. I closed up the suitcase and as I stood, I looked at all the people on the other side of the bars: Mom. Dad. Helson. Peter.

“We can’t leave him here,” I said.

No one replied. I looked at Peter and all my fury flew towards him. “He won’t be happy here. You could’ve told us it would be like this. You saw this place. It’s just a zoo!”

“Young man, listen to me,” said Helson, and his severe voice made my eyes snap to his. “You may not like the look of these cages, but I can assure you, my facilities are as good as it gets in this country. The chimps have large cages, space to play outside, and they have company. They’re well fed and have the best vet in the state looking after them. That would
be my wife. And they don’t have people sticking needles into them and injecting them with hepatitis.”

I looked down at my shoes, my heart pounding, so much noise in my head.

Mom came back inside the cage and leaned her forehead against mine. “He’s right, Ben,” she said. “There aren’t a lot of places willing to take a chimp, and we tried to find the best one. I really think this is it.”

“I’m staying with him tonight,” I said.

“Not in the cage,” said Helson. “If anything happens to you, I’m liable.”

“Zan would never hurt me,” I told him angrily.

Helson chuckled. “They’re full of surprises. Especially when under stress.”

“Outside the cage, then,” I said.

“Ben, you’re not sleeping outside the cage,” said Dad.

Mom looked at him. “Let him, if he wants.”

The way she said it, the way she looked at Dad, I knew he wouldn’t argue.

“Suit yourself,” said Helson. “Hard floor. It won’t be comfy. No room service here. And stay away from the other chimp cages.”

“I’ve got a sleeping bag in the back of my car,” Peter told me. “I’ll get it out for you.”

After I got settled outside Zan’s cage, Mom and Dad said goodbye, and Peter drove them to their motel. I lay there very still. I didn’t want to upset the other chimps, most of whom seemed to have calmed down and gone to sleep.

I did not sleep. I kept my eyes on Zan, who was starting to stir more and more as the tranquilizer finally wore off. It seemed to take him forever to wake up properly. Or maybe he was awake and it was just taking him a long time to figure out where on earth he was.

“Zan,” I called out to him softly. I didn’t want to get the other chimps going.

Eventually he lifted his head. His eyes met mine. He gave a happy pant-hoot and scampered clumsily over, dragging his blanket with him. He settled down in front of me, right against the bars. They didn’t seem to freak him out yet. He probably didn’t understand what they were. We touched each other through the bars, stroking each other’s hair and hands and faces.

Where shirt?
he signed, noticing for the first time he wasn’t wearing any clothes.
No shirt,
I replied.

He didn’t seem upset. He’d always hated his diaper, and getting dressed. Maybe he’d actually be happier naked. He signed
Zan eat.

Peter had left me with some food and water, figuring Zan would be hungry if he woke up in the middle of the night. I had several chunks of something that looked like meat loaf, and Zan took them eagerly as I passed them through the bars. If anything, he seemed excited, like this was all a fun adventure.

In,
he signed, inviting me inside.

No.

You in.

I shook my head and signed
no
again. He looked around at his cage, this time with more concentration.

Out. You me out. Now out. No.

Hurry out!

I tried to distract him by tickling him through the bars. This seemed to work for a bit. I’d kept his favourite G.I. Joe toy stuffed in my pocket, and passed it to him, and he tucked it under his armpit and pulled his blanket around him more. I wished I’d kept more of his toys on me so he could make his protective circle, but Peter had taken the suitcase back to his place.

I was worried Zan was getting upset, so I talked to him as I groomed him. I started telling him the story of his day, and of flying on an airplane, but he wouldn’t remember any of that, and anyway it was such a sad story I couldn’t keep going.

So I made up another story—I told him about how, when the sun came up, we would go out and play and there would be trees and plants and branches and we would have lots of tickling and hide-and-seek.

I just kept telling this over and over, my voice getting slower and sleepier, until his eyelids drooped and we fell asleep together, side by side, touching through the bars.

I
was woken by the sound of the big chimps hooting and shrieking, and a voice saying, “Rise and shine, mate.” I squinted up from my sleeping bag to see a big guy uncoiling a long hose down the walkway.

“Time to clean the cages,” he said. He sounded Australian. “I’m Marcus. You must be Ben, right?”

The other chimps seemed to know what to do. They moved through the tunnels into other cages while Marcus hosed down the floors, washing yesterday’s food and urine and feces down the drains.

Light poured through the high barred windows and Zan looked around properly for the first time. He stared and stared at the other chimps. I wondered what he was thinking. He’d never seen another chimp before in his life, except for pictures of himself. But those pictures were always beside photos of me and Mom and Dad and Peter. He was one of
us.
Not one of
them.
Finally he turned to me and signed:

Black dogs.

Not far from our house in Victoria there was a huge black Rottweiler and that was pretty much the biggest animal Zan had ever seen before now. I didn’t know how to tell him he was the same—or even if I should. Maybe it was better he figured it out in his own time.

Marcus saved our cage till last and I quickly pulled Zan’s blanket and toy through the bars and urged him to one side so Marcus could hose down his floor. There wasn’t much to clean up. Zan was pretty interested in watching the water swirl down the drain. Then he walked over to the water and had a pee, hooting with delight.

I couldn’t help laughing. I was just glad he was happy. I still wasn’t used to seeing him naked, though. He looked so small and young compared to the others. And he already looked less like one of us.

Once Marcus was done, another person came to help feed the chimps their breakfast. While all that was going on, Peter arrived with Mom and Dad. They’d brought me an Egg McMuffin and orange juice from McDonald’s.

“How was your night?” Mom asked, hugging me. Dad put a hand on my shoulder.

“It was okay,” I said. “He woke up and stayed up a long time, but he didn’t seem too scared. He calls the other chimps
black dogs.”

“Hah!” said Dad. “The power of cross-fostering.” Soon after, Dr. Helson and his wife arrived. I guessed their kids had gone off to school.

When they unlocked Zan’s cage and I went inside, he
was so excited he nearly strangled me, hugging and kissing me. Dr. Helson watched us with a rueful smile. Mrs. Helson wanted to examine Zan, but it took a while to get him off me. She had an excellent, reassuring manner with him, and he let her poke and prod him.

“He’s a very healthy little chimp,” she announced.

“That’s good,” said Helson. “In a chimp colony, the weak can be victimized. The faster we integrate him, the better chance he has of being accepted. We’ll introduce him to Sheba later today. She lost her own baby four months ago.”