The Bass Wore Scales (15 page)

A bass, like any other singer, is only as good as his last solo. It’s an axiom as old as Diane Bish’s hairdo. Fishy Jim had never missed an entrance that I knew of, and I’d been around since Pavarotti was in Pampers.

I had a chat with the maitre d’, got a voucher for two more free meals at the Chartreuse Chapeau, then went around back to retrieve my woodchuck out of the dumpster.

“
Wow,” said Betsy, standing waist deep in potato peels. “You really know how to show a gal a good time.”

“
Listen, Kitten,” I said, looking at my watch. “I haven’t got all night. And you couldn’t very well boost ME into the dumpster. Not in THAT dress.”

“
Found it!” yelped Betsy. “Right here under these chicken skins!”

“
Then hop out of there, throw it in the back seat, and let’s paint the town red,” I said.

* * *

“
What are we going to sing on Wednesday?” Meg asked. “Do you have any great ideas yet?”

“
Nope. I’ll have to do some planning, I guess. How about Mozart’s little d-minor mass?”

“
I’ve never heard it. Is it good?” asked Meg, handing me a plate of pasta.

“
Yeah, it is. A couple of violins, some nice little solos. Enchanting, really.”

“
Sounds like fun,” Meg said, handing me a glass of red wine to go with my plate of noodles. “By the way, I’m tired of cooking every night. You’re cooking the next three—no, make that four—times I come over.”

“
It’ll be my pleasure, but you only come over for dinner a couple times a week. That’s two weeks worth of cooking.”

“
Yep. And no take-out either. And no burgers or knockwurst. And
you
have to do the shopping.”

“
Sheesh,” I said, tasting my pasta. “Is this what it’s going to be like when we’re married?”

“
You wish!”

* * *

It was our plan to all meet at the biology department at Appalachian State. Pete had set up an “interview” with Dr. Pelicane and Kokomo the gorilla. We had quite a crew. There was Meg and myself; Moosey and his mother Ardine; Pete and his latest significant other, Molly Frazier; Dave, Collette and Nancy. Noylene was there, of course, and Wormy. Noylene had invited Brother Jimmy Kilroy, pastor of the New Fellowship Baptist Church, since she and Collette were members, and Brother Jimmy thought it would be fascinating to see a talking gorilla. He, in turn, had asked Rev. Francisco Garridos, a Baptist minister from Spain who was spending a month at NFBC studying church growth with Brother Jimmy. Kent Murphee, the coroner from Boone, made the two-block trek from his office at my invitation. I counted fourteen as we walked into the science building.

“
Wow, there’s quite a crew!” said a rather heavy-set, middle-aged woman wearing a white lab coat over a blouse and a pair of dark slacks. “I’m Dr. Pelicane.”

“
Hiya, Penny,” Pete said. “We’ve all come to see your gorilla.”

“
Wonderful!” said Dr. Pelicane. “Great to see you again, Pete! Follow me this way and I’ll give you the spiel.”

“
Kokomo has been with me for twenty-one years,” said Dr. Pelicane, leading us down the hall. “I got him as a baby. He has a vocabulary of over a thousand words and can understand two-thousand words of spoken English.”

“
How does he talk?” asked Moosey, now walking beside Dr. Pelicane. “Can I ask him stuff?”

“
He uses American Sign Language, but he’s very selective about answering questions.”

“
I can talk in sign language!” said Moosey, excitedly. “I learned last year. We had a deaf kid in our class, and Mrs. Shields taught some of us sign language. I was the best at it though!”

“
That’s great,” said Dr. Pelicane, still walking, with Moosey in close proximity, the rest of us doing our best to keep up and follow the conversation. “But he’s very hard to understand. Some of his signs you’d recognize right away, but he uses different language patterns than we do. If he doesn’t know a word, or if a word sounds a lot like one he
does
know, he might use that one. He often interchanges ‘nipple’ for ‘people.’”

Moosey laughed. Apparently, Dr. Pelicane, in her ivory tower, didn’t know that you can’t say “nipple” to an eight year old.

“
We call these ‘sound-alikes,’” she continued. “In some other cases, he’s decided to change the word completely. For example, for ‘woman,’ he would sign ‘lip.’ That’s his word for woman.”

“
So a woman is a lip?” asked Pete. “He’s a very perceptive gorilla.”

“
Oh yes,” said Dr. Pelicane, completely missing Pete’s joke. “He has an IQ of somewhere between 70 and 90. That’s just slightly lower than an average human’s. He’ll even tell me a lie sometimes.” She stopped in front of a door, took out a key, unlocked it and ushered us into a lab.

“
It is an extremely interesting proposition,” said Rev. Garridos in perfect English, but with a heavy Spanish accent. “In Spain, our governing party, what you would call the ‘Socialists’ I believe, is submitting a bill to grant human rights to four species of animals.”

“
Gorillas?” Dr. Pelicane asked.

“
Yes, that is one,” said Rev. Garridos. “Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans; the
grandes simios.
Great apes.”

“
Well, you know that the great apes share 99.3 percent of their genetic material with humans,” said Dr. Pelicane.

“
Yes,” said Rev. Garridos. “I find the entire exercise absurd, but champions of their rights say they have an emotional and cultural life, intelligence and moral qualities that are reminiscent of humans.”

“
I couldn’t agree more,” Dr. Pelicane said, leading us toward a door marked with a large, red exit sign. “Right through here. We could have gone the long way around, but this was easier.”

We pushed open the door and walked out into a paved courtyard. In the center of the courtyard was a motor home—a big one, with the University of Maryland logo on the side.

“
This is how we travel,” Dr. Pelicane said. “Kokomo enjoys driving.” She opened the door to the motor home, and we all piled inside. It was spacious, as motor homes go, thirty-nine feet long and eight and a half feet wide with a couple of slide-out walls that gave the occupants even more room. The air conditioner was on, and the temperature inside was rather cool. About two-thirds of the way back was a Plexiglas barrier, floor to ceiling, complete with a see-through door and several metal slotted disks inserted into the plastic for sound transmission.

“
Hey, Cutie,” Dr. Pelicane said loudly to Kokomo. “These are my friends. They’ve come to talk to you.”

Kokomo moved her hands and pointed to Noylene’s shirt.

“
Yes, that red-pink,” said Dr. Pelicane, then turned to us. “We were having a discussion about color earlier.”

“
Would that be all right with you?” she asked, speaking again to Kokomo, then turned to us and translated.

“
She says, ‘Fine hurry good.’”

I was watching Moosey during all this, and his eyes never left Kokomo’s signing. He nodded when he heard “hurry good.”

“
That red,” signed Kokomo, pointing at Dr. Pelicane’s hair.

“
No, Kokomo, that’s black,” corrected Dr. Pelicane.

“
Black,” signed Kokomo. “Candy give me.”

“
I will give you a treat when we’re finished,” said Dr. Pelicane. “but no candy.”

Kokomo huffed and blew some air through his great lips. He wasn’t a huge gorilla, but any gorilla is bigger than life in Boone, North Carolina. I had done some internet research before we left this morning—I was sure everyone else had as well—and found out that Kokomo was five-foot-eight-inches tall and weighed 480 pounds. He didn’t look quite so big sitting down on the other side of the Plexiglas, but I didn’t doubt these statistics. The gorilla site on the internet also pointed out that male gorillas are as strong as six to eight men. As tame as Kokomo was, I was glad of the barrier.

“
Would any of you like to ask Kokomo a question?” asked Dr. Pelicane. “I can’t guarantee he’ll answer you. Sometimes he can be stubborn, but he seems to be in a good mood today.”

“
Can I ask him about his kitten?” asked Noylene. The doctor nodded.

“
What is your kitten’s name?” said Noylene very slowly and deliberately.

“
Tiger,” signed Kokomo.

“
Tiger?” asked Moosey. “Did he say ‘Tiger?’”

“
He sure did,” said Dr. Pelicane. “That’s very good. Would you like to ask him a question?”

“
Sure,” said Moosey, thinking. “Do you like bananas?”

“
Yes,” signed Kokomo. “Kokomo like banana.”

“
He said ‘Yes, he likes bananas!’” exclaimed Moosey, his excitement growing by the moment.

“
Kokomo,” said Pete, “how do you feel about our government’s foreign policy? Specifically, the job our President is doing?”

“
Pete…” hissed Meg. “Don’t be rude.”

“
Like no little tree,” signed Kokomo. “Candy give me.”

“
He wants some candy,” blurted out Moosey. “Can I give him a treat when we’re done?”

“
Sure,” said Dr. Pelicane. “Did you see what else he said?”

“
He don’t like no little trees,” answered Moosey. “But I don’t get it.”

“
Kokomo doesn’t always have the vocabulary he needs, so sometimes he makes up words or puts words together.”

I started laughing, and Pete caught on a moment later.

“
That’s great!” I said.

“
That’s one smart gorilla,” said Pete, admiringly. “Although I think that he’s been coached just a little.”

“
I assure you he has not,” said Dr. Pelicane. “But I
will
tell you that he watches CNN for two hours almost every day. He has some very strong political opinions.”

“
What are you three talking about?” asked Meg.

“
He doesn’t like little trees,” I said.

“
So?”

“
Bush,” said Pete with a laugh. “He doesn’t like Bush. What a hoot!”

“
Wow,” said Noylene.

After that, we all had questions, mostly about Kokomo’s likes and dislikes, and Moosey was getting quite proficient at translating. About a third of the time, Kokomo’s answers had more to do with the color of Noylene’s shirt and when, if ever, he might get some candy. After about twenty minutes, though, it was pretty clear that Kokomo was getting tired of us.

“
Hurry candy give me. You go.”

“
I think that’s about it for this visit,” said Dr. Pelicane. “Moosey, here’s a plum you can give him. He likes plums. Just hold it up here.” She unlatched the window and slid it open. “He won’t hurt you. Gorillas are very gentle, but if they get excited, they’ll use their arms to crash into things. If this barrier wasn’t here and Kokomo got excited for some reason, it might be very dangerous.”