Buddy

  So Gertie designed a beautiful cage for each chimp. Captain Jiggs’s had a sailing motif. Maggie Klein’s was covered with butterflies. Joe Mendi’s was like an elegant Manhattan apartment.

  But Buddy’s was the grandest of all. His was like the tent of an Arabian sultan, filled with carpets and rugs and covered with drapes. You’d never have guessed it had bars.

  Buddy loved his tent. Almost everything in it was red. He rolled happily on the thick oriental carpets and, on their first night at the fair, started a pillow fight with Gertie and the chimps.

  “He’s like the Sheik of Araby in that thing,” said Bill. “He likes it so much we might have trouble getting him out of there.”

  “No,” said Gertie. “Watch.”

  She stood outside the heavy iron gate and held up his red blanket.

  “Here, Buddy,” she called.

  He looked up and rushed toward her so suddenly it almost frightened her. Gertie wrapped the blanket around Buddy’s head like a turban.

  They all laughed.

  “Now he does look like the Sheik of Araby,” Dick laughed.

  “He’s Buddy, the Ninth Wonder of the World!” joked Bill.

  “He’s the silliest-looking thing I ever saw,” said Beulah. The chimps beckoned Buddy back to the pillow fight. Bill, Dick, and even Beulah joined them. They played riotously. Gertie looked deep into Buddy’s eyes. He seemed so happy.

  “You’re none of those things,” she told Buddy. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and scratched him under his chin. “You’re just my Buddy.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The fair was a happy mix of the miraculous and the silly. There was the Hall of Tomorrow, a big white modern building filled with rocket ships and machines that would make the world of the future easy and carefree. There were robots who could do housework, beds that could make themselves, and even a gadget called the Brain-a-lator that was supposed to make you smarter. Next to the Hall of Tomorrow was an old-fashioned circus sideshow with exotic dancers, vaudeville comedians, magicians, and human oddities. There was even an antique roller coaster and a Ferris wheel.

  Across from these was the Avenue of Electricity, which showed the miracles of electric power, including Captain Electro and the world’s largest light bulb. Then there were the Streets of Many Lands, where each street looked exactly like a little strip of Paris, Rome, Dublin, or faraway Bombay. And right in the middle of the clutter of circus clowns and robots was the Ape Pavilion.

  Gertie, Buddy, and the chimps were a very popular attraction—even more popular than the world’s largest light bulb. They had their own stage where they would perform and a glassed-in viewing hall where people could watch them in their special cages.

  At first everybody had a wonderful time. Especially the chimps. They loved to perform and were happy with the attention and applause. Maggie Klein did a ballet dance and walked on a tightrope with Skippy. Joe and Captain Jiggs played drums and the banjo and sometimes tap-danced while Buddy would sit in a big easy chair and pretend to read the paper.

  Thousands of people came to see them, and millions more read about them in newspapers and magazines. They were famous. Even Franklin Roosevelt, the president of the United States, came to visit.

  But after a while Buddy seemed to grow bored with all the hubbub.

  “He’s unhappy,” Gertie told Bill. “For the first time since we’ve had him, he’s unhappy. I think he’s been cooped up in his cage for too long.”

  The next day, when Gertie opened Buddy’s cage to check on him, Buddy jumped up suddenly and rushed for the door.

  “Buddy, stop!” Gertie yelled, but he brushed right past her. Again she yelled for him to stop, but he didn’t listen. He knocked open the door of the pavilion and ran out into the crowded streets of the fair.

  Gertie shouted for Bill and the others.

  Buddy wasn’t hard to follow. Gertie could hear the screams of “Gorilla loose!”

  She got a glimpse of Buddy as he headed toward the circus midway, but a frantic older gentleman grabbed her. “It’s King Kong, lady!” he bellowed. “Run! Run!”

  Buddy galloped from place to place at the fair. He paid no attention to the startled, screaming people. Happy to be free, he began to tear away his beautiful clothes. There was something in the air that drew him on, something that smelled familiar.

  As he rounded the Wonders of Bread pavilion, he saw what he’d been searching for: a cluster of trees and undergrowth surrounding the African Safari ride.

  He dove into the deep leafy palms and vines. He swung from limb to limb and rolled on the fern-covered ground. Then he sat very still in the dense junglelike shade. He sat there for a long, long time. He felt peaceful, happy, and strangely at home. Memories from long ago came back to him—his parents, his jungle home, and his childhood days.

  Suddenly from all around him he could sense people closing in. He began to tremble. A single man was coming closer, then another and another. They were all holding guns. Buddy rose up to attack.

  Then a familiar voice rang out.

  “Get back, you nincompoops!” commanded Gertie. “And put away those stupid guns!”

  Gertie was shoving her way through the heavy brush, past a line of policemen. She was clutching Buddy’s red blanket.

  “Get back!” she ordered, but the policemen only looked at her as if she were crazy. “He’s my gorilla, and he’s as gentle as a lamb,” she told them.

  Buddy watched her as she came closer. He stood stock-still, his eyes darting from Gertie to the policemen. Gertie held up the red blanket.

  “Here, Buddy,” she said firmly. “Come to Gertie.”

  The policemen stood at the ready, their guns pointed at Buddy.

  “Come here!” said Gertie, fighting to stay calm. “Buddy, you’ve got to come here. Please!”

  Buddy relaxed his threatening stance and moved toward her. He reached out for the blanket. Gertie pulled him close to her.

  “Good boy, Buddy,” she gasped. “Good boy.”

  The policemen lowered their guns.

  But it took hours to lure Buddy away from the African Safari ride. Only after Bill, Dick, and Beulah had found them were they able to coax Buddy back to the Ape Pavilion. They huddled around him while Gertie led the way.

  He went willingly back into his cage, but as soon as Gertie closed the door, Buddy slammed his fists against the bars.

  “What’ll we do now, old girl?” asked Bill.

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. But in her heart she knew they would have to go home.

  CHAPTER 7

  They left the fair the very next day.

  “I just hope we can control him back home,” Gertie worried aloud.

  “I just hope we can control him on the train,” said Bill.

  Buddy was fine on the train. They had their own baggage car. Buddy and the chimps ran around having pillow fights and enjoying themselves.

  But back at their house in New York, Buddy was restless. He wouldn’t stay in his room or go near his cage. He finally went to sleep in a huge oak tree in the backyard. Gertie camped out underneath the tree to make sure he didn’t run away. She tried and tried to get him to come down. She held out his red blanket, but he snatched it away and kept it with him in the tree. She played her father’s opera records for him. He listened intently but still wouldn’t come down.

  “It’s not like it was when he was little,” Gertie told Bill. “Back then I couldn’t make him let go. Now I can’t get him to come near me.”

  It was a long, sad night. Gertie barely slept.

  The next morning she let Buddy scrub the kitchen floor. It was one of his favorite jobs and was the only time he wasn’t afraid of water. He’d get his bucket full of soapy water and scrub for hours, lost in thought. It always seemed to calm him. But he was so strong he could actually wear away the linoleum, so about once a month Gertie would have the kitchen floor replaced.

  Now there was a brand-new floor for Buddy to
scrub, and he went at it with a vengeance.

  “He’s gonna wear it out lickety-split,” Beulah told Gertie later that day.

  Gertie decided to check on Buddy, but when she walked into the kitchen, she slipped on the wet floor. Her legs slid out in front of her, accidentally knocking over Buddy’s bucket, and she landed with a loud thud. Water from the bucket splashed onto Buddy’s face and soaked his head.

  Gertie felt a little silly sitting on the floor, but she wasn’t hurt. She managed to laugh at herself. Then she looked at Buddy. His face dripped with water. For a moment she thought he was making a funny face. Then she realized something was wrong—very wrong. Buddy looked angry.

  Gertie remembered how Buddy had been afraid of water when he was little, but now she was afraid.

  “Buddy, are you okay?” she asked gently.

  He stood completely still for what seemed like a long time.

  Then he rose up to his full height and let out a great, furious jungle scream. Gertie’s blood ran cold. She knew she was in trouble. She wasn’t sure why, but somehow the water had done something to Buddy. This wasn’t the sweet gorilla that she had raised. In one terrible moment, Buddy had turned wild.

  Gertie crawled carefully out of the kitchen. Just as she quickly shut and locked the door, Buddy charged. He smashed against the door and splintered it open.

  “Knock-knock, who’s there,” chirped Charlie from his cage.

  Gertie was shocked. She backed away slowly as Buddy came closer to her. She reached for his red blanket, which was draped over a chair. She held it out. Her hand was shaking.

  Buddy ignored the blanket and threw the broken door across the room with one hand, almost hitting her.

  Gertie was sure that he would charge again, but instead he knocked over a chair, then hurled a table with all his might against the wall. He began to break everything in the room—desks, lamps, statues, pictures on the wall, even a huge globe.

  By then the whole house heard the commotion and stood watching, horrified, from the door.

  Buddy looked over and rushed like a demon toward them.

  “No, Buddy! No!” Charlie squawked. “No, Buddy! No, Buddy!”

  Buddy stopped. Charlie chirped on. Buddy turned and stared at Charlie. He seemed confused. He looked around the room as if amazed by what had happened.

  Gertie walked cautiously toward him.

  “It’s okay, Buddy,” she said calmly.

  He sat down on the floor and rocked back and forth. Gertie wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and hugged him.

  “It’ll be okay, Buddy,” she said softly.

  Bill, Beulah, Dick, and the others walked cautiously toward them.

  “What on earth happened?” Bill asked, his voice almost a whisper.

  “I’ve never seen him like that,” murmured Dick.

  “He went wild on us,” said Beulah.

  “Poor Buddy,” squawked Charlie. “Poor Buddy.”

  Gertie tried to look into his eyes, but he would not look up.

  “Poor Buddy,” said Gertie, almost crying. “He did go wild.”

  CHAPTER 8

  For days there was an unhappy quiet about the house. Workmen came to repair the room that Buddy had destroyed.

  Gertie stayed lost in thought and hardly spoke to anyone. She’d visit Buddy in his cage, where she’d had to put him since the attack, but he sat in a corner wrapped in his blanket with his back to anyone who came to see him. Gertie pleaded with Buddy to come to her, but he ignored her orders.

  Gertie didn’t know what to do. Buddy was miserable, but she couldn’t let him run loose anymore.

  “I promised I’d never cage my animals,” she said to Buddy sadly. “I’ll find a way, Buddy. I promise.”

  So she worried and thought and puzzled for days. Bill and Dick and Beulah and all the animals did their best to be cheerful. They dressed up and performed a dance to Gertie’s opera records. But Buddy yanked down the curtains from his cage and turned his back to them. He slouched against the bars, his head hung low. It was as if he didn’t like his home anymore.

  Later, as Gertie leafed through her photo album, she found a picture of Buddy the day she’d picked him up at the zoo. He had been so tiny, sick, and frail, nestled in his box as the zookeeper carried him out to the car. Something in the picture got Gertie thinking. Behind the zookeeper there was a big overgrown area of palm and banana trees.

  She stared at the picture. And she remembered how hard it was to make Buddy leave that small plot of fake jungle at the World’s Fair. A smile spread across her face. Her spirits lifted. She had an idea.

  Six weeks later, a small caravan of covered trucks left the Lintz house, headed toward Philadelphia. In the front truck rode Beulah and a host of household animals: Boo the leopard, Lawrence the dragon, and Lancelot. The little dachshund was wearing sun-glasses for the drive. Charlie the parrot kept calling, “Take a left! Take a left!”

  Dick drove the second truck with the chimps. Maggie sat in the front and blew kisses to passing cars while Joe Mendi, Captain Jiggs, and Skippy played in the back. In the third and last truck rode Gertie and Buddy. They sat quietly together while Bill drove.

  Buddy clutched his red blanket. He craned his huge neck and peered out from under the canvas truck cover. The world was rushing by as they sped along. Buddy sniffed the air and began to rock back and forth.

  “It’ll be okay,” Gertie whispered to Buddy. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

  After a while the trucks came to a stop. Then Gertie looked out from beneath the canvas cover. The zookeeper was greeting them at the gate of the zoo.

  “Everything’s ready,” he told Gertie. “Just follow me.”

  They followed the zookeeper’s car past cage after cage of animals. Buddy peered out again. He did not like what he saw.

  Then they turned into a big open area that looked like a sort of park. You could barely see the high stone wall that surrounded it. They came to a stop.

  The zookeeper called out, “We’re here!” Gertie and Buddy could hear the sounds of the others getting out of their trucks. The chimps were laughing. Beulah was grousing, “Come on, leopard! Come on, lizard! Come on, everybody!” Charlie was chirping, “Nice spread! Nice spread!”

  Gertie smiled at Buddy and gently took his hand.

  “Come on,” she said quietly. “Let’s see your new home.”

  She led him out of the truck and into the sunlight. Everyone stood waiting and watching. Buddy looked slowly around. In every direction there were tall trees, and around them, bushes, palms, and ferns. It was beautiful, green, lush, and shady. It was almost like a jungle.

  Buddy rocked back and forth excitedly and sniffed the air.

  “Let’s give him a chance to get used to it,” Gertie said.

  Suddenly in the distance two other gorillas came cautiously out of the woods.

  “Here are your new friends, Buddy. We had them brought in just for you,” Gertie told him.

  Buddy stared at the gorillas. He hadn’t seen others of his kind since he was a baby. He looked at Gertie.

  “They’re your new friends, Buddy,” she said. Tears filled her eyes. “Go on. Go say hello!”

  Buddy ran a circle around his old family, looking at Beulah and Dick and Bill and the chimps. He beat his chest joyfully.

  Then he ran full speed toward the other apes but, just as suddenly, he halted.

  He ran back to Gertie one last time.

  She scratched under his chin and hugged him.

  “Go on, you silly old thing,” she said quietly. “I told you I’d make everything okay.”

  She looked into his great dark eyes. “You’re still such a mystery,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. He took his red blanket from her hand and galloped toward the other apes.

  Buddy disappeared into the verdant shade of the trees with his new gorilla pals.

  “The zookeeper says we can come anytime we want,” Gertie told the others.

  “Goo
d, maybe they’ve got a cage for Dicky Boy,” joked Beulah.

  “I’m house-trained and everything,” said Dick.

  The chimps rolled around and around in the grass.

  “Maybe we could just move in here,” quipped Bill. “It’s not that different from our house.”

  “You’re right, Bill. It’s not that different,” Gertie said. They all chuckled, then grew quiet as they watched Buddy swing happily through the trees with his new friends.

  • • •

  And so a long time ago in the 1930s, you might have seen many amazing things, for it was an amazing time. And if you’d gone to a zoo in Philadelphia on just about any weekend, you might have seen one of the most amazing things of all: a beautiful woman and her family having a picnic inside the gorilla domain. The woman’s name? Gertie Lintz, of course. And her family? Bill, Dick, Beulah, and the chimps. And sometimes Lawrence the dragon and Boo the leopard and even little Lancelot the dachshund. A green parrot named Charlie would likely be chirping along to the opera music on the Victrola.

  And way off in the distance, back in the trees, you might just make out a big gorilla with a red blanket. That, of course, was Buddy, far away from Africa to be sure, but at last very much at home.

  AFTERWORD

  Mrs. Lintz was the most famous dog breeder of her day. But it is for her apes that she is remembered. On her Brooklyn estate she raised over a dozen chimpanzees and two gorillas, in addition to hundreds of other animals. She brought up her apes as much like humans as possible. They wore clothes, played croquet, ate at the dinner table, and did in fact go to the World’s Fair of 1933. Her chimps went on to star in the Tarzan movies, and appeared in Our Gang and The Three Stooges short films. One of her gorillas became the main attraction of the Barnum & Bailey Circus for many years. The gorilla depicted in this book resided at the Philadelphia Zoo until 1984. He lived to the ripe old age of fifty-four.