I am, I suppose, a peaceful sort. Mostly I watch the world go by and think about naps and bananas and yogurt raisins.
But inside me, hidden, is another Ivan.
He could tear a grown man’s limbs off his body.
In the flicker of time it takes a snake’s tongue to taste the air, he could taste revenge.
He is the Ivan on the billboard.
I stare at the One and Only Ivan, at the faded picture of Stella, and I remember George and Mack on their ladders, adding the picture of Ruby to bring new visitors to the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade.
I remember the story Ruby told, the one where the villagers came to her rescue.
I hear Stella’s kind, wise voice: Humans can surprise you sometimes.
I look at my fingers, coated in red paint the color of blood, and I know how to keep my promise.
days
During the days, I wait. During the nights, I paint.
I worry when Mack takes Ruby into the ring.
He carries the claw-stick with him all the time now. He doesn’t use it. He doesn’t have to.
Ruby isn’t fighting back anymore. She does whatever Mack asks.
nights
I close my eyes. I dip my fingers into the paint.
When I’m done with one piece of paper, I set it aside to dry.
It’s so small, just one sheet. And I’m going to need so many.
I move on to the next, and the next, and the next.
It’s a giant puzzle, and I’m making the pieces one by one.
By morning, my floor is covered with paintings.
I hide the paintings under my pool of dirty water before Mack can see them. I don’t want them to end up in the gift store, selling for twenty dollars apiece (twenty-five with frame).
These paintings are for Ruby. Every one of them.
project
“Ivan,” Ruby asks one morning when I am trying to nap, “why are you always so sleepy during the day?”
“I’ve been working on a project at night,” I tell her.
“What’s a project?”
“It’s … a thing. A painting. It’s a painting for you, actually,” I answer.
Ruby looks pleased. “Can I see it?”
“Not yet.”
Ruby pokes with annoyance at her roped foot. She takes a breath. “Ivan? Do I have to do the shows with Mack today?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, Ruby.”
Ruby dips her trunk in her water bucket. “That’s okay,” she says. “I already knew the answer.”
not right
It’s night again, and everyone’s asleep. I look at the picture I’ve just made, one of dozens.
It’s smudged and torn, a muddy blur.
I place it beside the others lining my floor.
The colors are wrong. The shapes are off. It looks like nothing.
It’s not what I’m trying to create. It’s not what it’s meant to be.
It’s not right, and I don’t know why.
Across the parking lot the billboard beckons, as it always does: COME TO THE EXIT 8 BIG TOP MALL AND VIDEO ARCADE, HOME OF THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, MIGHTY SILVERBACK!
If I could use human words to say what I need to say, this would all be so easy.
Instead, I have my pots of paint and my ragged pages.
I sigh. My fingertips glow like jungle flowers.
I try again.
going nowhere
I watch Ruby plod around the ring in endless circles, going nowhere.
More visitors have been coming, but not many. Mack says Ruby’s not picking up the slack after all. He says he’s cutting back on our food. He says he’s turning off the heat at night to save money.
Ruby looks thinner to me, more wrinkled than Stella ever was.
“Do you think Ruby’s eating enough?” I ask Bob.
“I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing, though: You’re sure as heck painting enough.” Bob wrinkles his nose. “That stench is unbelievable. And I found yellow paint in my tail this morning.”
Bob isn’t happy about my night painting. He says it’s unnatural.
Now, while I work at my art, Bob sleeps on Not-Tag. He claims he prefers her because she doesn’t snore. He says her belly doesn’t rise and fall and make him seasick.
“What is this plan of yours, anyway?” Bob asks. “If you explained it to me, I could help out.” He gnaws at his tail. “Maybe I could come up with something that doesn’t involve … you know, paint.”
“I can’t explain it,” I tell him. “It’s an idea in my head, but I can’t get it right. And anyway, I’m almost out of supplies. I should have known I wouldn’t have enough.” I kick at my tire swing. It’s spattered with drops of blue paint. “It’s a stupid idea.”
“I doubt that,” Bob says. “Smelly, yes. Stupid? Never.”
bad guys
Most of the day I doze. Late in the afternoon, Mack approaches.
Bob slips under Not-Tag. He prefers to keep a low profile around Mack.
Mack’s gaze falls on my pool. A corner of one of my paintings is visible. “What’s that, big guy?” he asks.
I calmly eat an orange, ignoring him, but my heart is racing.
Mack kicks at my plastic pool. Underneath it are all the paintings.
Mack yanks on a piece of paper. It slips out easily, and he doesn’t seem to notice the other paintings.
The page is striped with green, which is what happens when blue paint and yellow paint get together. It’s supposed to be a patch of grass.
“Not bad. Where’d you get the paint, anyway? George’s kid?” He considers. “Hmm. I’ll bet I can get thirty for this picture, maybe even forty.”
Mack turns on my TV. It’s a Western. There’s a human with a big hat and a small gun. He has a shiny star pinned to his chest. That means he is the sheriff and he will be getting rid of all the bad guys.
“If this sells quick, I’m getting you some more of that paint, buddy,” Mack says.
He walks away with my painting. Ruby’s painting. For a moment, I imagine what it would feel like to be the sheriff.
ad
“Good news, huh?” Bob says when Mack’s out of earshot. “Looks like you might be getting some more supplies.”
“I don’t want to paint for Mack,” I say. “I’m painting for Ruby.”
“You can do both,” Bob says. “You’re an artist, after all.”
While I watch the movie, I try to come up with a new hiding place for my paintings. Maybe, I think, I could fold them, once they’re dry, and stuff them into Not-Tag.
It’s a long movie. At the end, the sheriff marries the woman who owns the saloon, which is a watering hole for humans but not horses.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Western that was also a romance.
“I liked that movie,” I say to Bob.
“Too many horses, not enough dogs,” he comments.
An ad comes on.
I don’t understand ads. They’re not like Westerns, where you know who the bad guy is supposed to be. And they’re hardly ever romantic, unless the man and the woman are brushing their teeth before they face lick.
I watch an ad for underarm deodorant. “How do you know who’s who if they don’t smell?” I ask Bob.
“Humans reek,” Bob replies. “They just don’t notice because they have incompetent noses.”
Another ad comes on. I see children and their parents buying tickets, just like the tickets Mack sells. They laugh, enjoying their ice cream cones as they walk down a path.
They pause to watch two sleepy-eyed cats, huge and striped, dozing in long grass.
Tigers. I know, because I saw them on a nature show once.
Words flash on the screen, accompanied by a drawing of a red giraffe. The giraffe vanishes, and I see a human family staring at another kind of family. Elephants, old and young. They’re surrounded by rocks and trees and grass and room to wander.
It’s a wild cage. A
zoo. I see where it begins, and where it ends, the wall that says you are this and we are that and that is how it will always be.
It’s not a perfect place. Even in just a few fleeting seconds on my TV screen, I can see that. A perfect place would not need walls.
But it’s the place I need.
I gaze at the elephants, and then I look over at Ruby, small and alone.
Before the ad ends, I try to remember every last detail. Rocks, trees, tails, trunks.
It’s the picture I need to paint.
imagining
It’s different now, when I paint.
I’m not painting what I see in front of me. A banana. An apple. I’m painting what I see in my head. Things that don’t exist.
At least, not yet.
not-tag
I pull out Not-Tag’s stuffing. Carefully I fill her with my paintings, hiding them so Mack won’t sell them. She’s large, bigger than Bob, but I still have to crumple a few of them.
Bob tries to settle on her for a nap. “You’ve killed her,” he complains.
“I had to,” I say.
“I miss your stomach,” Bob admits. “It’s so … spacious.”
When Julia arrives, she notices that I’ve used up my paints and paper. “Wow.” Julia shakes her head. “You are one serious artist, Ivan.”
one more thing
My finger painting has sold for forty dollars (with frame). Mack is happy. He brings me a huge pile of paper and big buckets of paint.
“Get to work,” he says.
I paint for Mack during the day, and for Ruby at night.
I nap when I can.
But my nighttime picture isn’t quite right. It’s big, that’s for sure. When I place all the pieces on the floor of my cage side by side, the cement is almost completely covered.
But something is still missing.
Bob says I’m crazy. “There’s Ruby,” he says, pointing with his nose. “There’s the zoo. There are other elephants. What’s wrong with it?”
“It needs one more thing,” I say.
Bob groans. “You’re being a temperamental artist. What could be missing?”
I stare at the huge expanse of colors and shapes. I don’t know how to explain to Bob that it isn’t done yet.
“I’ll just have to wait,” I say at last. “Something will come to me, and then I’ll know my painting is finally ready.”
the seven-o’clock show
During the last show of the day, Ruby seems tired. When she stumbles, Mack reaches for the claw-stick.
I tense, waiting for her to strike back.
Ruby doesn’t even flinch. She just keeps plodding along, and after a while, Snickers jumps onto her back.
twelve
I lie in my cage, with Bob on my stomach. We are watching Julia do her homework.
She doesn’t seem to be enjoying it. I can tell because she is sighing more than usual.
Again, for the hundredth time, or maybe the thousandth, I wonder what is missing from my painting.
And for the hundredth time, or maybe the thousandth, I don’t have any answer.
“Dad,” Julia says as George passes by with a mop, “can I ask you a question?”
“May I,” George corrects. “Ask away.”
Julia glances down at a piece of paper. “What’s the difference between the word spelled P-R-I-N-C-I-P-A-L and the one spelled P-R-I-N-C-I-P-L-E?”
“The first one is the head of a school, like Ms. Garcia. The second one is a belief that helps you know what’s right or wrong.” He smiles. “For example, it’s against my principles to do my daughter’s homework for her.”
Julia groans. “If I’m going to be an artist when I grow up, why do I need to know how to spell?”
With a laugh, George heads off.
Poor Julia, I think. Gorillas get by just fine without learning how to spell. All those endless letters, those sticks and circles and zigzags, filling up books and magazines, billboards and candy wrappers.
Words.
Humans love their words.
I leap up. Bob goes flying, straight into my pool.
A word.
“You know how I feel about wet feet!” Bob yells. He scrambles out of the water, shaking each foot in dismay.
I look out my window at the billboard. I can still hear Mack’s voice in my head: “COME TO THE EXIT 8 BIG TOP MALL AND VIDEO ARCADE, HOME OF THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, MIGHTY SILVERBACK!”
I count to twelve, and then I count again, just to be sure.
H
I lay out sixteen pieces of poster board. Four down, four across.
A perfect square.
“What are you up to?” Bob demands. “I’m guessing it doesn’t involve sleep.”
“It has to do with the billboard.”
“That sign’s a monstrosity. Particularly since I’m not featured.”
I grab my bucket of red paint. “You’re not on the billboard because you’re not in the show,” I point out.
“Technically, I don’t even live here,” Bob says with a sniff. “I am homeless by choice.”
“I know. I’m just saying.”
I study the billboard. Then I make two fat lines, like broom handles. Another fat line connects them.
I stand back. “What do you think?”
“What is it? No, wait: let me guess. A ladder?”
“Not a ladder,” I say. “A letter. At least I think that’s what they’re called. I have to make three more.”
Bob cuddles up next to Not-Tag. “Why?” he asks, yawning.
“Because then I’ll have a word. A very important word.” I dip my fingers into the paint.
“What word?” Bob asks.
“Home.”
Bob closes his eyes. “That’s not so important,” he says quietly.
nervous
All day long I knuckle walk circles around my cage.
I’m so nervous I can’t nap. I can’t even eat.
Well, not very much, anyway.
I’m ready to show Julia what I’ve made.
It has to be Julia. She’s an artist. Surely she’ll look, truly look, at my painting. She won’t notice the smudges and tears. She won’t care if the pieces don’t quite fit together. She’ll see past all of that.
Surely Julia will see what I’ve imagined.
I watch Ruby trudge sullenly through the four-o’clock show, and I wonder: What will happen if I fail? What if I can’t make Julia understand?
But of course I know the answer. Nothing. Nothing will happen.
Ruby will remain the main attraction at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, conveniently located off I-95, with shows at two, four, and seven, 365 days a year, year after year after year.
showing julia
It’s time to show my work.
The mall is silent, except for Thelma the macaw, who is practicing a new phrase: “Uh-oh!”
Julia is finishing her homework. George is sweeping outside. Mack has gone home for the night.
I grab Not-Tag and carefully pull out the folded papers. So many paintings! Page after page. Piece after piece of my giant puzzle.
I pound on my glass, and Julia glances over.
Fingers trembling, I hold up one of my paintings. It’s brown and green, a corner piece.
Julia smiles.
I display another picture, and then another and another and another, each one a tiny part of the whole.
Julia looks confused. “But … what is it?” she asks. She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. It’s pretty just as it is.”
“Uh-oh,” says Thelma.
No, I think. No.
It does matter.
more paintings
George calls out to Julia. He’s done for the night. “Grab your backpack,” he says. “And hurry. It’s late.”
“Gotta go, Ivan,” Julia says.
Julia doesn’t understand.
I have to find the right pieces. I dig through the pile. They’re here somewhere. I know t
hey are.
I find one, another one, another. I try to hold four of them up against the glass.
“Bob,” I say, “help me. Hurry!”
Bob grabs paintings with his teeth and drags them to me.
One by one, I shove pictures through the window crack. They crumple and tear.
There are too many pieces. My puzzle is too big.
“Careful, Ivan,” Julia says. “Those might be worth millions someday. You never know.” She arranges the paintings into a neat stack. “I suppose Mack’s going to want to sell these in the gift shop.”
She still doesn’t understand.