I shove more out the hole and more and more, all of them, one after another.
“So Ivan’s been painting, has he?” George says as he puts on his coat.
“A lot,” says Julia with a laugh. “A whole lot.”
“You’re not taking all those home with you, are you?” George asks. “I mean, no offense to Ivan, but they’re just blobs.”
Julia thumbs through the towering stack of paintings. “They might not be blobs to Ivan.”
“Let’s leave those by the office,” George suggests. “Mack’ll want to try selling them. Although why anyone would pay forty bucks for a finger painting a two-year-old could do, I don’t know.”
“I like Ivan’s work,” Julia says. “He puts his feelings into them.”
“He puts his hair into them,” George says.
Julia waves good-bye. “Night, Ivan. Night, Bob.”
I press my nose against the glass and watch her walk away. All my work, all my planning, wasted.
I look at Ruby, sleeping soundly, and suddenly I know she’ll never leave the Big Top Mall. She’ll be here forever, just like Stella.
I can’t let Ruby be another One and Only.
chest-beating
Often, when visitors come to see me, they beat their hands against their puny chests, pretending to be me.
They pound away, soundless as the wet wings of a new butterfly.
The chest beating of a mad gorilla is not something you ever want to hear. Not even if you’re wearing earplugs.
Not even if you’re three miles away, wearing earplugs.
A real chest beating sends the whole jungle running, as if the sky has broken open, as if men with guns are near.
angry
Thump.
The sound—my sound—echoes through the mall.
George and Julia spin around.
Julia drops her backpack. George drops his keys. The pile of pictures goes flying.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I bounce off the walls. I screech and bellow. I beat and beat and beat my chest.
Bob hides under Not-Tag, his paws over his ears.
I’m angry, at last.
I have someone to protect.
puzzle pieces
After a long while, I grow quiet. I sit. It’s hard work, being angry.
Julia looks at me with wide, disbelieving eyes.
I’m panting. I’m a little out of shape.
“What the heck was that?” George demands.
“Something’s really wrong,” Julia says. “I’ve never seen Ivan act this way.”
“He seems to be calming down, thank goodness,” George says.
Julia shakes her head. “He’s still upset, Dad. Look at his eyes.”
My pictures are scattered all over the floor like huge autumn leaves.
“What a mess,” George says, sighing. “Wish I hadn’t bothered sweeping tonight.”
“Do you think Ivan’s okay?” Julia asks.
“Probably just a temper tantrum,” George says. He reaches under a chair to retrieve a brown and red picture. “Can’t say I blame the guy, stuck in that tiny cage all these years.”
Julia starts to answer, but then she freezes. She cocks her head.
She stares at her feet, where my pictures lie in disarray.
“Dad,” she whispers. “Come see this.”
“I’m sure he’s another Rembrandt,” George says. “Let’s pick these up and get going, Jules. I’m exhausted.”
“Dad,” she says again. “Seriously. Look at this.”
George follows her gaze. “I see blobs. Many, many blobs, along with the occasional swirl. Please, can we go home now?”
“That’s an H, Dad.” Julia kneels down, straightening one picture, then another. “That’s an H, and here”—she grabs more pictures—“put this one here, and, I don’t know, maybe that one. You have an E.”
George rubs his eyes. I hold my breath.
Julia is running now. She picks up one picture, sets down another. “It’s like a puzzle, Dad! This is something. It’s a word, maybe words. And a picture of something. A giant picture.”
“Jules,” George says, “this is crazy.” But he’s looking at the floor too, wandering from picture to picture and scratching his head.
“H,” Julia says. “E. O.”
“Hoe?”
Julia chews her lower lip. “H, E, O. And that looks a lot like an eye.”
“H, E, O, I.” George writes in the air with his finger. “I, E, O, H.”
“Not the letter. An actual eye. And that’s a foot. Or maybe a tree. And a trunk. Dad, I think that’s a trunk!”
Julia runs to my window. “Ivan,” she whispers, “what did you make?”
I stare back. I cross my arms.
This is taking much longer than I’d thought it would.
Humans.
Sometimes they make chimps look smart.
finally
Julia and George take the pictures to the ring, where there’s room to see them all.
An hour passes as they try to assemble my puzzle. Ruby’s awake now, and she and Bob and I watch.
“Ivan,” Ruby says, “is that a picture of me?”
“Yes,” I say proudly.
“Where am I supposed to be?”
“That’s a zoo, Ruby. See the walls and the grass and the people looking at you?”
Ruby squints. “Who are all those other elephants?”
“You haven’t met them,” I say. “Yet.”
“It’s a very nice zoo,” Ruby says with an approving nod.
Bob nudges me with his cold nose. “It is indeed.”
In the ring, Julia pumps her fist in the air. “Yes!” she cries. “I told you, Dad! There it is: H-O-M-E. Home.”
George gazes at the letters. He spins around to look at me. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence, Jules. You know, a once-in-a-trillion kind of thing, like that old saying about the chimp and the typewriter. Give him long enough and he’ll write a novel.”
I make a grumbling noise. As if a chimp could write a letter, let alone a book.
“Then how do you explain the rest of it?” Julia demands. “The picture of Ruby in the zoo?”
“How do you know it’s a zoo?” George asks.
“See the circle on the gate? There’s a red giraffe in it.”
George squints and tilts his head. “Are you sure that’s a giraffe? I was thinking more along the lines of a deformed cat.”
“It’s the logo for the zoo, Dad. It’s on all their signs. Explain that.”
George gives her a helpless smile. “I can’t. I can’t begin to. I’m just saying there has to be a logical explanation.”
“Look how big this is.” Julia puts the last piece of Ruby’s right ear into place. “It’s huge.”
“It is definitely large,” George agrees.
Julia watches me. She chews on her thumbnail. I see the question in her eyes.
She turns back to the paintings and stares at them, looking, truly looking.
A slow smile dawns on Julia’s face.
“Dad,” she says, “I have an idea. A big idea.” Julia races around the edge of my painting, her arms spread wide. “Billboard big.”
“I’m not following you.”
“I think this is meant to be on a billboard. That’s what Ivan wants.”
George crosses his arms over his chest. “What Ivan wants,” he repeats slowly. “And you know this because … you two have been chatting?”
“Because I’m an artist, and he’s an artist.”
“Uh-huh,” says George.
Julia clasps her hands together. “Come on, Dad. I’m begging you.”
George shakes his head. “No. I’m not doing that. No billboard, no way.”
“I’ll get the ladder,” Julia says. “You get the glue. I know it’s dark out, but the billboard’s lit.”
“Mack’ll fire me, Jules.”
Julia considers. “But think of the publicity, Dad!
Everybody would know about Ruby.”
“You want me to put up a sign that shows Ruby in a zoo with the word home on it in giant letters?” George gestures toward my pictures. “A sign, incidentally, that just happens to have been made by a gorilla?”
“Exactly.”
“And you want me to do it without Mack’s permission?” George asks.
“Exactly.”
“No,” George says. “No way.”
Julia goes to the edge of the ring, careful not to step on any of my paintings. She picks up Mack’s claw-stick. She walks back and hands it to her father.
George runs a finger along the blade.
“She’s just a baby, Dad. Don’t you want to help her?”
“But how would it help, Jules? Even if lots of people see Ivan’s sign, it doesn’t mean anything’s going to change.”
“I’m not exactly sure yet.” Julia shakes her head. “Maybe people will see the sign, and they’ll know this isn’t where Ruby belongs. Maybe they’ll want to help too.”
George sighs. He looks at Ruby. She waves her trunk.
“It’s a matter of principle, Dad. P-R-I-N-C-I-P-A-L.”
“L-E,” George corrects.
“Dad,” Julia says softly, “what if Ruby ends up like Stella?”
George looks at me, at Ruby, at Julia.
He drops the claw-stick.
“The ladder,” he says quietly, “is in the storage locker.”
the next morning
I watch Mack’s car slam to a halt in the parking lot.
He leaps out. He stares at the billboard. His jaw is open. He doesn’t move for a long time.
mad human
A mad gorilla is loud. But a mad human can be loud too.
Especially when he is throwing chairs and turning over tables and breaking the cotton-candy machine.
phone call
Mack is kicking a trash can across the food court when the phone rings.
He answers it, red-faced and sweating.
“What the—” he demands.
He glares at me.
“I don’t know what you’re—” he starts to say, but then he stops to listen.
“Who? Julia who?” he asks. “Oh, sure. George’s kid. She’s the one who called you?”
More talking. With the phone to his ear, Mack comes closer to my cage, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “He paints. Sure. We’ve been selling his art for quite a while now.”
There is another long pause. “Yeah. Absolutely. It was my idea.”
Mack nods. A smile starts at the corners of his mouth.
“Photos? No problem. You want to see him in action? Come on down, have a look. We’re open 365 days a year. Can’t miss us. We’re right off I-95.”
Mack picks up the overturned trash can. “Yeah, I think he’ll be adding more pictures. It’s a, you know, what do you call it? A work in progress.”
When the call is done, Mack shakes his head. “Impossible,” he says.
An hour later, a man with a camera comes to take my picture. He is from the local paper, the one Julia called.
“How about you take one of me with the elephant?” Mack suggests. He drapes his arm around Ruby’s back, grinning as the camera clicks.
“Perfect,” the man says.
“Perfect,” Mack agrees.
a star again
A photo of my billboard is in the newspaper. Mack tapes the story onto my window.
Each day more curious people arrive. They park in front of the billboard. They point and shake their heads. They take photos.
Then they come into the mall and buy my paintings.
While visitors watch, I dip my hands in fresh buckets of paint. I make pictures for the gift shop, and pictures to add to the billboard. Trees with birds. A newborn elephant with glittering black eyes. A squirrel, a bluebird, a worm.
I even paint Bob so he can be on the billboard too. I can tell he likes the picture, although he says I didn’t quite capture his distinguished nose.
Every afternoon, Mack and George add my new pictures to the billboard. People slow their cars while they work. Drivers honk and wave.
My gift-shop pictures now cost sixty-five dollars (with frame).
the ape artist
I have new names. People call me the Ape Artist. The Primate Picasso.
I have visitors from morning till night, and so does Ruby.
But nothing’s changed for her. Every day at two, four, and seven, Ruby plods through the sawdust with Snickers on her back.
Every night she has bad dreams.
“Bob,” I say, after I’ve soothed Ruby to sleep with a story, “my idea isn’t working.”
Bob opens one eye. “Be patient.”
“I’m tired of being patient,” I say.
interview
This evening a man and woman come to interview Mack and also George and Julia.
The man has a large and heavy camera perched on his shoulder. He films me as I make my pictures. He films Ruby in her cage, with her foot roped to the bolt in the floor.
“Mind if I take a look around?” he asks.
Mack waves a hand. “Be my guest.”
While Mack and the woman talk, the cameraman walks through the mall. He pans his camera right and left, up and down.
When his eyes fall on the claw-stick, he stops. He trains his camera on the gleaming blade. Then he moves on.
the early news
Mack turns on the TV.
We are on The Early News at Five O’Clock.
Bob says don’t let it go to my head.
There we all are. Mack, Ruby, me. George and Julia. The billboard, the mall, the ring.
And the claw-stick.
signs on sticks
In the morning, several people gather in the parking lot. They’re carrying signs on sticks.
The signs have words and pictures on them. One has a drawing of a gorilla cradling a baby elephant.
I wish I could read.
protesters
More people with signs come today. They want Ruby to be free. Some of them even want Mack to shut down the mall.
In the evening, George and Mack talk about them. Mack says they’re protesting the wrong guy. He says they’re going to ruin everything. He says thanks for nothing, George.
Mack stomps off. George, holding his mop, watches him leave. He rubs his eyes. He looks worried.
“Dad,” Julia says, looking up from her homework. “You know what my favorite sign was?”
“Hmm?” George asks. “Which one?”
“The one that said ‘Elephants Are People Too.’”
George gives her a tired smile.
He goes back to work. His mop moves across the empty food court like a giant brush, painting a picture no one will ever see.
check marks
A tall man with a clipboard and pencil comes to visit. He says he is here to inspect the property.
He doesn’t say much more, but he makes many check marks on his paper.
He looks at my floor. Check. He examines Ruby’s hay. Check. He eyes our water bowls. Check.
Mack watches him, scowling.
Bob is outside, hiding near the Dumpster. He does not want to be a check mark.
free ruby
Every day there are more protesters, and cameras with bright lights. Sometimes the people carrying signs shout, “Free Ruby! Free Ruby!”
“Ivan,” Ruby asks, “why are those people yelling my name? Are they mad at me?”
“They’re mad,” I say, “but not at you.”
A week later, the inspecting man comes back with a friend, a woman with smart, dark eyes like my mother’s. She has a white coat on, and she smells like lobelia blossoms. Her hair is thick and brown, the color of a rotten branch teeming with luscious ants.
She watches me for a long time. Then she watches Ruby.
She talks to the man. They both talk to Mack. The man gives Mack a sheet of paper.
> Mack covers his face.
He goes to his office and slams the door.
new box
Something strange is happening. The white-coated woman is back with other humans.
They place a large box in the center of the ring.
It’s Ruby sized.
And suddenly I know why the woman is here. She’s here to take Ruby away.
training
The woman leads Ruby to the box. She places an apple inside. “Good girl, Ruby,” she says kindly. “Don’t be afraid.”
Ruby inspects the box with her trunk. The woman makes a clicking sound with a little piece of metal she is holding in her hand. She gives Ruby a piece of carrot.