“Twenty-one steps the long way, five the short,” I replied.
“How many steps a day?” he asked.
“67,698 in the cold season, less when it’s warm.”
“Not bad,” he said. “How’s the vittles?”
“Real bad.”
“Ever get anything from the outside?”
There wasn’t no sense trying to fool him since Thought Speak don’t allow no lies—well, it does, but everybody knows it’s a lie when you tell it, and they more or less forgive it even though everybody knows you lied, but here it weren’t no use trying to lie, for he’d likely be able to tell it anyhow, being that he seemed to know Higher Orders well enough. So I told him plain. “Two mouse I caught, and also a rat they call Born Fat, but I let him go ’cause he promised to catch me a dog. He got the dog into the zoo, but the beast wouldn’t come inside my cage. That dog stood right where you are and laughed at me. I hurt my nose trying to get at that damned dog. Jumped into the bars. I was so hungry . . .” I stopped to scratch myself. “Rough life,” I said, “when you scrounging ’round for a damn dog.”
Mr. P laughed. “Serves you right, since you were out of Order.”
“I’d like to see you live here, tight as they are with the food,” I said. “I was hungry. Plus, that dumb dog might have enjoyed coming back as a lion.”
Mr. P looked at me and smiled. “Maybe. But . . . the Order.”
Sometimes this Order business works my nerves, though he was right. I couldn’t eat that dog because it would’ve messed up the Order. You can’t just go around eating any old thing like Smelly Ones who then eat their catch after burning it up over a fire and breathe smoking sticks that makes them dizzy and crazy. We ain’t Humans here. Higher Orders got rules to follow.
The main one is that once you supper an Animal, that feller Jumps Souls and comes back as the next Higher up. He gets upgraded, see, on account of him getting torn up by your jaws. Therefore little fish who gets suppered come back as bigger fish, and bigger fish who get swallowed come back as sharks, who come back as whales, who come back as bird critters, then land critters like mouse, monkeys, gorillas, giraffes, elephants, and so forth until you reach lion. After you’re on my level you’re at the top of the heap and the next time you sink all the way back to the bottom and it’s back to the water for you, buddy, and from there you work your way up to air creature and finally back to land creature again. Jumping Souls ain’t simple and most don’t like thinking on what they were before they Jumped Souls, for there ain’t no purpose in it. Plus getting runned down till you is out of breath and then having your throat wrenched out and getting put to Big Sleep by your fellow Animal makes you chicken-hearted on the notion if you tarry on it too long, so it’s best to forget it till it comes. My ridings from the high end to the low end happened three times to my recollection. I’m not favored of it, because being a small fish means from the moment you draw your first breath you’re running full out. You got to move brother, swim Jim, scramble, git going, hit it, before somebody comes along, because to my recollection of Water World life, everything’s eating everything down there. Most tiny fish the size of my eyeball get gobbled five minutes past breakfast before they even start running, which means you hit Big Sleep three or four times before you come back as anything substantial enough to prosper for a while. It’s troublesome Jumping Souls. It hurts.
Of course, Higher Orders screw it up all the time, like a weasel killing a hound dog, or a herd of zebras kicking a wounded hyena to death and sneaking in a bite or two as they do it, or a hippo whipping an alligator. But working outside your business always causes trouble. I once wiped out a young elephant named Slurps Leaves during a rough dry season. Slurps was my friend, too, nearly my age. He even got me to try a couple of them big leaves he favored chewing, but it was a tough time and we were sitting there trading Thought Shapes and he’d wandered a bit away from his herd and nobody was around, and his coat was so shiny and oily-looking and he looked so good I couldn’t resist. I said I was sorry before I wiped him out, but elephant ain’t bad. A little salty, not sour.
Well, a few seasons later I was sitting around chewing the fat with a young lion named Don’t Rest Mostly. It was afternoon, and we were setting at the bank of Meeting on the Waters trying to decide whether it was too hot to go hunting, or if we should stay by the water and hold out till maybe some female lioness would come along and do the work for us, when Don’t Rest suddenly turns to me and says, “Get Along, I’m Slurps Leaves.”
“Naw,” I said. “That’s impossible.”
“I am,” he said. “You wiped me out right by that banana tree over there,” and he nodded at the exact spot where I rubbed him out back when he was a young elephant.
I sized him up good. He was a pretty big lion. Strong. And Young. Younger than me. With leg muscles like rocks. I couldn’t take no parts of him. I was fat and pretty for him. I wouldn’t have no chance against him.
I stepped back on my haunches, quivering in my hide. “I’m sorry about that, Don’t Rest,” I said. “It was a bad rainy season. But it’s a good day to die.”
“Oh, forget it, old fella,” he says. “My dad was a hell-raiser and I needed an out.”
So sometimes you can get away with dodging the Order of Things, though I never told Mr. P that, being that he was a Smelly One and wouldn’t likely care nohow.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to eat that dog,” I told Mr. P pointedly, “if the Smelly Ones around here wasn’t so tight with the sour meat.”
“I’m not blaming you,” Mr. P said. “I’m not God, y’know.”
“I don’t know who that Smelly One is,” I said, “but please don’t mention him to me no more. Blows More Oil don’t like him.”
“You got plans tonight?” he asks.
“Nah. I need sleep. I’m leaving in the morning. Gonna tour the jungle for two months and kill Animals. Like the Smellies do.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “We’re all meeting at Rubs’s cage tonight for a Fashion Me. Everyone’s invited.”
That nearly blowed me off my haunches, but since he was new, I sat silent tight for a minute and kept a straight face. I didn’t get this old, even here in the zoo, being a fool. But he was pulling some high meat off the shelf, talking about a Fashion Me. That’s a fashion show, see. No Animal can resist showing hisself to other Animals. But I kept my face straight and yellow as a daisy.
“Rubs’s cage?” I asked.
“Yes. Everyone’s invited. You. Scratch there. Everyone. At Rubs’s Cage in the Monkey House.”
“I know where Rubs lives.”
“Well, you coming?”
“You say it’s a Fashion Me. Right here? At the zoo?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kidding. How I’m getting out?”
“I got the keys,” Mr. P said, and he pulled out a bunch of jangly keys the Smellies at the zoo carry around. “But no hunting,” he snapped. “I mean it. And Thought Speak only. No roaring out loud.”
“Hot damn!” I roared out loud.
“I just said no roaring out loud,” Mr. P said. “You want to give it away?”
“Naw, naw. Can’t give it away.”
“Remember. No hunting.” He stared at me real serious.
“Sure, sure, brother. I can’t eat no Higher Orders here. I wouldn’t have nobody to talk to.”
He smiled and nodded.
“When can I go?”
“Now.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. Right now.”
“Well, what we waitin’ for?” I bounded to the door of my cage. Then it hit me. I stopped in my tracks and sat on my haunches again.
“Hell, Mr. P. I been in this cage nine years. I need a minute to get myself together.”
“Take your time,” he said, “but I got other Animals to see. If you want out tonight, just call Looks O
ld. I gave him some keys.” Looks’s a monkey. Then he left.
I sat there a moment, then looked over at Scratch. I gathered up a Thought Shape and hollered it over to her. “Hey, Scratch. You hear that?”
“Yep.” She scratched herself.
“I can get out, lady.”
“Yep. Me, too.”
We were quiet a minute.
“Hey,” I said, feeling cheery, “we can take a walk around the zoo, you and me.”
“Yep.”
“Can walk outta these cages right now.”
“Yep.”
“Anytime we want. Just call Looks, he’ll open up the doors, and we’re out. Me and you. Walking around. Fully loaded. Still got all our teeth. Sniffing the grass, smelling around . . .”
“Yep.”
“Watching the birds.”
“Yep.”
“Scout some hiding places, maybe.”
“Yep.”
“Hunt a little bit. Forget what Mr. P says. We’ll hunt little stuff. A mouse or two . . .”
“Yep,” she said.
My heart was thumping so hard I could feel it in my feet.
“So, panther, what you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting for you, lion.”
“Hot damn! Looks!” I roared it at the top of my Thought Speak lungs.
“Yah, boss.” His Thought Shape voice was faint in the distance.
“Swing by here and let me and Scratch out.”
“I need five minutes, Get Along. I’m working on Rubs’s lock.”
“Make it three, son, or your black hide is mine. And the name’s Get Along, Go Along. Mr. Go to you. Y’understand?”
“Yessir, Mr. Go. Be right there.”
One of the nice things about knowing you’re getting out is you can be King again. Creatures pay attention when they know you ain’t behind bars.
• • •
ME AND SCRATCH didn’t have no trouble knowing where to go, for Rubs has been sending Thought Pictures of the Monkey House around the zoo for the longest. But seeing a place from Thought Pictures and venturing to it in a zoo once you free and outta your cage is two different things. If you don’t got no encouragement and a strong heart, you just can’t make it. I never knew so much sadness till the moment I first peeked out the Lion House and seen that where I was living wasn’t a zoo at all, but rather Man’s prison for his own self.
The sight of the trees, the walkways, the sadness floating in the air all about the zoo stopped us in our tracks right at the door. We couldn’t move, for the zoo is a downright ugly sight. The smell—the unnatural odor of the toilet of Animal creatures that had no place to go natural to join up with the air, sand, and soil from which everything come—was gone. Instead, Man’s footprint was everywhere. The blend of hard things and lights, paths that lead to hard edges, everything ordered, numbered, and placed here and there in sequence and order. Cages. Boxes. Squares. Lines. Animals boxed here. Man boxed there. Nothing circular. Everything leading to something with points and edges and order. Man, I come to understand at that moment, was jailed as Animals was. He ain’t free. That was the worst part of it, I reckon, standing there and feeling the downright sadness choking the place. I felt sorry for Man then, even as his unholy stinking scent was tearing at my nose. Everything before me was planned out. Clean. Go this way. Go that way. Take shelter here. There’s light there. No bumps. No dirt. No rocks. No plains. No fun. Everything all smoothed over with the exception of a plant here or there. The life of the land beneath gone, drained forever. I never felt so much sadness in my life till that moment. It threw me and Scratch outta whack right off. We got so chicken-hearted we couldn’t move. We lingered in the door of the Lion House afraid to leave.
Looks Old the monkey, he was setting on the top of the doorway over us as we tarried. “I know,” he said. “It do take some getting used to.”
“Does Man live like this all over the world?” I asked him.
“Dunno, Mr. Go,” he said. “But I got others to let out,” and he was gone.
Me and Scratch stayed in the doorway, staring, and finally that panther stuck her head out the door and put a paw to the outside and said, “It feels all right.” I got ashamed and pushed past her and stepped outside into the air and she followed. We spent a few moments standing there, still rattled, for the sacredness of freedom is something you feel, not necessarily see, but it just plumb wasn’t there. It made us scared to move at all, but finally I hopped up and hid behind a bush and she followed. We scrunched behind every bush and tree like cubs as we made our way to the Monkey House, for the stinking odor of Man got worse as we moved, and that too spelled danger.
It was worth it when we got to Rubs’s, though, and I had to keep my face low, being a lion and all, for you don’t want Higher Orders seeing the King weeping like Can’t Trot the elephant and the rest of them sorry sensitive beasts like them hippopotamuses, who was choking like a bunch of cubs and smelling righteous since they was far from their watering hole. All the Creatures had waited on us knowing that a fashion show ain’t no small turnips and the King of the Jungle do have to preside. Lions are the top of the heap when it comes to showing how much we can grunt, sniff, fart, and roar while showing how shiny our fur is but most others ain’t far. Them Creatures standing around waiting for us was pumped up and ready to strut their stuff. It didn’t matter that they was different breeds. Fashion Me’s is for everybody. Of course, mostly the preening is confined to your breed, but we had some mixed-breed Fashion Me’s back in the jungle too, mostly in emergencies, like when the Order was screwed up by some creature who’d gone too far left or right, like the time a baboon named Grunt started killing everything in sight ’cause a Smelly One shot him and didn’t rub him out completely. A bunch of us tracked him and put him down. I remember we had just laid him down and was about to put him to Sleep when I felt sorry for him and said, “Nothing personal, Grunt.” He looked up and said, real clear, “I understand, Get Along.” Then he died and we ate his victuals.
Anyway, that place was loaded. There was flamingos and giraffes and peacocks and deer and wolves and the one female tiger named Pout Face from the Lion House and Urge Me, the one polar bear who came over and sweated it out. I seen more Higher Orders gathered in one place in that one time than I’d ever seen before. There was Animals whose Thought Speak I’d heard for years and never laid eyes on. And though I was hungry as all getup watching the zebras cavorting around, for I have a weakness for them sweet-tasting beasts, I kept my promise to Mr. P and didn’t lift a paw.
He was standing over in a corner and didn’t say nothing when the Higher Orders come into the Monkey House. Instead, he watched as Rubs welcomed everybody who came.
This was her house and she was host and let everybody know it, walking around like a den mother on two legs, greeting the different Higher Orders who come in by twos and threes. She come up to me and Scratch and said, “Welcome, brother and sister.”
“I didn’t know you was so old, Rubs,” I said. She was the oldest gorilla I ever seen. Rubs is so old her hair was almost gone. She looked almost like a Smelly One.
“You ain’t so young, Lion,” she said.
“But I’m pretty, though.”
“And I ain’t pretty?” Rubs scratched herself. “I know I’m pretty, baby,” and she sent out a little Thought Shape like gorillas know how to do, showing herself all done up eating a shoot covered with ants, with a shiny coat and looking young. Everybody laughed. She been drawing that Thought Shape of herself for years.
I didn’t know if I liked them other Higher Orders laughing so free around me, being that I’m the King and all and mostly supposed to strike terror in ’em, but Rubs got everyone straight. She stood up on her hind legs tall like a Smelly One, spread her ape arms, and said, “C’mon here, y’all. Come look at Get Along, Go Along. See what the King of the Jungle look like up
close. He been a good King. Never shouted at nobody or nothing.” And the other Animals, they come up close, even the zebras, and they sniffed me a little and I sniffed them. It was strange, scenting them zebras, for my goodness, they smelled irresistible. There was a family of ’em. Don’t Murder Me was the daddy and the whole family gathered ’round and got a good whiff of me and that was a test with delicious things like that so close, but it was kind of nice, too. It was like we was all brothers and sisters for that moment, and after I got used to ’em standing there for a minute or two, I felt like I could never eat a zebra again without feeling like I was eating part of myself.
I said to Don’t Murder, “You and yours smell righteous.”
“Who you telling?” one of the little ones said. That was Don’t Murder’s son. He was a cute little feller, and he went over and sniffed Scratch just as bold as he wanted to be. Scratch looked downright rained on. I could tell that old panther wasn’t all the way pleased and was fighting the urge to plant her teeth in the little one’s neck and stuff the leftovers in a tree someplace to throw down her gizzard later. But she knew where she was and lay low and kept her word about hunting. She sniffed him back and asked him his name. That little fella wasn’t scared one bit.
“Mr. Nelson Whippie,” said the little zebra proudly.
Scratch scowled. “Ain’t Don’t Murder your daddy?”
“He is my daddy, but my daddy named me after Mr. P now,” the little critter said. “And he’s Mr. Don’t Murder Me now, like Mr. P, ya dig? Hey, can I stick my hoof in your mouth to see if you got any teeth?”
“If you do, I’ll close my mouth to see if you got any hoofs.”
“Cool it, Scratch,” I said. She cooled a little and said she was sorry. But she couldn’t hardly take it. She glanced at me. “Jeez. Ol’ Mr. P’s moving up,” she said. “Next thing you know, all the Higher Orders is gonna be named Mr. P and walking on two legs. Does Man gotta take over everything?”
But Mr. P wasn’t taking over nothing. He didn’t hear her. He was off by himself in the corner of the Monkey House, watching from atop a tree branch in one of the open cages, smiling his little Smelly One smile. I could see that he loved watching us, being with us, and he didn’t need to say it. He was a Smelly One, for sure, because he stunk so bad you couldn’t stay close to him for long. But deep in his heart he was an Animal, and that’s a fact. I was never sorry about what I did to him later.