I took a deep breath and roared in Thought Speak loud as I could, “Hey, Blows More Oil!” I tried to sound as polite as I could shouting over to Water World.
“What!” Her Thought Shapes was tremendous and powerful.
“Listen, Oil, do me a favor. We’re fixing to discuss the You Know Who. Would you mind . . . well, if you hear any crazy Thought Speak from outside somewhere, would you blast away? Sort of, er, explain things, run interference for us?”
“Okay,” Oil boomed. She’s a very reasonable whale when she ain’t insulted.
I thought maybe Oil could tell the Wind we wasn’t looking for no trouble. I turned to the others. “Don’t nobody touch that ape. Rubs, get off the floor and tell us what you know. There must be more to what you is telling, or you wouldn’t’ve started to tell it. I ain’t gonna let nobody wipe you out on a humble.”
Rubs sat up and seeing she wasn’t torn to bits said: “What is there to tell? Like I said, this Black-Brown Smelly knelt by her bed every night, put her hands together, and spoke to that Smelly One they call God for a while. She’d go at him awhile and then start yammering away fast in Smelly Tongue, speaking all sorts of weird noises and such, and waving her hands. I couldn’t make out what she was saying with her jaws, but in Thought Speak she was saying, ‘Edward! Edward!’”
“Wow.” There were gasps all around.
“And she would do that for quite a spell,” Rubs said.
“Why?” Scratch asked.
“I don’t know. But every night she did this, and one night the Wind did come right in the room and it spoke to her. He crashed the window open and hollered in Thought Speak in her ear, ‘CUT OUT THAT CRAP!’ He spoke so loud that it must’ve busted her brain open because she died right there, right on the bed with her hands folded.
“Then the Wind looked at me and said, ‘Got any questions?’
“‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘The name’s Rubs here and I’m just visiting here against my will. As you can see, I’m in a little cage here. I don’t have nothing to do with that and did not call you.’
“So he looked around the room a minute, and then he swept everything off the walls with a blink of his eye. Then he looked back at me and said, ‘You been pure in heart?’
“‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
“‘Shall I check?’ he asked.
“I said, ‘Check all you want.’
“‘No need to,’ he said. ‘I already have. You want outta here? I’ll blow the walls down and you can walk out.’
“I said, ‘It’s awful cold out there, Mr. Wind.’
“‘I’ll blow warm,’ he said.
“‘I’m a long way from home, sir.’
“‘I’ll blow you back. All the way to Africa.’
“I said, ‘With all due respect, sir, I believe my family would not want me now that I’ve been contaminated by Smelly Ones. I would not want to spread my sickness around other Higher Orders. I think I better stay and wait till I Jump Souls.’
“‘You’re a good ape,’ he said. ‘You will lead a long, prosperous life and you will come back as a Higher Order on any level you want.’
“And then he swept out the window and was gone. They came and got that old Black-Brown Smelly One and brought me here. And that is the truth as I know it, and if it ain’t I hope I come back as a small fish.”
A long silence followed.
“Good God,” Mr. P said.
“I wish you wouldn’t mention him,” I snapped. “Blows More Oil don’t like him.” But I too was knocked out.
We all sat there a minute. Finally Scratch spoke up. “Gosh, Rubs. I didn’t know you had it in you. To speak to the Wind. Gosh.” And we was all impressed.
A fresh breeze rattled the Monkey House and the leaves outside swished around. I shivered. The Wind was talking and we all got nervous thinking about it. It would be morning soon, and now maybe the Wind was mad, or maybe it wasn’t, but either way, it was time to go. We split up, everyone heading back to their cages. I gave Looks a ride on my back to my cage so he could lock me in.
“I’ve had enough stories for a while,” I said. “I got a headache.”
“Me, too,” Looks said. “Creepy. All this stuff about the Wind.”
He sat outside my cage a minute, looking thoughtful. “Hey, Get Along?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell Blows More Oil to stop now? I got a headache from all her Thought Speak.”
I’d forgotten all about her. She was droning away. No wonder I couldn’t think straight.
“Hey, Oil!” I hollered.
“Yes,” she thundered.
“You can let up now. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. There was a whining noise as she brought her powerful Thought Speak voice home. I always liked that whale. She’s a powerful nice creature. If I ever meet the Wind and get a chance to take my pick, I’m coming back as one of them.
Chapter 4
Rubs Gets Out
After that Mr. P never wanted to talk about Smellies no more. He wanted to talk to the Wind. Even after hearing Rubs’s creepy story, he wanted to. He already knowed how to talk to Higher Orders. Now he wanted more. That’s the problem with Smelly Ones. They got one thing Animals ain’t got. They got ambition.
He was pretty obsessed with the idea and talked about it all the time. Of course we didn’t want no parts of it. Not just because we was afraid, but Animals, you know, lose interest in anything real quick if it ain’t got to do with throwing somebody or something down our little red lane. He wouldn’t let it go.
We’d gather at Rubs’s cage and sniff and tell jokes and no sooner did five minutes pass when Mr. P, setting atop a branch next to Rubs, would start up about the Wind again.
“Let us speak as one voice,” he said. “We’ll organize. We’ll have study groups. And committees. We’ll study ways to speak to the Wind.”
“Nah, that’s all right, Mr. P,” we’d say.
“We can sing songs that will bring the Wind.”
“Nah. No camels here, Mr. P. They’re the best singers.”
“What about we make up a message. Like a letter?”
“What’s that?” somebody would say, and then they’d change the subject: “Hey! Y’all ever hear the joke about the mouse, the elephant, and the coconut?”
Of course that didn’t stop Mr. P. He just went on and on about it. Finally we got so tired of hearing him moan about it, one night a bunch of us went to Rubs’s and gave it a whack. Just to say hello to the Wind and make some friendly remarks. See, we liked Mr. P and tried to please him because he was a Smelly and therefore ignorant about certain things. We was hoping the Wind would take that into consideration.
It was a fool idea from the start, we knew, but we tried it anyway. Me, Scratch, Rubs, Urge Me the polar bear, Step the cheetah, and a few others. Even Blows More Oil pitched in to help. We tried for three whole hours, setting around Rubs’s cage, but nothing happened except we all got a headache from Blows More Oil, whose howling sounded like fifteen elephants all hollering at once.
“This ain’t no use,” I said finally. “My head’s gonna bust open. I got no business fooling with the Wind nohow. You got to have a solid clean record to talk with the Wind. It must’ve been that dog I tried to eat.”
Mr. P sat on the floor, glum. “I don’t see why he doesn’t answer,” he sighed.
“It ain’t right,” Scratch said, and she yawned and said she was going to sleep. The rest of us filed out of Rubs’s cage to sleep it off. But Mr. P stayed up with Rubs. He tried to talk to the Wind all night long, and after a while he must’ve talked Rubs into helping him again because you could hear ’em both calling out to it. Rubs was calling the Wind “Sir” and Mr. P was calling the Wind “Wind,” which just shows you the difference between Smellies and Animals. It’s bad luck to call a person
by their real name unless you’re mad at them. For example, my real name, in Thought Speak, is Sir Harold Cornelius II of the Third Breed of Nimphius Lion of the Serengeti, but everybody calls me Get Along, Go Along, and Smellies call me Hal, short for Harold.
They kept at it for a while, till somebody told them to cut the noise ’cause they couldn’t sleep.
The next day Looks swung by my cage and told me Rubs wasn’t feeling well, so me and Scratch dropped by her box the first thing that night. Most everybody was gathered there when we arrived, and I didn’t have to look at their faces but once to know something wasn’t right.
Rubs was laid out on her back on the ground. Her eyes were bulging and yellow, and she looked like somebody had sucked all the air out of her. Mr. P was leaning over her stroking her face, and he didn’t look too good neither. His Smelly face was long and drawn, almost pure white, his floppy zoo skin was practically falling off him, and he stunk like Smellies do when they ain’t washed their hides.
Everyone stepped aside when they saw me coming.
“It’s all my fault,” Mr. P said.
“Rubs is ill,” I said. “That ain’t nothing new.”
“Oh God, oh God,” he said.
“Please don’t mention him,” I said. “Blows More Oil don’t like him.”
Mr. P ignored me. “Trying to speak to the Wind. Oh Christ . . . look at what I did to her,” and he looked down at Rubs and sent out the strangest Thought Speak thing I ever heard. It wasn’t no words, just a Thought Shape like the sharks know how to send out except it was softer. You couldn’t hear it, but you could sort of feel it, like something inside his chest was melting and breaking up.
I went over to Rubs and sniffed her. “Well, you smell okay. You feel all right, old gorilla?”
“I feel old,” Rubs said.
“You are old.”
“How you know my age. You ain’t supposed to ask a lady gorilla how old she is.”
“I ain’t never done it. But it’d be good to know now.”
“Old enough to be tired, Get Along. Gosh, I feel sleepy. There’s a noise in my ears. It’s so loud. Can you hear it? It’s going wooooshhhh!”
“I don’t hear nothing.”
“Put your head close to mine. Listen.”
I brung my head close to her head and listened. “I don’t hear nothing, Rubs.”
“It’s the Wind,” she said.
“How come I can’t hear it?”
She ignored me. “You think I’m on my way out?” she asked. She looked at me with her big ape eyes and blinked a few times.
“Hard to say,” I said. “You’re still coming in good over Thought Speak. You smell okay.”
“Yeah, but . . . you think I’ll come back in the Order I want to?”
“Long as you don’t tell nobody what it was,” I said. “I don’t see why not. No reason for your friend not to keep his word.” I didn’t mention the Wind by name.
I sat on my haunches a moment and looked around, and of course they was all looking at me since I’m the King. Just about the whole zoo was there. Urge Me the polar bear, and Step the cheetah with his wicked self, Sniff the frog, and Scratch trying to look like she didn’t give a damn. I could even feel Blows More Oil’s whine, listening and sending all the news back to the fish—all of ’em listening in, waiting on me to speak. I can’t stand it when everybody stares at me that way. It’s the rudest thing a Higher Order can do, to stare, and I was about to roar them out of my head, when Mr. P did the oddest thing.
He started crying, out loud, in Man Speak.
Everybody gathered around him.
“C’mon, Mr. P,” Sniff said. “It ain’t nothing new. If Rubs goes to Big Sleep, she comes back.”
“That’s right,” Urge Me piped in. “She’s getting a new start. I wish I could get a new start, hot as I am around this damn place.”
“Me, too,” Scratch added. “I got all these holes in me where they shot me. I’m the holiest panther in the world. I’m aching for a new body.” She scratched herself. “Rubs, you really think you’re getting out?”
Rubs smiled at that. She seemed sleepy and droopy. “Yeah. I think I’m getting out,” and she touched Mr. P’s hand.
“Rubs,” Mr. P said. He choked out her name in both tongues, Man Speak and Thought Speak. “What did I do wrong?”
“Oh, come now,” Rubs said. “You ain’t done nothing, Mr. P. But you ought to stick to Thought Speak. Because not everybody here understands Man Speak. A body just can’t be in two worlds at once, y’know, love.”
She was right about that. For right then she closed her eyes and her body stayed where it was. But the rest of Rubs got outta the zoo. All the way out. And her Thought Speak floated away, as it always does at them times, except for that last word she said, which hung in the air like a cloud for a long time, and then after a while it faded and disappeared.
Chapter 5
War
It takes a lot of energy to read a human mouth. Most Animals—Higher Orders, that is—can manage about a minute but it saps you right down, so I couldn’t tune in too much when them Smellies was making a big deal over Rubs, though I heard enough to get the gist of it.
Boy, was they sad. All the Smellies that sweep the cages and harass us, the ones who came to the zoo with cameras and notebooks and all sorts of nonsense to write it down for other Smellies who can’t Thought Speak, they was all bent up about it. I thought that odd, since Rubs was never too particular for Smelly Ones. Of course when they fed her ice cream and Smelly food she ate it ’cause she was an Animal and Higher Orders do like to eat, but she was never particular about Smellies for the small fact that she happened to be living in a zoo. Smelly Ones defy understanding. They lock you in a zoo all your life, feed you ice cream and Smelly food that taste terrible, spray you with water hoses, then cry when you get free. I don’t think I’ll ever understand them.
Which is why some of us had trouble figuring out Mr. P. After the zoo people in the white suits came and took Rubs’s body to the office building where they cut her up and put her head on the wall or stuffed her up or did whatever else with what was left, Mr. P didn’t come around. We sent Born Fat the rat to follow him so he wouldn’t do nothing crazy, but Fat said Mr. P only walked around outside the zoo for hours and hours and after a while Fat gave up because his feet were hurting and there were too many cats.
We didn’t know what to do. Of course Looks still had the keys, so we got out any night we wanted. But we missed the old man and wanted him back. He was truly an interesting Smelly. As for Rubs, we didn’t miss her at all and wasn’t sad one bit, though it was fun talking to that ape ’cause she was a hoot and also wise. But that’s the way it goes when you’re a Higher Order. Rubs was pretty lucky. She had a choice of options, being that the Wind had cut her a nice break.
Finally, about a week after Rubs left, word came to the Lion House that Mr. P was back in the zoo. That was hot news, literally hot, being that he arrived during the afternoon, when we was all caged up tight and the Smellies were everywhere.
“That’s good,” Scratch said, getting up and yawning, showing her teeth to scare the Smellies standing outside her cage that were gaping at her. “I got a few questions about Smellies now that I know more about ’em. See them two there?” and she pointed with her mind to two male Smellies holding hands staring at her. She watched as they kissed. “Now them Smellies there, they’re both male Smellies, holding paws and trading mouth spit. And the other Smellies standing around don’t seem to like it. What you think, Get Along?”
“You ain’t seen nothing till you seen two male giraffes necking in the forest, Scratch.”
“Oh, I seen it,” she said. “Chimps, too. So sweet. Makes me wanna mmmmm . . .” And here she closed her eyes and sighed.
“Wanna what?” I said.
“You know . . .”
> “Don’t you think it odd?” I said. “Two males going at it?”
“Not at all,” she said, wistfully, opening her eyes. “Chimps, giraffes, Man. What difference does it make? It’s love, lion. Real love. Not zoo love. Real love ain’t got to do with species. Real love lives in a creature’s heart. Look at ol’ Rubs. Didn’t she love?”
Well, it hit me right where I lived, her talking that way, and in that moment I seen that panther in a whole different light. Scratch wasn’t the easiest leopard type in the world to know with her lying self, and with her being a panther and me being a lion, well, I just never seen her as anything but a pain and a friend. But we’d been staring at each other across that aisle and telling jokes and lies for years, and the combination of seeing them two male Smellies nuzzling and the excitement behind Mr. P suddenly being back in the zoo, and the last word that Rubs left in the air before she died, it all gave me a revelation. I seen Scratch looking at me, and said, “Gee, Scratch.”
She said, “Gee what?”
I didn’t know quite what to say then, for my nature ways had left me the moment I come to that zoo years ago, and now they was rising inside me fast. So I said, “Sit yourself down a minute while I roar in Man Speak and make them two Smellies turn around so I can study ’em, for they are giving me ideas.”
“’Bout what?”
“You know what kind, missy. Sit down for a minute while I teach ’em a thing or two about being a lion. There’s still a thing or two a lion can teach Man about us Higher Orders. They ain’t the only ones in this world that can say two things at once, y’know. There’s lots I can show ’em about what us lions can do.”
“Like what?”
“Like how you roar in the air to announce that you’re about, and how that same roar might be telling another creature in a roundabout, lion kind of way that you might—just might, even if you is a lion and all—got some special feelings about that creature, even if that creature ain’t no lion.”