by T. C. Boyle
That was when the front door slammed shut with a reverberation that sent a seismic shock through the house and Dr Moncrief’s voice called out, ‘Hello? Is anybody there? Dorothy, is that you?’
In the aftermath – the shock wave – both chimps vanished, panicked at the sound of Moncrief’s voice. Moncrief was the authority, the bringer of pain and retribution, the last word, and if they didn’t know God, they knew him. He was the one who wielded the dart gun and the cattle prod and made Azazel, to whom they all in turn submitted, submit to him. Sam and Alice were terrified, and rightly so, because she was terrified herself. There were two doorways to the kitchen, the one through which she’d come and another that gave on to a back hallway, which was where the chimps fled in a concentrated explosion of limbs and hands and feet. ‘Dorothy?’ Moncrief called out again. ‘Jack?’
And then the door from the living room swung open and he was standing there, staring at her, stupefied, for once at a loss for words.
‘I’m… sorry,’ was all she could think to say, because how was she going to explain what she was doing there in his desecrated kitchen in her wet underwear in less than ten paragraphs?
‘Jesus,’ he murmured. ‘You’re what – taking a shower? Did Dorothy say you could use the shower or something?’ But before she could answer, he saw the truth of the matter, the smeared farrago of egg and meat and ketchup on the floor, the ransacked cabinets, smudges on the walls. ‘Fuck no!’ he shouted. ‘You let them loose? Don’t tell me you let them loose?’
‘The rowboat. They got the rowboat.’
The huge head, the glaring eye – he just stared at her.
‘On the pond,’ she said. ‘I had to – to swim after them?’
He was on her in two strides, his face bloated and red, and he grabbed her by the arm and jerked her round. ‘Stupid,’ he said, ‘stupid, stupid.’ And then, tightening his grip: ‘You’re like a rag doll, you know that? I could break you in two – or no, how about if I just throw you across my knee and give you a good spanking, would you like that?’
She tried to pull away, everything boiling up in her, hurt and disgust and shame, because he was right, she was stupid and she’d put everything at risk, but he wouldn’t let go. ‘Answer me,’ he demanded. ‘Would you?’
Whatever would have come next, she never discovered, because Sam was suddenly there, bursting into the room and springing up on to the table with a heart-stopping screech – ‘Wraaaaa!’ – that made Moncrief drop her arm and throw up his hands the way Elise had when Sam was so much smaller. And weaker.
‘Get back!’ Moncrief roared, his face working, his eye bulging, shoulders swinging into play, but she could see that he was scared. Nobody went into any of the cages with any of the chimps, unless the chimps were restrained – that was the rule, and if she was the exception and then only with Sam, there was no way Moncrief liked that either. ‘Too risky,’ he’d say to her, the grad students and techs alike, then grin and point to the black leather patch and the slick black ligature of the band digging into the flesh of his face. ‘Because you know what? You only get two eyes in this lifetime.’ It had come to her even then, the first time he went through that particular charade, that he was afraid of the chimps, even the juveniles, and here was his moment of truth. Part of her wanted Sam to go for him – Oh, how she wanted it! – but she knew it would be fatal, the end of Sam no matter how it turned out. He’d be put down. Euthanised, killed, murdered, executed, however you wanted to phrase it.
Sam let out another long, withering scream, his hair erected, muscles tensed, mouth open wide to display the hard honed canines she made him brush each and every night, teeth that were weapons now, and the only thing she could think to do was take hold of him, throw her arms around him and press him to her even as Moncrief, the colour gone out of his face, darted back into the living room and slammed the door.
All right. Now what? Sam’s body was made of steel, every muscle tensed to the breaking point, his heart revolving like a lariat, his breath coming in short hard bursts. ‘It’s OK,’ she murmured, ‘it’s OK, Sam,’ and then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added, ‘Good boy.’
For a minute, two minutes, everything was still. She became aware of the intimate sounds of the house, the ticking of a clock, a drip in the sink, the soft purr of the refrigerator starting up again. She had to move, had to get Sam back in his cage – and Alice too, and Hobart – before something irreversible happened, and she was going to do that, right away, or as soon as she could calm Sam enough to lead him out the door, and she needed to find something to wear, a coat, one of Dorothy’s coats, a sweater, anything, and shoes, her feet were killing her…
But then Sam tensed all over again, attuned to some subliminal sound she couldn’t detect, a creak of the floorboards, the whisper of a breath caught and held, and suddenly the door flung back, and Moncrief was there with his dart gun and before she could react – she would have taken the dart herself if she could – he was firing it point-blank at Sam’s throat. The dart stuck there as if it were a bow tie and Sam screamed, flailing his arms and showing his teeth, then the second appeared in his chest, then the third, and in the next moment, he went slack, all his musculature, all his being, collapsed like an empty paper bag. She heard her own voice sailing out high over the room, ‘You killed him!’
‘Shut up!’ Moncrief barked, swinging round on her. ‘Shut the fuck up! You don’t even know what you’re talking about!’
She was still holding Sam in her arms, but not to comfort him – it was too late for that. He was like a puppet, a ventriloquist’s dummy without the hand and arm to animate it, gone limp now and on the verge of pitching to the floor. If she was bigger, if she was stronger, harder, fiercer, she would have gone after Moncrief with everything she had, would have killed him, she would have… but then Sam drew in a ragged phlegmy insuck of breath and she was back in the moment.
‘Where’s the other one?’ Moncrief – Dr Moncrief, the humanitarian, the educator, friend of animals and grad students alike – was loading another dart into his gun. ‘Down the back hall? Is that where she went?’
Her voice was very small, so small she could barely hear herself. ‘Yes,’ she said, but she was already far from this place, far from the world of cages and guns and this language she didn’t speak and didn’t want to speak. She would have to gas up the car, pack in a hurry, pay a visit to the bank – and then one more visit, her final visit, to the dank, reeking barn on the hill.
ANOTHER BUG
Guy had left him. He was in a cage. He was bored and restless and angry, and when Aimee wasn’t with him – at night, especially at night – he screamed just for the sake of screaming and if it brought the BIG MAN and the PAIN, at least it was something he was in control of: scream and feel pain, stay silent and feel its absence. He wanted OUT, wanted it more than ever now that he understood what this place was and what his role was and why he was here behind bars, and Guy and Aimee and all the rest of them were not – he was a BLACK BUG himself, that was it, that was everything, and he could see it in his feet and his fingers and worst of all in the little square mirror she kept in a snap case in her purse. OUT, he wanted OUT! And more, and worse: he wanted to KILL, he wanted to DIE.
But then one day there was another female, not the original one, the dumb one, but one whose fingers could construct words and make meaning. He’d known something was up from the way Aimee was acting that morning, and he couldn’t guess what it was, though he was hoping for a surprise, a TREAT, a trip in the boat, raisins, candy, soda. Aimee was with him in the cage, grooming him and praising him in her soft trickle of a voice, and then when he was distracted just for a second, she stepped out and locked the door behind her, and he was about to protest, to scream, already working himself up, when the door at the back of the cage slid open and there she was, the new one, the female, the new female. She was older than him, bigger, and when he rushed at her in full display, his hair erect and his hands pounding at the
floor and punishing the walls, she ignored him. He danced round her, hooting, beating at the air, shadowboxing (a term he didn’t know and would never know, but that was what he was doing), and still she ignored him. And then all at once her eyes fastened on his, and she didn’t look away as the other one had – no, she stared at him till he was the one to look away. He squatted there, no more than two feet from her, feeling smaller than he had in a long time, feeling embarrassed, if he could feel embarrassed. Or ashamed. Could he feel ashamed?
When he glanced up it was into a thunderclap of amazement: she was signing to him. HELLO HOW ARE YOU?
He was so surprised he couldn’t think.
I AM ALICE, she said, finger-spelling her name. WHO – she raised her eyebrows for the verb – YOU?
SAM, he signed. I AM SAM.
Just then a BUG in the next cage over, Hobart, another juvenile, hooted, because he wanted to get in on this and he couldn’t. WHO HE? she asked.
Ah, but that was the question, the existential question that had been hidden from him all this time, hidden from him by Guy, by Elise and Josh and Barbara and even Aimee, but he knew the answer now, knew it in the way he knew he was a prisoner, in the way he knew hate for the BIG MAN and the dogs and the hose men and Azazel, so he told her: A BUG. LIKE ME.
She didn’t understand. She said, YOU ARE SAM.
He shook his head.
WHO ARE YOU? she asked again.
He looked at his feet, looked at the wrinkled black hide of his too-long fingers, looked at her face, her ugly bristling cartoon of a face, and he snuffed the air and smelled the rank faecal stench of himself, of her, of all of them. A BUG, he signed. ANOTHER BUG.
A PERFECTLY ADEQUATE CONDUIT OF EXPRESSION
He was just coming up the steps on his way home from class, juggling a bag of groceries, his briefcase and his dry cleaning, when he heard the phone ringing inside the house. There was only the top lock to deal with now, and he already had his key out so he didn’t have to set down the groceries or fumble through his pockets, yet by the time he got to the phone it had stopped ringing. Which was no great tragedy – the only good news he was anticipating would come via the US mail, bearing the logo of the NIH or NSF, and he’d already checked the mailbox, which contained nothing but flyers and bills he barely had the funds to cover after settling the project’s final accounts.
Inside, everything was soft-edged and grey, and the house was cold, though it must have been seventy outside. It could have been cleaner too, but that was something he’d been addressing in stages, along with packing his clothes and getting rid of the furniture. Josh and Barbara had stopped by to help him move the bigger things (couch, armchairs, kitchen set) to the apartment he’d rented on East Boone, near the campus. His bedroom was intact for now, but all Sam’s things were gone, as was everything in the guest room, which depressed him. He ate standing at the counter most nights or in bed in front of the TV. Last he’d heard the school was planning on repurposing the ranch as a conference centre.
There were four messages on the answering machine, all from Moncrief. The first two delivered the same injunction, ‘Call me.’ – Moncrief’s voice captured in a crackling burst of phlegm as if he was trying to choke down a slice of dry toast and form the words at the same time. The third, which was so clear and immediate it was as if Moncrief were standing right there next to the refrigerator, was ‘Jesus Fucking Christ, where the fuck are you?’ The fourth, delivered just fifteen minutes ago, came across in a controlled roar: ‘Pick up, goddammit, pick up already!’
He took his time, tearing the plastic off the shirts he’d got back from the cleaner’s and hanging them in the closet before they got wrinkled, then putting the groceries away and pouring himself a glass of a local Pinot Noir he’d had to go out and buy himself (no more freebies from the friends of the project since there was no project, not any more), before he picked up the phone and dialled Moncrief. He tried him at home first – it was just past seven in Iowa, so it was unlikely he’d be at school still – but Dorothy answered and said he hadn’t come home yet.
‘Is there anything wrong? He called four times, but I wasn’t home all day and I just got his messages.’
‘Frankly, Guy? I don’t know, but he was in one of his moods when he came down from the barn around one or so. He didn’t say ten words to me – he just changed his clothes and slammed out the door – but I got the distinct impression that he had a bug under his collar, if you know what I mean, and I’ve learned the hard way not to ask.’
‘Should I try him at school?’
‘Yes, Guy,’ she said, her voice soft and placatory, ‘I think that would be a good idea.’
Moncrief answered on the first ring. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.
‘Who?’
‘Who? Your girlfriend, that’s who.’
He was trying to put things together, fitting the pieces in place, doing the maths: where was she? How would he know? In her apartment, the chimp barn, out on the island – or a movie, maybe she went to a movie. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t talked to her in a couple of days, if that – and I know I should call more, just to keep in touch, but it’s the end of the semester and—’
Moncrief cut him off. ‘She stole my fucking property and I want it back.’
He was at a loss. He was going to say, ‘What property?’ and then it came to him: ‘Sam?’
‘Not a word. Nothing. Jack comes in this morning and finds an empty cage. You know how much that animal is worth?’
He did. Because every time the subject came up – Renee Flowers, Johnny! – he let him know. And now, since the government had imposed a ban on importing chimps because of the collapse of the wild populations, the animals the breeders had on hand were potentially worth all the more – even if they did ultimately wind up in laboratories. ‘There must be some explanation. Did you try her apartment?’
‘What am I, a detective? A fucking bloodhound? Maybe you’re not hearing me: she stole my property and I want it back. Now. Today, tonight.’
‘Well, OK, yeah – calm down. If I hear from her I’ll tell her, of course I will.’
‘You’ll hear from her. She’s your main squeeze, isn’t she? Your little fuckstress?’
‘Donald, come on, you don’t have to be like that—’
‘Like what?’
‘It’s not fair to her.’
‘Not fair to her ? What about me? You forgetting your priorities here or what?’
He knew exactly what his priorities were – and they involved sucking up to the man on the other end of this perfectly adequate conduit of expression and to Leonard Biggs and to the granters of grant money and to all the other high priests of the science foundations. He said, ‘I’ll do everything I can.’
‘Everything you can? Yeah, well, that’s a good start. But look. You tell her this from me – if he’s not back in that cage in twenty-four hours, I’m calling Roy Stennett down at the state police division, who happens to be a personal friend of mine, and she will go to jail, that’s a promise.’
For a long while after he’d hung up the phone he sat out on the back porch with his wine and a cigarette, watching the light play off the high rock ledges behind the house. There’d been a late rain at the end of April and the chaparral was in bloom still, little white flowers like snowflakes decorating the mesquite, something else gone a vivid yellow against a low blue creep of what was it – ceanothus? Aimee would know, but then Aimee wasn’t here, was she? She was out on the road somewhere, with Sam, probably with no money and no place to go. He tried to get his head around that, but all he could summon were snapshots of disaster, and was she planning on coming back here? Or to her mother’s house – or maybe the aunt’s, if the aunt even existed? It got worse: what if Sam glanced out the window and saw a dog or a horse or an Amish buggy he didn’t like? What if he punched out the windshield or made a grab for somebody at a stoplight? At that very moment he was no doubt shitting all over the back seat or making his demands �
�� to be groomed, to sit in her lap, play with that nice shiny revolving plastic toy called a steering wheel, twist off the key, beep the horn. Where was she going to hide him? What was she going to feed him? How was she going to pay for it?
A hummingbird shot straight up in the air, then angled down again, hovering and flitting, and two of the steers that used to so excite Sam picked their way delicately across the back lot, pausing to browse on one shrub or another, wide around as barrels. Nobody was teaching them how to talk. They were as stupid as nature made them – or actually, as smart as they had to be to survive till something crept up behind them equipped with teeth and claws or the truck to the slaughterhouse pulled into the driveway. After a while he went back in the house and began dialling numbers – Josh, Barbara, Janie, Elise, even Jack Serfis in Iowa. Nobody had heard from her. Everybody was shocked.
It wasn’t till two days later – early evening, another bottle of wine, fast food out of a bag – that the phone rang again and her voice came over the line. ‘Don’t be mad,’ she said.
‘Are you crazy? I mean, have you gone completely out of your mind?’
Her voice tightened: ‘I didn’t call to get yelled at.’
‘I’m not yelling. I just – I’m concerned, that’s all. Worried about you – Moncrief called, which is how I found out, and I’ll tell you, he’s going ballistic.’
‘So?’
‘So? What do you mean, “So? ” He reported you to the police, you know that, don’t you? And he swears up and down he’s going to press charges, which is no joke, believe me – and remind me, how many times did we discuss this? How many times did I pronounce the words “grand theft”, “felony”, “jail time”? Shit, Aimee, what are you thinking? You’ve got California plates and a hyperactive animal just ready to explode sitting next to you in the passenger seat – how hard you think it’s going to be for the cops to find you?’