Zoo

by Tara Elizabeth

  “I know, but it makes it that much harder to be here, Janice,” I sadly admitted.

  Silence passed between us for a few minutes, as we both thought about our past lives. It was like a bad chic-flick movie with all the crying and sharing. We just needed to eat some ice cream and badmouth our old boyfriends. Our fire was dying down, and I was getting tired so I excused myself, happy to remove myself from the sob-fest. “Going to call it a night. See ya in the morning,” I told Janice as I stood to leave.

  Little did I know what the next morning would actually bring . . .

  HELLOOOO COWBOY!

  Straight across from our enclosure was another dome. We could only see one of its enclosures—well, kind of. From the time I had arrived at the zoo, it had been closed. The glass was an opaque shade of blue. Bright orange lettering flashed across the front of the enclosure that said, “New Exhibit Coming Soon!” When I got up that morning, however, it was open. The glass was clear, and I could see a dusty, western landscape. There were two small, wooden buildings with tiny porches, a horse tied to a post beside a water trough, two cows fenced off toward the back, some cacti, a few tumble weeds that would blow past every once in a while, and the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life.

  I figured he must be a little older than me, but no more than 21. He was sitting on the porch of one of the buildings with his head resting against the wall. He had gorgeous light brown hair that fell over his eyes. His clothing was typical of a cowboy: tight jeans, a pale blue button-up shirt, and a cowboy hat that was lying beside him.

  I drifted toward him; sure I was still asleep and dreaming. I realized I was awake when I smacked my head against our enclosure’s glass. The new guy saw my smooth moves and looked up at me with a grin. Even though he was about 20 to 30 feet away from me, I could tell his eyes were a piercing blue. If I could see the color of his eyes, there was no doubt he could see the scarlet shade of my face.

  He didn’t laugh at me. He casually pushed his hair out of his face and placed the hat upon his head. Then he smiled and tipped the brim of his cowboy hat. My knees went weak, and all I could think to do at the time was curtsey. OMG! I actually curtsied. It was so embarrassing.

  “What are you doing?” Janice called from somewhere behind me.

  “Making an ass of myself.” I answered when I turned around to find her watching me.

  She laughed. “Yeah, I can see that. Pretty cute,” she said as she glanced around me to get a good look at our new neighbor. “Guess that’s why you’re so red.”

  “Hey there cowboy!” Janice hollered across to him, while she waved and gave her best smile.

  “Stop it,” I said as I yanked her by the hand and dragged her away from the glass wall.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she giggled all the way over to the vegetable garden, where I stopped and released my hold on her. “Don’t worry. It’s not like I can actually do anything, but you can’t stop me from having a little fun. I’ve been so bored lately.”

  “Whatever. Help me weed, okay?” I tried to find something to distract her from the new guy. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that weeding was probably not the best answer, because she was unintentionally bending over and giving him the best possible view the whole time we worked. Thank goodness her dress was long enough to cover her butt, because we’ve still never been given underwear with better coverage.

  Fortunately, the park opened and people flooded the pathways, which prompted Janice to get bored and move on with her day. I stayed near the front of our enclosure and sat off to the side near Auntie Josephine’s section of the dome. Her singing was out of tune, but she was so passionate when she sang, it made you want to like it. I listened to the melody as I watched the new guy explore his enclosure. He was looking for a way out, much like I had.

  Sometime after lunch, the cowboy gave up looking for a door. He went into one of the wooden structures and came out again with a bowl of stew and a glass of water. Seriously?

  I enviously watched him eat spoonful after spoonful of his chunky stew, as he sat on the shallow porch. When he was finished, he left his bowl on the ground and walked over to his new horse and rubbed her nose. He pulled a few carrots out of his pocket and fed her a snack before giving her a good brushing. Every move he made was so natural for him. There was no doubt in my mind that he was actually from the Wild West or the countryside.

  Outside the cowboy’s enclosure, the public crowded around the new exhibit. They were consumed with him. Much to my relief, all eyes were on him instead of us that day.

  NICE TO MEET YOU

  The morning following the cowboy’s arrival, I woke up early. The zoo was not yet open, and Janice was still fast asleep in her hut. The sun had not made its appearance thus far, but I could tell it was getting close by the subtle change of colors in the sky. Oranges and pinks were fighting the night’s dark hues away.

  I quietly pushed through the jungle foliage and made my way over to the waterfall for a quick shower. Before leaving the fresh water source, I filled my animal skin with drinking water for the morning. It took about six or seven weeks, but I finally got over the “gross factor” of the container. I wasn’t really sure how long I’d been held captive at that point.

  The sun was up by the time I reached the front of the dome, and I could faintly hear the chirping of an unusual-looking bird. It was perched on the railing just outside of our enclosure. It was brown with a few orange feathers on the wings, and it had an orange beak with a strange hook at the end of it. I’d never seen a bird like that before.

  I sat down on the hard earth and pressed my ear up against the cool glass to get a better listen. The bird was serenading me with a pleasant melody. I think I smiled for the first time since I’d been imprisoned in the People’s Past Anthropological Center.

  Eventually, the bird flitted off to sing its song for someone else. As I pulled my face away from the glass, I noticed the cowboy watching me from his enclosure. He tipped his head at me, and like before, touched the brim of his hat as he approached the glass wall. I could feel my cheeks heating up, but I managed to nod back.

  I held my breath, as I waited for what would happen next. I was nervous, which was completely ridiculous since there were two glass domes and at least 20 feet of open space between us. I had always been shy around boys though. It was a nervous reaction that was very different from my everyday, somewhat sarcastic and determined attitude. Cute boys brought out the pink ribbon and bubblegum in me. I couldn’t help it.

  The cowboy sat down across from me with his long legs stretched out. He unscrewed the top off of his canteen and poured some of the water onto the ground next to him. My mind started spinning. What a strange thing to do, I thought.

  He swirled his index finger in circles, as he mixed the water and the soil until they met with his approval. Then he brought his finger up to the glass in front of him. He wrote, Hello.

  And then, I smiled for the second time since I’d been imprisoned.

  I hurriedly followed his lead and emptied some of the water from my animal skin pouch onto the ground. I mixed them until I got a muddy paste and replied to the handsome cowboy with, iH. Oops. I needed to write in reverse for him to be able to read it correctly. I rubbed out the i and moved it to the other side of the H so that the message then read Hi.

  He wrote back again. Name?

  Emma. U?

  I watched as his mouth formed around the syllables of my name. I wished I could hear his voice as he said my name. As I anxiously awaited him to mix more water with dirt, I tried to guess what his name was. Hmmm . . . Was it Wyatt or maybe Daniel? He kind of looked like a Sean.

  James Wilder

  Yes. That was better. He absolutely looked like a James.

  He then wrote, Time?

  Did he mean when was I born or when did I die? I decided that he was asking about when I was taken. I wrote back, 2013. U?

  He looked at me for a moment with a confused expression. His forehead was scrunched
up and his eyebrows were pushed close together. Maybe it was because my surroundings didn’t match what he imagined my era to look like, which they definitely did not. He finally wrote back, 1876. Then he scooted over a little to his left to get some more empty space to write on. He lifted his finger to the glass and smudged the mud on the surface forming the question, How?

  Did they even have cars back then? He wasn’t going to have a clue what I meant by a car accident, but I wrote it anyway. Car Accident

  His demise was similar. Horses were the vehicles of the Wild West, right? He wrote, Driving cattle. Thrown from horse. Broken back.

  “Hey, what are you doing? Are you okay?” Janice called from somewhere behind me.

  James’ eyes shifted over my right shoulder, and I momentarily hated Janice for taking his attention away from me once again.

  Before she got too close, I rubbed out my messages to James and splashed some water on them to wash away any traces. He did the same on his side, perhaps guessing from my reaction to Janice’s approach that I didn’t want her knowing we could communicate without screaming at each other through the glass.

  “Hey, Emma. What’s going on?” She looked down at me and then across at James.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Geez. You on your period or something?”

  I jumped up from the ground to face her. “No! Can’t I get a little privacy around here?” The constant eyes on me, even Janice’s, overwhelmed me.

  Janice looked hurt by my words and said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I just saw you staring at the glass. I was coming to check on you. I thought maybe you were upset or something. Were you two writing on the glass?”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I was thrown off by her actually caring about me and instantly regretted my harsh words. I knew that I should apologize, but I still wasn’t going to tell her anything I learned about James, especially his name. That was for me alone. “Sorry for the outburst. Guess I’m feeling a little tense. Um. Yeah, he made some mud and wrote on the glass. Smart, right?” I motioned over my shoulder.

  “Yeah, sure.” Janice didn’t seem very impressed. “Well, since you’re okay, I guess I’m going to go and get ready for the show today. Going to milk Betsy or something equally entertaining.”

  I didn’t know how they all did it, Auntie Josephine with her singing, Janice with her sweet, farm girl thing, and even the new guy, James, with his cowboy stuff. They all performed for the public like they enjoyed it, and all I wanted to do was rip their eyes out for watching me against my will. It made me feel so dirty.

  I looked back across to James’ enclosure. He had left the glass wall and was saddling up his chocolate colored horse. Disheartened, I left our connection of the glass and trudged over to our fruit tree. I plucked an apple from a low hanging branch. Another one instantly grew in its place. It started out the size of a small raisin and grew into a plump, juicy, red apple within minutes. It was freaky.

  I spent the rest of the day crushing on the hot cowboy and thinking about my next chance to communicate with him again.

  GLASS CONVERSATIONS

  The following morning I woke up before the park opened. I rushed down to the front of the dome to see James. He was waiting for me, sitting in the same place as yesterday. My heart leapt into my throat, but I slowed my pace so he wouldn’t know how anxious I was to see him. He was so ruggedly handsome in his western wear that he could have been a movie star in my time. So far, he was the only good thing about the People’s Past Anthropological Center. He gave me something to focus on besides escaping.

  I casually waved and sat in front of the glass dome of my enclosure. I took special care as I mixed my water into the soil next to me. It needed to be just the right consistency to smear on the clear surface.

  James had already written out Good Morning on his glass wall when I looked back toward him. He had a crooked smile playing across his thin lips, and his blue eyes were radiant.

  I smiled back and wrote Good Morning as well. Then I wrote, Lonely?

  He shook his head no and wrote, Good horse. You?

  Absolutely. I was more than lonely, even though people surrounded me most of the time. I shared this easily with James. Somehow the fact that he had only been around for two days, and I’d never spoken face to face with him, didn’t matter. Actually, that’s probably why it was so easy. I knew I would never get to meet him so there was nothing to lose. But I wanted to meet him badly.

  What do you miss? I drug my fingers over the glass with care to ask the personal question.

  His face turned grim as I made him think about things he probably would have rather not dwelt on. He wrote, mother and little sister. provided for them. father died in war.

  Oh no. I shouldn’t have asked. The look on his face broke my heart. He poured a little stream of water over his muddy answer to wash away the memories of his lost, loved ones.

  I shared with him; I miss my mother and father. Friends. I didn’t write the superficial things that I missed like my car, shopping, or the $4.00 a cup vanilla lattes that I got several times a week. Those things didn’t even compare to his loss. How shallow of me that I whined to Janice about them.

  He nodded again, acknowledging both of our losses. Then we sat and stared at one another for a little while with nothing left to say.

  James and I didn’t leave our spots facing one another, across the expanse of the public’s walkways, when the park opened. People of all ages, wearing all eras of clothing, trickled through our section of the zoo. Some of them paused and looked at our muddy messages on the glass. They curiously looked from me over to James. I bet they were thinking and even saying aloud, “Silly animals.”

  I didn’t care. I stayed where I was seated and coldly stared back at them.

  Until, I saw him . . .

  WHAT DOES THIS GUY WANT?

  A man I’d seen before was standing right in the middle of the public walkway—right between James and me. He stayed in place as people passed all around him, moving from one enclosure to the next. I recalled his tan skin and firm build, but he was no longer wearing a grass skirt, nose piercing, or showing off his tattoos. Instead, he was dressed like someone from my era; with khaki shorts, a plain gray t-shirt, and black flip-flops. It threw me off for a minute.

  More than anything, I still recognized something in his eyes, but was unable to place it for a second time. That day, though, his eyes were unhappy. It made me uncomfortable. I quickly washed my messages to James off of the glass wall and picked up my water pouch. I wondered why I felt guilty all of a sudden for communicating with James. I couldn’t figure out who the strange guy was or why he had such power over me. I was sure he knew things I didn’t. Perhaps he had secrets and a world of knowledge that I wanted to hear about, or maybe he was just a stalker.

  I rose to my feet and smoothed my dress out, and then I left James sitting alone with his own messages to wash away. I hurried away to find Janice, never looking back at the man that was surely watching me retreat. In no time at all, I found her talking to Betsy. She had a carefree air about her like life in a zoo suited her just fine. This made me angry and envious at the same time. I couldn’t help but want to force my own opinions down her throat. Why wasn’t she feeling the same things that I was feeling? I didn’t quite understand her point of view, because I didn’t live her life.

  However, at that time, I was more concerned with the weird stalker than Janice’s stance on the zoo. I whispered to her, while I kept my back toward the public and him, “Janice, don’t be obvious, but do you recognize that guy in the gray shirt staring at me?”

  Janice casually walked around Betsy, all the while stroking her coarse coat, until she was once again standing next to me. “What guy in a gray shirt?” she asked.

  When I turned around, he was gone—and Janice had one more reason to think I was a little crazy.

  JAMES

  James and I met for our mud-chats most mornings. He always waited for me in the same
place, ready to write a new message. He must have been an early riser in his old life. For me, it was a struggle to wake up before the zoo opened, which was early by most people’s standards.

  From our conversations, I learned that James was from Colorado and missed it dearly. I learned that he’d been working since he was a young child, and therefore, he didn’t have very much education and often misspelled things. I never corrected him. I learned that his mother’s name was Helen and his sister’s name was Rose. He also had a baby brother named William. William died of influenza when he was an infant.

  He had a hard life. I did not.

  I thought back to all the things that I took for granted like antibiotics, which probably would have saved his brother’s life. His stories made me realize how great I had it and how fortunate I was to have grown up in my time and not his. What I would have given to be able to hit the rewind button and see the world in a different light. I would’ve appreciated every day I was alive. James was a nice distraction, but he wasn’t enough of a distraction to keep me from missing my family and friends.

  Sometimes, after our conversations, I watched James go about his day. He spent most of his time with his horse that he named Sue. He took such good care of her, brushing her and keeping her well exercised. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bother myself to do the same with our cow. She was a good cow, but she was kind of stinky. Okay . . . She was really stinky.

  James grew more handsome to me by the day, and I wanted nothing more than for him to be in our enclosure or vice versa. I felt like he was all mine, something that the Keepers didn’t control. He drew my attention away from my awful circumstances, and I clung to that—probably too much—but it helped at the time. The only person that seemed to interfere with my goings-on with James was the strange tanned guy that watched me. He showed up randomly, never at the same time or day of the week. He always watched me and only me. It made me feel uncomfortable and guilty. Not because I was attracted to him or anything. It was something I couldn’t explain. It just was.