A Beautiful Truth (31 page)

Me too.

This place is cleaner than you’ve ever seen it and I’ve mowed the lawns he says.

Everyone takes as much food as possible and they carry it outside with their lips and hands. It’s a beautiful day again and Looee sits in the shade eating bananas and grapefruit and he fishes through a bag of peanuts.

He is getting better at recognizing his friends. Mama approaches making soft noises and she grooms his shoulders and neck. Her fingers are practical and rough.

Sometimes she turns and presents her pink rear end to him. She rubs it on his arm and he gets up. He doesn’t know where to look.

Some of their customs will be forever foreign to him.

On sunny days and rainy days they sit under trees and think. He sees memories in their eyes. He feels tired. It rains prettily and he sits under a tree. He turns to his side and briefly looks at Mama and the girl. They’re sitting and Mama is hugging her from behind and the girl is using her like an old chair.

Looee gets up and walks in the rain. He stares at the blue wall. He doesn’t think mummy is over there but he thinks of her and sits
in the light rain. He can go back inside whenever he wants. The rain is sweet on his lips and the sun comes out again.

Looee hurt mummy and that night is a red flash. It bursts when he blinks. He wants to say sorry. His need to say sorry to Judy has become a calcified reflex. It accompanied whatever memories were left, it sat with him and settled through fourteen years and grew into a bone lying crosswise in his chest.

No one loves this sun as much as the one who has been tortured. The sun and this apple are beautiful. The apple is in his hand, he can feel his hand and the sun. He is here. He eats the skin of the apple.

Mr. Ghoul sits with Jonathan, grooming. The yek seems to be inching closer and Jonathan starts to feel rinjy.

A foreigner takes our jobs and our women. He has greasy hair, kinky hair, blond hair and no hair, smells like armpits and cumin, patchouli and Ralph Lauren, and I swear I can smell his ass. He has a big nose and doesn’t know our ways. He’s a kike, a goy, a cracker and a paki. He’s from the city and won’t fit in. We used to know everyone here.

Mr. Ghoul strokes Jonathan’s arm to calm him as Looee looks towards them. David, from the tower, sees Ghoul resting the back of his hand, gently and briefly, on Jonathan’s testicles. Jonathan’s hair relaxes and the grooming is resumed.

Looee walks by and sits with his back to the wall of the building. He gets hungry and finds more peanuts. If he stays away from Jonathan and Burke he can move wherever he wants.

He sits with his bone of guilt and appreciates the day.

This is not the time of life to stoop and cower, my brother.

Mr. Ghoul and Looee sit together and Mr. Ghoul shows Looee how to crack nuts. Looee knows an easier way but there is no nutcracker available.

Mr. Ghoul can’t steer a car, make drinks for the ladies or control a VCR.

Burke walks near with hair on end and Looee and Ghoul both cower. They stare at the nuts with greater concentration and bond through the act of sharing their fear, and hating it. Burke passes by.

Mr. Ghoul looks handsome for a dogperson, more man than animal, and is endearingly weak.

The yek has the marks of many battles but would not survive without Mr. Ghoul.

When Burke is safely distant they eat the walnuts and think of other things. Mr. Ghoul taps Looee’s shoulder with the back of his hand, let’s go, and they sit by the pokol-fear. Mr. Ghoul wants to see him put his goon under again, and gestures to make him understand. The yek is not fast sometimes. Eventually he understands and does it.

Looee’s head emerges refreshed from the water and Mr. Ghoul is standing on two legs, arms swaying, uttering low ritual whimpers: high priest to divinity incarnate.

He turns his butt submissively to Looee and Looee is offended. He pushes the dogperson’s butt, and Mr. Ghoul is satisfied.

Mr. Ghoul sits near the water and timidly scoops some in his hand and spritzes his face. They look around at the sun-filled bowl of possibility and deliberately ignore the troubles that randomly wander.

Mr. Ghoul grooms Looee, who is getting used to the roughness of their nails—the aggressive way his chin is pushed up while his neck is getting inspected. Judy used to clean him like that when he had been naughty.

Mama watches Mr. Ghoul and the yek spending time together.

David watches Fifi licking her fingers and casually rubbing her clitoris, and he wonders what that’s all about.

As dinnertime approaches, Mr. Ghoul goes to the yek and puts his arm around his shoulder. They briefly walk with their arms around each other and file into the tunnel and catwalk.

The high-ceilinged chamber is filled with food grunts and farts while all of them dine privately from the trolleys in front of their cages. Mama takes an armful of fruit and climbs up to her lowered platform. She likes to eat up high where nothing can bother her.

The sounds of chewing mouths would be enough to make children laugh.

Looee can never eat much of what he is given, though sometimes the cooked food goes down regardless of how he feels. When Mr. Ghoul sees that Looee is leaving something aside he taps on the divider and holds out his hand. Looee passes a half-full bag of nuts to Mr. Ghoul.

They sit close to their shared wall and eat. Looee used to make Larry laugh by putting something on his bottom lip, pushing it forward and staring at the object cross-eyed. He does this with a plum pit and Mr. Ghoul laughs, a quick and quiet wheeze.

Mr. Ghoul eats and grunts and taps the grid and carefully makes a nest of blankets. He eats nine soporific bananas and taps banana banana banana on the cardboard beside him while he eases into sleep.

In the morning he grooms Jonathan outside beneath a needle tree. The cool smell of the needles soothes them. Jonathan watches Mama grooming the yek. He wants to run at them, but he knows that the yek is a friend of Mr. Ghoul’s. He knows that Mama, Fifi and the new one are bowing to Mr. Ghoul and that Mama and Fifi will get in his way. Burke is no longer his ally. He feels calm with Mr. Ghoul.

He tries to pin Magda later but she hits him and screams and runs away. She feels that Burke should be respected.

Burke watches Jonathan and Magda.

Jonathan stares at the new one and his cock arises. Burke sees it.

No one predicted it.

Magda gradually resented the new one. She had seen Jonathan’s interest and did not want a new woman to complicate the World. She had attacked the new one through the plekter at night, scratching her face and pulling on her arm. She fought with many the next day and learned how things were changing.

The new one no longer slept near Magda’s side of her night cage. She was afraid and wanted friends.

Burke made sucking sounds and lured her in the dark. He pushed his mouth through the bars. He dangled both of his arms into her room and she did not trust him, but she couldn’t resist. Her fear made his invitation more compelling.

She turned submissively and he touched her. She sat nearby and he chewed some fruit. He offered her the chewed wad of fruit from his mouth as if he were her mother. She stood to take it with her mouth and his hands trapped her hard against the bars. He opened his mouth and sucked, salt fruit and bone. He held the back of her head and ate her face.

The staff heard alarm calls in the morning. They came down before opening the cages and saw several of them jumping hysterically and pacing. The girl was lying in a pool of blood. Her jaw was hanging by a tendon and what was left of her tongue drooped unsupported to her neck.

One of the staff went into her cage and picked her up. Magda made threatening gestures at him.

He walked through the vestibule carrying the eleven-year-old
girl against his chest. David watched him come into the study area covered in blood. She was still alive but sounded like she was drowning.

Looee and Mr. Ghoul, at the far end of the chamber, didn’t know what was going on. They were kept in their cages all day, food brought out on trolleys.

Mr. Ghoul could tell that something was wrong with Mama. She was keening and screaming and leaping at the side of her cage.

He paced and made desperate noises and intently touched and groomed the yek. His fingers told stories of need.

Fifi was in the night cage next to Magda’s. She was Mama’s informant. She touched Mama and screamed pointedly at Burke. Mama learned that Magda had not been involved.

They were kept in their cages and fed for three days. The staff naively hoped that things might settle down. What little Mama ate she choked on.

The locks buzz open. Mama pushes her door and runs along the catwalk and stops above Burke. She screams and tries to break the iron, and diarrhea sprays down over Burke. He will kill her when he comes out.

By the time he does, Mama has touched or been touched by everyone but Magda. Burke runs straight for Mama, and Jonathan is the first to knock him down.

It is the most vicious and prolonged beating they have on record. David feels sick but he is the best at identifying the actors and actions. Even he needs to review the footage closely. When fists stop rising it eventually looks like a group of wild dogs busily feeding on a carcass. There is jostling, and side fights, and some of them come and go. Mama walks away from Burke and throws
something into the moat. Fifi is notably on the fringe of the attack.

He finds the gradual lack of emotion on their faces to be the most unsettling, the way they eventually walk away and seem to go about their business. He is trained to read subtleties and knows there is more than meets the eye, but he is acculturated to expect keening, remorse, articulate shock and grief.

When they are locked in at dinner the staff retrieve Burke’s testicles from the moat and take his body to the main site. Some organs may still be of use.

David feels a strange need when he goes home to come clean about every lie he has ever told, and to tell his wife that he loves her and knows what is important.

For weeks there is a bruised and chilly calm, an air like the early northern spring, weak promise amidst bad memories. Among all of them is a fragile mood of mutual respect. The staff agonize over the condition of Mama. She wastes in her grief.

Fifi too is grieving. At first they assume she is grieving for the girl, but the extent does not make sense.

Despite her hatred of what Burke did, he was hers.

It is proof to some that adoption was complete, that apes can call anyone a son. Her interaction with the group is uneasy.

The girl’s jaw was reattached in the hospital at the main site. She has been fed by tubes. There was extensive plastic surgery and she is kept in clinic for two months. She won’t be able to function without human help while she recovers.

So while the staff rejoice on the one hand, they wish they could somehow put Mama at ease.

Looee grooms Mama, as roughly as he can.

The new one is released from the introduction room. She wears a helmet and jaw-brace and her sounds, forever altered, combust against her palate.

Mama runs and throws her arms up repeatedly, and vomits from shock and joy. As the news spreads over the acres, all arms go up as if a war has ended.

They gather around the new one, and poke and smell her helmet.

She gets special meals that she drinks through straws, and Magda and Bootie are jealous.

The radio says it is ninety-eight degrees.

Looee steps out onto the grass.

They wear the same skin, no difference in temperature between Looee’s chest and the air that rests on the grass. They sit in the body of the World, and the earth, Looee, the leaves and that tower are equal and temporary facts.

One of the researchers wants to show her new baby to Mama. She takes him out to the other tower and waits for Mama to look up. A few of them are curious. Mama comes closer, then looks for her own daughter. The woman hears Mama issue a telltale hoo whimper towards Beanie: come and let me feed you. But the new one is older and wants her own baby to play with.

Looee naps on the grass under a threat-free sky. He hasn’t done this since he was a child. He awakes and sleeps again. Jonathan is sleeping nearby and neither minds the other. Two hairy men dreaming on the grass.

Mr. Ghoul sits with Fifi and Mama and it feels like the three of them are sharing a secret smile. Warmth and wet arise in Mr.
Ghoul and Fifi. She turns and manoeuvres and grips his curiosity. He holds her hips while his own roll and jerk. Mama turns her back and presses her backside against Mr. Ghoul’s while he is inside Fifi. This is a pact, a trusting sweet agreement. Fifi squeezing tight, Mama on his doojy.

It is most enjoyable.

He eats and thinks of Podo for a moment. He smells Fifi on his fingers and feels a dulchy sleep approaching.

He sees Looee sleeping in the warmth. He sits nearby, flicks away a stick, and lies on his side. Their long arms are extended towards each other, their fingers almost touching.

They sleep and twitch through dreams and Looee’s arm tingles under the pressure of his body. He moves and his fingers touch Mr. Ghoul’s. He is not fully awake and is frightened by the touch, but he relaxes when he sees Mr. Ghoul’s face.