Half Brother (35 page)

Loyal too. Zan saw Mike take another step towards me, and he stood on both legs and displayed. All his hair stood out, all two inches of it, and he shrieked and struck the air with his long, powerful arms.

I saw the fear on Mike’s face as he took a step back.

“Better beat it, Mike,” I said. “He’s strong.”

I said Zan’s name several times, and told him to come.

But he wouldn’t come. He stood there between me and Mike, showing his teeth.

“All right, all right,” said Mike, and he quickly lowered his gun so the muzzle pointed earthwards. He took a step backwards and, as a parting gesture, snarled at Zan.

Zan leapt at him. I don’t know what made Zan do it. Maybe it was the snarl; maybe the gun reminded him of a cattle prod. But he threw himself at Mike, knocked him over, and bit his foot right through his sneaker. Mike cursed and screamed. I saw blood. Zan tried to bite him again.

I ran forward, snatched the BB gun, and whipped it into the trees.

“Zan!” I shouted. “Stop!”

I pulled at all his muscle and fury, and I knew I couldn’t stop him, not if he didn’t want to stop himself. Then he spun at me, and his eyes blazed with a pure animal rage I’d never
seen before. I was afraid he might actually bite
me.
But instead he whimpered and jumped into my arms.

“You are so friggin’
dead!”
shouted Mike. His eyes looked crazy as he staggered up.

I whirled and ran towards a tree with many low branches.

Up,
I signed to Zan.
Climb.

He climbed, and I climbed after him. I glanced back to see Mike looking around for his gun.

“Where is it?” he shouted at his two stunned friends. “Get me that frickin’ gun!”

Zan climbed fast and high. Even at that moment, I marvelled at him. I didn’t dare look down.

I heard the crack of the gun, then a second crack, and felt a searing pain in my bum. I swore.

“Yeah!”
shouted Mike from below. “More coming your way!”

I tried to climb around to the other side of the tree, where the branches were bushier, but they were also farther apart and they slowed me down. I heard a few more shots, but they missed. I was hoping Mike couldn’t get clear aim any more. I glanced up and saw Zan, crouched on the branch above me, giving me encouraging pant-hoots.

I reached up to his branch and got a grip with both hands, then started looking for a foothold. The crack of the gun, and the pain in my bare right arm came at the same moment. It hurt so bad that my right hand lost its strength and slipped. I dangled, my left hand holding on, but I could feel its power failing.

Zan grabbed my left hand. He held me in place, and his
grip was so tight I felt my fingers breaking, actually breaking, and I screamed with agony, screamed for him to let go, even though I knew I’d fall if he did.

He didn’t. He held me tight. He pulled with all the might of his little body. With my right hand I flailed around for a hold and finally found one. Zan helped pull me up onto his branch.

I looked at my hand and retched in pain and disgust. It looked like a weird swollen red and purple glove, the fingers bent at odd angles. I cried. I couldn’t help it. I’d never known such pain. Zan was looking at it too, and stroking it and my arm, and signing,
Sorry, sorry, hurt.

“What the hell’re you doing?” someone shouted from below.

Through the branches, I saw Tim Borden approach Mike. Mike let his gun drop a little.

“Just a few potshots,” said Mike.

“Tim!” I called down to him.

“Ben? Is Zan up there too? Are you guys okay?”

“My hand’s busted.”

I saw Tim turn on Mike. “You freaking nutcase!” He snatched the gun from Mike’s hand and pointed it at him. “Get going before I load your ass.”

“Take it easy,” said Mike, backing off. “No big deal.”

“Go!” shouted Tim.

With his two friends, Mike hurried off. “You need help getting down?” said Tim.

“Maybe.”

He hid the gun under some brush and climbed up. We sat there together for a while. I saw Tim look at my hand
and then look away without saying anything. I didn’t feel too good. I felt like if I moved my hand, I’d puke.

“You were on the news last night,” Tim said.
“The National.
Boy disappears with pet chimp. People are looking for you. They had this one guy calling you a fugitive from justice.” He chuckled.

“Dr. Helson?” I asked.

He nodded. “Tall and thin, like those crazy training sergeants in the movies?” “Sounds like him,” I said.

“You’re in the morning paper too,” Tim said. “Everyone feels sorry for you and Zan. You’re sort of a hero.”

The throbbing in my hand was getting deeper and meaner.

“I think I better get home,” I said. I felt about six years old.

Together, Tim and Zan helped me down from the tree. It took a while. And then there was the long walk through the woods. We left the knapsack and the bikes. When we reached the parking lot, there was a pay phone, and Tim called my house.

“They’re coming to pick you guys up right away,” he said after he hung up.

And then we just sat down and waited.

Zan had broken every finger in my hand, even my thumb.

He couldn’t help it. He was just so strong.

But he’d saved me from breaking a leg, and probably my neck. He’d probably saved my life.

I was in the hospital two days as they X-rayed my hand and discussed what was best, and how successful they might be at repairing the damage, and then they decided I needed a little operation. I got put to sleep, and when I woke up, Mom and Dad and Peter were all there. My left hand was so wrapped up it looked like I was wearing an oven mitt.

“Where’s Zan?” I croaked. My mouth had never felt so dry.

“Good news,” said Mom with a smile. She took my good hand and pressed her cheek against mine. After all the bad hospital smells, her perfume was so good.

“He doesn’t have to go back to Helson’s,” said Peter, beaming.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to sit up. “The power of the media,” said Dad, helping me. “It saved us in the end.”

After interviewing Helson, a reporter had somehow gotten hold of the letters between him and the Thurston Foundation. All about which chimps Helson was offering for sale, which ones the Foundation wanted to buy. There were letters haggling about the price, until the last one we’d seen, where the Foundation had made its final offer.

They showed that letter on TV from coast to coast.

Helson was still insisting these letters were just
discussions.
No formal agreement had ever been reached, he said, and he was not doing anything that wasn’t within his legal rights. But it made him look like a liar.

And, thanks to William Eckler, the news station also showed some footage of the lab where Zan might end up.

They showed the cages and the little baby chimps banging their bodies against the bars.

Apparently the newspapers and the TV stations received a ton of phone calls and letters.

And the next day, Helson issued a statement. He said that, given my personal attachment to the chimp, he was willing to return Zan to me.

I wondered how the reporter got those letters. Did someone at the Thurston Foundation leak them, some researcher sick of seeing the suffering of the chimps? Or was it closer to home? Was it Sue-Ellen, who’d grown up with Caliban and Igor, and was starting to love Zan? Maybe she’d gone into her dad’s office one night, stolen the letters, and given them to the newspaper. I guessed we’d never know. I was just so grateful it worked out.

Five days later we bought Zan back from Helson for one dollar.

The last night Zan was with us, I put him to bed. I lay beside him with his blankets and toys and brushed his hair for a long, long time, and I told him the story of his life.

“Here’s the real story,” I told him, “because maybe no one else will ever tell you. Your real mother lived in a lab and she had you in a cage, and she loved you and fed you until Mom came along and stole you. And Mom brought you here. And we gave you a room and a yard and food and pretended that you were a real human and a part of our family. Dad pretended
to like you. Mom was really fond of you right away, and then she started loving you for real.” I paused, because this part was hard to admit. “I didn’t love you at first, Zan. I thought you were weird, and I guess I was jealous, and sometimes I didn’t want you at all. But that didn’t last long. You were my little brother. I really felt that. That was never fake.”

I don’t know how much he understood. He understood a lot, much more than he could sign.

But I think he was asleep long before I finished.

A
nother private plane, more sweltering country roads, flat land on all sides. Zan asleep on my lap, in the back seat.

I still had a cast on my left hand. The doctors had X-rayed it a couple more times, taken off one cast, reset a couple of fingers, put on a new cast. They talked about how, maybe, I’d never regain full use of my hand, my thumb especially. It might not work too well any more. It was funny, because chimps had weak thumbs too. Look at them, and you could see how short they were, compared to their other fingers. Often they used just their fingers to pick things up. I didn’t mind if I had a chimp hand. Zan’s hand.

When we first pulled up at the sanctuary, my heart felt sick, because it didn’t look much different from Helson’s ranch. Fences and big outbuildings with bars and high windows. But beyond the fences I could see five islands in large ponds, and in the trees I saw the dark outlines of two chimps, playing. Driving closer, we passed fields where there were
huge wooden walkways and shaded platforms and ropes and planks with more chimps playing on them. Some of them looked pretty young, still with their white tail tufts, not much older than Zan.

The woman who ran the sanctuary was named Margaret Inverness, and I liked her right away. She came out from the office in jeans and T-shirt, and when she greeted us I realized she’d been the person I talked to that first time on the phone. Mom and Dad and Peter were there, but it was me she looked at most as she showed us around the grounds and main building. Zan slept in my arms.

There were still cages where the chimps slept and ate. There always had to be cages. When we arrived it was lunchtime and the volunteers were feeding them. They loaded trolleys with all sorts of drinks and fruits and vegetables and yogourt and other things, and the chimps could reach through these slots and just take what they wanted. Every cage had its own trolley. It was sort of like a rolling cafeteria.

Above the cages where lofts were the chimps liked to sleep, and above those were bigger caged areas where they could also play and sleep together if they wanted. They had blankets and toys and all sorts of things to stimulate and comfort them.

I watched the volunteers as they fed the chimps, and they really did seem to like them. They talked to the chimps and joked with them. The chimps were all ages and sizes. One guy kept clapping his hands to get a volunteer’s attention and she always seemed to know exactly what it was he wanted.

There was a cage ready for Zan, and they let us put in his
favourite blankets and toys and anything else we thought might make his transition easier.

“Now, there’s some paperwork,” said Margaret.

We went into her office. It was a single piece of paper we had to sign. Mom and Dad read it, and so did Peter.

“What this says,” Margaret told me, “is that once you transfer Zan to us, we will never release him. You understand?”

“I think so,” I said. Zan was beginning to stir in my arms.

“That means we don’t let anyone have him. Not a scientist or a zoo or a lab. Or you, Ben. You understand that, right?”

For a second I couldn’t say anything. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

“So even if you change your mind and want Zan back, you can’t have him.”

I nodded, and Dad signed the papers.

We spent three days at the sanctuary, trying to make it easier for Zan. Or maybe it was to make it easier for us. It sure helped me to see that it was a good place for him, filled with people who really loved the chimps and wanted the best for them.

I hoped it helped Zan too, us staying on a few days.

On the last day, we left him in one of the play areas. We were all on the other side of the fence. That was one of the things about the sanctuary. There was no human-chimp contact unless the chimps were sick. You could touch them through the bars and groom their hands and backs if you knew them well enough. But there’d be no more teaching, no more signing. Zan was allowed to be just as he wanted.

“I bet he teaches some of the young ones signs,” said Peter. “I bet he does.”

“Maybe he will,” Dad said. Then, one by one, we slipped away. I was last.

Zan came over for a tickle and hug through the fence. A couple of other young chimps were bounding around on the play apparatus and Zan kept looking over his shoulder to check on them. One hooted impatiently at him, and Zan looked at me one last time, then turned and scampered off.

I watched him go, and hoped that one day he’d forget he was ever human.

A couple of nights later, after we got home, I dreamed about Zan.

We were talking, signing. Our hands, flying to speak.

I didn’t understand how his vocabulary—or mine—had grown so much. There were no words we couldn’t say to each other, and I felt such joy to be talking to him, the way I’d always wanted to, all those months he’d been one of us.

The sanctuary’s okay, isn’t it?
I asked.

I like it,
he said.
The food is excellent. If anything, they give us too much.

I wish you could’ve stayed with us.

A house can’t hold me,
he said.
I’m going to get a lot bigger and a lot stronger. Probably smelly. I’m pretty rambunctious too.

I break things. It’s fun, you should try it some time. That time I ripped your kitchen cabinet off the wall—that was very satisfying.