Jennie (39 page)

It screamed all the time. Especially when people came by. On my rounds, see, I had to punch a clock in the barn. That's where they kept the cages. I'd try to sneak in, keep the light off. But see, I had to turn this little key in the clock, and when it heard the click it always started screaming bloody murder. Rattling the cage. You'd hear this
Wham! Wham!
and it'd be hitting something in there. Jesus. I was scared out of my mind it'd get out and tear me to pieces. Hey, it did get out once. Sat in a tree for two days, screaming its head off. That was one crazy animal. I don't know
what they were doing with it there, or what was wrong with it. Probably got messed up in some experiment.

Gabriel? Yeah, well, he was kind of a jerk. I hardly saw him. He didn't know who I was. He didn't make an effort. Like on some jobs, the top guy makes an effort. He didn't. He wasn't my boss, though. My boss was a guy called Oscar. Oscar was okay, and most of the time he wasn't around. Like I said, I was the only guy worked the graveyard. There was another scientist that was there a lot. Blond woman, a real looker. Not too friendly.

Lemme see. I guess they had that chimp for about two, three weeks. Maybe a month. So I come to work, ten o'clock, and there's a big deal going on. Someone broke into the chimp's cage. Some kid. I don't know how he did it, I mean he must've had guts. By the time I got there, he was gone, and they'd knocked out the chimp. It was in the cage, sleeping. No problem. I'm doing my rounds, like usual. Then, like around three o'clock, I was heading for the barn. I heard this chimp scream. That wasn't anything unusual. But when I got inside, I heard this other noise. Like a flopping sound. So I turn on the light. And there's this chimp, like, flopping on the floor of the cage. You know, twitching. I thought it was from the drugs, being knocked out. Coming to, you know? But then I see this blood. Like there's a trail of blood, and this chimp's crawling, leaving this trail across the cage. And it started making this sound, like snoring.

It kind of freaked me out. But I wasn't going in there. No way. So I went over to the house and woke up Gabriel. That lady scientist had an apartment there too. So anyway she calls the vet while Gabriel comes running down.

He goes, “Who did this? Did you do this?” Like I would go and kill this chimp. “Hey,” I said, “take it easy. I found it like that.”

He was all over me. “You let someone in. You let that kid in, didn't you? That son of a bitch, look what he did. I'll get that son of a bitch.” Saying stuff like that. I was really getting pissed off. I don't have to take that kind of shit. I told him so. Nobody had been
around, or I would have seen him. I hadn't seen nobody, but he didn't believe me.

He was really ripped. And this chimp is like
snoring
, and then it starts crawling across the cage. To the door. And it gets to the door and reaches up, like, grabs the handle. And then it falls back and starts flopping again and twitches. So Gabriel tells me to stay there, and he goes back and calls the cops. And while I'm waiting, the chimp coughs or something and goes still. Like, it died.

And then, it was really weird. That lady scientist comes down, and she goes in the cage and she's holding the dead chimp and screaming her head off. Getting blood all over her. And
kissing
it. No shit. I mean, she was still in her
nightgown
. And then she's looking at her hands, with the blood on them, and slapping her own face and hitting herself. Jesus. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I swear to God you never seen anything like it. I swear to God.

Then everyone comes, and they take it away. So the cops want to talk to me, and they're asking me all these questions like Who did this? Who was around? Did I go to sleep? Had I been drinking? I mean, it really pissed me off and I told them so. Even with a shitty job like that, I'm a responsible guy. I don't have to take shit like that.

Then the next day it was all cleaned up. It was like nothing happened. A week later they asked me a bunch of questions, but it was different. They were a lot more friendly. See, they were afraid I was gonna quit. I mean, who were they gonna get to work nights at three fifty an hour? That's what they paid, three fifty. They wanted to know what I'd seen. Hey, I said, I keep telling you I didn't see nothing or nobody. Just what I said. Like, why would I lie? And that was it. So later they told me it was an accident, the chimp fell and hit its head.

Yeah. So I worked there another year and then they laid me off because of some cutback somewhere. That's when I got the job at Marine Magic.

[F
ROM
an interview with Lea Archibald.]

There isn't much to tell after that. The story's over. You can finally shut off that tape recorder. Jennie was dead. It was done. And legally they owned her, she was their property, so who could we sue? Who could we complain to? They had killed our daughter and there was nothing we could do. Nothing. Anyway she was dead.

So there was Jennie's body laid out there in the veterinary hospital, on a stainless steel table, dissected. Her whole face and skull had been opened up. I was the only one to see that. No, Sandy saw her later, I believe. I kept Hugo and Sarah out. You know, it wasn't that shocking, really—because it just wasn't her. For the first time, she looked like an animal to me. All the life was gone and she looked like somebody's big black dog run over by a car. If there is such a thing as a soul, it was long gone.

Sandy was released from the hospital that day. The psychiatrist said he was upset but in good mental health. George Gabriel, fearing a scandal, no doubt, declined to press any charges. We had Jennie's body cremated, and we took the ashes back to Boston.

Sandy had already made his peace. Learning of Jennie's death didn't throw him for a loop the way we thought it would. He accepted it with a fatalism that, well, kind of scared us at first. It was almost as if he'd already said good-bye to her. I guess he had.

[F
ROM
an interview with Harold Epstein.]

Now where was I? You know the story. They found Jennie on the floor of her cage. Unconscious. While Dr. Gabriel administered emergency first aid to Jennie, Dr. Prentiss called Roger Kuntz, who was the D.V.M. used by the center. Although Dr. Gabriel was a veterinarian himself, Dr. Kuntz had more experience with trauma. He arrived ten minutes later and tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but by that time it was clear that Jennie was not merely unconscious. She was dead.

Now I know that
Esquire
reported that Jennie might have been murdered. Let me address that. This utterly ridiculous falsehood stemmed from the fact that, in her very distraught state, Dr. Prentiss made some thoughtless allegations against Sandy. Jennie had been found lying in her cage with a fractured skull. And Pam didn't see, at first, how that could have happened. She asked Dr. Kuntz to photograph and remove the body and perform an autopsy. Once made, the allegation was out, and it took on a life of its own. It was sensational. A macho red-blooded journalist like that fellow from
Esquire
, well, he just couldn't resist.

Dr. Kuntz quickly dispelled the idea that the death was anything but accidental. Mind you, they seriously examined the possibility of foul play. Dr. Prentiss insisted on it. What they found was crystal clear. The door to the building was locked. The cage was locked. There were no signs of a break-in or tampering. The night watchman had not fallen asleep or been derelict in his duty. All his clocks had been punched and this was, apparently, an unusually reliable fellow.

Sandy had quite definitely been in the hospital all night. When everyone finally calmed down we realized that it had been an accident, a freakish accident.

Apparently what happened was this. During the night she had had a fall, undoubtedly while the sedative was still clouding her mind. Normally chimps can fall twenty or thirty feet out of a tree and be unhurt. I might add, however, that Goodall did observe chimpanzees falling to their deaths from trees. Jennie fell from above and just happened to land on her head on some hard blunt object—we believe it might have been the edge of her cement water bowl. A severe cranial fracture followed by cerebral edema ended her life very quickly and mercifully, without suffering.

When Dr. Prentiss returned to Boston a week later, she came into my office. She was a changed woman. Her love for that chimpanzee was as powerful as any mother's love for her daughter. That tragedy
changed her life. And you know what? She's never been the same since. Don't print this, but she's been treated for depression. That's why it burns me up to hear accusations leveled against her merely because she isn't, on the surface, the warmest and most socially graceful person in the world. I hope you will not be another one of those people casting stones. I'm asking you to have a little compassion. I also hope you'll be gentle with Sandy. He was a lovely, kind boy and he was just
crushed
by this whole thing. He is suffering terribly out there in Arizona. I think he blames himself. And Hugo's death, I think, had something to do with this whole thing. It ruined him as a scientist. He lost all perspective. He just seemed to give up on life. Of course, I'm not implying suicide of any kind, but one doesn't normally die from a simple gallstone operation. It was a routine operation; he just never woke up from the anesthetic.

Look, we're all good people here: myself, Dr. Prentiss, Lea, Sandy, and of course Hugo. Hugo was a wonderful man. We are kind people. To be sure, we're human beings, but we're not evil scientists. So, where did we go wrong? I really don't know the answer. I really don't.

[F
ROM
an interview with Lea Archibald.]

We decided to bury Jennie's ashes on Hermit Island. It was the happiest place of her life, the only place where she could be herself. We put them in a clay jar that Sandy had made as a child, a big clunky thing colored in big green and yellow stripes. Sandy had been so proud of that jar when he brought it home. We kept it on the windowsill of the kitchen ever since. It was just about the only thing Jennie hadn't managed to break. It was indestructible.

We went to Hermit Island two weeks later. It was late May, but it was still cold and blustery. Hugo got the boat out of the barn and fixed up the engine—it had broken over the winter somehow—and
we put it in the water in Franklins Pond Harbor on Saturday morning. It looked like bad weather, so we bundled up in sweaters and slickers. There was quite a chop out in the sound and I made the mistake of musing out loud that perhaps it might be just a little dangerous? Well! Sandy just about had a fit. So we loaded up the boat and set out.

The air still smelled of winter, it was that cold. On the way over it started to drizzle, and the water in Hermit Cove was black. Just as we got there the Monhegan foghorn began blowing, making these long soundings that rolled across Muscongus Bay. Ever since, I've associated that sound with burying Jennie on Hermit Island. So low and sad, like some lost lonely creature of the deep.

We hiked about the island, all through the wet grass, and got soaking wet. Sandy scattered a handful of ashes here and a handful there. He strewed some along the rocks and at the base of a spruce tree Jennie liked to climb.

We buried the jar with the rest of Jennie's ashes in the hole in the back of the fireplace where Sandy found the secret letter. We fitted the stone back in place, and then we lit a fire and made some hot tea. And we talked about Jennie, and we toasted her. We cried a little, but we tried to make it a happy moment. In a curious way it was a release. What kind of life would Jennie have had, if she lived? If she couldn't get along with other chimpanzees? And you know, she never would have accepted other chimps. I really believe that now. So what kind of a life was she going to have? Locked up in a cage? Put in a zoo? I've come to feel, over the years, that maybe her death was a blessing in disguise. She was too . . . too
free
for the world of people. Although chimps and humans are supposedly so closely related, there is still a gulf there—a vast gulf. We almost bridged that gulf, but in the end it didn't work.

So we huddled by the fire, and the roof leaked more than ever, and Sandy said a few words and we left. That was what, seventeen years ago? And we've never been back to Hermit Island. I don't imagine there's much left of the cabin, after all those winter storms.
The roof was already on its last legs. It isn't that we avoided the island, it was just that we never seemed to get around to it. We always talked about going back. Now with Hugo gone, I don't suppose I'll ever get back there. The boat was sold, Sandy's in Arizona, Sarah's in New York. I'm just a useless old lady now.

I still go to Maine, and Sarah visits every August with the grandchildren. Sometimes when I'm in the farmhouse, and the fog rolls in, I listen to the Monhegan foghorn, blowing, just blowing, and I think of the day we buried Jennie. And I think of Jennie's cold little jar there in the hermit's cabin in that secret place.

You know, I'm not a religious person, but sometimes I think I can hear Jennie hooting and laughing from a great distance when the waves are crashing on the shore. Of course it's bosh, just my imagination, but it always gives me a start. Yes indeed it does. And who knows, maybe she
is
out there somewhere in that big old strange universe of ours. Maybe when I die she'll be there waiting for me with open arms and a big halo around her head. Now wouldn't that be something?

[F
ROM
an interview with Alexander (“Sandy”) Archibald.]

It snowed last night. Did you hear the wind all night long? When it blows like that, it just sucks the heat right out of this place. Out the smoke hole. We'll go for another ride today. The desert in the snow is the most beautiful sight in the world. That coffee should be ready in a few minutes. Tortillas and beans for breakfast? Good, because that's all I've got. Unless you brought the bagels and smoked salmon from Zabars. [Laughs.]