Jennie

by Douglas Preston

  See, all the commotion had finally gotten the old drunken bitch out of bed. She came staggering down the stairs, saw blood on the carpet no doubt, heard some noises, and went down to the basement. Apparently Jennie was hiding under the covers of Sammie’s bed, whimpering. Her mom, thinking it was somebody, started yelling and when there was no response whipped the covers back. Oh my God. The poor old sot screamed and fainted.

  The police found Jennie curled up on the bed, crying. They revived the mom. She was hysterical. She refused to leave the house so the cops searched around for the finger, couldn’t find it, and left with Jennie and brought her to my parents’ house. By the time the police got there my parents were on their way to the hospital, so they sat there and waited. Jennie felt terrible about the whole thing. She was so ashamed and sad. When my parents came home, Jennie went to the bathroom all by herself and shut herself in. To punish herself. She stayed in there for the whole day. Not even eating.

  I really don’t remember much of anything. They’d given me some shots that made me feel like I was floating about two feet off the bed.

  They fixed me up pretty well. After about six months I stopped missing it, except that once in a while it itches right on the tip and I can’t scratch it. Damn, that’s annoying!

  So that’s what happened. My parents blamed Jennie and decided to send her away. End of story.

  I got over losing a finger pretty fast. I wasn’t mad at Jennie at all. It was my fault. But my mom kind of freaked out. She kept Jennie locked up in her room most of the time and she had bars and screens put on the windows and door. It was like a prison. And Jennie treated it as such, banging and yelling and raising holy hell when she was put in there. My mother and I had pretty bad fights about that, arguing almost nonstop. Sarah was her usual uptight self, walking around with her nose wrinkled up. Sarah was basically a good kid but she really had a thing about Jennie. My father did his usual disappearing act. Did you try to talk to Sarah? I knew it. I knew she wouldn’t talk to you. You might as well forget her; she’s as stubborn as an ox. When she says no that’s it.

  So then Prentiss came around with some kind of offer to take Jennie to Florida. Prentiss and that pompous old egomaniac Epstein. Epstein thought he had the answer to everything. My parents jumped on that. I was surprised, because my mother didn’t like Prentiss. My parents pretended to have a talk with us, to let us feel that we were part of the decision, but their minds were already made up. I was against it right from the beginning. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I tried my best to stop it, but being a sixteen-year-old kid I didn’t have much say.

  They had a going-away party for Jennie. I thought that was the cruelest thing of all. Like giving a condemned man a last meal of steak and lobster. Jennie had no idea that in three days she was going off to prison. It was so phony, this party. I wasn’t going to go to the party, but then I changed my mind and showed up near the end. I guess I’d had a bit too much to drink. They were all lined up for a picture and I just ripped into the whole lot of them. I said some pretty terrible things. I asked them how they could stand there laughing and smiling and having a good time, when they were sending Jennie to prison camp. I called them hypocrites, motherfuckers—I mean, you name it, I said it. And you know what? Nobody said a word. Nobody defended themselves. The knew. They knew in their heart of hearts that I was right. They stood there looking guilty and then they slunk away and went home.

  Here was the deal. This’ll make you sick. Prentiss insisted that we transfer ownership of Jennie to the Tahachee center. Like a fucking slave. Like chattel. Oh but no, it was just a legal formality, see? Something about insurance or liability, oh yes of course, thank you, just a formality. Right. And my parents went along; they signed the fucking slave papers, giving these bastards ownership of Jennie. A clean break, a new life, they called it. How oh-so-wonderful.

  My parents flew down to Florida with Jennie and came back a few days later. I wasn’t around. I was so pissed off at that point that I’d gone to live with Sammie. I stayed there for a week and then I came home.

  I have to say, I found my parents pretty broken up about losing Jennie. The only one who was happy was Sarah, who went humming and skipping around the house with her fucking dolls, having make-believe tea parties and things like that. Oh well, I can’t blame her really. My mother cried just about every day. That surprised me, how upset she was. We talked a lot about it and I think that was the first time I’d really connected with my mother in years. We talked a lot about the early days when Jennie was young, about Jennie and her tricycle, about Jennie’s first words. My mother really needed to talk about it. She tried to explain to me why they’d sent Jennie away. It was hard for her to defend the decision when I could see she was having second thoughts herself. I think she realized she’d made a terrible mistake. My father, he just withdrew. He was always pretty remote, but he looked . . . ashen after that. He was at the museum all the time. I really resented that.

  The reports coming back from Florida were all bullshit. Everything was “normal.” Normal what? Jennie was still in a fucking cage. It may be normal for them to sit in a cage but it wasn’t normal for Jennie. What a crock.

  After a few weeks my mom started getting suspicious. They had said Jennie would be released on the island in two weeks, but a month later she was still in the cage. They were evasive. They didn’t want anyone to come down. Dr. Prentiss came back to Boston, but three weeks later she was back down there. No one would say why.

  My father was a fool. In his mind, these people were scientists and scientists never make mistakes. He had this faith in those people, Epstein, Prentiss, Gabriel.

  So here we were, everyone was sitting around the house talking about it but nobody was doing anything. Not a thing.

  So I finally said to myself, the hell with this, this is a crock of shit, I’m going down there myself to see what’s going on. I’m her brother. Nobody, I mean nobody, is going to keep me out.

  So about a month after Jennie left, I wrapped my stuff in a blanket and I went out there to Route 128 South and stuck out my thumb.

  That trip was a nightmare. It took me five days to get to Florida, and it rained almost every day. The first man that picked me up was an old guy driving a gold Cadillac, and he was so drunk, weaving all over the road, that I had to get him to stop and get out in the pouring rain. Then this busful of hippies picked me up; you know, peace and love and all that, and all they did was bitch about who was hogging the drugs, who had ripped off the pot. I spent a night with them at this KOA campground outside of Baltimore, and they split in the morning without paying and I had to pick up the tab.

  It rained that morning, and an old black guy in a pickup stopped. He was only going a hundred miles, but he invited me to spend the night at his place near Richmond. His name was Dad Patterson. Dad and Muriel Patterson. I’ll never forget them. Their kids had grown up and moved away, and I think they were lonely. They lived on one floor of this old crooked three-story house, looked like the porches were about to fall off. His wife cooked me a fantastic meal and I told them about Jennie. They were fascinated. They asked me all kinds of questions about Jennie and what it was like growing up with a chimpanzee, and I showed them my finger and they ooohed and aaaahed about it. We drank bottles of Colt 45.

  It rained the next day and the next, and when I finally got to Florida it was still raining. It took me a day and a half just to get halfway down the length of Florida. Tahachee was on the Gulf Coast near Sarasota.

  The last afternoon it cleared and I slept in a nature preserve along the coast. Snuck in and curled up in this deep sandy grove of palmettos. The night was full of stars. When I got up in the morning the sun was just hitting the tops of the trees and the birds were making an incredible racket. They were flapping and squawking through the branches. The sky was an incredible blue color, and as I lay on my back I saw a snake silently gliding along a branch above my head, so smooth and graceful and alive. It seemed like such a perfect
thing. Just going about its business and living its life in a pure way. There was no bullshit or phoniness in this snake’s life. No complexity, no moral agony. Just this beautiful simplicity. I wanted to be the snake, at that moment. I wanted to shed this life and just be up there, gliding over a branch in the warm sun. And then I thought, Why not? What’s preventing it? I can be like that.

  I wish I could describe to you how I felt at that moment. I suddenly felt alive, for the first time in months. It was a great moment, an epiphany. I felt free.

  I was only a few miles from Tahachee. I felt that, whatever happened, everything would be okay. I don’t know why I felt that, but I did. It helped me get through the next few days.

  I got to Tahachee about noon. I walked into George Gabriel’s office. I wasn’t looking very presentable, and he looked at me and demanded to know what I wanted.

  I told him who I was, and I said I wanted to see Jennie.

  He just looked at me steadily. He was dressed like a great white hunter, all khaki with pockets everywhere. He had a big beard and a sunburned face, but his eyes were that Nazi pale-blue color. He was a phony through and through.

  Then he stood up and shook my hand. He said, “Sit down, sit down. Let’s rap.”

  Can you believe it? Let’s rap. He thought he was so cool, so with-it, he wanted to rap. Not talk. Rap. What an asshole.

  Then he went through this thing of crossing his legs and sighing and saying that he didn’t know how to say this to me, but it wouldn’t be in Jennie’s interests for her to see me, and so forth. Looking all thoughtful and fatherly and paternal, and pretending to take me seriously when all he wanted was for me to get the hell out. Talking to me like I was some kind of idiot.

  So I said, “Why not?”

  So he started this longwinded explanation. They wanted to release Jennie on this island with other chimpanzees, but in order to do that they had to accustom her to being with her own kind. And that was a hard process for her. On and on. Jennie was very upset, she was having trouble adjusting. But she was making progress. My visiting her would undo all the progress they’d made. It would upset Jennie terribly. It was a very bad idea. It would set her back.

  I listened patiently. I thought, Let the asshole talk himself out. I mean, nothing was going to keep me out of that cage.

  So I asked him, very nicely, why she was in a cage in the first place.

  He had another long bullshit explanation for that. She was too powerful to control on a lead. She was extremely hostile to other chimpanzees and had attacked one. Why, Jennie had even attacked him. When he said that I couldn’t keep myself from grinning. Too bad Jennie didn’t kill the bastard. The only way, he said, to safely allow her to be in proximity with other chimps was by keeping her in a cage. On and on. It was only temporary and then she would have a long and happy life on the island.

  I started to get pissed off. I said, “Look, I’ve got a right to see her. Now!”

  He hemmed and hawed and went into more explanations. He wanted to know if my parents knew I was there. I said that was none of his business. He said he wouldn’t call them unless I wanted him to. He understood my reasons for being here, on and on. Still trying to be cool, still feeding me bullshit.

  Then he went into this business about what “right” did I have to see her. My family had given up all “rights” when we gave Jennie to the center. He didn’t quite put it that way, but that was the idea.

  That really made me mad. I said, “I’m not talking about legal rights. I’m talking about moral rights.”

  Nothing would shut that asshole up. He went on and on about whose right was higher, Jennie’s to become adjusted to her new life or my right to see her and possibly wreck everything. They had a “duty” to see that Jennie had a happy life. On and on. I realized that I was on the wrong track, that nobody could outtalk that scumbag.

  So I tried something different. I said, “This place is going to be turned upside down if you don’t let me in there.”

  Oh, he understood, oh sure, why I was upset. And he sympathized. But let’s not do anything rash that we might regret. Oh no. Finally he said that she was very upset right now. A danger to herself and others. Even if he thought it would be a good idea to let me in, it would be too dangerous. She might accidentally, in her excitement and frustration, hurt me.

  I just said, “Bullshit.” Can you believe he was talking to me like that, me who had grown up with her and known her all her life? I just stared at him. I didn’t know what to say.

  He looked at me and said, “You, of all people, should know just how dangerous an excited chimpanzee can be,” and I could see him glance at my hand.

  Well, that really pissed me off. What an asshole. I stood up and said, “I’ll find her on my own,” and walked out the door. He rushed after me and grabbed my arm and we talked on the lawn. The sun was out and I could see a big barnlike building with a row of chain-link cages sticking out along one side. I figured that’s where they had Jennie.

  Oh, he knew how I felt. He sympathized. But I couldn’t just go barging in there. Something might happen. I just said to him, “Fuck you. Fuck you.” I shook off his hand and kept walking toward the building. He was saying “Just think of Jennie. For her sake. Just think how upsetting it will be. She might very well attack you. I can’t be responsible for that.”

  I just kept walking. Gabriel kept walking alongside of me, and finally he gave in. He said he’d let me into the building. But not into the cage. It was really too dangerous. I had to promise not to go near the cage. He had to remind me I was a guest of the center. Et cetera. I didn’t say a word. I just kept heading for the building.

  We had reached the door. I said, “Let me in.”

  He was dancing around with the key, and he tried to make me promise not to go near the cage. I didn’t say a word.

  He stuck the key in the door. The minute his key made a noise Jennie started to scream. Jesus. I’d never heard her scream like that. It made my skin crawl. It was like . . . like she was being tortured. She was choking and hammering on the bars. When the door opened she was in the far corner of her cage, shrieking and banging on the bars. She would run out of air and there would be a choking silence and then she would scream again, her eyes squeezed shut. She started hitting herself on the head with her fists. I couldn’t believe it. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t even see us, she was in such a frenzy. There were bald spots all over her where she’d been pulling out hair. And her fur was kind of a dull brown, not the usual glossy black color. And she had this big potbelly. Emaciated with a big unhealthy-looking belly sticking out, like those starving kids in Africa. God, I hardly recognized her. It was sickening what they’d done to her.

  I was so angry, I could hardly get the words out. I told him to let me in the fucking cage.

  He was saying, “Wait, you promised.”

  I hadn’t promised a fucking thing. I started toward the cage.

  He started to shout. “Stay back! She’ll try to grab you through the bars.”

  That’s when I suddenly realized that this macho pumped-up Great White Hunter was actually afraid of Jennie. He was scared shitless of her! You should’ve seen him.

  Jennie wasn’t even looking at us. She was in such a fury I don’t even think she was aware of her surroundings. She didn’t know it was me.

  I just said, “Gimme the keys.”

  He was going on and on. “She’ll hurt you,” he said. “Look at her!”

  So I grabbed the motherfucker and twisted his arm behind his back. And I shoved him toward the cage.

  He really started to scream “What the hell are you doing! Help! Security!”

  Look at me. I’m no big tough guy. I’m actually kind of a wimp. I’ve never been in a fight in my whole life. And this guy was just paralyzed with fear. [Laughs.] I suppose I did look pretty intimidating, with my long hair and scraggly beard, covered with dirt and mud. Yeah, I must’ve looked like some crazed biker. Gabriel didn’t eve
n struggle. He was, like, flabby with fear.

  When Jennie saw us close, she ran straight to the bars. Still in a total frenzy. Slammed herself against them, she was so anxious to kill the bastard. Reaching out and screaming and baring her teeth with her big canines flashing.

  He was screaming his fucking head off. “No! She’ll kill us both! Let go!”

  I said to him, real calm. “If you don’t gimme the keys, I’ll push you right up against the bars.” And I started shoving him forward. I can’t believe what I did. I was just crazy I was so upset.

  He was slack with fear. “In my side pocket!” he yelled. “They’re in my side pocket!”

  There they were, a big bunch of keys. Dozens of them. One for every fucking cage on the place.

  I yelled, “Which one!”

  He was scared shitless, yelling “Number six! Number six!”

  I let him go and he stepped back, but he didn’t leave. He just stood near the door, sweating.

  Then he said, “You little prick, I hope she bites your hand off this time.” His face was red. He looked like he was about to cry.

  I unlocked the door and it swung open and I went in. Jennie saw me vaguely through her ranting and rushed at me with her hair sticking up, her teeth bared. A roar of rage coming out of her throat. She came straight at me. She was ready to kill.

  I said, “Jennie! It’s me!” and she stopped dead and looked at me for the first time. For the first time. Then she ran toward me and threw herself into my arms.

  Then she started to cry. The tears were just streaming down her face. She was silent, weeping and clinging tightly to me. Her head was pressed against my chest, and she was holding me like she was never going to let go. I could feel her skinny little body shaking with sorrow. Oh God it just—it just hurt so much. We just held each other for a long, long time, and I could feel this pain in my chest like my heart, it was, like, breaking. I was crying too, I guess, and we just held each other and cried.