Zamba

by Ralph Helfer

  The couple smiled, nodding their understanding.

  “We call him Zamba,” said Brini. “After the river where we found him.”

  “And so it shall be,” I said. “It’s a fitting name.”

  “Yes, well, I guess we should be going,” offered Jack.

  “No coffee?” I asked, although I could barely breathe, looking at the covered cage.

  “We have to get back.” Brini’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m really going to miss him,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “You know, when I first held him in my arms, I was thinking of you. When we first met, you spoke of wanting a lion of your own. I can’t explain it, but I knew this would be the lion you have been waiting to share your life with. You’re the best person for Zamba, Ralph.”

  Her kindness embarrassed me, but my heart filled with appreciation. I touched the cage. “I can’t begin to tell you how I feel at this moment, and how moved I am that you thought of me after all these years,” I told her. I could feel the slight burn of tears welling in my own eyes. “I really have been waiting my whole life for this moment.”

  Brini’s British reserve kicked in. “I guess we had better be going,” she said quietly. She had said her good-byes to Zamba earlier; best not to repeat. She could cry in the car. Jack lifted the little bundle to the ground. No sound came from the cage.

  I hugged them good-bye.

  “Thanks. Thank you so very much.”

  A handshake from Jack, and they were gone.

  I picked up the small cage and climbed the short distance to the crest of the hill, where there was a giant oak tree. It must have been at least four hundred years old, and although it had been ravaged by centuries of storms and natural disasters, it still stood tall and majestic. It was the largest and most beautiful tree in the county, and it could be seen for miles in all directions.

  This tree had become a legend in the area, and she was affectionately referred to as the Old Lady. Her lowest branches, long and heavy with foliage, hung in a huge circle, tips bending until they touched the earth. Witches’ hair moss hung from the branches. The growth was so thick that one could neither see in, nor get close to her trunk. When she shed her leaves, they fell still green and full of energy, an emerald carpet encircling the matriarch.

  Everyone who saw her immediately recognized the feeling of a cathedral about her, and in fact many church groups gathered around her for special services. I was fortunate and proud to have inherited her on the property.

  In years past, whenever I had felt alone, confused, or wounded, I had gone to her, seeking direction. I have always believed in nature as the true way to reach one’s God, and the Old Lady offered me a natural temple and gave me an opportunity to recharge.

  You could drive up the hill close to where the Old Lady stood, but the best way to approach her was by a small trail starting in the valley below. It twisted its way over cascading streams into a thick medieval forest, lush with conifers and giant-leaved plants. The forest was filled with mule deer, cottontail rabbits, gray tree squirrels, and the occasional raccoon and opossum. In the creek beds, shy newts and pink salamanders hid under moss-covered rocks. To end up at the base of the Old Lady after such a walk really made you feel that the oak was nature’s church.

  Very few people knew about a small opening in the low-lying branches around the back of the tree, hidden by a thick patch of manzanita brush. I picked my way through the opening, carrying the cage and its precious cargo. Once through, it was cool and quiet inside, an amphitheater filled with the intoxicating smell of the damp, rich, reddish earth. The gnarled base of the tree trunk was huge, and there were no initials cut into its bark. It was as pure as the day its seed sprang into life.

  I stood there, full with the realization that this was a moment I had been waiting for all my life. All was quiet. I set the cage down in the middle of the circle and sat with my back against the tree, where the lowest branches were high enough for a man to stand at full height.

  The silence was broken by an impatient “aghruh” from inside the cage.

  I walked over and gently unwrapped the canvas. The cage was made with loosely fitted wooden slats, with a wire screen on the front. I reached down and undid the door latch and let it swing open, and then I went back to where I had been sitting, with my back against the tree. The morning sunlight shone through the slats, casting beams of golden light across a pair of huge, beautiful, unblinking eyes.

  I said “Zamba?” as softly as I could.

  The cage moved. The cub got to his feet and peered out the door.

  Such a face! It was truly a face of God’s making. Perfect, trusting, and so very beautiful. We looked at each other for a while. I was practically overcome with the joy of it all.

  “Aghruh!” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He stood there, head up, standing as tall as he could, planning his next step. Then, with an air of dignity, he started toward me. He had all the features of an adult in miniature. When he got a few feet away, he stopped and looked directly at me again.

  Extending my arms, I said, “Hi, Zamba.”

  He tilted his head, waited a single beat, and then ambled right into my arms. Although he was barely two months old, his little body bowled me over—not with his strength, but with his pure enthusiasm. I lay back on the ground while his small pink tongue licked every inch of my face; he nursed my nose until it was red. He found my tears of joy and licked them away. Then, hugging my neck with his soft paws, he collapsed on my chest, got comfortable, and fell asleep with his face on mine. We didn’t move for the next two hours. My Zamba was home.

  4

  In the years before Zamba came to me, I had been developing a philosophy of training animals that was based on love, not fear. This system would eventually become known as affection training, and I don’t think I’m overstating the case when I say that it revolutionized the way animals are trained and treated in the motion picture industry.

  The system evolved over a long period of time. In fact, the first seeds of the idea of affection training were planted on the day of my eighth birthday.

  “Wake up, birthday boy.” My mother’s voice penetrated my sleep. “Happy birthday!” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

  Reluctantly I left my beautiful dream. It was a dream that I’d had over and over again since I was a very small child.

  In this dream, heavy snow blanketed the silent world as I curled up on God’s eyelid. The snow was beautiful, but I was chilled to the bone. A lion of massive proportions approached through the flurries, and immediately I was flooded with a sense of calm. This lion was my protector, my mentor, my friend.

  He moved in slow motion, radiating a pulsating glow of warmth, and as he turned his head toward me, the warm air coming from his nostrils thawed the cold in my body. Time slowed down—every blink of his enormous eyes seemed to last an eternity as he looked deep into my being.

  Then I’d wake up under a big old brown wool quilt my grandma had made years ago, and slowly the warmth the dream had imparted would leave me. We had no heat in the house until my uncle Chan and I started up the furnace each morning.

  This birthday was no exception. Shivering, I quickly put on my knickers, a heavy wool shirt that itched something terrible against my cold skin, a coat, two pairs of socks, a wool skullcap, and a pair of red earmuffs. My gloves were cold and hard, so I beat them briskly against the bedpost until some of the elasticity came back. Mom gave me a thermos of hot cocoa to warm me, and I headed out the door to help my uncle Chan start the furnace.

  This was my life. From birth until I was eleven years old, I lived in a place I detested. The south side of Chicago was a middle-to lower-class section of town, full of rat-infested alleyways, torn-up streets, and week-old garbage. Every day seemed colder and wetter than the day before. My parents were separated, so my mother, sister, and I lived with relatives, supplementing their charity with whatever Mother could earn from a series of small-paying jobs.
I had very little contact with my father—when we did spend the day together, he’d usually drop me off at a whorehouse his brother owned so the girls could babysit me, hugging me to their huge, baby-powdered breasts. Like any child raised without a father, I wished that he had been more of a full-time presence in my life, but it was only when I became a father myself that I fully appreciated what he’d missed. I believe that both my father and I could have benefited from each other’s love, but we did not see each other often enough for a real relationship to develop.

  My only escape from reality was a collection of lion paraphernalia that I kept in my room. I looked every day in the newspaper and saved any advertisement or article that featured them, and over the years, my relatives had given me a few cherished figurines.

  Someday, I thought, someday, I will leave here and live in Africa, a place full of trees and rivers with lions all around. It will be warm. And I will have my own lion. He will be my best friend and I will be his.

  Fortunately, this birthday promised a break from my ordinary life. My mother, sister, and auntie had promised me a day at Aurora, an amusement park at the edge of the city. It was a special place full of barnyard animals, circus acts, carnival shows, rides, games, corn on the cob, and juicy hot dogs dripping with chili. I could hardly wait.

  As I got out into the living room, I noticed that everyone had dressed up a little for the occasion—everyone except Uncle Chan. Mom wore her black-and-white polka-dot dress, my auntie Anne had on her new blouse with the puffed sleeves, and my sister, Sally Ann, wore a bright blue off-the-shoulder top to match her eyes. But Uncle Chan was wearing an old pair of jeans, wool scotch plaid shirt, and high-top boots.

  He sat down across the room on the sofa and looked at me, the way he did whenever he was contemplating a reprimand or about to announce a change in our living conditions. I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, sinking between the old sofa cushion and the armrest, and desperately tried to figure out what crime I might have accidentally committed.

  “Come on, honey,” said Auntie Anne, a little timidly, to her staring husband. “We don’t want to miss the early morning performance.”

  She knew his moods could spoil things very quickly and didn’t want anything to happen on my birthday.

  “We’re not going,” came his terse reply.

  His words were like a slap in the face.

  “But honey, we’re all ready and—”

  A look from Chan quickly stopped her. She turned to me with her head tilted, a sheepish smile conveying her helplessness. My mother sat motionless, afraid to say the wrong thing.

  “The boy’s too old to go to some sissy-girl park. I’ve got him something that will turn him into a man. Here!” He reached behind his back and pulled out a tall brown-paper wrapped package.

  The entire family was startled; this may have been the first gift my uncle had ever given anyone. I didn’t care what it held; nothing could replace the outing I had so happily anticipated for months. I laid the package across my lap and began slowly unwrapping the paper.

  “Hurry up, goddammit. We don’t have all day!” he yelled. His sudden outburst startled me, and I quickly tore at the paper. As soon as the box was open, I felt sicker to my stomach than I ever had before. Lying before me was the one thing in the entire world I hated the most—a hunting rifle.

  “Isn’t it a beauty? I bought it brand-new from a used gun dealer. It’s a 30–30, big enough to knock a hole you can see through in any good-sized deer.”

  I struggled to catch my breath. The rifle lay there on my lap, its long black barrel all shiny and polished. The stock was made of a light-colored wood, the same kind as their dining room table.

  “Well, go ahead, pick it up,” he urged.

  It was almost too heavy for me to hold. I knew my uncle wanted me to try it out, point it at something as though I were going to shoot. For one wild second, I imagined pointing it at him. Instead I “shot” at the living room lamp.

  “How’s it feel, son?” he asked.

  “Fine, Uncle—thanks.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll go up to Three Point. It’s a great place for deer this time of year. If we’re lucky, we’ll bring home a nice buck. Be the best birthday you’ll ever have.”

  I spent the rest of the day in numb misery. The disappointment of the amusement park seemed a hundred years away, overshadowed completely by the threat of what the next day would bring, the gun a silent, evil reminder propped up in the corner of the living room. The night was no better: I tossed and turned, wide-eyed and feverish, unable to stop the voices in my head. Killing a deer? The man must be crazy! Why? We didn’t need deer meat for food. There were always plenty of hamburgers in the refrigerator. Why kill an innocent animal? What was the purpose?

  I was already up and sitting on the edge of my bed when my mother came in the next morning. She looked tired, and I knew she was worried for me. She sat on the edge of the bed and took my hands in hers as her eyes filled with tears.

  “You know, honey, your uncle Chan means well. He was in the navy for many years, serving on a destroyer. He never had children of his own, and I think he always wanted to have a boy so he could teach him all the things he thinks a boy should be.”

  Destroyer was a good name for Uncle Chan. “Momma, I can’t kill any animal, let alone a deer. They’re beautiful and have families and don’t hurt anybody.”

  Her voice was soft. “Look, honey, you know we can’t afford to get our own place. What with the Depression and all, times are rough. Auntie Anne and Uncle Chan have been good to us, letting us live here. If I say something, well, you know how Uncle Chan is. He could ask us to leave, and what would we do then?”

  I was still hoping against hope that she’d tell me I didn’t have to go. “Please tell me I don’t have to kill a deer.”

  “No, of course not. I just want you to know that things are difficult now and I don’t want them to get any worse.” Her hands were clasped in her lap, and by now, her voice was barely audible. “You’re a good boy, Ralphie, and I know you’ll make the right decision.”

  When she hugged me I felt her tears on my cheek.

  My new rifle lay in its carrying case on the backseat of the Chevy, nestled up next to Uncle Chan’s. We had been driving about three hours, the city left behind us, when the old truck broke down. Uncle Chan said it was the carburetor, and siphoned some gas out of the tank into a Coke bottle. The hood was split down the center, and he raised it on one side, exposing the engine. He lifted me up onto the front fender, showing me how to slowly drip gas from the bottle into the carburetor. In order for the truck to continue to run, I had to balance on the fender, dripping gas, while we drove.

  “Don’t drip it on the engine, boy. You’ll blow us all to kingdom come.”

  He drove quite slowly, as I balanced and dripped. It was a warm day, and the breeze felt good blowing in my face, and although my task made me a bit uncomfortable, at least it kept me from thinking of where we were going. The drive was beautiful, and the forest surrounded us with all its awesome splendor. I felt at home there—I knew that a place like this was where all my hopes and dreams for the future lay. But given the day’s objective, instead of comforting me, the smells and the sounds coming from the surrounding forest only intensified my dread.

  I couldn’t look around much because if the drip wasn’t steady, the engine would cough and sputter. It happened once, and a look from my uncle ensured that it didn’t happen again. I knew if I let some of the gas drip on the hot engine the whole truck could catch fire, and I gave it serious thought, but ultimately I didn’t have the nerve. We arrived at our destination intact.

  Uncle Chan parked the truck under a large oak. He took the rifles from their cases and leaned them against the tree, then opened one of the boxes of bullets he’d brought, grabbed a handful, and dumped them into my pocket. From another box he dug out a bunch of larger shells for his rifle and filled his pocket to the brim. He donned a red cap and put anoth
er on me, which covered my ears. I had to pull my ears out and fold them over the top so I could hear.

  For the next half hour my uncle showed me how to load, aim, and fire the rifle with the precision of a master. He made me repeat every move four or five times until he was satisfied that I had it down. Despite my anxiety and loathing, I had a moment of wishing that we shared some interests. He would have been a good teacher.

  He strapped on his bowie hunting knife, hung a pair of binoculars around his neck, and we were off. I had been hoping all day that we wouldn’t see any deer at all, and now I started praying in earnest. I crunched my heels into the dry leaves, hoping to scare away anything that came near until Uncle Chan walloped me on the shoulder and told me to be quiet. I watched as he took an infantry position, stalking the enemy, his gun at the ready as we headed deep into the forest.

  For two hours we trekked. There was no sign of deer, or anything else for that matter, and when Uncle Chan said that maybe we’d have to come back another day, I actually began to enjoy myself. The forest was lush and beautiful, and I drank the best water I’d ever tasted from a small brook.

  About two hours later, we were on our way back, crossing that same brook, when Uncle Chan suddenly froze, eyes narrowed. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to the ground.

  A huge, splendid buck was drinking upstream. The noise from the bubbling water had blocked the sound of our approach. Uncle Chan belly-crawled behind a log nearby, half dragging me alongside him by my coat collar.

  “Keep down!” he hissed.

  I was shaking from head to toe, sure he could hear my thumping heart. Silently he took off his cap and carefully brought his rifle up over the tree, aiming it at the deer. He motioned for me to do the same, and with shaking hands, I complied.

  “Adjust your sights.”

  Both rifles had huge sights that ran down the barrel, practically as big as the barrels themselves. As the deer came into focus, I could see just how magnificent he was. His antlers, rich with points, reached high in the air. His liquid eyes brimmed with dignity and intelligence, and the sunlight illuminated his beautiful flanks. This was the daddy of all deer. Uncle Chan edged up close to me, his whisper almost silent.