Orbit 4 - Anthology

by Edited by Damon Night

  The animal is graying at the temples. His eyebrows have grown bushy. There are hairs in his ears. Perhaps his hard life in the deepest part of the forest has aged him. Actually the man in the tan coat appears to be the same age and might make a proper husband for the woman who walks dogs even though he hasn’t yet been married and, at his time of life, one would suspect strange vices. Yet he could afford a wife and he has kept himself remarkably fit. He doesn’t smoke. Unfortunately he never passes the Century Arms at quite the right times for any chance meetings to occur and neither do the animal and the woman meet, on this, the third day, but if he has an odor, subtle and savage, that is certainly what makes her take off her white scarf and open the top button of her coat. What if she is conscious of some secret origins? (perhaps all the townspeople are) then she may feel some organic kinship at this smell and from it she might draw conclusions about her past and maybe even about her future. Now the dogs slink with their tails between their legs. They are black retrievers though she can have no use for their inborn talents at the Century Arms. The only water they ever see is in their bowls or rain but the weather continues fair. It grows warmer. It is thought that the animal might be permanently installed in the small park where he would see the sun and yet be out of the public’s way to some extent. It is thought an imitation cave with a heater and a cot might do well enough and a private bathroom with shower stall. Some keepers wonder if even a heavy wire mesh will be strong enough to hold him. It must cross the top of the cage for he is nimble enough to climb almost anything with a toehold. There happens to be a suitable spot there already which once housed squirrels, foxes, a raccoon and an owl. It only needs enlarging and refurnishing.

  Chance encounters sometimes lead to warm friendships and at their first meeting she offers the animal a cigarette which he accepts graciously with a little nod of thanks. Unfortunately, under these circumstances, she would have to play rather the dominating role in the relationship and yet appearances are so important that his expression alone may lead her to believe in his abilities as advisor and encourager. The mesh makes things simpler in many ways. She might bring him little presents of coffee in containers to go, or ice cream or something she has baked herself and she will never need to wond6r why he hasn’t brought anything to her. She can put herself in a mother role and act out a part she would prefer he played, perhaps thinking he will learn from her, yearning to tuck blankets round his chin, to rub his back, always speaking softly.

  Others come and watch him as they watch the goldfish in the pond or how far the crocus has come up. Someone has somehow taken pictures of him naked and sold them surreptitiously. The man in the tan overcoat bought a set of five but he doesn’t meet the woman that day in front of the animal’s cage as the creature chins himself on a branch of his ginkgo tree. If he were here, she might pay some attention to the man in the tan coat, more than she ordinarily would. Everything has become physical and even under their overcoats they would have felt themselves to be there in the flesh.

  Neither of them have yet received the invitations to the party that will celebrate the installation of the animal in the park. There has been a delay in hopes that warmer weather will come in the next week or two. The hunters and keepers will be there as well as most of the people in the nearby apartments such as the Century Arms. It is felt that perhaps the animal will pick up some valuable hints on the nature of civilized behavior from this event, though, of course, he can’t be blamed for the two killings that occurred at his capture. Some of the townspeople have wondered what would have happened at that time had he been captured by other townspeople than hunters, had, for instance, the behaviorists come upon him first. Some of the keepers, themselves, and many have become quite fond of him, argue that there would have been no deaths, yet others say he has turned on them in anger more than once, though they managed to get out of his way in time, but they can’t say for sure if these were only threatening gestures.

  Yet suddenly, before the invitations can be sent, the animal escapes. No one can understand quite how. At night there’s the policeman to check now and then. The lights are kept burning all around the park and yet he’s gone. There are reports of four rapes that night, and goodness knows, the townspeople say, how many unreported. One can’t be sure who committed them. (There has already been much thought about his possible animal wife or wives, his animal children, perhaps whole colonies of animals living in shelters under the roots of fallen trees, nested in coarse skins and covered with lice. Perhaps they run in packs.) In any case, it may well be that the women of the townspeople seem extraordinarily desirable to him or perhaps it’s just his superb physical shape or his animal nature, but then maybe he isn’t responsible for the rapes at all.

  Once the woman had come in late afternoon and whispered “Apartment 5A” as though by some miracle he could come to her open window five floors up. Many of the townspeople have exaggerated ideas of the animal’s abilities, but still, he has escaped miraculously, no one can tell how. Perhaps as he shaved himself in the mornings, his thoughts had turned to the functioning of doors and locks and maybe the woman had left him a bobby pin or dropped one by the wire mesh where he could reach it. Perhaps the key to her apartment, by some strange coincidence, also fit the door of his cage.

  And certainly, these moonlight nights, the woman would have liked to reinvent love on a higher plane, liked to consider it from many angles and choose those most likely to satisfy in the longest run of all. And suppose there are to be thoughts also on the new man or a new mankind? a new movement of which the animal might be the leader and she might play the part of sister to the animal, a position without emotional dangers, in which she can permit herself a certain degree of closeness while waiting for some ritual sacrifices to take place. And she wants love-tests also for herself to pass, and a period of fasting, a building up of muscles and mental capacities, some way to prepare herself while she waits for his token, a severed finger, ear or toe? Who knows what rites he practices?

  He was found ten days later eating a hamburger and French fries in a diner in a distant city, wearing an astrakhan hat, sunglasses, and smoking Marlboros. He did not resist recapture and was taken by taxi to the airport with no incidents. Positive identification wasn’t difficult even though he had changed his name and adopted many new mannerisms.

  A double lock is put upon his door and a guard to warn the townspeople not to come too near. It is felt new hobbies will have to be found to occupy his time. Someone has contributed an old upright piano, others have brought last month’s magazines, paint sets, colored pencils, a banjo. There is a general understanding among the townspeople that there comes a time in everyone’s life when new decisions must be made, new directions taken, new resolutions formulated. The townspeople recognize this phase as it becomes manifest in the actions and attitudes of the animal. After all he is, they estimate, at about that age when such a change is due, and. he must understand, in some vague way of his own, that in spite of his marvelous physical condition he has passed the peak of his powers. And so they are watching the new self-awareness bloom in him along with new generosities and new dissatisfactions. Surely he is asking not only what is the purpose of life, but more specifically, what will he make the purpose of his own life. Now he takes up new pleasures and discards old ones. He revolves slowly to music by the townspeople’s best loved, long-dead composers. He dances with his eyes shut. He taps on the mesh. He seems to understand or at least to react to counterpoint and fugue. He receives a daily newspaper and a good deal of mail addressed to occupant. He writes: Once I crouched, fleabitten, eating raw roots. Once I never heard of shirttails, socks and tie tacks. I slept on ferns.

  By now it is the fifty-first day of the animal.

  He is writing poems on shredded wheat cardboards and old envelopes, but this time of year the younger townspeople roller-skate in the park. The sound of their wheels on the sidewalks bothers the animal as he sits thinking what to write down next or when he is studying a book on
style. He has a list of nouns expressing movement and a note to remind himself to put a short sentence next to a long one. Lately he has studied the role of mystery in fiction of every form, but now, probably because of some special feeling for the lady with the dogs and knowing her address from before, he writes: Dear Madam; I must apologize for the night of April second, 1969 . . . She won’t be sure what he is apologizing for even though it was not a fulfilled night for her as it may have been for the animal.

  He has already attended two cocktail parties in his honor and one literary tea and he has returned to his cage without complaint. The extra guard may soon be removed. Someone has given him a tan corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Many townspeople have found him extraordinarily attractive, especially in a cocktail party setting. The combination of a rugged, even dangerous looking face, white teeth, a well cut jacket, a delicate touch upon a Martini glass and a bit of primeval shyness forms an irresistible combination and none of the male townspeople have blamed the female townspeople for their susceptibility. One woman has sent him three bottles of champagne, another a suede vest and an imported shoehorn. One has knit him a sweater which he will certainly put to good use since the heating in his cave is not particularly good and the imitation stone door has never closed well. He would have liked an electric blanket, which might not have been much more expensive than the champagne, but he certainly must know that he cannot choose in his position.

  One woman has asked if he might be let out in her custody. She has, no doubt, realized the distractions of the park with its roller-skating and its gaping visitors, with even the guard wanting to join into some sort of communication with the animal. She has felt this isn’t in the best interests of his art.

  She would like to install him in a section of her summer house where he might have a suite of rooms over the garage. She hopes he will be of use as a fourth for bridge and secretly she imagines that the animal will not be aware of her age as she is interested in a certain aspect of his animal nature. The morals of a case like this may be questioned, but the answer is certainly not clear-cut.

  This would be just for the Easter vacation and perhaps for next summer. Of course she realizes that the townspeople need this attraction for their park and that the animal belongs to all the people and not just to her but she feels he needs a change if only for the sake of his art. Where will his new ideas come from? she asks, and wouldn’t a wild creature do better in the suburbs than in the center of town? at least for a while? People must have sympathy and understanding for all their animals and if she can’t have this one she might consider taking a gibbon instead, or a young fox.

  She has already gone to the jeweler’s to have a silver chain made with which to lead him to breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  But he has written: Dear Madam; I would like to accept your kind offer of the use of your house in the country, but I’m afraid I have other plans over Easter. However I may be available for the summer, especially after August first. Perhaps you will consider some alternative since, as you are well aware, all of us wild creatures would enjoy a week outside the town. I would suggest you contact the keepers as to which animals will be the most suitable. Very truly yours, the Animal.

  The young male townspeople imitate the animal. They stand at the street corners with their heads at a noble angle, their cigarettes between thumb and forefinger. They all have political opinions now and they fondle stray cats.

  The woman still walks her dogs four times a day as usual. She has bought three red leashes for them.

  There is much conjecture as to whether the animal is actually capable of experiencing real love in spite of the complications of his political beliefs and the nuances of his art. One never knows how imitative such things may be. But it does look as though the animal considers the three dogs exceptionally graceful. It looks as though he is interested in becoming friendly with dogs, but he has recently given up smoking and there is no longer any excuse for her offering him cigarettes. Perhaps cough drops if he coughs a bit and she notices, but she doesn’t.

  There are changes afoot. Professors have come to study his reflexes and they have found that they are in no way different from those of the townspeople. This hasn’t surprised anyone since they have all, long ago, recognized their animal origins. Yet there is a general sense of foreboding. There has been a reorganization in the department of parks. Younger townspeople are coming in to replace older men. There will certainly be new theories on the influences of such a creature as the animal living in plain view of everyone. Many studies are already underway as to whether there has been more or less crime since his capture. Attitudes of the teenage townspeople are being questioned by teams of graduate students and the animal’s writings are being studied by experts in animal behavior. The animal himself has expressed the view that he would like to be considered as an individual as well as an animal. Soon there will be a symposium. Everyone has a theory or two. The lady with the three dogs will be there as representative of the citizen’s council of residents of the park area. It is said that the animal himself will preside as chairman, though he will have no real say in the proceedings. No doubt it will be broadcast.

  The animal has not yet expressed any opinion of his own. Most likely he is waiting for the results of the various studies to be published. The townspeople are eagerly waiting for him to speak out for they are sure, as with all his other writings, that what he says will not be ordinary.

  The woman with the dogs feels her responsibilities deeply and is even more inclined to wear black than ever, but she still allows herself red leashes. She doesn’t think it proper for her to discuss anything with the animal at the present time.

  On sunny Sundays the park is full of dogs including the three with the red leashes. Townspeople who own dogs can always find something to talk about with each other. It’s too bad the animal doesn’t own a dog. There is so much he could join into. Later the townspeople will remember this and think, if only we had given him a dog since he had to live in the park anyway. But of course it’s too late now.

  He has evidently come to a decision and walked away into the deepest part of the forest without writing a single word on the question of his good or bad influences. He has left all the townspeople with an empty feeling inside. Their park seems deserted.

  The woman walks with her head up. There are rumors about her but nothing anyone can prove. Her dogs act as though they own the park. Not a single tree is sacred to them. Many townspeople wonder were they really that way before? What if she has shown the animal some secret results from some secret studies? Had she some information not yet released to the general public? Or is it that she has finally grown bold enough to realize her love and confess it? and was he, after all, capable of some sort of loving response of the same nature as the townspeople’s reponses? But how will they ever know now all that their animal might have been capable of? And they will always be wondering why he went just at this particular time before the symposium had even begun. They will think how great was his need to return to the land of his origin. They will say he pined for his animal family, his possible animal wives and children, or they will say that he searches for his youth in the places where he once was young or that it is for the townspeople’s sake, because of his influence, perhaps sinister and yet so subtle only he was aware of it, that he has hidden himself there, alone and lonely, writing out his poems on birchbark and whistling themes from the music of their long-dead composers, able to avoid capture this time because of his greater knowledge of the townspeople’s methods.

  Oh come back to us, they sometimes call out silently towards the forest, come and write us your animal opinions. Sit in our park. Adorn our cocktail parties. Crime wave or no, you were really good for us in the long run, and even if that may not be true, why you belonged to us and no other town had one like you.

  But there’s nothing for them to do but to await the sons and daughters of the animal, those conceived on the nights of freedom, if it rea
lly was the animal who was responsible for (and capable of) that rash of rapes. Will the children of the animal, they wonder, follow him back to the deepest part of the forest by instinct, off in search of their father as soon as they are old enough? And what of the youngest, the one that some of the townspeople believe must have been conceived the night he left? will he or she stay as a gift to the townspeople from the animal, decorating first their schools, their birthday parties, baseball games, even roller-skating in the very park where her father spent so much of his time, later the college, the dances, contributing to the courses in logic and philology, majoring in history or French and then marrying one of the townspeople and conceiving sons and daughters of her own?

  Surely, the townspeople think, surely the blood of the animal is with us still and will, in some future time, be a part of us all.

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  There is an ethnic flavor to the following story; I am unable to define it with exactness, but would almost be willing to venture the opinion that it is Irish. It is certainly mad; it has in addition that determined and violent gaiety that somehow makes me think of large, jug-eared men with scars on their knuckles.

  The author, R. A. Lafferty, might well adopt the proud phrase used by John Collier to describe his Fancies and Goodnights; his stories are “tales unlike other tales “