Fear No Evil

fifteen

The afternoon was warm and golden green. Butterflies were fluttering, birds chirping. Sally emerged from the pool and moved cautiously down the glen to graze, her big square mouth chomping like a lawnmower. The lions were all luxuriating in the sun, on their backs, paws in the air, and every now and again Kitty tried to box the butterflies.

The gorillas and chimpanzees had retreated into the trees when Elizabeth came to sit beside the waterfall. Now, first the chimpanzee called Daisy came back, cautiously bobbing behind bushes and peeping at her. Then one by one the others began to appear, brown eyes anxiously peering and ducking in inexpert counterintelligence. But then they began to relax.

Daisy was plucking at the greenery, holding it up in her thumb and forefinger and examining it quizzically, then popping it into her mouth and munching experimentally while she kept an eye on Elizabeth. One by one, the others followed. Only the zoo gorillas remained tense, standing on the fringes of the trees, staring at her suspiciously: they remembered her. She wanted to give them her most winning smile and call out, ‘Come on, King, don’t be frightened.’ But she just wagged her head to show nonaggression and ostentatiously averted her eyes.

Then Daisy began to play the fool. Suddenly she threw her handful of leaves into the air with gay abandon and gave a short bark, slapping her hand on the ground with all fangs barea; then she threw herself into a cartwheel. Whirling in the sunlight, head over heels, crashing through the undergrowth; around and around Daisy went, hands and feet flying. Suddenly the other chimpanzees were copying her, throwing themselves into their circus cartwheels out of the infectious joy of the forest. For the moment Elizabeth forgot her fears of the hunters, and she wanted to clap her hands. The gorillas stared, astonished. Then Daisy spun into a somersault, landed smartly on her feet and galloped straight at King Kong; she leapfrogged over him, slapping her hands on his shoulders, flying over him before he could dodge indignantly. Then Florrie was racing at him.

King Kong jumped aside, and Florrie swerved after him, waving her arms; Daisy cavorted twenty yards up the glen, pretending to run in terror of big King, looking back over her shoulder. King Kong stood uncertainly, flustered and staring. Daisy’s challenge had been cheeky, and he did the only thing he knew to impress her; he rose up onto his hind legs with some misgivings and beat his hairy chest. But Daisy just cavorted more provocatively and came scampering straight back. King Kong blinked in mid-thump, gave a disconcerted grunt, and charged.

Daisy fled gleefully across the glen, and King Kong pounded after her, disconcerted because he was not gaining on her. Now Florrie was joyfully beside her, and then Candy. Nervous little Champ scrambled up from Davey’s side and went galloping off to join them. Daisy, Florrie, Candy, and Champ raced down the glen, then into the trees beyond, with King Kong pounding breathlessly after them, scattering the lions in all directions.

Kitty had flung herself flat as the hairy humanoids thundered past her, but now she sprang over the undergrowth after them. King Kong went thundering through the trees in hot pursuit of the chimpanzees, with Kitty bounding after him.

Then something began to happen in King Kong’s big, serious, sooty breast. Suddenly it felt like fun to be crashing through the trees; it felt wonderful for his great body to be running and chasing. The forest felt like his territory.

Just then Kitty bounded at him with a shattering roar right in his earhole. King Kong flung his shaggy arms over his head and spun around, shocked at the sight of the huge lioness flying at him. He reeled backward wildly and collected his wits, and he reared up onto his hindlegs.

Kitty skidded to a stop and froze, backside up, head down, ears back uncertainly, and suddenly this had become serious. Even the chimpanzees stopped their cavorting, eyes wide.

King Kong and Kitty faced each other in the sudden silence, both hearts thumping. King Kong wanted to have nothing to do with lions, and Kitty didn’t want to have anything to do with bad-tempered gorillas twice her size. For a long, shocked moment King Kong and Kitty stared each other down, one poised at full height, the other crouched low, mutually alarmed at what they’d got themselves into.

Then Kitty’s nerve broke.

Slowly, her back arched, and she hissed; then she began to creep backward, never taking her eyes off King Kong’s. King Kong glared at her all the way with intense relief. Then she turned and took to her heels. She burst into the open glen, and stopped. She looked back at him, tail swishing, then she sat down and proceeded to wash her face.

King Kong glared at her balefully, turned and headed purposefully back into the forest, satisfaction in his heart.

Then they heard the helicopter.

Davey and Big Charlie tensed; it was a faint, faraway throbbing. Elizabeth’s heart was thumping.

Davey and Charlie were looking at each other, twelve paces apart, listening intently, assessing. The sound was getting louder, but it was muffled by the forest.

‘There.’ Big Charlie jerked his head down the mountain.

Davey nodded. ‘Going that way.’ He pointed north, toward Erwin.

They listened, hardly breathing. For a long minute the sound seemed to stay at the same level, and her heart hammered as it occurred to her that it was hovering to lower men; then the noise began to diminish. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Davey and Big Charlie relaxed visibly.

Davey checked the position of the sun, nodded, and Charlie disappeared into the forest, heading up-mountain.

‘Where’s he going?’

‘Just to have a look.’

She clenched her fist and massaged her brow.

‘O God … How much longer are you staying here?’

‘Until the sun starts going down. They won’t find us with helicopters.’

‘Mr Jordan,’ she quavered, ‘that helicopter was not police. The Sheriff told me; it belongs to hunters … and it can lower men all over the place.’

‘They’d have to be very lucky to find us that way, Dr. Johnson.’

She wanted to cling to that assurance. ‘But aren’t you worried?’

It was a silly question. He lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Of course. Please relax, Dr. Johnson. The animals will pick up your vibrations, and they’ll get nervous too.’

She could hardly believe this. Here they all were, at large in America, romping in the forests—even she had been carried away with the magic of it—while the net was closing in on them, hunters drawing closer and closer: yet there lay David Jordan, eyes closed, relaxed. Like Sir Francis Drake finishing his game of bowls while the Spanish Armada hove to on the horizon.

But no, he was not crazy. That was the extraordinary thing. He just has this … she was going to say ‘crazy idea,’ but that wasn’t right either, because even she, for a while, watching the animals, had been caught up in it, the beauty of it—she had glimpsed the world he wanted, and it was not only possible, it was happening.

But no—it was not possible. She had to talk him out of it.

Then she realized the bad logic: she had concluded his venture was crazy because Man would come down like the wrath of God— Man deemed it crazy and would not permit it. But who was Man? The circus owners. The Sheriff of Erwin. Even Jonas Ford—who called his animals ‘exhibits.’ Who were they, to make the rules?

She stopped herself and took a deep breath. Her nerves were stretched so tight she felt like screaming. What was she talking about? Of course it was crazy. She had to make him see it.

But there was his exasperating refusal to talk about it! He almost turned the other cheek. She longed for the protection of darkness. For five minutes she sat in silent turmoil.

She carefully tried another approach. ‘Mr. Jordan? Do you believe in God?’

He lay still, eyes closed. Just when she began to think he was going to ignore her, he opened his eyes and looked at the sky.

‘There’s a poem I read once. About the man who was sent up to God to complain, because the people on earth were suffering.’ He hesitated, then, almost shyly, he began to recite.

I travelled far and, lo, I stood

In the presence of the Lord Most High

Sent thither by the sons of Earth

To earn some answer to their cry

And the Lord listens, puzzled, then He says:

The Earth, sayest thou? … A race of men?…

By Me created? … Sad its lot? …

No—I have no recollection of such place

Such thing I fashioned not!

But the man cries:

But Lord, forgive me if I say

You spake the word and made it all!…

So God thinks a bit; then He says:

Let me think …

Ah … dimly do I recall

A tiny shape I built longst back

—It perished surely? …

Davey turned and looked at her, then he ended:

And the man cries out:

Lord, it existeth still!

She was staring at him. She remembered the poem, from Professor Joad’s book, God and Evil

‘So God’s forgotten about us, has He? And you’re going to recreate the Garden of Eden? You’re His instrument?’

He looked away, embarrassed.

‘I’m not God’s instrument, Dr. Johnson. I’m just doing what is right. Setting free the animals. Where they’ll be happy at last.’

Then he got up quietly and started walking down the glen, with Mama padding behind him in the dappled sunshine.

Sultan took the opportunity to come scrambling down out of his tree.

Little Smoky was only little in comparison to the great grizzly bears he performed with in the circus, and when he wore his dungarees and scout hat and danced behind them with his fire extinguisher, and held paws, he did look little and awfully cute. When he squirted his fire extinguisher on cue, messed up Winnie’s pinafore and knocked off Pooh’s hat, and they whacked him, he did look just like their baby grizzly bear. But he was really a fully grown black bear, and he weighed nearly five hundred pounds; he stood five feet tall on his hindlegs; he could swipe eight feet high with his clawed paws, and he could run faster than the best man can sprint.

Smoky did not remember the forests of his cubhood, nor his mother, with her big, furry, grunting, dangerous protection; all he remembered about those days was the sudden deafening bang, the terror of being suddenly alone and running for his life, then the terror of being caught. They had put him in a cage and fed him milk from a bottle. The cage had become smaller and smaller until he could hardly turn around in it; then one day they’d sold him to the circus. He had not seen another black bear since the day of the terrifying bang.

Now, indeed, Smoky thought he was a grizzly bear, just as the public did. But he thought he was a puny grizzly, and he had an inferiority complex. But he did his job well enough in the circus because bears like to show off once they understand how. The trouble for Smoky had been in understanding how. It had taken a long time to understand what the man wanted him to do, and he’d suffered lots of electric prods and was terrified of the cracking whip. When he’d finally understood what he had to do to earn the reward, the fearsome man started teaching him something new and incomprehensible. It was very confusing and frightening, and he did not know, each time he was taken out of his cage, what was going to be expected of him. Only when he saw the crowds around the ring did he know that it was an old trick he had to do, one he understood. He dreaded the man with the whip, and he was nervous of Winnie and Pooh because of the authority their great size bestowed. The only friend he had was his keeper, and he was devoted to him. His keeper fed and groomed him; he sat in his cage with him and played with him. Smoky would have done anything for him, as long as he understood how.

Elizabeth, watching Smoky, was frightened of him—and terrified of Winnie and Pooh with their huge, expressionless, powerful presences. But her harried heart went out to them all.

From her readings she knew of the Americans’ mentality about the wilderness and their natural heritage, and that no other animal so filled the American mind with dread as did the legendary grizzly bear, even though, once tamed, grizzlies become absolutely devoted to their keepers. Almost certainly the bears would come down out of the forests wherever Davey abandoned them, in search of familiar human protection and food; they would set the fear of God into Americans and have the whole town out to blast them off the face of the earth.

Watching them, her fears were confirmed. They were rooting around, but they were staying within sight of Davey. Every few minutes one of them would look back at him to make sure he was still there.

But, as the afternoon went on, little by little they ventured farther; and finally they were out of sight, grubbing and grunting through the undergrowth, snuffling under fallen logs, nudging over stones. There were lots of things that bears like to eat—roots, berries, fungi, sprouts and grasses—and there were many exciting smells.

For the first time in his life, Smoky found that he was not trundling after Winnie and Pooh. They were not shoving him aside and nudging him away from the food; there was enough to share, with so much space to lumber and huff and bustle through. Slowly, Smoky began to feel like a real bear.

It was a wonderful feeling, of being strong, of bulldozing importantly, shoving aside bushes, flattening shrubs, rolling over logs and burrowing into the rich earth, with no Winnie or Pooh to boss him around. Then Smoky discovered something else: that black bears can climb trees, and grizzlies cannot. And something else: that bears like honey, that he was just naturally good at getting it, and that grizzlies are not.

Suddenly, as he was rooting around, his snout full of earth, he smelled something delicious. He eagerly followed his nose, and saw Winnie and Pooh standing on their hindlegs, swiping up into a tree with their forepaws. Bees buzzed angrily about their heads; in a fork in the tree was a hive.

But the hive was well out of the big bears’ reach. Pooh was trying to climb the tree. He lunged at it, chest first, and flung his forelegs around it. He jumped, and for an agonizing instant he clung there, hairy and bulbous, his hind claws frantically trying to find purchase. Then he slid down with a thump. Winnie tried, taking a lumbering run at the tree trunk, hind paws massively scrabbling. Then, crash, down she came too. Smoky looked at all this hirsute activity, and he just knew what to do.

He knew nothing about trees and nothing about honey; but he knew that he could climb a tree to get it. Smoky lumbered around Winnie and Pooh, giving them a wide berth, looking up into the tree, sizing it up; then he bounded.

His claws sank into the bark, and up he went, effortlessly. He was halfway up before Winnie and Pooh realized it, and was into the beehive snout-first, long tongue licking, claws clinging tight. The bees went berserk, swarming about his furry head in a cloud. The smell of honey flooded down to Pooh and Winnie, and they were beside themselves. Smoky was getting stuck into what they couldn’t reach, and Pooh hurled himself at the tree trunk with anguish and came crashing down again, grunting and thumping. Pooh tried to paw Smoky down out of the tree by jumping and swiping. Winnie joined in, and they bumped into each other in their agitation, but their paws whistled harmlessly beneath Smoky’s rump. The bees were zapping furiously into his nose, his ears and his deep shaggy fur, but it would have taken strong machinery to pry Smoky out of that tree.