“You sure you’re going to be all right in here?” Charlie asked.
He was standing in the connective doorway between our two rooms. His warmhearted question struck me as odd. I wouldn’t have expected such concern from, well, anyone, let alone Charlie McManus. In addition, when you took into account the absurd decadence of the stately quarters, Charlie’s words were all the more out of place. It was difficult to imagine anyone not being OK in a place this spiffy.
Knowing what little attention Simon had paid to the outside of his motel in the past quarter century, the inside was all the more impressive. Without getting bogged down in details, I will say that, from what I remember, back in ’73 the Paradise Inn was one step shy of being an upscale crack den. To my underdeveloped mind, the numerous stains on the shag carpet read as human excretions of some debased form or other. At all hours of the few days and nights we spent hiding out here, regardless of temperature or relative humidity, the then-dilapidated walls sweated lead-based paint. The unnatural melting gave the effect that the room itself was constantly panting and closing in.
One might argue that we had been on the run for so long that I, as a child, allowed my mind to invent such unsatisfactory particulars. Or perhaps now, as an adult returned, I was exaggerating all the sleazy dives we’d frequented and melding them into one execrable conglomerate. I might be inclined to agree with either of these assumptions if only this roadside motel were not the staging ground for what essentially turned out to be my family’s last stand. I’ve never admitted to having a picture-perfect memory, and I suppose perspectives can change over a lifetime, but I do know that rooms eight and nine were a thousand times nicer in 2000 than they were in 1973. Of course, that’s like saying a stubbed toe hurts less than a slit throat.
“It’s not so bad, huh?” Charlie said, lingering.
“It’s immaculate.”
“Well, that might be a stretch, but it’s a lot swankier than I expected.”
“I’ll be fine, Charlie,” I answered his previous question.
“We’ll find her, you know. It won’t be hard. We’ll start in the morning. We can call the women’s penitentiary. We can speak to the warden, or at least his assistant or someone. And we can get the information. But they might not believe you’re blood related. If that’s the case, we can drive out there. We can ride some hot van right into ladies’ prison and show them who you are. I mean, you’re entitled to know your mother, right? They can’t keep the bitch from you. Not if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want,” I said, almost dreamlike. It was more of a detached echo of Charlie’s words than any declaration of my own desires.
His plan seemed doomed to fail at every turn. Of course they wouldn’t just hand out prisoner information to some stranger over the phone. What’s more, a meet and greet/how-do-you-do with any official at the big house would surely yield requests for identification and endless interrogations about my life. I would be able to produce no papers. I would have no proof. I was a ghost in the machine called America — little orphan Marcus, forever alone.
“If all else fails,” Terence called, poking his head over Charlie’s shoulder, “I’m sure luck will light your way to her.”
The two of them left off to figure out the sleeping arrangements on their side of the mirror image rooms. With one king bed and a fold-out couch, they had plenty of options. Well, two anyway.
I chose a third option: the floor. Maybe before morning I would crawl into the sheets that were soft as a bunyoro rabbit’s fur; for the time being, I was comfortable leaning against the foot of the majestic bed, staring up at the low-hanging, glass-paneled mirror that was attached to the ceiling as if by magic. Whatever purpose that mirror served was a mystery to me. I could only surmise that its intended effect was to welcome overnight guests with a vulgar charm. The aesthetics of the thing was quite unmatched by anything I’d ever come across. But initial awestruck reactions aside, once you took the whole of it in, the mirror very quickly began inspecting you from the bottom up, so to speak.
No, there are no cracks in my ceiling, the mirror pretended to say. There were many, yes, back in the day. Your memory serves you well, Marcus Fox. But that was so long ago. Those grandiose imperfections have been repaired. Unlike the hurt lines on the soles of your feet, the sallow fissures in your cheeks. You’re thirty-something, I gather? That’s not old at all. You carry yourself with not only the weight of the world but also an air of superiority. I’m not at all convinced you deserve either.
“You don’t know me,” I hushed.
I know plenty. I see you sitting there, thinking you are who you think you aren’t. A bit over the top, if you ask me. Why so tired, Marcus? Why so blue? Your life is extraordinary and it’s only just begun. Oh. Maybe that’s what you fear the most? An ordinary life at the end of the erratic rainbow? Or are you hoping to go out in some self-fulfilling, full-circle blaze of glory? That would be best for you, don’t you think? Better to die large than to fade into some misshapen configuration that resembles your own obscurity.
“I am Marcus Fox,” I pleaded.
You were, once. I’ll give you that. Given your current circumstance, I wouldn’t dare name you. Are you William’s son? Or Shumbuto’s? Can it be both? Or neither? Or maybe just Callio —
“Dare breathe her name and I’ll smash you, devil mirror! I’ll slice you up with your own shattered corpse.”
You are talking to an inanimate object, you dumb shit. Can’t you see that only means you are talking to your —
“Myself.”
The girl from the front desk was standing in the open door with an armload of fresh towels. Her legs, which were previously hidden by the counter in the front office, were long and quite pleasant to behold. Here, in open view, I could see just how magnificent they were. The glimpse she’d offered before, when she sauntered out of the back room, was, in retrospect, just a tease. Her short shorts fully exposed exactly how daring she thought she was — or, at the very least, desired to be.
“What are you doing down on the ground, mister?”
“Taking in the view,” I heard someone from inside me, someone even more daring than her, say.
I stood and went to her. Placing one hand not even on the small of her back but in the air that lived immediately behind it, I ushered her to me. Then, in a swift movement neither of us acknowledged, my other hand ushered the door closed behind her. The latch nestled in its hole with a seductive click.
“Oh,” she said. “Is it like that, then?”
“You are quite stunning,” I offered what sounded like an apropos compliment.
Her teeth, now free of gum, chewed on this disputable response. “You’re a fucking liar.”
Never hesitate in battle. This I knew. It was presumptuous, but a good guess, to apply the same logic to intimate merges of the flesh. The space about the small of her back radiated warmth; my palm counted those nervous vibrations emanating off her and pushed back. The towels hit the floor in a crumpled heap, and when I kissed her plush mouth, that tongue of hers went ahead and penetrated my face hole. I fought back, using my own oral salamander to joust and swirl. In the end, neither of us was the victor (though we both slurped a shared way to palatable triumph). She tasted like evergreen trees and the color blue.
We fell to the bed. Rather, I slowed gravity, leading her gently down and through space and time. We bounced once, then settled, and I slid into the softest, sweetest cushion known to man. The mattress had top-notch squoosh as well.
She moaned much, but was careful not to make a show of it. When I allowed her to take command of the lovemaking (to essentially take command of me), I found myself in awe of her natural ability to please. She turned me onto my back with the ravenous grace of a starved raptor flipping a Gila monster in search of meatier flesh. Properly mounted, I took notice of imperfections in her face and breasts. They made her all the more perfect. When my gaze caught the attention of the magic talking ceiling mirror, I suddenly understood its true purpose.
“Oh,” I muttered.
“You like that?” she asked. She was speaking rhetorically, so I kept my “yes” to myself. But as the mirror watched, I watched back. Its sexy reflection undulated unadulterated banality.
Know thyself, it mocked.
I ignored the mirror’s constant stare as best I could and rejoined the blessed moment, until the moment ended.
When it was over, the afterglow wore thin. With no intention of revealing she’d been my premiere human mating encounter, we went outside so she could smoke. As habits go, this was a lowbrow pastime that should have appealed to me, but never did. She offered one of her harsh fire sticks, but I declined, opting to sit next to her on the curb and take in the rough coolness of her secondhand menthol. I got a sick buzz that soon dissipated.
“So that was … something,” she said, grasping for another word but settling on “something.” She was referring, I assumed, to the masterful sex we’d just had with one another. “Something” was as all-encompassing and benign as any other descriptor she could have conjured.
“Your twice-the-size-of-Montana boyfriend would likely disapprove,” I said.
“Oh, him,” she snorted and choked an inhale. “Honesty time, then. I may have made part of him up.”
“Which part?”
“The part where he exists.” She smiled and blew.
The warm night air was tame and hushed between us. Her smoke curled around our heads, escaping out and up, combining with the atmosphere and the future of Earth. The motel girl’s silence spoke volumes. It was clear she was sitting on a subject but didn’t know how to broach it. Rather than force her thoughts in whichever direction they were headed, I got her talking with a simple query that had been on my mind.
“You got a name?” I asked, disregarding proper English for some reason.
“Charity.” She turned her eyes my way and smiled.
“That’s pretty,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“My name? It means I don’t like being called by my real name.”
“You should,” I said, quickly coming to terms with the idea that a person would even want to change their name. “Your given name is who you are. You should be true to it. You should be real.” She wasn’t buying whatever I was selling, so I changed tactics. “What’s your real name, anyway?”
“You’re asking too many questions, mister. What’s your name mean? Say, you didn’t even tell me what it is.”
“Marcus,” I said and then added the “Fox” for good measure. Her eyes lit up and she flicked her cigarette stub halfway across the parking lot.
“You mean … oh my God. You weren’t kidnapped. You were their son! Oh! The levels of fuckery just got more fucked! What happened to you?”
“Zambia, mostly. Also, I got addicted to heroin in New York for a few years. Then spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. That’s about it.”
“Fine, don’t tell me.” She pouted until she realized it wasn’t adorable. “I’m sorry that, you know, you had to grow up that way, with that shit on your back.”
“Everybody’s got some shit on their back.” I shrugged, not divulging anything profound. “Some just have more than others.”
“Nobody gets out of life alive,” she said, which struck me as a pearl of wisdom that was probably light years beyond her mortal experience. “Jim Morrison said that … or maybe it was Jimi Hendrix. Either way, powerful stuff, right?”
I considered sharing how many times I gnashed against death’s snarl and won. But what purpose would that serve? This would not be a lasting relationship, so why worry her?
“Charity,” I started, but she interrupted with a jaw dropper.
“I think I know where she is, your mother,” she said.
My face was stoic, comprised of the hardness of ages.
“OK, so this was a couple years ago,” she went on. “I’d just started working for Simon.”
“He’s your father. He is a good man. Know that.”
“Yeah. So anyway, Simon — my father — he had a stroke and was in a coma for three months. When I say I had just started working for him, I mean it was literally the same day. He was showing me the logbook when he started repeating one word over and over again: important. ‘This is important important important important,’ he said. And then his right cheek kind of melted down into his dimple and his ‘important’ became ‘poor tent poor tent’ then just one word: portent. And then he collapsed and then we were in an ambulance and he was just dead asleep. I stayed at the hospital with him that night, but when morning came and he was still a zombie, the doctors told me to go home, get some rest, blow some blow. I don’t know what they said, exactly, but that’s what I did. I went home, got some rest, blew some blow. But the motel guests kept arriving and leaving and the rooms needed to be turned over and the maids who came in every Friday needed their checks and all these bills needed to be paid and before I knew it, I was running this place. It wasn’t that hard, just exhaustive busy work. It never ends. I guess in all those years of rebelling and doing my best not to pay any attention, most of the ins and outs of maintaining this place seeped in and stuck.
“I went to see him as much as I could, but like I said, the demands of running Paradise came first. I kept telling myself it was what he would have wanted me to do. So that kept me going. It was his life’s work, you know? I couldn’t just let it fall to shit in his absence. At the same time, though, I should have gone to visit him more. Don’t you think?”
“I would not presume to know,” I said, awaiting her teased reveal with unparalleled patience.
“Well, three months flew by, and I was starting to find some comfort in the daily drudge.” Charity stopped to light another cigarette. She took a deep, dramatic drag and exhaled that dizzying, minty smoke into my air again. “I guess I was getting comfortable with the work because I found myself talking to the guests more. It wasn’t just about the particulars any longer. ‘Nice weather, here’s your key’ grew into idle chitchat about where they were from and what they were doing in my neck of the woods.
“One goddamn day before Si — my father woke up, this petite lady with frazzled hair and a unibrow came to rent a room. She was alone and nervous as a country hamster with a city rat. She was all jittery-like and she kept looking back over her shoulder while she was forking over crumpled tens and fives. She said she just needed to stay the one night and she asked me if the locks on her room door were deadbolts or those slider chain thingies? I told her we had strong security bolts on our doors, and the key shook out of her hand when I gave it to her. I came around the counter and picked it up for her. I was guessing she was running scared from some abusive man. I’ve known girls like that — escaping hell and hidden bruises.
“I walked her outside and tried to calm her down. I said something like, ‘I’m not much for sleep and the local sheriff is a close personal friend of the family. If there’s any trouble, he’ll be here like that.’ I snapped my fingers a bit too forcefully, I guess, cuz she spooked and broke down right there in the parking lot, near her faded beige Corolla.
“I told her, ‘You’re safe from him tonight. You can rest assured on that.’ And she laughed and repeated ‘him’ through her tears. ‘Honey,’ she said, at last lightening her load. ‘I ain’t never been afraid of no man on earth. They’re weak creatures, darlin’. Don’t you ever let one pretend to be otherwise.’ Or some stupid inverted-sexist shit, I dunno. It was what she said next that concerned me. She let me know she’d had a good job working as a short-order cook at some zoo. Said she’d worked there coming up on nine years. But she had to run. Said they had a new employee that just started there a week prior. Said it was an older woman. And she said this older woman was only there as part of some work-release program from jail. ‘Her parole officer is blind to her ways,’ she said. ‘Maybe the whole system is. But let me tell you something, she’s manipulative as the devil himself and dangerous as daggers, right down to her core. But I see her. I know her. And I had to get out before it was too late. Before she got to me. She was one of those Texas Terrors,’ she said. ‘And I’m pretty sure she had it in for me.’ ”
I puffed out bad fumes. I don’t know during which part of her story I’d accepted one of her cigarettes; no more than I know which part I’d figured where her tale was inevitably headed.
“Of course, I knew who she was talking about,” Charity continued. “Dad didn’t have a more favorite subject. But why this woman would go bolting from her life and gainful employment of nearly a decade just because some washed-up, ancient ex-con was standing next to her frying burgers or whatever — that was beyond my comprehension. I wanted … no, I needed to understand more. I helped her into her room and would have pressed for more details, but her legs couldn’t even support her. She was exhausted from terror, I suppose, and the road. So I helped her into bed and turned out the light. She was asleep before I closed the door.
“The next morning, the hospital called to tell me Simon was awake. It caught me by surprise, you know? I suddenly realized that three months had zoomed by amid boatloads of minutia. I rushed to his bedside and (somewhat regrettably) poured my relief onto him. He was glad to see me and, I think, probably even more happy to hear I’d kept the motel afloat.
“It took him a few weeks to fully recover and return to Paradise, and by that time, of course, the woman was long gone. I never did get her whole story. Maybe that’s why I never told him about her. Maybe I felt that half a story was no story at all? Or maybe it was because I think that if he knew, the shock of it would’ve killed him for good. Can you imagine? The unbelievable coincidence of someone staying at his motel the night before he woke from his coma, someone who had direct contact with the once-upon-a-time fugitive he occasionally obsesses over? Jesus Phoebus! Even I’m a little woozy just thinking about it.
“I dunno. Maybe she was meant to come here? What do you think about that, Mister Marcus? Maybe she was a … what do you call it? A …”
“A portent.”
And the wind whispered Charity.
“Oh no you didn’t!” She stood and flailed her long limbs like Pinocchio first coming to life and realizing he’s got two arms and this is how they move. “Oh no no no no no! You did not just blow my mind in two!”’
“I didn’t?” I asked, not sure why she should be the one embodying bewilderment. After all, was it not I who had come so far in search of answers, never quite believing I would find them and not the least bit aware of what I would do if I did? Only to come to a good, solid lead within mere hours of arriving in my birth state? Furthermore, what were the chances this girl ever would have shared so damn much with me had I not spent my manhood in her honeypot?
Charity went on spinning like an ancient Shakasantie Infinity Top. She was convinced that it was all connected, that everything in her life had been building to this. She was saying that we, together, could drive there in the morning. We would go, she proffered, just the two of us, and confront Calliope in the zoo’s eatery.
“Oh shit.” She halted. “What was the name of the zoo? It was so average and forgettable!”
“The Texas State Zoo,” I said. I knew it from various road signs spotted on the way in. “Come Visit The Texas State Zoo,” they read. “Where Wildlife Meets You With A Ferocious ROAR!”
“Of course that’s it!” Charity said, then she read my face. “Oh, you don’t want the company. I get it. It’s something you gotta do on your own. What about your friends?”
“They’ll understand. Can you do me a favor? When morning comes, can you tell them where I’ve gone? Let them get a good night’s sleep. They’ve earned it.”
“Yeah, sure. No problem. What about you, Mister Marcus Fox? Why don’t you spend the night? You’ve waited this long to confront her. What’s one more night?”
“What’s one more night.” I repeated her question as a statement, signifying nothing.
“Well, be sure and come back to tell us how it went. I know Si — my father will want to hear all about it.”
I kissed her on the forehead and thanked her for all her help. She stopped me cold in my tracks.
“You fixin’ on killing her? Your own mother?” she asked. I turned and delivered the truth, as well as I could figure it in the moment.
“I’m no animal,” I said, and left her.
With a final destination boiling in my brain, I crossed the parking lot and headed toward the busy diner up the street by the Super 8 Motel. After witnessing Charlie hotwire close to two dozen vans, I was confident I could do the deed with any one of the vehicles readily available at that roadside greasy spoon. Choosing the biggest and baddest of the bunch, I hesitated before climbing up into the cab of an unlocked eighteen-wheeler.
I owed him much more than this — sneaking off in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye. But saying goodbye just wasn’t an option. Charlie would have insisted on coming. Terence, too. If ever there was a time to be selfish, it was now. Sorry, Charlie. This was my story. The very root of it. He would just have to understand. And if he couldn’t, well then, I would be making every effort to see him again soon, after the business, to explain my reasons. I just had to hold out hope that the Banshee’s final prophecy could wait a little longer.
“Stay safe, friends,” I told the air that drifted back toward the motel. An answer I was not expecting came back in the form of approaching footsteps and a gruff, displeased voice.
“You wanna back the fuck away from my rig, Pacho?”
Beneath the glow of the lot’s artificial streetlamp, I saw that the man moving toward me had tree trunks for legs and a solid oak barrel (possibly recently drained of distilled whiskey) for a chest.
“You aren’t Pacho,” he stated the obvious.
“No,” I answered, choosing my next words carefully. “Pacho split.”
“Figures,” the man said. I stepped out of his way and he climbed the three small steps up and into his cab. “Pacho never was one to linger. The asshole.”
He started up the engine and it roared like a motherfucker. He stepped on the gas three times to emphasize some unknown point and then leaned out his open window to drink me in.
“You need a ride or somethin’, boy?” he asked. I couldn’t believe my luck. I might not have to commit grand theft auto this evening, after all.
“Going west?” I inquired.
“Only as far as San Antonio,” he answered. “Where you headed?”
“Texas State Zoo.”
“What the fuck you wanna go there for this time of night?” He laughed. “Eh, just get in, pal. You can sit in for Pacho and tell me your story along the way. Hope you got a good one. Anything to keep me from falling asleep. The zoo ain’t far. About seventy miles, I’d guess. Well, what are you waitin’ for, a goddamn written invitation? Get in and start talkin’! And fuck Pacho, am I right?”
“Yeah,” I said. He was right, all right.
Fuck Pacho.
When we arrived at the zoo’s front gate, the clock on the dashboard read 3:17 a.m. and my new friend and avid listener, Gary Berhardt, reminded me it was ten minutes fast. I’d earned my fair passage by talking the miles away. Gary was engrossed by my story. He never interrupted while I rallied on, though he did nod, grunt, and gasp in all the right places. I’d only arrived at the Banshee’s first prophecy when we had the zoo in our sights, precisely ninety minutes after we’d left the Paradise Inn and All-You-Can-Eat Barbecue behind us. He pulled slowly up to the side of the road, about 100 yards past the zoo’s front entrance.
“Banshee, huh?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“What came of all her complaining?”
“Maybe a story for another time,” I said, eager to exit gently and respectfully into the good night.
“Why don’t you just tell me now, you cock tease,” he said with a coquettish smile and wink. I sighed and prattled through it.
“Three days after that encounter, my entire tribe was killed by a pack of bloodthirsty lions who were themselves acting at the behest of some bloodthirsty humans, poachers to be exact. They used my family for bait, and it worked.”
“I just have so many questions,” Gary said. “But you look like you’re ready to blaze on outta here, so I’ll pose just one: When’s the book coming out?”
“The what?”
“It’s a book, right? You’re some kind of writer and you made it all up? Look, I’m not saying it’s not fascinating stuff, it is. But if you’re gonna pass it off as a memoir, you should probably leave off some of the screwy bits.”
I hadn’t even brushed the surface of “screwy” with this man. In fact, I’d left a lot out of my retelling and changed a few other things, just so he wouldn’t ask too many questions. For instance, instead of saying what really happened when I was shoved from the airplane, I told Gary that Billy and Calliope abandoned me in the middle of the night while we were camping by the edge of the Zambezi. Same story, basically, with less pizazz.
“It’s not a book,” I stated. “It’s my life.”
“OK then, Marcus Fox, son of the Texas Terrors, whatever you say!” He laughed and slapped the wheel with a happy hand. “Well you oughta write it someday. Hey!” He stopped his jovial manner in remembrance. “You never told me what the hell you’re doing here? You got some long-standing beef with those African lions? If that’s the case, well I know they got some here, but I seriously doubt they’re your Shakasantie blood searchers. Ho-ho!”
“They have lions here?” I said, doubting such a thing could be real.
“Of course! What do you think a zoo is? Lions and tigers and bears, oh Marcus!”
I shrugged it off. I was not here for the lions.
“I told you about my first mother,” I said. “I got a tip that she’s here.”
“Holy hell, you actually believe your own bullshit! You really do think you’re the son of the Texas Terrors? Don’t that beat all? Well I got news for you, sailor. I heard that Foxy lady got the chair years ago. Lone Star justice don’t mess around. I also never heard they had any kids. So why don’t you get on up outta my cab and go get yourself fucked?”
“Like Pacho,” I said.
“Yeah, fuck Pacho,” Gary said. But he said it with a grin. “Hey, you’re all right, Marcus. Whoever you are, I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for, for real. Good luck to you, brother.”
He put out his hairy-knuckled hand and I shook it. For an instant, I felt him half-trying to pull me in, or maybe he was just feigning male dominance. He closed his eyes and puckered his mouth, or maybe he just blinked too slow and stifled a yawn. I retracted my hand and exited his eighteen-wheeler of skeptical sexual tension.
“You be good now, Marcus. Don’t go chasin’ waterfalls.”
A low-hanging crescent moon lit the gate. Gary Berhardt blew his horn three times as he pulled away. From behind the wrought iron bars, several hundred dissonant beastly voices answered the trucker’s savage call with their own blare of the wild. The trucker’s shrewd noise had awoken and angered many animals within. The soulful, pre-morning howling began. Among the din, I heard not a lion’s roar.
The gate was at least a giraffe-and-a-half tall and was flanked by sturdy walls of brick and mortar, sixty-five yards in either direction. The easy, arguably sane thing to do would be to camp out nearby and wait for the park to open. I could mingle with the crowds and try sliding in among a big group without purchasing a ticket. But the risk was too high. I didn’t know what kind of security they had during the day, but at night, walking the perimeter, I easily spotted the half dozen video cameras strategically placed around the vicinity. One such camera was perched atop a pole directly behind the rear entrance. There, the gate was a trifling thing and the wall reaching it shrunk down. I studied the eye in the sky, strategically out of range. It swiveled from left to right, clearly on some auto timer. When it turned from my location, following its programmed axis a third time, I knew my window had come. I raced, leapt, clung, then sprung from the top of the wall and landed cleanly on the other side. I ducked and rolled and hid behind a cardboard cutout of a smiling zebra before the camera tottered dumbly back again.
I was in.
The irritated voices died down as I walked among the imprisoned animals’ kingdom. The sole complaint that remained was the shrill hooting of the aptly named screech owl. There were two of them, standing at attention side by side along a moss-dampened branch in their cage. Their raised eyebrows further emphasized their faces’ rigid peaks, giving them the appearance of inquisitive old men (though one was clearly female).
“Who?” the male asked. “Who who?”
“You’re goddamn right,” I said, walking on.
I passed a pair of leopards lounging in vast, manufactured grass. Behind their metal bars, they snoozed on.
The white-nosed coati and ring-tailed lemurs were hidden somewhere within their man-made huts, as were the bobcats, ocelots, spider monkeys, and jaguars. As I passed by their separate-but-equal cells, I began to imagine they were heralding my arrival with respectful disappearances. Perhaps they’d gotten word through the universal animal pipeline that Marcus Fox, the greatest Zambian hunter who ever lived, was prowling their premises. If that was the case, then they didn’t get the memo re my retirement.
Or they might have just been asleep.
The so-called “Lion’s Lair” was, appropriately, the largest of all the “exhibits.” By the white glow of the sliver moon, I read with interest the sign explaining the lady within.
Malaika Mlinzi, a 25-year-old African lioness, arrived at the Philadelphia Zoo in 1978, at the age of 4. Purchased from a Tanzania game reserve, Malaika Mlinzi was transported here in 1985 as a mate for Shujaa, our then ‘male lion in residence’ and pride of the Texas State Zoo. In her lifetime, Malaika Mlinzi has produced 12 cubs, all of which have been distributed to various zoos around the world.
In 1993, Shujaa succumbed to old age, at 19; his passing was complicated by feline panleukopenia (distemper). It was somewhat of a miracle Malaika Mlinzi (whose name means “guardian angel” in Swahili) was not infected by the highly contagious disease. At 25, she is the second-oldest African lion in captivity.
When I came to this country, I was supremely self-involved. Somewhere along the way, I had heard mention of the concepts of zoos, aquariums, animal-based theme parks, and circuses. It is difficult to discern my exact first impressions upon learning that animals were held in captivity for what passes as “family entertainment.” On the one hand, I understood, perhaps better than anyone, the irresistible appeal. To behold a creature of the wild up close is a gift unmatched by anything else in this world. But to do so at the expense of the creature itself — it didn’t seem right. Then I learned how well cared for the animals usually were, and how they tended to live much longer behind bars than they did out in the free air. This, coupled with the amount of love and attention they generally received from their handlers and onlookers, swayed my opinion back to, it’s all right. But was it?
Poor Malaika Mlinzi, who was nowhere to be seen in her cage, had lived her life as a whore and a cub maker, only to have her babes ripped from her protective care when they were old enough to be on their own. Even her name, Guardian Angel, seemed a cruel irony to bestow upon her when she repeatedly experienced the unbearable loss of those she watched over — those she birthed and bathed with her own tongue.
A shiver coursed through my body. What was I doing here? What, in the sacred name of Shumbuto, did I hope to find? What was anything worth in this defective existence? And why was I, a man with no ties to fairer emotions, weeping like a … like a … I can’t even summon an appropriate animal metaphor. Because beasts don’t cry. Some bawl. Others bemoan. But none cry.
Somewhere between withdrawal and electrotherapy, I’d become a shell of my former self. I had become weakness incarnate. At least I was finally owning it.
I hopped the low rail and walked the few yards to sit with my back against the outer, chain-link walls of the lioness’s lonely home. In deep despair, I awaited some psychotic familial reunion, knowing it would never come. I was on a fool’s errand. The likelihood of Calliope still working here was, at the very least, unlikely. I didn’t even know what I would say to her, were I to face the bitch.
For the second time that evening, footsteps approached me. No, that’s inaccurate. What I heard was the deliberate promenade of a woebegone elder cat.
Through the fence, she sniffed my hair, my neck, my torso. I remained still — not from fear, but high esteem. After minutes, years, eons, zerotime, she accepted me; her analysis was complete. I turned to face her through the cage. She was frail but not withered. Sickly but not sick. Definitely nearer to the end of her life than the start, sure, but she still possessed a strength and a wisdom that would never be crippled by time. Her being was written all over her whiskered face. Malaika Mlinzi. She might very well have been my soul mate.
I leaned in, pressed my face against the mesh. She showed me her tongue and then proceeded to lap my weathered countenance.
I had no words for her. Nor she, me. No speech nor roars when I picked the simple lock on the zookeeper’s entrance and let myself into her domain. No grunts nor feeble discourse, not even when I trespassed on the tracks she’d tread. She welcomed my presence and invited me to join her upon a large granite slab, the centerpiece of her home.
The lone stars in the sky all joined to make pretty, twinkling pictures. And we lay there, staring off into the swirling cosmos, side by side on her rock, separated by species and significant life experience. Soon, we nodded off into slumber, one after the other, safe in the mutually guarded comfort of a natural mess of hairy arms and padded paws.