Love is hard on everybody.
Take Martinez, for instance. Not long after our adventure at the fair, Houmahatchee played Jacksonville High School in football. And in the crowd from Jacksonville was a tall, pretty girl named Fallon, who was probably three grades ahead of Martinez. That didn’t stop Martinez from asking Fallon to be his girlfriend. She replied that he was too young. And then one of Fallon’s friends said Fallon would never date him because he was “nartistic.” Fallon told her that was a mean thing to say, and that she should hush, but the damage was already done.
Martinez was stunned. In all these years, no one had ever told him he was nartistic.
“Everything is falling into place now,” he said as we were fixing dinner the next day. “All the problems I’ve had in classes. The way teachers talk to me. It’s all because I have narticism.”
“I don’t think narticism is a thing,” Dad said.
“You’re a lawyer, not a doctor,” Martinez said. “I bet if I told you I had epicormic branching, you’d believe me.”
“It’s pretty loud at those games,” Taleesa said. “Are you sure she didn’t say ‘narcissistic?’”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Martinez said.
“It’s from Greek mythology,” I said. “There was a guy who was so good-looking he sat around looking at his reflection all day in a pond. And he sat there looking at himself until he turned into a plant.”
“So this girl is hating on me for being good-looking,” Martinez said. “I really can’t help that.”
“Well, being good-looking is just part of the story,” Dad said. “What if she said you’re ‘not artistic’? Do you think that’s maybe what she said?”
“Nah,” I said. Everybody who meets Martinez knows he’s the creative type. This is the kid who dressed as Batman every day for eighteen months of his life. He even wore a Batman suit under a Superman suit for Halloween. He almost got kicked out of kindergarten for refusing to wear normal civilian clothes; Taleesa had to convince him to adopt an alter ego to protect us all from the Joker. The first thing he’d do when he got home every day was rip open his shirt to reveal the Batman logo under his normal clothes.
For more than a year, I had to carry a fully automatic Nerf blaster around the house with me to fend off Batman attacks. That’s how I created my own supervillain, Gun Moll. She’s a stereotypical 1920s gangster girlfriend, with a New York accent, a beret, high heels, and a tommy-gun. Her superpower is colorful swearing, which leaves Batman bent over with laughter so she can get away. Gun Moll has a great tagline, but I can’t tell you what it is. I mean, what if some little kid picked up this book and read it?
“Nartistic sounds to me like someone who’s really creative but also kind of self-absorbed,” Taleesa said. “Does that sound like Martinez at all?”
We all just looked around at each other and smiled.
“Well, if he is nartistic, it must run in families,” Taleesa said. “I’m pretty sure that narticism broke up my first marriage. Good news is, narticism is worst when you’re in your early twenties, but then it starts to wear off. For instance, a nartistic person would just pile the mail up on the counter for a couple of days like someone did here. A nartistic person would wait for someone to read it. But look at me: I’m going to open and read.”
“I hate bills,” Dad said.
“Here’s a letter for both of us, Paul,” Taleesa said, opening it. “Oh. Oh, that’s interesting. Look.” She handed the letter to Dad, who took a look.
“It was good of them to approach us before getting in touch with Atty,” Dad said.
“Let me see!” I said, snatching the letter out of his hand.
It was from the Elephant and Primate Intelligence Committee, a bunch of law professors who go to court in animal-related cases. They were always in the news when there was a controversy about a chimp, gorilla, an elephant, or a dolphin—and their basic argument was always the same: these animals have rights, like a person does. If you can recognize that you’re the elephant in the mirror with a dot on your forehead, they argue, then you ought to be a person under the law. If you can show mercy to a little dog in a hole who’s about to be crushed by a log, you’re a person. If you can go to a graveyard and mourn others who are now gone, you’re a person. Apparently dolphins and chimps can do similar things.
Whenever I talk about this, I feel like I should put my hands over Easy’s ears. I don’t know if Easy can do all those things, and I don’t know how I’d find out. If he couldn’t do them, I wouldn’t think of him as any less a person, with any fewer rights. Can you really look your dog in the eye and say he’s not a person?
Anyway, Dottie Labisky, the director of EPIC, wanted to talk to Taleesa and Dad and get their permission to talk to me, all with the idea of perhaps getting me to take part in a lawsuit against Emory’s family. They wanted to sue the Mumbfords to get Elizabeth moved into a better environment.
“What do you think?” Dad said. “Do you want to do this?”
I sighed.
“This is tough,” I said. “I don’t want to sue Emory’s family. But I know that what’s going on with Elizabeth is wrong. Why is this so hard?”
“Why don’t we call these EPIC folks and talk about it as a family?” Dad said. “I can put her on speaker, if she picks up, and we can discuss over dinner.”
So that’s what we did. While we ate, Dad’s phone sat in the middle of the table on speaker, and we introduced ourselves to Dottie Labisky.
“First,” Labisky said. “Let me say that I’m really impressed with the work you’re doing so far. When you’re old enough, I think any law school would be delighted to snatch either one of you up, Atty, Martinez.”
“Bleah,” said Martinez. “Law.”
“Martinez has other plans,” Taleesa said. “Lots and lots of plans.”
“I’m going to be the first person to complete the Talladega 500 on a motorcycle,” Martinez said.
“And you, Atty?” Labisky said. “Surely you have some interest in a law career.”
“I think I’d like to be a drummer in an all-girl punk band,” I said.
Martinez threw a roll at me. “Appropriation!” he said. “They’re my drums!”
Labisky laughed. “Well, I’ll get right down to brass tacks,” she said. “We think Elizabeth’s case is a strong one. And I mean, a strong case for the rights of elephants. There’s plenty of evidence that elephants have a high level of cognition. That’s what we call it, cognition, when you’re thinking in a complex way that we once thought only humans did. Elephants know they’re elephants, and they know that elephants don’t live forever. They know that other creatures around them have thoughts and feelings, too, and they’re willing to show those creatures some kindness. To us, this is enough to be a person as defined by law. We’re not saying that an elephant has the same rights as a person. But we are saying that this human-like thinking gives an elephant—gives Elizabeth—some sort of rights.”
We were all silent for a minute. There was an uneasy tension in the air.
“I do see a problem here,” Dad said. “How you figure out what those rights are? I mean the elephant can’t tell us what she wants. So who decides what her rights are?”
“There’s one right that really matters here,” Labisky said. “There’s one right that could change the way animals are treated in court. That’s the right to go to court, and to be treated as a person by the court. I know you all know how things work now: an animal, any animal, doesn’t matter at all under the law unless it’s someone’s property. When you go to court for animals, Atty, you have to convince a judge that you’re harmed by mistreatment of animals. If Elizabeth can be recognized as a legal person, which could happen in this case, that might open the door to a whole new way of looking at animals under the law.”
“That would be big,” I said.
Still, that uneasy tension hung in the air.
“Look, I’m just going to say it,” Taleesa said. “I see what you mean about elephants, but I can’t help but feel a little righteous anger every time someone says this stuff about an animal as a person. This is Alabama. Alabama used to treat Black people as property not so long ago. Three-fifths of a person, that’s how we were defined under the Constitution. So I can’t help getting a little upset when people start saying an elephant is a person. I’m not saying you’re wrong about that. I’m just saying there are a lot of people in Alabama, now, who are not getting their full rights. People who are in prison, or who get shot, and who didn’t do anything. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t upset me a little to see an elephant going to the front of the line.”
“Every single thing you’re saying is true,” Labisky said. “It’s coming from a place of deep knowledge, and I honor it. I don’t think I could even come to you with this pitch if I didn’t know that Mr. Peale, for instance, is working full time already in the difficult business of helping human beings secure their rights, as a defense lawyer.”
Taleesa looked at Dad knowingly, as if to say and you want to be a judge.
Dad cleared his throat a little. “You can call me Paul,” he said. “No need for Mr. Peale.”
“Mrs. Peale,” Labisky said. “I hope I can encourage you to see this as more than an either-or. I’d argue that in places where society is more willing to expand rights—places where the government recognizes a right to health care or education and so on—you typically see better living conditions and more attention to the basic rights of everybody. And in places that are stingy about rights—maybe a place where people get really mad about lowering the voting age to sixteen—in those places you find that it’s often hard to practice the rights that do exist. I realize that my experience isn’t your experience, but my hope is that we’re all better off any time society decides to be a little more humane.”
“Wow,” I said. “You could lower the voting age to sixteen? I never thought of that. That would be great!”
“There’s a lot that courts and lawmakers can do when they set their minds to it,” Labisky said. “There’s a lot of unusual stuff they’ve already done with the concept of personhood. Atty, did you know that a corporation is a person under American law? Just imagine that I created a cereal called Yabba-Dabba-Doo, a chocolate cereal, let’s say, and I put it in a brown box and started selling it . . .”
“Make it a big box,” Martinez said. “Cocoa Pebbles, the boxes are way too small.”
“You’re getting my point, Martinez,” Labisky said. “If I did make a Yabba Dabba Doo cereal, everybody would know I was copying someone else’s product. The people who make Cocoa Pebbles could sue me to make me stop. Not the people, really, but the business. A corporation can come before the court and make that kind of demand, just like a person can, because it owns the rights to Cocoa Pebbles and Fred Flintstone and all that. The corporation didn’t create those things. It isn’t even a human or a creature with a brain, but it can own those things and it can sue me. In our system, a corporation is a legal person even though it doesn’t have a brain or feelings, and, unlike you and me, it can live forever.”
“Like a jellyfish,” I said.
“Exactly,” Labisky said. “And if a jellyfish can have rights before the court, why can’t a whale, or a dolphin, or an elephant?”
“It’s an interesting argument,” Dad said. “I guess I’m wondering what you want to ask Atty to do that will help with all this.”
“It’s simple, really,” Labisky said. “We’ve done all the lawyerly stuff. We’ve written the briefs. We’ll argue the case. What we really need is someone to be the voice of Elizabeth. Atty, you hit on it exactly when you invited the world to ask who Elizabeth really is. You win a court case by telling a story, and we want you to testify. To tell the jury your story.”
“I don’t know Elizabeth’s story,” I said. “I don’t know where she’s from or how she got here.”
“Just tell your story,” Labisky said. “Just tell the truth. Tell what you saw and what you felt.”
Everybody was looking at me. My mind was racing. I thought of an elephant, caressing the bones of a long-gone elephant and thinking sad thoughts. I thought of the first time Emory grabbed my hand, a move that was so unexpected and felt so comfortable.
And then, something occurred to me.
“Wait,” I said. “Where is this trial being held?”
“Dixie County, Florida,” Labisky said. “It’s where the Mumbfords have their farm.”
Dad started shaking his head, and then I did too.
“This will never work,” I said. “I’ve read up on this place. It’s out in the country. The biggest city there is smaller than Houmahatchee. You’re going to get a bunch of local farmers on the jury. There’s no way farmers are going to look at an elephant and say she’s a person.”
“Florida can always surprise you,” Labisky said. “A lot of Florida folks really care about ecology, particularly in beach communities. There’s a lot of coastline in Dixie County. And farmers can surprise you, too. Maybe they’ll be more open-minded than you think.”
“I want to win,” I said. “I’d love to see more rights for animals in courts—but what I really want to do is see this one elephant, Elizabeth, have a better life. Isn’t there another way to make this case?”
“I’ll tell you this,” Labisky said. “We’ve done better, so far, than we expected. I think our chances are good. All I’m asking is that you come to the court and tell your truth. And we are asking. We won’t call you to testify if your heart isn’t in it.”
Again, all eyes were on me.
“Can I have some time to decide?” I said. “I think this is something I want to do. But I need to think.”
Maybe “think” isn’t the right word. I mean with choices like this, is thinking what we really do?
Think about teen romance novels. Or rom-coms. On TV. The girl always has a choice between two boys, and they both seem pretty desirable. Both of them make her swoon—and they make you, the reader, swoon too. She has to decide. She dreams about a life with one boy and then she dreams about her life with the other, and she has to say yes to one and no to the other. But somehow, it isn’t thinking the same way that, I don’t know, solving a math problem is thinking. There aren’t any rules, like there are in math. In math, you want to know whether the answer to the problem is seven or twelve, but you don’t feel like you’re already in mourning for twelve the moment you put seven down as the answer. You don’t feel like your life will end if the real answer turns out to be nine.
The girls in those books and movies never really make a choice between the boys anyway. Think about it. There’s always something that happens that changes the math and makes her decision no decision at all. She almost marries the wrong boy, but then she catches him shoving a little kid and suddenly she just knows. But what if both boys are nice? She has to make a choice, and she has to cry every tear that choice causes, and she has to cry them all by herself.
Lying awake about eleven o’clock that night, I decided I needed someone to talk to. So I called someone. I called someone I probably shouldn’t have called. If I was planning to testify in the case, there’s one person I definitely shouldn’t have called.
“H’lo?” said Emory.
“You sound like you were in a deep sleep,” I said. “How early do you go to bed?”
“Early,” he said. “I have to get up before sunrise to take care of the animals.”
It felt so good to hear his voice. I sighed. I know I do this a lot. That’s just love.
“So,” Emory said. “You’re just going to call me and start talking like we never had an argument? That’s how you’re going to handle that?”
“That’s how I do it,” I said.
Now he sighed, and it wasn’t an exasperated sigh. “Okay,” he said.
“I need help,” I said. “Today I’m the one having a bad day.”
“What kind of help do you need?” he asked.
“I need you to hold my hand,” I said. “I need you to hold my hand over the phone.”
We sat there for a while, holding hands. Maybe Heaven isn’t so scary after all. I think I could sit here for a good long while, alone under the covers, holding hands with a boy in Florida.
“I don’t want to say anything and ruin it,” Emory said eventually. “But I want you to know I’m still here.”
“I was about to say the same thing,” I said.
Then, silent heaven again, for a long time. I don’t know what got into me. I opened my mouth.
“Emory, who—” I said. I stopped myself before asking, “who is Elizabeth?” Why would I say such a thing at just that moment? “Who are you, Emory?” I said. “Tell me who you are.”
He didn’t have to think very long.
“I’m the boy who lives in the forest,” he said. “I take care of animals. I get up before sunrise and feed the goats and the horses and Elizabeth, not just because I have to, but because I want to be out of the house. I like animals better than I like people. Goats go right for your pocket. They dig right into the pocket of your jacket because you’ve reached your hand in there before and pulled out some corn. Animals are simple in what they ask you to do.
“There’s a hill behind our house, a hill with trees,” he continued. “The hill is mine. I used to go up there with my toys and play. There was something about being out there, where you could hear the wind and smell the earth—there was something about that that made it more fun to play, as if my toys were real soldiers fighting in a real jungle, or real scientists looking for real animals. Then I realized I don’t need toys. When I’m at the top of my hill, when I can look down through the trees and see Elizabeth down there throwing dirt around with her trunk, I feel like I’m in a big adventure. Being out in the woods, that’s the adventure. When I’m out there I feel like I’m the real me.
“The hill is really mine,” Emory went on. “My parents have already told us that when they die, Russell will get the house and I’ll get the hill. I guess the idea is that empty land is worth a lot of money because you can sell it for someone to build houses on. But I don’t want to sell it. This is my place in the world. I’ve always known it.”
As he talked about his life, I started to get a picture of what the Mumbford farm looked like. An old, two-story house, with air-conditioning units in the windows that hummed in the summer. Most of the year, though, those windows were open. Little lizards, the kind that do pushups and change from green to brown, would scurry across Emory’s schoolbooks as he tried to study in the kitchen. Frogs shouted all night. Elizabeth lived in a barn and spent the day wandering around a fenced-in area that she’d worn down with walking—worn down to the point that there was no grass, only dirt. Emory didn’t know any other kids, except the girls who leaned over the fence at this carnival or that carnival. He left his green world only when the family went to Walmart, or when they toured across the country with Elizabeth. That other world was mostly gas stations, parking lots, and fairgrounds. Sometimes, when he was supposed to be studying, he’d get out his phone and read all the newspaper stories about how the gas-station world was eating away at the green world.
“The earth is dying, Atty,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to stay on my hill. I’m not going to sell it. I’m going to let it be green.”
“I wish I could see it,” I said.
“I wish you could see it,” he said.
Quiet, for a moment, again. A perfect moment, a warm and perfect moment. But I just can’t keep my mouth shut.
“What happens when—” I started. Then I stopped.
“Go on,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Never mind.”
“No, you started,” he said. “Now you have to tell me.”
Why did I go on and say it? Why not make something up?
“If you inherit the hill and Russell inherits the house, who inherits . . . the rest?” I said. “The goats, the horses.”
“Elizabeth,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I don’t think it will be a thing,” he said. “Elizabeth is old, and my parents are not-so-old. She’ll be gone by then.”
“Wow,” I said. “You say it so calmly. I don’t think I could talk that way about my dog, Easy.”
“Well,” he said. “She’s my good friend. I’ll miss her. But it’s also the circle of life, I guess. I mean, look at all the goats. We feed goats and pet them and then we slaughter them and eat them.”
I gasped a little.
“How can you do that?” I said. “To a goat you know?”
“It’s part of the natural world, Atty,” he said. “It’s part of how we get back to nature. If we all raised our own food, if we didn’t buy stuff from stores all the time, that would help. It’s not any meaner than when you buy a hamburger.”
“I don’t eat meat,” I said.
“Come on,” he said, with a little edge of frustration in his voice. He didn’t say anything else, but it sounded like he didn’t believe me.
“I don’t—I don’t see how you can do that,” I said. “How can you raise a goat from a baby to a grownup and then eat it? You might as well eat Elizabeth.”
“You know that’s not the same,” he said.
“Why isn’t it the same?” I asked. “What is it about Elizabeth that makes her different from those other animals?”
He was quiet for a minute. I waited. I pictured him in the dark in his house, thinking hard. For a brief moment, I imagined him coming around to my way of thinking. I imagined us agreeing, us meeting, us holding hands, us wandering around his hill together.
I was completely unprepared for what he said next.
“Are you recording me?” he said.
“Wait, what?” I said. “Why would I be recording you?”
“You want me to talk about how Elizabeth is different from other animals,” he said. “I’m such an idiot. Russell told me you’d do this. You’re part of the lawsuit.”
“So you know about the lawsuit,” I said.
“So you know about the lawsuit,” Emory said. “You’re working with them. You’re just calling me now to pick my brain and get more information about Elizabeth. I’m such an idiot.”
“I didn’t call you to spy and I’m not part of the lawsuit,” I said. “They want me to testify in court. But I haven’t said yes. I’m just thinking about it.”
“How can you even think about it?” he said. “Oh, I’m so stupid. I talked to you again! I thought you were on my side. And here you are getting ready to talk against my family in court.”
“Testifying is just telling your story,” I said. “I’m just going to tell them what I saw. The truth and nothing but. Somebody else decides.”
“If you were in court, and somebody asked me to testify, and I thought it was bad for you I would keep my mouth shut,” Emory said. “You stand behind the people you care about.”
“Are you telling me to keep my mouth shut?” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
“No boy is going to tell me to shut my mouth,” I said. “No man and no woman is ever going to tell me to stay quiet when I see an animal suffering. Elizabeth is suffering. Everybody can see it but you. And I’m not going to shut my mouth about that.”
“Well, I’m going to shut mine,” Emory said. “I’m not going to sit here and spill my guts to somebody who wants to spy on me and my family. That’s it, Atty. You’re not going to hear from me again.”
He hung up, and I cried myself to sleep.