Copyright

The One and Only Ivan and The One and Only Bob first published in The United States of America by HarperCollins Publishers in 2012 and 2020 Published simultaneously in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children's Books Published in this ebook pack edition in 2020 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright Katherine Applegate 2012, 2020

Illustrations copyright © Patricia Castelao 2020

Cover illustrations copyright © Patricia Castelao 2012, 2020

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Katherine Applegate and Patricia Castelao assert the moral rights to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007468461 (The One and Only Ivan), 9780008390679 (The One and Only Bob) Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008404758 Version: 2020-07-06

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The One and Only Ivan

The One and Only Bob

Back Ad

About the Author

Books by Katherine Applegate

About the Publisher

Dedication

For Julia

Epigraph

It is never too late to be

what you might have been.

—George Eliot

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Hello

Names

Patience

How I Look

The Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade

The Littlest Big Top on Earth

Gone

Artists

Shapes in Clouds

Imagination

The Loneliest Gorilla in the World

TV

The Nature Show

Stella

Stella’s Trunk

A Plan

Bob

Wild

Picasso

Three Visitors

My Visitors Return

Sorry

Julia

Drawing Bob

Bob and Julia

Mack

Not Sleepy

The Beetle

Change

Guessing

Jambo

Lucky

Arrival

Stella Helps

Old News

Tricks

Introductions

Stella and Ruby

Home of the One and Only Ivan

Art Lesson

Treat

Elephant Jokes

Children

The Parking Lot

Ruby’s Story

A Hit

Worry

The Promise

Knowing

Five Men

Comfort

Crying

The One and Only Ivan

Once Upon A Time

The Grunt

Mud

Protector

A Perfect Life

The End

Vine

The Temporary Human

Hunger

Still Life

Punishment

Babies

Beds

My Place

Nine Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy-Six Days

A Visit

A New Beginning

Poor Mack

Colours

A Bad Dream

The Story

How

Remembering

What They Did

Something Else to Buy

Another Ivan

Days

Nights

Project

Not Right

Going Nowhere

Bad Guys

Ad

Imagining

Not-Tag

One More Thing

The Seven O’clock Show

Twelve

H

Nervous

Showing Julia

More Paintings

Chest Beating

Angry

Puzzle Pieces

Finally

The Next Morning

Mad Human

Phone Call

A Star Again

The Ape Artist

Interview

The Early News

Signs on Sticks

Protesters

Check Marks

Free Ruby

New Box

Training

Poking and Prodding

No Painting

More Boxes

Goodbye

Click

An Idea

Respect

Photo

Leaving

Good Boy

Moving

Awakening

Missing

Food

Not Famous

Something in the Air

A New TV

The Family

Excited

What I See

Still There

Watching

She

Door

Wondering

Ready

Outside at Last

Oops

What It Was Like

Pretending

Nest

More TV

It

Romance

More About Romance

Grooming

Talk

The Top of the Hill

The Wall

Safe

Silverback

Glossary

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Hello

I am Ivan. I am a gorilla.

It’s not as easy as it looks.

Names

People call me the Freeway Gorilla. The Ape at Exit 8. The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.

The names are mine, but they’re not me. I am Ivan, just Ivan, only Ivan.

Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot.

Everyone knows the peels are the best part.

I suppose you think gorillas can’t understand you. Of course, you also probably think we can’t walk upright.

Try knuckle walking for an hour. You tell me: which way is more fun?

Patience

I’ve learned to understand human words over the years, but understanding human speech is not the same as understanding humans.

Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps, crowding the world with their noise even when they have nothing to say.

It took me some time to recognise all those human sounds, to weave words into things. But I was patient.

Patient is a useful way to be when you’re an ape.

Gorillas are as patient as stones. Humans, not so much.

How I Look

I used to be a wild gorilla, and I still look the part.

I have a gorilla’s shy gaze, a gorilla’s sly smile. I wear a snowy saddle of fur, the uniform of a silverback. When the sun warms my back, I cast a gorilla’s majestic shadow.

In my size humans see a test of themselves. They hear fighting words on the wind, when all I’m thinking is how the late-day sun reminds me of a ripe nectarine.

I’m mightier than any human, four hundred pounds of pure power. My body looks made for battle. My arms, outstretched, span taller than the tallest human.

My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and distrustful cousins.

I know this is troubling.

I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered clowns.

Chimps. There’s no excuse for them.

The Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade

I live in a human habitat called the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade. We are conveniently located off I-95, with shows at two, four and seven, 365 days a year.

Mack says that when he answers the trilling telephone.

Mack works here at the mall. He is the boss.

I work here too. I am the gorilla.

At the Big Top Mall, a creaky-music carousel spins all day, and monkeys and parrots live amid the merchants. In the middle of the mall is a ring with benches where humans can sit on their rumps while they eat soft pretzels. The floor is covered with sawdust made of dead trees.

My domain is at one end of the ring. I live here because I am too much gorilla and not enough human.

Stella’s domain is next to mine. Stella is an elephant. She and Bob, who is a dog, are my dearest friends.

At present, I do not have any gorilla friends.

My domain is made of thick glass and rusty metal and rough cement. Stella’s domain is made of metal bars. The sun bears’ domain is wood; the parrots’ is wire mesh.

Three of my walls are glass. One of them is cracked, and a small piece, about the size of my hand, is missing from its bottom corner. I made the hole with a baseball bat Mack gave me for my sixth birthday. After that he took the bat away, but he let me keep the baseball that came with it.

A jungle scene is painted on one of my domain walls. It has a waterfall without water and flowers without scent and trees without roots. I didn’t paint it, but I enjoy the way the shapes flow across my wall, even if it isn’t much of a jungle.

I am lucky my domain has three windowed walls. I can see the whole mall and a bit of the world beyond: the frantic pinball machines, the pink billows of cotton candy, the vast and treeless parking lot.

Beyond the lot is a freeway where cars stampede without end. A giant sign at its edge beckons them to stop and rest like gazelles at a watering hole.

The sign is faded, the colours bleeding, but I know what it says. Mack read its words aloud one day: “COME TO THE EXIT 8 BIG TOP MALL AND VIDEO ARCADE, HOME OF THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, MIGHTY SILVERBACK!”

Sadly, I cannot read, although I wish I could. Reading stories would make a fine way to fill my empty hours.

Once, however, I was able to enjoy a book left in my domain by one of my keepers.

It tasted like termite.

The freeway billboard has a drawing of Mack in his clown clothes and Stella on her hind legs and an angry animal with fierce eyes and unkempt hair.

That animal is supposed to be me, but the artist made a mistake. I am never angry.

Anger is precious. A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger. When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do.

Here in my domain, there is no one to protect.

The Littlest Big Top on Earth

My neighbours here at the Big Top Mall know many tricks. They are an educated lot, more accomplished than I.

One of my neighbours plays baseball, although she is a chicken. Another drives a fire truck, although he is a rabbit.

I used to have a neighbour, a sleek and thoughtful seal, who could balance a ball on her nose from dawn till dusk. Her voice was like the throaty bark of a dog chained outside on a cold night.

Children wished on pennies and tossed them into her plastic pool. They glowed on the bottom like flat copper stones.

The seal was hungry one day, or bored, perhaps, so she ate one hundred pennies.

Mack said she’d be fine.

He was mistaken.

Mack calls our show “The Littlest Big Top on Earth”. Every day at two, four and seven, humans fan themselves, drink sodas, applaud. Babies wail. Mack, dressed like a clown, pedals a tiny bike. A dog named Snickers rides on Stella’s back. Stella sits on a stool.

It is a very sturdy stool.

I don’t do any tricks. Mack says it’s enough for me to be me.

Stella told me that some circuses move from town to town. They have humans who dangle on ropes twining from the tops of tents. They have grumbling lions with gleaming teeth and a snaking line of elephants, each clutching the limp tail in front of her. The elephants look far off into the distance so they won’t see the humans who want to see them.

Our circus doesn’t migrate. We sit where we are, like an old beast too tired to push on.

After our show, humans forage through the stores. A store is where humans buy things they need to survive. At the Big Top Mall, some stores sell new things, things like balloons and T-shirts and caps to cover the gleaming heads of humans. Some stores sell old things, things that smell dusty and damp and long-forgotten.

All day, I watch humans scurry from store to store. They pass their green paper, dry as old leaves and smelling of a thousand hands, back and forth and back again.

They hunt frantically, stalking, pushing, grumbling. Then they leave, clutching bags filled with things – bright things, soft things, big things – but no matter how full the bags, they always come back for more.

Humans are clever indeed. They spin pink clouds you can eat. They build domains with flat waterfalls.

But they are lousy hunters.

Gone

Some animals live privately, unwatched, but that is not my life.

My life is flashing lights and pointing fingers and uninvited visitors. Inches away, humans flatten their little hands against the wall of glass that separates us.

The glass says you are this and we are that and that is how it will always be.

Humans leave their fingerprints behind, sticky with candy, slick with sweat. Each night a weary man comes to wipe them away.

Sometimes I press my nose against the glass. My noseprint, like your fingerprint, is the first and last and only one.

The man wipes the glass and then I am gone.

Artists

Here in my domain, I do not have much to do. You can only throw so many me-balls at humans before you get bored.

A me-ball is made by rolling up dung until it’s the size of a small apple, then letting it dry. I always keep a few on hand.

For some reason, my visitors never seem to carry any.

In my domain, I have a tyre swing, a baseball, a tiny plastic pool filled with dirty water, and even an old TV.

I have a stuffed toy gorilla too. Julia, the daughter of the weary man who cleans the mall each night, gave it to me.

The gorilla has empty eyes and floppy limbs, but I sleep with it every night. I call it Not-Tag.

Tag was my twin sister’s name.

Julia is ten years old. She has hair like black glass and a wide, half-moon smile. She and I have a lot in common. We are both great apes, and we are both artists.

It was Julia who gave me my first crayon, a stubby blue one, slipped through the broken spot in my glass along with a folded piece of paper.

I knew what to do with it. I’d watched Julia draw. When I dragged the crayon across the paper, it left a trail in its wake like a slithering blue snake.

Julia’s drawings are wild with colour and movement. She draws things that aren’t real: clouds that smile and cars that swim. She draws until her crayons break and her paper rips. Her pictures are like pieces of a dream.

I can’t draw dreamy pictures. I never remember my dreams, although I sometimes awaken with my fists clenched and my heart hammering.

My drawings seem pale and timid next to Julia’s. She draws ideas in her head. I draw things in my cage, the simple items that fill my days: an apple core, a banana peel, a candy wrapper. (I often eat my subjects before I draw them.)

But even though I draw the same things over and over again, I never get bored with my art. When I’m drawing, that’s all I think about. I don’t think about where I am, about yesterday or tomorrow. I just move my crayons across the paper.

Humans don’t always seem to recognise what I’ve drawn. They squint, cock their heads, murmur. I’ll draw a banana, a perfectly lovely banana, and they’ll say, “It’s a yellow airplane!” or “It’s a duck without wings!”

That’s all right. I’m not drawing for them. I’m drawing for me.

Mack soon realised that people will pay for a picture made by a gorilla, even if they don’t know what it is. Now I draw every day. My works sell for twenty dollars apiece (twenty-five with frame) at the gift shop near my domain.

If I get tired and need a break, I eat my crayons.

Shapes in Clouds

I think I’ve always been an artist.

Even as a baby, still clinging to my mother, I had an artist’s eye. I saw shapes in the clouds, and sculptures in the tumbled stones at the bottom of a stream. I grabbed at colours – the crimson flower just out of reach, the ebony bird streaking past.

I don’t remember much about my early life, but I do remember this: Whenever I got the chance, I would dip my fingers into cool mud and use my mother’s back for a canvas.

She was a patient soul, my mother.

Imagination

Someday, I hope I can draw the way Julia draws, imagining worlds that don’t yet exist.

I know what most humans think. They think gorillas don’t have imaginations. They think we don’t remember our pasts or ponder our futures.

Come to think of it, I suppose they have a point. Mostly I think about what is, not what could be.

I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.

The Loneliest Gorilla in the World

When the Big Top Mall was first built, it smelled of new paint and fresh hay, and humans came to visit from morning till night. They drifted past my domain like logs on a lazy river.

Lately, a day might go by without a single visitor. Mack says he’s worried. He says I’m not cute any more. He says, “Ivan, you’ve lost your magic, old guy. You used to be a hit.”

It’s true that some of my visitors don’t linger the way they used to. They stare through the glass, they cluck their tongues, they frown while I watch my TV.

“He looks lonely,” they say.

Not long ago, a little boy stood before my glass, tears streaming down his smooth red cheeks. “He must be the loneliest gorilla in the world,” he said, clutching his mother’s hand.

At times like that, I wish humans could understand me the way I can understand them.

It’s not so bad, I wanted to tell the little boy. With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.

TV

My visitors are often surprised when they see the TV Mack put in my domain. They seem to find it odd, the sight of a gorilla staring at tiny humans in a box.

Sometimes I wonder, though: Isn’t the way they stare at me, sitting in my tiny box, just as strange?

My TV is old. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes days will go by before anyone remembers to turn it on.

I’ll watch anything, but I’m particularly fond of cartoons, with their bright jungle colours. I especially enjoy it when someone slips on a banana peel.

Bob, my dog friend, loves TV almost as much as I do. He prefers to watch professional bowling and cat-food commercials.

Bob and I have seen many romance movies too. In a romance there is much hugging and sometimes face licking.

I have yet to see a single romance starring a gorilla.

We also enjoy old western movies. In a western, someone always says, “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us, Sheriff.” In a western, you can tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and the good guys always win.

Bob says westerns are nothing like real life.

The Nature Show

I have been in my domain for nine thousand eight hundred and fifty-five days.

Alone.

For a while, when I was young and foolish, I thought I was the last gorilla on earth.

I tried not to dwell on it. Still, it’s hard to stay upbeat when you think there are no more of you.

Then one night, after I watched a movie about men in black hats with guns and feeble-minded horses, a different show came on.

It was not a cartoon, not a romance, not a western.

I saw a lush forest. I heard birds murmuring. The grass moved. The trees rustled.

Then I saw him. He was bit threadbare and scrawny, and not as good-looking as I am, to be honest. But sure enough, he was a gorilla.

As suddenly as he’d appeared, the gorilla vanished, and in his place was a scruffy white animal called, I learned, a polar bear, and then a chubby water creature called a manatee, and then another animal, and another.

All night I sat wondering about the gorilla I’d glimpsed. Where did he live? Would he ever come to visit? If there was a he somewhere, could there be a she as well?

Or was it just the two of us in all the world, trapped in our own separate boxes?

Stella

Stella says she is sure I will see another real, live gorilla someday, and I believe her because she is even older than I and has eyes like black stars and knows more than I will ever know.

Stella is a mountain. Next to her I am a rock, and Bob is a grain of sand.

Every night, when the stores close and the moon washes the world with milky light, Stella and I talk.

We don’t have much in common, but we have enough. We are huge and alone and we both love yogurt raisins.

Sometimes Stella tells stories of her childhood, of leafy canopies hidden by mist and the busy songs of flowing water. Unlike me, she recalls every detail of her past.

Stella loves the moon, with its untroubled smile. I love the feel of the sun on my belly.

She says, “It is quite a belly, my friend,” and I say, “Thank you, and so is yours.”

We talk, but not too much. Elephants, like gorillas, do not waste words.

Stella used to perform in a large and famous circus, and she still does some of those tricks for our show. During one stunt, Stella stands on her hind legs while Snickers jumps on her head.

It’s hard to stand on your hind legs when you weigh more than forty men.

If you are a circus elephant and you stand on your hind legs while a dog jumps on your head, you get a treat. If you do not, the claw-stick comes swinging.

Elephant hide is thick as bark on an ancient tree, but a claw-stick can pierce it like a leaf.

Once Stella saw a trainer hit a bull elephant with a claw-stick. A bull is like a silverback, noble, contained, calm like a cobra is calm. When the claw-stick caught in the bull’s flesh, he tossed the trainer into the air with his tusk.

The man flew, Stella said, like an ugly bird. She never saw the bull again.

Stella’s Trunk

Stella’s trunk is a miracle. She can pick up a single peanut with elegant precision, tickle a passing mouse, tap the shoulder of a dozing keeper.

Her trunk is remarkable, but still it can’t unlatch the door of her tumble-down domain.

Circling Stella’s legs are long-ago scars from the chains she wore as a youth: her bracelets, she calls them. When she worked at the famous circus Stella had to balance on a pedestal for her most difficult trick. One day, she fell off and injured her foot. When she went lame and lagged behind the other elephants, the circus sold her to Mack.

Stella’s foot never healed completely. She limps when she walks, and sometimes her foot gets infected when she stands in one place for too long.

Last winter, Stella’s foot swelled to twice its normal size. She had a fever, and she lay on the damp, cold floor of her domain for five days.

They were very long days.

Even now, I’m not sure she’s completely better. She never complains, though, so it’s hard to know.

At the Big Top Mall, no one bothers with iron shackles. A bristly rope tied to a bolt in the floor is all that’s required.

“They think I’m too old to cause trouble,” Stella says.

“Old age,” she says, “is a powerful disguise.”

A Plan

It’s been two days since anyone’s come to visit. Mack is in a bad mood. He says we are losing money hand over fist. He says he is going to sell the whole lot of us.

When Thelma, a blue and yellow macaw, demands “Kiss me, big boy,” for the third time in ten minutes, Mack throws a soda can at her. Thelma’s wings are clipped so that she can’t fly, but she still can hop. She leaps aside just in the nick of time. “Pucker up!” she says with a shrill whistle.

Mack stomps to his office and slams the door shut.

I wonder if my visitors have grown tired of me. Maybe if I learn a trick or two, it would help.

Humans do seem to enjoy watching me eat. Luckily, I am always hungry. I am a gifted eater.

A silverback must eat forty-five pounds of food a day if he wants to stay a silverback. Forty-five pounds of fruit and leaves and seeds and stems and bark and vines and rotten wood.

Also, I enjoy the occasional insect.

I am going to try to eat more. Maybe then we will get more visitors. Tomorrow I will eat fifty pounds of food. Maybe even fifty-five.

That should make Mack happy.

Bob

I explain my plan to Bob.

“Ivan,” he says, “trust me on this one: the problem is not your appetite.” He hops on to my chest and licks my chin, checking for leftovers.

Bob is a stray, which means he does not have a permanent address. He is so speedy, so wily, that mall workers long ago gave up trying to catch him. Bob can sneak into cracks and crevices like a tracked rat. He lives well off the ends of hot dogs he pulls from the trash. For dessert, he laps up spilled lemonade and splattered ice-cream cones.

I’ve tried to share my food with Bob, but he is a picky eater, and says he prefers to hunt for himself.

Bob is tiny, wiry and fast, like a barking squirrel. He is nut coloured and big eared. His tail moves like weeds in the wind, spiralling, dancing.

Bob’s tail makes me dizzy and confused. It has meanings within meanings, like human words. “I am sad,” it says. “I am happy.” It says, “Beware! I may be tiny, but my teeth are sharp.”

Gorillas don’t have any use for tails. Our feelings are uncomplicated. Our rumps are unadorned.

Bob used to have three brothers and two sisters. Humans tossed them out of a truck on to the freeway when they were a few weeks old. Bob rolled into a ditch.

The others did not.

His first night on the highway, Bob slept in the icy mud of the ditch. When he woke, he was so cold that his legs would not bend for an hour.

The next night, Bob slept under some dirty hay near the Big Top Mall garbage bins.

The following night, Bob found the spot in the corner of my domain where the glass is broken. I dreamed that I’d eaten a furry doughnut, and when I woke in the dark, I discovered a tiny puppy snoring on top of my belly.

It had been so long since I’d felt the comfort of another’s warmth that I wasn’t sure what to do. Not that I hadn’t had visitors. Mack had been in my domain, of course, and many other keepers. I’d seen my share of rats zip past, and the occasional wayward sparrow had fluttered in through a hole in my ceiling.

But they never stayed long.

I didn’t move all night, for fear of waking Bob.

Wild

Once I asked Bob why he didn’t want a home. Humans, I’d noticed, seem to be irrationally fond of dogs, and I could see why a puppy would be easier to cuddle with than, say, a gorilla.

“Everywhere is my home,” Bob answered. “I am a wild beast, my friend: untamed and undaunted.”

I told Bob he could work in the shows like Snickers, the poodle who rides Stella.

Bob said Snickers sleeps on a pink pillow in Mack’s office. He said she eats foul-smelling meat from a can.

He made a face. His lips curled, revealing tiny needles of teeth.

“Poodles,” he said, “are parasites.”

Picasso

Mack gives me a fresh crayon, a yellow one, and ten pieces of paper. “Time to earn your keep, Picasso,” he mutters.

I wonder who this Picasso is. Did he have a tyre swing like me? Did he ever eat his crayons?

I know I have lost my magic, so I try my very best. I clutch the crayon and think.

I scan my domain. What is yellow?

A banana.

I draw a banana. The paper tears, but only a little.

I lean back, and Mack picks up the drawing. “Another day, another scribble,” he says. “One down, nine to go.”

What else is yellow? I wonder, scanning my domain.

I draw another banana. And then I draw eight more.

Three Visitors

Three visitors are here: a woman, a boy, a girl.

I strut across my domain for them. I dangle from my tyre swing. I eat three banana peels in a row.

The boy spits at my window. The girl throws a handful of pebbles.

Sometimes I’m glad the glass is there.

My Visitors Return

After the show, the spit-pebble children come back.

I display my impressive teeth. I splash in my filthy pool. I grunt and hoot. I eat and eat and eat some more.

The children pound their pathetic chests. They toss more pebbles.

“Slimy chimps,” I mutter. I throw a me-ball at them.

Sometimes I wish the glass were not there.

Sorry

I’m sorry I called those children slimy chimps.

My mother would be ashamed of me.

Julia

Like the spit-pebble children, Julia is a child, but that, after all, is not her fault.

While her father, George, cleans the mall each night, Julia sits by my domain. She could sit anywhere she wants: by the carousel, in the empty food court, on the bleachers coated in sawdust. But I am not bragging when I say that she always chooses to sit with me.

I think it’s because we both love to draw.

Sara, Julia’s mother, used to help clean the mall. But when she got sick and grew pale and stooped, Sara stopped coming. Every night Julia offers to help George, and every night he says firmly, “Homework, Julia. The floors will just get dirty again.”

Homework, I have discovered, involves a sharp pencil and thick books and long sighs.

I enjoy chewing pencils. I am sure I would excel at homework.

Sometimes Julia dozes off, and sometimes she reads her books, but mostly she draws pictures and talks about her day.

I don’t know why people talk to me, but they often do. Perhaps it’s because they think I can’t understand them.

Or perhaps it’s because I can’t talk back.

Julia likes science and art. She doesn’t like Lila Burpee, who teases her because her clothes are old, and she does like Deshawn Williams, who teases her too, but in a nice way, and she would like to be a famous artist when she grows up.

Sometimes Julia draws me. I am an elegant fellow in her pictures, with my silver back gleaming like moon on moss. I never look angry, the way I do on the fading billboard by the highway.

I always look a bit sad, though.

Drawing Bob

I love Julia’s pictures of Bob.

She draws him flying across the page, a blur of feet and fur. She draws him motionless, peeking out from behind a trash can or the soft hill of my belly.

Sometimes in her drawings, Julia gives Bob wings or a lion’s mane. Once she gave him a tortoise shell.

But the best thing she ever gave him wasn’t a drawing. Julia gave Bob his name.

For a long time, no one knew what to call Bob. Now and then, a mall worker would try to approach him with a tidbit. “Here, doggie,” they’d call, holding out a French fry. “Come on, pooch,” they’d say. “How about a little piece of sandwich?”

But he would always vanish into the shadows before anyone could get too close.

One afternoon, Julia decided to draw the little dog curled up in the corner of my domain. First, she watched him for a long time, chewing on her thumbnail. I could tell she was looking at him the way an artist looks at the world when she’s trying to understand it.

Finally she grabbed her pencil and set to work. When she was finished, she held up the page.

There he was, the tiny, big-eared dog. He was smart and cunning, but his gaze was wistful.

Under the picture were three bold, confident marks, circled in black.

Julia’s father peered over her shoulder. “That’s him exactly,” he said, nodding. He pointed to the circled marks. “I didn’t realise his name was Bob,” he said.

“Me neither,” said Julia. She smiled. “I had to draw him first.”

Bob and Julia

Bob will not let humans touch him. He says their scent upsets his digestion.

But every now and then I see him sitting at Julia’s feet. Her fingers move gently, just behind his right ear.

Mack

Usually Mack leaves after the last show, but tonight he is in his office working late. When he’s done, he stops by my domain and stares at me for a long time while he drinks from a brown bottle.

George joins him, broom in hand, and Mack says the things he always says: “How about that game last night?” and “Business has been slow, but it’ll get better, you’ll see,” and “Don’t forget to empty the trash.”

Mack glances over at the picture Julia is drawing. “What’re you making?” he asks.

“It’s for my mum,” Julia says. “It’s a flying dog.” She holds up her drawing, eyeing it critically. “She likes airplanes. And dogs.”

“Hmm,” Mack murmurs, sounding unconvinced. He looks at George. “How’s the wife doing, anyway?”

“About the same,” George says. “She has good days and bad days.”

“Yeah, don’t we all,” Mack says.

Mack starts to leave, then pauses. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a crumpled green bill, and presses it into George’s hand.

“Here,” Mack says with a shrug. “Buy the kid some more crayons.”

Mack is already out the door before George can yell “Thanks.”

Not Sleepy

“Stella,” I say after Julia and her father go home. “I can’t sleep.”

“Of course you can,” she says. “You are the king of sleepers.”

“Shh,” Bob says from his perch on my belly. “I’m dreaming about chilli fries.”

“I’m tired,” I say, “but I’m not sleepy.”

“What are you tired of?” Stella asks.

I think for a while. It’s hard to put into words. Gorillas are not complainers. We’re dreamers, poets, philosophers, nap takers.

“I don’t know exactly.” I kick at my tyre swing. “I think I may be a little tired of my domain.”

“That’s because it’s a cage,” Bob tells me.

Bob is not always tactful.

“I know,” Stella says gently. “It’s a very small domain.”

“And you’re a very big gorilla,” Bob adds.

“Stella?” I ask.

“Yes?”

“I noticed you were limping more than usual today. Is your leg bothering you?”

“Just a little,” Stella answers.

I sigh. Bob resettles. His ears flick. He drools a bit, but I don’t mind. I’m used to it.

“Try eating something,” Stella says. “That always makes you happy.”

I eat an old, brown carrot. It doesn’t help, but I don’t tell Stella. She needs to sleep.

“You could try remembering a good day,” Stella suggests. “That’s what I do when I can’t sleep.”

Stella remembers every moment since she was born: every scent, every sunset, every slight, every victory.

“You know I can’t remember much,” I say.

“There’s a difference,” Stella says gently, “between ‘can’t remember’ and ‘won’t remember’.”

“That’s true,” I admit. Not remembering can be difficult, but I’ve had a lot of time to work on it.

“Memories are precious,” Stella adds. “They help tell us who we are. Try remembering all your keepers. You always liked Karl, the one with the harmonica.”

Karl. Yes. I remember how he gave me a coconut when I was still a juvenile. It took me all day to open it.

I try to recall other keepers I have known – the humans who cleaned my domain and prepared my food and sometimes kept me company. There was Juan, who poured Pepsis into my waiting mouth, and Katrina, who used to poke me with a broom when I was sleeping, and Ellen, who sang “How Much is That Monkey in the Window?” with a wistful smile while she scrubbed my water bowl.

And there was Gerald, who once brought me a pack of fat, bright crayons and a luscious pad of thick paper.

Gerald was my favourite keeper.

But mostly it’s Mack I recall, day in and day out, year after year after year. Mack, who bought me and raised me and says I’m no longer cute.

As if a silverback could ever be cute.

Moonlight falls on the frozen carousel, on the silent popcorn stand, on the stall of leather belts that smell like long-gone cows.

The heavy work of Stella’s breathing sounds like the wind in trees, and I wait for sleep to find me.

The Beetle

Mack gives me a new black crayon and a fresh pile of paper. It’s time to work again.

I smell the crayon, roll it in my hands, press the sharp point against my palm.

There’s nothing I love more than a new crayon.

I search my domain for something to draw. What is black?

An old banana peel would work, but I’ve eaten them all.

Not-Tag is brown. My little pool is blue. The yogurt raisin I’m saving for this afternoon is white, at least on the outside.

Something moves in the corner.

I have a visitor!

A shiny beetle has stopped by. Bugs often wander through my domain on their way to somewhere else.

“Hello, beetle,” I say.

He freezes, silent. Bugs never want to chat.

The beetle’s an attractive bug, with a body like a glossy nut. He’s black as a starless night.

That’s it! I’ll draw him.

It’s hard, making a picture of something new. I don’t get the chance that often.

But I try. I look at the beetle, who’s being kind enough not to move, then back at my paper. I draw his body, his legs, his little antennae, his sour expression.

I’m lucky. The beetle stays all day. Usually bugs don’t linger when they visit. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s feeling all right.

Bob, who’s been known to munch on bugs from time to time, offers to eat him.

I tell Bob that won’t be necessary.

I’m just finishing my last picture when Mack returns. George and Julia are with him.

Mack enters my domain and picks up a drawing. “What the heck is this?” he asks. “Beats me what Ivan thinks he’s drawing. This is a picture of nothing. A big, black nothing.”

Julia’s standing just outside of my domain. “Can I see?” she asks.

Mack holds my picture up to the window. Julia tilts her head. She squeezes one eye shut. Then she opens her eye and scans my domain.

“I know!” she exclaims. “It’s a beetle! See that beetle over there by Ivan’s pool?”

“Man, I just sprayed this place for bugs.” Mack walks over to the beetle and lifts his foot, preparing to stomp.

Before Mack can lower his foot, the beetle skitters away, disappearing through a crack in the wall.

Mack turns back to my paintings. “So you figure this is a beetle, huh? If you say so, kid.”

“Oh, that’s a beetle for sure,” Julia says, smiling at me. “I know a beetle when I see one.”

It’s nice, I think, having a fellow artist around.

Change

Stella is the first to notice the change, but soon we all feel it.

A new animal is coming to the Big Top Mall.

How do we know this? Because we listen, we watch, and most of all, we sniff the air.

Humans always smell odd when change is in the air.

Like rotten meat, with a hint of papaya.

Guessing

Bob fears our new neighbour will be a giant cat with slitted eyes and a coiled tail. But Stella says a truck will arrive this afternoon carrying a baby elephant.

“How do you know?” I ask. I sample the air, but all I smell is caramel corn.

I love caramel corn.

“I can hear her,” Stella says. “She’s crying for her mother.”

I listen. I hear the cars charging past. I hear the snore of the sun bears in their wire domain.

But I don’t hear any elephants.

“You’re just hoping,” I say.

Stella closes her eyes. “No,” she says softly, “not hoping. Not at all.”

Jambo

My TV is off, so while we wait for the new neighbour, I ask Stella to tell us a story.

Stella rubs her right front foot against the wall. Her foot is swollen again, an ugly deep red.

“If you’re not feeling well, Stella,” I say, “you could take a nap and tell us a story later.”

“I’m fine,” she says, and she carefully shifts her weight.

“Tell us the Jambo story,” I say. It’s a favourite of mine, but I don’t think Bob has ever heard it.

Because she remembers everything, Stella knows many stories. I like colourful tales with black beginnings and stormy middles and cloudless blue-sky endings. But any story will do.

I’m not in a position to be picky.

“Once upon a time,” Stella begins, “there was a human boy. He was visiting a gorilla family at a place called a zoo.”

“What’s a zoo?” Bob asks. He’s a street-smart dog, but there’s much he hasn’t seen.

“A good zoo,” Stella says, “is a large domain. A wild cage. A safe place to be. It has room to roam and humans who don’t hurt.” She pauses, considering her words. “A good zoo is how humans make amends.”

Stella moves a bit, groaning softly. “The boy stood on a wall,” she continues, “watching, pointing, but he lost his balance and fell into the wild cage.”

“Humans are clumsy,” I interrupt. “If only they would knuckle walk, they wouldn’t topple so often.”

Stella nods. “A good point, Ivan. In any case, the boy lay in a motionless heap, while the humans gasped and cried. The silverback, whose name was Jambo, examined the boy, as was his duty, while his troop watched from a safe distance.

“Jambo stroked the child gently. He smelled the boy’s pain, and then he stood watch.

“When the boy awoke, his humans cried out, ‘Stay still! Don’t move!’ because they were certain – humans are always certain about things – that Jambo would crush the boy’s life from him.

“The boy moaned. The crowd waited, hushed, expecting the worst.

“Jambo led his troop away.

“Men came down on ropes and whisked the child to waiting arms.”

“Was the boy all right?” Bob asks.

“He wasn’t hurt,” Stella says, “although I wouldn’t be surprised if his parents hugged him many times that night, in between their scoldings.”

Bob, who had been chewing his tail, pauses, tilting his head. “Is that a true story?”

“I always tell the truth,” Stella replies. “Although I sometimes confuse the facts.”

Lucky

I’ve heard the Jambo story many times. Stella says that humans found it odd that the huge silverback didn’t kill the boy.

Why, I wonder, was that so surprising? The boy was young, scared, alone.

He was, after all, just another great ape.

Bob nudges me with his cold nose. “Ivan,” he says, “why aren’t you and Stella in a zoo?”

I look at Stella. She looks at me. She smiles sadly with her eyes, just a little, the way only elephants can do.

“Just lucky, I guess,” she says.

Arrival

The new neighbour arrives after the four o’clock show.

When the truck comes lumbering towards the parking lot, Bob scampers over to inform us.

Bob always knows what’s happening. He’s a useful friend to have, especially when you can’t leave your domain.

With a groan, Mack lifts the sliding metal door near the food court, the place where deliveries are made.

A big white truck is backing up to the door, belching smoke. When the driver opens the truck, I know that Stella is right.

A baby elephant is inside. I see her trunk, poking out from the blackness.

I’m glad for Stella. But when I glance at her, I see she is not glad at all.

“Stand back, everyone!” Mack yells. “We’ve got a new arrival. This is Ruby, folks. Three hundred pounds of fun to save our sorry butts. This gal is gonna sell us some tickets.”

Mack and two men climb into the black cave of the truck. We hear noise, scuffling, a word Mack uses when he’s angry.

Ruby makes a noise too, like one of the little trumpets they sell at the gift store.

“Move,” Mack says, but still there is no Ruby. “Move,” he says again. “We haven’t got all day.”

Inside her domain, Stella paces as much as she’s able: two steps one way, two steps the other. She slaps her trunk against rusty metal bars. She grumbles. “Stella,” I ask, “did you hear the baby?”

Stella mutters something under her breath, a word she uses when she’s angry.

“Relax, Stella,” I say. “It will be OK.”

“Ivan,” Stella says, “it will never, ever be OK,” and I know enough to stop talking.

Stella Helps

The men are still yelling. Some of the yelling is at each other, but most of it is at Ruby.

We hear scrambling, pounding, shifting. The side of the truck shudders.

“I’m starting to like this elephant,” Bob whispers.

“I’m getting the big one,” Mack says. “Maybe she can coax the stupid brat out of the truck.”

Mack opens Stella’s door. “Come on, girl,” he urges. He unties the rope attached to the floor bolt.

Stella pushes past Mack, nearly knocking him down. She rushes as best she can, limping heavily, toward the open back door of the truck. She catches her swollen foot on the edge of the ramp and winces. Blood trickles down.

Halfway up the ramp she pauses. The noise in the truck stops. Ruby falls silent.

Slowly Stella makes her way up the rest of the ramp. It groans under her weight, and I can tell how much she is hurting by the awkward way she moves.

At the top of the incline she stops. She pokes her trunk into the emptiness.

We wait.

A tiny grey trunk appears. Shyly it reaches out, tasting the air. Stella curls her own trunk around the baby’s. They make soft rumbling sounds.

We wait some more. A hush falls over the entire Big Top Mall.

Thump. Thump. Step, step, pause. Step, step, pause.

And there she is, so small she can fit underneath Stella with room to spare. Her skin sags and she sways unsteadily as she makes her way down the ramp.

“Not the greatest specimen,” Mack says, “but I got her cheap from this bankrupt circus out west. They had her shipped over from Africa. Only had her a month before they went bust.” He gestures toward Ruby. “Thing is, people love babies. Baby elephants, baby gorillas, heck, give me a baby alligator and I could make a killing.”

Stella ushers Ruby towards her domain. Mack and the two men follow. At Stella’s door, Ruby hesitates.

Mack gives Ruby a shove, but she doesn’t budge. “Doggone it, get a clue, Ruby,” he mutters, but Ruby isn’t moving, and neither is Stella.

Mack grabs a broom. He raises it. Instantly, Stella steps in front of Ruby to shield her.

“Get in the cage, both of you!” Mack shouts.

Stella stares at Mack, considering. Gently but firmly, using her trunk, she nudges Ruby into her domain. Only then does Stella enter. Mack slams the door shut with a clang.

I see two trunks entwined. I hear Stella whispering.

“Poor kid,” says Bob. “Welcome to the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, Home of the One and Only Ivan.”

Old News

When Julia comes, she sits by Stella’s domain and watches the new baby. She barely talks to me.

Stella doesn’t talk to me either. She is too busy nuzzling Ruby.

She is cute, little Ruby, with her ears flapping like palm leaves, but I am handsome and strong.

Bob trots a circle around my belly before settling down in just the right spot. “Give it up, Ivan,” he says. “You’re old news.”

Julia gets out a piece of paper and a pencil. I can see that she is drawing Ruby.

I move to the corner of my domain to pout. Bob grumbles. He doesn’t like it when I disrupt his naps.

“Homework,” Julia’s father scolds. Julia sighs and puts her drawing aside.

I grunt, and Julia glances in my direction. “Poor old Ivan,” she says. “I’ve been ignoring you, haven’t I?”

I grunt again, a dignified, indifferent grunt.

Julia thinks for a moment, then smiles. She walks over to my domain, to the spot in the corner where the glass is broken. She slides a piece of paper through. She rolls a pencil across my cement floor.

“You can draw the baby elephant too,” Julia says.

I bite the pencil in two with my magnificent teeth. Then I eat the paper.

Tricks

Even after Julia and her father leave, I try to keep sulking. But it’s no use.

Gorillas are not, by nature, pouters.

“Stella?” I call. “It’s a full moon. Did you see?”

Sometimes, when we are lucky, we catch a glimpse of the moon through the skylight in the food court.

“I did,” Stella says. She is whispering, and I realise that Ruby must be asleep.

“Is Ruby all right?” I ask.

“She’s too thin, Ivan,” Stella says. “Poor baby. She was in that truck for days. Mack bought her from a circus, the same way he bought me, but she hadn’t been there long. She was born in the wild, like us.”

“Will she be OK?” I ask.

Stella doesn’t answer my question. “The circus trainers chained her to the floor, Ivan. All four feet. Twenty-three hours a day.”

I puzzle over why this would be a good idea. I always try to give humans the benefit of the doubt.

“Why would they do that?” I finally ask.

“To break her spirit,” Stella says. “So she could learn to balance on a pedestal. So she could stand on her hind legs. So a dog could jump on her back while she walked in mindless circles.”

I hear her tired voice and think of all the tricks Stella has learned.

Introductions

When I awake the next morning, I see a little trunk poking out between the bars of Stella’s domain.

“Hello,” says a small, clear voice. “I’m Ruby.” She waves her trunk.

“Hello,” I say, “I’m Ivan.”

“Are you a monkey?” Ruby asks.

“Certainly not.”

Bob’s ears perk up, although his eyes stay closed. “He’s a gorilla,” he says. “And I am a dog of uncertain heritage.”

“Why did the dog climb your tummy?” Ruby asks.

“Because it’s there,” Bob murmurs.

“Is Stella awake?” I ask.

“Aunt Stella’s asleep,” Ruby says. “Her foot is hurting, I think.”

Ruby turns her head. Her eyes are like Stella’s, black and long-lashed, bottomless lakes fringed by tall grass. “When is breakfast?” she asks.

“Soon,” I say. “When the mall opens and the workers come.”

“Where,” – Ruby twists her head in the other direction – “where are the other elephants?”

“It’s just you and Stella,” I say, and for some reason, I feel we have let her down.

“Are there more of you?”

“Not,” I say, “at the moment.”

Ruby picks up a piece of hay and considers it. “Do you have a mum and a dad?”

“Well… I used to.”

“Everyone has parents,” Bob explains. “It’s unavoidable.”

“Before the circus, I used to live with my mum and my aunts and my sisters and my cousins,” Ruby says. She drops the hay, picks it up, twirls it. “They’re dead.”

I don’t know what to say. I am not really enjoying this conversation, but I can see that Ruby isn’t done talking. To be polite, I say, “I’m sorry to hear that, Ruby.”

“Humans killed them,” she says.

“Who else?” Bob says, and we all fall silent.

Stella and Ruby

All morning, Stella strokes Ruby, pats her, smells her. They flap their ears. They rumble and roar. They sway as if they’re dancing. Ruby clings to Stella’s tail. She slips under Stella’s belly.

Sometimes they just lean into each other, their trunks twirled together like jungle vines.

Stella looks so happy, and it’s more fun to watch than any nature show I’ve ever seen on TV.

Home of the One and Only Ivan

George and Mack are out by the highway. I can see them through one of my windows. They are next to each other on tall wooden ladders, leaning against the billboard that tells the cars to stop and visit the One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.

George has a bucket and a long-handled broom. Mack has pieces of paper. He slaps a piece against the billboard. George dips the broom into the bucket. He wets the paper with the liquid from the bucket, and somehow the paper stays in place.

They put up many pieces before they are done.

When they climb down from the ladders, I see that they’ve added a picture of a little elephant to the billboard. The elephant has a lopsided smile. She is wearing a red hat, and her tail curls like a pig’s. She doesn’t look like Ruby. She doesn’t even look like an elephant.

I’ve only known Ruby one day, and I could have drawn her better.

Art Lesson

Ruby asks a lot of questions. She says, “Ivan, why is your tummy so big?” and “Have you ever seen a green giraffe?” and “Can you get me one of those pink clouds that the humans are eating?”

When Ruby asks, “What is that on your wall?” I explain that it’s a jungle. She says the flowers have no scent and the waterfall has no water and the trees have no roots.

“I am aware of that,” I say. “It’s art. A picture made with paint.”

“Do you know how to make art?” Ruby asks.

“Yes, I do,” I say, and I puff up my chest, just a little. “I’ve always been an artist. I love drawing.”

“Why do you love it?” Ruby asks.

I pause. I’ve never talked to anyone about this before. “When I’m drawing a picture, I feel… quiet inside.”

Ruby frowns. “Quiet is boring.”

“Not always.”

Ruby scratches the back of her neck with her trunk. “What do you draw, anyway?”

“Bananas, mostly. Things in my domain. My drawings sell at the gift store for twenty-five dollars apiece, with a frame.”

“What’s a frame?” Ruby asks. “What’s a dollar? What’s a gift store?”

I close my eyes. “I’m a little sleepy, Ruby.”

“Have you ever driven a truck?” Ruby asks.

I don’t answer.

“Ivan?” Ruby asks. “Can Bob fly?”

A memory flashes past, surprising me. I think of my father, snoring peacefully under the sun while I try every trick I know to wake him.

Perhaps, I realise, he wasn’t really such a sound sleeper after all.

Treat

“How’s that foot, old girl?” George asks Stella.

Stella pokes her trunk through the bars. She inspects George’s right shirt pocket for the treat he brings her every night without fail.

George doesn’t always bring me treats. Stella’s his favourite, but I don’t mind. She’s my favourite too.

Stella sees that George’s pocket is empty. She gives George a frustrated nudge with her trunk, and Julia giggles.

Stella moves to George’s left pocket and discovers a carrot. Nimbly she removes it.

Mack walks past. “Toilet’s plugged up in the men’s bathroom,” he says. “Big mess.”

“I’ll take care of it.” George sighs.

Mack turns to leave. “Um, before you go, Mack,” George says, “you might want to take a look at Stella’s foot. I think it’s infected again.”

“Darn thing never does heal up right.” Mack rubs his eyes. “I’ll keep an eye on it. Money’s tight, though. Can’t be calling the vet every time she sneezes.”

George strokes Stella’s trunk. She inspects his pockets one more time, just in case.

“Sorry, girl,” George says gently, as he watches Mack walk away.

Elephant Jokes

“Ivan? Bob?”

I blink. The dawn sky is a smudge of grey flecked with pink, like a picture made with two crayons. In the shadows, I can just make out Ruby, waving hello with her trunk.

“Are you awake?” Ruby asks.

“We are now,” says Bob.

“Aunt Stella’s still asleep and I don’t want to wake her ’cause she said her foot was hurting but I’m really, really,” – Ruby pauses for a breath – “really bored.”

Bob opens one eye. “You know what I do when I’m bored?”

“What?” Ruby asks eagerly.

Bob closes his eye. “I sleep.”

“It’s a little early, Ruby,” I say gently.

“I’m used to getting up early.” Ruby wraps her trunk around one of the bars on her door. “At my old circus we always got up when it was still dark and then we had breakfast and we walked in a circle. And then they chained my feet up and that really hurt.”

Ruby falls silent. Instantly Bob is snoring.

“Ivan?” Ruby asks. “Do you know any jokes? I especially like jokes about elephants.”

“Um. Well, let me see. I heard Mack tell one once.” I yawn. “Uhh… how can you tell that an elephant has been in the refrigerator?”

“How?”

“By the footprints in the butter.”

Ruby doesn’t react. I sit up on my elbows, trying not to disturb Bob. “Get it?”

“What’s a refrigerator?” Ruby asks.

“It’s a human thing, a cold box with a door. They put food inside.”

“They put food in the door? Or food in the box? And is it a big box?” Ruby asks. “Or a little box?”

I can see this is going to take a while, so I sit up all the way. Bob slides off, grumbling.

I reach for my pencil, the one I snapped in two with my teeth. “Here,” I say, “I’ll draw you a picture of one.”

In the dim light, it takes me a minute to find the piece of paper Julia gave me. It’s a little damp and has a smear of something orange on it. I think it’s from a tangerine.

I try my best to make a refrigerator. The broken pencil is not cooperating, but I do what I can.

By the time I’m done, the first streaks of morning sun have appeared in flashy cartoon colours. I hold up my picture for Ruby to see.

She studies it intently, her head turned so that one black eye is trained on my drawing. “Wow. You made that! Is this the thing you were telling me about before? Art?”

“Sure is. I can draw all kinds of things. I’m especially good at fruit.”

“Could you draw a banana right now?” Ruby asks.

“Absolutely.” I turn the paper over and sketch.

“Wow,” Ruby says again in an awed voice when I hold up the page. “It looks good enough to eat!”

She makes a happy, lilting sound, an elephant laugh. It’s like the song of a bird I recall from long ago, a tiny yellow bird with a voice like dancing water.

Strange. I’d forgotten all about that bird, how she’d wake me every morning at dawn, when I was still curled safely in my mother’s nest.

It’s a good feeling, making Ruby laugh, so I draw another picture, and another, along the edges of the paper: an orange, a candy bar, a carrot.

“What are you two up to?” Stella asks, moaning as she tries to move her sore foot.

“How are you this morning?” I ask.

“Just feeling my age,” Stella says. “I’m fine.”

“Ivan is making me pictures,” Ruby says. “And he told me a joke. I really like Ivan, Aunt Stella.”

Stella winks at me. “Me too,” she says.

“Ivan? Want to hear my favourite joke?” Ruby asks. “I heard it from Maggie. She was one of the giraffes in my old circus.”

“Sure,” I say.

“It goes like this.” Ruby clears her throat. “What do elephants have that nothing else has?”

Trunks, I think, but I don’t answer because I don’t want to ruin Ruby’s fun.

“I don’t know, Ruby,” I reply. “What do elephants have that nothing else has?”

“Baby elephants,” Ruby says.

“Good one, Ruby,” I say, watching Stella gently stroke Ruby’s back with her trunk.

“Good one,” Stella says softly.

Children

Once I asked Stella if she’d ever had any babies.

She shook her head. “I never had the opportunity.”

“You would have made a great mother,” I told her.

“Thank you, Ivan,” Stella said, clearly pleased. “I like to think so. Having young ones is a big responsibility. You have to teach them how to take mud baths, of course, and emphasise the importance of fibre in their diet.” She looked away, contemplating.

Elephants are excellent at contemplating.

“I think the hardest part of being a parent,” Stella added after a while, “would be keeping your babies safe from harm. Protecting them.”

“The way silverbacks do in the jungle,” I said.

“Exactly.” Stella nodded.

“You would have been good at protecting too,” I said confidently.

“I’m not so sure,” Stella said, gazing at the iron bars surrounding her. “I’m not sure at all.”

The Parking Lot

Mack and George are chatting while George cleans one of my windows.

“George,” Mack says, frowning, “there’s something wrong with the parking lot.”

George sighs. “I’ll take a look as soon as I’m done with this window. What’s the problem?”

“There are cars in it, that’s what’s wrong. Cars, George!” Mack breaks into a grin. “I think things are actually starting to pick up a bit. It’s gotta be the billboard. People see that baby elephant and they just have to stop and spend their hard-earned cash.”

“I hope so,” George says. “We sure could use the business.”

Mack’s right. I have noticed more visitors coming since he and George added the picture of Ruby to the sign. People crowd around Ruby and Stella’s domain, oohing and ahhing at the sight of a such a tiny elephant.

I gaze out at the huge sign that makes humans stop and spend their hard-earned cash. I have to admit that the picture of Ruby is rather cute, even if she doesn’t look like a real elephant.

I wonder if Mack could add a little red hat and a curly tail to the picture of me. Maybe then more visitors would stop by my domain.

I could use a few oohs and ahhs myself.

Ruby’s Story

“Ivan, tell me another joke, please!” Ruby begs after the two o’clock show.

“I think I may have run out of jokes,” I admit.

“A story, then,” Ruby says. “Aunt Stella’s sleeping. And there’s nothing to do.”

I tap my chin. I’m trying hard to think. But when I gaze up at the food court skylight, I’m mesmerised by the elephant-coloured clouds galloping past.

Ruby taps her foot impatiently. “I know! I’ll tell you a story,” she says. “A real live true one.”

“Good idea,” I say. “What’s it about?”

“It’s about me.” Ruby lowers her voice. “It’s about me and how I fell into a hole. A big hole. Humans dug it.”

Bob pricks his ears and joins me by the window. “I always enjoy a good digging story,” he says.

“It was a big hole full of water near a village,” Ruby says. “I don’t know why humans made it.”

“Sometimes you just need to dig for the sake of digging,” Bob reflects.

“We were looking for food,” Ruby says, “my family and I. But I wandered off and got lost and went too close to the village.” Ruby looks at me, eyes wide. “I was so scared when I fell into that hole.”

“Of course you were,” I say. “I would have been scared too.”

“Me too,” Bob admits. “And I like holes.”

“The hole was huge.” Ruby pokes her trunk through the bars and makes a circle in the air. “And guess what?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “The water was all the way up to my neck and I was sure I was going to die.”

I shudder. “What happened then?” I ask.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Bob says darkly. “They captured her and put her in a box and shipped her off and here she is. Just like they did with Stella.” He pauses to scratch an ear. “Humans. Rats have bigger hearts. Roaches have kinder souls. Flies have—”

“No, Bob!” Ruby interrupts. “You’re wrong. These humans helped me. When they saw I was trapped, they grabbed ropes and they made loops around my neck and my tummy. The whole entire village helped, even little kids and grandmas and grandpas, and they all pulled and pulled and…”

Ruby stops. Her lashes are wet, and I know she must be remembering all the terrible feelings from that day.

“…and they saved me,” she finishes in a whisper.

Bob blinks. “They saved you?” he repeats.

“When I was finally out, everyone cheered,” Ruby says. “And the children fed me fruit. And then all those humans led me back to my family. It took the whole day to find them.”

“No way,” Bob says, still doubtful.

“It’s true,” Ruby says. “Every word.”

“Of course it’s true,” I say.

“I’ve heard rescue stories like that before.” It’s Stella’s voice. She sounds weary. Slowly she makes her way over to Ruby. “Humans can surprise you sometimes. An unpredictable species, Homo sapiens.”

Bob still looks unconvinced. “But Ruby’s here now,” he points out. “If humans are so swell, who did that to her?”

I send Bob a grumpy look. Sometimes he doesn’t know when to keep quiet.

Ruby swallows, and I’m afraid she’s going to cry. But when she speaks, her voice is strong. “Bad humans killed my family, and bad humans sent me here. But that day in the hole, it was humans who saved me.” Ruby leans her head on Stella’s shoulder. “Those humans were good.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Bob says. “I just don’t understand them. I never will.”

“You’re not alone,” I say, and I turn my gaze back to the racing grey clouds.

A Hit

Stella’s foot hurts too much for her to do any hard tricks for the two o’clock show. Instead, Mack pulls her, limping, into the ring, where she tracks a circle in the sawdust.

Ruby clings to her like a shadow. Ruby’s eyes go wide when Snickers jumps on Stella’s back, then leaps on to her head.

At the four o’clock show, Stella can only get as far as the entrance to the ring. Ruby refuses to leave her side.

At the seven o’clock show, Stella stays in her domain. When Mack comes for Ruby, Stella whispers something in her ear. Ruby looks at her pleadingly, but after a moment, she follows Mack to the ring.

Ruby stands alone. The bright lights make her blink. She flaps her ears. She makes her tiny trumpet sound.

The humans stop eating their popcorn. They coo. They clap.

Ruby is a hit.

I don’t know whether to be happy or sad.

Worry

When Julia arrives after the show, she brings three thick books, one pencil, and something she calls Magic Markers.

“Here, Ivan,” she says, and she slides two Magic Markers and a piece of paper into my domain.

I like the sundown colours, red and purple. But I don’t feel like colouring. I’m worried about Stella. All evening she’s been quiet, and she hasn’t eaten a bit of her dinner.

Julia follows my gaze. “Where is Stella, anyway?” she asks, and she goes to Stella’s gate. Ruby extends her trunk and Julia pats it. “Hi, baby,” she says. “Is Stella all right?”

Stella is lying in a pile of dirty hay. Her breath is ragged.

“Dad,” Julia calls, “could you come here a minute?”

George sets aside his mop.

“Do you think she’s OK, Dad?” Julia asks. “Look at the way she’s breathing. Can we call Mack? I think there’s something really wrong.”

“He must know about her.” George rubs his chin. “He always knows. But a vet costs money, Jules.”

“Please?” Julia’s eyes are wet. “Call him, Dad.”

George gazes at Stella. He puts his hands on his hips and sighs. He calls Mack.

I can’t hear all of his words, but I can see George’s lips tightened into a grim line.

Gorilla expressions and human expressions are a lot alike.

“Mack says the vet’s coming in the morning if Stella’s not any better,” he tells Julia. “He says he’s not going to let her die on him, not after all the money he’s put into her.”

George strokes Julia’s hair. “She’ll be all right. She’s a tough old girl.”

Julia sits by Stella’s domain until it’s time to go home. She doesn’t do her homework. She doesn’t even draw.

The Promise

My domain gleams with moonlight when I awake to the sound of Stella’s calls.

“Ivan?” Stella says in a hoarse whisper. “Ivan?”

“I’m here, Stella.” I sit up abruptly and Bob topples off my stomach. I run to a window. I can see Ruby next to Stella, sleeping soundly.

“Ivan, I want you to promise me something,” Stella says.

“Anything,” I say.

“I’ve never asked for a promise before, because promises are forever, and forever is an unusually long time. Especially when you’re in a cage.”

“Domain,” I correct.

“Domain,” she agrees.

I straighten to my full height. “I promise, Stella,” I say in a voice like my father’s.

“But you haven’t even heard what I’m asking yet,” she says, and she closes her eyes for a moment. Her great chest shudders.

“I promise anyway.”

Stella doesn’t say anything for a long time. “Never mind,” she finally says. “I don’t know what I was thinking. The pain is making me addled.”

Ruby stirs. Her trunk moves, as if she is reaching for something that isn’t there.

When I say the words, they surprise me. “You want me to take care of Ruby.”

Stella nods, a small gesture that makes her wince. “If she could have a life that’s… different from mine. She needs a safe place, Ivan. Not—”

“Not here,” I say.

It would be easier to promise to stop eating, to stop breathing, to stop being a gorilla.

“I promise, Stella,” I say. “I promise it on my word as a silverback.”

Knowing

Before Mack, before Bob, even before Ruby, I know that Stella is gone.

I know it the way you know that summer is over and winter is on its way. I just know.

Stella once teased me that elephants are superior because they feel more joy and more grief than apes.

“Your gorilla hearts are made of ice, Ivan,” she said, her eyes glittering. “Ours are made of fire.”

Right now I would give all the yogurt raisins in all the world for a heart made of ice.

Five Men

Bob heard from a rat, a reliable sort, that they tossed Stella’s body into a garbage truck.

It took five men and a forklift.

Comfort

All day I try to comfort Ruby, but what can I say?

That Stella had a good and happy life? That she lived as she was meant to live? That she died with those who loved her most nearby?

At least the last is true.

Crying

Julia cries all evening, while her father sweeps and mops and dusts and cleans the toilets.

When George sees Mack, he runs to him. I can only hear a few of his words. Vet. Should have. Wrong.

Mack shrugs. His shoulders droop. He leaves without a word.

When George wipes the fingerprints off my glass, his cheeks are wet. He doesn’t meet my eyes.

The One and Only Ivan

When all the humans have left, I send Bob to check on Ruby. “How is she?” I ask when he returns.

“She was shivering,” Bob says. “I tried to cover her with hay. And I told her not to worry because you were going to save her.”

I glare at him. “You told her that?”

“You promised Stella.” Bob lowers his head. “I wanted to make the kid feel better.”

“I shouldn’t have made that promise, Bob. I just wanted—” I point to Stella’s domain, and for a moment, it seems like I’ve forgotten how to breathe. “I wanted to make Stella happy, I guess. But I can’t save Ruby. I can’t even save myself.”

I flop on to my back. The cement is always cold, but tonight it hurts.

Bob leaps on to my belly. “You are the One and Only Ivan,” he says. “Mighty Silverback.”

He licks my chin, and he’s not even checking for leftovers.

“Say it,” Bob commands.

I look away.

“Say it, Ivan.”

I don’t answer, so Bob licks my nose until I can’t stand it any longer.

“I am the One and Only Ivan,” I mutter.

“And don’t you ever forget it,” he says.

When I gaze at the food-court skylight, the moon Stella loved is shrouded in clouds.

Once Upon A Time

All night, Ruby moans and sniffles. I pace my domain. I don’t want to fall asleep, in case she needs something.

“Ivan,” Bob says gently, “get some sleep. Please. For your sake. And for mine.”

Bob can’t sleep unless he is on my stomach.

I hear a stirring. “Ivan?” Ruby calls.

I rush to my window. “Ruby? Are you all right?”

“I miss Aunt Stella,” Ruby sobs. “And I miss my mom and my sisters and my aunts and my cousins too.”

“I know,” I say, because it’s all I can think of.

Ruby sniffles. “I can’t sleep. Do you know any stories the way Aunt Stella did?”

“Not really,” I admit. “Stories were Stella’s specialty.”

“Tell me a story about when you were little,” Ruby pleads. She puts her trunk through the bars. “Please, Ivan?”

I scratch the back of my head. “I don’t remember things, Ruby,” I admit.

“It’s true,” Bob says, trying to be helpful. “Ivan has a terrible memory. He’s the opposite of an elephant.”

Ruby lets out a long, shivery breath. “Oh, well. That’s OK. ’Night, Ivan. And Bob.”

I listen to Ruby’s soft sobs for long, horrible minutes.

Then I hear myself saying, “Once upon a time there was a gorilla named Ivan.”

And, slowly and deliberately, I try to remember.

The Grunt

I was born in a place humans call central Africa, in a dense rainforest so beautiful no crayons could ever do it justice.

Gorillas don’t name their newborns right away, the way humans do. We get to know our babies first. We wait to see hints of what might yet be.

When they saw how much she loved to chase me around the forest, my parents decided on my twin sister’s name: Tag.

Oh, how I loved to play tag with my sister! She was nimble, but when I got too close, she would leap on to my unsuspecting father. Then I would join her and we would bounce on that tolerant belly until he gave us the Grunt, the rooting-pig sound that meant Enough!

That game never got old.

Although my father might have disagreed.

Mud

It didn’t take long for my parents to find my name. All day long, every day, I made pictures. I drew on rocks and bark and my poor mother’s back.

I used the sap from leaves. I used the juice from fruit. But mostly I used mud.

And that is what they called me: Mud.

To a human, Mud might not sound like much. But to me, it was everything.

Protector

My family, which humans call a troop, was just like any other gorilla family. There were ten of us—my father, the silverback; my mother and three other adult females; a juvenile male called a blackback; and two other young gorillas. Tag and I were the babies of the group.

We squabbled from time to time, as families will. But my father knew how to keep us in line with a simple scowl. And for the most part, we were happy to do what we were meant to do: to feed and forage and nap and play.

My father was a master at leading us to the ripest fruit for our morning feast and the finest branches for our night nests. He was everything a silverback is meant to be: a guide, a teacher, a protector.

And nobody could chest beat like my father.

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