Part 6
Ruth was already waiting by the employee security gate at six in the morning, long before the Ohio sun had a chance to bake the morning dampness out of the asphalt. She carried a faded canvas tote bag over her shoulder. Inside was a thick, cracked leather photo album.
I badged her through the perimeter gates and walked her down the empty paths of the North Trek. I had kept my word. In a shaded, restricted-access alcove usually reserved for vet staff observations, I unfolded a heavy-duty steel chair and placed it directly against the two-inch acrylic viewing wall.
Before she sat down, Ruth opened the album across her hands. She didn’t offer a long, emotional speech. She simply pointed to the yellowed photographs, their corners permanently curled from years of exposure to the dry African heat. I looked over her shoulder. There was a tiny, tawny lump asleep on a wool blanket. There was a clumsy cub swatting uncoordinated at a braided rope. And there was a shot of him standing awkwardly on three legs, his right front limb encased in a heavy, white plaster cast.
The final picture showed Ruth, twelve years younger, her face tanned and dusted with dirt, holding the cub tightly against her chest. The animal was staring into the camera lens with wide, milky eyes, completely fragile and entirely dependent on her body heat to survive.
I looked up from the vulnerable creature in the photograph to the massive, scarred apex predator currently resting inside the habitat. Reconciling the two felt biologically impossible.
Ruth gently closed the album and took her seat.
The moment the metal legs of the folding chair scraped against the concrete, Titan lifted his head. He pulled his massive frame up from the dirt, completely ignoring the heavy beef shank the morning crew had left in his feeding chute. He walked directly across the enclosure, his shoulder muscles rolling under his tawny coat, and approached the acrylic wall.
He didn’t pace, and he didn’t paw at the barrier. He simply lowered his four-hundred-and-fifty-pound body into the dust, directly opposite her chair.
Ruth lifted her hand and pressed it flat against the thick glass. Titan exhaled, a long, heavy breath that briefly fogged the acrylic right over her palm, and they simply sat together in the quiet morning air.