Part 2
Caleb turned toward Porter. The silverback glanced at him, then returned his attention to Ellie, and Caleb felt his usual introduction become strangely inadequate. He had helped care for this animal for eleven years; the girl seemed to think the important part was that Porter knew it.
“He sees me most days,” Caleb said. “Does he scare you?”
“No.”
“Even when he’s this close?”
Ellie looked at the great hand opposite hers. “He looks sad.”
Her mother’s mouth tightened. “She does this. She’ll tell me somebody’s unhappy, and I don’t even know who she’s talking about.” She adjusted the slipped cuff with two fingers. “I’m sorry.”
“She’s all right,” Caleb said.
He had cared for a female who carried her stillborn infant for days. He had watched a young male stop eating after separation from his brother, and a troop grow subdued when its oldest female died. He didn’t need Ellie to teach him that an ape could suffer; what unsettled him was how readily Porter was resting under her attention.
The silverback lowered his hand. He settled onto his knuckles, bent his elbows, and lowered his chest onto the ground. Ellie sat down across from him, crossing her legs with an awkward tug at one sneaker.
“You’ll get dirty,” her mother whispered, then looked as if she wished she’d said something else.
“He’s tired.”
Porter’s eyes shifted once more to Caleb.
The trailer returned in pieces: the narrow working space, the wet jacket sticking between his shoulders, a bottle of water he had held out to a veterinary technician because her hands were occupied. Outside, late-March rain had turned the lane into a rut deep enough to catch a boot.
Pine Ridge Exotics had advertised birthday parties until almost the end. When the authorities closed it, there were cats in short pens, stressed parrots picking at themselves, and a bear walking the same worn trench. The gorilla had been in a back enclosure made from rusting panels.
The intake sheet gave his age as thirteen to fifteen. It offered no useful name. His owner called him difficult while the veterinarian examined the infected wounds around both wrists; Caleb remembered wanting the man to stop talking long enough to hear the animal breathe.
Moving him required an emergency veterinary team. His fever and poor condition made the sedation difficult, and twice a change in his breathing brought the monitoring team abruptly closer. Caleb worked where he was told, passing supplies along the narrow side of the secured transport compartment.
Then the gorilla opened his eyes.
Caleb was beyond the crate barrier, close enough to see him focus. There was no room for a quick retreat that wouldn’t put someone else in the way. At the veterinarian’s low instruction, he held still while the team assessed the change.
Water hammered the trailer roof. Caleb’s jacket dripped onto the floor, one drop after another, and the animal followed his face with an expression he had never managed to remove from his memory.
“We’re taking you with us,” he told him. “I’m staying right here.”
For nearly an hour he went on saying it as the team worked, then through the long wait for the animal to be stable enough to travel. The words were nearly gone from his voice by the time the rain eased. When a colleague offered to relieve him, he stayed.
There had been surgery afterward, quarantine, and months of small changes that wouldn’t have looked like progress to a visitor. A door opening ceased to bring the same alarm. Food could arrive without a hurried retreat to the farthest corner.
One keeper eventually joked that the big fellow carried the whole building around on his shoulders, like a hotel porter with everybody’s bags. Porter went into the care records, and later onto the habitat sign. He acquired a troop and a routine, although the wounds never entirely stopped affecting the way he moved.
Caleb had come to know the settled animal so well that he seldom pictured the one in the trailer. Now the girl beside him hadn’t even been born when the rescue took place. She leaned toward the window until her reflection hovered over Porter’s lowered face.
“You can rest,” she told him. “You don’t have to keep looking.”
Porter closed his eyes.
Caleb raised a hand behind him, and Marco began easing the spectators farther back. The girl’s mother knelt, setting her map on her thigh. For a moment she concentrated on folding one torn corner flat.
“Ellie, look at me.” She waited until the child did. “When Caleb asks us to do something, we do it. All right?”
“Okay.”
Caleb waited for that exchange to finish. “Have you seen Porter before?”
“No,” the mother said. “We’ve never been here.”
Ellie examined her hands. “Maybe it wasn’t here.”
Her mother started to answer, but Caleb asked her to give Ellie a moment. The child’s thumb worked at the seam of her sleeve. She seemed to be searching for words, and he resisted the urge to offer her some.
“Like a song,” she said at last. “You don’t know the name. But you know what comes next.”
Caleb had no useful follow-up. Porter opened his eyes and looked between them while the girl’s mother reached for her map. She picked it up, then put it down again.
Dr. Hannah Ellis called over the radio from outside the gallery. The head veterinarian asked whether Caleb wanted her inside, and he told her yes, quietly, with the emergency equipment kept out of public view.
Ellie looked up at that. “Will she hurt him?”
“She’s coming to watch with us,” Caleb said. “We’re not going to hurt him.”
Porter lifted one finger toward the pane. Ellie unfolded her legs enough to reach, placing her palm opposite the broad knuckle. Caleb could see the thickness of the glass between the two outlines when he looked along its edge.
Hannah came through the staff-side entrance in her ordinary work clothes. She watched Porter, checked the troop, then leaned close enough to speak without carrying her voice across the gallery.
“Anything before this? A display?”
“Nothing I’ve seen. He’s been settling.”
“And you want to let them stay.”
“For a few minutes. Keep it this quiet.” Caleb looked at her. “I’ll stay here.”
Hannah considered the emptying room, the mother within reach of her child, the silverback’s slow breathing. Then she nodded and took a place against the wall. Marco held incoming visitors while those already present left in small, reluctant groups.
Ellie put her hands on her knees. Porter rested near the pane, his chin low, and she told him softly that she was still there. Caleb remained crouched beside the mother as the gorilla let his eyes close again.
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