Дуглас Престон - Jennie

Pam: Jennie hug Pam?

Jennie: Opens her arms for a hug. Pam hugs Jennie. Jennie holds on to Pam for a long time before letting go.

Pam: Pam love Jennie .

Jennie: Go?

Pam: Pam go away .

Jennie: Bad bad Pam dead .

Pam: Pam not dead. Pam go away. I know. Bad bad. Pam go away very bad. Pam love Jennie .

Jennie: Pam Pam Pam sorry sorry Pam. Jennie bad. Bad bad bad bad bad dead dead dead .

The fall of 1973 stands out in my mind as one of the most difficult periods in my life.

The first blow came when Dr. Prentiss unexpectedly lost her funding for the Jennie project. We did not quite realize how dependent we were on her until she ceased coming three days a week. The withdrawal of funding also ended our work with Jennie at the museum. Harold had reached retirement age, and I had to move on to other projects. All the additional care for Jennie fell on Lea’s shoulders. At the same time, Sandy was in full rebellion against constituted authority and a disruptive influence in the house.

The fall made a sorry contrast to the August vacation we had just passed at the farmhouse in Maine. It was a wonderful summer, one of the best of our lives, and it was Jennie’s last summer in Maine.

I will never forget that summer. As we drove up, at least an hour from our destination Jennie was hooting and drumming on the seat with her hands. When she saw the wooden Indian, she let out a screech of joy, and as we turned into the driveway she rolled down the window and jumped out, even before the car had stopped. We saw her black form racing through the meadow to the apple trees. She sat in her favorite tree, screaming with delight, shaking the branches and clapping her hands. Sandy, at sixteen, was also happy to get away from Kibbencook, which he found oppressive and “middle class.”

Sarah was nine years old that summer. Her passions were reading and music. Sarah devoured books, sometimes two a day. Lea had to check her every night to make sure she turned out her light, or she would read to all hours and drag herself down to breakfast with dark circles under her eyes. She also loved classical music. She had started piano lessons and played tolerably well. We bought her a plastic portable record player that summer, and she set it up in the living room and listened endlessly to Chopin’s preludes, until the record became worn and scratchy. In Maine she could indulge in music and reading without the interruption of schoolwork.

Music was the only interest Jennie and Sarah had in common. Unfortunately, their respective ways of appreciating music were very different. As soon as the sounds of a Chopin prelude floated out of the living room, Jennie would appear out of nowhere and sit on the sofa with her eyes half closed, her lips pursed. As the music swelled to a climax, Jennie would begin to make unpleasant noises. We charitably called her noises “singing,” although they sounded more like the wheezing of a dying poodle. Sarah could not tolerate noise while she listened to her beloved Chopin. She had many clever ways of dealing with Jennie. Sometimes she stopped the record, went to the kitchen, and rattled the padlock on the refrigerator. Jennie could never resist the sound of an opening refrigerator, and she scurried toward the kitchen. Meanwhile, Sarah quickly returned to the living room via the back hall, locked the door, and started the record again, while Jennie banged on the refrigerator and rattled the doors. (Like the Kibbencook house, our farmhouse in Maine had locks on both sides of all the doors, as well as on the refrigerator and cupboards.) If that ruse failed, she would take a banana and throw it on the lawn; when Jennie raced out to get it she would lock the door.

That spring I bought a boat, a secondhand Boston Whaler with an eighteen-horsepower engine. It was not a big boat, but it was seaworthy. We took it out for the first time that August. Jennie, naturally, insisted on coming. After we felt comfortable with the boat we allowed Jennie to steer it. She sat in my lap while I controlled the throttle. She weaved about the ocean, turning the wheel this way and that, hooting with pleasure and hopping up and down. She became so excited at one point that she let go of the wheel and whirled around and around, her ultimate expression of joy. Handling the wheel gave her a sense of power and control, which she found enormously exciting.

We took the boat to a place called Brackett’s Ledge, which was covered with seals at low tide. It was a low spine of rock, black with seaweed, which the waves pounded incessantly. Jennie had never seen a seal. We pointed them out to her and she looked and looked, but she could not distinguish the seals from the rocks. When we got too close and they all started to shimmy into the water, Jennie squeaked with fright and crammed herself under the seat, whimpering. The seals began popping up in the water around us, curious, and we eventually coaxed Jennie out to watch them.

Jennie stared at them intently, a look of deep interest in her face. After a while she lost her fear and signed Play, play! at them. We didn’t know what the sign for seal was, and we did not have the ASL dictionary with us, so we made up a sign and taught it to her.

From then on, all we heard from Jennie was begging to Go seal! Go seal! Go boat seal! She became a fanatic seal watcher.

After that we often took the boat out to Brackett’s Ledge and from there went on to Hermit Island. Hermit Island was an ideal playground for Jennie. One could not have created a better environment for a rambunctious chimpanzee. It was deserted, and Jennie could race around, climb trees, pull up plants, throw stones, beat sticks on the ground, scream, and break branches, all activities we had tried to discourage at home. The boat was anchored in a cove offshore, beyond Jennie’s reach. Jennie could be herself on the island without our having to keep track of her or worry about her.

On the northern end of the island was a thick stand of black spruce trees, which Jennie climbed. When she reached the top she sometimes held on by one hand and swayed back and forth, howling with abandon at the sea, drunk with freedom. When she came down she had sap all over her arms and legs. She ran through the meadows screeching with joy, and she spent many hours whirling around trying to catch the monarch butterflies that floated among the milkweed and chokecherries. When she caught them, she cupped them in her hands and smelled them, as if they were flowers. When she released them, some would drop to earth traumatized or crushed, while others flew off in a spiraling panic while she watched, her hands and nose dusted with the orange powder from their wings.

The island was named for an old hermit who once lived there, and his house still stood in the center of the island. It was made of beachstones cemented together, with a wooden roof. The walls were almost two feet thick and a fireplace was built in a corner. Other than a few holes in the roof it made a perfect place to spend the night. It sheltered us from the wind and the salt spray off the rocks and the soaking fogs of the mornings.

The hermit’s name was John Tundish, and he had a curious history. According to the locals, Tundish had been born on a farm on the mainland. He was a simple, friendly boy. The farthest he had ever been from his house, they said, was Blacks Cove, about five miles to the south. When World War II broke out he enlisted, and was sent to Fort Pendleton in California, and from there shipped to the South Pacific.

Little was heard from him. When he returned from the war in 1945, he had stopped speaking. Not a word would he say to anyone. He bought Hermit Island — it was called Thrumcap Island at the time — for twenty-five dollars and moved there, where he lived for ten years.