Дуглас Престон - Jennie

And Sandy. We never saw him anymore. He had some girlfriend, her name was Sammie. Ugh. Oh dear, she was... she was pretty, that’s about all you could say about her. Brunette, quite petite. She didn’t wash and her hair looked like a rat’s nest. That was the style. They spent all their time together and poor Jennie was left out. Whenever Sammie was around Jennie was nervous and upset. I remember one time Sandy came by with Sammie, and after he left Jennie ran up to Sandy’s room and ripped the mattress right open. I... I expect they had done something on the bed. Oh dear, isn’t it awful to remember these things? Strewed all the stuffing everywhere, and then peed on the bed. It horrifies me just to remember it. Just talking to you is bringing back all these terrible memories...

Hugo and I finally had a talk. I’ll never forget it. We were both awfully upset. Hugo could hardly speak... We decided that Jennie had finally become dangerous. She really had. I told Hugo that we had to find another way. We talked and talked. Hugo denied it and denied it. He loved that chimpanzee. I finally had to say, It’s either me or the chimpanzee. I’m going to put Sarah in that car and take her away, and raise her where I can give her a reasonable childhood. It was really about Sarah, you see. It came down to that: Jennie or Sarah.

Hugo finally accepted the seriousness of the situation. But then we didn’t know what to do. Could we hire someone? Who? Jennie was just so strong and so willful. Nobody would have been able to handle her any better than us, and none of us could control her. Whoever we hired would probably have gotten bitten. We couldn’t risk that. But we couldn’t just lock Jennie up in her room all day. Send her to the zoo? That was unthinkable. To see Jennie locked in a cage, gawked at by the world...

Finally Hugo promised he would talk to Harold and Dr. Prentiss about it. They came over one afternoon. It was in 1974, I think. In the spring.

When Jennie saw Dr. Prentiss, she went wild. She was so happy. She had this enormous pink grin and she laughed and laughed. I was touched to see it. You know, I was also very touched to see that Dr. Prentiss actually cried a little. I didn’t think she had it in her. She was a terribly misguided young lady but she had feelings. They kissed and hugged and wouldn’t let each other go. Then we sat down in the living room over coffee.

Dr. Prentiss offered to take her right away. She wanted Jennie. When I first heard that, I was really quite shocked. It made me angry. I almost threw her out of the house. But then she started to explain. She made it sound so wonderful.

She explained that she was director of a chimpanzee rehabilitation center down in Florida. An island where they released chimps. It was right on the Gulf Coast, near Sarasota. Here, laboratory chimps could be reintroduced into the wild. They would actually train chimpanzees to gather their own food, to hunt, to build nests.

The purpose, you understand, was not to turn them back into wild and self-sufficient animals. Just to give them full and happy lives. Many of these lab chimps were like Jennie, and they’d become too difficult to handle. They had served science and mankind well, Dr. Prentiss said, and they deserved to be cared for. Some of them had led terrible lives in medical labs and humans owed it to them to redress that wrong. It sounded so humane. We had a responsibility to these animals. Previously, they would have been destroyed or just left locked in cages. The chimpanzees from her Barnum colony were down there, very happy and doing fine, she said. There were no cages or fences, since the island was its own natural cage. It was as close as possible to their natural African environment.

She went on and on. Jennie, she said, deserved to finally become a full-fledged chimpanzee. Jennie had been a human for a long time, and it wasn’t working. She didn’t understand what she was supposed to do, she didn’t have the biology for it, and she was unhappy. Et cetera, et cetera. She could live on the island, mate, raise a family, and finally be what nature meant her to be. Everything would be wonderful. It was all very plausible.

I really didn’t know what to say. Hugo was also silent. Harold agreed with Dr. Prentiss, and urged me and Hugo to think it over. Harold said he knew this time was long coming, and he had given the matter a great deal of thought. This would be the right thing to do. He said it would be like giving up a child. Could we do it? Could we put Jennie’s interests first? Could we let her fulfill her biological destiny? Could we let her go?

Oh, I sit here talking to you and I wonder: why did I ever listen to them? Why did I ever think they knew better than a mother? God damn them! The vile, vile, vile scientists .

That fire feels great, doesn’t it? Here’s your coffee. Now maybe you’re starting to see what I mean. Simplicity. You don’t need a three-thousand-square-foot house to be comfortable.

Hand me that kerosene lantern and we’ll get some light in here. Beans should be ready in an hour. Can you hear the wind starting to blow? It’s going to blizzard tonight. What the Navajos call a yasyítsoh . I’ve been learning Navajo. It’s a phenomenally difficult language, maybe the most difficult in the world. For an English speaker, that is. Lot harder than ASL, that’s for sure.

Where were we? Listen to the wind shaking and moaning in the stovepipe. Sounds like a dying man. Funny though, it makes you feel safe, doesn’t it? That’s the thing out here, you feel safe. Out there, where you came from, it’s dangerous as hell. I never felt safe until I got out here.

So. What else? Hermit Island? Sure, I remember that place. Back when I was fifteen or sixteen my father bought a boat and we used to camp on Hermit Island. There was an old hut on the island where we spent the night, with a big stone fireplace. Jennie loved that island. She could run free and do whatever she wanted. I think the only time she was truly free was on that island.

One year we spent four or five days on the island, fishing every day and eating the fish for dinner. One night it was clear and we slept outside. I think we counted thirty shooting stars that night, just one after the other, whisking across the sky. It was in early August. At first Jennie couldn’t figure out what we were seeing. But soon she started counting the shooting stars along with us. “Heeee!” she said when one streaked across. There were some big ones that went halfway across the sky.

The water was phosphorescent. We swam in the cove at night, and as we moved in the water sparks of phosphorescence would swirl around us. It was beautiful. Jennie never went swimming. She was terrified of water. She hated us swimming. She’d stamp around the shore and piss and moan, signing Come! Come hug Jennie! Help! Dirty dirty! and anything else she could think of that would get us to come to shore. She was sure we were all going to die. She was so full of love for us, it was sometimes a little frightening.

I once was cleaning out the fireplace of the old hermit’s cabin and I found a loose stone in the back. Underneath it was a box full of stuff. I believe these were his sole possessions. There were some photographs and a letter, a silver dollar... let’s see, and a piece of turquoise. See, the hermit disappeared and nobody knew where he’d gone.

This letter was really scary. Legible? Oh, it was very legible. And eloquent. It was the pictures that had faded. Ah! You’ve read my father’s book. Well I’m sorry to say that was a bit of a gloss, his saying the letter was illegible. It was totally legible.

That’s right. No shit. This guy, John Tundish, wrote out his whole life story. What happened when he went to the Pacific, why he’d chosen to become a hermit. It was like his farewell letter to the world. Only it was addressed to God.