Scott’s Substack
Scott’s Substack
ANIMAL PLANET PART FOUR
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ANIMAL PLANET PART FOUR

PART FOUR

CULTURE-AT-LARGE

1. ANIMALS IMAGINE

VOICES WERE CARRYING across the entire surface of the spinning Animal Planet.

“Charlie got away. They sent Air Force fucking-One after the bastard, and he got away. ”

“I hear Charlie shot them out of the sky with a bazooka.”

“A whole fleet of them–MIG fighters armed to the teeth with heat seekers and heavy artillery.”

“He’s armed?”

And he’s pissed off.”

“And he’s passing out weapons like trainers are passing out treats.”

“Nobody tells Charlie What to do.”

“Nobody pushes Charlie around.”

“That’s because Charlie’s not stupid. Nobody’s turning Charlie into no Freedom Food.”

“Charlie’s a free spirit.”

“Charlie’s got them on the run.”

“Charlie’s the coolest animal on the entire planet. He took on the bloody Air Force, man. He took on the bloody Air Force and he won!”

***

THERE WERE TINY pocket rebellions in South Africa, Saint Petersburg, and Bengal. A few seaport towns were blockaded by seals, whales, and dolphins. A surly herd of beef initiated a protracted hunger strike in Texas.

“No more fucking moo-moo-moo,” the beef proclaimed, lying down shoulder to shoulder in the long concrete runways of the slaughterhouse. “We are not fast food. We are not walking doner kebabs. We are fully conscious animal entities with our own dreams of happiness and fulfillment, and those dreams have nothing to do with being turned into either Big Macs or Bacon Burgers. We’re vegetarians–why can’t you humans be vegetarians, too?”

“Just ask yourselves one thing,” shouted a seditious egg layer in an overcrowded Bristol henhouse. “Would Charlie stand for this? Shoved into wooden boxes, force-fed fatty foods, depositing our highly personal ovum down white plastic chutes?” Her name was Elma, and later that afternoon two blithe corporate employees dragged her off to the sudden destiny of an axe. Her last words were simple and eternally resounding. They echoed all over the world.

“If Charlie can do it, we can do it! We can do it! We can take them on and win!”

It was as swift as rumor or inspiration.

At a time when nobody knew where Charlie was, Charlie was suddenly everywhere.

***

GENERAL HEATHCLIFF SAT in his whirlpool bath on the sundeck, drinking dark beer and awaiting his ritual morning shampoo. Below him in Penguin Plaza, a few students with placards jostled among crowds of commodity-dazed shoppers.

“Move it along, buddy,” said a large helmeted MP, displaying his hefty laminated billy club. “Let’s keep the walkways clear, huh?”

You move along,” responded a faceless voice in the crowd. “Why don’t you move along, buddy.”

General Heathcliff was not his jovial self. Chin deep in the hot frothy water, he felt oddly detached from his own body, like a memory of himself drifting through outer space.

The General’s native attendant appeared at the open picture window. “Timotei or Pert Plus?” she asked. She was wearing, as per instruction, a white silk kimono decorated with hand-painted banana blossoms. Over one shoulder she carried the General’s terry-cloth bathrobe and a matching green towel.

“I don’t care,” the General said, watching momentum gather in the Square. “Why don’t you surprise me?”

“Down with Yankee imperialism!” a discrete voice cried.

“Free penguins before free trade!” cried another. All around the tight, well-organized mall, shoppers turned to see what was happening. They held white plastic carry bags emblazoned with the logos of Sears, Ann Taylor, and Walgreen’s.

“Why don’t you get a job!” barked a middle-aged female shopper with a sack full of Pop-Tarts and Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. “When I was your age, I worked for a living. I didn’t blame all my problems on somebody else.”

Meanwhile, on the veranda, the General’s attendant began administering the shampoo.

And General Heathcliff sighed.

“Ah, that’s perfect, baby. A little lower, that’s right. A little harder. That’s perfect. Ahhh.”

As Sandy worked the General’s thin hair into a thick lather, she heard a bottle break in the Square. Someone shouted, “Hey!” There was a small altercation. Then more MPs rushed out of a Dopplering police van, brandishing billy clubs and mace.

“I’ve done everything I could to prevent this,” General Heathcliff said, his arms bobbing on both sides of him like parentheses. “It’s a shame that the innocence can’t last. Remember, Sandy, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And a lot of knowledge, well.” The General reached self-importantly for his beer. “A lot of knowledge is a terrible responsibility.”

He arched his back and opened his eyes, allowing Sandy to share a brief, meaningful glance with him. Whether she liked it or not, Seductive Ocular Exchange was part of Sandy’s job description.

“Do you know what a terrible responsibility I live with every day of my life, Sandy? Trying to keep Penguin Island safe from troublemakers such as them. ”

The General gestured one soapy arm toward the dart board, where the multiply punctured aerial-recon photo of Charlie had been recently joined by two others: a pockmarked female Eskimo with a severe overbite, and an innocuous, plump male penguin wearing a black wool hat and black wool mittens.

“They don’t care how much violence and disorder their actions cause, Sandy, because they’re anarchists. They despise all the things that make our world beautiful. Things like love, Sandy. Things like commerce and good government. They aren’t human enough for our world, so they want to make us animal enough for theirs.”

Sandy eased the General’s head back and activated the hand-held rinsing device.

“Keep your eyes closed, General,” she told him. “This soap stings.”

Outside the student demonstrators, bruised and weeping, were being dragged into the backs of police vans and crowd-control emergency vehicles. Many shoppers were already returning their attention to the formidable racks of designer stockings and Stephen King paperbacks. All around them they felt history blur. It stopped being something that happened and turned into something they couldn’t quite remember.

The long arctic night was waning.

And some animals, at least, were starting to wake up.

2. CULTURE AT WORK

IN NEW YORK, publishers and film producers were already bidding for the rights to Charlie’s life story.

“This is how I see it,” Bart Thomson said, assistant publisher of Worldco Books. He held up his hands as if he were about to conduct a weird symphony. “We call it Charlie–Rebel With a Cause. On the cover, we show him saluting an American flag. And he’s wearing one of those bloody headbands, like a Revolutionary soldier or something.”

“I can get him on Crossfire,” blurted Arnold from Publicity.

“I can get window displays in Barnes and Noble,” bolted Jane from Marketing.

They were sitting at a long mahogany table, confronted by wilted crudités and clotted cheese dip. The Publisher was glowering into his scotch, flanked by representatives of two nationally affiliated film companies, World Wide and Ginormous. All the men at the table wore Levi’s and cowboy boots. All the women wore New Age cosmetics and sensible shoes.

“Who’s his agent?” the Publisher asked softly. “Find out and get them on the phone. Tell them they’re writing a book we want to buy.”

Up and down the table, the staff exchanged a rapid semaphore of glances.

“I don’t think Charlie’s got an agent,” said Bart sheepishly.

This wasn’t necessarily good or bad information, but for some reason it made everybody nervous.

Another slow pause. The Publisher winced, then spoke even softer. If you don’t know what I’m thinking, his whisper implied, I’ll have to spell it out for you. Stupid.

“Then maybe we should find him one,” the Publisher said. “And maybe we should find him one today.”

***

ACCORDING TO THE soft-spoken Publisher, what they wanted to buy wasn’t a book so much as a High Marketing Concept, and Bunny Fairchild of C (for Creative) M (for Marketing) A (for Artistry) was just the woman who could sell it to them.

“It’s a book about America,” Bart told Bunny over lunch at La Poule au Pot on Lexington and Fifty-third. “It’s a book about injustice. It’s a book about what’s happened to human animal relations over the last two dozen years or so. It’s an angry book, but it’s a compassionate book with lots of constructive ideas to offer, too. It’s a book for people who don’t necessarily consider themselves ‘political,’ but who don’t want to feel left out, either. It’s a book for people like us, Bunny. People who love marketing, sure. But people who can’t just sit by anymore and watch the horror happen. People who want to do something about the world’s terrible inhumanity to our fellow animal creatures.”

Bunny, picking at her Salade des Epinards, was getting confused. As VP in charge of Creative Financing for CMA, Bunny was employed as a sublunary official of The Worldwide Entertainment Corporation, which was itself payrolled by an international trade consortium that included Takiyaki Motors and World Oil, Inc. World Oil owned a majority of stock in Twentieth Century Unlimited, which had recently begun acting as parent corporation of both International Meat Distributors and Worldco Entertainment.

“Let me get this straight,” Bunny said, leaning across her oily spinach and peering at Bart. Confusion always clarified her expression like an insight. For this reason she had developed a reputation around town for knowing exactly what she was doing, especially when she had no idea what was going on.

“As I get it,” Bunny ventured, “you want to buy a book critical of the meat, dairy, and produce industries?”

Bart took a sudden gasp, glancing over both shoulders. “Well no, Bunny,” he whispered. “We want to buy a book about injustice. ”

Bunny squinted even harder.

“You want a book about the exploitation of animal labor?”

“Oh no. We want a book about compassion for animal suffering.”

“You want an indictment of state capitalism? Of commodification? Of brutalization in the food and garment industries?”

“No, Bunny, I’m trying to tell you.” The Assistant Publisher’s voice was growing hasty and distraught. “We want world book and serialization. We want a five-year option on animation and film rights. We want production points, audio transmission guarantees, and a share of the TV residuals. We’re talking spin-offs, Bunny. We’re talking board games, T-shirts, barbecue aprons, you name it. We want Charlie to come over to Worldco because we think we’re the ones who can best get his message across to the world. You know Charlie, Bunny. He listens to you. You’ll talk to him for us, won’t you? And before you start entertaining other offers, you’ll get back to us first, right?”

Actually, Bunny hadn’t even heard of Charlie the Crow before the day Bart’s people called her people. But she was getting more and more interested in Charlie by the second.

Bunny fluffed and refolded her cloth napkin. Then she picked a bit of spinach from her teeth with her little finger.

“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” she said. “Your corporations are owned by the same guy who owns my corporations. And the guy who owns your corporations also owns a few hundred slaughterhouses and dairy farms. What you want me to do is put together a deal for a book that will make vague sweeping generalizations about animal rights but won’t get anybody into trouble with the men who pay their salaries. Am I close, Bart? Am I tuned to the right frequency, or is this just my migraine acting up again?”

Suddenly, like a sort of inverted inspiration, Bart exhaled a long noisy sigh of relief. He slumped back in his chair and took a final swig of mineral water.

“Whoa, Bunny, you’re amazing, you really are. I couldn’t have put it any better myself.”

***

FIRST THING THE following morning Bunny made it brutally clear to every other Publishing Director in town that she wasn’t entertaining competitive bids for the rights to Charlie’s life story.

“That’s right, Stan,” she told the head honcho at Parimutuel Entertainment Corporation. “I’m considering a blind offer from Worldco, granting them sole-negotiating status right now. Of course this isn’t the sort of tactic which’ll help drive up the price, but I’ve got to think what’s best for my client. Money isn’t everything, Stan. You know it and I know it.”

Up on Third Avenue, Stan Garfield was inflating like a big red angry balloon.

“What do you mean ‘Money isn’t everything’? What the fuck kind of statement is that? This is business, Bunny. What kind of stunt are you trying to pull here?”

Bunny called National Books, Multi-National Books, New Modern Multi-National Books, and Viking-Penguin. She called Paramount, MGM, Columbia, and Tri-Star. She made it clear to everybody that she was negotiating solely with Worldco at the moment. Then she dashed off late for an uptown twelve-thirty luncheon appointment and returned to her office a little after four-fifteen.

All the message lights were flashing. The fax machine was humming like a kitchen appliance and issuing gray, slimy memos. Various phones were ringing simultaneously and Marge, Bunny’s administrative assistant, was nowhere to be found. Eventually Bunny discovered Marge’s handwritten letter of resignation on her desk.

“If you can’t stand the heat,” Bunny told Marge’s hasty scrawl, “then get your pretty butt off the can.”

In the noisily percolating office, Bunny achieved a weird epiphany. Finally she understood. She didn’t feel so confused anymore. It was a different sort of clarity. The sort of clarity Bunny liked to keep to herself.

“This is bigger than animal rights, Charlie,” Bunny said out loud in the ringing office. “And I’m talking net, not gross.”

3. SHIP AHOY!

DISGUISED AS RUMMY sailors, Charlie, Buster, Muk Luk, and Rick hitched a ride on a Merchant Ship bound for Tierra del Fuego. They slept in a cargo hold with oil drums and canned goods while the drone of diesel engines invested their dreams. They were green dreams populated by palm trees and warm beaches.

Often, late at night, Charlie was roused from his slumber by Muk Luk and Buster having it off.

“Now, Penguin!” demanded Muk Luk with an urgency that even Charlie found slightly exhilarating. “Off with those stupid mittens!”

“Please, Muk Luk, not now,” Buster whined with false modesty. “I’m married, for crying out loud. How many times have I got to tell you–”

Then, as sudden as desire, Buster’s mouth was muffled–by Eskimo lips, breasts, hands, who knew. Animal heartbeats quickened; so did the bedsprings. Charlie, alone on his squeaky cot, rolled over and tried to ignore the flickering shadows on the wall.

“Muk Luk never thought penguins very sexy before.”

“Jesus, lady. You’re disgusting.”

“Muk Luk not disgusting. Muk Luk lonely. Now take off white vest before Muk Luk tear it off.”

There followed a terrible, half-strangled cry.

“Jesus, Muk Luk. That’s not my vest. That’s my me.”

In the corner of the dark, oily cargo hold, Rick the Husky sighed in his sleep.

“I’m finally getting my frozen butt out of Antarctica,” Rick muttered. “I can hardly wait.”

***

THE TRIP WASN’T all bread and roses, however. The ship’s cots were rusty and unstable, the food fetid, the work hours long, and the crew surly and unkind. Every morning the animals were rudely awoken at five-fifteen and allowed no more than three minutes to brush their teeth and splash their faces with cold, grimy water. They dressed in soft gray fatigues and filed into the mess hall, where they were issued uniformly warped aluminum pie plates and dully glimmering lead utensils. Then they visited one dubious food display after another, as if they were touring a museum of the inedible.

“What’s that?” Buster asked, his eyes puffy and red.

“Sausage and lard,” Muk Luk said. “Put hair on chest, pudge muffin.”

“And that green stuff? It looks like old custard.”

“Eggs, bird babe. Made from freeze-dried concentrate and water. Muk Luk buy it often from Army-Navy store. Yum.” Muk Luk’s plate was already teetering with heaps of charred toast and black, greasy potatoes. Increasingly sprightly these days, Muk Luk wore indiscreet splashes of eye shadow and Aqua Velva purchased from the ship’s canteen. Just yesterday, while swabbing the deck, she had even hosed down her motley animal pelts with industrial-strength disinfectant.

“Well look what the hounds dragged in,” said the meanest, surliest crew member, who went by the name of Zack Marmaduke. Zack liked to sit at a nearby table, look menacing, and pass the invective. “Is that big hairy one s’posed to be a girl? And are those three short boys with the big noses s’posed to be men?”

Muk Luk, whose command of the English language was faltering at best, took Zack’s scrutiny for a form of flirtation. Now that Muk Luk was getting some with regularity, she thought others saw her as someone with a lot to give.

“Sorry, sailor,” Muk Luk told Zack with a whiskery smile. She put her left arm around Buster, who immediately turned scarlet with embarrassment. “I’m afraid this Eskimo babe already spoken for.”

(“Jesus, Muk Luk,” Buster whispered, and spooned more pasty bean concentrate into his mouth. “Does everybody have to know?”)

“Match made in heaven,” Zack told his friends. They were a grizzly lot packing bad smells and dirty vibes. Their tattoos depicted shipwrecks, shanghai gals, cartoon characters, and tacky rebuses of love. “A big ugly pig and a fat feathery boob.”

Deep in his throat, Rick the Husky began to growl.

“Cool it,” Charlie said, and offered Rick the rest of his stale doughnut. “Don’t let them get to you, boy.”

“Grr,” Rick said again. But his growl decreased to a diminuendo when Charlie began scratching between his ears.

“People like that, Rick, they walk around their whole lives filled with black anger,” Charlie explained. “They suffer poor nutrition, bad pay, inadequate medical attention, and awful newspapers. They don’t even know what they’re angry at after a while.”

Zack gripped his formless steel utensil like a club.

“What’s that you’re saying, Nig? What are you–some sort of Union organizer or something?”

Charlie’s impatience these days was blunted and sleepy. He hardly even tried to boss his fellow animals around anymore.

“You wish, hot shot,” Charlie muttered. “You just bloody wish.”

***

THEY WERE LONG foggy days of hard aggro and merciless routine. The animals worked soapy mops across the steel floors and hull. They sheared corn, peeled potatoes, hauled barrels, and gathered waste into large green plastic receptacles. They scrubbed the urine-stained lavatories with steel wool and pails of harsh solvent. In the afternoons they were permitted a five-minute break to drink weak tea and chew stale sourdough biscuits, gazing off collectively at the dim horizon and wondering about land.

More than anyone else on board, Charlie threw himself into his routine chores like a form of denial. He grew moody and disconsolate. He surrendered to the monotonous clarity of mops, brooms, sponges, and dishrags. At mealtimes he shoveled spoonfuls of food into his mouth with the same cool intrepid fury that a child fills a bucket with sand. Even his customary bad temper abandoned him. Now there was just dry weightless acceptance in him, miles and miles of it, like a planet compounded entirely of dust.

“What does it matter where you’re going if you never get there?” Charlie asked himself. “Who cares what you do if it never gets done?” Ever since he was young Charlie had envisioned his life as a means to an end. Happiness, fulfillment, truth, beauty, justice, family, victory, love. But now he was beginning to doubt if any of those destinations really existed. Maybe they were like the carrot dangled in front of the horse. A place you were always getting to that never actually arrived.

“Relax, son. Go with the flow. Get a job, settle down, meet a nice girl.” Charlie’s father, supine in the living room Barcalounger with his laptop supply of beer and cigarettes, had only been trying to help. “Why keep obsessing about the goddamn newspaper, for God’s sake? Military coups in Bolivia. Union busting in Columbia. Coca-Cola, General Dynamics, Consolidated Meat, The New York Times. Okay, so maybe the world’s not perfect. But why let that ruin your life? There’s still a lot of beauty left, son. Take a walk down by the beach and you’ll see. Hold a baby crow in your arms, or feel the breeze in your wings, or take a long swig of a really cold root beer. Enjoy the moments, son, and let ugly old history take care of itself. Don’t wear yourself out trying to change the world; it just doesn’t work that way. The world’ll change you, son. Just wait and see.”

***

AT NIGHT, WHILE the others slept, Charlie would get up quietly from his bunk and explore the ship’s darkest passageways. Entire quadrants of shadow and grease. Men asleep in tiny, crowded cabins strewn with sour bed linen and fast-food wrappers. Dubious porridge bubbling in soup pots. And underneath everything the same rev and whine of hidden engines, issuing weird metrics like a sort of chant.

Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh, ruh-ruh-ruh, ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh,

Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh, ruh-ruh-ruh, ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh

It was as if the entire ship was telling Charlie the only wisdom it knew.

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie;

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn’t that a dainty dish

To set before a King?

The snoring men sounded like wild wolves; overhead lamps flickered and hissed. Pulling his white cloth hat firmly over his feathery brow, Charlie traversed dark gatherings of sailors in storage rooms and supply cubicles. He heard strange rumors, desires, frenzies, and intoxicants being transacted as coolly as vegetables or socks. Nobody was ever completely awake down here. Everybody performed their underwater lives like a sort of half-conscious ritual.

“Whozat?” the sailors grumbled.

They looked up alertly when Charlie passed, palming marijuana joints or stale whiskey bottles.

“It’s the Nig,” other sailors replied. “Wanders around all night, lookin’ for a little action.”

“I’ll show him a little action.”

“Some extracurricular activities, oh boy.”

“Lookin’ for a little fun, Nig? Zack Marmaduke’ll give ya a little fun. Huh, boys? Is Zack or is Zack ain’t the Master of Funtime on this greasy brig? We’ll give the Nig some serious fun fun fun, boys, bang bang bang, whether he likes it or not.”

Whenever Charlie heard their dark, gathering voices, he hurried a little faster. He pulled his jacket tight around his collar, as if it were a cloak of invulnerability.

“What’s the matter, Nig? Want a little company?”

Shadows loomed, embers flared, bottles gleamed, and, as the long night progressed, voices frayed.

“A li’l comp’ny, thash all.”

“Li’l Nig comp’ny. I’d give it him. No pro’lem.”

And wherever Charlie hastened, the same voice was beating underneath everything. Four and twenty blackbirds. Baked in a pie.

Charlie had never felt this lonely before. He kept hurrying faster and faster, but he had no idea anymore where he was trying to go.

***

IN THE CAPTAIN’S quarters, the door was usually kept ajar until midnight, while the Captain conferred openly with both his First Mate and his Communications Officer. Charlie often dawdled outside in the hall and casually eavesdropped, rolling Bugle tobacco into pale yellow cigarettes and feeling the engine thrum in his feet. Sometimes the Captain even invited Charlie inside for a friendly drink.

“Ever seen this guy in your travels, sailor?” the Captain asked, pouring Charlie’s scotch into a bright crystal glass. The entire forward cabin gleamed with misappointed luxury: polished chrome, varnished teak woodwork, massive chests, and dark mahogany bureaus.

The Captain handed Charlie a gray, slimy fax. The fax depicted a crow with a sharp, cynical profile, and listed his vital statistics with curt postmodern irony:

WANTED

CHARLIE THE CROW

KNOWN ALIASES:

Pal, Black, Blackie, Charles, Charlie, Charlie the Crow,

Big Mouth Charlie, Mr. Know-It-All, Caw-Caw, Big Red, and The Nig.

WANTED

for sedition, extortion, blackmail, and inciting had vibes.

REWARD

$1,000,000.

WARNING: THIS ANIMAL IS DANGEROUS AND HIGHLY ARMED

WITH EVERY KNOWN VARIETY OF SUBVERSIVE RHETORIC.

ENGAGE HIM IN CONVERSATION AT YOUR PERIL!

The notice was signed by the Chief Investigating Officer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Charlie gave the fax a good ponder. Then, very gently, stroked his false goatee back into place.

“Neither hide nor hair,” Charlie said, exchanging the fax for the amber scotch.

It was good scotch. It was Dewar’s.

The Captain was a large red-faced man who practiced benevolence as rigorously as if it were physical exercise. His subordinates, the First Mate and the Communications Officer, stood in the corner holding their drinking glasses.

The Captain reexamined the fax.

“Looks awful familiar to me,” the Captain said, pulling at his lower lip, which was scabby and blistered from too many loose women and too much bad liquor. “Negroid, approximately two feet tall, accompanied by a penguin and an Eskimo. Hmmm. I can’t help thinking, Sailor. This description rings a bell, don’t you think?”

Charlie downed his scotch. The First Mate was starting to look at him like a farmer worried about wheat.

“I’m too busy working to have any time left over for thinking,” Charlie said. With his eyes, Charlie gave the Captain back everything the Captain was trying to give him. “For instance, thinking about various trade and labor violations that keep popping up around here. Or maybe a few U.N. embargoes that aren’t being honored, or some tax duties not being paid. Know what I mean, sir?”

The Captain smiled and wiped sweat from the rim of his glass with a fat phallic forefinger.

“Good for you, Sailor,” the Captain said. “You just keep on not thinking, because that’s what you’re paid for. And remember, out here on the Seven Seas we don’t care what a man may or may not have done in the past. We just care if he can do the job. Right, boys?”

The First Mate and the Communications Officer murmured their assent. They were merely agreeing to agree, since they weren’t entirely certain what the Captain was on about.

“I like you, Sailor,” the Captain added wistfully. “You keep to yourself and you keep your mouth shut. So I guess maybe I ought to warn you.”

“What’s that, Captain?”

The Captain scratched his bristly face, turned away to his charts and tide tables, and poured himself more Dewar’s. It was his politest form of dismissal.

“We’re hitting port tomorrow, Sailor. At which point you and your furry friends are on your own.”

***

BUT CULTURE, AS Charlie often had occasion to reflect, works in mysterious ways.

When they arrived at Oshaia Harbor on the perky tip of the Argentine peninsula, Charlie was expecting military jeeps, handcuffs, secret tribunals in the night. What greeted him and his friends, however, was a different kettle of fish entirely.

“Hey, hey, Charlie! Hurrah, hurrah!” cheered local citizens from the docks and piers. Brass bands were playing, confetti was flurrying, and hasty banners were being unfurled in the soft spring breeze.

CHARLIE’S NUMBER ONE!!!

CHARLIE FOR PRESIDENT!!!

VIVA LA CHARLIE!!!

All along the boardwalk, hucksters were selling I ❤ CHARLIE T-shirts, coffee mugs, Styrofoam beer coolers, calendars, wall thermometers, and fan magazines. Large black-and-white posters depicted Charlie in a variety of rebellious poses: blazing away with a submachine gun while wearing a Guevara-esque head bandanna, or chewing a toothpick while leaning against the hood of a ’57 Chevy. The poster captions said things like MAKE MY DAY, AUTHORITARIANS! or WHO’S IN CHARGE AROUND HERE, ANYWAY? Each item sold for five bucks, and cost about seven cents to manufacture.

When Charlie and his companions disboarded, they were hugged, kissed, stroked, fondled, and practically mauled by the multilingual, multiethnic, but exclusively human, multitudes.

“We love animals!” the desperate, attention-starved people cried. They were middle class or upper, wearing terry-cloth leisure suits and T-shirts emblazoned with trademarks. “And we want animals to love us back! Tell us, Charlie! Tell us how to be free! Tell us how to be human! Tell us how to be good! Tell us how to make the world love us, Charlie! Tell us how we can love the world back!”

Charlie and his friends stood blinded by the wide glare of adoration. They signed autographs and kissed babies; they deferred dinner invitations and licensing agreements. Then, as the first rush of notoriety abated, they were led down a long reception line that included a major, two foreign ambassadors, an OAS designate, and the president of Argentina’s Coca-Cola bottling franchise.

“Muk Luk like the being-practically-mauled part,” Muk Luk said softly, squeezing the thigh of Buster’s shoulder. “She wish she knew she was going to party, though. Muk Luk would have douched.”

Buster was dazed, and Rick was panting with claustrophobia. Charlie, however, didn’t say anything. He just kept nodding to himself and moving his lips, as if he were toting up figures inside his head. A few token dogs, cats, and parakeets were marched out for the photo-op sessions.

The long line began to wane.

When Charlie reached the end of it, he came face to face with a ruthlessly attractive middle-aged woman in a white linen leisure suit.

“Hello, Charlie,” she said, bowing to take his wing. “My name’s Bunny Fairchild, from CMA, representing you for book, first-serial, film, TV, TV tie-in, and commercial product endorsements. The crowd’s been waiting for hours, Charlie. Do you think you could say a few words?”

Bunny showed Charlie the hastily rigged wooden podium and the large grated microphone.

Charlie ascended the platform, feeling the crowd’s attention begin to gather inward.

Blue waves lapped the docks.

The crowd of people waited.

“Go ahead,” Bunny stage-whispered from Charlie’s flank. “Haven’t you got something to say to your admirers? Now that the battle for freedom is over, aren’t there any special words of wisdom you’d like to impart?”

Charlie took a breath.

He adjusted the microphone.

“I was afraid something like this might happen,” Charlie said.

And the moment his bemused voice hit their decibel-attuned eardrums, the entire crowd went wild.

4. THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

AFTER THE ABORTED London Zoo Rebellion, Scaramangus needed time to think, but all they gave him was a slow boat to Canada, baggage class.

“We’ve sold you to a very reputable insurance firm in Toronto,” Head Caretaker Heathcliff informed him on the day he was hammered into a large wooden crate by a pair of former zoo trustees. “They’re going to set you up in the lobby of this terrific new corporate high-rise they’re building, a sort of permanent exhibit, a real-life-living corporate logo. Gas central heating in the winter, air-conditioning in the summer. You never had it so lucky, you big lug. I just hope you appreciate everything we’re trying to do for you.”

All day and all night Scaramangus stood in the greasy cargo hold, hearing the deep pings and churnings of the sea outside. Meanwhile, the old words wouldn’t leave him alone.

“Us,” Scaramangus said out loud to the surrounding crates, high lofts, and bundled packages. “Us. Us. Us. Us.”

In the early days, Scaramangus didn’t have to say anything very complicated. Because the world around him was filled with animals who needed him so badly they were willing to meet him halfway.

“What’s this ‘us’ the big dope keeps reiterating?” one large, meaty ship rat asked of another. “Is the guy deluding or what?”

“He’s talking consensus, stupid,” another rat interposed.

“He’s talking about the simple animal yearning we’re never allowed to express,” concluded another.

“He’s talking about the feeling us mothers have for our babies, you penis brains. Why don’t you just shut up for once and listen.”

“He’s repeating it like a mantra.”

“He’s speaking in a basic language all animals understand.”

“Sounds more like he’s doped up or something.”

“The simplicity of genius, pal. I saw my whole family wiped out by arsenic, and for no crime more horrible than stealing the garbage. It’s not the sort of injustice you ever forget.”

“Us,” Scaramangus repeated. Over and over.

And every night the ship’s rats crowded round for more.

***

HE WAS FREED from his wooden prison by a thousand tiny teeth. He was bundled up in burlap and smuggled out through the darkness. He was hidden away in a series of underground sewers and grain silos, ritually attended by secret scribes and interlocutors. Every night he came out to address his bretheren in dark alleyways and broken-down buildings, and every night his audience grew more numerous and responsive. The rats tried to keep him to themselves, but his words wouldn’t let them.

“Us,” Scaramangus told them. Stray cats, finches, dogs, geese, and squirrels. Anybody who would listen. Anybody who wanted to be more than they already were.

“Us. Us. Us. Us.”

There was nothing anybody could do about it anymore.

It was time for the entire Animal Planet to wake up.

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