The One and Only Ivan

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“Good news, huh?” Bob says when Mack’s out of earshot. “Looks like you might be getting some more supplies.”

“I don’t want to paint for Mack,” I say. “I’m painting for Ruby.”

“You can do both,” Bob says. “You’re an artist, after all.”

While I watch the movie, I try to come up with a new hiding place for my paintings. Maybe, I think, I could fold them, once they’re dry, and stuff them into Not-Tag.

It’s a long movie. At the end, the sheriff marries the woman who owns the saloon, which is a watering hole for humans but not horses.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Western that was also a romance.

“I liked that movie,” I say to Bob.

“Too many horses, not enough dogs,” he comments.

An ad comes on.

I don’t understand ads. They’re not like Westerns, where you know who the bad guy is supposed to be. And they’re hardly ever romantic, unless the man and the woman are brushing their teeth before they face lick.

I watch an ad for underarm deodorant. “How do you know who’s who if they don’t smell?” I ask Bob.

“Humans reek,” Bob replies. “They just don’t notice because they have incompetent noses.”

Another ad comes on. I see children and their parents buying tickets, just like the tickets Mack sells. They laugh, enjoying their ice cream cones as they walk down a path.

They pause to watch two sleepy-eyed cats, huge and striped, dozing in long grass.

Tigers. I know, because I saw them on a nature show once.

Words flash on the screen, accompanied by a drawing of a red giraffe. The giraffe vanishes, and I see a human family staring at another kind of family. Elephants, old and young. They’re surrounded by rocks and trees and grass and room to wander.

It’s a wild cage. A zoo. I see where it begins, and where it ends, the wall that says you are this and we are that and that is how it will always be.

It’s not a perfect place. Even in just a few fleeting seconds on my TV screen, I can see that. A perfect place would not need walls.

But it’s the place I need.

I gaze at the elephants, and then I look over at Ruby, small and alone.

Before the ad ends, I try to remember every last detail. Rocks, trees, tails, trunks.

It’s the picture I need to paint.