A Beautiful Truth Read Online Free PDF Page A

finally hungry and better. He explored the changing house and watched her cook with their new friend over her shoulder.
    He’ll hold your finger like a baby.
    I know.
    This house is hotter than inside a moose he said. Maybe it’s time to crack a window.
    The cloud of rheum, the film of incomprehensible memories, was lifting from Looee’s eyes, and looking down was Judy. The more his eyes cleared, the more curious and intimate Judy got.
    Walt bought some toys like a ball and a doll and a bone. He wondered what the hairy little guy could do.
    These were the days that Judy, months later, remembered when she sat on the living room floor and pondered the strangeness of her life, how none of it seemed strange till now, and now there was nothing strange, this was her little Looee. She fed him formula, not plain old milk as Henry Morris had suggested. He was fifty percent bigger in four months and Dr. Worsley was correct in figuring he was smaller than normal when he had come to them. He figured he was possibly a year, year and a half, who knows.
    The loss of a mother and the travel from Africa typically killed most chimps his age, but Judy’s presence saved him. Questions naturally occurred to them about where he came from, what ground, what air, but Henry and the circus had moved on. Whenyou plant a sapling, sometimes you don’t care where the seed was from. They decided that as far as Looee was concerned, this was where he came from, right here.
    He slept in their bed for the first several months. Walt would sometimes be awakened by Looee running his fingers through his hair or playing with his lips and trying to pry his mouth open with those little fingers of his, I’ll be darned. They always woke up with him in the middle of the bed—he never liked anyone coming between him and Judy.
    The difference between Looee and a less hairy baby was that he could move a lot better. He could support his weight, hang on to things and climb. He never left Judy, but she could usually rest her arms.
    And he did enjoy a tickle.
    Walt thought back to the laughing chimp in the circus and figured Looee’s laugh was different. Looee’s laugh was real. You’d get him on the bed and when you’d wedge your fingers into his little armpits he smiled with his lower lip more than with his upper and then he started this little chuckle like the uck in chuckle or the ick in tickle but softer and Christ it was funny and cute. And he’d stand up and squeeze your nose then throw himself down again and away you’d go with more of a tickle on his belly and thighs, Walt and Judy’s four hands on their little hairy piano.
    He had pale hands, black fingernails, a pale face and feet, and a little white tuft of hair on his rump that Judy liked to pat before she put his diaper on. The hair on his body was a little wiry, though Judy found ways to soften it up. There was a little boy’s body under there.
    He was squirmy in their bed and they didn’t sleep well for a long time. Walt set things up for the future. It was a large old house, with a couple of spare bedrooms that Judy had long agodecorated with insincere finality. Solid desks for future business, beds that only existed to display her latest linens. Walt took a big oak wardrobe, laid it on its back and made a sort of crib.
    They were happy to see that room change. Walt took a chainsaw to the mattress and resized it so it would fit in the flat-lying wardrobe, and why they thought the walls of a crib would contain a chimpanzee was part of a daily chorus of I didn’t think of that.
    He caused quite a fuss later when he had to sleep in his own bed. He jumped on the dresser and kicked Judy’s makeup, jumped down and halfway up Walt to hit his chest, and sometimes he removed his diaper, smeared his mattress and returned with a look that said you can’t expect me to sleep there it’s disgusting. He would walk to Judy with his palm up and whimpering, and she was quite susceptible to that. But Walt