I still remember the day we found him.
It was six months into the voyage and a month since our supplies ran out. We were down to rainwater and rats from the bilge, and the only rats left were the swift canny little bastards that were all gristle and ribs. If our boat hadn’t run into that mysterious mist-wreathed island covered in jagged rocks and overflowing with dark primeval jungle the likes of which no human had ever witnessed in memory living or dead I don’t know WHAT we’d have done.
Anyways after our boat ran into it we all went ashore to find food and also something to patch the hole in it. Ted found some crabs; Lenny found some coconuts; Jess found some kind of enormous crocodile; Joe found a rock to hit the enormous crocodile with; and then as we were all limping inland I swept away a patch of giant ferns with my left arm and saw the clearing and saw him.
He was resplendent in the light of the fading sun, eyes aflame with bestial wrath and a glimmer of almost-human intellect. I stared in awe and gasped as he raised one mighty limb and, with casual ease, bit off a mouthful of leaves and chewed them.
“My god….” I said, taking the name of the creator in vain for surely his attention was needed here.
“Whazzat?” asked Ted. Then he saw and he too was stricken into silence.
“Huh?” inquired Joe. And he gawped too. And so on and so on until every single one of was slack-jawed and paralyzed at the sight and not one of us had dared open our mouths to describe it.
Until Jess (slowed by his masticated state) stumbled up and saw the sight and dropped his jaw and said. “Wow. That’s a very large gorilla!”
And so he was.
***
I won’t lie to you. That very large gorilla caused us all to question the nature of the universe, god, and ourselves, in that order. What truth did the scientists have to show us that would explain this very large gorilla? What verse in the bible expounded upon god’s desire to create a very large gorilla? And how could we sit here as pretty as you pleased and declare ourselves the pinnacle of the world’s animals when here, hidden on this island, was a very large gorilla?
It was enough to drive one mad. I know it drove Lenny mad. It took him about an hour to get over it, and before he did he’d picked up all our coconuts and hurled them into the ocean. Real inconvenient that was. Ted was the only one that could swim good enough to fetch all the coconuts back and on the way he got bit by a shark. Just a small shark, but he was really upset by that and we had to tear off Lenny’s pants to make a bandage and HE was really upset by that but hey fair’s fair.
In the meantime, the very large gorilla had gotten curious and had wandered over to watch us as we swam for coconuts, screamed about sharks, tore each other’s pants off, and ran in circles on the beach waving our arms. He picked up some fresh leaves and ate them, and the grinding of his mighty jaws was enough to freeze our blood in our veins.
Not literally, of course. It was a nice day out. Practically a tropical paradise, aside from the slightly chilly mist. And the enormous crocodile. And the small shark.
We wandered around the place and discovered all its secrets: the rotting log with spiders under it; the lizard family sunning themselves on a big rock; a snake hanging over a tree branch; a big dead tree with a bird sitting on it.
Then we dismantled a sturdy-looking tree, patched the hull, and at the last minute – it was Joe’s idea, I think, but we all were on board right away – took all the chloroform from the medical cabinet, snuck up on the very large gorilla as he slept, dumped it on his face, and ran for it.
Then we ran back for him, picked him up, put him on the boat, and locked him in the lavatory.
It was many days of going over the side for us, but the rewards would be worth it.
***
The city welcomed us home as heroes: it failed to notice any of us and tried to pretend we weren’t there.
So we did as heroes always do and made a big show of it. Hired a theater, hired an agent, hired strings of lights and billboards and barkers ticket-takers and agents and even a small audience before people caught on and turned it into a BIG audience. All on credit, of course, but once you’ve acquired enough credit people are eager to add to it because hey, everyone else CAN’T have made a mistake.
The banner was a small problem. Nobody could remember how many wonders the world was meant to have. Was he going to be the eighth? The ninth? The twelfth?
I credit myself this much: I was the one who suggested just calling him “a wonder of the world.” Mind you, Ted was the one who said we should puff it up to “THE wonder of the world.” Confidence. Always about confidence. And we were confident men, or confidence men, or well what’s REALLY the difference anyways?
So we put on our rented tuxedoes and we put on our borrowed manners and we fingered our best scars and we stepped out on stage and introduced THE wonder of the world, a beast that walks like a man, a creature that was once king of his world and is now a shackled piece of dime-store entertainment: a very large gorilla.
Maybe we should have bought newer chains on credit too.
Whoops.
***
So our very large gorilla was gone. The good news was that while he ran for it he also spooked off all our creditors. The bad news was that probably wasn’t permanent. And the immediate news was the army showed up. They were very upset about our very large gorilla, who was running through the city and disturbing traffic.
“Just what kind of force are we going to need to destroy this very large gorilla?” inquired the general or maybe colonel or major or someone who was in charge. He was tired and crabby and had somehow put two cigars in his mouth.
“Loads,” said Ted.
“Tons,” said Joe.
“Bring howitzers,” said Jess. “Bring mortars.”
“Use planes,” I chimed in. That was me. I said that. I’m pretty sure. “This very large gorilla’s existence defies all humanity’s assumed knowledge of the universe, god, and ourselves. You’re going to need at LEAST five planes.”
“Sure,” said the man with two cigars in his mouth. “Whatever. Fine.” He doodled on his paperwork, then read it. “Says here he’s gone to ground. Let’s go get the big bastard.”
He’d climbed on top of some sort of factory – I think they made condoms? – and was refusing to come down. He huffed and smacked his chest and punched the roof when people yelled at him, and we recoiled in awe at how very large he was. He picked up a loose shingle and threw it down, where it hit Lenny on the head (Lenny didn’t come off very well in this whole affair) and roared at us with his very large gorilla mouth.
Then the planes swooped by and riddled him with bullets and he tipped over and fell over and over and over and over and over and landed on the pavement right in front of us.
“Looks like bullets killed the beast,” one of the swarming reporters commented.
“No,” I said. “It was more metaphorical than that. Say beauty killed him.”
“What beauty? Didn’t see none of that he did, but lord that was a lot of bullets.”
“Don’t you dare trivialize this very large gorilla,” I demanded. “He deserved better than that. We’ll tell his story and tell it properly. We’ll tell it on every stage from here to San Francisco and beyond. This is THE wonder of the world here, and he will live on in the imagination of every man, woman, and child from now ‘till the end of time.”
“What do we do with the body?” asked another reporter.
“Can’t just leave it here,” said the man with two cigars in his mouth. “That’s littering. You boys’ll get fined for that.”
“Dog food,” replied Jess quickly. “My uncle owns a factory.”
“Good thinking.”
***
I still have one of the cans from that run. Mind you, I think he was something like five percent of it by weight; even a very large gorilla can only provide so much dog food.
But in your imagination, he can give so much more than that.