But he was wrong about that. Rather, he’d become a zoo sensation. And with each new promotion, Dirk would understand less and less about the ropes tying him in place; the cage he wanted to bust out of lowering from the rainy green Goblin sky.

4

It simply couldn’t be stopped. Soon Dirk’s co-workers were whispering about how odd the new guy was. Gordon wasn’t the only person he’d spoken to about the animals. But after his visit to Trudy, his fellow staff noticed just how bizarre the animals did act around him. Dirk was big. Some might say rugged. Maybe he’d lived a hard life, a rough life, maybe he’d been to jail.

The gossip about the new guy reached a peak when the longtime ticket taker Don Chambers was approached by the feeder Sam Jones.

“Has he worked his spell on you yet, Don?”

“Who?”

“Dirk Rogers. The big guy. Seems everywhere he goes he brings the place to a stop.”

“Really? Hadn’t noticed.”

“You will. The elephants watch him close.”

Don thought about this.

“Sounds like he’s sick,” Don said, shuffling the day’s tickets-to-be.

“Sick? What do you mean?”

Don peered over his glasses. “Animals don’t sit still for something they’re afraid of. They recoil…they snarl…they crouch. You know that. But they watch a man in distress. A man in a bad way. A man near the end of his rope.”

“Why do they do that, Don?”

Don shrugged. “Maybe because they know there’s an end to their rope, too. And they wanna know what it looks like before they reach it.”

And as if the ticket booth acted as a megaphone, Don’s take on Dirk was carried throughout the park and settled strong into the minds of everyone who worked there. It didn’t hurt that the lumbering custodian seemed to affect the kids the same way. And Dirk, walking the zoo trails in a dull daze, performing his simple tasks in silence, wasn’t entirely unaware that the children clamored for him. Somehow, through sympathy or sheer entertainment, he had become a little part of the zoo. An attraction that could be missed if he quit.

Seth Handy noticed this, too. So when the tour guide entered Robin Jacobs’s office to announce he was moving to Florida, he said Dirk Rogers would make an excellent replacement. It just sort of slipped out of his mouth without any forethought.

“You know what?” Seth said, his body halfway out the door, Robin already lifting the phone. “I’m pretty sure he’d do it for the same money he makes now, Robin. He doesn’t seem to have too much upstairs.”

“I’ll take care of the business side of things, Seth. Good luck in the humidity.”