Painting f antastic identity. ush with futurism. READ MORE, HURT LESS: Jet Li: Our Fearless Interview Memorializing Hyperreality Wax Tailor: Tales of Forgotten Melodies Birdy Nam Nam DIY or Die: The Minutemen, We Jam Econo

[by Ross Levine]

[Previous Page: "In actuality, the quagga had followed Sydney into his room at a Kenyan safari compound to munch on a straw hat he had purchased the day prior, and Sydney had been about to complain to the management. But the very look of the animal aroused enough curiosity in him that he asked a few pointed questions of a precocious brat in a room a few doors down...'"]

Sydney was now alone in the yard with his prisoner. Every half hour or so a blast would come from a megaphone, a polite, reassuring plea for surrender. You buck the authorities just once in your life, thought Sydney, and they talk to you like you're some kind of mental case. And speaking of bucking, suddenly the quagga, for perhaps the first time since it arrived in America, stopped eating, looked at Sydney and began derisively curling its upper lip. It showed its big, beautiful horse teeth, then whacked its tail against its left hindquarter, and snorted a burst of warm, hay-scented air through its nostrils.

"What do you want?", said Sydney, unprepared for the report that followed. The creature raised its head to the heavens, and let out a blast between whine and whinny that had every hound in the vicinity belting out a canine aria in no time. And then it repeated its call, some twenty times in succession, as if it had just realized it was no longer in Africa, but in Sydney Bitner's backyard.

"Put a lid on that, damn you! I'm in enough trouble as it is!" But the recalcitrant animal reared, and Sydney backed away, pointing the gun at its head and insisting on cooperation. With the stall unfinished and half-open on one side, there was no way he could keep the quagga inside it unless it wanted to stay there. Which it suddenly, most decidedly did not; within seconds, it was up a small flight of steps, through a plate glass door and in the house, dripping blood, breaking lamps, tearing couch covers, pulverizing knickknacks, and creating within both Sydney and his home complete, unmitigated havoc. Sydney was only afraid that his silhouette in the living room window, as he pursued his huge, equine trespasser, would be an open invitation to a government assassin. So he mustered his courage, cornered the spooked throwback in the kitchen, offered it every available morsel, and managed to get the trusty rope over its head.

With the help of a stale box of cookies, he lured it back into the living room, where it stopped to ingest a pillowcase his late wife had spent two years embroidering. Finally, with one cookie left, he got it outside to its proper quarters. Exhausted, Sydney tied the rope to his arm, and sat down by the door of the stall. If he was going to hold a hostage, he reasoned, he better damn well not be afraid of it.

In fact, as he gently dabbed away the blood from the animal's neck and back, he felt a greater kinship and love toward it than he ever had before. And as evening turned to night, and the megaphoned ultimatums became less frequent, and a few stars appeared in the vast, moonless sky, he found himself for the first time taking pity on his now somewhat morose-looking charge. He recalled an old painting he'd seen years ago with his wife at a gallery at Yale: a lone zebra in an English forest, the first such creature ever seen in the British Isles, looking completely forlorn and out of place.

What now hit him, like an asteroid colliding with a planet, was his own stupidity. How could he have ever dreamt of enriching both the world and his own life in such a way? He was a house painter, nothing more; but the quagga, this was a horse of another hue. House painters were expendable; the animal sleeping at the other end of the rope was not. And why? Because it was one of a kind. Because it didn't look like any other horse, or any other zebra for that matter. Because its value did not derive from how many houses it could paint in its lifetime, but from its own innate existence.

And with that prick of comprehension, Sydney had a premonition of his own mortality. He hid himself behind a wall of the stall and resolved to spend the entire night wide-awake and vigilant.

When morning came, Sydney realized he must not have kept to his plan, since he remembered a dream (more a nightmare) about being shot by a hunter and having his head mounted on the wall of a rather crowded establishment for all to see. Snapping from his reverie, he looked up and saw, to his surprise, that the quagga was still there, masticating peacefully. Sydney felt an impending sense of doom -- he knew if the government wanted his quagga, they would have it sooner or later, it was just a matter of time. He reconsidered going out front to turn himself in, then changed his mind. The bright, clear light of a gorgeous April morning, illuminating the splendid blooms of the dogwood at the other end of the yard, brought a semblance of inspiration to Sydney's long dormant spirit. The whole of his previous life seemed stripped away, and he was reborn to the very earth around him.

He had not slept outside for over fifty years -- not since he was a lad on a camp outing -- and he began to ponder why so many people, well-connected establishment types, were so covetous of his quagga. He suspected some sinister, albeit secret, plot of which the quagga, however innocent and docile, was the intended victim. Alive, the quagga was proof of its own existence, living testimony to the crimes committed against its kind. Dead, it could never raise another accusatory whinny. They wanted to destroy it, and he, Sydney Bitner, was responsible; if he'd only let it devour his straw hat and go off into the jungle forever.

The committee of scientists arrived at 10 A.M . -- an entourage of nearly thirty. Sydney knew that science would not dare murder his quagga while the world was watching, so he yelled to the front of the house and said that four -- "and only four!" -- of them could come into the yard or he would return the quagga to extinction. Fifteen minutes later, the chosen four made their way to the back, two older men, a middle-aged woman and a younger fellow, all of them laden with pads, instruments and vials. Practically ignoring Sydney, oblivious to the gun he held outstretched before him, they "ooed" and "ahhhed" as they stroked the magnificent specimen. They listened to its heart, thumped its loins, clipped samples of its hair, took smears of its saliva, collected its urine and extracted its blood.

They drew pictures and took photographs. The center of attention chewed its cud, but all the probing, prodding and stroking began to stimulate it. Before long, it was obvious to even the thickest mind that this quagga was a male. A sperm sample followed, and with a portable microscope they'd brought along, the youngest member of the group examined it. He scrutinized the drop of semen on the slide, then asked his colleagues to look for themselves. After a moment, with great disappointment, the four of them turned to Sydney and informed him that his splendid beast was not so splendid after all. Sydney, nerve-racked, was slow to grasp what they meant, so the young scientist explained.

"This so-called quagga of yours is sterile. Its sperm count is not only low, but none of its sperm are alive. This confirms other tests for what we all suspected from the beginning, but hoped wasn't true. This animal is not a quagga at all, but simply a horbra, or a zeborse if you like. The offspring of a horse and a zebra who, by some freak of nature, came together and mated. Which means, Mr. Bitner, that you may go ahead and shoot it if you will, but don't expect to be robbing the world of some irreplaceable treasure."

And with that, the four scientists bowed their heads and sullenly -- and smugly -- walked out of the yard. Sterile: the word fell upon Sydney like a mallet. He remembered the afternoon in Dr. Morris' office when the physician had given him the same diagnosis. But now there was no time for such painful reflection. Sydney suspected a trick, but if they were right, then there was nothing more than a barren, hay-chomping ass left between him and the SWAT team. Within seconds, some well-armed police officers appeared in the yard, their leader with his hand outstretched for Sydney's gun. Sydney, too besieged to resist, placed the shiny black revolver in the policeman's palm, and pleaded for one last moment alone with his quagga. The police were hesitant, but, taking pity on a man whose goldmine had turned out to be nothing but a glue factory, granted Sydney his wish.

They stationed themselves directly behind the wooden fence at the side of the house while Sydney went over to the quagga and stroked it between the eyes. The animal nuzzled closer, licked Sydney's face and gave him a loving snort. Overcome with emotions he'd buried since his wife's death, Sydney felt the blood rise to his face and tears well in his eyes.

"I know you're not no fake," he whispered into one of the quagga's large ears, "but they don't. They wanna kill you, make you into fast food. Only I ain't gonna let 'em." Sydney waited for the police to relax their attention, then shifted himself alongside the quagga and, with every muscle of his neglected body, pulled himself onto its back. "Can ya make it over that fence?," Sydney asked, leaning over to clasp his hands in front of the animal's neck. "Remember, you only got one try."

And with that, he dug his heels into the quagga's fleshy flanks, causing it to rear majestically forward like an oddly painted rocket. Sydney held on for dear life -- he was in the air, and saw his neighbor, Fred Greenglass, eye-to-eye in Fred's upstairs window. The quagga's belly hit the very top of the wooden gate, knocking it over and scattering the startled officers. They reached for their guns, but were commanded not to shoot. Instead, they were ordered into their patrol cars to pursue the strange apparition that was now disappearing in a furious gallop at the end of the block.

Indeed, the quagga moved like lightning, suddenly transforming a suburban subdivision into a veldt. Sunday shoppers veered their cars onto manicured lawns rather than remain in the way of those clattering hooves. The police were hot on the creature's tail, but fortunately, it came to a dense thicket of trees that formed the outer border of a parkway. The whining cruisers screeched to a halt as the quagga, well-accustomed to running through the forest, sprinted full speed through the thicket and charged onto the highway. Cars careened in all directions as the quagga, with Sydney barely hanging on, burst forth in front of them. Miraculously, man and beast made it safely across the parkway, through the thicket on the other side, and out onto the streets of an adjacent, much wealthier district full of gated estates.

The quagga, slowing to a trot, headed for the first open driveway gate it found in order to reach a lawn to graze on. As it came to a halt and started nipping at the lush grass, Sydney slid off its back in a daze. Disoriented, he staggered across the green expanse and tumbled onto a hedge by an open, screenless window. Using the window ledge to pull himself up, he gazed into the house and saw a television playing with nobody watching. There on the TV screen, with quite a mob gathered in front of it, was Sydney's own house.

And then, suddenly, there he was himself, atop an incredible horse like the winged Pegasus, sailing in slow motion over the front gate, people scattering, the gate splintering and he and the quagga whirring past the camera lens like a blast of unadulterated energy. He was so impressed with the spectacle of his own adventure that he forgot the aching in every limb and the gashes and scratches all over his face and body. He watched as the TV screen captured the rear-end of the quagga, its long, black tail flying gloriously in the wind, and Sydney riding on its back, disappearing at the end of the street like the Lone Ranger -- it seemed as if he were witnessing the most sublime moment of his life. Then he saw something else on the screen -- the young security guard whose gun he'd taken. He stuck his head further inside to hear what the lad was saying:

". . .I was lucky to get out alive. I mean a job's a job, but come on -- what kind o' fruitcake fixes a horse to look like some kind o' freak?" The guard vanished. In his place was a striking newswoman with starched golden hair. "We'll have more on the quagga quagmire in a moment."

Sydney, distressed, turned away from the window and stumbled back onto the lawn. When he looked up, he realized his quagga was gone. He leapt to his feet and ran from one end of the mansion to the other, to no avail. He hurried into the street, but there was no sign of it anywhere. A car came by and blasted its horn at the bedraggled human obstacle. Sydney crawled out of the roadbed and collapsed on the sidewalk. Staring up at the blue sky above, he prayed to God the quagga would never be caught. He saw the quagga running free across the entire country, transforming suburbs into vast plains, shopping malls into green jungles, cities into rocky canyons. With his consciousness ebbing from exhaustion, the last sensation he felt was a moist, raspy tongue dragging gently across his face.

When Sydney came to, he was alone in a silent, windowless room. He lifted up the strange gown he was wearing. His legs were pink. He lifted the gown higher. His chest was striped. At last, he thought, I exist!

November 1, 2006