Derrick Magnolia And A Zebra Named Jonathan
Paula Hightower takes Jonathan back to his father
After Paula left me at the house I sat quietly on the sofa where she had left me and held the zebra on my lap. My father took my backpack off me and carried the box of drawings and my backpack upstairs to my room. I said almost nothing on my first day at home, only two words “I’m hungry,” in forty-eight hours.
Several times over those days, he placed the zebra in my closet only to come back into the room to find the zebra back on my bed. Finally, after a dozen times he resolved to let me keep him there if I so desired.
On the morning of the second day, when my father came into my room for the first time, he discovered that I had taped my fifteen drawings around the walls of my room, with Derrick Magnolia’s zebra drawing right above the headboard of my bed. He didn’t know what any of them signified, but he resolved to leave them where they were and let me do whatever he wanted with my room. In his gut, he knew more was going on than his eyes could see.
After Derrick had left him, his father walked back to the enclosure and stood near the gateway watching the zebra run in circles around the enclosure. He was saddened that his son had not come back to see him, that his glimpse of the future proved accurate, but he did not regret what he had told him about the future. He knew that his son had a journey to make, like Odysseus or Achilles and that one day he would return to find his father and his zebra waiting for him.
Virginia stopped by to see her father that evening, sensing that Derrick would not come back for final goodbyes, and she found her father still standing with the zebra.
“Don’t be so sad, Dad,” she greeted him. “How long have you been here?”
“Two hours, I think,” her father answered.
“He will come back. He must find his way,” she answered.
“We all must find our way. It was completely crazy buying this zebra, wasn’t it?” her father told her.
“A little. But sometimes we need crazy.”
“You’d think it even crazier if I told you how much it cost me.”
“Did you expect him to stay because you bought him a zebra or built this train set?” she asked.
“No. But one day he will understand why I did this, and hope will bloom in his life like an Iris in springtime.”
“I never thought you were so poetic,” she responded.
“I was a lot of things before my father forced it out of me,” Edward lamented.
“This man ‘thing’ has brought so much aggression and destruction in this world. I don’t know if we would have had this disaster of a world if women were in “charge,” she proposed.
“I don’t disagree with you,” Edward responded.
She turned herself and watched the zebra running around the enclosure.
“Would you like to come to my house, and I’ll fix you a nice supper?” Virginia asked him.
“Of course.”
“I’ve one question for you. Was this idea to buy this zebra from the boy? Did he ask you to do this?”
“Yes.”
“And to build the train?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you why?” she asked.
“He showed me a principle I knew in my gut, but never thought about, how the things we do send ripples through time and space, how one act of kindness can through this effect change a world.”
“Derrick’s right about you. It’s like you’re a different man.”
She embraced him.
“The person I am now was trapped inside the person I was,” he told her.
“I’ll tell Priscilla you’re eating with me, and we should leave soon. The boys will be home.”
“Dad, did the boy tell you to name the zebra Jonathan?”
“No. That was my idea.”
“Why Jonathan?” she asked.
“He was my best friend as a boy. Then he moved away and I never heard from him again!”
