Northern Borders (8 page)

Sometime later, I had no way of knowing exactly when, the kitchen door slammed. I heard someone walking beneath me, and the sink pump working. Then the steps retreated toward the dining room.

“Tut,” my grandmother called up the steps of my loft a minute later. “That was your grandfather, back from Labrador. We're all here where we belong now. You can go to sleep.”

So I did, knowing with a certainty that would remain with me for many years that the Farm at the end of Lost Nation was where I too belonged, and that for as much time to come as I could now foresee, my grandparents, for all their singularities, would be at the center of everything for me.

2

The end of my first summer in Lost Nation was fast approaching, and I was becoming happily ensconced in my new life with my grandparents. For a six-year-old who had led a rather sheltered town existence until now, every day on the Farm seemed to hold several fresh surprises; and my grandparents themselves continued to be endless sources of fascination for me, with their ongoing rivalry and strange ways of incorporating me into it.

Recently everything they did around the Farm in their spare time seemed calculated to prepare for Kingdom Fair, which fell on Labor Day weekend, just before I would start school. They spent hours out in their respective gardens, earmarking the choicest vegetables for their individual displays at the horticultural exhibit. Never one to put away her work for the day and retire before eleven or midnight, my grandmother was now working nearly round-the-clock, putting up preserves for the canned produce competition,
dispatching me on forays for blueberries and long blackberries to go into jams and jellies, baking pie shells for the pastry displays sponsored by the local Grange.

My grandfather was busy on fronts of his own. Now instead of reading in the big kitchen rocker after supper or taking me fishing, he washed and groomed the four Ayrshire milkers he'd selected to show at the cattle exhibit, selected some beautiful maple and fir boards for the lumber display, and circled his work horses around and around the barnyard, pulling a small buckboard wagon in preparation for the two-horse hitch driving competition.

My grandmother had a summer kitchen off the regular year-round kitchen. This was a large, unfinished room with a dry sink, a long wooden counter, and an old-fashioned kerosene range where she did much of the cooking in the summertime in order to keep the regular kitchen cool to eat in. The walls of the summer kitchen were emblazoned with blue ribbons from forty years of my grandmother's triumphs at the fair. My grandfather's ribbons hung over the milking stanchions in the barn.

It is hard to convey exactly how determined each one of my grandparents was to win the greatest number of ribbons. Suffice it to say that never since then have I witnessed such single-minded rivalry between two people. For weeks it infected the entire household.

As Labor Day and the fair drew nearer, a special anticipation hung in the air all up and down Lost Nation Hollow and throughout Kingdom County. One day on our way into the village to deliver our milk to the cheese factory, my grandfather and I spotted many bright red-and-yellow posters on the sides of barns and sheds, in store windows, plastered to roadside trees and telephone poles. They depicted a performing elephant rearing up on its massive hind legs with its trunk raised majestically. Of course I had seen pictures of elephants before, but compared to the Elephant Child in my Kipling storybook, or even the gigantic beasts in the caravan of elephants in
The Arabian Nights
, the elephant on the posters was huge almost beyond belief, dwarfing the midway Ferris wheel sketched in the background. Covering its back was a vast tapestry of many brilliant colors. Its headdress glittered with rubies and emeralds, and its alabaster tusks were long and curved, and as lethal-looking as twin
ivory scimitars. “See Hannibal Rex, King of the Big Top, the Third Largest Elephant in Captivity,” the posters announced.

Even now, I vividly remember the thrill of that gaudy scene repeated a hundred times all over the county. I hoped my grandfather hadn't forgotten the promise he'd made to stake me to a day at the fair, but was too shy to remind him of it.

 

Fair day arrived at last. Lately my greatest fear had been that it would rain, but today was cloudless. My grandfather had put the high sideboards on his truck and taken his four show cows and two horses into the fairgrounds the evening before. Uncle Rob had carted in my grandmother's displays.

While my grandfather and I did barn chores, my grandmother packed our lunches since like most farm families at the time, they deemed it wasteful to purchase lunch at the fair. Immediately after breakfast we headed down the hollow in the mist.

The fairgrounds weren't crowded this early on opening day. Except for the carousel, most of the midway rides and game booths weren't set up yet. But the freshly painted dairy barns sparkled white in the sunshine, the stalls had been draped with colored bunting and decorated with cedar boughs and wildflowers in sap pails, and as the farmers moved quietly along the aisles with hay and grain and wheelbarrows carrying out manure, there was an anticipatory, festive air about the scene that reminded me of Christmas.

In the lower end of the Ayrshire barn, a boy of eight or nine was helping his father milk cows. He had a peashooter, and every once in a while he'd ping a pea in our direction. One drilled me in the forehead and smarted like a bee sting. “Who's that?” I asked my grandfather.

He waited until the man and kid went outside for sawdust. Then he said, “That's Preston T. Hill and his boy Hermie from down on the county road. Preston's the town poundkeeper. He rounds up stray animals and such. His boy's a young pissant if you want the truth. You let me know if he hits my cows with that peashooter. I'll kick his ass over the grandstand.”

“Elephant's coming! Elephant! Elephant!”

Hermie Hill was rushing past the open end of the barn, shouting as he ran. Several other boys came charging along behind him. They were chasing a boxy, round-shouldered old truck with slatted openings in the sides. In faded letters on the back were the words “Hannibal Rex, King of the Big Top.” Without a moment's hesitation I joined the gang of boys running behind the truck as it coughed and bounced its way across the racetrack toward the infield in front of the grandstand. Through the slats I caught a glimpse of something gray and enormous. As the battered vehicle jolted and rocked along with its enormous weight, I was breathless with anticipation.

The truck lurched to a halt and a spry, undersized, unshaven man in a dirty blue T-shirt and jeans, scuffed red cowboy boots, and a wide-brimmed big-game hunter's hat jumped out with a scowl on his face. He made a short dash toward the gaggle of us kids behind the truck, then pulled up short and stamped one red boot. “Scat!” he yelled.

Just the way you would to a cat.

“Scat!” he shouted again. “No kids yet. This elephant's a man-killer until he's been fed and watered. No elephant rides until noon.”

The little man in the big hat could have devised no more enticing come-on for us. We'd stopped in our tracks when he'd rushed at us. Now we surged forward again, determined to see this man-killing elephant, this Hannibal Rex, the third largest elephant in captivity.

In the meantime, out of the passenger side of the cab stepped the skinniest, slinkiest woman I'd ever seen. She wore a spangled blue costume, like a cowgirl, and appeared to be much younger than the man in the big-game hat and boots. She stretched out her arms as though they'd been riding all night and she'd gotten very stiff. Then suddenly she was standing on one leg with the other leg folded flat up against her back, like a stork's leg. She reached up over her shoulder and scratched the ankle of the lifted foot.

“Double-Jointed Woman, Freaks of the World Show,” the man said to us over his shoulder. “Also the wife, name of Mrs. Twist. Step back away now. I'm about to let Hannibal out of this truck. He's a rogue, he's a man-killer and a child-killer, back, back, back.
You, rube!” He whirled and pointed straight at me. “Fetch me a bale of hay. Hannibal ain't quite so apt to tromp you to mush if you hay him a little now and then. Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

I ran for the cow barn, tremendously proud to be singled out to fetch hay for Hannibal. My grandfather was still milking, and Mr. Preston T. Hill was talking vehemently to him about school taxes. Gramp listened to me without comment, then finished his milking unhurriedly while I shifted from foot to foot and Mr. Hill ran on about taxes. Finally my grandfather picked up a hay bale and headed out of the barn toward the infield, with Mr. Hill and me beside him.

We arrived just as the elephant man was unchaining the massive rear door of the truck. It dropped down onto the grass with a resounding thump, converting itself into a makeshift ramp. Out of the dim interior of the truck drifted a nearly overpowering odor of old straw and manure and a musty, ineffable presence of elephant.

Hannibal looked leviathan as he backed out of the truck down the ramp. Until that moment, the largest animals I'd ever seen were our team of workhorses. Hannibal would have made half a dozen of them. I simply could not believe how big he was. He was taller than our milk house at home, and nearly as wide. At six, I could scarcely have been more incredulous if the showman had produced a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Hannibal felt cautiously, almost daintily, for the ground with each hind foot, then lumbered around to face us as the elephant man jabbed at his legs with a long pole ending in a sharp hook.

Mrs. Twist was now sitting on the grass with her back against the front truck tire and her legs crossed behind her head.

“Christ Jesus!” Mr. Preston T. Hill said to her. “Who the hang are you?”

“Freaks of the World Show,” she said.

“Freaks is right,” Mr. Hill said.

“Stand back, he's a rogue, he's a child-killer and a baby-killer!” the elephant man said, feinting another dash at us boys.

“Oh, pipe down, Show,” Mrs. Twist said in a bored voice. “Han never hurt nobody in his life.”

“Yes, he did too,” the little man she'd called Show shouted.

“You there, rube,” he said to my grandfather, “break that bale
open and scatter it out here for Hannibal. Same as you would for a cow.”

My grandfather set the hay bale down. “What did you call me?” he said.

“Nothing,” Show said. He was in perpetual motion. Now he was driving an iron stake into the ground, now fastening the elephant's leg chain to it, now jabbing at the animal again with his hook.

“He could yank that stake clean out of the ground with one quick jerk. Be on the rampage seconds later,” Show said to my grandfather. “Annihilate half the midway crowd, the way he done down in Arkansas a few years back.” He brandished his hook. “This keeps him in line, you better believe.”

“Did you call me rube?” my grandfather said.

“No, I was talking to them infernal kids,” Show said. “Hannibal don't take to kids at all. He killed a young scamp was teasing at him with a water pistol over in Albany two years ago this past June.”

My grandfather gave Show a skeptical look. Then he cut the baling twine and spread out the hay for Hannibal. “That'll be fifty cents,” he said.

“Put it on my tab,” Show said. “I don't have fifty cents or five cents and won't until after I commence giving rides this afternoon. I coasted in here with the fuel needle on empty the last five miles.”

“That's the Jesus truth, mister,” Mrs. Twist said, her legs comfortably folded behind her back. “That's the plain sad Jesus truth. Show don't have one thin dime to his name and neither do I.”

“Yah!” Hermie Hill called out suddenly. “I ain't a-scart your stupid old elephant.” He whipped out his peashooter and zinged one at Hannibal. It bounced off his massive shoulder. If the elephant noticed at all, he gave no sign of it. But Show saw what Hermie had done.

He made a sprint at Hermie, who ran around the truck, laughing. “Hannibal made boy-soup out of a young fella in Macon for doing less than that!” Show yelled. “All he done was poke Han with a little stick. Boy looked like smashed shortcake afterward.”

“Hear him, won't you?” Mrs. Twist said amiably.

“Listen, mister,” Mr. Preston T. Hill piped up, “I'm here to tell you to keep your critter hitched and under control. I don't care how
big he is. If he gets loose and does any damage, I'll have him impounded before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Very cautiously, I edged several steps closer. Hannibal had short yellow tusks and saggy, smooth-looking skin, all variations of gray. His massive ears hung halfway to his knees, and he was swinging his great head and trunk back and forth in time to the distant strains of calliope music from the midway. He did not seem interested in any of us boys so I inched closer.

The showman ran two buckets of water from a hose stretching from the grandstand, and Hannibal drank both immediately, one right after the other. Until now I'd had no earthly idea how an elephant drank. I was delighted to see Hannibal suck the water up into his trunk and then squirt it back into his low-slung mouth. He ate most of the hay, swinging it into his mouth with his trunk in small neat bunches. Suddenly Mrs. Twist flipped me a peanut to give him. My heart beat faster as I stepped closer and held it out. Very delicately, the gigantic beast removed the peanut from the palm of my hand with the moist end of his trunk. It tickled, and I jumped back, but Hannibal paid no attention to me at all. He did not look in the slightest way dangerous.

“This elephant's getting on in years,” my grandfather remarked to me. “He's not very well taken care of for an old elephant. See these hook marks on his legs?”

Now Hannibal was swaying to the distant carousel music and tossing wisps of loose hay and dust onto his back with his trunk. As I peered up at the raw-looking gashes Show had made with the hook on the elephant's legs, Hermie Hill suddenly dodged out from behind the back of the truck and let him have it again with the peashooter. This time the missile struck the inside of the huge animal's ear. Hannibal gave a snort and stamped his back foot once.