Still Life with Elephant (12 page)

P
LATE TECTONICS
. It's when the plates that make up the surface of the earth slide against each other, the resulting friction causes mountains to rise, earthquakes to rumble, and volcanoes to erupt. And I now had plate tectonics going on inside my head.

I thought I would come home and take a long, hot shower, fall across my bed, and lapse into an immediate stupor. The fact was, after mumbling a few quick greetings to Reese and Gracie, who was miffed at my absence and would not let me pet her, I lay awake for most of the night, feeling plates shift across my brain. Mountains sprang up and disappeared, earthquakes of emotion left me staggered, boundaries were colliding and collapsing. I wanted to hate Matt, and I couldn't. I didn't want feelings for Thomas Princeton Pennington, and I had them. Rivers of tears overflowed their banks. There was a huge sensation of continental drift going on. I was a geographical mess.

Grace, who finally thought better of snubbing me, was now all forgiveness as she jumped onto my bed. She gave my face a big welcome-home lick and made herself comfortable across my chest. Alley Cat tucked herself under my armpit, and we all fell asleep together.

 

The next morning, Reese was standing by the sink, gulping down a cup of coffee, ready to dash off to school.

“Good morning,” he said. “So—did you bring him back alive?”

I poured myself a cup of coffee and let Grace out the back door.
“Her. It was a female. And we brought two of them back alive. She had a baby with her.”

“I meant Matt,” he said. “I expected you to be hauling him in here all hog-tied, and you smiling in triumph.”

“I have nothing to smile about,” I said. “Everything's still a mess. I'm a mess.”

Reese put his hands on his hips. “Okay, this should cheer you up. How do you shoot a blue elephant?”

“Not now,” I replied.

“With a blue-elephant gun,” he said. “So—how do you shoot a red elephant?”

“It's not funny, Reese.” I opened the refrigerator and looked for breakfast.

“Squeeze it by the neck until it turns blue,” he answered himself, “then shoot it with the blue-elephant gun!” He guffawed and slapped his knee. “I have another one. What is red and white on the outside, and gray and white on the inside?”

I whirled around. “Didn't you hear me?” I snapped. “I'm not in the mood.”

“What's gotten into you?” he asked. “Didn't you have fun in Zimbabwe?”

“No,” I said. “People are dying there, animals are dying, and the land is dying. It wasn't fun at all.”

“Oh,” he said contritely.

I looked back into the refrigerator.

“Why are these in here?” I demanded, annoyed at the largesse of four half-empty pizza boxes stacked neatly on the top two shelves. I had left him eggs and juice and bread and bacon and fruit. And a roasted chicken.

“After I ate everything in there, I bought some extra snacks,” he explained. “I was starving.”

“Ironic,” I said. “There's starvation and there's starvation.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, peeking into the refrigerator behind me. “You can finish the rest of the pizza.”

“No thanks,” I mumbled. “I don't feel like eating pepperoni pizza for my first breakfast home.”

“Well, there are a few beers left, behind the boxes,” he said as he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door. “Help yourself.”

 

I did my donut run. The shop owner handed me my coffee and donut, and I stood for a moment, mesmerized by the bins and bins of fresh-baked pastel donuts. The smell of coffee, the sight of people lined up, casually ordering lattes and eggs on bagels as they did every day, it all felt strange to me. I glanced down at my own coffee and then at the line behind me. Every one of them would have a different request and expect to have it filled, without much thought about how easy it was. A dozen donuts, please. A chocolate donut. A Bavarian cream. No one would know about Zimbabwe and the men picking through garbage looking for something they could eat, for some stray cast-off piece of food they might bring home to their families. Men who would never know about the donuts here, stacked in huge fluorescent piles, fresh and inviting and so easy to obtain. Stacks of donuts, just waiting to be bought. Donuts that are always waiting here, that would be stacked and waiting here tomorrow, too.

“Anything else?” the shop owner asked me impatiently.

“No,” I said. “No thanks.” And I mused how even the simple act of buying donuts now seemed miraculous to me.

 

I put Delaney on the cross-ties and spent a good amount of time grooming him. He was a puzzle. Inconsistent in temperament and work, he was my most challenging horse so far.

Today he had good manners and stood quiet and respectful, letting me brush him and clean out his hooves. He even looked like he enjoyed it. He let me saddle him and mount him. Maybe I had made some progress in the weeks before I left for Africa. Perhaps he had talked things over with the other horses and decided to reform.

I walked him into my riding ring, and after a few minutes of warm-up, we picked up a trot. His body felt tight—I could feel it in his back, in his jaw, in the way he braced his neck against me—but he was manageable. The last time he had misbehaved with me, I had tapped a whip against his flank and urged him into a strong trot that settled him. Maybe that was all he needed, a firm hand and a secure rider who would insist he behave properly.

Fifteen minutes later, he threw me. It was sudden. A violent twist to the left that left me no time to react, no time to regain my balance. I hit the dirt, unhurt, and sat on the ground, watching him gallop madly around the ring, like a crazed merry-go-round horse. I got up, dusted off my jeans, and caught him. He stood trembling while I examined him. When a horse reacts like that, it is usually the result of unexpected pain—maybe a pinch from the saddle or an insect sting. I ran my hands over his body, his legs, across his neck, trying to feel for something out of the ordinary. There wasn't a lump or heat anywhere, and my saddle fit him well. I was stumped. I mounted him and cantered him around the ring. He rode fine, and I dismounted and led him back to the barn.

“What is
wrong
with you?” I asked him as I brushed the saddle marks from his back. At the sound of my voice, he turned his head to me and opened his eyes wide. I braced, prepared for him to act up again, but he let out a long sigh and dropped his head. I studied him for a moment, puzzled. He didn't strike me as spiteful, and then an inkling of something crossed my mind. It was an answer I didn't want.

I can fix just about anything, except crazy.

 

Alana called me that afternoon to welcome me home. “So you came back in one piece,” she said.

“How did you expect me to come back?” I asked.

“Frankly, deep in the bowels of a lion.”

“Which would make me a pile of shit,” I said. “Which I feel like anyway.”

“I didn't mean it that way,” she said. “How are things with Matt?”

“We had a big fight.”

“Of course you did,” she said. “Emotions are running high. You're resentful, and rightly so. And he's defensive, and—”

“I know all that crap,” I said. “Tell me how to fix it.”

“You ought to know,” she said. “You need to talk it through. Define your goals. Decide if you want to be righteous or married.”

“Can't I be both?”

“No,” she said. “You have to pick one.”

“Can I pick Tom?” I said. “He's very nice.”

“You can't have Door Number Three,” she said. “That's a different game.”

“Anyway, Door Number Three rejected me,” I said. “I invited him into his own sleeping bag, and he turned me down to sit up all night on a pile of boots.”

“He knew it was Rebound Sex,” said Alana. “And he didn't want that. He probably wants you on his terms.”

“It would have been Consolation Sex,” I said. “I'm not ready for Rebound Sex, because I'm not on the rebound yet.”

“You'll thank him later,” said Alana. “Besides, you don't know if he's in a relationship or not. You don't know anything about him.”

“I don't seem to know anything about anybody,” I said. “Everyone's just full of big surprises.”

“Well, here's another one,” said Alana. “I want you to find my kids a pony.”

 

Reese surprised me, too, early that evening, with an anchovy pizza, so I wouldn't have to cook, and a tape cassette he found somewhere, of old elephant theme music. I'm not crazy about either anchovies or Henry Mancini, but I'm less crazy about cooking. We finished the pizza with a bottle of wine, he told me the answer to his morning riddle was Campbell's Cream of Elephant Soup, we listened to “The Baby Elephant Walk,” and I went to bed early. Grace
and Alley were sharing my pillow, so I curled up with Matt's pillow, trying to put everything together. I had to rethink Delaney; my mind danced around the idea that the horse just had a screw loose somewhere. I had to rethink Matt and try to decide if my marriage was worth pursuing. I had to rethink Alana, who had watched me ride all sorts of bad horses over the years and now was brave enough to let her kids start riding. And I had to rethink Tom. Was I finding meanings in his gestures that didn't exist? I needed him to touch me. I needed to know that it was still possible. Was there anything wrong with that? What did I actually hope to prove?

The tectonic plates were shifting all over the place.

S
HE WAS
ten feet at the shoulder, a wall of thick, wrinkled gray skin with sparse, bristle hair. A week had passed by now, and it was early evening and my first night to sleep with her. I stood outside her enclosure and stared in, studying her. I had never been all alone, so close to an elephant. She stood on large, round platter feet and had four toenails, like teacups, on each front foot. She had tusks that curved outward, like crescent moons, and large palm-leaf ears the shape of Africa, and small, intelligent caramel-brown eyes that stared through the bars, stared right through me, stared far off, past the confines of the barn, seeking something else, perhaps the comforting trees and bush and tall yellow grasses of Zimbabwe.

“You will be okay,” I said. “I'll take care of you.” She lifted her great head, but she wasn't really listening to me. She just stared through the bars, fanning her ears slightly, as though straining to hear the calls of her herd.

I pressed my face against the bars and continued to speak softly to her. “Good girl,” I whispered. “Good Margo.” She was indifferent to my words. Depressed. Grieving. And I felt ashamed to be human in the face of her suffering. “No one will ever hurt you again,” I promised her.

Her wounds were grave. Deep gouges that still oozed bloody fluids, washing away the traces of ointment that Matt had spread on them. He would apply more tomorrow, to help fight the infection, inch by inch, until the violated skin closed and healed. I stood there quietly, until she finally closed her eyes and dozed. I glanced at the IV, to make sure it was still in place, and wondered how I would ever reach her enough to gain her trust.

I had read everything I could on elephant training, and most of it employed brutality: electric prods and sharp hooks and chains. I would have none of it. In the meantime, Reese's jokes ran through my mind, and I couldn't stop them. How do you train an elephant? Carefully. How do you know there's an elephant in the room? By the peanuts on its breath. There were hundreds that Reese had been telling me, nonstop, since I got home from Zimbabwe. Now, standing next to a real elephant and looking at her wounds, I wondered where the joke was.

I lowered the lights even more, so that the barn was dim and the shadows melded together, and then I sat down on my cot. Richie and I had given the baby a liter bottle of formula earlier in the evening, and she had finished most of it before she fell asleep in the hay. She was one very small, very sick baby elephant. Billy DuPreez had calculated her to be less than two months old. A mere infant. A two-hundred-pound infant. And she was underweight.

Margo suddenly let out a long, breathy groan and sank to the floor. I jumped up and unlocked the gate and pulled it open, ready to summon Richie, but she only draped her trunk over the sleeping form of her child before she lay flat-out, next to her in the hay. Exhaustion, I realized, and I shut the door to leave them alone.

A few minutes later, I was back on my cot, in the warm, elephant-scented air, and listened to the animals breathing next to me. I was trained to rescue, I thought. I rescue horses, and I used to rescue people. Now I even helped rescue an elephant. I lay on my cot, in the silent barn, without my radio. Without my music to fill my head. How would I manage the next twelve hours, I wondered, without my music? The room was filled with the breathing of elephants. The room was filled with their soft grunts as they slept. I pulled the blanket over my clothes and closed my eyes and listened to their sounds and hoped it would be enough to get me through the night.

 

It wasn't.

I lay awake. I sat up. I lay down again. I finally got up and
walked softly across the floor and rolled the barn doors open to reveal a warm night and a full moon. I slipped outside to stand under a pale-silver sky and wonder how this was all possible, this sleeping with elephants. I wondered what the stars looked like right now in Zimbabwe. I wondered where Tom was right now, and ran my fingers across my lips to capture what he had felt like. I wondered what the African day would reveal tomorrow. How many animals were waiting for help. Wondering what Tom was feeling.

Wondering how both Africa and Tom had gotten so much under my skin.