Hannah's Dream (22 page)

“You’re lucky to have had the life you did, sir—done so many things, been so many places.”

Max Biedelman stood silhouetted in the parlor window, silent. Finally she said, “Do you know what I’ve been thinking lately? I’ve been thinking that we’re animals, like any others—we senesce, we sink into decrepitude just as they do. But I’ve wondered if it isn’t our special hell that we are able to register the swift passage of time, the lightning speed of it all, and the absoluteness with which it is gone. I feel my age, Mr. Brown, I feel every bit of it, and yet I can recall so very clearly what it was like to be young. It torments me. I should like, just one more time, to feel the winds of Africa, to hear and feel the din and the heat of the Indonesian jungle. The mahouts used to sing as they prepared their supper. They were a joyful people who believed in a joyful world. And indeed, the world is a fine place when one sees it from the back of an elephant.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “You cannot know how hard it is, saying goodbye to it all. There are moments when it is unendurable.”

“You’re alive,” Sam said. “You still got life all around you, so God isn’t ready to bring you home yet. When He’s ready, you’ll be ready, too. Like Miss Effie was.”

Max Biedelman wiped at her face with her shirt cuff and looked at him. “I hope so, Sam. I do hope so.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said softly.

Maxine Leona Biedelman died one week later, alone by intention in her room. Sam thought she would have wanted it that way. On the next fine day he mingled her ashes with Miss Effie’s in the clearing, just as she’d asked him to do.

And that night, for the very first time, he dreamed Hannah’s dream.

“Looks like this is the place,”
the truck driver said, startling Sam, who must have dozed off. His eyelids felt like sandpaper. When they drove past a wooden sign saying
PACHYDERM SANCTUARY
, his heart began to pound.

Out the window he watched as the gravel road led them through woods and clearings, then into a huge meadow that disappeared over the top of rolling hills.

He had already seen it, right down to the rocks and hillocks.

They pulled up to a big white barn, newer than the newest building back at the zoo. A tall, long-legged, weathered woman came outside and signaled the driver where to park the truck. Neva shot by in her car and stopped alongside the barn, hopping out to embrace the woman. When the driver stopped the truck, Sam got out of the cab slowly, all of a sudden reluctant to be here, not sure he could bring himself to do what he’d need to do.

Neva brought the tall woman over. “Sam, this is Alice McNeary.”

“Nice to meet you, Sam. Neva’s told me a lot about you.”

Sam shook her hand. “Ma’am.”

And then he’d turned and walked away.

Alice put her arm around Neva’s shoulders and hugged her
reassuringly. “It’s always tough,” she said quietly. “And they’re always fine.”

“The keepers or the elephant?”

“Both.”

“God,” Neva said, wiping her nose.

“You sure you won’t stay with us?”

“I’m sure. I promised someone I’d come back, at least for a little while.”

Alice raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well!” Alice gave her a quick one-armed hug and then strode to the truck, where Sam was fumbling with the cage’s locking mechanism.

“Neva’s told me Hannah is a good animal, Sam. One of the best.”

“Yes, ma’am, she is.”

“It’s going to take some time to get the cage open and for us to get ready for her. Why don’t you go into the barn and bring down a flake of hay for her? You’ll find a wheelbarrow inside the door, and a pitchfork in the loft. It’s good timothy hay. We grow it ourselves.”

Sam drew a deep breath. “Shug sure does love her hay.”

“Has she had much to eat?”

“No, ma’am. Just some Dunkin’ Donuts.”

Alice cracked a smile. Sam smiled back.

“So she’s spoiled, is she?”

“Yes, ma’am, she is.”

“Well, she won’t have to lower her standards on our account. We talk a good story, Sam, but deep down everyone here is a pushover.”

Sam’s smile faded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go and get the hay.”

In the barn he breathed in
the good rich smells of elephant. He found the hayloft and the wheelbarrow and the pitchfork and brought the flake to the truck. Alice McNeary and Neva had put the ramp in place against the side of the cage and slid back the gate. All that was keeping Hannah inside were the chains and shackles.

“All right, Sam, I think we’re about ready for her,” Alice called. “Can you put the hay at the bottom of the ramp? Maybe a little on the ramp, too. That should give her some incentive to leave the truck.”

Sam put down the hay. “Hey, sugar,” he said softly, climbing into the open gate of the cage. Hannah turned her head and reached for him with her trunk. “How’s my baby girl? You tired of standing in this mean thing? How about we get you out of here and let you see some things. You’re in your new home, now.”

Alice had been standing to one side, watching. Now she handed him a wrench. “We’ve found that it’s better for everyone if we let the elephants come out under their own steam. Whenever you feel she’s ready, Sam, you can do the honors.”

Sam looked at her, not understanding.

“You can take off the shackles.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Me and shug have a couple things to talk over first, though, if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course. Take all the time you need. She’s here now. There’s no hurry.”

Neva started toward him, but Alice caught her by the arm and shook her head.

Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out the last donut,
wrapped in a napkin. He held it out to Hannah on the palm of his hand. “I suppose that’s the last Dunkin’ Donut you’re going to get for a while, baby girl. I bet they’ve got other treats for you, but I didn’t see a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way through town.”

Hannah nudged his hip anxiously with her trunk. He leaned into her and said, “Let me get through this, sugar. You’re going to be with elephants now. You won’t need me and Mama anymore.” Sam turned the wrench over and over in his hand. “But no matter what, you can count on me thinking about you up there at home, so if you feel a little breeze or smell a donut smell sometimes, why, you know it’s just my thoughts passing through. I won’t leave you, is what I’m saying. Not in my mind. You just keep that in your thoughts, sugar, like a great big bull’s eye.”

Hannah wrapped her trunk around Sam’s head gently, whistled in his ear. “That’s all, shug. That’s what I got to say.” He took a deep breath.

“Foot, baby girl.”

Hannah lifted her front foot. Sam unwrapped enough of the shackle to get at the fitting, and then the steel clattered onto the bed of the truck. He walked around behind her and she lifted her foot before he’d even asked. The second shackle came undone like a well-oiled lock. Sam caught it before it could fall, staring at it in his hand. Then, still holding the shackle tightly, he turned and walked down the ramp. Hannah followed him the way she’d followed him so many times before, over so many years.

At the bottom of the ramp, he stopped and looked around. He could see Neva and Alice McNeary starting toward him. From the other direction, cresting the hill Sam knew better than his own backyard, he saw four elephants. How many times had he
seen them in his sleep—six hundred? A thousand? How many miles had he walked in his dreams, trying to catch up?

He felt Hannah see them, too. She pulled up short like she’d been touched with something electric. One of the elephants trumpeted, and then the others trumpeted, too.

Sam could feel what she was feeling: that it had been so long.

He pushed her gently, willing her to leave him. His had been a long and solitary vigil, but it was over.

“We’re going to be all right now, shug,” he said. “This is how we begin.”

F
rom 1995 to 1998
I was lucky enough to work with an ailing killer whale named Keiko—the star of the movie
Free Willy
—and the staff that rehabilitated him. The Keiko project had all the makings of an epic story: there were heroes and villains, huge sums of money made and spent, complex issues and passionate declarations, organizational politics, and public and private struggles over control and recognition, often played out on the front pages and television sets of major media outlets around the world. At the center of the vortex was Keiko himself: a smart, wily, keen, silly, luminous soul that burned more brightly each month as his health was restored; and the handful of men and women who spent hours in an icy pool to swim with him, pet him, challenge him, play with him, teach him, and be taught by him. (They also joined him for the Fourth
of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and spent countless evenings watching television with him on a donated wide-screen TV.) From Keiko’s keepers I learned the extraordinary lengths to which good people will go—often without recognition—for the sake of the animals in their care. Keiko’s was, in the end, a love story.

When the killer whale was moved to Iceland and my part in the project ended, I thought I would write about the experience, or at least about some of the issues and conflicts it raised, but the story was simply too close. So I let the idea go and wrote
Homesick Creek
instead.

Then, in 2001, I stumbled upon television footage of a man named Solomon James Jr., unshackling for the last time the Asian elephant he had taken care of for twenty-two years. Her name was Shirley, and he had just transported her from the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hoehenwald, Tennessee. He was struggling to maintain his composure as millions of people watched their parting on television. It was clear that theirs had been a long and complex journey. Out of this remarkable moment, and informed by my experience with the Keiko project, Samson Brown and Hannah were born.

Thus, my thanks go first to Phyllis Bell and Beverlee Hughes, two extraordinary women who allowed me to be part of Keiko’s story. I am also indebted to the men and women on Keiko’s staff who so graciously shared with me their knowledge, patience, and friendship, especially Mike Glenn, Mark Trimm, Ken Lytwyn, Jeff Foster, Karen McRae, Brian O’Neill, Tracy Karmuza, Steven Claussen, Jen and Greg Schorr, Nicole Nicassio, and Cynthia Alia-Mitchell. My thanks, too, to Earth Island Institute’s Dave Phillips, Eagle River’s Craig McCaw and
Bob Ratliffe, Joe Gaskins, veterinarian Dr. Lanny Cornell, and troubleshooter extraordinaire John Scully.

In the realm of elephants I would have been lost without the elephant keepers at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. Craig Wilcox, Shannon Smith, and Dr. Holly Reed gave me not only their professional insights but also a further glimpse into the depth of commitment that became the centerpiece of Sam’s character. Sally Joseph and Dr. Brian Joseph were both generous teachers and invaluable fact-checkers when this book was very new, and they saved me from untold gaffs, goofs, and errors.

My heartfelt thanks also go to Beth Basham, Caryn Casey, Richard Liedle and Debbie Coplin for reading drafts of
Hannah’s Dream
and giving me their thoughts and encouragement. My gratitude, too, to Kate Nintzel and her team at Harper Perennial, and to Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Anna DeRoy, and Erin Malone at William Morris, for being Hannah’s champions.

To Jeannie Reynolds Page goes my continuing amazement at finding such a friend and supporter in the lunatic world of writing. I land in your e-mail with doubts and fears and you just
know
: what to say, how it feels, why I worry.

To my daughter Kerry, who is beginning to discover the magic of fiction, go my thanks for sharing your insights and revelations. The world of books and writers is lucky to have you in its midst. I hope that for you, as for me, it’s a passion that will last a lifetime.

And finally, no words can sufficiently express my love and gratitude to Nolan Harvey, my husband, teacher, supporter, guide and friend, for believing in Hannah and Sam even when I doubted them. Without you, this book would never have been.