Larger Than Life (Novella) (8 page)

As Lesego gets bigger and bolder, she begins to test her limits. In the wild, this
would lead to a sharp rebuke from her mother or the matriarch. In the wild there would
be so many aunties and older sisters around taking care of her that no matter what
mischief she wanted to get into, she would never get very far. But because there is
only one of me, there’s nothing for me to do but run after Lesego one afternoon when
she bolts away from the porch and toward the tourists’ camp.

The guests who come on safari are warned that this is not Disneyland; that we do not
cue the lions and that the hippos are not animatronic. For this reason they are escorted
to and from their plush accommodations after dark, and they are told to keep an eye
out for an errant bushbuck that may bolt across the path. But I am pretty sure that
the last thing the Dutch businessman and his family expect to encounter on their way
back to their rooms after tea is a small, determined charging elephant calf.

Lesego stumbles when she first sees them, which gives me enough time to catch up to
her. The Dutch family is delighted, their little girl clapping her hands at the baby
elephant’s arrival. “Don’t move,” I warn. Lesego is too small to do much damage, but
she is nearly three hundred pounds and curious.

Lesego shakes her head in a weak display of intimidation. She tries to roar, but it
sounds more like the toot of a clown’s horn. She rushes forward, skidding to a stop,
a mock charge.

The family thinks it’s hilarious. “Picture?” the businessman asks in broken English,
holding up his camera.

I hesitate. The reason Neo and I have avoided bringing Lesego here is that the more
domesticated she becomes, the harder it will be to return her to the wild. It is already
unorthodox for her to be almost exclusively in the company of two humans.

Before I can tell him no, the wife and daughter scoot into place beside me and the
man takes a photograph. As I return to the researchers’ camp with Lesego in tow, I
mull how much trouble I will be in when Grant hears from the guests that she was the
star attraction today. If word gets out—if that
photo
gets out—our whole research operation could be compromised, and punished by the wildlife
department.

I am so deep in thought that I do not hear Neo calling my name until he is virtually
standing in front of me. Lesego, delighted to see him, trumpets and reaches for his
hat. “Karabo’s herd,” Neo says, breathless—only then do I realize he’s been running
to find me. “It’s being led by Mpho now.”

Karabo was the matriarch who was killed by poachers, along with four other females
in her herd—one of which was Lesego’s mother. But herds had ten or fifteen members;
presumably the other cows and juvenile bulls had run off at the gunshots. They had
not been seen for weeks, probably because they were avoiding the site of previous
danger. Now, according to Neo, they are nearby, and they have a new leader.

He stares at me, his chest still heaving, and I know what he’s saying:
It’s time
.

If Lesego were in the wild, she’d have a herd to protect her. Her mother would teach
her how to use her trunk to eat, how to threaten a predator. She’d learn from her
grandmother where to find water and food, and which places are dangerous because of
poachers. She’d have an aunt to show her how to practice her mothering skills, and
younger cousins and siblings to test them on. I may have helped Lesego survive, but
I am not equipped to teach her how to truly live. If Lesego has any chance of being
reintroduced to the wild, this is her best shot: to be among those who are biologically
related. Neo is right.

We head into the bush to the spot where he’s seen Mpho and her herd. Three weeks of
memories swell in my throat, making it hard to breathe: Lesego overturning the card
table where Neo and I are playing Spit; Lesego’s ear fluttering over me like a butterfly
wing as she leans close to my face; the urgent tug of her suckling on my elbow, my
foot, the tail of my shirt; the designs she traces with a stick in the dirt outside
the cottage, symbols in a secret code I haven’t yet deciphered.

I walk with Lesego, my hand riding lightly on her spine. Behind us Neo drives the
four-by-four, puttering along at a safe distance. It takes us an hour to cover the
two miles of terrain between the camp and Mpho’s herd, and it is Lesego who senses
them first.

Her trunk rises into the air, and she wrinkles it, sniffing. She lifts her rear foot
so that it hovers over the dusty ground.

Suddenly, there is a rumble in the distance that I would guess was thunder if not
for the drought.

Lesego breaks into a run. I start after her, but Neo pulls up beside me in the vehicle.
“Jump in,” he says, and we bounce up the hill after her.

When we see the herd, they are in a valley, all pointed in the direction of the crest
where Lesego waits and watches them, every fiber of her body vibrating with excitement.
Loose-limbed and light-footed, she races toward the giants. From our position on the
hill, we watch the other elephants immediately form a circle around her. “I can’t
see her anymore,” I say, panicking.

Neo points. “There. See the one with the single tusk? That’s Mpho. She’s got
Lesego under her belly.”

Another elephant shifts, and then I see it—the matriarch using her trunk to pull Lesego
close.

I have heard of elephants who think kindly of humans, who will come to the camp for
help if they are tangled in a snare or barbed wire. Maybe it will be that way for
Lesego. Maybe she won’t forget me.

I don’t realize I am crying until I feel Neo’s warm hand cover mine where it rests
on my lap. “Let’s just go,” I force out, because I don’t think I can stand to watch
Lesego walk away.

“Not yet,” Neo murmurs.

Mpho suddenly takes her trunk and shoves Lesego away. The matriarch rumbles,
Let’s go
, and the herd begins to walk north. When Lesego scampers to follow, one of the other
large females roughly pushes her back.

“They won’t take her,” I say, realizing what I am seeing.

“Maybe,” Neo says. “She stinks of human.”

Suddenly I realize the great disservice I’ve done to Lesego. I might have always planned
to set her back in the wild, but I have tainted her with salvation. Lesego smells
of cookies and soaps and laundry detergent and the hundred other man-made items with
which she’s been in contact. A herd that is terrified of humans—that associates those
smells with death—will naturally reject her.

Confused, Lesego turns to the only elephants that haven’t moved off with the matriarch
yet—the young bulls that are too juvenile to live apart from the herd but too old
to hang out with their mothers. They begin to charge Lesego, who is so surprised she
doesn’t even feint to avoid the blow. They knock her over, and she struggles to her
feet again. One bull crunches into Lesego with an audible crack; I see blood well
up where his tusk has sliced open her forehead. Lesego lets out a distress call, but
in this social experiment of my own creation, none of the mature females come to her
aid as they would have in the wild.

I stand up in the Land Rover. “Stop them,” I shriek. “They’re hurting her!”

“Alice—”

“I said
stop them
!” Without a second thought, I leap out of the vehicle and start
running into the pack of juvenile bulls—a stupid move, but all I want to do is help
Lesego. Neo immediately revs the engine, flying by me in the Land Rover to drive the
bulls away. It takes him three tries before they jog off up the hill, a delinquent
pack of teenagers, rumbling as if they are already embellishing the story for the
telling.

Dazed and stumbling, Lesego tries to join them.

It’s not that she’s a glutton for punishment. It’s not that she’s not terrified. It’s
that she wants a family, even if they don’t want
her
.

With strength I didn’t know I had, I run after Lesego, rugby-tackling her with all
my weight so that she tumbles to the ground. She trumpets, another cry for help, as
I pull her ears over her eyes so that she cannot watch her cousins leave her behind.

I don’t know what Neo says to convince Grant to call the bush vet, but he is summoned.
Lesego is given two milligrams of etorphine and twenty milligrams of azaperone—sedatives
to calm her while the gash on her forehead is treated. Neo and I stand shoulder to
shoulder behind the vet and Grant, watching in silent misery. At one point our hands
brush. My pinkie hooks tight to his, hidden in the folds of my cargo shirt, where
no one will see.

“I suggest,” the vet says to me when he finishes, “that you get some rest.” He is
tight-lipped about the very obvious fact that we are harboring a baby elephant in
the game reserve, which leads me to believe Grant has made an excuse for me. The two
men leave so that Grant can take the vet to the airstrip.

Although I should be exhausted after the day, I am coiled tight as a spring. I can’t
imagine sleeping anytime soon. I start pacing in my hut, peeking out the door to make
sure Lesego is still unconscious. “She’ll be out all night,” Neo says.

“I know.”

He sticks his hands in his pockets. “I ought to go.”

I should nod, but I don’t. He should leave, but he doesn’t.

I take a deep breath and confess the fear I’ve buried inside for the past three hours,
ever since the debacle of watching Lesego be rejected by her herd. “Neo,” I
whisper. “I made things worse.”

I am thinking of what sort of life might be possible for an elephant in captivity:
a circus, where she would be forever on display. A zoo, where her world would shrink
to the size of a cage and enclosure. Was it really worth saving her from starvation
for that limited existence?

“You didn’t know,” Neo says.

I round on him. “But I
should
have. The last time I—” I break off, realizing what I am about to reveal.

Neo stands on the ground, and I am one step up on the porch, so our faces are level.
“Tell me why you left Madikwe.”

I glance away. “I was
strongly encouraged
to transfer to a new game reserve.”

“Did you try to save an orphan there, too?”

I think about the trampled calf that died on my watch, because I had played by the
rules. “No,” I say, swallowing.

Neo strides past me into the hut, to the cupboard where I keep my laundry supplies
and—in the far reaches—my emergency alcohol. It’s a bottle of tequila I have cracked
open only twice. Once when the calf died at Madikwe. And once just before I found
Lesego and her slaughtered family.

I don’t ask Neo how he found my stash; he knows this cottage as well as I do after
nearly a month of practically living here. He takes juice glasses from the dish rack
and pours two fingers of alcohol in each one. When he sits down at the table with
the drinks, I join him. “Ever had tequila?” I ask.

He shakes his head, lifts the glass, and downs it in one swallow.

I do the same, wincing at the fire that races along my throat and makes my teeth ache.
“There
was
a calf,” I confess, as Neo pours us each another shot. “He was attacked by his own
mother.”

Neo’s eyebrows raise. “I’ve never seen that happen.”

“Well, Madikwe wasn’t like here. The South African government thought they could manage
the elephant population by killing entire herds and putting the babies together on
reserves like Madikwe. But those juveniles, they didn’t behave the way they would
have if the older matriarchs had been there to keep them in line. And this one
elephant, she trampled her newborn.” I look up at Neo. “It wasn’t her fault that there
was no one around to teach her how to be a mother.” My voice gets hard, bitter. “It
was
ours
. That calf was just collateral damage.”

“You left because you couldn’t save him?”

I shake my head and toss back my second drink. By now, the room is starting to swim
at the edges. “I wasn’t the same, after he died. I hated not being allowed to intervene.
Then about a month later, a group of rangers driving to check on a water pump found
themselves surrounded by a herd of young bulls. One of the juveniles attacked the
four-by-four, charging it over and over, spearing the doors with his tusks. Well,
the rangers knew they had to get out and run. One of them was tusked by the elephant.”
I watch Neo finish his drink, rattled by the reality of the dangers of his work. “The
rule in the reserve was that if an elephant was an instigator or had killed a person,
it had to be shot. During the attack, that particular elephant had opened up a cut
on his forehead, so he was very recognizable within the bull herd. But every time
the game warden went out with a gun to kill the elephant, the bull herd would surround
him and move off. It was as if they realized he was in trouble, and they were protecting
him.”

I lean forward, my head resting on my hand. “This went on for months. The wound healed,
and no one could recognize the bull anymore. No one except me, that is, because I
had cataloged all the elephants at Madikwe as part of my doctoral research. The head
of the reserve ordered me to locate that bull, so that he could be shot,” I say. “And
I refused.”