Tua and the Elephant (11 page)

Noom slipped the bracelet over Tua’s wrist, smiled, and wiggled his ears.

After thanking the monks, Tua waved from the back of the truck as it squeezed out of the
wat
walls and turned into the street.

The only other vehicle on the street was a motorcycle with a sidecar, and it followed the truck at a distance with the beam of its headlight.

As the truck rumbled beneath their feet and the wooden slats rattled around them, Pohn-Pohn wrapped her trunk around Tua’s back as if holding on to a guardrail.

“Don’t be afraid, Pohn-Pohn,” Tua said. “We’ll be there in less than an hour. It’s in the forest. I’ve never been to the forest before. And there will be elephants there, too.”

She talked and talked and talked, cradling Pohn-Pohn’s trunk and looking her in the eyes, until the sun came up and they began climbing the side of the mountain.

“Look how green it is, Pohn-Pohn,” Tua said, pressing her face between the slats.

The forest was mostly a dark shape, a blur, to Pohn-Pohn. But she could smell the cool mountain air above, and the warm breath of the forest beneath it.

The truck groaned up the mountainside in low gear, then raced, purring, down the other side. It climbed and fell, twisted and turned, until it came to a wide green valley surrounded by a ring of blue mountaintops. A chattering river ran through the valley, dividing it between forest and farms.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Pohn-Pohn? This must be …” Tua started to say, when the truck began to sputter and cough. It rolled to the shoulder of the road and stopped with a gasp and a sigh.

“What happened?”

Pohn-Pohn began rocking and swaying, tossing her trunk about and flapping her ears. She looked behind her on the left, then behind her on the right.

The driver hopped out of the cab, climbed up on the bumper, opened the hood, and peered
inside. Then he hopped down and came around the cab, scratching his head.

“What’s the matter?” asked Tua through the slats.

“I’ve lost a hose.”

“Oh,” Tua said. “Can I help you find it?”

Just then a motorcycle with sidecar approached, slowed as if intending to offer help, then sped away and took the turnoff just ahead. The riders were wearing bright bubble helmets with black tinted visors that looked like a dragonfly’s eyes.

“It must have fallen off,” said the driver, turning back to Tua. “I’ll have to go back to look for it. You can wait here or walk the rest of the way on foot. The sanctuary isn’t much farther.”

Pohn-Pohn rocked her head and tossed her trunk over her shoulder.

“We’ll walk, I think, kha,” Tua said. “Which way is it?”

“Maybe three or four miles up that river.” He pointed to the valley. “The road’s just there. But you
might want to take the path instead, on account of the logging trucks.”

“Logging trucks?” Tua curled her arm around Pohn-Pohn protectively. “I think we better take the path.”

After backing out of the truck, Pohn-Pohn led Tua down the rocky embankment and onto the path below. They entered a bamboo grove and passed a riot of ferns and plants with leaves as big as an elephant’s ears. A swaying coconut palm stretched so high into the blue sky it made Tua dizzy to look at it. An orchard of banana trees lined one side of the path, and papaya trees stood at ease on the other. Mangos dangled from trees like gaudy baubles. Then they stepped out into a field of corn that grew twice as high as Pohn-Pohn’s back.

Pohn-Pohn reached out her trunk, plucked off an ear, and popped it in her mouth.

“Stop that,
chang,
” shouted a voice.

Tua dropped the mango she was about to bite into and kicked it aside with her foot. Then she leaned over and peeked around Pohn-Pohn.

A boy with arms crossed over his naked chest and scowling like a bat was blocking the pathway. A faded sarong reached down from his waist to the tops of his two bare feet.

“
Sawatdee kha,
” Tua said, stepping out from behind Pohn-Pohn and bowing a
wai.

The boy leapt into the air like a rooster and took two steps back.

“Who are you?” he said, recovering from his surprise.

“I’m Tua. And this is Pohn-Pohn.”

Pohn-Pohn ignored the introduction and reached for another ear of corn.

“Are you from the sanctuary?” the boy asked.

“No,” Tua said. “But we would like to go there.”

Tua was about to ask the boy for directions when she heard voices singing a chant.

“
Hoon lai ga, hoon lai ga,
where do you find a
hoon lai ga
?”

“Quick,” said the boy, “in here.” He parted the cornstalks like a curtain and nodded his head inside.
“Hurry.
Reo reo.
”

Tua took Pohn-Pohn’s trunk and led her inside the cornfield.

The boy straightened the stalks as best he could and covered the hole with his back.

“
Hoon lai ga, hoon lai ga,
what do you do with a
hoon lai ga
?”

Tua crept back to the path and crouched down out of sight to listen and watch.

Two children faced the boy: an older girl in a school uniform and her brother, a plump boy in a tracksuit and white sneakers. The brother kicked a dirt clod that splattered against the other boy’s legs.

“What are you doing, scarecrow?” said the girl. “What do you do with a scarecrow that can’t even scare crows?”

“What do you do with a scarecrow that’s ascared of crows?” said her brother.

The two children laughed at the boy in the sarong.

“Afraid of crows,” said the boy.

“What?” yelped the girl.

“It’s ‘afraid’ of crows, not ‘ascared’ of crows,” the boy in the sarong said.

“What do you know?” whined the girl. “You’re only a
hoon lai ga.
Scarecrows don’t go to school.”

“I know what I know,” said the boy.

“And that’s nothing,” said the girl. Then she spun around on her heels and skipped down the path singing, “
Hoon lai ga, hoon lai ga,
nobody wants a
hoon lai ga.
”

“What’s in there?” asked the brother, standing on tiptoes. He could see stalks swaying in the cornfield.

“A demon from the forest went in there,” the boy in the sarong whispered. “With bloodshot eyes and tusks like a wild pig. Do you want to see it?”

“No!” The brother stumbled backward. Then he spit on the ground and said: “I don’t believe in demons and spirits,” and ran off to catch up with his sister.

“You can come out now,” the boy called to Tua. “They’re gone.”

Tua led Pohn-Pohn back to the path, trying not to trample too many cornstalks.

“They would have told their father about the elephant,” the boy said. “Farmers don’t like elephants very much.”

“Thank you,” Tua said. “What’s your name?”

“Kanchanok.” He blushed and looked down at his feet.

“Why did they call you
hoon lai ga,
Kanchanok?”

“I come from a village in the hills,” he said. “My father left home to look for work, and he didn’t come back. Now I must work to support my brothers, sisters, mother, and grandmother. I don’t have money to go to school.”

“I’m sorry,” Tua said.

She took off the bodhi seed bracelet and slipped it over the boy’s thin wrist.

“Thank you for helping us,” she said. “This was a gift from my friend Noom at the temple. My
Uncle Sip says gifts that are shared travel in a circle back to us.”

Kanchanok turned the bracelet around on his wrist like a knob that opened a smile on his face.

“Would you like me to take you to the sanctuary?” he asked.

“Would you?”

“Of course,” he threw out his chest. “Mae Noi is my friend. She taught me how to read and write. But we’ll have to cross the river and go through the forest so no one sees us.”

The motorcycle with sidecar came to a turnoff at the bottom of a hill with a sign over the road that read:

Elephant Haven

Nak stopped the motorcycle in the middle of the road and gunned the engine, attracting the attention of a gatekeeper and a chocolate-colored guard dog with a razorback.

The dog bared its teeth and growled back at the motorcycle.

“Easy, Fudge,” said the gatekeeper. “Don’t much like the look of them, do you?”

The motorcycle accelerated around the bend, sped up the side of another hill, and pulled over to the shoulder.

“Look there,” Nak pointed his finger at the river below. “They’re crossing the river with that buffalo boy and going into the forest.”

“Maybe they’re going to set it free in there,” said Nang.

“They’ll come out of the forest and cross into the sanctuary there,” Nak pointed up river. “We need to get to the river and cut them off.”

“How do we do that?” Nang threw up his arms. “There’s a guard. And a dog.”

A raft floated downriver just then with two
farangs
on board.

“By craft.” He chortled, then slapped down his visor and sped off down the hill.

After luring Tua and Pohn-Pohn out of the river with sticks of raw sugarcane, Kanchanok led them into the dense forest and onto a small dirt path. The forest leaned over the path, threatening to swallow it up. A line of green tufts grew between two dusty tracks as if bursting through a seam. The tree canopy blocked out the sun, sending down long vines of grasping tentacles and shivers down Tua’s spine.

When they heard voices up ahead, Kanchanok steered them off the road and into the cover of the forest.

An elephant appeared on the road, carrying a mahout behind her neck and two
farangs
in a
wooden saddle on her back. The
farangs
were laughing and taking pictures of themselves. After they passed, a young elephant only a few months old came running clumsily after his mother. The mother stopped so the baby could catch up, but the mahout struck her face with a bamboo switch and ordered her to move on. She called encouragement to her calf and continued down the road with her cargo.

“Oh no, Kanchanok. We can’t go there,” Tua whispered.

“They’re from a tourist camp upriver, not the sanctuary. Mae Noi asked them to let her take the mother and calf until he’s stronger, but they said the mother must work.”