Whistling for the Elephants (22 page)

‘And
Jehovah said to Jesus, “I am the Lord your God and thou shalt have none other
gods before me.” Why did he say that if he
is
the only god? Was there
competition?

Why did
he need to say it? Do you think other gods were setting up shop? I tell you, if
I die I ain’t going to heaven. It’ll be some asshole place run by a bunch of
Apostles. Goddamn men in beards who abandoned their families, sitting arguing
and talking about fishing.’

Cosmos
came into the discussion from left field. ‘The Sumerians worshipped the Great
Goddess, Inanna. She had a lap of honey, a vulva like a boat of heaven and
bounty poured forth from her womb so generously that every lettuce in the land
was to be honoured as the Lady’s pubic hair.’

Sweetheart
put down her sandwich. The mention of lettuce had been too much. I didn’t
understand a lot of the conversation but I was so glad to be there. I felt
grown-up, valued, important. We were talking about important things. Cosmos
went back to digging while Helen sat down with yet another book. She had raided
the library in the big house. When we weren’t working in the field Helen and I
spent a lot of time in the library. There was every kind of animal book you
could imagine. We had found a whole stack about elephants. I think by then I
was building a strange image of the arriving creature. I knew that she would be
big, so big that fence posts couldn’t hold her back, that she could
tightrope-walk and that she would never forget anything. Helen wasn’t really
helping. She read out quietly from an ancient tome:

“‘1844
… Charles Knight … The surgeon Sir Everard Home, who carried out an
exhaustive anatomical examination of the elephant’s ear, maintained that its
structure precluded the animal from having any appreciation of music.

I
nodded, not sure what to make of it. ‘I guess that’s TV out.’

‘“Elephant
herds consist of up to four generations of females and young, immature males.
The herd has a dominance hierarchy based on age, with knowledge passing from
mother to child to grandchild.”‘

‘She’ll
probably remember.’ Cosmos called out to Miss Strange. ‘You know, Artemesia.
Being here, I mean. She might even remember you. It’s true about their
memories. Doesn’t it say in that book, Helen?’

‘They
never forget. A calf was once knocked over by a train in Assam. The mother
elephant waited until the train came the next day and then she put her weight
against it and derailed it.’

‘Can’t
you find something useful in there?’ snapped Miss Strange. ‘We’re not having a
herd, I’m not going to play her music and she ain’t playing on the train
tracks.’

Helen
sucked hard on her lip and turned the page. ‘The average bull consumes one
hundred twenty-five pounds of hay per day.’

‘Great.
Something else we hadn’t thought of.’ Miss Strange heaved another post from the
ground. For her age she was remarkably strong. From the left side she looked incredibly
powerful and perfect.

Perry
was running around tracing circles in the dust with a twig. He tripped over
nothing at all and crashed to the ground, grazing his knee. Sweetheart scooped
him up and held him close. She rocked her great-grandson while Cosmos and Miss
Strange dug, Helen read and I tried to be helpful. We were a strange group. It
was very hot and we all looked terrible. I was fairly sure that Mother would feel
we were not making the most of ourselves. Not that we had time. There were problems
to deal with.

A dog
began attacking some of the smaller creatures at night. There were two geese who
lived at Manitou Manor. A gander called Troilus and his mate Cressida. Two
nights after we started work on the elephant run, Cressida got savaged by the
unknown dog. In the morning we found Troilus standing silently beside her
partly eaten body. Troilus was inconsolable. He hunched his body and hung his
head. His eyes looked sunken and he seemed to cry pain and distress. It made
Cosmos cry but Miss Strange shrugged.

‘Zoo’s
so damn good, animals are trying to get in,’ she said. She said she would call
Joey to get the dog but I don’t think it made the goose feel better. It just
hung around looking terrible, which didn’t exactly help. When you are busy what
you don’t need is a depressed bird getting in the way all the time. Once the
fencing was clear the next difficulty loomed at us. Something had to take the
place of the old wood and we were running out of time. Building a fence strong
enough for an elephant was no mean feat. This was a creature who could use her
trunk like a forklift truck. A mammal with the strength of fifty men. One
evening I rode home on my bike past the big house. I loved to watch the sun
turn it golden in the evening light. Down by the river, the railway track
trudged its useless miles along the bank and across the water. Miles and miles
of metal lying silent. I was thinking about tightrope-walking so I got off my
trusty steed and had a go on the track. Rusty with disuse, it still did not
flinch when I bounced up and down on it doing my circus-elephant impression.
The old track was strong and usable. I just wasn’t sure how.

On my
way back I stopped at the A&P. Mother had asked me to get her more pecans.
She never asked me why I took all day doing it. It was a good excuse to stop at
the store. We were going to need a heck of a lot of fruit at the zoo when Artemesia
came and I figured Alfonso would help. When I came round the apple display I
saw that Harry was talking to him. Harry was holding a roll of the
Close the
Zoo
posters and he was almost jabbing them at Alfonso.

‘I need
your support here, Alfonso.’

Alfonso
picked up an apple to shine as if his life depended on it. ‘Look, Harry, I know
you want the stadium and I’ve always voted for you before. You’re a good man
and I know you’ve had troubles…’

‘Alfonso?’
I interrupted. I couldn’t bear it if he took a poster. I had to talk to him
first. He looked relieved. A man at home with avocados and oranges did not want
to dabble in politics.

‘Hello,
Dorothy, come for your pecans? Beautiful thing, the pecan. Member of the walnut
family and native to these United States. The ones we have in today are from
Indiana and…’

Harry
lost his cool. ‘I don’t give a damn about your stupid nuts.’

‘Oh, you
should. They are a native product and…’

Harry
took his posters and left. Alfonso watched him go and handed me the polished
apple he had been holding.

‘I
think he needs more fibre,’ he said.

I
nodded. It was a fruit-and-vegetable kind of approach. ‘He’s mad all the time
now.’

Alfonso
shook his head. ‘It’s a shame. He used to be such a nice kid but he had a tough
time.’ It was hard to imagine Harry having a tough time. ‘Growing up at the zoo
and his mom not married. I think it was okay till Billie died. He thought he
should have saved her. After that there was Miss Strange and all. He sure did
get teased at school. Then he went away to war and he came back so tough. Pearl
was good but when she went there was nothing left to soften the edges. It’s a
shame.’

I
wanted to ask about Harry and Billie but someone came in for potatoes and
Alfonso swept off on a short root-vegetable lecture. I got the pecans and went
home. When I got back Mother was waiting. I used to dream about her waiting for
me, standing there with milk and cookies and a solicitous word about my day,
but this was the wrong day. I didn’t want to see her when I was sweaty. When I
was thinking about Harry being teased. When I had been digging and pulling and
generally doing things which were probably bad for your nails. I knew she
wouldn’t approve and it was terribly important to me just then not to hear
that. She didn’t seem to notice much about me at all. I gave her the pecans.

‘Dorothy,
I’ve got you something. A present, you know, you said… a few things, et
cetera.’ She spoke with the quietness of Father which we all used in the house.

She
produced a box. The box I had longed for, from the Sears, Roebuck Company. It
was my shorts and matching T—shirts. I went as red as if I had been supplied
with something risqué from an erotica collection. The clothing mattered
terribly and yet I couldn’t tell her. There was a moment when we might have
actually said something to each other but that time I spoiled it. I took the
box without saying a word, went into my room and shut the door. I wanted to
put the clothes on privately. They mattered too much for an audience.

The
next morning I looked fabulous. No Joan of Arc in newly polished armour could
have been more confident of her appearance. In knee-length royal blue shorts
and matching T-shirt, I was fit for battle. I led my herd at the zoo round to
the old track. I was unstoppable.

‘If we
can break up the old track, we can dig it in and make the enclosure. It’s very
strong.’

Miss
Strange eyed me and nodded. It was a great idea. Cosmos clapped her hands.

‘Ganesh
has answered our call.’

‘Ganesh?’
inquired Sweetheart.

‘Don’t
start her off,’ sighed Miss Strange, but Cosmos had moved on.

‘He’s
the Hindu god with the head of an elephant — the remover of all obstacles and
bringer of good fortune. He is on our side. We can achieve all.’

‘Right
… yes … so,’ said Miss Strange. ‘Just one thing. How much do you think each
piece of track weighs?’

We all
looked at the slumbering lengths.

‘A lot,’
I said as a ballpark figure.

Miss
Strange nodded at Cosmos. ‘So, do you think you could get your Ganesh to come
up with something to get the track from here to the field?’

Miss
Strange went to finish clearing the old wood and get the bonfire started.
Cosmos and I were to try and see if any of the track could be shifted from the
old sleepers.

I think
Miss Strange was just trying to keep me out of the way. Helen drifted off to
the butterfly house. Sweetheart and Perry kept the drinks coming. I was glad of
a little time with Cosmos. After all the discussion, I had spent the night
trying to have a vision from Jesus and nothing had happened. I thought maybe
Buddha was a good second option.

‘So,
Cosmos, you worship this Buddha?’

‘Oh no,
Buddha is not a god. He’s a Great Teacher whose doctrines and example each
individual may follow on the road to enlightenment. You know, trying to ascend
to higher levels of being. He was a real guy — Siddhartha Gautama. “Buddha” is
just a title. It means awakened or enlightened one. He was a prince. Son of the
rulers of the kingdom of the Sakyas. When he was sixteen, he married his
cousin, Princess Yasodhara. They lived in this fabulous luxury palace. Then
when he was twenty-nine he realized that all human life is suffering. That, you
know everyone has to die. So he gave up the palace, left his wife and infant
son and went looking for the truth.’

‘He
left his wife and son?’

‘He
wanted to find the four noble truths.’

‘I don’t
think he should have left his kid.’

‘That’s
not like, the point, Sugar.’

But I
thought it was typical. Leave the princess at home to do all the work. I went
off Buddha in an instant. Why couldn’t his wife have gone to find the four
noble truths? At least they could have made it a family trip. I didn’t think
Buddha would be my friend either but I did think of Gabriel over at the Mobil
station. He was my friend. He had a religious kind of name and he had a
tow-truck. At lunch I biked over to the garage to see if he would help. I was
beginning to judge the businesses in town by whether they had a
Close the
Zoo
poster or not. There were a lot of them around but not at the gas
station. I figured it would be okay.

‘Hey,
Gabriel,’ I called casually, popping a wheelie on my bike in the forecourt.

‘Yo,
Professor.’ Gabriel thought I was real smart ever since I had read his draft
letter. I forget how I asked him. I don’t think it was too subtle. Something
along the lines of ‘You wanna come help with an elephant? You’d need a truck.’

He’d
shrugged and mumbled something which sounded like ‘Okay.’

You couldn’t
tell with Gabriel how much had gone in. I wasn’t sure he would turn up so I
didn’t say anything to the others.

We were
all just helping to finish piling up the bonfire when Gabriel arrived in the
tow-truck. It was a huge white machine with
Jacobson’s Garage
painted on
the side. It had ridiculously massive tires and a crane at the back. Off the
school bus and behind the wheel of his massive machine mover, Gabriel looked
impressive, even to me. Helen was reading quietly to us when he arrived and I
don’t think she really noticed him at first.

“‘Once
a bull is mature it will enter a state of musth once a year. The word is Urdu
for ‘intoxicated’. During musth, a young bull is drunk with only one thought —
to pick fights and seek females in estrous. It can be a dangerous time. A
fully mature bull has the strength of around seventy men”’

Gabriel
slipped from his truck and grabbed one of the last posts from Miss Strange. He
tossed it on the top of the fire with barely a muscle ripple. Unaware, Helen
ploughed on.