An Inconvenient Elephant Read online

  There had to be a reason I was still here, I mused. There had to be a reason why I didn’t want to leave. Except to see Margo, the elephant I had helped rescue, there was nothing I wanted to go back to in New York.

  I was a trained psychotherapist, and I had once vaguely thought of restarting my practice when I got home, but it was a task more complicated than I wanted to tackle. I was bored with the idea of having to find a nice office and acquiring a few dysfunctional clients that might want to make lifestyle changes within their actual lifetimes.

  I was even bored with my long-held passion of retraining problem horses. I needed to do more. Something more significant, more challenging.

  I walked along the shore, stepping carefully through the heavily scented heather, thinking. I knew only one thing with any certainty: I needed to take part in something that would put an end to my restlessness. I stood for a moment to lift my face into the dimming sun and closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath.

  A sudden loud burst of laughter erupted through the brush, the unexpected human sound violating the wild silence. It was coming from a nearby hut, perhaps from campers, maybe even hunters. I knew that hunting parties from all over the world frequented the area because it was so rich with animal life.

  Startled, the pink-and-blue Goliath herons arose in one move, pressing themselves against the pink-and-blue sky, nearly disappearing into it, their deep-throated warnings ringing across the lake.

  Their sudden alarm unnerved me, and I turned away from the setting sun to quickly return to the hut. A croc drifted close by through the water like a stealth missile, closing in on a small bird. I shivered at the sight and sped up.

  The ground was soft and muddy under my boots, and small puddles filled my footsteps as I followed the shoreline back. It felt like the laughter was pursuing me, harsh and unexpected, and I hurried through the fading day. Behind me, the light was an infinity that reached through the horizon, turning the landscape into a mysterious color-filled world. A world perfect by itself and made treacherous by its human inhabitants, poisoned in ways I had yet to discover.

  Chapter 4

  DIAMOND WAS SITTING AT THE LITTLE TABLE OUTSIDE our hut and serenely drinking a cup of tea. There was a brown-and-yellow clay pot set on the table along with another cup, a small jar of honey, and a single spoon for us to share.

  “Still haven’t gotten in touch with Charlotte,” she announced as I sat down. “Now that my phone’s back online, her service is out.” She shook her head. “You know the old joke, if you’re in Zimbabwe and can make a phone call, you’re not in Zimbabwe.”

  I laughed and poured myself a fragrant cup of hot black tea, then mixed in some honey and took a sip.

  “Good tea,” I said.

  “Bush tea.”

  I’d had it nearly every day in Kenya, and I liked the strong flavor. I took another appreciative sip and stared down at my cup.

  “You’re being quiet,” Diamond said. “Did you enjoy your walk?”

  I nodded.

  “Missing your man?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not that.”

  “Yes it is,” she said, a mischievous smile playing on her lips. “What was his name?”

  “Tom,” I said, then looked back into my cup at the tiny leaves that were clinging to the side. I wished I could read them.

  “See?” Diamond said triumphantly. “I knew it was a man. It’s always a man.” She leaned back in her chair and scrutinized me. “I’m guessing that after your lover broke your heart, you ran off to live with the baby elephants.”

  I gave a little laugh. “Actually, I met him rescuing an elephant. Then I ran off to live with the baby elephants, and then he broke my heart. That’s how it all started.” I thought for a moment, then corrected myself. “Actually, that’s how it all ended.” I reconsidered my words again. “Actually, I think that means I ended it.” I sighed. “I think I broke my own heart.”

  Dinner was served a while later by a guide who drove up in a jeep and briskly pulled a silver metal food container from the back. He lifted the lid to reveal a series of bowls and dishes, and poured out a small bowl of water, offering it to Diamond with a polite bow. She washed her hands, then passed the bowl to me, and I did the same.

  Next the guide took out two plates and with great ceremony set the table for our dinner. He put a bowl of dinner sadza, made of cooked ground corn, in the middle of the table, along with a bowl of stewed greens, some cauliflower, and a fresh pot of tea. I looked askance at the cauliflower.

  “Give us this day our daily cauliflower,” I intoned, holding my hands reverentially over our plates.

  The man took out a platter of meat on skewers, put that on the table, bowed, and left.

  “No forks?” I said. I’d had forks even at the sanctuary in Kenya, dining with the elephants. Well, technically, it wasn’t with the elephants. Dr. Annabelle Pontwynne, who ran the sanctuary, was very genteel and insisted on a proper dinner every night with her staff.

  “No,” Diamond agreed, looking over the food with satisfaction. “But it’s shasleek!” She grabbed a skewer and pulled off a piece of meat with her teeth. “I love shasleek.”

  I took a little bite. It was very savory and tender. “What kind of meat do you think it is?”

  She peered at the piece left on her skewer. “Ostrich? Springbok? Could even be croc.”

  I stared at my skewer for a few minutes, then looked at the cauliflower, then back at my skewer. I was hungry. I finished the meat.

  We ate our fill, politely leaving a small amount as was custom. An hour later, the jeep returned, and the procedure was reversed. Our guide bowed, rolled out the silver container, loaded our plates, and left. Diamond sighed with satisfaction and pulled what looked like a short, tan cigar from her pocket and lit it, taking a deep, contented puff. It smelled like, well, an overflowed toilet.

  “What are you smoking?” I asked.

  “It’s a bundu cheroot,” she replied. “I roll them myself. Want one?”

  “No thanks.” We just sat there, content to watch the heavens turn orange and gold, the sun burn itself down behind the mountains, while the blackest of skies revealed a million stars overhead.

  “I have an idea,” Diamond said into the deepening night. “If I can’t reach Charlotte, we can do our own little walkabout. It’ll be a great experience.” She took another puff on her cheroot. “I’ll get permission from the game warden, I’m sure it won’t be a problem. I have a Level Three license, with an Advanced Weapons Certificate. And you can snap some photos like a proper tourist. I even bought a disposable camera at the airport for the bargain price of two hundred thousand Zim dollars.” She laughed at this before continuing. “There’s really another side to this country, and it’s quite beautiful.”

  “Great,” I said. It did sound nice to have a chance to play tourist before I went home.

  Diamond stood up and stretched, then opened the door to the hut. The little green lamp was giving off a sweet yellow glow. “I’ll talk to the warden at first light,” she said, lingering at the door to look up at the stars, “and it comes very early, so you’d better get some sleep.”

  I followed her in.

  “Take the bed,” she said, dropping to the floor.

  “We can share,” I said, trying not to sound as doubtful as I felt.

  She just stuffed her rucksack under her head and yawned. “Sweet dreams, Neelie Sterling. Dream of your Tom.”

  I lay down on the bed and rolled the thin pillow under my head and stretched out on the hard mattress. “I hope I don’t,” I said truthfully.

  I wasn’t sure what had awakened me. Several sharp reports, then a great noise, a crash, someone shouting, and the familiar trumpeting of an elephant. I jumped from the bed. Diamond was already out the door, the camera swinging from her wrist.

  We followed a rush of campers and guides across the dark compound, toward a path where the lights had been turned on. There was a jumble of loud voices ahead, and
my stomach tightened with anticipation. I was certain that an elephant had come into the camp. I missed my elephants, and I was eager to see one. I let myself get carried along in the surge toward a campsite about a quarter of a mile away.

  “It’s probably Tusker,” someone said behind me. “He comes here almost every night.”

  I turned around to see a thin man running with a camera. “Who?” I asked.

  “That big bull elephant,” he said. “Breaks into camp here around dinnertime. He’s famous for it. Practically a mascot. I’ve snapped quite a few photos of him.”

  No one seemed fearful. There was a contagion of high spirits and laughter and several comments about Tusker’s frequent visits. Some even proudly mentioned they had old videos of him, as though he were a star.

  There was a loud trumpet, and my heart jumped inside my chest. For all the hundreds of elephants I had seen by now, the sight of one still sent a thrill through me.

  He was just ahead. I could hear him, smell him.

  I ran with the others, anticipating him. Exhilarated. He was here. He was here!

  I hadn’t known what to expect. A camp attraction? Something to amuse the tourists? Some semicomical version of an elephant, not so very large, certainly not truly as wild as the country around us?

  And then suddenly he was right in front of me.

  In the night stood a colossus of an animal, thirteen feet at the shoulder, at least. His great gray body swayed as he left the shadows and moved into the light, each step slow and deliberate and majestic, until he stood there, illuminated like a god, the gold light falling upon him like a mantle, his ears held out like great capes, his trunk lifted over our heads like an arm held out to bless us. He stood wild and glorious, the god of wild hearts.

  The shadows played against his giant head, his ears seemed to fan away the darkness as he approached the crowd of people playing flashlights on his corrugated face. He stopped walking and stood over us, expectant, yet expecting nothing. It was all contained within him, his own splendor, his own personal dignity. He needed nothing from us to complete him.

  I could only stare. I wanted to pay him homage. Drop to my knees in reverence. In an instant, I was utterly his.

  His one tusk curved delicately inward toward his uplifted trunk like a musical instrument ready to summon other gods to his side. He looked around, turning his attention from one to the other, and we stood before him, chastened, like subjects to a king, as though waiting to be summoned into his glorious presence for a holy convocation.

  A large tent had been knocked over, the refrigerator lying on its side and broken apart, cots and equipment strewn across the ground.

  “Get your elephant under control,” a British-accented voice angrily rang out at one of the guides who had raced over to help. “The blighter’s ruined my party.”

  The guide slowly approached the huge animal and faced him under the light, standing just a few feet away. He braced his shoulders for courage and stood on his toes to clap his hands in the elephant’s face. “Away, away!” he shouted. “Away!”

  The elephant calmly backed up, his face composed, blinking his eyes to show he would have a sense of humor about it all. He rolled his head from side to side as though to apologize for the ruckus and any trouble he might have caused, and stepping back, back, disappeared into the night with not even the rustle of a leaf.

  “There’s your Tusker,” the thin man whispered to me. “There’s your boy.”

  I could barely breathe. I had seen something so transforming, so transcending that I had no need for air or light or anything else, except for this creature. He had retreated and taken my spirit with him. I had never seen anything more noble, more alien, more splendid. Every cell in my body was filled with him, and I felt adrift after he left.

  “Bloody pest,” the British accent continued loudly. Its owner was a heavy man with a mustache, dressed in an immaculately starched, stiff new tan safari outfit. His round face was flushed as he kicked at the broken camping equipment. “Bloody beast should be shot.”

  The game warden, whom we had met earlier, walked into the disarray. He leaned over and pulled something from the broken refrigerator—a bag of lemons.

  “Citrus! You were warned about the citrus,” he said sternly to the heavy man.

  “You can’t tell me what to eat,” the man retorted. “I use them for my drinks. I like my gin and tonic with a fresh twist of lemon.” He swayed drunkenly under the light. “The blighter ruined my party.”

  “He was throwing firecrackers at the thing,” someone called out. “He was throwing firecrackers in the bush.”

  The heavy man waved them all away, his starched shirt riding up around his stomach. “Just having some fun.” A few members of his party laughed at this, but some of the other campers became angry.

  “I saw you throw firecrackers at him out in the bush. You sent him this way,” one shouted. “We could have been hurt.”

  “You’re the one who should be shot,” the thin man yelled.

  “Damn you all!” The British man waved his arms at them. “I spent a bloody fortune to come here, and no one tells me what to do.”

  I made a move to join the other campers to protest, but Diamond pushed me in the direction of our hut, and I moved woodenly, reluctantly.

  “Don’t fight with him,” she said to me. “We need to get some sleep so we can go on safari, first thing in the morning.” She looked over at the fat man with disgust. “Remember, one never rubs bottoms with a porcupine.”

  Chapter 5

  MORNING CAME UPON US LIKE A GOOD FRIEND, comforting and warm and ready to please.

  Diamond was sitting outside our hut, waiting for me to finish washing. I emerged from the little stall shower and stepped into brilliant sunlight. I threw the thin towel over a post—it would dry in just a few minutes—before sitting down at the table with her.

  I hadn’t slept well. I had spent most of the night sitting at the edge of my bed and thinking about the elephant I had seen. Tusker, they had called him. Tusker. It was a common enough name—most bull elephants are called tuskers—but the name suddenly took on a certain majesty. Tusker.

  “Good morning,” Diamond greeted me. She pulled her hair back from her face and secured it with a bolo string. Then she dug into her bowl of breakfast sadza, scooping it up with her fingers.

  “So, I spoke to the game warden this morning before you got up,” she said, slurping down the white cornmeal gruel. “We needed permission for a walkabout, and at first, he denied it because of safety concerns.”

  I poured myself a cup of tea. “What do we do now?”

  “After I told him that I was licensed and that the Popes in Chizarira would vouch for me, he agreed to assign us a guide.” She passed me my own bowl of breakfast sadza.

  “I have to see him again,” I said. “The elephant.”

  I did. He had taken possession of my soul. I could think of nothing else.

  “I fell in love with him, too.” Diamond smiled. “The warden said he has another name, Dustbin, because he has a habit of picking through the garbage bins. He’s sort of a park favorite.”

  “Dustbin,” I repeated. “I hate that he’s named after garbage.”

  “The warden also told me something else,” Diamond said, her face becoming troubled. “They’ve classified him as a problem elephant, which means he’s slated for execution.”

  I jumped from my chair. “What are you talking about?” I gasped. “What do you mean, ‘execution’?”

  Diamond looked up at me. “He knows there’s food here, and apparently he’s already overturned seven cars. They were empty, but he can’t just flip cars around at will, looking for snacks.”

  “But execution?” I said, my mouth barely able to form the word.

  She nodded. “The warden said the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force is out of petrol again, but when they get their new requisition, he’s as good as dead. They plan to come here and shoot him. They’re culling elephants
all over the country.” She scooped up the rest of her sadza and held her hand aloft for a moment. “They use their meat to feed the soldiers of the Zimbabwean army. One more elephant death would mean nothing at all to them.”

  She licked the food from her fingers. Discussing Tusker’s death over breakfast was making me sick. I pushed my food away. The orange sun bloomed over the day-bright lake.

  “We don’t have many options in saving him,” Diamond said, deflating the rapid swirl of ideas and solutions that were racing through my head. “I called my friend Charlotte after I spoke to the game warden. She knows about Tusker, says he’s on everyone’s rescue list, but she said it’s very hard work, and the failure rate for rescues is very high. Plus she mentioned that she’d need a lot of help.”

  I gave her a wondering look. “Does she mean us? There’s no reason why we can’t help.”

  “No reason at all,” Diamond agreed, wiping her breakfast bowl clean with her fingers and licking them like a cat. “Charlotte says she’ll try to come up with some kind of plan.”

  “I hope she hurries,” I said, then sighed, thinking this Charlotte probably knew every bush, tree, and growl of the countryside, and if she couldn’t think of something, then we’d have very little chance of success trying to do it by ourselves.

  Diamond grinned. “You look worried. But I bet we can pull it off.”

  “We’d need a crew and planes and tranquilizers and stuff,” I worried. “It’s a huge undertaking.”

  Diamond appeared not to be listening. I followed her gaze to the mountains and wondered if she thought of taking Tusker north since we were at the most northern tip of the country. “Maybe Charlotte could let us borrow some horses. Then we could track Tusker on horseback,” she mused out loud. “We could push him to Mozambique—its border covers the whole east of Zimbabwe.” She thought it over. “No, Mozambique is hundreds of miles away. It would be too far for horses.” She poured us both more tea. “Maybe north across the border to Zambia. Or south to Botswana.” She sighed. “Either way, it’s very far.”