An Inconvenient Elephant (9 page)

“Speaking of lunch,” Diamond added, “I try never to miss mine either.”

“You can't be hungry!” I gave her an incredulous look. “How do you eat so much and stay thin?”

“I'm just making up for all the meals I missed as a kid,” Diamond said, and then laughed.

 

The elephants were settled, and I reluctantly decided to leave them. When I reached the barn doors, I turned for one last look. Diamond's words about their confinement were
still bothering me. Perhaps there
was
something obscene about an elephant behind bars, the massive gray body locked helplessly inside a steel cage, roomy though this one was.

Abbie, who had been only one or two months old when they were rescued, would probably never remember anything different, but Margo, as far as the other rescuers could tell, had been about seven years old.

Which was better? I wondered. Not to ever know true freedom, or to know it once and never have it again.

Then I took a deep breath and closed the creaking gates and locked them in.

IT WASN'T REALLY THAT COLD. ESPECIALLY NOT FOR
a New Yorker in New York in early fall, but I started shivering as soon as I stepped out of the elephant barn. It was a clear day, the sun was bright, but I felt cold.

There is nothing like the heat of the African sun. Burning down from an oceanic blue sky, it sears your skin and bleaches your soul. Once you feel it, you never forget it. You crave it like opium. The New York sun was cold and pallid by comparison. Only one day back and I was already wondering how I was going to get through the oncoming winter.

A sparrow gave a singular chirp in a nearby bush, and a vee of geese flew overhead, raucously breaking the quiet. They weren't nearly as colorful as the birds in Africa, which were lavender and red and green, like flying stripes of rainbow.

Diamond pulled her jacket around her shoulders and scanned the sky as the birds flew over us. “Wish I could follow them home,” she said, then gave me a half grin. “Of course, I don't know where home is anymore.”

 

I checked the bulletin board outside the barn. There were a few cars in the parking lot by now. Volunteers had started to drift in to check their assigned tasks, and some of them recognized me and waved their welcomes. “Have you seen Richie?” I called to one woman, who shrugged her reply. And I thought I caught an odd sympathetic look here and there. Probably everyone knew about me and Tom. Our breakup must have fed the gossip mill for most of the year.

“Richie's truck hasn't moved from its spot all morning,” I said to Diamond, puzzled. “And I don't see Mrs. Wycliff's old dogs—they usually follow him around—but he could be anywhere on the farm. We'll have to do some walking.”

“I'm always up for a walk.”

“How about eight hundred acres?”

“That's just a warm-up,” Diamond scoffed. “I could do it in my sleep.”

I laughed. I forgot who I was talking to.

 

There were fences and gates and narrow paths. I was never so aware of fences. A donkey brayed hello, starting a chorus of five or six others. Behind another fence, a black bear lazed at the edge of his pond, one foot dangling in the water. Behind another, a buffalo swung his head up and down in a lazy threat before returning to his hay, and in yet another, two wolves glared at us with gold eyes. Several llamas followed us
across a rocky field in a dignified march. Nearby, two camels watched passively with sweet, dark eyes double fringed in long tan lashes, while a small herd of alpaca hummed at us like a glee club, but there was still no sign of Richie.

We came up to a large field of horses and Diamond stopped.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Ah,” she said. “There's nothing like the walk of a good horse.” I knew what she meant. Sitting on a horse, feeling the swing of his back, the sound of his hooves tattooing against the hard red pack sand. She was missing it. I was missing it. Very much.

“So, here's an idea.” She gestured to the horses grazing peacefully on the thick grass. “Why don't we just grab one of these and look for your friend on horseback?”

“I don't know if they're even broke to ride,” I replied. I had once offered my services to Mrs. Wycliff, to climb aboard some of the younger ones to train them, but she had stead-fastly refused. She didn't want her animals to ever again be stressed by human touch. It was a thorny subject between the two of us, and I had let it drop.

Diamond followed me past the field. “Pity we can't ride them,” she grumbled, pointing to a flashy black horse with white stockings that was near the fence. “That one's a looker.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That's all he's good for. Looking but no touching.”

 

At the end of the path was a large meadow surrounded by a ten-foot chain link fence.

“These are the cat enclosures,” I pointed out. “Two lions,
a couple of Siberian tigers. And a jaguar, too.” I opened the combination lock, then pulled on the bolt that held the gates together. “People buy these animals when they're cubs and after they grow up, their owners are totally surprised that they're stuck with wild animals.”

Diamond hung back. “I have a policy never to socialize with carnivores,” she said.

“It's perfectly safe,” I said, laughing at her reluctance. “What are you worried about? You must have seen hundreds of lions on safari.”

“Of course,” she replied, “as long as I'm guaranteed to see them from the outside in, and not from the inside out.”

Two lions lazed in the shadows of large rocks that had been specially purchased by Mrs. Wycliff to give them a more natural environment. One lion stopped licking his paw as soon as he spotted us, the paw remaining frozen upright as he stared with glittering eyes.

“Are you sure it's safe?” Diamond asked, helping me bolt the gates together behind us. The second lion pricked his ears and immediately stood up to sniff the air.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “They're used to people. They were trained for some dinky circus, but ended up in a small cage at a gas station, like a sideshow. Mrs. Wycliff couldn't stand to see them like that and bought them. They're probably waiting for their lunch.”

Diamond raised her eyebrows. “And would that be us?”

“Yep.” I laughed. “Saves on the feed bill. Richie just throws them a visitor every so often.”

 

A loud whistle pierced the air. I spun around to see the farm
truck rolling down the road toward us with a man hanging halfway out of the window, his beard flapping in the wind as he steered the truck with one hand and whistled through the fingers of his other.

“Richie!” I yelled happily. The truck clanked to a halt. Its bed held a large plastic tub of frozen raw chicken.

“I wasn't sure I recognized your car,” Richie said, jumping out from behind the wheel, “but when I saw the donut box in the barn and no fresh bodies lying around, I knew it had to be you. Margo would have flipped anyone else over the fence.”

His curly gray-brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he was wearing a navy suit, red tie, and light blue shirt, which provided a strange contrast to the heavy work boots on his feet. “So good to see you.” He wrapped me in a big warm hug and held me for a moment. “Welcome home. How was Kenya?”

“Zimbabwe.”

He gave me a puzzled look.

“It's a long story and I'll tell you over a cup of coffee.” I introduced Diamond-Rose, expecting one of Richie's usual safety lectures on not bringing strangers without his prior approval, but he seemed oddly preoccupied as he shook her hand.

“Welcome,” he said, then did a double take at her outfit. “We don't normally allow visitors.” He pointed to her clothing. “Did you think this was a theme park?”

“I'm a safari leader from Kenya,” Diamond explained. “Level three license, with advanced weapons certificate.” She pointed to his suit. “What about you? You usually dress this formally to feed raw chicken?”

“I just got back from an important meeting and didn't have time to change,” he replied, then turned to me. “Lawyers. They even sent a car to get me. For some reason, they didn't want me to bring my truck into their parking lot. I'm thinking maybe it's because I had twenty pounds of chicken thawing in the back. Anyway, it was the meeting that I've been dreading.” His face grew serious. “And I have kind of a good news–bad news thing.”

“Tell me the good news first,” I said as he grabbed a tub of chicken and threw its contents over the fence. The lions trotted up to us and, after giving each other their usual courtesy warning growls, grabbed the food.

Richie leaned against the railing and watched as one of the lions picked up a chicken and carried it off. Its fur looked sleek and it was well fed, and I knew how proud he and Mrs. Wycliff were over the cats' good health.

“Well,” he said, “for starters, I was offered my dream job last week. I still can't believe it.” His voice filled with excitement. “I was hired to help manage that big elephant rescue in Alabama. And Jackie was asked to do a lot of promotional work for them with her photography. It'll pay well for both of us.”

“That's wonderful,” I enthused. Richie lived for elephants, working in Alabama had been his dream. And Jackie, his wife, was an amazing wildlife photographer. It was a wonderful opportunity for both of them.

He opened the door to his truck and invited us in with a bow. “Honor me with your presence and come back to the house. I'll fill you in.”

“And give me a cup of coffee,” I reminded him. “But con
gratulations on your dream job.” The three of us squeezed into the front seat. I took a deep breath. “So what's the bad news?”

“Actually,” Richie said, “the bad news is not for me, it's for you.”

“For me?” I repeated, surprised. “Oh! I know! Because you and Jackie are moving away! But I can come and visit a lot, right?”

“Yeah, but that's not it either.”

“What then?”

We bumped along the road past his house to the main house, where he parked the truck and turned to give me a solemn look. “I'm so sorry, Neelie. The meeting I just came from was with Elisabeth Wycliff's lawyer. The sanctuary is being sold, and the elephant barn is going to be knocked down. Margo and Abbie are being sent to Alabama.”

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I THOUGHT I WOULD GROW UP
to have a lovely house with a horse barn behind it, a lovely husband, one or two lovely daughters, and would live a happy, if conventional, but
lovely
life with a good career and a couple of lovely horses to ride. After I grew up, most of my dreams came true. I had a lovely husband, house, barn, and horse. Not to mention a lovely cat and dog. Okay, maybe the dog wasn't so lovely.

And then the dream started to break apart piece by piece, like peanut brittle.

I tried to stop it. I tried very hard to fix it, but there is only so much nutty stuff one can hold together.

The lovely house was sold after the lovely husband cheated on me with his lovely colleague. I had to give away my lovely horse and my lovely dog. Conventionality disap
peared the day I left for Zimbabwe to rescue Margo and Abbie, and though I eventually lived in Kenya with three or four baby ellies at my side, I always considered Margo and Abbie my lovely surrogate children, just waiting for me to return home. And now I was losing them, too. Panic tore through me. Something had happened to me in Africa. I couldn't put my finger on it—maybe it
placed
me, somehow. Maybe it taught me that what I thought I wanted, I didn't want at all.

Except for the elephants. I realized I wanted elephants in my life. I couldn't let Richie take them away.

“How could you do this?” My voice rose in fury, but he just waved for me to follow him as he walked up the path to Elisabeth Wycliff's back door. “It's not fair!” I yelled at him. “We all risked our lives to save them! You can't let them go just like that!”

“It wasn't my decision.” Richie paused at the back door. “But Tom feels—and I have to agree—they'll be better off with other elephants.”

“No, they won't,” I countered. “They have me. And Mrs. Wycliff can supervise the way she's always done. I'll come up and help her. I'll come every day. I once worked here, too, you know. I know the routine. And you have that handyman—Ignacio—and all the volunteers…”

“You've been away for a whole year,” Richie said wearily. “There are things going on that you don't know about.”

“I know this—I can't let you take my elephants.” My stomach was churning from anger.

“A place with other elephants sounds much better for them,” Diamond interjected. I glared at her.

“Actually, they're Elisabeth's elephants,” Richie reminded me. “And Tom's.”

Ah yes, Tom.

“Well, I can't imagine Mrs. W. letting the elephants leave,” I sputtered. “She loves them.”

“She doesn't know yet,” Richie replied. “And we're not going to tell her for a while.”

“What do you mean she doesn't know yet?”

“It was Tom's idea to protect her. When the time is right, he wants to be the one to tell her.”

“He can't just arbitrarily move them,” I insisted, but Richie was already opening the back door to Mrs. Wycliff's house.

“We'll discuss the whole thing when we get inside,” he said. “But I'll tell you this—Tom's pretty much made up his mind.”

 

Diamond and I followed Richie into the sparsely furnished mudroom. An old dart gun hung on the wall next to a row of pegs that held Mrs. Wycliff's brown corduroy jacket, a green plaid raincoat, and an old pith helmet. A pair of bright red wellies were neatly parked underneath. Oddly, we had to step over a charred hole burned into the floor.

“Was there a fire?” I asked Richie, gesturing to the blackened wood. “Mrs. Wycliff,” he said, leading us into the kitchen. “Her latest hobby.”

 

The kitchen is the soul of the house, and I always liked Mrs. Wycliff's kitchen because it was so unlike my mother's well-
controlled and tightly organized one. It was casual and comfortable, with white painted wooden cabinets, pots hanging from a baker's rack over a big old-fashioned stove, and prints of herbs and spice plants framed on the walls. A round oak table stood in the middle surrounded by four blue wooden chairs with plump blue gingham cushions. Diamond pulled out a chair and immediately sprawled into it.

“Anyone else hungry?” she asked. “We missed lunch, you know. Could chew on a good strip of biltong 'round about now.”

Richie jumped at the word “biltong.” He and Jackie were strict vegetarians, and he gave Diamond a horrified look. “I'll make you coffee,” he said. “But don't even mention biltong. It's cured
animal
.”

“And ostrich makes the best kind,” she blithely replied. “I have a great old recipe. The secret is curing it in a lot of fresh coriander.”

“You could cure it in fresh gold,” Richie muttered darkly, “and it's still a sacrilege. It's not nice to eat meat.”

“It's necessary,” Diamond said, with a snort. “You know, there aren't too many salad bars in the jungle.”

Richie took an ancient coffee pot off the stove and unproductively tinkered with it for a few minutes before setting it down on the counter. “I don't really know how to do this,” he finally admitted with a sheepish grin. “Jackie always makes the coffee, and she's in Alabama, looking for a house for us.” He picked up a bag of coffee and peered at the lettering, looking for directions. “There's got to be a recipe somewhere on here.”

Diamond-Rose leaped from her chair, grabbed the bag
from him, and then hunted through the cabinets for a saucepan.

“This is the way we do it on safari,” she said, dumping the contents of the bag into the pan, filling it with cold water and sloshing it on the stove to boil. “Makes good coffee after you let the grinds settle.”

Ten minutes later, we were sipping coffee that bore a strong resemblance to melted asphalt.

“So, what's going on?” I asked, after stirring three or four heaping teaspoons of sugar into my cup, which still didn't help.

Richie brought his finger to his lips. “Elisabeth's upstairs, probably taking a nap,” he whispered, then pointed over his head to where the bedrooms were. “I don't want her to wake up yet. It's exhausting to keep up with her.”

Diamond got up to pour herself a second cup, offering a refill to Richie. “Another cup of my coffee and you could keep up with a jaguar.”

“Actually, your coffee could fly a helicopter,” Richie said, quickly putting his hand across the top of his cup to decline, “but that's not what I meant by keeping up.”

Diamond wasn't the least insulted. She sat down again and leaned back in her chair. “Mind if I smoke?” She reached into her pants pocket, pulled out one of her cheroots, and chomped it between her lips. Another pocket produced a tin of matches, and after striking a match against the bottom of her boot, she lit the odd-looking object with a deep inhale. The room filled with the scent of fresh dung. I tried not to gag.

Richie watched her with some fascination. “Is that a camel turd?”

“A bundu cheroot,” she replied, exhaling with a sigh of satisfaction. “We make them in the bush all the time. Gum tree root. I can give you a couple next time I see you.”

“I've smoked a lot of joints in my time”—Richie laughed, waving the smoke away from his face—“but I'll pass. I don't think Elisabeth wants anyone smoking in the—”

“Oh my! Do I smell a cheroot?” Mrs. Wycliff's voice preceded her as she toddled into the room, leaning on her cane. She threw her head back and inhaled deeply. “Mmmm.”

She looked just the way I remembered her, gray hair pulled into a utilitarian bun and still wearing the ubiquitous white cable knit sweater and jeans that had been her fashion statement since I had first met her, more than ten years ago. Maybe she moved a little more slowly, and maybe she was a little thinner, but she sounded as strong as she always had, with good color in her face and eyes bright with curiosity. I shot Richie a quizzical look. She looked perfectly fine to me, and with someone else doing the actual physical work, I didn't see why she couldn't stay in charge of her own sanctuary.

“Elisabeth,” he said, “you remember Neelie Sterling? She helped Tom bring Margo back last year.”

“Hello.” I extended my hand.

“Good to see you again, dear.” She took my hand in her thin, cool fingers and held onto it while leaning forward to drop into a conspiratorial whisper. “Sorry that I had to fire Margo. She was very sloppy in the kitchen.”

Before I could reply, Richie stepped in. “Margo wasn't the housekeeper,” he said to her in a gentle voice. “She's the elephant.” But Mrs. Wycliff had turned to stare at Diamond-Rose.

“And who is this redhead?”

Diamond stood up and extended her own hand. “Diamond-Rose Tremaine,” she said, a delighted look crossing her face. I could see she was taken with Mrs. Wycliff right off.

“Hot damn! I did smell a cheroot!” Mrs. Wycliff pointed at Diamond's cigar. “Do you have any more? It's been a while since I've had one.”

“Take mine,” Diamond offered generously. “I have plenty.”

Mrs. Wycliff took it with a pleased grin, then whispered to me, “But don't tell Harry. He hates when I smoke, so it'll be our little secret.” She took a deep puff, then carefully lowered herself into a kitchen chair. “If Harry wasn't such a damn crank about me smoking, I would enjoy one with my Irish coffee every morning.”

“I rolled about ten dozen of them before I left Kenya—had to sneak them through customs twice,” Diamond said. “I have a few outside in the car, if you want one.”

“Speaking of vehicles”—Mrs. Wycliff impatiently looked around the kitchen—“where are the keys to my truck?”

“I have them,” Richie said. “Your truck isn't running. It needs repairs.”

“Oh, that's right.” Mrs. Wycliff exhaled a long, smoky breath across the table. “It got dented when I hit that black rhino last week.”

“We don't have any black rhinos, Elisabeth,” Richie corrected her. “You hit the side of the garage.”

“Whatever it was,” Mrs. Wycliff agreed. “Stampeded right into the engine.”

 

Mrs. Wycliff was enjoying her coffee and smoke, and sat back in her chair to regale us with stories of her life in the bush. Diamond-Rose was listening with her head resting on one hand, her face a study in adoration, but I was growing more impatient with each passing minute. I wanted to talk about the elephants, not adventures that took place fifty years ago. I wanted to find out how to keep Margo and Abbie at the sanctuary, and ask Richie the best way to contact Tom about Tusker.

“Richie!” I made an eyebrow gesture for us to go into the living room. He nodded and left the table, trying not to disturb Mrs. Wycliff. We left her and Diamond in the kitchen, happily passing the cheroot back and forth and comparing notes about their last safaris.

The spacious living room was furnished with a view toward practicality and comfort. Two black fluffy cats lounged on afghan-covered sofas, while a plump tabby was being accommodated by one of the overstuffed chairs that flanked a bay window. An antique mahogany desk stood against one wall, with a leather chair that hosted yet another sleeping cat, a gray striped, that snored softly. A small table by a side window had a porcelain elephant planter with what looked like the stringy remains of catnip growing from it. In front of the large marble fireplace lay Mrs. Wycliff's two old black Labs, Baako and Dafina. I drew closer to study the pictures hanging above the mantle, stepping over the snoring dogs. Neither of them lifted an ear.

I had seen these pictures before—they were of a young Elisabeth Wycliff in safari clothes and pith helmet, posing with elephants or horses or chimps. In one picture, she was
caressing a large Bengal tiger. In another, she was kissing the nose of a down-stretched giraffe. My favorite was the one where she was sitting on a horse and holding a lion cub across her lap. It had been an enviable life, and she had done many good things for wild animals. I stood on my tiptoes for a better look.

“She's always loved animals,” Richie said, standing next to me. “I think she was only seventeen in that picture—took a trip with her father and already doing rescue work. Mostly in Kenya, though she was in Botswana and a few other places, too. Of course, all those countries had different names then.”

“She's a remarkable woman,” I agreed, then turned around to face him. “And that's why it's not Tom's place to take her elephants away from her. She should be respected for everything she's done. Maybe she moves a little slower, but she can still run things.”

“No, she can't,” Richie said. “She gets confused.”

“All she needs is a little help,” I argued.

Richie frowned and plucked a cat from the side chair before sitting down. The cat stretched across his lap and purred. “Neelie, you haven't been here for a whole year. She can't run this place anymore.”

“Then what about this Harry she mentioned?” I demanded. “What's wrong with him? Why can't he help?”

“Harry was her third husband, and he died thirty years ago,” Richie said.

“Then hire someone to take your place,” I said. “Another manager.” I was getting an idea.

He dropped the cat to the floor and stood up. “Look, I
tried. I found two people that just might have worked out, but”—he made a helpless gesture with his hands—“she thought they were poachers and chased them off with her old dart gun.” He shook his head. “She's erratic. Her last housekeeper was so intimidated, she left in the middle of the night.”

I stated the obvious. “What about me?”

He put his hand on my arm. “Did you forget who her partner is? Do you think Tom would want you up here?”

Tom again. And I knew the answer.

“Anyway, the elephants are being moved,” he said with an air of finality. “We're in the process of making arrangements for them.”

My thoughts started whirling like something out of Dr. Seuss. I could not lose my elephants, I would not lose my elephants.