Elephant Winter - By Kim Echlin Page 0,31
I thought of my baby and slowed down. The waitress picked up our pitcher, expertly dripped its last drops into each of our glasses and dropped down another. I went to the washroom, where two young girls putting on mascara were joking about some men at the bar. “I know all of them,” one girl said. “And only half of them’s worth knowing.” I wandered back up through the smoke and felt Alecto appraising me across the gloomy room. When I sat down I said, “Alecto, where are you from?”
“The south. You?”
“From around here. How do you know Jo?”
“We met at a zoo years ago. Didn’t he tell you?” He watched my eyes, peeled off his board and continued, “Jo was the only one who could get elephants to do what I wanted.”
“What did you want?”
“I was researching sensory points. I had an old map from India made by the mahouts.”
“I read that article.”
His bright eyes caught mine, looking to see if I was mocking him, and reassured, he continued writing. “No zoo would give me access. Jo was in a Florida petting park and all he wanted to do was take care of elephants in a decent place like this. I told him I could arrange this job if he’d help me do my experiment.”
“And he did it.”
Alecto nodded.
“What did you do?”
“Jo kept the elephant down. I beat the sensitive spots and recorded the pulse and external reactions.”
“How did he keep him down while you were hitting him?”
“Voice commands.”
“That must have been an amazing elephant.”
“Amazing keeper.”
“I don’t see what kind of evidence you were looking for when you already had the map.”
“I wanted to see for myself. Refine the chart.”
“What for?”
He looked down at his glass, then wrote quickly, “It was a long time ago.”
“I’ve read your physiology articles too—you’ve killed a lot of elephants.”
“I was a good shot. I usually could get them with one bullet through the brain. There weren’t so many tourists in those days. The villagers lined up to help to get the meat. It was fascinating—I did all ages, both sexes. You’d never get permission to do that kind of study now. Everyone uses my studies. Even the vet schools.”
I shook my head and watched him studying my face. He took my hands, the way he took my mother’s hands, and tried to look into my eyes. I didn’t like the feeling but out of shame I didn’t pull away. He turned my hands palms down on the table, covered them both with one hand and wrote with the other, “I never noticed how beautiful your forearms are.”
I laughed. There is no new language.
He looked at me, his lips turned up ironically, his eyes angry. “Why is it all the words seem to have been said before?”
“They haven’t. Why is it we think in clichés? Why is it we think it should always feel like the first time?”
He shrugged and let me go.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“Maybe you won’t like it.” His knuckles were clenched white on his pen and he wrote from injured merit.
I waited.
“I need your help. If Kezia’s baby dies, or is born dead, I want to do an autopsy. The Safari says I can, but only if Jo agrees. They say it’s his baby. I need you to help me persuade him.”
“If Jo doesn’t want it, I can’t do a thing.”
His body was tight with anger, still. “You underestimate your influence.”
“Believe me, I don’t. Why doesn’t Jo want it?”
“He thinks it’s bad luck,” he wrote glibly.
“What makes you think it won’t survive? Jo’s never said that.”
“The odds are against her. There aren’t many live births in captivity.”
“You’ve already done this kind of autopsy. I remember reading about it.”
“That’s what Jo said.”
“I don’t know.” I was tempted. It would be an interesting thing to see.
He leaned forward charmingly, his jaw still stiff, and wrote, “No need to answer now, just keep it in the back of your mind.”
I erased his slate and said that I thought I should be going. The beer was making me feel tipsy and I shouldn’t have been drinking anyway with my baby. I wanted to get home before he said anything else. I shouldn’t have let his hands linger on my arm. I shouldn’t have enjoyed the touch. I shouldn’t have laughed at him. Nothing had happened. But I still wanted to get home. I should have known that even though nothing had happened, something had.
The sicker my mother got the more I wanted