Elephant Winter - By Kim Echlin Page 0,39

dress on the bed, pulled back the bedcovers to swing out her legs and slip it on. Angry, she pulled back. “Sophie, stop, I can’t, I really can’t!”

Tears fell from her eyes and all that beauty melted away. Her bright fingers wiped at her tears and she tore off her wig. Shocked and angry with my own drunkenness, now I was crying too, and when I wiped my eyes mascara streaked over my fists and the thick lipstick tasted of salt.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hand me the cold cream, will you?” she said, her tears great round drops from her diamond will, and I loathed myself and I smeared away my make-up and when she was done with hers, in seven or eight great sweeping slashes of her hands, she reached over and took off bits I’d missed.

“Don’t cry, Sophie . . . it doesn’t matter . . . don’t you hate the feeling of cold cream, I’m going to wash it off, I don’t care if my skin does shrivel up,” she said, swinging out of bed stiffly. She tossed the bottles and brushes and clothes into a basket and carried it all slowly into the bathroom. I followed her and stood near her as she ran the water to warm. Side by side we scrubbed our faces. We wiped at the smudges and removed the colour. We dabbed astringent on cotton balls and took off every bit right down into our pores. Then we splashed cool water on our skin. As we were patting ourselves dry with fresh towels, my mother pulled my face in close to hers and made me look in the big mirror, cheek to cheek with her. The mirror’s sides reflected back a tunnel of faces, each the same, narrowing down and down. Her face was tired, her head nearly bald, her skin the colour of yellowing wax with no eyebrows, deep rings under her eyes and deep pain furrows above her nose. My own eyes were red and swollen, my short, thick hair was tousled over thick eyebrows, and though I was tired, my skin shone with my baby and my long healthy afternoons at the Safari. I could feel the clean coldness of her delicate cheek on my own warm one as we stared at ourselves in the mirror, scrubbed and plain, and she kept her hand there, pressing me to her until we blurred and became one image.

I was upstairs in the loft when I heard Lear bellow, a sound I’d never heard before. I scrambled down the ladder and was through the barn and out to the field in moments. Lear’s head was low, his ears held wide, and he was running. Jo was running for the fence and Lear’s trunk was extended. Lear thwacked Jo’s back with the tip of his trunk. Jo fell and before he hit the ground Lear hit him again, this time throwing him sideways into the soft earth. I screamed and ran to the fence yelling, “Lear!”

The elephant ran forward and tried to stamp on Jo, who was tumbling across the dirt toward the fence like a bit of old wool. Jo froze and just as Lear was above him he rolled under the elephant. Instinctively courageous, he grabbed onto his left front leg, clinging like a bloodsucker, his cheek and forearms scraping up and down against the elephant’s rough hide. Lear thrashed his leg wildly, dropped his trunk, curled it firmly around Jo’s right leg, snapped Jo off and flung him through the air. Then Lear charged again. A flat crack echoed across the field and Lear’s head jerked back and to the side in an odd twisting movement. He crumpled forward on his trunk into the ground, only a few steps from Jo. The noise was gunshot and blood trickled from Lear’s forehead where a single, precise shot through the brain had felled him. He looked now like a pretend elephant splayed on the ground. The field was torn up, deep gulleys and drag marks through the blood-soaked earth around Jo’s face and arms. He was moaning lightly. A sandpiper on its spring migration whistled sharply somewhere in the trees. I jumped over the fence and was leaning over Jo before Alecto could join us, his gun dropped casually back in his pocket.

This was how I lost Jo.

ELEPHANT-ENGLISH DICTIONARY PART THREE

The Functional

There are a number of activities in elephant life that are concerned with survival: migration, the search for food and water, the safety of