Whistling for the Elephants Read online

  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.
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  ‘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.

  “‘The bull advertises his condition with a striding walk showing off his tremendous size, strength and confidence.”’

  Gabriel grinned at all of us and moved to his truck. He walked led entirely by his hips. A loose open walk which advertised all that he had to offer. Sweat ran down his forehead and his arms as he walked. He was just eighteen but a strong scent of male and grease pervaded the air. If the Army could see him now they would definitely have to rethink that 4F status.

  “‘The bull’s temporal glands, above and behind his eyes, swell and release a thick fluid which flows down the side of his head. Everything about him tells you that the bull is a swaggering male on heat. One bull can produce as much as a litre of ejaculate. A single jet of elephant sperm from the four-foot-long penis can provide enough protein to feed a forty-foot-high anthill for a year.”’

  For Helen it was straightforward scientific fact, but everyone was entirely silent as she looked up. Gabriel leaned against the Jacobson’s logo on his truck, muscles bulging against muscles. Muscles where there shouldn’t ought to be muscles. Muscles on top of muscles. He wore breathtakingly tight jeans, a white T-shirt and a large pair of work boots. He smiled and he sweated. No doubt we were a strange sight. Five females with their mouths wide open and not speaking. Instinctively I understood a great deal at that moment. These were the moist moments in life which Mother always guarded against. Certainly I knew that it was a bad time for Harry to show up.

  The election was in full swing. You couldn’t drive through town without a loudspeaker on someone’s car yelling, ‘Stick with Schlick’ or ‘Say hello to your own Joe’. The whole of Sassaspaneck had become addicted to Styrofoam boaters. The men wore them at rakish angles proclaiming their Democratic or Republican fervour. The women were less comfortable with their hats and perched them on top of carefully constructed coiffures. It made them look less confident about the whole thing. As if the hat and the political affiliation had landed when they weren’t looking. Harry swept into the zoo sitting on the back of a convertible Caddy. Blue balloons trailed from every piece of chrome. He stood up as the car came to a halt. Football hero Harry liked to be the centre of female attention. Arriving when everyone’s focus was entirely on young Gabriel probably didn’t help how it went.

  ‘Thank you, thank you. Hello, people.’

  The people said nothing. Harry leaped down, leaving his entourage ready to move out at a moment’s notice. I didn’t know what he was going to do. The general form was to shake a lot of hands and then kiss babies. I didn’t think anyone would really want to shake hands. Perry was out of the question and Gabriel probably didn’t have the brain to have an opinion. Harry was smiling but he seemed rather nervous. He looked beyond us to the bonfire.

  ‘Burning the place down, eh? Great! Save us a lot of trouble.’

  Miss Strange looked at him. ‘Where are your manners, Harry? Good afternoon.

  He almost blushed. ‘Sure, right, good afternoon. Uh, Miss Strange, have you seen the plans for the new football stadium? Going to look mighty fine.’

  Miss Strange looked straight at him. ‘Forget it, Harry. You are not building anything here.’

  Harry smiled and tutted at the same time. ‘It’s over but you won’t let go, will you? I am talking about building a future for the young people of this town and all you want to do is cling on to the past. Hanging on till some bastard animal gets you too.’

  Little Perry grabbed at Harry’s pants and pulled. ‘Balloon,’ he said. Harry ignored him. He was in full speech mode and would not be swayed.

  ‘This place is nothing now but a health hazard. A hazard which the people of Sassaspaneck will not tolerate. I have therefore been in touch with the county health authority, who will be sending an inspector. An inspector who will no doubt find, as I do, that this place is no longer fit to remain open. Can’t even keep the animals in any more, can you?’

  Miss Strange’s head snapped up. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I hear one of them is missing. I hear there is a salamander gone AWOL.’

  I wanted to die. I knew it was my fault. I had told Harry about the salamander. I was the traitor in their midst. Everyone was going to hate me.

  ‘How do you know that?’ demanded Miss Strange.

  ‘I told him,’ I whispered. Harry looked at me triumphantly.

  ‘It disappears all the time,’ interrupted Cosmos. ‘It comes back. It’s like, a free spirit.’

  ‘Balloon,’ said Perry again, looking at the car.

  Harry smiled a mayoral smile and got back in the car. Sweetheart moved toward her son.

  ‘Harry, your grandson wants a balloon.’ Harry’s smile faltered a little as he leaned right down to his mother. He spoke in a forced whisper.

  ‘He is not my grandson. You are showing me up. You shouldn’t even be here. You don’t need to be here. Get in the car and come home.’ Sweetheart didn’t move. Harry, surrounded by his entourage, was getting a little uncomfortable. ‘Look, we can talk about the boy. Find him some place.’

  Sweetheart looked at her son and stepped back. Perry ran to her and she held him close. Harry shrugged and stood up in his chariot. He left. As he did a balloon flew loose from the car and Cosmos caught it. Perry got his balloon. No one mentioned the inspector coming. We just got on with the work.

  That evening I had to have dinner with Mother and Father, which was in itself quite unusual. With the General Amherst Restaurant out of action since the fire, we had no choice but to go to the diner on Palmer, which was not quite so refined. It was my parents’ wedding anniversary. All I kept thinking was that if it was my wedding anniversary then I wouldn’t take my kid. Outside the diner, I could see people driving by with the now-familiar boaters on their heads. The town was close to excitement.

  I had a lot in my head by then from the zoo and I was desperate to talk. I wanted to discuss religion and the origins of the world and whether your hair stayed the same after you were dead. I thought that would interest Mother. She sometimes had days when she couldn’t do a thing with her hair, and that would be a very bad day to die on. Mother made me have melon. I think she thought it had vitamins in it like a vegetable. She also had the melon but that was all. I don’t think she could really eat in the new eighteen-hour girdle. It didn’t look like there was room. Besides, she didn’t like the restaurant. She didn’t say anything but we all knew it wasn’t good enough. When Mother disapproved she just withdrew. I know now how much the prescription drugs didn’t help with that, but in those days it was okay. We had a bathroom cabinet full of the stuff They let Mother slip from us slowly but surely.

  As usual, Father and I carried the can for conv
ersation. He steadily drank martinis while I was allowed one kids’ cocktail called a Shirley Temple and a pitcher of water. Father had always taught me and Charles to have suitable topics for the table but I don’t think any of mine were entirely successful.

  ‘What have you been doing with your time, Dorothy?’ my father inquired, his whisper making it sound as if there might be some intrigue.

  ‘I’m helping at the zoo.’

  ‘Zoo?’

  ‘Yes. We’re getting ready for Artemesia.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, although he didn’t at all. ‘And who is Artemesia?’

  ‘She was the first known woman sea captain. She commanded a whole fleet at the Battle of Marathon and she was so devastating and brilliant that the Athenians put a huge bounty on her head. She survived the Persian Wars, and I mean thousands of others died, but then she threw herself off a cliff when she fell in love with a much younger man and he rejected her. Don’t you think that’s a shame? I mean just because he was younger than her didn’t mean they couldn’t fall in love, don’t you think?’

  It was not a good subject. It involved discussing emotions, which is what we did worst. I had come to realize that it was a British thing. That’s why they go out in the midday sun. If you lay in a cool room you might have to think about how you feel. I realized I had lost my parents entirely. Father swallowed hard.

  ‘I had a letter from Charles this morning. He is doing very well,’ he segued. I polished off the melon and took a gulp of my Shirley Temple.

  ‘How come Charles goes away to school and I don’t? You know that Plato says that the state which doesn’t train and educate its women like its men only trains its right arm. Do you think that’s right?’