With her trunk, Hannah nudged Corinna gently to one side and wrapped her ear around the woman, holding her close. Sam had never seen the girl do something like that before. “Lord, but I’m going to miss you,” Corinna broke down. “It’s all right, baby—they’re tears of joy. You’re finally going to have the life the good Lord intended all along. And if that’s not a joyful thing, I don’t know what is.”
Now, the driver called Sam back so they could get on the road again. Sam gave Hannah one more donut, patted her with what he hoped was reassurance, and climbed back up into the cab.
“You been driving elephants for long?” Sam asked the driver, mostly to keep himself from entertaining sad thoughts. The driver was a big man—big belly, big face, stubbly cheeks. He had nasty, wet-sounding lungs, a cough full of junk.
“A few years,” the driver said, resting a meaty forearm on the wheel. “Not just elephants, though. I done ’em all—elephants, tigers, lions, giraffes. Walrus, one time; a killer whale one time, too. Big box of water sure made a mess when you stopped, slopping all over the place.”
“You worry about them, when you’re driving?”
“Nah,” the driver said. “I figure that’s someone else’s job. Yours, today. I just keep us on the road and steer. He doing okay back there?”
“She. Yeah, she’s doing okay. I’ll sure be glad when it’s over, though.”
“Yeah. One time we had an elephant go down, a circus elephant. They’re not supposed to have room to lie down, but this one must have fallen. Hoo boy.”
Sam looked over. “She get back up?”
“Not without a winch. Busted up her leg real good. Don’t think that elephant ever went back into any circuses, if you know what I mean. Elephant’s not worth much with one leg that’s no good.”
Sam crossed his arms tightly across his chest and prayed.
Forty-one years ago, Max Biedelman had taught Sam how to ask Hannah for things: lie down, lift a foot, rise.
“When you ask her to do something, Mr. Brown, you must ask her nicely, and in a normal speaking tone,” the old woman had said. “She is every bit as civilized as we are; indeed, more than some people I’ve known.” She’d smiled to herself when she said that. “Hannah will understand you perfectly, so there is no need to shout, or to speak to her as you would to an idiot. Never underestimate her intelligence, or her desire to please you, once you’ve earned her trust. It’s all about trust, Mr. Brown. That’s the glue that will bind her to you. Trust and respect.”
Sam had never stood beside something so big before, or so soulful. The old woman had stood back, arms crossed, watching him, watching Hannah.
“Come, Hannah,” he’d said.
The elephant had just stood there.
“Try again, Mr. Brown.”
“Come, Hannah.”
The elephant had stood there.
Max Biedelman’s eyes twinkled. “You’re unsure, Mr. Brown. If you’re unsure, she will be, too, and it’s in an elephant’s nature to want to be sure of things before doing them.”
Sam took a deep breath. In a low, quiet voice he said, “Come on now, sugar. You and me got places to go.”
And from that moment on, they had.
“How long you been with this one?” The truck driver jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“Forty-one years.”
“Jesus.”
They’d had to bind Corinna’s breasts to make her milk stop. She had done the binding herself, wrapping her breasts so tightly she’d had trouble breathing. When he’d asked her about it, she said she’d have had trouble breathing anyway, so it didn’t matter. She had worn those bindings like a hair shirt every day for a year, eleven whole months beyond what she’d needed to, but Sam had left it alone after that first time asking. If the bindings made her remember the baby, why, that was her business, no one else’s, not even Sam’s. They’d learned privacy, that year. They’d also learned that not everything broken could be fixed, and that not everything ruined could be thrown away. Sometimes the damaged things were all you had to work with. Sam had built Corinna the Beauty Spot because he couldn’t build a road to God.
By Yreka, California, Hannah’s legs were raw from the constant friction of the shackles. Neva stood beside Sam, handing him strips of foam tape to wrap the leather in. Not that it would help much.
“Sam,” she said softly, closing her hand around his wrist, and that’s how he knew he was crying.
The day after she and Sam scattered Miss Effie’s ashes, Max Biedelman closeted herself with a team of lawyers. Over the next week she called Sam to the house several times to help her move boxes. “What does one do with all the detritus of one’s life?” she asked one afternoon as he was pulling a trunk from a closet for her. “In the end it means so little to anyone.”
Sam moved the trunk to a place in the room where she could get to it easily.
“I’ve lived a long time, Mr. Brown, longer than most. I should be grateful—indeed, I am grateful. And yet, I would give everything, everything, to do it all again.”
“You’re lucky to have had the life you did, sir—done so many things, been so many places.”
Max Biedelman stood silhouetted in the parlor window, silent. Finally she said, “Do you know what I’ve been thinking lately? I’ve been thinking that we’re animals, like any others—we senesce, we sink into decrepitude just as they do. But I’ve wondered if it isn’t our special hell that we are able to register the swift passage of time, the lightning speed of it all, and the absoluteness with which it is gone. I feel my age, Mr. Brown, I feel every bit of it, and yet I can recall so very clearly what it was like to be young. It torments me. I should like, just one more time, to feel the winds of Africa, to hear and feel the din and the heat of the Indonesian jungle. The mahouts used to sing as they prepared their supper. They were a joyful people who believed in a joyful world. And indeed, the world is a fine place when one sees it from the back of an elephant.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “You cannot know how hard it is, saying goodbye to it all. There are moments when it is unendurable.”
“You’re alive,” Sam said. “You still got life all around you, so God isn’t ready to bring you home yet. When He’s ready, you’ll be ready, too. Like Miss Effie was.”
Max Biedelman wiped at her face with her shirt cuff and looked at him. “I hope so, Sam. I do hope so.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said softly.
Maxine Leona Biedelman died one week later, alone by intention in her room. Sam thought she would have wanted it that way. On the next fine day he mingled her ashes with Miss Effie’s in the clearing, just as she’d asked him to do.
And that night, for the very first time, he dreamed Hannah’s dream.
“Looks like this is the place,” the truck driver said, startling Sam, who must have dozed off. His eyelids felt like sandpaper. When they drove past a wooden sign saying PACHYDERM SANCTUARY, his heart began to pound.
Out the window he watched as the gravel road led them through woods and clearings, then into a huge meadow that disappeared over the top of rolling hills.
He had already seen it, right down to the rocks and hillocks.
They pulled up to a big white barn, newer than the newest building back at the zoo. A tall, long-legged, weathered woman came outside and signaled the driver where to park the truck. Neva shot by in her car and stopped alongside the barn, hopping out to embrace the woman. When the driver stopped the truck, Sam got out of the cab slowly, all of a sudden reluctant to be here, not sure he could bring himself to do what he’d need to do.
Neva brought the tall woman over. “Sam, this is Alice McNeary.”
“Nice to meet you, Sam. Neva’s told me a lot about you.”
Sam shook her hand. “Ma’am.”
And then he’d turned and walked away.
Alice put her arm around Neva’s shoulders and hugged her reassuringly. “It’s always tough,” she said quietly. “And they’re always fine.”
&nbs
p; “The keepers or the elephant?”
“Both.”
“God,” Neva said, wiping her nose.
“You sure you won’t stay with us?”
“I’m sure. I promised someone I’d come back, at least for a little while.”
Alice raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well!” Alice gave her a quick one-armed hug and then strode to the truck, where Sam was fumbling with the cage’s locking mechanism.
“Neva’s told me Hannah is a good animal, Sam. One of the best.”
“Yes, ma’am, she is.”
“It’s going to take some time to get the cage open and for us to get ready for her. Why don’t you go into the barn and bring down a flake of hay for her? You’ll find a wheelbarrow inside the door, and a pitchfork in the loft. It’s good timothy hay. We grow it ourselves.”
Sam drew a deep breath. “Shug sure does love her hay.”
“Has she had much to eat?”
“No, ma’am. Just some Dunkin’ Donuts.”
Alice cracked a smile. Sam smiled back.
“So she’s spoiled, is she?”
“Yes, ma’am, she is.”
“Well, she won’t have to lower her standards on our account. We talk a good story, Sam, but deep down everyone here is a pushover.”
Sam’s smile faded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go and get the hay.”
In the barn he breathed in the good rich smells of elephant. He found the hayloft and the wheelbarrow and the pitchfork and brought the flake to the truck. Alice McNeary and Neva had put the ramp in place against the side of the cage and slid back the gate. All that was keeping Hannah inside were the chains and shackles.
“All right, Sam, I think we’re about ready for her,” Alice called. “Can you put the hay at the bottom of the ramp? Maybe a little on the ramp, too. That should give her some incentive to leave the truck.”
Sam put down the hay. “Hey, sugar,” he said softly, climbing into the open gate of the cage. Hannah turned her head and reached for him with her trunk. “How’s my baby girl? You tired of standing in this mean thing? How about we get you out of here and let you see some things. You’re in your new home, now.”
Alice had been standing to one side, watching. Now she handed him a wrench. “We’ve found that it’s better for everyone if we let the elephants come out under their own steam. Whenever you feel she’s ready, Sam, you can do the honors.”
Sam looked at her, not understanding.
“You can take off the shackles.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Me and shug have a couple things to talk over first, though, if that’s all right with you.”
“Of course. Take all the time you need. She’s here now. There’s no hurry.”
Neva started toward him, but Alice caught her by the arm and shook her head.
Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out the last donut, wrapped in a napkin. He held it out to Hannah on the palm of his hand. “I suppose that’s the last Dunkin’ Donut you’re going to get for a while, baby girl. I bet they’ve got other treats for you, but I didn’t see a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way through town.”
Hannah nudged his hip anxiously with her trunk. He leaned into her and said, “Let me get through this, sugar. You’re going to be with elephants now. You won’t need me and Mama anymore.” Sam turned the wrench over and over in his hand. “But no matter what, you can count on me thinking about you up there at home, so if you feel a little breeze or smell a donut smell sometimes, why, you know it’s just my thoughts passing through. I won’t leave you, is what I’m saying. Not in my mind. You just keep that in your thoughts, sugar, like a great big bull’s eye.”
Hannah wrapped her trunk around Sam’s head gently, whistled in his ear. “That’s all, shug. That’s what I got to say.” He took a deep breath.
“Foot, baby girl.”
Hannah lifted her front foot. Sam unwrapped enough of the shackle to get at the fitting, and then the steel clattered onto the bed of the truck. He walked around behind her and she lifted her foot before he’d even asked. The second shackle came undone like a well-oiled lock. Sam caught it before it could fall, staring at it in his hand. Then, still holding the shackle tightly, he turned and walked down the ramp. Hannah followed him the way she’d followed him so many times before, over so many years.
At the bottom of the ramp, he stopped and looked around. He could see Neva and Alice McNeary starting toward him. From the other direction, cresting the hill Sam knew better than his own backyard, he saw four elephants. How many times had he seen them in his sleep—six hundred? A thousand? How many miles had he walked in his dreams, trying to catch up?
He felt Hannah see them, too. She pulled up short like she’d been touched with something electric. One of the elephants trumpeted, and then the others trumpeted, too.
Sam could feel what she was feeling: that it had been so long.
He pushed her gently, willing her to leave him. His had been a long and solitary vigil, but it was over.
“We’re going to be all right now, shug,” he said. “This is how we begin.”
An Excerpt from Fridays Harbor
Prologue
IN BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA, a twenty-one-foot-long, nineteen-year-old, North Atlantic-caught killer whale swam around and around. His small, warm, cloudy pool was the main attraction of a theme park long past its glory days. Because he always swam in a counterclockwise direction, the centrifugal force may have caused the fallen dorsal fin that curled tightly over his back. He was called Viernes—Friday— but he’d been given that name years and years ago and no one left knew why.
Viernes hadn’t lived with or even seen another killer whale in eighteen years, which was how long he’d been in captivity. He wasn’t alone, though: he shared his pool with a changing cast of bottlenose dolphins that hectored him mercilessly. His skin was delicately filigreed all over with rake-marks from their teeth: while they could move fast in this small pool, he barely fit, which made him slow and awkward. Whenever he dropped his tail flukes, they rested on the bottom of the pool while his head stayed above water.
It was all too obvious that the killer whale’s health was breaking down. Clusters of wartlike lesions encircled the base of both pectoral flippers and formed a black masslike bubbled tar above his tail flukes; he was two-thousand-pounds underweight. But he still performed in shows twice a day on weekdays, three times a day on weekends and in summer, producing on command a series of lumbering bows that splashed the delighted children in the front rows around his pool. Some-times there were birthday parties, too, which he enjoyed because the children were allowed to come closer, where he could watch them. They were allowed to pet his face and head, and he liked this most of all. When they went home, they took with them cups and kites and stuffed plush toys in his likeness.
In Colombia, he was a star.
From time to time, people from other marine parks in other countries had come to assess his well-being; among the international marine mammal community he’d been considered at death’s door for years. They never stayed for long, and nothing ever changed. But now, though he had no way of knowing it, a different kind of committee had arrived at the park’s invitation.
The committee members included an older woman in a flowing, floor-length caftan and Nikes who held in her arms a tiny dog that interested Viernes very much. He’d never seen an animal like this before, and he hoped she’d put it down so he could take a closer look, but although they stayed at his pool for an hour or more, she kept it in her arms.
The woman reappeared off and on during the rest of the day, always with the dog and some-times, but not always, with other people. At the end of the day she returned for the last time, accompanied by a man Viernes recognized from past visits. He and the woman talked and talked and talked, with their arms folded over their chests, considering him. This, too, had happened before.
Viernes drifted to the far side of the pool and closed his eyes.
/> Chapter 1
WHAT WOULD COME to be known by the Levy family and friends as the Whale Business began that day in Bogota. The woman in the flowing Egyptian caftan and cross-trainers was Ivy Levy, a longtime board member of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, Washington, who had traveled to Bogota at the very last minute, filling in for another representative stricken with food poisoning.
At sixty-two, by her own admission, Ivy was a boozy old gal with more time and money than she knew what to do with; broad in the shoulders and wide through the beam, canny and keen-eyed, plainspoken and possessed of unshakable convictions—that most people were more stupid than they thought they were; that young people squandered their elders’ wisdom; that in all the world only animals were honest; that if God were truly almighty, things would be going a lot better.
Ivy had joined a blue-ribbon panel convened by the Bogotá theme park to solve Viernes’s increasingly desperate housing and health problems. In addition to the Whale Museum, the committee included representatives from SeaWorld, the Vancouver Aquarium, Shedd Aquarium, and Sea Life Park—some of the world’s preeminent marine parks. The committee’s unqualified conclusion was that the whale had run out of time, but that saving him would require an immediate move out of Bogota. Unfortunately, not a single zoo or marine park would take him. He was a high-profile, failing animal that might die of stress during or shortly after transport, on top of which no one had a pool that was at the same time big enough for a full-grown killer whale and unoccupied, which it had to be in case he arrived with something contagious. And then there was the problem of money—enough to underwrite the crippling costs not only of transporting a killer whale out of Central America, but also of sustaining him through a long and uncertain rehabilitation.
Ivy’s last-minute involvement was, as she would put it, a game-changer. She knew what no other committee member did, namely that the tiny Max L. Biedelman Zoo in Bladenham, Washington, had just finished constructing, but not yet populating, a large saltwater pool intended to exhibit porpoises, thereby beefing up the zoo’s dwindling revenue stream; that the zoo was run by Ivy’s nephew Truman, a newly minted lawyer and recently appointed executive director; and that Ivy herself was exceedingly, excessively, congenitally rich. In her eyes, the project was perfect.
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