The Mourning Parade

by Dawn Reno Langley

  Fifteen

  We are the children of our

  landscape; it dictates behavior

  and even thought in the measure

  to which we are responsive to it.

  -Lawrence George Durrell

  To Natalie, there were few things more satisfying than having a breakthrough with an animal. Whether that meant finding a way to halt an aggressive cancer in a British Mastiff, saving a beautiful thoroughbred’s leg, or getting an elephant to trust her—it didn’t matter. All she wanted to do was to find an answer to a problem. She thought about that with her feet planted shoulder distance apart, feeling rooted to the earth as the lukewarm shower water pounded her from above. She liked having answers that made sense, and she felt most vulnerable when she had unanswered questions. Questions unbalanced her. They made her feel as though one leg was stretched high into the air while the other tried to maintain balance on a log spinning in a wild river.

  As she walked to the big building for supper, the fatigue of the day rolled off her shoulders as easily as the soapy shower water had. A layered fuchsia, watermelon, and robin’s egg blue sunset sky revealed its richness along the far edges of the meadow. She stopped to breathe it in for a moment. In the distance, a dog barked and an elephant answered with a long rumble. It was a sound she’d heard often, but this time she wondered idly whether it had been Ali and was surprised that she’d begun to identify the elephants by their sounds.

  Mali had brought whatever undamaged vegetables and herbs she could find to the kitchen, demanding they be used as quickly as possible. Some of the cooks teased that there would be no meat for a week because that would be how long it would take to eat all the veggies.

  Mali caught Natalie’s eye and smiled. “Perhaps it’s time to stop eating meat completely,” she said in English, then she turned to the cooks and volunteers and repeated the comment in Thai. Natalie guessed from the looks on their faces that they weren’t sure whether that was a good idea.

  Natalie found a seat at the same long picnic table where Andrew, Peter, Karina, and some of the volunteers sat. She smiled across the plates and bowls at Karina on the other side. That was a mistake. Karina instantly averted her gaze and switched to sit on her right hip so she could continue talking to a volunteer who’d arrived from Germany the night before.

  Natalie moved to the other end of the table and put her tray down next to Karina’s knapsack. Everyone picked up their conversations where they’d left off, ignoring her. Was that a sign that she was accepted? They didn’t have to pay attention to her? Or were they purposefully ignoring her? She squirmed a little in her seat and looked around, but no one paid any attention to her, engaged in their own side conversations, or simply gazing into the distance.

  She took a spoonful of food, telling herself she was making too much of it, but from somewhere in her teenage past came a memory she’d long forgotten of being ignored by Carrie and Sabrina and Jill, the girls she’d been friends with since grade school, and the same familiar stab of betrayal came back to haunt her, coupled with the unanswered question: what did I do?

  She shifted in her seat, realizing how ridiculous it was to revisit the same question at this stage of her life and even more ridiculous that her first inclination was to run away from the situation. It took all of her willpower to anchor herself to the seat and act nonchalant.

  Andrew was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. “Peter, Natalie, Mali, and Siriporn: When you are done with dinner, we need to meet. Be at the long table in half an hour.” He rose as he spoke and made eye contact with everyone before taking his dish and moving to the sink to rinse and stack it.

  Mali followed close behind and spoke with him quietly before walking with him to the end of the patio where several of the elephants waited patiently for their evening meal.

  Natalie silently swallowed her food and watched Mali and Andrew, deep in brow-furrowed conversation. They were an odd couple in so many ways: he, tall, broad and blonde, a no-nonsense Englishman with a few rough edges; Mali, small, slight, and dark, exotic yet European, intelligent and cultured, and able to straddle the diversity in the camp as well as in her personal life. Siriporn, her eldest son, personified Mali’s Thai life, while Sivad, the youngest of Mali’s children and Andrew’s daughter, resembled her mother in more ways than the two others, yet it seemed that she might have more of a challenge than the others since she had a fair modicum of Andrew’s stubbornness. She ran around camp free as a butterfly, often getting into places and things that she shouldn’t. Khalan’s eyes were a different shape than either of his siblings’, and he was smaller in frame and height than Siriporn, but they had the same broad mouth. All three of Mali’s children had her smile.

  Natalie liked Mali, and though she often felt she’d never truly know her, the irony was that the two of them had one major factor in common: they both loved their boys way too much. Natalie knew by the way Mali talked to Siriporn that the two of them were bonded more strongly than Mali was with Khalan. Though most mothers wouldn’t admit it, there was always one child who needed more attention, more mothering, more love.

  Danny had been that child. Everything Danny had done delighted her. And Mali looked at Siriporn with the same kind of wonder. Seeing the raw maternal emotion wash over Mali’s face often felt like too much to bear. Natalie turned away, overwhelmed, and fought it with every ounce of her energy. It would never end. This pain. The only thing that helped was to find another focus. She blinked hard and forced herself to watch her new friend.

  Mali stared at Siriporn as he approached her and Andrew. It was an odd moment. Andrew ignored Siriporn. Mali glanced back and forth between her lover and her son as if unsure to whom she should pay attention. In that blink of an eye, Natalie understood Mali better than she understood herself. She watched as conflicting emotions chased each other across Mali’s face as she fought being caught in the middle. After a few moments of talking, they all turned and glanced at Natalie. Something in their gaze stirred her and diverted her from the jealousy she’d begun to feel. Just as well. The envy connected to that deep well of grief she couldn’t afford to plumb right now.

  Mali lifted a hand to her mouth, her eyes still focused on Natalie. She spoke to Andrew, who nodded and walked over to the table where Natalie sat. For no other reason than an instinctual and powerful feeling of dread, Natalie felt that the world as she knew it would soon change.

  “Listen up, everyone,” Andrew called out. “Natalie, Peter, Siriporn, and Mali, gather around. Everyone else, you need to find something else to do. We need this space for a private meeting. Now.”

  The volunteers gathered their plates and cups nervously, chattering among themselves as they moved toward their cabins. The kitchen staff moved more slowly, straightening up their work spaces before meandering off in the direction of one of the big trees where they took their breaks. Karina lingered longer than everyone else, as if expecting that Andrew would suddenly remember that she needed to be part of the meeting. When he didn’t, she slapped the table and stomped away.

  Finally, the five of them were alone. Hatcher sat across from her, playing with a paperclip as if it was the most important thing he’d ever done. Mali and Andrew sat next to each other, and Siriporn slouched against the table instead of finding a seat, a worried expression on his normally smiling face.

  “I wanted to talk among us before I make this announcement to everyone else, because all of you are going to play a role in what we have to do.” Andrew folded his large hands on the table in front of him and stared down at them solemnly. “You all know what Sophie did, and all of us—with the exception of Natalie—realize that kind of destruction has been Sophie’s modus operandi since she came to us a year ago. Peter and I talked last night, and I spent the whole night pondering this issue. I don’t think it’s going to end. She’s costing us way too much in stress and medicine and, now, damages. I’m afraid that the next
thing she’s going to do is to physically hurt someone. Peter believes we need to put her down.”

  Hatcher flipped the paperclip into the air.

  Siriporn pushed off the table and folded his arms across his chest.

  Natalie couldn’t move.

  “That’s it? No talk about it?” Siriporn glared at Andrew.

  “Do you have a better idea? You’re the one who’s been dealing with her all this time. Have you seen any changes in her behavior? Anything for the better?”

  Andrew’s question stopped Siriporn. He pushed a hand through his hair and muttered something unintelligible.

  “We can’t put her down.” Natalie realized the moment she spoke that she had no idea what else to do, but somewhere deep down, she felt like the decision wasn’t a wise one. “There’s got to be something else. Something that hasn’t been tried.” She directed the last comment to Hatcher, who hadn’t looked up from the paperclip he now twisted and turned.

  Mali rose and put her arm around Siriporn. Her head reached his shoulder. She spoke to him quietly. His deference for her was evident in the way he leaned in to hear her speak.

  Andrew glanced up from his folded hands at Hatcher, then to Natalie. “If there’s another way, I’d certainly like to hear it. I’m the last one to get on board when it comes to putting an animal down. But I have to listen to the veterinarians that I hire to give me good advice, and Peter—”

  Natalie’s chest tightened as she searched for words. “She followed me back to the holding area. All she wanted was food . . .”

  “She certainly ate plenty when she destroyed my gardens.” Mali plunked herself down at the end of the table next to Siriporn. “We all know elephants are voracious, but most of them are not vicious.” She avoided Natalie’s gaze. “But we have plenty of others that need our help and are more likely to be rehabilitated.”

  Mali fell silent. For a moment no one else spoke either. Hatcher kept his eyes on the paperclip. Andrew studied his fingernails, and Siriporn stood, arms folded, looking into the meadow as darkness descended on the elephants grazing beyond. Natalie looked at each of them for a long moment, one at a time, wondering what was going through their heads.

  “I can’t believe you don’t think she’s worth saving.” Natalie shook her head and sighed long and deep. No one answered. Silence descended and lingered for several moments. Finally, she could stand it no longer. She stood, leaned over the table to look directly into Andrew’s somber face. “Please do me one favor. Give me a day to consider our options. I didn’t come all the way to Thailand to put animals to death.”

  He leaned back and rubbed his forehead. The lines around his eyes had deepened since the day before. “You know, my dear, one of the reasons I brought you here was because of your commitment and the second reason was because you seemed a quick study with a lively curiosity. But I’m afraid you might be too sensitive.” He paused and drew his hand across his mouth. “I hope I’m wrong.”

  Natalie twisted her mouth and paused for a moment. She had to answer him. She had to win the argument. This argument, in particular. “Give me a couple of days. Let me do some research. I’m sure you’d rather save Sophie than lose her.”

  He squinted his eyes looking up at her, bringing his bushy white eyebrows together to create one chalky line across his brow. He pursed his lips as she had seen him do during his presentation only two months ago in the States. Though they had interacted almost every day, she had come to think of him as a kindly older man instead of the philanthropic millionaire who moved as easily and freely around the globe as some did around their tiny neighborhoods. He was used to launching arguments with governments. The defense of her own dissertation was the only argument she’d ever given that wasn’t personal, and that was more than a decade ago.

  “Just a couple of days,” she repeated. “Please.” Tears burned at the back of her eyelids.

  Andrew and Hatcher exchanged a long, probing stare but no words.

  Finally, Andrew broke the stare and glanced at Natalie. “Two days. And if she does anything else—anything at all—during that time, I will have to make the decision to keep my people and the other animals here safe. You know that ‘oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.’”

  On the walk back to her cabin, Natalie mulled over Andrew’s Shakespearean quote. How could one blame Sophie for her actions when human beings were at fault? If she had not been abused, she wouldn’t be defensive. If she wasn’t defensive, she wouldn’t tend toward violence. No one had given her a chance to recuperate from her PTSD and until that was cured, she wouldn’t trust anyone to treat her physical injuries.

  Catch 22.

  She kicked the dirt, feeling angrier than she probably had a right to be. The night wind rustled the trees a bit, making them whisper as though warning her to relax. She gazed upward, catching a glimpse of the moon through their waving branches and fought a sudden wave of homesickness.

  If Sophie were a horse in her care, Natalie would not have hesitated to call for help. There were five or six people she counted on. Horse whisperers, others called them, specially-trained professionals who retrained animals that had become dangerous. She had no connections here. No team on which she could rely. No network of trusted colleagues.

  She’d have to take on the fight alone. She’d have to find a way to help Sophie.

  But how?

  Sixteen

  We are weighed down, every moment,

  by the conception and the sensation of Time.

  And there are but two means of escaping and

  forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work.

  Pleasure consumes us.

  Work strengthens us.

  Let us choose.

  -Charles Baudelaire

  The dream swung back and forth in time, as it always did when she dreamt about Danny. One moment, he was a baby, and the next, he was a married man introducing her to her first grandchild. She heard his loving voice and his proud laughter. She felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek, the power of his brief and intense hugs. If anyone had asked her when she awoke about the content of the dream, she’d have been hard pressed to find a storyline, yet she could detail the gamut of emotions she’d ridden in every nanosecond of time that was the gift of seeing her younger son again.

  When she first opened her eyes, the moon still shone through her window, telling her it wasn’t even close to sunrise. She tossed and turned on her thin mattress, finding no comfort in the waves of homesickness that washed over her. Homesick for her down-filled, king-sized mattress, for the promise of a piping hot shower every morning, the aroma of freshly-brewed tea, the scent of pine trees after a light rainfall, the crackle of autumn leaves underfoot. She even missed the little arguments her parents had whenever she went to their house for dinner.

  Nighttime was always the worst time. It reminded her of her solitary life when the dark silence enveloped her. The sadness she knew during the day could be dampened with activity, but at night, that grief fed on her heart. She wished she’d never known love. Love brought pain. Heartbreak. Fear.

  Finally, she fell back into a fitful sleep. This time, the dreams changed. She still saw Danny, but he wore a white lab coat, and they were going to the movies together. That made no sense, and even worse, throughout the movie, he repeated over and over again: “The cows. Temple’s cows. Watch the cows.” By the time he’d repeated it half a dozen times, Natalie wanted to retreat somewhere where she would not hear his voice or the nonsensical phrase he repeated. “Temple’s cows. Temple’s cows.”

  Then the dream ended abruptly, and her eyelids flew open. Sunlight spilled into her room like overripe lemons, telling her it was far past sunrise, her usual waking time. She sat up on the edge of the bed, groggy. Dreaming often felt like a theft of sleep to her instead of a rejuvenation. She needed down time for her body to recou
p after working long days. If she didn’t get it, she moved through the next day in a fog. This would be one of those days. Yet, as she slapped some cold water on her face and readied herself for work at the clinic, she remembered the research she needed to do in order to keep Sophie alive, and Danny’s words from her dream repeated themselves in her mind: “Temple’s cows.”

  What exactly did that mean? The thought rotated in her mind over and over again as she dressed, pulling a pink Sanctuary t-shirt over her head and slipping her legs into her khaki shorts. She found her laptop under a pile of nutritional health white papers she’d been studying to determine whether they were feeding the older females enough calcium to supplement what they’d been missing in their leafy diets. She’d done the research several days ago when she had a few hours to sit on the platform. The only time she could use the laptop here at the sanctuary was when she physically sat at one of the tables where they ate their meals. Connectivity was non-existent in her cabin, away from the wireless router. Even when she sat near it, she might only have Internet service for half an hour or so in the afternoon.

  Temple’s cows.

  She walked up the dusty road, past the fields of palm grass that had been partially harvested to feed the elephants.

  What kind of temple shelters cows? An Indian temple? Why would my dream be telling me about cows in India?

  She ate a couple of pieces of toast and sipped a cup of bitter black tea while trying to get on the Internet. When she finally found a weak signal, she Googled “Temple’s cows.” Eighteen million hits, most of which pointed to Temple Grandin, the autistic woman made famous for her inventions for moving cows through slaughter houses in a humane fashion.