The Rolls came by at precisely four thirty to take Grisha to the ranch and pick up Lance Imperialle and his aides. The rest of us—Tom, Diamond, JJ, and I—got into another rented car, a simple green sedan not nearly as luxurious as Grisha’s. Diamond placed Mrs. W. on her lap.
“Can’t you leave that urn in your suitcase?” I hissed at Diamond as she got into the car with us.
“I don’t think she’d want to miss out on something like this,” Diamond replied.
“The more the merrier,” said Jungle Johnny. Diamond flashed him a grateful smile.
The blue trucks were waiting, parked alongside the road that backed the ranch. The men had already done their job, snipping the chain link with bolt cutters and peeling it back like the lid of a tin can. They had lured the dogs, all four of them, and given them the dose of sedatives mixed with hamburger meat, and now the dogs were sleeping peacefully under a nearby tree, in a large mottled heap of black and tan fur.
Diamond, JJ, Tom, and I slipped through the fence. Tom carried a pair of bolt cutters and snipped down the thornbushes, clearing a path as we went. Diamond carried the GPS and a compass and the same bag she had brought back from yesterday’s errand, though I still didn’t know what was in it. Jungle Johnny carried several bullhooks. I could barely look at them. I was assigned to carry two large rifles. For what purpose, I didn’t want to know.
“They’re loaded” was all Tom said to me.
The air was warm and tacky, like a child’s lollipop. My tee stuck to my arms and back, and my jeans hugged my legs. I could feel sweat running down the back of my knees, my hair growing slick, even my feet sweating inside my boots. Maybe it was nerves, but it seemed that the bushes looked even more oppressively thorny from the ground, thicker and uglier, growing in tight formation, and they snagged at us mercilessly, giving up a hold on our clothing only to bite at our skin and hair.
Diamond was following the compass on her GPS. Her stride was steady and stealthy, and I had to admire how she moved with perfect confidence, slipping this way and that, checking and rechecking her coordinates, as though she had walked the land many times.
“Here,” she mumbled, moving to the right, “this way. Now we turn here.” Tom followed, snipping down bushes, ripping at the vines, measuring the width of the path we were making.
It was a long walk, and we had to execute each step with precision. There wouldn’t be another chance. We were coming from the back side of the ranch, so we wouldn’t be passing the other animal cages, and I was glad of it. I couldn’t bear to see those faces again.
There was a large enclosure ahead of us. The familiar form of Shamwari, rocking, rocking, rocking filled its entirety.
“We get Tusker first,” Diamond said, and Jungle Johnny agreed. “Tusker is the elder. If we move him, Shamwari should follow out of respect.”
We pressed on another half mile or so, moving quickly. My breath came hard. It had been so easy to travel these distances in the jeep, and I wasn’t that fit to move through the humidity, over the brush, pulling away the low-hanging Spanish moss that wrapped into our hair like moist brown-green spider webs. But it was quiet. We said nothing to each other. Tom made a motion, and we followed the line of his hand.
Suddenly Tusker was straight ahead. Tom moved swiftly to the back gate and clipped the lock off in one neat motion. He pulled at the gate and we stood back. Tusker didn’t appear to notice.
“We’ve got to get him out of there right now,” JJ said softly. He slipped inside, behind the elephant. Tusker just stood, his trunk down, his ears close to his head. JJ bent down to examine the leg chains and then held his hand out behind. Tom slipped him the bolt cutters and JJ clipped the chains from Tusker’s legs, one, two, three, four. I counted them compulsively, one, two, three, four. Everything seemed to be taking so much time.
“He’s emaciated,” said Tom. “I hope he has the strength to move.”
JJ pushed Tusker lightly on the rump. There was no response at all. He didn’t move his head, he didn’t take even one step forward. It was as though we were invisible to him.
I was sick. It was as though he had died somewhere between his life in Zimbabwe, the clown of the camps, the majestic plunderer of cars and dustbins and lovely lily ponds, and here, in this dry, soulless, ugly hell, he had died. Only his hulking shell was left, waiting for the rest of him to be called away.
“Move on, move on,” JJ said to him, slapping him on one hind leg, but Tusker only backed up a confused step.
“The bullhook,” Tom ordered. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”
JJ slapped Tusker on the rear with the bullhook now, the sharp end of it biting into the animal’s flank. I turned away, sick.
“Please just move,” I prayed. “Please. Please.”
Tusker stepped back again. The bullhook had made its mark, and he responded in bewilderment. Tom slipped behind him as well, with a bullhook, to stand on his other side. Diamond and I stepped aside so that Tusker could have a clear view of the open gate.
“Come on, man,” JJ said. He looked at Tom, and I knew what they were thinking. If we can’t even get him out of the cage, how are we going to move him across the ranch before Grisha returns. The whole prospect suddenly seemed impossible.
Tom lifted the bullhook over his head and gave Tusker a hard whack against his back legs. Tusker’s head jerked up from the pain, and he spun around and around in a circle but still made no noise. It was eerie and sickening. The men flattened themselves against the chain link to move out of his way. He circled again. We were tormenting him. He didn’t know what else to do.
Diamond opened the bag she was carrying. Oranges. Grisha had laughed at the idea, but she reached in and pulled one out, holding it in front of Tusker’s trunk. He was shaking now, his legs shook. He looked at the orange and looked away.
“Give me the bullhook,” she called to Tom. He handed it to her, and she sliced the orange in two with the sharp end and rubbed a piece of it on the tip of Tusker’s trunk. We waited a minute. Slowly, as though a ghost were whispering in his ear, Tusker lifted his trunk to his mouth and tasted the moisture from the fruit.
“Let’s go,” Diamond ordered. “JJ, stay in the rear and keep driving him forward.” She walked ahead, and I followed her. Tusker took a shaky step, then another, then stopped. Diamond ran back to wipe the fruit again on his trunk. He took another step, another. In a few minutes, he had cleared the cage and was standing outside.
“Bollocks! There’s no way we can move him like this,” Diamond said. “It’ll take all night.”
“Fuck,” Jungle Johnny snapped. “This is becoming a mess.”
Diamond looked around. “You get the other one out,” she ordered Jungle Johnny and Tom. “Open the gate and get the other one out. We’ll get him moving, I promise. We’ll bring this one right past Shamwari.”
“You have a magic flute?” Tom asked. “He’s not moving.”
Sure enough, Tusker was rocking from leg to leg and rumbling to himself.
“Get me up there,” said Diamond.
“Up where?” asked Jungle Johnny.
“On his back. Get me up on his back,” Diamond ordered. “I’m going to ride him out of here.” She handed her bag to me while Jungle Johnny lifted her onto the chain link fence. Pushing the tip of her foot into each link, then grabbing herself up with her hands, climbing like the baboons I had seen in Kenya, lifting up swiftly, gracefully into the canopy of the trees. She managed to climb to the top of the enclosure, where she stood, balanced over Tusker’s back. In an instant, she dropped down and scrambled across his back to sit right behind his head. Not used to the strange weight, he shook his head up and down and turned sideways.
It wasn’t such a crazy idea.
People ride elephants all over the world. The secret, what they don’t tell the rest of the world, is that the elephants are trained from the time they are about four, systematically starved and beaten and tortured into submission. Thailand, India, all of
those lovely countries that worship the elephant beat and starve them into submission to ride them. This wasn’t so different.
Diamond leaned over and grabbed Tusker’s ears. Elephants’ ears are exquisitely sensitive. “Get Shamwari out of his cage,” she said to Jungle Johnny. “I know I can get Tusker going. Neelie, oranges!”
Tom gave me one of the bullhooks, and I resolved I would use it if there was any chance of Tusker turning back. I walked slowly in front of him, luring him with oranges as he took small, unsteady steps behind me. Diamond pulled his ears, one way, then the other.
“Like a horse,” she called down to me. “Sometimes you just have to get on and ride ’em. They do catch on.”
We walked. The broken elephant and Diamond and I. Every time he stopped, I rubbed the orange on his lips, his tongue, almost putting my hand into his mouth. “Come on,” I urged him, I begged him. “Walk.”
He did walk. Mechanically, slowly. Even broken, there was something inside of him that still wanted to live. I smacked him with the handle end of the bullhook when he paused. We had to get out of there. I had to keep him moving.
Tom and JJ were having trouble with Shamwari. His gate was open, his chains were off, but he was still swaying mindlessly from leg to leg.
“Get on him,” Diamond called over. JJ quickly scaled the sides of the cage and lowered himself onto Shamwari’s back and settled, like Diamond, behind his head.
But Shamwari continued to rock. Back and forth, leg to leg, shaking his head from side to side, his eyes blank and unseeing. I ran over to rub the orange on his trunk, but there was no response. I rubbed it on his lips. Nothing.
I reached into the bag. There were only one or two oranges left and a can of something. I pulled it out. Enamel spray paint. Bright red.
“What the hell is this for?” I called up to Diamond.
“Oh, right,” she said. “Spray his head. Now! Spray both their heads.” I did, without knowing why. I reached up and sprayed the foul-smelling paint, covering their foreheads with huge red splotches of enamel.
Tom came up behind Shamwari and slapped him hard again and again. The elephant lifted his trunk and screamed. A long, heart-rending trumpeting, filled with rage and pain and torment and protest.
“Let’s go,” Diamond said. “He’s come back to life.”
She kicked at Tusker. I squeezed oranges until my fingers burned. Tom ran behind the animals, pushing and slapping at them. It was a slow procession, but we moved.
One step to the next.
Across the dust, through the date palms, stumbling over the twisted, dried bromegrass, Shamwari followed his old friend, slowly, painfully, trusting that the old elephant would lead him somewhere safe, and Tusker moved forward, almost as if he understood that every step was a step to life. We got them to the gates. It was nearly dusk, and Grisha would be returning soon. We had to move them faster.
The blue trucks were ready. The back panels were open, the ramps were down. Diamond slid down the side of Tusker and onto the ground, and we pushed and prodded him up the ramp and into the truck. Immediately, the doors were slammed behind him.
Shamwari was next. He balked and screamed as soon as Tusker disappeared from view. JJ was on the ground now, and he and Tom pushed Shamwari up the ramp, sweating and grunting from the effort.
Shamwari fought. He swung his head back and forth, as if to comfort himself. He moved backward, stepping off the ramp, and he trumpeted. His calls were answered by Tusker.
“Hey!” someone screamed from inside the compound. “Hey! What the hell are you doing there? Hey!” It was the security guard. He was running toward us, waving his arms.
We had run out of time.
Chapter 46
SHAMWARI WAS IN NO HURRY. HE RAISED HIS TRUNK and pulled the orange from my hand while Tom and JJ frantically pushed against him. He ate the orange, chewing it slowly. The men pushed some more.
There was a loud rustling sound, and a man screaming in the woods. The date palms swayed like ladies with big hats, disturbed by the grunting efforts of the security guard, who was running between them, tripping over the dried grass and knots of thornbushes. He was overweight, his belly flopped with every lumbering stride, and he ran clutching at his chest and screaming for us to stop.
Shamwari savored the orange, his mouth open, his tongue rolling it around, chewing, chewing, then swallowing it. He took another step, then reached his trunk out to me to ask for more. Tom’s two men and JJ pulled on chains that raised the ramp while Tom called Grisha on the cell phone.
“Just get the hell out of the restaurant,” he was saying. “Leave the limo and get a cab back to the hotel. The second hotel.”
Shamwari wanted more orange. He swept his trunk against me, but I had nothing. He swept the bag, and I threw it up the ramp, inside the truck, hoping he would follow it in, but he stood resolutely waiting for more. One of Tom’s men revved up the motor that lifted the ramp. The angle of the ramp was getting higher, forcing Shamwari to slide part way down the ramp. Tom’s two drivers each jumped behind the wheel of a truck and started the engines. Finally, Shamwari moved off the ramp and into the back of the truck. We were almost free, but now the security guard was climbing through the cut chain link. Tom and JJ were trapped inside the blue truck with Shamwari. Tom’s men gunned the engines, and both trucks rolled safely away.
I ran to the green rented car and turned on the engine. Diamond was just climbing into the passenger seat when the security guard lunged at her and caught her by the leg. They struggled as he tried to pull her out. She fought him, elbowing him, kicking at him, but he hung fast onto her leg, trying to pull her out into the road. I was sitting behind the wheel with the motor running and couldn’t reach Diamond to help her. She stretched across the seat and grabbed at the urn, pulling it open with one hand and throwing the contents into the guard’s face. He clawed at his mouth and nose, now covered in two inches of thick gray ashes, courtesy of Mrs. Wycliff. Blinded and coughing, he fell back into the road, Diamond slammed the door shut, and I gunned the motor. The guard sat in the road, wiping at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his shirt and retching.
Tom paced the hotel room nervously. He and JJ had been dropped off on the side of the road by the blue trucks and had called a taxi to the new hotel, where Diamond and I were waiting. It wasn’t nearly as fine as the Holiday Inn, but the plan had been to disappear from view, more or less. We were registered under another false name, Vasya Pupkin, that Grisha had insisted was the simple and forgettable Russian version of John Doe.
It had been nearly three hours since we had taken the elephants, and they were already on their way to a sanctuary in Tennessee, to be checked by a vet, put on IVs, and in general, gotten ready for their long trip to New York. That part had worked, but Grisha hadn’t yet returned. He hadn’t called any of us and didn’t answer his cell phone. The limo driver called Tom to tell him he had dropped off four men at the Circle D ranch, that Grisha had not been with them, and was he finished for the day?
“How hard can it be to get a cab in Texas?” Tom kept asking us. But we knew what he was worried about. Anything could have happened to Grisha—the ranch was big enough to hide anything.
Diamond and JJ were playing cards. I sat by the window to watch anxiously for Grisha’s return, when suddenly I remembered something.
“Diamond,” I asked, “why did we spray the elephants’ heads?”
“Oh, right! I learned my lesson with those horses at the farm,” she replied. “When I accidentally used the red marker that washed off.”
“But why do it at all?”
She looked over at me. “Trophy hunters? What do they want? Heads! I thought, if we couldn’t get the elephants out of there, we could at least paint their heads. Who’d want a trophy with a big red blotch on it that won’t come off for years?” She gave a triumphant laugh. “Just wish I’d had the time to spray paint all the other animals.”
“The authorities will seize them,” Tom said. �
��Neelie took enough photos—”
The door flew open.
“Is Grisha returned!” Grisha burst into the room, carrying several shopping bags. I jumped up from my chair and ran over to give him a big hug.
“Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?” Tom asked.
“Grisha forgets to electrocute it,” he replied, then looked around the room, hands on hips. “Where are elephants?”
“On their way to Tennessee,” said Tom. “We actually pulled it off.”
Grisha nodded and sat down in a chair. “Was sheiks with me at dinner. Was making more bids! Two more men, trying to make heavy bid! I tell them I am Russian mafia. No one makes heavy bid more than Grisha. Then you call. I make excuse myself for toilette and leave through kitchen.” He pointed to the bags. “But I stop in kitchen to bring treat. I am told this is famous Texas specialness. Fried prairie oysters!”
“But even with that, what took you so long?” Tom asked. “You should have been back hours ago.”
Grisha smiled and shrugged. “Grisha does not remember Athens, Texas. Grisha only remembers Greece city. Grisha tells driver to go to Cypress.”
The owner of the sanctuary called late that night to tell us that the elephants had arrived safely. They were weak and injured and were being cared for, and she reassured Tom that they would be ready to undertake their last journey in about a week. It wouldn’t be long before they would be in New York, but she wondered why they were both marked in red paint.
“Some kind of ritualistic killing?” she asked.
“Sort of,” said Tom. “American ritualistic killing.”
The next afternoon, we were having our last meal together before we would fly our separate ways. Grisha had requested real Texas barbecuement for our farewell dinner, since the prairie oysters did not engender much enthusiasm. Diamond looked up a few restaurants in the motel directory and actually found about 162 places, but we let proximity be the determining factor, and we wound up at Bob’s BBQ Shack around the corner from the motel.
An Inconvenient Elephant Page 29
