Water for Elephants

by Sara Gruen

  Dean Wilkins stares at me. "Come with us," he says.

  I've done something, that much is clear.

  I follow him into the hallway. McGovern walks out behind me and closes the door. For a moment the two of them stand silently, arms crossed, faces stern.

  My mind races, dissecting my every recent move. Did they go through the dorm? Did they find Edward's liquor--or maybe even the eight-pagers? Dear Lord--if I get expelled now, my father will kill me. No question about it. Never mind what it will do to my mother. Okay, so maybe I drank a little whiskey, but it's not like I had anything to do with the fiasco in the cattle--

  Dean Wilkins takes a deep breath, raises his eyes to mine, and claps a hand on my shoulder. "Son, there's been an accident." A slight pause. "An automobile accident." Another pause, longer this time. "Your parents were involved."

  I stare at him, willing him to continue.

  "Are they . . .? Will they . . .?"

  "I'm sorry, son. It was instant. There was nothing anyone could do."

  I stare at his face, trying to maintain eye contact, but it's difficult because he's zooming away from me, receding to the end of a long black tunnel. Stars explode in my peripheral vision.

  "You okay, son?"

  "What?"

  "Are you okay?"

  Suddenly he's right in front of me again. I blink, wondering what he means. How the hell can I be okay? Then I realize he's asking whether I'm going to cry.

  He clears his throat and continues. "You'll have to go back today. To make a positive identification. I'll drive you to the station."

  THE POLICE SUPERINTENDENT--a member of our congregation--is waiting on the platform in street clothes. He greets me with an awkward nod and stiff handshake. Almost as an afterthought, he pulls me into a violent embrace. He pats my back loudly and expels me with a shove and a sniff. Then he drives me to the hospital in his own car, a two-year-old Phaeton that must have cost the earth. So many things people would have done differently had they known what would happen that fateful October.

  The coroner leads us to the basement and slips through a door, leaving us in the hall. After a few minutes a nurse appears, holding the door open in wordless invitation.

  There are no windows. There is a clock on one wall, but the room is otherwise bare. The floor is linoleum, olive green and white, and in the middle are two gurneys. Each has a sheet-covered body on it. I can't process this. I can't even tell which end is which.

  "Are you ready?" the coroner asks, moving between them.

  I swallow and nod. A hand appears on my shoulder. It belongs to the superintendent.

  The coroner exposes first my father and then my mother.

  They don't look like my parents, and yet they can't be anyone else.

  Death is all over them--in the mottled patterns of their battered torsos, the eggplant purple on bloodless white; in the sinking, hollowed eye sockets. My mother--so pretty and meticulous in life--wears a stiff grimace in death. Her hair is matted and bloodied, pressed into the hollow of her crushed skull. Her mouth is open, her chin receding as though she were snoring.

  I turn as vomit explodes from my mouth. Someone is there with a kidney dish, but I overshoot and hear liquid splash across the floor, splattering against the wall. Hear it, because my eyes are squeezed shut. I vomit again and again, until there's nothing left. Despite this, I remain doubled over and heaving until I wonder if it's possible to turn inside out.

  THEY TAKE ME SOMEWHERE and plant me in a chair. A kindly nurse in a starched white uniform brings coffee, which sits on the table next to me until it grows cold.

  Later, the chaplain comes and sits beside me. He asks if there is anyone he can call. I mumble that all my relatives are in Poland. He asks about neighbors and members of our church, but for the life of me I can't come up with a single name. Not one. I'm not sure I could come up with my own if asked.

  When he leaves I slip out. It's a little over two miles to our house, and I arrive just as the last sliver of sun slips beneath the horizon.

  The driveway is empty. Of course.

  I stop in the backyard, holding my valise and staring at the long flat building behind the house. There's a new sign above the entrance, the lettering glossy and black:

  E. JANKOWSKI AND SON

  Doctors of Veterinary Medicine

  After a while I turn to the house, climb the stoop, and push open the back door.

  My father's prized possession--a Philco radio--sits on the kitchen counter. My mother's blue sweater hangs on the back of a chair. There are ironed linens on the kitchen table, a vase of wilting violets. An overturned mixing bowl, two plates, and a handful of cutlery set to dry on a checked dish towel spread out by the sink.

  This morning, I had parents. This morning, they ate breakfast.

  I fall to my knees, right there on the back stoop, howling into splayed hands.

  THE LADIES OF THE CHURCH auxiliary, alerted to my return by the superintendent's wife, swoop down on me within the hour.

  I'm still on the stoop, my face pressed into my knees. I hear gravel crunching under tires, car doors slamming, and next thing I know I'm surrounded by doughy flesh, flowered prints, and gloved hands. I am pressed against soft bosoms, poked by veiled hats, and engulfed by jasmine, lavender, and rose water. Death is a formal affair, and they're dressed in their Sunday best. They pat and they fuss, and above all, they cluck.

  Such a shame, such a shame. And such good people, too. It's hard to make sense of such a tragedy, surely it is, but the good Lord works in mysterious ways. They will take care of everything. The guest room at Jim and Mabel Neurater's house is already made up. I am not to worry about a thing.

  They take my valise and herd me toward the running car. A grim-faced Jim Neurater is behind the wheel, gripping it with both hands.

  TWO DAYS AFTER I BURY my parents, I am summoned to the offices of Edmund Hyde, Esquire, to hear the details of their estate. I sit in a hard leather chair across from the man himself as it gradually sinks in that there is nothing to discuss. At first I think he's mocking me. Apparently my father has been taking payment in the form of beans and eggs for nearly two years.

  "Beans and eggs?" My voice cracks in disbelief. "Beans and eggs?"

  "And chickens. And other goods."

  "I don't understand."

  "It's what people have, son. The community's been hit right hard, and your father was trying to help out. Couldn't stand by and watch animals suffer."

  "But . . . I don't understand. Even if he took payment in, uh, whatever, how does that make everything belong to the bank?"

  "They fell behind on their mortgage."

  "My parents didn't have a mortgage."

  He looks uncomfortable. Holds his steepled fingers in front of him. "Well, yes, actually, they did."

  "No, they didn't," I argue. "They've lived here for nearly thirty years. My father put away every cent he ever made."

  "The bank failed."

  I narrow my eyes. "I thought you just said it all goes to the bank."

  He sighs deeply. "It's a different bank. The one that gave them the mortgage when the other one closed," he says. I can't tell if he's trying to give the appearance of patience and failing miserably or is blatantly trying to make me leave.

  I pause, weighing my options.

  "What about the things in the house? In the practice?" I say finally.

  "It all goes to the bank."

  "What if I want to fight it?"

  "How?"

  "What if I come back and take over the practice and try to make the payments?"

  "It doesn't work like that. It's not yours to take over."

  I stare at Edmund Hyde, in his expensive suit, behind his expensive desk, in front of his leather-bound books. Behind him, the sun streaks through lead-paned windows. I am filled with sudden loathing--I'll bet he's never taken payment in the form of beans and eggs in his life.

  I lean forward and make eye contact. I want this to be his problem,
too. "What am I supposed to do?" I ask slowly.

  "I don't know, son. I wish I did. The country's fallen on hard times, and that's a fact." He leans back in his chair, his fingers still steepled. He cocks his head, as though an idea has just occurred to him. "I suppose you could go west," he muses.

  It dawns on me that if I don't get out of this office right now, I'm going to slug him. I rise, replace my hat, and leave.

  When I reach the sidewalk something else dawns on me. I can think of only one reason my parents would need a mortgage: to pay my Ivy League tuition.

  The pain from this sudden realization is so intense I double over, clutching my stomach.

  BECAUSE NO OTHER options occur to me, I return to school--a temporary solution at best. My room and board is paid up until the end of the year, but that is only six days away.

  I've missed the entire week of review lectures. Everyone is eager to help. Catherine hands me her notes and then hugs me in a way that suggests I might get different results if I were to attempt the usual quest. I pull away. For the first time in living memory, I have no interest in sex.

  I can't eat. I can't sleep. And I certainly can't study. I stare at a single paragraph for a quarter of an hour but can't absorb it. How can I, when behind the words, on the white background of the paper, I'm watching an endless loop of my parents' deaths? Watching as their cream-colored Buick flies through the guardrail and over the side of the bridge to avoid old Mr. McPherson's red truck? Old Mr. McPherson, who confessed as he was led from the scene that he wasn't entirely sure what side of the road he should have been on and thinks that maybe he hit the gas instead of the brake? Old Mr. McPherson, who showed up at church one legendary Easter without trousers?

  THE PROCTOR SHUTS the door and takes his seat. He glances at the wall clock and waits until the minute hand wobbles forward.

  "You may begin."

  Fifty-two exam booklets flip over. Some people riffle through it. Others start writing immediately. I do neither.

  Forty minutes later, I have yet to touch pencil to paper. I stare at the booklet in desperation. There are diagrams, numbers, lines and charts--strings of words with terminal punctuation at the end--some are periods, some question marks, and none of it makes sense. I wonder briefly if it is even English. I try it in Polish, but that doesn't work either. It might as well be hieroglyphics.

  A woman coughs and I jump. A bead of sweat falls from my forehead onto my booklet. I wipe it off with my sleeve, then pick the booklet up.

  Maybe if I bring it closer. Or hold it farther away--I can see now that it is in English; or rather, that the individual words are English, but I cannot read from one to another with any sense of continuity.

  A second drop of sweat falls.

  I scan the room. Catherine is writing quickly, her light brown hair falling over her face. She is left-handed, and because she writes in pencil her left arm is silver from wrist to elbow. Beside her, Edward yanks himself upright, glances at the clock in panic, and slumps back over his booklet. I turn away, toward a window.

  Snatches of sky peek through leaves, a mosaic in blue and green that shifts gently with the wind. I stare into it, allowing my focus to soften, looking beyond the leaves and branches. A squirrel bounds fatly across my sight line, its full tail cocked.

  I shove my chair back with a violent screech and stand up. My brow is beaded, my fingers shaking. Fifty-two faces turn to look.

  I should know these people, and up until a week ago I did. I knew where their families lived. I knew what their fathers did. I knew whether they had siblings and whether they liked them. Hell, I even remember the ones who had to drop out after the Crash: Henry Winchester, whose father stepped off the ledge of the Board of Trade Building in Chicago. Alistair Barnes, whose father shot himself in the head. Reginald Monty, who tried unsuccessfully to live in a car when his family could no longer pay for his room and board. Bucky Hayes, whose unemployed father simply wandered off. But these ones, the ones who remain? Nothing.

  I stare at these faces without features--these blank ovals with hair--looking from one to the next with increasing desperation. I'm aware of a heavy, wet noise, and realize it's me. I'm gasping for breath.

  "Jacob?"

  The face nearest me has a mouth and it's moving. The voice is timid, unsure. "Are you okay?"

  I blink, unable to focus. A second later I cross the room and toss the exam booklet on the proctor's desk.

  "Finished already?" he says, reaching for it. I hear paper rustling as I head for the door. "Wait!" he calls after me. "You haven't even started! You can't leave. If you leave I can't let you--"

  The door cuts off his final words. As I march across the quad, I look up at Dean Wilkins' office. He's standing at the window, watching.

  I WALK UNTIL the edge of town and then veer off to follow the train tracks. I walk until after dark and the moon is high, and then for several hours after. I walk until my legs hurt and my feet blister. And then I stop because I am tired and hungry and have no idea where I am. It's as though I've been sleepwalking and suddenly woken to find myself here.

  The only sign of civilization is the track, which rests on a raised bed of gravel. There is forest on one side and a small clearing on the other. From somewhere nearby I hear water trickling, and I pick my way toward it, guided by the moonlight.

  The stream is a couple of feet wide at most. It runs along the tree line at the far side of the clearing and then cuts off into the woods. I peel off my shoes and socks and sit at its edge.

  When I first submerge my feet in the frigid water, they hurt so badly I yank them out again. I persist, dunking them for longer and longer periods, until the cold finally numbs my blisters. I rest my soles against the rocky bottom and let the water wriggle between my toes. Eventually the cold causes its own ache, and I lie back on the bank, resting my head on a flat stone while my feet dry.

  A coyote howls in the distance, a sound both lonely and familiar, and I sigh, allowing my eyes to close. When it is answered by a yipping only a few dozen yards to my left, I sit forward abruptly.

  The faraway coyote howls again and this time is answered by a train whistle. I pull on my socks and shoes and rise, staring at the edge of the clearing.

  The train is closer now, rattling and thumping toward me: CHUNK-a-chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk-a, CHUNK-a-chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk-a, CHUNK-a-chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk-a. . .

  I wipe my hands on my thighs and walk toward the track, stopping a few yards short. The acrid stink of oil fills my nose. The whistle shrieks again--

  TWE-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E--

  A massive engine explodes around the bend and barrels past, so huge and so close I'm hit by a wall of wind. It churns out rolling clouds of billowing smoke, a fat black rope that coils over the cars behind it. The sight, the sound, the stink are too much. I watch, stunned, as half a dozen flat cars whoosh by, loaded with what look like wagons, although I can't quite make them out because the moon has gone behind a cloud.

  I snap out of my stupor. There are people on that train. It matters not a whit where it's going because wherever it is, it's away from coyotes and toward civilization, food, possible employment--maybe even a ticket back to Ithaca, although I haven't a cent to my name and no reason to think they'd take me back. And what if they will? There is no home to return to, no practice to join.

  More flat cars pass, loaded with what look like telephone poles. I look behind them, straining to see what follows. The moon slips out for a second, shining its bluish light on what might be freight cars.

  I start running, moving the same direction as the train. My feet slip in the sloping gravel--it's like running in sand, and I overcompensate by pitching forward. I stumble, flailing and trying to regain my balance before any part of me comes between the huge steel wheels and the track.

  I recover and pick up speed, scanning each car for something to grab on to. Three flash by, locked up tight. They're followed by stock cars. Their doors are open but filled by the exposed tail ends of
horses. This is so odd I take note, even though I'm running beside a moving train in the middle of nowhere.

  I slow to a jog and finally stop. Winded and very nearly hopeless, I turn my head. There's an open door three cars behind me.

  I lunge forward again, counting as they pass.

  One, two, three--

  I reach for the iron grab bar and fling myself upward. My left foot and elbow hit first, and then my chin, which smashes onto the metal edging. I cling tightly with all three. The noise is deafening, and my jawbone bangs rhythmically on the iron edging. I smell either blood or rust and wonder briefly if I've destroyed my teeth before realizing the point is in serious danger of becoming moot--I'm balanced perilously on the edge of the doorway with my right leg pointed at the undercarriage. With my right hand I cling to the grab bar. With my left I claw the floorboards so desperately the wood peels off, under my nails. I'm losing purchase--I have almost no tread on my shoes and my left foot slides in short jerks toward the door. My right leg now dangles so far under the train I'm sure I'm going to lose it. I brace for it even, squeezing my eyes shut and clenching my teeth.

  After a couple of seconds, I realize I'm still intact. I open my eyes and weigh my options. There are only two choices here, and since there's no dismounting without going under the train, I count to three and buck upward with everything I've got. I manage to get my left knee up over the edge. Using foot, knee, chin, elbow, and fingernails, I scrape my way inside and collapse on the floor. I lie panting, utterly spent.

  Then I realize I'm facing a dim light. I jerk upright on my elbow.

  Four men are sitting on rough burlap feed sacks, playing cards by the light of a kerosene lantern. One of them, a shrunken old man with stubble and a hollow face, has an earthenware jug tipped up to his lips. In his surprise, he seems to have forgotten to put it back down. He does so now and wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  "Well, well, well," he says slowly. "What have we here?"

  Two of the men sit perfectly still, staring at me over the top of fanned cards. The fourth climbs to his feet and steps forward.

  He is a hulking brute with a thick black beard. His clothes are filthy, and the brim of his hat looks like someone has taken a bite out of it. I scramble to my feet and stumble backward, only to find that there's nowhere to go. I twist my head around and discover that I'm up against one of a great many bundles of canvas.