Still Life with Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  She brought her suitcases into Richie’s house and came back out, carrying a long thin stick with a white flag attached to the end of it.

  “Target stick,” she said, holding it up.

  “Do I wave the white flag while she’s coming at me or after I’m under her?” I joked. She didn’t laugh. That didn’t bode well, I thought. It’s one thing to be dedicated, it’s another thing to be grim about it. I followed along as she marched off to the barn without another word.

  “Name?” she asked as she slid the barn door open.

  “Neelie,” I replied.

  “Elephant,” she snapped.

  “Margo.”

  “It’s all about respect,” she said, and walked inside the barn. “You have to establish leadership or they will ignore you.”

  Pretty much like horses, I thought.

  “You have to think like an elephant,” she continued, standing outside the enclosure and watching Margo suck down the last of her bananas. “Get into their heads.”

  I understood that, too.

  “African elephants are hot-blooded—more impetuous than Asian elephants.” She was opening the cage door now. Margo had turned around to assess this intrusion. “And there are no accidents. Only stupid handling mistakes.”

  “Like with horses,” I said. Faye didn’t respond. She waved the white flag around.

  “Use her name frequently,” she said.

  “Margo,” I said again.

  Faye ignored me and pulled a metal clicker from her pocket. “Clicker,” she said. “You link it with a reward.”

  “I already know how to do that,” I mumbled.

  “Margo!” she said loudly. Margo looked Faye up and down and went back to her hay. I smiled inwardly. Elephants are great equalizers.

  The first thing Faye did when she introduced herself to the baby was take her trunk and blow gently into her nostrils. Then she handed the baby’s little trunk to me and I took a turn.

  “She’ll remember us forever now,” she said. “Now we can all be good friends forever.” I liked the idea that we would be linked together forever.

  Faye worked hard over the next three weeks. She showed me how to wait until Margo approximated what I wanted from her, then to press the clicker, even though it might be only a portion of what I was hoping for, then, immediately, to reward her with a piece of fruit. She showed me how to touch the target stick to Margo’s feet and click and treat. How to click every time Margo lifted her trunk, even if it was random, and link it immediately with the words “lift trunk” and a treat. It was called shaping, this molding of behavior into something we wanted. And gradually Margo was getting socialized. At times, I thought she looked almost cheerful.

  Faye didn’t say much, but that was just fine with me: I don’t listen much. We worked well together. She had a good instinct around animals, and grudgingly told me that I did, too. She had a sweet tooth and appreciated my morning donuts. She never changed her clothes, not once in the first two weeks she was with us. One night, after a long, hard day, I found she could drink all the local barflies under the table. But she preferred the company of elephants to anyone else.

  Almost anyone.

  “What’s the story with the vet?” she asked me one morning. “Richie won’t talk about him.”

  “Matt?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Married?”

  I thought for a moment, then figured, what the hell, let her give Holly-Humpkins a run for her money. “No,” I said. “Single.”

  “Nice,” she said.

  She didn’t say much after that, but she did start changing her clothes on a regular basis. I think she may even have washed her hair a time or two.

  “How’s it going with Matt?” I asked her one day, while we were teaching Margo’s baby to fetch.

  She shrugged. “I think his life’s a mess. He lives in a motel. Sometimes he’s hard to reach.”

  “Emotionally?”

  “Yah, well, that, too, but I meant his phone.”

  “If you ever need to get in touch with him,” I said, “you can always get him through the other vet, Dr. Scarletta. They stay in touch all the time. She should be able to give him the message.” I gave her Holly’s cell number.

  “She won’t mind?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Call her anytime.”

  “Great,” she said. “I’m not into anything long-term, but he sure fills out his jeans. He looks like a good lay.”

  I didn’t care anymore. I had given up on Matt. I wanted him to screw everyone in the world. All I wanted to do now was hurt Holly.

  One day Faye and I were outside, watching mother and daughter play in the muddy pond just after we had given them a beauty session of massages with warmed coconut oil. Margo had progressed, presenting her foot on command, lifting her trunk. And letting us play with her daughter. We fed her handfuls of carrots as her reward after a successful training session.

  “I’m leaving in two days,” Faye said quietly as we watched Margo spray mud all over her baby.

  “Oh?” My heart skipped a beat. My future with Margo was going to be based on her report to Tom.

  “But I think you’re going to be okay with them,” Faye said, and gave me a quick pat on the shoulder.

  I turned to study her face. She barely cracked a smile. I almost wanted to blow in her nose.

  I greeted Faye on our last morning with a celebratory box of donuts. Maybe it was more bribatory, because she was going to give Tom her opinion on my expertise when he got back from Europe.

  We met in front of Margo’s cage.

  “Go in with her,” Faye commanded. I opened the lock and went in. Alone.

  “Ask for her foot,” Faye said from outside.

  “Margo, lift foot,” I said. Margo looked at Faye and she looked at me and yawned. Then she dropped a pile of dung.

  “Margo, lift foot,” I said, in my best master-of-the-universe voice.

  Margo rumbled and lifted her foot. I gave her an apple.

  My graduation ceremony consisted of Faye’s presenting me with the target stick and clicker.

  “She needs to respect you more,” she said. “Work on it. And try to get her to like you.”

  I took the target stick like I had won an Oscar, and clutched it to my chest. “Thank you,” I gushed. “And I think she will really, really like me.”

  We both turned to look at Margo. “Right now, she likes me best,” Faye said. “I just hope she doesn’t miss me too much.”

  “Will that be a problem?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “They form attachments, you know? And then sometimes refuse to work for anyone else. We’ll see.”

  We turned to face Margo. She was eating her graduation treat, a large watermelon. She had broken it apart by stepping on it with her big front foot and now was lifting chunks into her mouth. She looked happy, if elephants could look happy The rips in her skin, the slashes, the torn ear were all healing. Maybe her heart was, too.

  “And take good care of that baby,” Faye said. I thought I detected a tiny waver in her voice.

  “I will,” I promised. “Tom even said I could name her.”

  “Pick something dignified,” Faye said, then snorted. “I hate when people get all sweet.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I haven’t a drop of sweet left in me.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  TELEGRAPH, TELEPHONE, tell a horseman. All I had to do was put the word out among my horsy friends, and within a week I had leads on a nice little pony. I first checked it out on my own and then took Alana and her girls.

  It was a medium-size pony, a brown-and-white pinto with a thatch of color-coordinated brown-and-white mane and a tangled, particolored nest of a tail, which I thought would make perfect projects for Alana’s daughters. They could spend endless hours bathing him and brushing him and fluffing all that hair, and tying it up in hot-pink bows. He was a gentle old gelding, and he was up for adoption because he belonged to a family with three kids
who had grown up and gone off to college. He had been their first pony, and now was “sadly outgrown,” as ponies are called when they are no longer useful.

  His name was Tony, Tony the Pony, and he was almost as old as Alana and me.

  “Thirty-five years old?” Alana exclaimed when I told her about Tony. “Do you think he remembers the Reagan years?”

  “He probably remembers the Hoover years,” I said, “but that’s exactly what you want for a first horse.”

  He was well broke, was trained to pull a little cart, was safe and mannerly, and could probably even make hot chocolate for the girls when they were done riding for the day. I took them to his barn to meet him, and it was love at first sight, all around.

  The pony’s owner, Mrs. Hammock, was thrilled to have her pony find a good home.

  “With the kids gone, there’s no point in having a house with a barn,” she confided to us. “I’m actually planning to moo in the near future.”

  “Moo?” I asked.

  “Moo?” she asked me.

  “Move,” Alana whispered in my ear. Pony Lady took a check from Alana and went into her house. The deal was done.

  “I’ll pick your pony up with my trailer and bring him to my barn,” I told Alana, “but I might not be able to keep him for long. I’m probably going to be mooing myself.”

  She gave me the squint eyes. “You talked me into this pony,” she said. “So, whither you goest, he goest with you.”

  “Very biblical,” I said, “but I might not get another barn.”

  “Your living room will do just fine,” she said. “I’m not fussy.”

  Finding the pony seemed to be the last good thing I was able to pull off. After he was happily settled in my barn, I developed a reverse King Midas touch. Everything I touched turned to crap.

  Delaney was getting more difficult, and had now taken to spooking at his breakfast. Conversano was not thrilled to see me anymore since I’d started saddle-breaking him, and he thought he could avoid me by hiding behind the trees in his paddock. And Isis’s owner complained incessantly during her lessons.

  “Can’t I do something more than just sit here?” she wailed, when I made her sit for long periods of time on her horse, just doing nothing. She seemed to have already forgotten that, only a few weeks before, she had been begging me to get her horse to stand still.

  Other areas of my life weren’t faring much better. Reese was calling and suggesting that he move back in and give me a hand with things, my mother was calling and suggesting that I let Reese move back in and give me a hand with things. My lawyer was calling every few days warning me to get my ducks in a row. Apparently, they were just one more species of animal that was not under my control.

  And Faye’s words had become prophetic, because Margo started being naughty within a few days of her leaving. She became cranky and temperamental, and had cultivated a mean curve ball with the apples she was tossing back at me.

  I was getting discouraged. Any attempt on my part to further her socialization was met with resistance. I could see that she had gotten depressed after Faye left. Sometimes she grudgingly accepted a piece of fruit, but more than once my “lift foot” command was met with a loud trumpet of indignation and a rush at me. And more than once I slipped out of her pen just in time. Sometimes I got hit with the piece of fruit, like an unpopular performer in a vaudeville show.

  If she were a horse, I would have had her trained within the week to lift her feet, move sideways, walk next to me, and maybe even throw in a salute or two. But she was an elephant, and you just can’t discipline an elephant. I did the white-flag routine again and again, and she turned her back on me. When you are an eight-thousand-pound elephant, a small white hankie tickling the side of your foot does not make a huge impression. She ate her bananas and apples and carrots, but I could see they weren’t motivating her anymore. She wanted Faye. So did I.

  I needed to find something more inspiring.

  I was on an exhausting treadmill of waking up while it was still dark to give my horses breakfast, do my donut run on the way to the sanctuary, work all morning with Margo, run back to my barn to put my horses out for the day, run back to the sanctuary to help Richie put Margo out for the day, and then back home to train horses and students. I was beginning to develop a great respect for the work ethic of hamsters who ran all day on their wheels.

  “You need to find a way to motivate her,” Richie informed me as we ducked yet another barrage of fruit.

  “I don’t understand it,” I said. “She used to love her apples and bananas.”

  “That’s when she was starving,” Richie pointed out. “Now she gets two big helpings a day. It’s not that special.”

  I switched to watermelons. She loved crushing them under her feet and feeding herself big juicy pieces, but watching her step on watermelons was alarming. I kept picturing my head under those big gray platters. And though the melons did placate her for a while, it was impractical to carry two or three of them around in my pocket for immediate reinforcement. There had to be something else that would tickle her palate and renew her interest in her training.

  “Have I told you about my Midas-touch theory?” I complained to Alana one night. “Everything I touch becomes doo-doo. Things just can’t get worse.”

  “Be careful what you say,” she warned me. “Those doo-doo gods are always listening in.”

  A few mornings later, I was feeding Margo a handful of peanuts. She liked them enough, but was ignoring my command to pick up her feet. Richie was standing next to me and watching us with a serious expression.

  “It’s important she respect you,” he said. “Faye said that accidents happen from a basic lack of respect. And if you can’t get her to work with you, she’ll have to go on protected contact.” Protected contact was when elephants are kept away from their handlers. They are always fed and worked from behind a barrier.

  “I know,” I replied, touching the white flag to her big gray feet. They remained firmly planted while she watched her daughter play with the peanuts.

  “Well, I hope you come up with something soon,” Richie cautioned me.

  “I will,” I promised.

  “Okay,” he said quietly, “because, if you can’t, she’s going to be a resident of Tennessee, and I will die from heartbreak.”

  The doo-doo gods were locked and loaded.

  That night, Pony Lady called. “I hope Tony is getting on well,” she said. “And I just wanted to let you know that my house is for sale. No point maintaining it if the kids are gone. Thought I’d let the word get around. You know that old saying, telegram, telemarketer, tell a horseman.”

  Tell a horseman. Tell an elephant girl. I suppose it’s all the same. And for the first time, I thought that if someone would only tell me what to do I would really, really listen.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  WHEN YOU’VE seen one dawn, you’ve seen them all.

  Actually, that’s not really true.

  Dawn breaking over the plains of Zimbabwe was breathtaking. A rose-colored sky, streaked with orange and gold that finally gave up to a burning cerulean blue, set off by high, brilliant white tufts of clouds. The daylight in Africa looks different. Like it streamed straight from the sun, each particle of light burning, keen, without any interference from earth at all.

  Dawn breaking over my barn was gray-blue, with tentative slivers of pink that tried to insinuate their way across the horizon before the foggy air muted them into submission. Maybe it was just because of the way I felt. I quickly fed the horses, gave them fresh water and hay and a promise that I would be back in a few hours to turn them out.

  My two coffees and a bag of jelly donuts were already waiting for me. I was in such a routine by now, the owner of the shop had things ready by the time I walked in. I supposed he had been up since dawn himself.

  I drove with my usual hurricane speed to the sanctuary, where Richie and Margo were waiting. Well, at least Richie was waiting. I had gotten hi
m hooked on jellies by now, and after we finished our coffee and several donuts, we were ready to start the day.

  The baby was being playful. She trotted around the enclosure, sampling the fruit, grabbing at my stick with her little trunk, and squealing like a badly played saxophone.

  I gave her things to touch, and she grabbed them with her trunk like a toddler picking up a toy, comically clumsy. Sometimes she sniffed at my clothing. Elephants have a scent organ in their mouths, like horses do, and I loved watching her explore by sniffing things and then sticking the tip of her trunk into her mouth to capture the scent. I even let her sniff the last of the jelly donuts that I was holding.

  “So what should I tell Tom?” Richie asked while I played with the baby.

  “Tom’s in Switzerland,” I replied, now rubbing the baby’s trunk with a soft towel.

  “Actually, he called me late last night,” Richie said. “He’s back, and he’s coming up here in a day or two.”

  I tried not to react, but I felt a wrench. Why hadn’t Tom called me? And right away realized that it was absurd to believe I was important enough to him that he would.

  Then I made a mistake. I wrapped my arms around the baby and hugged her. Margo spun around and rushed me, bellowing at the top of her lungs. When you are four feet from a very angry elephant, it’s not only impressive, it’s imperative that you remove yourself from the immediate vicinity. I jumped away and darted for the gate, dropping the jelly donut that I was holding.

  “This isn’t working,” Richie said to me once I was safely outside. “I’m going to be frank with you—”

  “Not now,” I said, walking toward the barn doors to leave. “Not now.” I couldn’t bear another delivery from the doo-doo gods.

  The phone was ringing as I was letting myself into my house. I ignored it and bent over to pet Grace. I had African music playing loudly on the stereo, but I could still hear the ringing.