All the Land to Hold Us

by Rick Bass

  A pitcher of clear water would be standing in the center of the table, and a bowl of sunlit fruit, and the table would be filled with a family of all ages, the young through the very aged.

  The man who was being dragged on his belly by his hound was finally able to regain his footing at the bottom of a dune, as the bluetick slowed slightly; but now another hound snapped free of his tether, and broke from the pack with such speed and enthusiasm that it appeared he had been chosen by them to take the lead; that they had marshaled the collective sum of their frenzied desire and assigned it to that one hound.

  At the top of the final rise, the elephant received the hound as gracefully as if he had been lying in wait there all of his life: as if that one place was where the elephant, recumbent, best fit the curve of the earth in order to welcome, and return, the hound’s charge.

  As his millennial ancestors had done innumerable times with tigers, leopards, and lions, the elephant lifted his weakened trunk almost tentatively, even leisurely, raising it just in time to blunt the dog’s headlong attack, and with seemingly no more effort than a man reaching into a refrigerator for a beer, the elephant caught the dog in midflight with his trunk, made a quick twisting motion—there was a sudden silence from that one hound, though the angelic shouting of the hounds below continued—and then with a whiplike gesture, and still recumbent, the elephant hurled the hound back down to the bottom of the dune, so that the advancing houndsmen had to stop and duck to avoid being struck by the flying object.

  This was enough to give both men and beasts pause in their charge, and the hounds circled and milled around their lifeless comrade. Max Omo and Mufti parked their trucks on adjacent dunes—to an observer looking down upon them from far away, the arrangements and positionings would have seemed like those of chess pieces in some tiny game—and they got out of their hissing, ticking vehicles and walked down into the trough, where the houndsmen and hounds stood gathered over the campaign’s first casualty.

  On the ridge above, the baking elephant fixed them with a direct stare, with both reddened eyes seeming to drill straight through all those gathered below. His ears flapped, his enormous tusks were long against the sky, and now his eyes seemed to be searching the hearts of each of them; and to all the men, it appeared that the eyes rested longest and saddest upon Mufti, and that the expression in the elephant’s eyes spoke of nothing but betrayal.

  The elephant laid his head back down onto the broiling sand almost gently.

  “I cannot tell if the musth has left him yet or not,” said Mufti, quietly. There was no other sound around them save for the quicksilver panting of the dogs.

  The men conferred, and decided that the elephant could not get up, or did not want to, and that he would be safe to approach, as long as none of them got within reach of his trunk.

  The hounds still roared and strained against their leashes; but the houndsmen approached more cautiously now, wrapping the chains and leashes in bights around their waists, and moving slowly up the final dune like mountain climbers, belayed by the dogs: and as the staggered battalion of them neared the fallen elephant, his head did not even lift, nor did anything else move save for the slow, occasional flapping of one ear, seeming mysteriously communicative.

  With the side of the elephant’s huge-tusked and bouldered head pressed into the burning sand, it appeared to them all, as they approached, that the elephant was listening to some instructions coming from far below, and faintly heard: though the instructions might be more audible now to the elephant than they had ever been before, so that perhaps he was not even aware of the chorus of the hounds.

  He paid them no mind, thus seemed at peace with them, even as the men and hounds drew nearer still, moving more fully toward the scent of the roasting.

  They gained the ridge, sweating, and stood spaced about, still unsure of whether the animal might yet be transformed back into health and strength in some godlike metamorphosis of rage—the image of the flying dog indelible within them now—and they convened among themselves by calling out to one another in hushed voices, as if not wishing to disrupt the communion the elephant was having with the ground below.

  “I do not know if he will be able to mind me or not,” Mufti said. “I do not know if he will want to mind me. He looks and acts as if the musth is still upon him, but I do not think he can get up. Maybe if I crack the whip he will remember all the times before when he has obeyed, and will rise one more time.”

  The houndsmen shook their heads and muttered among themselves, disgruntled at the suggestion that the crack of a whip could accomplish the same effect as their dogs, and wanted to turn the hounds loose upon the elephant, with the hounds having worked so hard and led them so far. It was not good for the dogs’ courage to draw so close to such a combatant, and then not finish the job.

  The elephant still belonged to Mufti, however, and Mufti to the elephant, and so the houndsmen’s dissent was tempered; and, as well, none of them was anxious to see another dog lost to the elephant’s final throes: lost, and seeming somehow wasted in that manner, being vanquished by the elephant when the elephant itself would not be living long enough to even acknowledge its small victory.

  Mufti advanced upon the elephant, whip trailing in the sand like some dead snake he was bringing to the elephant as a gift.

  The elephant’s eye glowed brighter for a moment as it caught sight of the whip, and a ripple of muscle tone quivered through the animal, a galvanic tension that none of the men would have thought possible from a creature so near to death; and the dogs sensed and smelled the life still within him, and set about their baying again.

  And though the elephant had not yet lifted his head from the ground, it seemed that he was no longer listening to anything below but was attuned and attentive once more to the world around him, desert though it was.

  Max Omo took a step backwards, glad in that moment that he had not yielded to his sons’ pleadings that they go off into the desert by themselves after the elephant, in the hopes of subduing and domesticating it and training it to turn its labors and power to their good.

  Mufti advanced.

  When he was but ten feet away from the anguished animal—was it fear or anger or tenderness, or even joy, with which the elephant beheld the sight of the whip? Even Mufti could not be sure—Mufti stopped, and swirled the whip, readying it to crack upon the dry heated air that was rising in shimmers from the elephant’s cooking body.

  There was a part of Mufti that was lamenting the impending loss of his old friend—he had known and lived with the elephant now longer than any human—but there was a part of him too that was calculating the consequences of what might possibly be the end of his career, represented in the smoldering gross tonnage of the sand-bound creature that was fast becoming deadweight.

  Mufti raised the whip as if to crack it—magically, the elephant raised his head, seeming now as alert as does a dog who has been waiting by the door for its master’s return—and when he leaned forward, snapping the whip into the hot sky like a fly-fisherman casting into some still pool, the elephant rolled over with a great stirring of sand and leaned forward also, struggling to kneel upon its front legs, but still unable to rise.

  Not blaming the elephant, but frustrated, Mufti cracked the whip harder and louder. The dogs were nearly uncontrollable, roaring, and this time the elephant managed to get its hind feet beneath it, and sought to stand, but lost its balance—it appeared to the men that the muscles and bones within the great sack of its hide no longer had any order, and merely shifted, spilled sideways, obeying no desire or willpower but merely flowing according to the laws of gravity—and the flagging animal tumbled over on its side, falling as if crumpled by a shot: and once again the dogs danced and howled and sang.

  The elephant lay still, trunk outstretched and eyes catatonic, tusks no longer menacing but instead as harmless as twin beams of river-polished driftwood. But Mufti was encouraged by this show of valor, and knowing the animal as he did, and believi
ng that for all its great bulk and strength, the animal’s heart and will was stronger than even its body, he began popping the whip again and again.

  And as he was cracking the whip, and as the elephant was lifting its huge head and struggling once more to rise, Mufti shouted to the handlers, telling them to turn their dogs loose, and they did so gladly.

  The dogs darted in as both individuals and a team, their desires weaving and unweaving, seeking out and finding and snapping at the weak spots and seams of softness that the elephant could not protect; and in that deviling manner, chewing and howling, they helped to urge him, against the logic of his body, to his feet, where he did not spend or waste time standing his ground but instead broke into a swaying run, down the dune and in the direction of the river. He stumbled and fell often, piling headlong into the dunes with great fountains of sand but rising again, the hounds behind him now, euphoric. Max Omo and Mufti jumped back into their trucks and followed him up and over the dunes.

  The houndsmen ran along behind, also stumbling and shouting and blowing on their huntsmen’s horns; and to the sky above, and the curve of the earth, it would have seemed little different from the times when in this same country hunters with lances had pursued and harried the woolly mammoths and mastodons, over ten thousand years ago: as if all the time that had passed had been as if but a nap on a summer afternoon.

  On a path to the river, blinded with fatigue, but somehow knowing where the river was, the elephant managed to pick up one more dog and hurl it, whiplike, a sufficient distance across the hard sand so that it would run no more, and he paused to stomp on two other dogs, leaving only four pursuing it; but it was not the hounds the elephant was fleeing now, nor even the men and their trucks behind him—Mufti firing his pistol into the air—but rather the desert itself, and this errant turn his life had taken.

  For a moment, for several moments, there was nothing else in the world, just that one elephant galloping at full effort down that one steep slope of sand.

  It was a sight so wondrous, one that perhaps no other human had ever seen, that Marie wondered in that breathless moment if the image of it did not unlock within her certain feelings and ideas, mysterious combinations that in some way freed her from earlier and older guidelines of being human.

  It seemed that she could feel parts inside her, both physically and mentally, opening and closing like the locks and weirs of a dam, or the sluice gates to some innovative if not complex watering system that diverted creek water to parched fields. It seemed that she could feel and hear the sound of water running, as she watched the elephant continue his plunge down that steep slope, running with a steadfastness of purpose that seemed to indicate the destination toward which he hurtled was not one of a mere moment’s opportune selection but rather the desire of a cumulative destiny; and that in his haste, the elephant was acutely aware that the last of certain puzzle-pieces were being assembled.

  And it seemed almost to Marie, across that distance, that she could perceive joy in the elephant’s tumult—though in this, she was completely mistaken.

  She could not look away, could not blink; and as she watched, she continued to feel the gates and locks changing and shunting within her, felt the cool water rising.

  She was conscious of the day’s fierce heat, but the heat was no longer an enemy or an oppressor, and she kept watching the faraway elephant pluming down the dune like a ball rolling crookedly, not sure whether she was dreaming it or not, but not minding.

  The waves of her pleasure and astonishment began to fade, however, as there appeared now behind the elephant the straggling, shouting wave of pursuers, the trucks and houndsmen strung out all across the landscape, struggling in that seam between earth and sky.

  Then came the jagged, blaring sounds of the chase, the horns and bayings only now drifting across the expanse of sand and reaching her ears; and it was a disturbing sound, reminding her of the descriptions the missionaries of her former church had given of the ceremonies held by rank villagers in the Himalayas, who would surround a fellow villager, dressed as a devil or dragon, pelting him with rocks and banging on pots and pans and blowing on trumpets made from the hides of animals or the wetted bark of trees stretched tight around hoops of bone or iron, in the foolish hopes of driving demons and other evil spirits out of their village.

  These villagers were worse than cursed, said the missionaries, for they believed in these pagan rites, and lived for months following each purging in a deluded sense of cleanliness and well-being, even as their souls were rotting.

  Again and again the elephant fell, stumbling and sometimes rolling a short distance down the dune like a boulder seeking to both establish and yet resist its angle of repose. And always, if the elephant sought to pause and rest, the hounds would bite and worry his flanks, so that no rest could be had, and the elephant would rise and continue his headlong descent.

  Near the bottom of the dune, his glittering eyes caught sight of the truck parked still before him, and he caught sight of and recognized Marie—she could tell this in an instant: some jolt, some awareness, across the distance. It seemed to Marie that his recognition of her spurred in him some effort even more pronounced, for he lowered his head with resolve and came on even stronger, reaching the bottom of the dunes and accelerating, lifting his feet and knees high, and running hard.

  It looked like a charge—the ears flapping, and the tusks riding so smooth and level, aiming for the destination, which she assumed to be the river, Horsehead Crossing, but which she understood too might have been mistaken by an uninformed observer to be the truck, and Marie.

  And as the elephant continued to close that last distance—so close now that the exhausted hounds still hectoring him no longer sounded like angels, but merely hounds—it began to occur to Marie, belatedly though still in time to consider an escape, that there was some error in the elephant’s interpretation of events, and that it was not with comradeship or any feelings of commiseration or understanding that the elephant was hurtling toward her, but that it was powered instead by the ungovernable fuel of the betrayed.

  Maybe Marie’s perceptions were wrong, she told herself, even as she felt her own heart falling through some rotting planking. The beautiful image of the elephant crossing her lake, and then descending the dune to greet her, was destroyed like a mirror or glass vase broken into a thousand pieces—and now as the elephant drew closer, Marie was certain that it was a feeling of having been betrayed which drove the elephant toward her; though still she could not bring herself to run or hide or take cover, but could only do that which she had done all her life, to watch and wait: and when the elephant was close enough for her to smell it, and to see the pearly strings of slobber trailing from the hounds’ jowls, she had another revelation, which was that the elephant was correct, that Marie had betrayed him—both in her passive participation in the hunt, as well as in her failure to stop the hunt, or even argue against it—and so overwhelming was this sudden, lucid awareness of her own unworthiness that she felt as if the elephant had already slammed into her.

  She was standing in the wedge of shade cast by the truck. She stepped out into the light and sun so that he could see her better, and to better receive the full impact of him.

  She thought she saw a wave of softening—the first release of emotion that precedes forgiveness—enter his eyes, a dimming of the enraged lights within, in the last moments before his body shut down, and his front legs tangled together, conspiring to send him down hard, coming to a stop so close in front of her that the impact of his collapse threw a spray of sand against her feet, and a wave of the heated air displaced by his passage washed over her, carrying with it not just the ripe scent of his cooking, but of his fear and anger and misery, too.

  He lay there, ribs heaving, unblinking, staring at her without seeing her, while the dogs climbed atop him and began chewing and tearing at the thick hide. Blood began to run down the sides of him, glistening like the streams leaving a mountain’s melting snowcap.r />
  Marie waded into the fray, shouting at the dogs and laboring to pull them off—climbing up the elephant’s tusk, running up over the top of his head and tugging and jerking on the hounds’ collars and on the leashes and chains that still trailed from them—but even with her might and fury she could never keep more than one or two of the dogs from biting at the elephant at any one time, and she called out to the men to hurry down from the dune and help her.

  “Ah, they can’t hurt it,” called out the houndsman nearest to her, “and it’s what they’ve worked for.” The others seemed to be in agreement, and it occurred to Marie that the men had lost hounds to the elephant and were seeking revenge.

  One of the hounds snapped at her ankle as she pulled it down the slope of the elephant. It was a young hound, and it laid open the skin around her calf as if cutting into it with shears. She felt no pain, only the brief tugging, and when her boys saw that she had been hurt, they scrambled on top of the elephant to help her, and to wreak their own vengeance on the hounds, wrestling with the dogs as they would with another person, and winding the leashes around the dogs’ necks and strangling them.

  Mufti was scaling the bloody elephant too, crying out and slapping at the dogs with his palms, and then the houndsmen were up on the elephant, pulling their dogs off not so much to keep them from inflicting more harm to the elephant as to protect them from the attacks of Mufti and the children; and one of the houndsmen, in prying the oldest boy loose from his best hound, with the dog’s eyes rolled back in his head—still the boy would not release his chokehold—was a bit rough with the boy, which spurred Max Omo in a way that witnessing the damage the hounds had inflicted upon his wife had not; and soon enough, Max Omo was into the combat as well, so that atop the mountain of the elephant there was not just hound battling elephant, but man against man, woman against dog, man versus child, foreigner versus native; and through it all, the elephant did not move, only lay there as if oblivious to the scrabblings above, and to the heated red rivers trickling down his back, and stared out at the crossing, not fifty yards away.