This Rock

by Robert Morgan

  “Oh no!” Annie screamed.

  “Let’s stay back,” I said.

  The elephant’s eye looked panicked. The big eye was full of dark liquid and it widened till it seemed ready to bust. People pulled away from the car as glass popped and shot out of the windows. A man in a gray suit, who appeared to be the owner of the roadster, run around the front of the car like he was trying to shoo the beast away from the hood. He looked frantic, and hollered, “Get back! Get back!” and placed his hand on the radiator cap like he was protecting it.

  The elephant turned and come down with a foot the size of a stove on the man’s head. The head hit the hood and popped like a terracotta flowerpot. It happened in a second, but everybody on the street seen or heard it. The elephant brought down its other foot, crushing the man’s shoulder against the grille of the roadster. Blood spurted over the car and over the people standing close by. A drop hit Annie’s dress and she tried to brush it away.

  As sudden as it had reared up, the elephant lowered its front legs to the street and backed away with a scream. The animal turned and started marching down the street again, and the man in the top hat had to run to get in front of it. The circus wagons and the prancing horses behind the elephant went past, but the crowd hardly noticed them. A clown doing tricks rode by on a little bicycle, and there was jugglers on stilts and a man breathing fire. But we didn’t hardly pay any attention. Nobody could take their eyes off the man on the hood of the car.

  The body rolled off the radiator onto the sidewalk, but there was no head, just pieces of scalp and bloody bones, rags of a head. Annie turned away and put her red hands over her face. Then she took her hands away and looked. Everybody looked and gasped.

  Women was crying all around and Annie sobbed against my chest. Somebody bent over the body and touched the shoulder, as if to see if it was still alive. But there was no life there, not after what the elephant had done. The crushed pieces was wet and sticky. People crowded in closer to get a better look.

  We was locked in by people on every side and couldn’t hardly move. I put my arms around Annie and Fay as the crowd pressed tighter and closer. Somehow a dog had squeezed between the legs of the crowd and was licking the blood off the sidewalk.

  “Get away!” I hollered at the dog.

  A whistle blowed, and then another. “Stand aside!” somebody yelled. “Stand aside!”

  A policeman pushed his way through the crowd, trying to find out what had happened. “Stand back!” he yelled and blowed his whistle again. He seen the man laying on the sidewalk with only scraps in place of a head, and he bent over him. “Who done this?” he yelled.

  “The elephant,” several people shouted.

  “How?” the policeman said.

  Just then another man in a uniform pushed his way through the press of people. He was a fat cop with an officer’s cap. He acted like he might be the captain. “What is this?” he shouted. Then he bent over beside the other policeman. They shouted in each other’s ears, and then the first policeman stood up.

  “Arrest the elephant!” the big man said.

  “You can’t arrest an elephant,” the other officer said.

  “Just like a dog that has bit somebody,” the chief cop said. “You have to secure it.”

  THE CIRCUS WAGONS rumbled past, but nobody paid them much mind anymore. Another band come marching and blaring by, and then an open car with the mayor and another man in a top hat. They rode in a long black car and waved, but nobody much noticed them. I guess they wondered why everybody was looking at the sidewalk beside the busted roadster. I recognized the other man was Congressman Wilson, who was coming up for reelection.

  But the spirit had gone out of the parade. People stood back and stepped aside like they didn’t hardly know what to do. Others kept pushing on through to get a good look at the body on the curb. When they seen the man’s crushed head they turned away.

  After the last car went by, and the high school band from Canton kaboomed and bugled past behind it toward the south end of Main Street, two men in white uniforms shoved their way through the crowd, carrying a stretcher. “Go away!” one shouted. “Stand aside!” the other yelled. They dropped the stretcher on the sidewalk and lifted the body onto the canvas. One picked up the pieces of hair and skull and placed them on the stretcher beside the crushed head.

  Annie tried to turn away but couldn’t with all the people crowding on every side. “I want to go home,” she said. “I don’t want to see no more.”

  “Me too,” Fay said.

  “You don’t want to see the circus?” I said.

  Soon as the body was wrapped up and carried away, the crowd started shifting down the sidewalk in the direction the parade had gone. People begun thinning out like snow melting and trickling away. Me and Annie and Fay was left standing on the sidewalk near the bloodstains and crushed roadster. A great heap of elephant dookie stood in the street like a cairn placed there as a marker. The courthouse beyond looked deserted.

  Annie’s face was white as a pillowcase as we walked back to the car parked at Brookshire’s. I felt a little sick at my stomach too, and nobody had much to say as we waited for the traffic jam to loosen up so I could drive home.

  AT THE HOUSE Fay rushed in to tell Mama what had happened. I followed her and just come through the screen door when I heard her blurt out, “Mama, you wouldn’t believe what we seen in Tompkinsville.”

  Moody asked what we had seen when we walked into the living room. I told him about the elephant and the man with the roadster.

  “Sounds like you have seen the elephant,” Moody said.

  THE NEXT MORNING when I got the paper I found the elephant story was the headline. There was a picture of the man who’d been killed, and there was a picture of the elephant looking wild, its eyes streaked like they’d been crying blood. The article said the elephant was twenty-six years old and had never hurt anybody before. “Mr. Salvanti, the owner and trainer of Jumbo, says he has always been a friendly, gentle animal,” the reporter said. “No one can explain why the young animal suddenly stopped in the parade and turned on the blue Ford roadster and killed its owner, Mr. Raymond Foster of Mills River. The elephant had not been sick, or provoked in any way that was noticed. Some suggested that Jumbo saw his reflection in a store window and thought he was confronting another elephant.”

  The story went on to say that Sheriff Walton and Chief of Police Howard had arrested the circus animal and was holding him until an inquest was completed. “State law requires that any animal causing injury or loss of life be secured and put down,” the reporter said. “Sheriff Walton says the case is in his jurisdiction because the circus is camped at the county fairgrounds. Chief Howard claims it is in his jurisdiction because the death occurred within the city limits.

  “Meanwhile Jumbo is confined to his quarters at the fairgrounds under a guard of both the sheriff’s department and the city police. Chief Magistrate Walker of the county court has already ruled that the animal must be put to death if it is proven it killed a man. But so far the appropriate means of execution has not been determined. Chief Howard says the execution will take place on Saturday afternoon at the fairgrounds.”

  “Who ever heard of executing an elephant?” Fay said. “An elephant ain’t a person. An elephant don’t know right from wrong.”

  I told her a destructive animal had to be put down. The paper said the idea was not to punish the animal but protect society.

  “Do you want to see the execution?” I said.

  “Do you?” Fay said.

  On Saturday afternoon we drove over to the Richards house to ask Annie if she wanted to go to the fairgrounds to see what would happen.

  “I don’t see how they can kill an elephant,” Annie’s daddy, Hank, said. “Nobody has a gun big enough to kill an elephant. At least not in these parts.”

  “If they just wound it, the elephant might go crazy and kill more people,” I said.

  Annie’s younger brother, Troy, poin
ted out they would have to bury the elephant where it died. Nothing was strong enough to pick up a dead elephant.

  “They won’t kill Jumbo,” Annie said. “They’ll just put him on the train and ship him away.”

  “The circus has already gone,” Hank said. “I heard at the store they loaded everything on the train last night and pulled out for Greensboro.”

  We all got into the car, Annie in the front beside me, and Fay and Troy in the back. I drove out the Spartanburg Road to the fairgrounds. But we hadn’t gone much past the hosiery mill at East Flat Rock when I seen the road was jammed with cars. There was cars parked on both sides of the road and cars in yards and driveways and fields. It looked like the whole county had turned out to see the elephant. I pulled into a little side road near the hosiery mill and parked.

  “We’ll have to walk at least a mile,” Fay said.

  “Just hope it don’t rain,” I said.

  The fairgrounds was covered with people. The circus had gone and the fields was muddy in places and scattered with straw and manure and sawdust. There was a few empty pens where they had livestock shows in the fall, and a big pen where they was holding the elephant. Several bales of straw was piled beside the pen.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, and Annie and the others followed. It took a while to even get close enough to see the elephant. The animal stood in the pen panting, shifting from one side to the other. It looked like it was scared by all the people crowding close on every side. There was a lot of deputies and policemen beside the pen, and they carried rifles and shotguns. It looked like they was trying to decide what to do. “Ain’t you going to kill that crazy thing?” somebody yelled.

  There was newsmen with writing pads and cameras and flash attachments. There was boys throwing peanuts and apples at the elephant.

  Jumbo’s eyes looked wetter than they had before. He appeared to have been crying all night and brown stuff was crusted on the skin below his eyes. I wondered if he was crying now because his trainer was gone and he was among strangers.

  “If they shoot that animal it’ll go crazy,” Troy said.

  When we got closer I seen the elephant’s foot was tied by a big rope from one of the fence posts to an iron collar on its ankle. Sheriff Walton in his wide-brimmed hat come to the fence, and just behind him followed the chief of police. I wondered if they was planning to shoot the elephant at the same time, to show they was each in charge of the situation.

  And then we heard a train whistle and the chuff-chuff-chuff of a locomotive. The crowd got quiet and turned toward the railroad tracks that run right along the edge of the fairgrounds. There was a spur track and siding where they unloaded wagons and animals and tents for the circus. The spur run not far from where the elephant was penned. The train got closer and the whistle louder. “Maybe they’re going to load Jumbo up and ship him away,” Annie said.

  The crowd shifted toward the tracks and everybody got pushed along. Finally I seen the smoke from the locomotive, and then the eye of the locomotive itself. It was coming up the grade from the direction of Spartanburg. At first it looked like a regular engine, and then I seen the thing behind it.

  The engine was pulling a big car that had a cab and a long crane reaching behind. The arm had a wheel and a strand of cable at the end of it.

  “It’s a railroad crane,” I said. “It’s what they use to lift locomotives that have wrecked and gone off the tracks. I bet they brought it all the way from Greenville, or maybe Atlanta.”

  A gasp went up from the crowd as they watched the engine haul the crane into view and then slow down and pull up alongside the pen. People stepped back from the tracks as the engine hissed out steam from its wheels and the engineer leaned out his window.

  The crane was longer than the locomotive, and one of the trainmen climbed up into the cab of the crane and started its motor. Black smoke and steam started puffing out of the stacks of the crane. As people backed away, the crane begun to turn, roaring and creaking on its long car. The back of the crane reached out over the grass. It was the biggest and heaviest piece of machinery I’d ever seen. The crane swung around on its turntable until the arm was almost over the elephant’s head.

  I was beginning to have an inkling what was going on.

  There was a cable with a heavy ball and hook at the tip of the crane. The cable run right over the pulley wheel at the end of the boom. One of the sheriff’s men started crawling out the long crane with a piece of rope in his hand. He cooned along the boom until he got to the wheel just above the elephant. Then he pulled up the rope from the ground and we seen there was a heavy chain attached to the end of the rope. The elephant squealed as the chain rattled past its ear.

  The deputy slipped one end of the chain over the hook on the cable and swung the big chain over Jumbo’s head behind the ears. Somebody throwed the other end of the rope up to him, and he pulled the opposite end of the chain up and hooked it tight as he could around the elephant’s neck.

  I had noticed before that when you see something awful you don’t always understand at first. And then it hits you like a fist of electricity that hurts your bones down to the soles of your feet. I felt my breath tighten and the nerves in my teeth ache as I watched the men pull the chain tight around the elephant’s neck. The elephant screamed and tried to break away, but it was caught. It seemed odd that such a huge animal had such a high-pitched scream. I felt silly to be there watching the elephant be punished.

  The deputy sheriff cooned back down the long arm of the crane, jumped onto the cab, and climbed down a ladder at the back to the ground. Smoke and steam blasted from the engine of the crane and the boom begun to rise, pulled by cables from the windlass in front of the cab. The man inside operated it by levers.

  It was strange to think of the elephant as a murderer, but not as strange as what was happening now. The crowd got quiet, and the big crane roared like it was straining to lift the long arm. The cable went taut and the chain tightened around the elephant’s neck. The elephant was pulled over so it was leaning, and its eye opened wider. The animal screamed worse than a pig and its gray hide wrinkled around the chain, crimped where the pressure was.

  A deputy with an axe pushed his way through the crowd and started chopping the rope that tied the elephant’s foot to the post. The animal tried to break away from the crane and stumbled sideways, knocking over a section of the fence. People hollered and backed away.

  “Stand back!” a deputy yelled.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Annie said.

  “The sheriff, I reckon,” I said. But I thought about her question: Who was really in charge? Was it the mayor of the town, or the board of county commissioners? Was it the sheriff? Or was it the chief magistrate that had made the ruling? Was it the law itself? Was nobody really in charge?

  “Can’t you stop them?” Annie said. She had tears in her eyes. She banged on my chest with her fists. “You’ve got to stop them!” she cried.

  My knees was trembling. I felt like a coward. I knowed somebody ought to take charge and stop them.

  “Do something!” Annie screamed and banged on my chest harder. There was more tears in her eyes, and her face was white.

  “No!” I hollered.

  Little by little the front of the elephant was pulled off the ground. The front feet kicked at the ground and at the fence. They kicked the air like the elephant was trying to swim. He swung his rear sideways and knocked over another section of the fence. The elephant was trying to run away from the chain. He was trying to pull loose, and he kicked out like he was dancing.

  When Jumbo turned his rear toward us I could see all the scars on his hide. The elephant’s skin was wrinkled and dusty. Up close you could see a few hairs like big whiskers. The skin looked like he had been cut and hurt a lot of times, maybe with chains while he was pulling things, maybe from hitting sharp limbs and nails. The rump was a mountain of wrinkles and scars. It looked like the skin didn’t fit the elephant but was too big and had got twiste
d on the elephant’s frame. The legs danced like logs tamping dirt.

  “Errr!” the elephant roared. Its head got pulled sideways as it tried to wrench away. It was panting and snorting. The pant sounded like the flame in a furnace, or a chimney on fire. A big stream of yellow liquid squirted from the animal as it struggled. People yelled and pushed away.

  “Get out of the way!” a deputy shouted and waved his shotgun.

  Annie asked me again wasn’t there something I could do, but I shook my head. There was nothing.

  The front end of the elephant lifted higher and higher, and I heard a crunching sound, like bones breaking or flesh tearing inside the neck. But it could have been skin breaking under the chain, for there was white places and pink places with blood on them on the elephant’s neck. The last time the elephant screamed the squeal got turned off like the air had gone out of a whistle. The throat puffed out and went limp. There was a gurgling and panting in the chest.

  The crane pulled higher and higher. It seemed impossible anything could lift an animal that big. As the crane raised up, the elephant appeared to stretch, like it was made of rubber or something heavy in a wet sack. The back feet kicked and drug the ground, and the wheel turned on the end as the boom raised higher.

  “It won’t work,” somebody hollered. “The elephant’s too heavy.”

  Annie put a handkerchief to her mouth. My own stomach felt like the bottom had dropped out of it.

  The motor on the crane roared louder and louder and steam blasted from the top.

  “Get back!” a deputy shouted, and waved us further back with a shotgun. Soon as Jumbo’s hind feet was pulled off the ground it was clear what he was warning us about. The elephant swung like a pendulum at us and everybody stumbled back to miss the feet and the manure that was flung over the ground. The swinging feet knocked down the rest of the fence.

  And then I heard the awfullest sound as the engine went quiet for a moment. It was a whimper or wheeze inside the animal’s throat. Maybe as the chain slipped tighter the big head bent sideways. But the noise was no louder than a puppy whimpering or some little furry thing caught in a trap.