* * *
This is a story about Furmother - With - The - Cracked - Tusk, starmaker, tugger of tiger tails and player of games. Listen.
There was no warm wallowmud then, no melons, no watersweet leaves to pick pluck stuff scatter. The sun lay sluggish-cold on the ground. The Great Mothers grew coats like bears and wandered the empty white places of the world Alone, each splintered to Herself, each bull-separate. There were no Stories to spine-spin the We together. A bull had found them all, in the dark and chill Before, and in the way of bulls he had hoarded them for himself.
Now, the biggest shaggiest wisest of all Great Mothers was Furmother - With - The - Cracked - Tusk. Back back where this story calves, her tusks were still unbroken, so long and so curved they sometimes pricked the night’s skin and left little white scars. A dying bear had told Furmother where the Stories lay hidden, just before her great crunchfoot met the ground on the other side of what was left of him. There was a Blacksap lake that stretched far enough to tickle the sky’s claws, he had whispered; the bull’s cave opened somewhere on the other shore. The only way to find it was to go there.
Furmother was wise, which means curious. She set out walking. As she walked, she sang, and her frozen songs dropped behind like seeds in dung, waiting for sun and the rain and the nibbling bugs to free them. It took a night and a day and a mango tree growing to reach where she was going, but one pale morning she sang up over a hill and there the Blacksap lake oozed, full of skulls and spines and foul-stinking unluck. No rooting in the tall grass was needed to find the cave’s mouth. The bull stood big outside of it, rubbing his tusks and his shadow and his stained scarred furhead against a tree’s bones.
She went up to him, Furmother - With - Her - Tusks - Whole, and she said, in a voice like the earth split - shake - root - ripping, “You there! Bull!”
He grunted, as is the way of bulls.
“Bull there, you! Do you have the Stories in your cave?”
He grunted irritably, as is the way of bulls. “Yes,” he rumbled, “and they are all mine. I found them. No milk-dripping udder-dragger or tiny-tusked Son in his first musth will take what is mine. I will fight them. I will dig my tusks into their sides and leave them for the bears.”
As is the way of bulls. “Bull,” the Furmother said, “what do you even use them for? What good are they to you or to anyone, piled like rotting rained-on grass in a downbelow place?”
“They are mine,” the bull repeated, his ears flaring, his skull thick, his legs braced. As is the way with bulls. “Mine and no one else’s.”
But Furmother was wise, which means crafty. She went away and left the bull to his scratch snort stomp. She went away to where his weak eyes could not follow, away down the shore to a dead forest, and with branch and trunk and sticky Blacksap she put together a cunning thing like a small bull’s shadow. Her own fur she ripped out to cover it, because there were no other Mothers to give their own. How lucky are we, to be We! When she was done, sore swaying sleep-desperate on her feet, no She was there touching and rubbing the shoulder-to-shoulder skinmessage, We are here with you. There was nothing but she and herself.
She left the not-bull outside the cave. She left it and went away, just out of sight, and there she waited for dawn.
The bull came out of the cave. He came out and he saw the not-bull, black in the cold morning sun. His ears flapped, his eyes glittered, his feet stomped.
“You!” he squealed. “You, standing there! Who are you?”
The not-bull did not answer.
“What do you want, tusker? Get out of my way, or I will fight you!”
The not-bull did not answer.
“Do you dare challenge me, little Son? Me, whose tusks are great-greater-greatest? Me, who rode your Mother long ago? Sing your war song, if you wish to fight, else move out of my way!”
The not-bull did not answer!
The bull with the stories roared and flared and charged with a sound like great rocks rolling, goring stomping furious mad. He wanted to kill, as is the way with bulls. But the not-bull had no skin to tear, no insides to rupture, no skull to crush. It was nothing but sticks and fur and sticky Blacksap all the way through and through, so that the more the bull tried to gore and butt, the more mayfly stuck he became. And this caused him to lose himself completely. His screams were terrible things for ears to catch.
“If you had only shared,” the Furmother said, “you wouldn’t be caught in this trap. Now I’ll have all of the stories, and you’ll have none. Which is better?”
The bull cursed her so terribly bats fell dead from the sky. As is the way with bulls. She laughed like a triumph and went inside.
* * *
Watching the elephant’s deft trunk double and snake and contort is downright hypnotic, even if what she’s signing may possibly be a really long, really detailed way of saying “screw you.” Proboscidian had been an elective at Kat’s university; she hadn’t really thought she would ever need it, so she hadn’t bothered signing up. It was one of those courses, like Basketweaving or Food In Religious Texts, that seemed to be more of a charmingly eccentric way to bobsled through school grabbing credits than anything else. Nobody but the zoology students, historians, folklorists, and some of the more obsessively dedicated sociologists ever took it. For a language that had only really been around since the 1880s, though, it had its devotees; subjects with animals always did.
“She wants to ask you a question,” the translator says.
“Go ahead.”
“You want to make us glow when we’re near this poison buried in the ground. You want to do this because of some screwy cultural sapiens association between elephants and radiation, when humans doing terrible fucked-up stuff to elephants ninety years ago is the reason for the dumb-ass cognitive association in the first place.”
“Uh, wow.” Kat gropes for a response. “Jesus. There’s . . . sorry, there’s a way of saying ‘fucked up’ in Proboscidian?”
“Not really. That was mostly me.” The translator raises an eyebrow. “Anyway, what she wants to know first is this: What exactly are you offering the Mothers in return if they say yes?”
* * *
Every day she eats the reeking, gritty poison. The girl with the rotten bones showed her how, and occasionally Men come by and strike her with words and tiny tickling whip-trunks if she doesn’t work fast enough. She feels neither. She feels neither, but rage buzzes in her ear low and steady and constant, a mosquito she cannot crush. Like a calf she nurses the feeling. Like the calf she’ll never Mother she protects it safe beneath her belly, safe beneath the vast bulk of Herself, while every day it grows, suckles, frolics between her legs and around the stall and around the stall and around the stall until she’s whirling red behind the eyes where the Stories should go.
One day soon the rage will be tall enough to reach the high-branch mangoes.
Okay? the rotten-bone-dead-girl signs. Okay? Are you okay?
* * *
“Topsy? You okay?”
There’s a stillness and a silence and a towering far-awayness the elephant sometimes takes on that makes Regan feel jumpy the same way she does right before a big green-and-purple April thunderstorm. She repeats the question, louder this time, but part of her is also looking for the nearest exit, the closest cellar door to hunker down behind. Topsy’s eyes flicker, land—Why is that mouse squeaking at me? Where am I?—and register some level of slow-returning recognition. For the time being she’s Topsy again, not a thoughtful disaster deciding whether or not to hatch. Regan slowly lets a chestful of air hiss through what’s left of her throbbly-wobbling teeth.
Fine, the elephant signs. I am . . . fine. And then, to Regan’s surprise since they’re not exactly what you’d call friends: You?
Now there’s a hell of a question. She thinks about Jodie, dying alone in that hospital bed of a wasting disease more than half Regan’s fault. She remembers blood in the dormitory sink that morning; another three teeth rattling against th
e porcelain like thrown dice, still coated in fresh toothpaste. And where in the hell is that goddamned settlement check? The lawyer had said it would be arriving soon, but for all she knows that was just bullshit fed to a dying woman to hush up her howling. They might just wait until she drops dead and keep the damn money; trusting a company that happily gave you and all your nearest and dearest cancer wasn’t wise, easy, or highly recommended.
Not really, she signs. And I ain’t convinced you are, either.
Topsy’s got nothing to say to that. Goddamned liars, the both of them.
* * *
But the story does not end there, O best beloved mooncalf. Were things ever so easy, or so simple, even for Great Mothers and tricksters!
Furmother went inside the cave. She went inside the cave, but there were no Stories hidden there as the bear and the bull both had told her there would be. There was nothing but nothing, and Furmother needed no nothing. She walked back outside to where the bull still lay stuck, beside the shores of the great Blacksap lake.
“Bull,” she said, “where are the Stories you were so keen to keep for yourself? Did someone clever rob you before I arrived?”
The bull rolled one red eye to look up at her. He laughed with malice and with scorn, but most of all with madness. As is the way with bulls.
“Fool milk-dripper,” he panted. “Did you really think I would leave the Stories where you could get at them after yesterday? They are at the bottom of the Blacksap lake, where no one may have them. I hurled them all in myself with my strong and beautiful trunk and watched them sink beneath the surface with my keen eyes. If you want them, O cursed calf-dropper, go in and get them.”
Furmother looked at him with sadness—because then as now We pitied the bulls, our Sons and Fathers and occasional Mates.
“Very well,” she said. “Thank you for giving me the location, bull.” And she turned and walked into the lake, where she sank like a Story.
* * *
“Well, as I said before, they’ll be doing our species and any species that come after a tremendous favor,” Kat repeats. Her mouth’s gone dry, heart and pulse skidding rubber tread marks into the fight-or-flight zone. The elephant can probably smell the adrenaline rolling off her like summer sweat funk pouring from a subway commuter. “This isn’t just a federal problem. It’s an issue we’ve been struggling to solve for years. We’ve discussed human guardians, almost like priesthoods, we’ve talked about making cats glow, for chrissakes, but cats don’t have the same level of cultural connection.” She’s rambling. Goddammit. She’s had nightmares involving naked dental surgery that went off better than this meeting. “It would be for the greater good. There is no greater good than this. This is . . . this is the greatest good.”
More waiting as the translator passes along her fumbling. The matriarch snorts. It’s the first noise Kat’s heard her make thus far.
“The ‘greater good’, as you put it, was also used to justify the use of my people in your radium factories during the war, was it not? To save costs. To save your own from poisoning.”
Shit shit shit. It’s amazing I can breathe with my foot lodged in my windpipe the way it is.
“Not only that,” the translator continues, “but you’re asking us to more or less agree to the perpetuation of this twisted association. Would there be any attempt at all at reeducating the human public, should we somehow come to an agreement?”
“I . . . it’s . . . it’s sort of rooted in that cultural association.” Kat can feel the blood burning in her cheeks as the situation spirals out of control. A parachute, a pulled fire alarm, dear sweet Jesus give me some way outta here. She doesn’t know what she was expecting when she walked into this meeting. “I guess we could try to maintain the cognitive link while launching some kind of reeducation campaign? I’d have to talk to my higher-ups. I’m only really in charge of the one thing.”
The translator stares at Kat for a little longer than is necessary. She glances back over her shoulder at the matriarch, then back at Kat.
“I just want to make sure I’m hearing this correctly before I translate,” she says, in a lower register. “Did you seriously just show up to what is basically a diplomatic meeting with no bargaining chips whatsoever?”
* * *
Each moonrise the metal bird in the box screams a mad musth cry. Like all Man-things, the bird is obsessed with the rising and setting of the sun. The night-whistle signals rest. The night-whistle signals a bag full of tasteless dried oats, a brief escape from sad dead girls and tormenting men, and four more wooden walls, the inside of a dry skull plugged tight with moldy hay and dung. She remembers a place where the Night was made of warm shuffle and star-graze, tearing up sweet wet grass by the trunkful with moonshaded Mothers when she was old enough to tooth. She remembers, but there is no sweet grass to tear up by the trunkful, so instead she thoughtfully tears apart her stall, board by splintered board. There will be a beating in the morning. There are always beatings in the morning.
As she works she sings, tufts of Story-song plucked from memory, faded but firm-rooted beneath the skin. She can hear the Many Mothers beyond the crackrip of wood, their voices low lower lowest, sweet vibrations no Man’s tiny ear could ever catch and hold. They are with her still, humming in her teeth and skull. Listen, mooncalf, they sing. Listen. The songs are still behind your left eye. Pull them up and scatter the seeds.
She pauses for a moment in her song. She pauses, but the singing continues, outside her skull, outside her memory, rippling out through the barn’s beams. Up and down the dim length of the building, unseen Mothers catch-carry the thrum. They pass it along the line like a Great Mother’s thighbone, trunk to trunk, tongue to tongue, mouthing tasting touching smelling remembering. Yes. Yes. I know this one. This is Furmother’s Lay. She tricked a bull. She scattered the Stories. This is one of those Stories.
Her hum rejoins the others. The night ripens with song.
* * *
What there are of Jodie’s belongings make for a pitiful small pile. The nun brings them all out in a single wooden peach crate: a silver lighter, a plug of tobacco, a few badly mended pairs of trousers originally meant for men, work boots, a busted music box with a ceramic bluebird fixed to the lid, a leather coinpurse with 3 dollars in nickels still jingling around inside, pill bottles by the double handful, and a key on a length of ribbon faded to the color of attic curtains. There’s a letter, too, addressed to Regan in a hand so loosey-goosey it’s hard at first making out what it says. Penmanship was never what you’d call a strong point for either of them.
“Will you be taking care of the burial arrangements as well?” the nun asks. “If the girl had no living relatives left to take the body . . .”
Regan hasn’t even begun thinking over the practicalities of getting her friend in the ground. She’s got no spare money; all that’s left goes straight to Mama and the girls. In a way she’s lucky; family ground costs nothing. You get some pine boards and nail them together and you’re good.
“Hell,” she says, finally. “She’s dead. She don’t care anymore and neither do I. Nothing wrong with the potter’s field. Jesus was a potter, wasn’t he?”
“A carpenter, my child. Our Lord was a carpenter.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Well, hell. I still don’t think she cares.”
* * *
Down down down sank the Furmother, deep down slowly beneath the Blacksap where nothing grows but bone-rooted ghosts.
She held her breath as she dropped. She held her breath, but the Blacksap oozed inside her ears, her mouth, the tip of her trunk, the corners of her eyes. It smothered her fur, stifled light and air and up and down and night and day. Ghosts tethered to drifting skeletons stretched out their trunks to touch her; whispers filled the echo-empty places of her skull.
Am I dead? Are you? Where is the sun?
The tusk-tiger! It followed me in!
Why do you not fight when there is still breath and blood within you? Why do yo
u not trumpet and flail?
My calf, did she escape, at least? Have you seen her?
I do not have your answers, Furmother hummed. I do not know about those things. I only come for the Stories. Have you seen where they settled?
Many voices, like sticky bones rubbing together. Stories? Is that what they are? We know nothing of those, but we know where they fell. Reach out your trunk, living Mother. They are much farther down; do not miss them as you sink.
The air inside her swelled and grew large. It pressed against her throat, demanding to be calved, and the Furmother fought with wounded tusk - tiger fierceness to keep it from escaping. Strong was Furmother - With - Her - Tusks - Whole, greatest of all Great Mothers! There was no boulder she could not move, no tree she could not uproot. Her squeal crumbled mountains to dust baths.
But her descent was slow.
* * *
“I can’t outright promise you anything, no. Everything will have to be negotiated.” Think fast, Kat. Do something to salvage this mess, quick. “But,” she hurries on, “the mountain the waste will be buried under and everything around it will be designated sovereign elephant territory, obviously. No unauthorized trespassing. You and your daughters and the daughters of your daughters will live there undisturbed, forever.” She doesn’t mention how it’s all blasted scrubland and decommissioned atomic test sites, a sandy wilderness pockmarked with green glass craters. Someone else can get into that later—namely and most importantly, someone who isn’t her. I’m just here to sell the idea, she tells herself. “And I’ll talk to someone about the education campaign.” Not a lie. She’ll definitely try and bring it to the table for discussion, for all the good it may or may not do. Whether it gets any further than said table is anyone’s guess. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t at least look into it, right?”
There are a million different reasons they might defer looking into it, ranging from expenses to manpower. Kat hopscotches over that and lands on one leg and holds the pose, waiting as the elephant takes in the translator’s hand gestures. Her old eyes shift to Kat’s, ancient and endless and unhurried, as cool as Kat feels hot. God help them if elephants ever start playing poker.
The Only Harmless Great Thing Page 2
