by Farris, John
"Good cinema," Etan murmured, looking through a telephoto lens at the movement of elephants in their direction, like a small brown range of hills, restless topography.
Pert glanced at him, a look of misgiving. "Any mature elephant kin stomp this vehicle flat as a tin o' kippers. Mind ye dinna ferget tha'."
"What's musth?" Eden asked Pert.
"Rrragin' hormones. The condition affects all mature males fer up tae four months o' the year. But few o' them ha' the opportunity to mate until they are a' least tharty years o' age. The estrous female wants only the best and strongest bulls tae father her calves. Dunn' musth the testosterone level makes a bull dangerous er offensive tae others. He lives as an ootcast er wi' other bulls competin' fer the same prize, all o' them stinkin' miserable, contentious, and losin' weight."
Pert raised her binoculars to study the group of elephants.
"Aye, this will be Czarina's clan. A matriarch, quite elderly naow, but fully as big and powerful as inny bull. No males along today except fer adolescents, but, let oos ha' a look—" She scanned a partly denuded acacia grove in which a few trees had been uprooted, focused on a lone independent male yanking up tufts of coarse grass, trailing the group by forty meters. "Karloff," she said softly. "Ha 'n't seen the auld boy o' late."
"Do you name all of the elephants at Amboseli?" Pegeen asked her.
"Most ha' noombers; others ha' been gi'en names, by whim er soomtimes by appearance."
"Why Karloff?" Etan wondered, putting his camera down to wipe sweat from his eyes.
"He is somethin' monstrous, and not merely in size. Years ago he was part o' a bond group o' elephants, eighty strong, a phalanx moving rrrather rapidly through a confined area by Lake Kioko. It happened tha' a male lion found h'self trapped by thir approach, wi' no room tae get oot o' thir way. The lead elephant, oor gentlemanly Boris K., was quite astonished when the frightened lion leapt tae his shoulder and clung thir by the claws of a forepaw whilst rakin' oot the elephant's right eye wi' his oother claws. Whereupon oor enraged patriarch reached across the lion's boody wi' his trunk, plooked him ri' off, then held him by the tail and beat him 'gainst the rrrocky ground 'til the lion was nae but pulp."
"'Masterful! Towering! Ineluctable!"' Etan said, raising his camera to eye level again.
"He goes off like that" Pegeen explained, "quoting reviewers' blurbs from adverts for the new Hollywood films in the Times that particularly annoyed him."
"'Colossally talented! Wildly ambitious! Courageously moving!'"
"Etan, darling?"
"'Wonderfully playful, with delectable acting!"'
Toward Kilimanjaro there were a couple of striped hot-air balloons, red, yellow, and orange, like fishermen's bobs dappling the surface of a mirage. A popular type of safari in the national parks, Pert said.
"I hope no one minds awfully" Pegeen said, "but I must take a shit."
"Ye ha' aboot thray minutes," Pert advised her. "Please not tae dally. And carry a stick tae stir up the booshes befair ye drop yer knickers; some o' oor local vipers ha' vile dispositions."
"Oh," Pegeen said. She clenched her teeth and stayed in the Rover. Pert grinned at Eden. She had a dead-white spot near one corner of her mouth, the rest of her face hard varnish, like the wood of a coffin in which a perennial handsomeness was interred. Pert indicated that they should put on their headphones.
Eden could hear the elephants already, raucous in their dealings with one another. Calves stumbled about or fed even as their mothers walked. Cattle egrets like white feathers from an exploded pillow floated in the nimbus of red dust raised by the elephants; much higher, there were eagles.
In the air now a power of movement, a gamey effluence, stench of urine. Elephants, obviously, peed a lot.
"The first time," Pert said, "I laid eyes on an elephant group o' this size, I was properly humbled. I knew wi'out a doobt tha' they belonged hir and we did not. Much o' Efrika simply is not suited tae human habitation, except at the tribal, nomadic level. Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was an exception. And Sooth Efrika, o' course, until 'instant democracy' happened in 1991. Democracy in the hands o' those wi' no desire tae employ it has been an abomination, an invitation tae despots and thir tyranny, which arrived bang on schedule. Thir once were tens o' thoosands o' prosperous farmers in those two coontries alone, most o' them white. Sooth Efrika raised food enough tae feed an entire continent. Today tha' gooverment's treatment o' the white farmers is destroyin' the coontry's agricultural base. Sooth Efrika has been forced to import basic foodstuffs, unheard of a decade ago. Thir farmers are the highest-at-risk-o'-murder group in the world. Upward o' six thoosand incidents o' black-on-white violence has decimated the farming community. I'm speakin' a gangs o' young thugs armed wi' Russian Kalashnikovs and usin' military amboosh tactics, rrroamin' the coontryside. Sooth Efrikan gun laws limit its civilian farmers tae ownership o' small arms, which are no defense against automatic weapons. A yoong nephew o' mine, married tae a lass o' Boer-Voortrekker descent and managin' a big farm she inherited, was strangled recently wi' barbwire. His wife and twin ten-year-old datters wir gang-raped. The goovemment seldom prosecutes e'en the bluediest ootrage. A policy o' dnvin' off the white commercial farmers whilst the incidence o' HIV-positive cases in the population soars past fifty paircent is suicidal at best. 'Strange things are many in this world, and strangest o' all is man.' I often think whilst starin' at the embers o' my fire and listenin' tae the soft nocturnal calls o' the great beasts in the wood close by, how Sophocles would ha' enjoyed my elephants. I woonder did he e'er sae one."
The elephants—two families temporarily conjoined, Pert explained, because there were twenty-eight of them, not including Karloff, who belonged to no family—were now close enough to distinguish individual features and imperfections: a ragged ear, broken or cracked tusks, Karloff's scars and wizened eye socket. Pert's attention sharpened to her task. Adolescents were bumptious and play-threatening; they flashed young clean tusks like foot-long baby teeth, broke into ambling runs with their tails straight up and ears flapping. Czarina, oldest of the females and the matriarch the others deferred to, had a remnant of one tusk, the other blunt at the tip. She led the others with eyes downcast, trunk swinging close to the ground, sampling odors on a familiar trail. She was a talker, mostly rumblings. Long aware of the two vehicles parked in the acacia grove, when she was within thirty meters of them Czarina stopped and raised her trunk in an S-shape, nostrils moving delicately.
"We will be verra quiet now" Pert advised everyone. "Tha' roomble ye hear is reassurance tae the group. They may tarry a while, er joost pass oos by."
The elephants stayed. There were calves to be fed. Water to be sucked from boreholes in the dry streambed.
To the south a herd of zebra appeared in parched short grass. Wildebeest accompanied the zebra, both favored prey of lion, Pert said. "Also high in desirability a' mealtimes is the two-legged species, tha' canna run verra fast nor protect thir tender arses. Which o' carse ye dinna hear aboot sae aften, as it is bad fer tourism."
The sun rose higher; they all were damp with sweat. Pert apparently had no use for deodorant. Etan filmed and Pegeen fidgeted. Her surgical mask had turned grimy. One of the male elephants, adolescent but still a good eight feet at the shoulder, came close to the Rover, flapping his ears, pissing noisily; he sucked up dust and blew it over them. A mature female called him off. She waved her trunk then, casting what might have been an apologetic eye in their direction.
That's when they heard, and felt, Karloff coming, with a roar that could fibrillate an artificial heart.
The Rover trembled on the hard ground. Pert's head jerked around. In spite of the dark glasses she wore, Eden saw her eyes widen in alarm. They all looked back at the monster elephant as he charged the two vehicles in the grove. His show of rage had instantly upset the other elephants, who responded with fright rumbles, bellowing, and screams.
"What's happening?" Pegeen cried.
Etan said, panning his camera, "We
should get out of—"
All of the elephants, led by Czarina, began to run, ears flat against their necks, trumpeting madly, raising an immense cloud of dust. The Rover shook from the impact of the stampede around it; the sun went dark. But not a single elephant made contact with them in their headlong panic.
Moments after the last elephant had cleared out, Karloff arrived. He had gone from a charge to a trot. His ears flapped and cracked like sails in a spanking wind. He loomed behind the Rover, less than three feet away but only partly visible through the dust. And passed it, heading for the combi. Trunk curled high, bellowing his outrage.
Eden could only imagine the petrified faces inside the combi; there was too much dust to see anything from twenty feet away. Pegeen whimpered in terror. Pert's walkie-talkie was on, but they heard nothing but static.
The bull elephant lowered his domed juggernaut's head and placed it against the side of the combi, as if he intended to roll it over a few times. Until he'd dislodged all of the combi's passengers like a few seeds from a gourd.
"Uh-oh, what's got him in this state?" Pert said.
Eden heard Bertie, but not over the walkie-talkie.
Karloff had lifted the combi off its right-side tires, tilting it at an angle of twenty degrees. There he hesitated, as if his rage had subsided. Eden heard Bertie again, and now she was receiving mind-pictures, a great jumble, so rapid she couldn't focus on any of them.
Karloff stepped back, head still lowered. The combi fell to the ground, springy on its shocks. Karloff rumbled, lifted his head, shuffled back a few more steps, trunk swinging imperiously. He tapped a six-foot tusk a couple of times on the bonnet of the combi. The flood of images continued in Eden's mind, a life in no particular sequence. She closed her gritty reddened eyes, feeling an end to the elephant's anger, and sighed.
When she looked again through tears washing out the dust, the cloud had settled from treetop height, revealing the sun again. Karloff was walking away, in the direction the herd had fled.
"I believe I've had enough of elephants for today" Etan said in a dust-strangled voice.
"Aye," Pert said. She ran the tip of her tongue around her lips, leaving them muddy. "Wa'n't the auld boy magnificent, though. Woonder wha' upset him?"
"A lion took out his eye," Eden said. "He doesn't like lions."
Pert looked sharply at her. "Elephants fear no creature. And thir wir no lion hereaboot this marnin'."
"Karloff thought there was. A lion. Something like a lion. I'm not sure."
"I need a change of clothes," Pegeen said, woeful again.
Chapter 7
STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA
OCTOBER 14
10:45 A.M. EDT
The four-man team from Atlanta PD's homicide division assigned to investigate or mop up after the murder of Pledger Lee Skeldon had taken close to fifty statements before it was finally possible for them to meet with Jimmy Nixon's mother. She had been hospitalized shortly after hearing the grim news: shock and an irregular heartbeat. The family lawyer had kept everyone, particularly the media, away from Rita Nixon and her two younger children.
Lewis Gruvver and Matt Ronyak went out to Stone Mountain when the lawyer consented to his client being "interviewed"—not questioned—so APD could conclude the paperwork. Jimmy Nixon continued to linger, on massive life support, at Grady Hospital downtown, but he never would speak again. Everyone wanted a motive, of course, which Matt thought was bullshit. He was all too familiar with senseless killings. And they had twenty-three open cases that were a lot more interesting to work on.
They checked out a car and took Memorial Drive east through a billboard blight to the Clearview address, a two-story brick-and-frame house on a high terrace. The park and the granite dome jutting eight hundred feet above the Piedmont plain was almost in the Nixons' backyard. Mid-October, but summer still had a grip on the weather. The local cops had closed off the Nixons' block on Clearview; phone calls to the house from religious crackpots vowing revenge on the family.
"I went to school near here," Lee Gruvver said. "Redan High."
"Track star, right? The high hurdles?"
"Til I blew out a knee my soph year at Morris Brown. Eight months of rehab. The Olympics came to town; all I could do was watch."
"Tough break," Ronyak said. He was twenty years older than Gruvver, hadn't made detective until he was thirty-six. Gruvver breezed in, college man, second cousin to the Atlanta City Council president. Race-based fast-tracking at APD gave Ronyak the redneck, but Gruvver had proved to be conscientious and astute. A good detective. And anyway, Matt's mother had been half Cherokee.
They were met at the residence by the family lawyer, whose name was Zetella. Rita Nixon was on the patio out back with a neighbor, and her other kids were in psychological counseling.
Before meeting Mrs. Nixon, the two detectives looked over Jimmy's room. His computer had been removed the day after the evangelist was murdered and its hard drive scoured to see where the kid's interests lay when he was surfing the net, but apparently he had no interest in porn or diabolism, or straight religion. Mostly paperbacks on his bookshelf, required reading material for school. He subscribed to Sports illustrated. The swimsuit issue was well thumbed. Posters on his walls were of local pro sports figures. Chipper Jones, Michael Vick. Photos of his mother and father, who lived with a new wife and an infant son in Phoenix. Jimmy and his siblings spent three weeks each summer and alternate Christmases in Arizona. There were snapshots of the kids with R. Palmer Nixon, burly and balding, prosperous in pawn broking and the used-car biz. Poolside at the house in Paradise Valley, horseback riding in a desert mountain setting. In the photos everyone seemed to be having a good time. Arms around each other, spontaneous smiles, no sulks or resentful faces as if the kids had been made to pose. The APD detective who had gone to Phoenix to talk to the heartbroken Palmer Nixon had heard nothing to indicate that Jimmy might have had a violent temper kept carefully under control.
Albums of snapshots. Proms, parties. Jimmy with girls his age, but seldom the same girl twice. No one special in his young life. Team pictures dating back to Jimmy's first appearance in a Pee-Wee Football uniform.
Gruvver took a closer look at a glossy photo recently Scotch-taped to the mirror over Jimmy's dresser. Jimmy with his dad and a woman who may have been his stepmother; the fourth person in the photo, between the others, seemed familiar to Gruvver. Showbiz type, looking straight at the camera, big smile. And the photo was autographed to Jimmy.
"Know who that is?" Gruvver asked Matt Ronyak. "Can't place him. An actor?"
"Magician, I think. Not David Copperfield." He puzzled over the signature, all loops and flourishes. "Gray, something. That's who he is. Lincoln Grayle. They must have done Vegas when Jimmy was out there this past summer, taken in some shows."
"Anything else we need to look at in here?"
Gruvver stared at a portrait of Jimmy, age about ten, all ears and teeth and with that sunny smile, face-to-face in winsome profile with his mother. It was a long stare, with sparse expectations.
"Nice kid. No history of substance abuse. Well adjusted as kids come nowadays. Took the divorce okay... everyone says. Did his chores, got the grades, played football. He was hoping for a scholarship to a Division I school, but he was undersized for a college lineman these days, no foot speed his coach says. I guess he would have adjusted to that disappointment too. Four nights ago he has a good supper, kisses Mom good-bye, gets into his car, drives to Philips Arena, waits for his chance, then kills a man like a wild animal kills. Or the remote ancestor still hangin' around like a ghost in the atavistic brain. It's almost as if Jimmy—"
Gruvver made a gesture of dissatisfaction and irritability.
"What?" Ronyak prompted with a sour glance. Gruvver was using unfamiliar words again, a not-so-subtle reminder of his superior education.
"I'm not sure." Gruvver shook his head. "Believe in the devil, Matt?"
"Not since I stopped going to church in a m
obile home and speaking in tongues."
"I don't go none too regular, but I love Jesus and I still read my Bible. If the devil was real enough for Jesus, he's real enough for me. The devil and his legion."
"Why drag religion into this? The kid just snapped."
"No rhyme or reason. Yeah. I'm down with that." Ronyak nodded.
"Good, Lew. Now let's us finish up here, without gettin' melodramatic."
"Somebody could've been in the car with Jimmy Nixon as he drove downtown. Sat with him in the arena, whisperin' a different sermon in his ear."
"Like who?"
"That remote ancestor. Another Jimmy, one he didn't know a thing about."
"Do I deserve this? The Lew Gruvver Twilight Zone Comedy Hour? How about you yank the wild hair out of your ass, and we try to be professional here. Save your bad hunches for your bookie."
A few minutes after they sat down with Rita Nixon. It was obvious they weren't going to get anything useful. She was flanked by her lawyer, Zetella, a neighbor friend whose name was Marge, and her father, whom she called "Powzie." The family name was Cripliver. Powzie Cripliver was one of those elderly men who wear baseball caps with their suits and florid ties. His eyes brimmed with tears and he clung to his daughter's hand.
Rita was still sedated, slow on the uptake, prone to looking around the shady yard with wide vacant eyes. Clearly she hadn't accepted the fact that anything bad had happened because of, or to, her son Jimmy.
Gruvver was able to get in a few questions when she paused in her ramble of reminiscences, questions Matt Ronyak thought were a further waste of time.
"Mrs. Nixon, did Jimmy say much about his trip to Las Vegas this summer?"
