That night they came back. But in the morning they did not wait to be scolded. Rajah led them off somberly without being ordered.
Elizabeth was not worried about them re-adapting. But she was sad that, in the new regime, Dumbo no longer had a crush on her.
In fact, for all his hangdog expression, Dumbo had not lost his crush on Dr. Johnson: he was just too happy to think about her for long. When Elizabeth visited them, he wanted to go with her, but Jamba called him back with a snort, bossing him. All of which was all right with Dumbo, for if ever there is a mother’s boy it is a young male elephant. Jamba still did not trust Elizabeth. Wherever Jamba went, Dumbo went, trundling through the forest together; he watched what Jamba ate and ate the same; when she found something new that she considered suitable for an elephant she broke off a bunch and stuffed it into his mouth; if she saw him about to eat something unsuitable, her trunk snaked out and took it away from him; if he persisted she gave him a whack. If he wandered too far she called him back impressively. And in the middle of the day they stood side by side, napping, rocking gently. At the end of the day, when elephants want to take their bath, they headed down to the lake, and that was great fun. They waded out into the water and ponderously sucked up great trunkfuls; when each had drunk about thirty slow gallons, they curled up their trunks and squirted the water over their backs in huge sprayings and gushings so rainbows sparkled. Then they wallowed—ponderously getting down onto their knees, and toppling enormously over; wallowing and thrashing with great elephantine sighing and gratification.
And Dumbo, who had only had a bucket to drink from, thought all this water was wonderful; he wallowed and squirted, full of joy, and every evening he could not resist doing what he had learned in the circus: he filled his trunk, stuck it out like a firehose, and jetted it straight at Rajah’s ponderous backside. Then, glinting black, they set off slowly to the cabin.
Then, one evening, they did not come home—for something else began to happen in those beautiful days: Jamba went into estrus, and in her giant belly there began the same urgent feelings that used to make her trumpet to the stone walls of her cage in New York for a bull elephant to hear. But this time Rajah was the first to know about it.
And Rajah could hardly believe his luck. Old Rajah had never been allowed a female, but he knew what to do, and the giant courtship began. Suddenly he was not interested in feeding any more—all he could think of was the wonderful smell of Jamba. He lumbered after her wherever she went, bumping winningly against her and curling his trunk to embrace her. But Jamba was not yet ready, and she moved away provocatively. He plucked up big tidbits of foliage and popped them into her cavernous mouth, then slopped his trunk amorously over her neck and squeezed her. Encouraged, he entwined his trunk in hers and tried to heave back her great head and kiss her, and she twisted away, her tail held down coyly. And he blundered hopefully after her, slinging his trunk between her baggy hind legs and fondling her teats. She let him do that, huffing and sighing, sniffing at him; then he tried to mount her.
Suddenly, without proper permission Rajah bunched up his massive hindquarters and crashed his forelegs down on Jamba’s back. Jamba scrambled away, crashing bushes flat, and Rajah hurried desperately after her on his hind legs, his fore legs trying to grip her retreating bulk and his baggy hindquarters hopefully thrusting. Jamba twisted her rump, and he skidded off with a thump. She moved off sweetly, trunk swinging, hindquarters tucked in; then she began to feed with a massive display of feminine indifference. Rajah went after her again, penis slopping through the undergrowth. He did not care what he dragged his penis through, just so long as he could get his forelegs up onto her beautiful back again.
But Jamba was having none of that yet. She was feeding elaborately, her hindquarters demurely away from him. So Rajah fed elaborately too, with masculine snorts, breaking off high and difficult foliage and stuffing it tastelessly into his mouth, watching Jamba out of the corner of his eye, ready to pounce on her the first off-guard moment, trying to edge unobservedly closer as she chomped.
For a whole day the elephantine courtship continued: two great gray beasts milling through the forest, huffing and puffing, amorous intertwining of trunks, cuddling. And Dumbo trundled along behind, bewildered, trying to keep out of the way of the huge preoccupied bodies. The next morning the huge copulation took place.
With the early sun shafting through the forest, the two elephantine lovers intertwined their trunks and tilted back their great heads and kissed, and Rajah’s trunk was groping urgently between her hind legs, all the time huffing and working his way down her flank towards the desperately important position. Then in one invincible mass of hooves he bunched up his hindquarters and sort of leaped up onto Jamba’s squirming back. Thrusting urgently, his spine hunched, but he kept on missing and banging his penis against her rump. Of course he could not see what he was doing way back there; and Jamba was squirming her willing hindquarters around, and all in all it was a very difficult but happy-making business.
Finally he got it right. With Jamba on her foreknees, Rajah’s legs splayed over her, gripping with all his bulging might, frantically thrusting and their trunks intertwined, grunting and squeaking.
With the first sunlight Elizabeth had gone out to look for them. Now she hid in the bushes, whispering breathlessly into her tape recorder. She wanted to go running through the forest and throw herself into Davey’s arms and tell him the beautiful thing that had happened.
sixty
But on the mountaintops each morning was tense.
Big Charlie sat with his Cherokee partner, as still as a statue, scanning the blue vastness below; two dozen more Cherokees were spread along the crests at strategic intervals. They were watching for the helicopter, listening for gunshots. On the other side of Fontana lake, more Cherokees were watching for canoes. Tom Underwood had supplied radios. If anyone saw or heard anything they would radio up to Big Charlie, and he would contact Davey.
Charlie did not trust the radios. To be entirely reliable they needed to be much stronger. The men on the lakeside and along the crests could talk to each other easily, but once down into the valleys contact was lost. And, by nature, Big Charlie did not like mechanical things, fully expecting them not to work for him. Furthermore, despite his Cherokee friends, there were still places where Forsythe or hunters could slip through without being seen. Not likely, but possible.
So Big Charlie relied on his eyes and ears, and he anxiously listened to his radio for news that Operation Noah had been cancelled.
But no such news came. Each day Charlie’s tension mounted. But every morning Forsythe had lost another day. Everyday his helicopter went in quite the wrong direction. Every day lost gave the animals a better chance of survival, and Eric Bradman’s stories and the Cherokees’ petitions a better chance of success.
The helicopter rose from its new site beside the offices of Oconaluftee and went chopping off into the sunrise. It finally hovered just above the treetops in the valley below Mount Le Conte, on the other side of Newfound Gap road. The first three members of the tracking team began to clamber down the ladders: Forsythe, Samson, then Frank Hunt.
Frank waited with a pained expression until the noise of the departing helicopter had ebbed, then pulled out a magazine, and sat down wearily against a comfortable tree. He started to read. The other two looked around restlessly.
‘Excuse me, sir?’
Frank did not look up from his Newsweek. ‘Yes, Mr. Forsythe, sir?’he said pleasantly enough.
‘Do you mind,’ he said, ‘if I go off and … actually, well, look around?’
Frank sighed wearily. ‘You do what you like, son. You’re the boss, ain’tcha?’
‘I mean,’ he said, ‘you never know, there may actually be spoor around here. They may have come back.’
Frank looked up slowly.
‘Look, sergeant. You don’t even know what spoor looks like. But if there is any around here, you want to keep well away from it, son
. You stick with the marines, and you’ll live long and happy.’
The black man was grinning.
‘Besides, these woods are full of fierce Cherokees. Redskins, son. They see you, you’re a goner. They’ll pounce on you and steal all your radio batteries.’
The black marine gave a laugh. The white sergeant was grinning now too. Frank said, ‘But I don’t care if you screw up this operation. Sure beats lion-taming. But you take my advice and lay low, son, like Professor Ford said, until he comes back for you tonight in his nice helicopter. You let the real Mr. Forsythe and his darkies look for spoor.’ He glanced up. ‘All you go to do is look like the sonofabitch, son.’
Elizabeth did not know what was happening out there in the world. Big Charlie and his Cherokees were protecting them; Eric Bradman was campaigning for them; Davey Jordan was looking after them all. And there was God. She placed her trust in God and Eric Bradman and Davey Jordan and Big Charlie—not always in that order. Any day now the news would arrive that Operation Noah had been cancelled.
Meanwhile, she looked for work. There was little for her to do—and yet there were not enough hours in the day. Every morning she had to take the bears out and lose them; then, she tracked down the other animals.
She carried out a daily medical examination of each. It was unnecessary, but she wanted to revel in the privilege of working like this. The animals were quite unafraid of her now, as they let her pull down their eyelids and peer into their ears and lift their tails. The joy of being the recipient of such animal trust! Of being quite unafraid. She wished that Jonas Ford could see her. How could anybody want these animals back in cages if they could see them now?
And she sat and unobtrusively observed them, her tape recorder ready, watching the behaviour of animals returned to the wild. She was going to write a book for the housewives and schoolchildren of the world. It would make them weep and laugh and fall in love with Nature. Then they wouldn’t want to lock up animals in cages any more.
With each passing day King Kong began to relax more—with the feeling of being able to move in any direction, no iron bars or sheet of glass to stop him. There was no end to the trees and the valleys, and all the green things to smell and touch and climb and explore, and the sun and the breezes. His body had become hard and strong, and he could run, jump and climb as much as he liked. Slowly, King Kong began to learn to play. Then he hardly knew what to do with his gorillaness.
Suddenly he was sized with a desire to run, and he went galloping through the undergrowth on his black knuckles, pounding and crashing, and Auntie, Florrie and Champ took off after him, jumping and cavorting for the sheer infectious joy of it. King Kong leaped up onto his shaggy hindlegs and ran like a man; then Candy, Florrie, and Champ began to do tricks—throwing themselves and tumbling as they did in the circus. King Kong did not know these tricks so he beat his chest. Champ leaped up and beat his little furry chest imitating King Kong, charging at Auntie in mock battle. And as suddenly as the outburst of joie de vivre began, it stopped.
King Kong and Auntie and the chimpanzees rambled through the wilderness, plucking this and that and munching contentedly under the wide, tree-topped sky. Then one of the chimpanzees would feel frolicsome again, and they would play hide-and-seek and king-of-the-castle and follow-the-leader, racing through the trees for the sheer joy of it.
But even though King Kong began to relax, he was also very much the boss, and the chimpanzees accepted that. Although he let Champ pretend to threaten him, one bark, one glare, was enough to put an end to any boisterous mess that he didn’t feel like. And at the end of the day, when it was time for gorillas to start thinking of nesting, he gave his long significant stare in the direction of the cabin, and home they started, four hairy humanoids walking purposefully in a shaggy line.
Elizabeth dictated into her tape recorder: ‘Health perfect. Much leaner, coats getting glossy. No evidence of dietary deficiency. But despite daily-growing confidence, when I first arrive the gorillas duck out of sight, then peep for quite a long time. Have to avert my eyes and shake my head to show nonaggression. But after a while they settle down and let me examine them. King Kong is still suspicious. But others submit philosophically. Wonderful to receive such trust.
‘But they still huddle around the cabin indecisively at sunset. Gorillas have made no attempt yet at building tree nests, despite profusion of suitable thickets …’
Then, one late afternoon, King Kong stopped near the cabin and looked up into the boughs and studied them. Auntie dutifully followed his gaze. So did the chimpanzees. And from deep in his ancestral memory, King Kong was told that he should sleep above ground. He hesitated; then he reached up and began to climb.
He climbed slowly for fifteen feet, then he stopped in a fork. He tentatively took hold of a branch, and bent it toward him. He wedged it into the fork, and looked at it dubiously. It held. He reached out for another. And another. He painstakingly wedged them into position. Finally he had a rough-and-ready platform. Auntie was watching intently. Carefully, experimentally, King Kong climbed onto the nest and lay down his big body.
Then, slowly, Auntie began to climb, and she started bending branches too.
Elizabeth wanted to applaud.
With the wilderness all about him, King Kong’s thoughts began to turn to fancy—which was something he knew much about, having been lord of the Ape House for many years.
Auntie recognized the urgent feelings that came and lingered, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do about it when she began to ovulate. One day King Kong’s sober senses were invaded by a musk that took his mind off everything else, and Auntie suddenly became the most beautiful gorilla in the world. Absolutely irresistible, she knew it, knew just how to exhibit her shaggy rump: it worked like a charm.
There was no courtship, no seductive jostling and popping of tidbits into each other’s mouths. Auntie had asked for it, and she promptly got it. King Kong lumbered purposefully up behind her with a gleam in his eye, reared up, grabbed her hips in his big black hands, and wrenched her on to him; he threw back his head and thrust.
And thrust and thrust, his mouth open and his eyes closed; Auntie thrust back at him on all fours, her head hanging. For ten blissful seconds they thrust and ground; then King Kong, the experienced lover, changed position. He heaved her around roughly to face him, sat down with a thump, and pulled her onto his lap. Auntie sat down on him, and they clutched each other.
King Kong thrust upward, and Auntie bounced and ground downward, both hugging each other, heads back, eyes closed, grunting and groaning. Then King Kong took a shuddering breath so his chest swelled, opened his mouth, and gave a roar as he juddered; Auntie gave a groan-bark at the same time. Then they both went limp.
After a few moments she climbed off him, a little unsteadily. King Kong sat there, staring at nothing; Auntie sat down beside him. She took his big black hand in hers.
sixty-one
Every time she saw any interesting behaviour, she thought, I must tell Davey this, and she made a note on her recorder. Every time she saw something beautiful she wished that he was there because he would think it was beautiful too.
In the evenings, back at the old log cabin, she missed him badly. He understood much that other people did not, even sensitive, educated people like her. It amazed her how much he seemed to have read, how articulate he could be when he opened up.
She wanted to ask him, what’s going to happen to the world, Davey? How do we stop our own environmental suicide? What about the forests which make the oxygen and which we’re destroying at the rate of thousands of acres a day? What about acid rain, Davey—how on earth do we stop the sulfurous pollution from Japan blowing across the Pacific and dissolving in American clouds? And the industrial smoke from England blowing across to Scandinavia and making acid rain there? How do we make those people stop it? And how do we stop them killing the oceans, Davey? How long before the oceans rot, and greenhouse effect causes the icebergs to melt and flood the
coastlines with rotting sewage, and we all die on mountaintops gasping for air? How do we stop people killing us like that? What about the fish, the dolphins, and the whales, Davey?…
She thought she knew what his answer would be.
It is no good talking any more, Elizabeth. Politicians won’t listen because it costs money, and votes. It is our last chance, now. We must do. What is right.
In fact, if she had looked for signs, she would have known that Davey Jordan did come back to the log cabin from time to time.
He came whenever he could, to see if there were any signs that she was in any distress. But there were none. Each time, her sleeping bag was neatly rolled up, her cooking utensils washed, her underwear hanging out to dry, and the level was unchanged in the bottle of whisky Eric Bradman had brought her.
If Elizabeth had been a better tracker, she would have seen from the spoor that sometimes he had been there with the animals just hours before she arrived; if she had had eyes for anything other than the animals maybe she would have glimpsed him watching her, standing in the forest, with Sam sitting silently beside him.
Every day he climbed a high ridge and spoke to Big Charlie on his radio. They did not know what to make of Forsythe.
Every day Davey took the big cats hunting. Each day he was more encouraged, particularly by Kitty. But it was slow work.
Something always went wrong: either the wind changed and the pigs smelled them before they were close enough to strike; or a noise startled them, and they fled. But each day they got a little closer to a kill. Except Tommy.
Old Tommy seemed to understand perfectly well that, when pigs were sighted, a hunt was about to begin; and he got excited, looked mean. He even began to stalk; then, when he got into a favourable position, he sat down ponderously, and watched the scene with interest. Like a general, he watched Kitty and Princess go on his behalf. When they failed yet again, he looked mildly disappointed, then bored.
Fear No Evil Page 34
