Elephant Winter by Kim Echlin Read Free Book Online Page B

in something beyond. He played the music of wandering people, unresolved dominants sliding up from his lungs, down from his irretrievable first breath. I should have closed the doors and walked homeacross the snowy field but I lingered in the barn, pretending to be busy. I liked the feeling of his eyes on me. I knew I should go but my body had different ideas. I warned my body sternly but it kept stirring. It wanted his heat, it wanted to act without conscience, it wanted, and I told it to stop.
     

     
    The next afternoon Jo came into the barns with some horse blankets for Lear.
    “Did you see Alecto?”
    “Who?”
    “Alecto.”
    “Is he here?”
    “Yes, you didn’t see him?”
    “No. How’s Lear?”
    “No change . . . I hand-fed him some grain and he drank a little. Isn’t Alecto a friend of yours?”
    “Is that what he said?”
    “No, only that he’s known you for a long time.”
    “Is that so? Help me cover Lear up.”
    We laid the blankets over his exposed side, stroked his head and his legs, which pushed forward, as if to get up. Elephants breathe poorly lying down because much of their enormous weight rests on a transverse diaphragm. We’d talked about trying to raise him a little and managed to get a few rolled blankets as bolsters under him. They didn’t raisehim but cushioned his side at least. I was frustrated that we seemed to be doing nothing, but Jo was even terser than usual.
    “Why is he mute?”
    “Don’t know. I heard he was born that way. He’s not completely mute.”
    “Then why does he use that board?”
    “Don’t know . . . maybe he doesn’t like the sound of his own voice.”
    “Who is he?”
    “He does research on elephants—anatomy. His name’s Rikes. You showed me some of his articles.”
    “F.A. Rikes?”
    I’d read his autopsy reports. He was an eccentric scholar without affiliations. His reports came out of zoos and safaris abroad. About thirty years ago he’d travelled through Kenya on a killing spree, shooting elephants and doing autopsies on the spot, hunting in a way that would now be impossible. His observations were impeccable and many other scientists drew on the detailed physiology he recorded on that trip. Two decades later, he moved to North America where he did several bizarre experiments. He built a “breathing chamber” with a hose for an elephant to stick its trunk in to measure air volume displacement and learned about breath rate and oxygen transfer. He wrote about the sensory points on the skin of an elephant. In that article he published a map of the elephant’s pain centres, marking specific points around the eyes, under the belly, around the shoulders, on the topsof the feet, at the tip of the sensitive trunk. He noted that the research was developed out of the traditional teachings of Indian mahouts. His most recent work was a design for elephant quarters that would eliminate the keeper, a system of hydraulic doors between zoo yards and the barn through which the elephant is enticed with food. He argued that handling elephants is dangerous and that eliminating all human contact is both cheaper and safer in small zoos.
    “Why didn’t you tell me you knew him.”
    “Didn’t think it mattered. I know most of them one way or another. He’s a university man, he doesn’t have time for people like me,” Jo said contemptuously. “What do I know, I just like being with them. Look, I’m more worried about Lear right now.”
    I watched as Jo tried to feed Lear and give him something to drink. I stroked the elephant’s ears.
    “Dr. Yu must have told you something we could do, Jo. What did you talk about?”
    Jo clamped his jaw down. “He told me the common problems—infections, heart—but nothing we can fix. There was nothing except a strange folk cure from Burma.”
    “What was it?”
    “We’re not in goddamn Burma.”
    I knew how little Jo would be moved by my words, so I waited in fierce silence until he finally relented. “He said