by Gene Stone
“They taste like rubber, the omnivores tell me. Most would rather go hungry.”
“Wait until they get hungry enough. They will feast on human flesh.”
Nancy paused. “Is there anything I can do to get you to come out and join us? I’m asking selfishly. They are all looking to me to answer their questions.”
“Well, you should have thought of that before you destroyed the humans.”
“Are you on the side of the humans?”
“I’m on the side of reality.”
“What does that mean?”
“They provided for us. They fed us. We get proper thought for one day and we misuse it. Just like them. What did you think would happen with them gone? Food would just appear? Water would fall from the sky?”
Nancy was getting angry. But then she thought of Theresa, her first trainer, of the bull hook and the chains. She sensed the tiger had his own Theresa.
“What did they do to you?”
“Who?”
“The trainers. How bad was it?” Her voice had softened to a maternal whisper. The tiger shifted uncomfortably in the corner. Nancy continued, “You know what they did to me? The kept me locked up in a place so tight I couldn’t even raise my trunk. They thought my skin was rough because it looks rough, but it’s as sensitive as theirs. So when they pierced my skin with the hook—because I went the wrong way, because I was exhausted from overwork and lack of sleep—it stung for days. And when they humiliated me, laughed at me, thinking I didn’t know what was happening, when they shoved me this way or that, I began losing myself. It happened so slowly, I had no idea.”
She paused, for though she’d thought of all this earlier, saying it aloud gave it a weight, a conviction, that she hadn’t anticipated.
“So what did they do to you?”
The tiger crawled from his corner. He hung his head low, and inched toward her. He was large, but gaunt.
“It doesn’t matter what they did. And you’ll never hear about it anyway. Not you, not anyone else.”
“They killed my best friend. A beautiful elephant named Edgar, because he wouldn’t bend,” Nancy said.
The tiger waited for her to continue, but she couldn’t. The tiger saw the sadness in her eyes and heard the struggle in her voice. He considered his options, and realized he had only one. “I’ll come along with you,” he said. “Just leave me alone. Let me be.”
There was something magical about the tiger. He was a living myth, but a dangerous one. The other animals would need assurance that the tiger was on their side. For many, he was an enemy.
“I have to be clear. Are you with us?”
With a graceful leap, the tiger landed on the dirt next to Nancy.
“Yes. I said yes. I meant yes.” The tiger almost smiled, and added, “The zebras will be safe.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Consider it a promise.”
An hour later, the migration had begun. Nancy led the brigade, with Joe next to her. The baboons followed, then the horses and zebras, then the sheep and the giraffes. The monkey rode on the back of one of the giraffes, eyeing the tiger curiously as he stalked the group a hundred yards or so behind. There, but not there—with them, but not with them.
In the beginning, Nancy kept turning around to make sure he was near, and to make sure the zebras were untouched. But before long, she stopped turning. The road had captured her imagination, and now it asked for her undivided attention.
With each step she was getting further and further away from the circus, and further and further away from her past. The Texas summer, the bee blossoms dotting the dirt, sod and tufts of wilting grass, the aridness—it all felt so comfortable to her.
Joe lagged behind Nancy, then sprinted a few yards ahead, only to quickly lose her pace and lag behind yet again. Now a kick of dust flared up as he dashed over a patch of loose dirt.
The dust stuck in her eyes and as she tried to blink it out, a grey elephant appeared, a baby, playing with her, racing her, beckoning her to come and join him. Nancy found herself racing toward the young grey calf, suddenly desperate to join him. She sprinted, not feeling the pain from her bullet wound shoot up her leg.
“I’m coming,” she said. But the calf was losing his greyness. He was turning black, he was turning into shadow.
“I’m coming!” The shadow, black and twisting, started to get smaller.
Nancy extended her trunk, trying to grab the shadow that seemed so intent on evaporating. She grabbed a bit of it and brought it to her, but it was slippery, squirmy.
“Nancy?” Joe said.
Nancy, still blinking her eyes, finally got the dust out.
Joe was wrapped in her trunk, suspended six feet in the air, turned upside down.
“Please set me down?”
Nancy shook her head, dazed.
“Of course, Joe,” she said, regaining her wits. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what just happened.”
“We need to get you some water.”
“Yes, I need water,” she said, but no, she had drunk plenty. Still, she would take Joe’s alibi. She glanced around to see if any of the other animals had seen her pick up Joe. They had.
“We need to find water. It’s been a long time since any of us were on our own. Thirst must be quenched.”
The others nodded.
Nancy carried on leading the charge, Joe running alongside. The others walked behind her. The tiger skulked in the background. And the bee blossoms were still guiding them towards something miraculous, the blossoms’ white petals like grounded doves. Yes, this meant more walking, more one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, but the sky was blue and the metal cages and bars belonged to yesterday.
At noon, they came across a large redbud tree. It stood by itself in the middle of the dryness.
“Let’s rest under the tree,” Nancy suggested.
Soon, the monkey was playing on the branches that forked off like a tributary from the main trunk, swinging and screeching. The giraffes picked at the soft pink leaves, but they didn’t like their stinging tartness. The baboon scratched his back along the rough bark. The sheep grazed on small spurts of grass that struggled to life under the canopy of shade.
Nancy looked back and spied the tiger, an orange blur far to the side of the group. She could just picture his agitated tail, flapping back and forth, waiting for something she couldn’t know.
“Can you sense water?” Joe asked.
“It’s near. This tree wouldn’t be here without water.”
Joe leaned in close and whispered, “I know you, and I know you need water.”
“I’ll be fine, friend. And we will find water soon.”
“Can we take a nap?” a bashful sheep asked. Her words were shaky; she hadn’t mastered this new speech yet. Nancy sensed she’d been wanting to ask this for some time but that it had taken a few miles before she could muster the courage.
“It is midday. What do you all think?” Nancy asked the group.
A resounding yes.
So they settled comfortably under the redbud tree, closed their eyes, and fell asleep. This time, even Nancy’s eyes fell quickly shut.
And this time, she dreamed.
Of a single tree on an empty savannah.
An abstract version of herself ballooned up. She was light, bouncing along the heather and acacia grass, small wildebeests snaking through the tall underbrush, trying to bite her, to puncture her balloon body, let the helium escape, but their bites never took. She found herself on top of a tree, sitting and watching the expanse that lay like an artist’s tableau before her. She could see everything. Endless animal footprints in the dirt path that cut a swath among the amber fields. A cheetah sat and watched for prey on top of a mound of dirt. Meerkats sniffed the air for danger and possibility. African buffalo danced clumsily along the edges of a watering hole as sinister eyes tracked them from just below the water’s surface.
And then, she saw the grey calf again. He was older now. Another elephant was standing ne
ar him. The calf was leading her to the watering hole. Behind them more elephants followed. The balloon version of Nancy felt compelled to go to them, to drink the water with them. But she couldn’t leave her perch. She was stuck to the tree. For a second, her dream-self considered how odd it was for an elephant to be in a tree, but she didn’t question her situation for too long. She was afraid to move, knowing that the thorny edges of the leaves and branches would do what the wildebeests couldn’t. She would be punctured. She would deflate. She made small, deliberate movements, but with each attempt to free herself, she could feel her body tear. So she stayed still as the sun set, as the far-away elephants drank from the watering hole and then left. This time her grey friend didn’t disappear into shadow; he disappeared into that horizon....
Nancy awoke, startled. She’d often woken up feeling odd, as though the night had taken her places far-off and remote, but she’d never understood that these feelings, these places, existed within her.
She looked up at the redbud tree, at the monkey sleeping high in its branches.
“Now we really do need to find water.” She knew it was crazy, but she thought maybe, just maybe, if they found water, and quickly, she might see him, that grey calf, who was now full grown, and the two of them would lap up the water together. Maybe, if she kept going this way, she would find everything she had dreamed about, just over the next hill.
“Joe,” Nancy said urgently, “Joe, wake everyone up, we’ve been resting for too long. We need to find water.”
Joe was slow to wake, but once he did, he commanded the group to open their eyes and prepare for the migration to continue.
Then, as the animals stretched and yawned, as they dragged the final vestiges of sleep out of their minds and bodies, they began to walk.
A few hundred yards from the redbud tree, the circus animals walked into another collective of animals heading east. For Nancy this meeting seemed like an extension of her dream. These animals were strange, each one odder than the next. Most were short, barely reaching the place where the bullet had entered her lower leg.
“Are you aware?” asked one of the animals, who, despite his physical repugnance, spoke with strength and dignity. “Do you have a leader?”
“We are and she is,” Joe answered, using his small horns to indicate Nancy.
“Why aren’t you fighting in the battles?” another of the new animals asked. Nancy recognized this one—a black and white, bushy-tailed skunk.
“We could ask the same of you,” Nancy said defensively.
“We have been fighting. We were in the battle at Lubbock, but we’ve decided to come east to the next town and see if we can fight somewhere else,” said the first animal, with the voice of paved gravel.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are,” said Nancy. The animal looked like a pig, but a deep brown one, more boar-like, with a rodent-like quality as well.
“How would you know who I am? I am from south Texas and I doubt that’s where you’re from.”
“What I meant was I don’t know what you are.”
The animal grunted haughtily. “I’m a peccary and I don’t like strangers. Life works better for me if I keep to myself. But those days are long over. So here I am, out in the open.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Is it?” the peccary scoffed. “That would be a first.”
He then introduced the rest of his ragtag group: their predator, a jaguarundi, looking more like a puffed-up weasel than any of his big cat cousins. He, like the tiger, stood off to the side; an antelope with strange, twisting horns that looked more like prongs than goring devices; three possums, who bore their teeth and poised their claws for attack; and, sleeping on the head of the antelope, using the prong-shaped antlers as a makeshift bed, a ringtail cat, who looked like a runty raccoon. He was their night watcher.
The two groups intermingled for a bit, honoring their old instincts by sniffing and eyeing each other, then gradually using their newfound cognition to get better acquainted.
“So, how was the Battle at Lubbock?” Nancy asked the peccary.
“It was tough. We lost many of our own.”
The circus animals hung their heads in tribute.
“Peccary, is there water to the west?”
“There is, but you should join us and head east. We could use a collective like yours.”
Nancy considered this proposition. These animals knew this land, and could guide her group through the foreign terrain, lead them to food and water and shelter.
But the grey elephant from her dream had set out to the west from the watering hole, and something about the west still called to Nancy with a power she couldn’t resist.
“We’ll take our chances in the other direction,” she said.
The peccary scoffed.
“There is nothing there but skinny coyotes, slow armadillos, and desert field mice. They have nothing to offer. They are fighting in circles.”
“Isn’t that all the more reason to join them?”
The antelope with the deformed antlers chimed in. “You don’t understand. They won’t have you join them. They want to do everything their own way. Even if that means losing.”
Nancy looked down at Joe, who cocked his head like a muddled puppy.
The antelope continued, “The eight of us know how to defeat humans. We’ve been watching them quietly and secretly under the camouflage of night. So when we saw that our more common brethren were losing, we came out of the shadows to help. It worked while they listened to us. Now we want to find others who appreciate our value.”
“It’s no use,” said the ringtail cat with a sleepy yawn. “The elephant has made up her mind.” Then she repositioned herself among the antlers and fell back asleep.
“The cat is right,” said Nancy. “I want to go west. But join us. We could use each of you.”
The peccary smiled. “No, we are done with the west. But you go ahead, if that’s what’s calling to you. We wish you the best.”
The ugly creatures began to leave, walking slowly toward the next battle. The peccary turned around. “The watering hole is less than half a day’s walk to the southwest.”
“Thank you.”
The peccary nodded, then turned back around and walked off.
Nancy and the others walked the rest of the day. The landscape softened, the vegetation mutating from the endless yellow to a smattering of green. The giraffes grazed on the cottonwoods and red berry junipers, which were more and more frequent. The monkey screeched and hollered as he swung from the broad shin oaks and the arching black willows. Joe and the sheep took bites of grass, chewing slowly, to the rhythm of their walking.
Overhead, Nancy spied the soaring blackbird’s spreading wings, and she took this image as a sign that she was headed in the right direction. But then a noise disturbed her. A flash. She was back in Africa. She was looking at the grey calf, now fully grown. The elephant whom he’d led to the watering hole was in pain. Her elephant, the calf-turned-bull, the one she so wanted to meet, was pacing around the ailing cow. The noise grew louder and louder. It was deafening. The other elephants in the group, also cows, looked around. The sound shot through their ears. The bull elephant led the cow away. The other elephants followed, but the noise didn’t relent. It got stronger and stronger. It was getting nearer.
Run, thought Nancy. Get out of there.
Run.
“Run!” she shouted. “Run for cover, run for somewhere, run to where the noise can’t find you!”
“We are running!” Joe said.
And he was, and so were the other circus animals. So, too, was Nancy, though she didn’t remember starting her sprint. The noise from her daydream was real. It was coming from the sky. She looked up. A human plane had replaced the blackbird, a crop duster. It was directly behind them, racing through the sky toward them. The pilot had spotted them and was closing in. He was aiming a rifle at the collective.
“He’s got a gun,” sai
d Nancy, losing her breath.
“We know. He hit one of the sheep on his first pass.”
The man in the crop duster shot and missed, then swooped past the running animals, looping a big U-turn to have another go.
Nancy knew the shooter wouldn’t miss next time. She looked at the terrain ahead. No natural hiding place. She looked up. The plane had nearly doubled back.
“Split up. Every one of you run in a different direction. He can only go after one of us!”
“And what if he chooses us?” asked the giraffes. “We’re the easiest targets.”
“Just run. Find trees. Find rocks. We are only an army of fifteen.”
“Thirteen,” Joe said.
“Do as I say.”
The animals did. Thirteen different directions. A minute later, when the crop duster made its pass, it did go after one of the giraffes. But it missed. The plane was being buffeted by high winds above; the bullets went astray. Two more passes yielded the same fruitless results. The plane then flew off to the west. Nancy had never been more relieved to hear the silence of dusk.
Once they realized the plane was gone, the group, shaky and weak, met Nancy.
The surviving sheep were especially shaken. The dead sheep was the one who’d asked for the nap earlier that morning. Those were her final words.
“We should have gone with the other group. They were ugly, but they knew what they were talking about,” said the sheep, in angry defiance of Nancy’s authority.
“No one stopped you.”
“You stopped us,” the sheep said. “You wanted to go west. We don’t even know which way west is. We just followed you.”
“No one asked you to.”
“It feels like you did,” the sheep said.
Nancy felt overwhelmed by the moment, the heaviness of it. “The peccary said water is near. Let’s drink, find some food and rest for the night. Maybe tomorrow will bring us more guidance.”
They found the watering hole easily, a small victory after a hard day of losses.
Exhausted, each animal lapped up the water even though it had a toxic tinge. Nancy drank the most. As she did, she heard a noise, a human noise, but it wasn’t the noise of the crop duster. It was the noise of a jeep. Once again she saw the cow, her pain relieved now. Behind her a little calf on wobbly legs clung to her mother’s tail.