by Gene Stone
The noise of the automobile was getting louder. The group of elephants, all females except the bull she’d first seen as a grey calf, was wary of the approaching sound. The elephants stood near a river, a river they couldn’t cross. To the north was a large butte that they couldn’t climb. To the east was a dense cluster of fever trees they had chewed on earlier that day. To the south was the road. And on that road was the human car, getting closer and closer...
“Nancy, I don’t feel good,” said Joe.
“Neither do we,” said the horses.
“Me too,” squeaked the monkey.
“The water is no good,” said Nancy. “It’s human water. It’s no good. Why wouldn’t the peccary tell us this?”
The animals were sick all that evening and into the night. Weak, vomiting, sleepless. When the zebra finally found sleep, the monkey woke her up with his sickness. And then the zebra woke up the baboon with hers and then the baboon woke Joe with his. Round and round.
During those times when they believed Nancy was too sick to hear them, the collective ventured towards mutiny.
“She’s led us nowhere.”
“We were better off with the humans. The tiger was right.” This caused to group to look for him, lurking in the shadows. He was out there somewhere.
“Those animals, they were mostly small. We can catch up with them tomorrow.”
“What if the plane returns?”
“And now she gets us sick.”
“She will soon get us killed.”
“We’ll leave her tomorrow.”
Joe heard all of this. He didn’t speak up. He didn’t know what to do. He understood their complaints. He wouldn’t leave Nancy, but he understood why they wanted to. His stomach was better able to deal with toxicity than the others’ and he threw up only once. Otherwise, he rested near Nancy. As the animals continued to complain about her, he saw that she was awake and listening.
Those beautiful brown eyes of hers, looking sad and despondent, hid themselves under the heavy lid, not wanting to see Joe, not wanting to see anything.
But it did see something. It saw the rest of her story. Her father’s story. Her father was the grey calf who’d grown up, who was trapped by the humans who’d approached with their car. It was also her mother’s story; her mother’s fate was intertwined with that of the bull elephant who gave Nancy life.
That bull—Nancy’s father—was poached for his ivory, those powerful tusks he had used to spar and tear and protect. He’d helped the cow elephants and the calves find safety behind the fever trees. But the humans arrived before he himself could hide. They shone the lights of their jeeps and he was exposed. A quick shot from a rifle maimed him and made him angry. The jeep had come to a stop. Three humans ran out, guns aimed at his grey body. They shot him again. The bullet entered his sternum, blowing him back, but he found a way to get his momentum going forward. Another shot. He was blown back again. And again he found the strength to inch forward. Two more shots and he couldn’t move anymore. He was done.
Nancy, the young calf, was witness to it all. She watched from behind the lush fever trees as the humans sharpened knives and cut into her father’s skin, even as he still drew breath. They ignored his blood. They ignored his grunts. They ignored everything but the dull white of ivory.
After they’d taken what they were after, the humans climbed back into the jeep and rumbled, then faded, into the night. Nancy was just a yearling; she’d had no idea it was possible to feel such sadness, sadness that slowed her toward paralysis.
After a time, the herd stepped out from the shadows. They circled Nancy’s father, heads hung low, ears pulled back. When it was finally her mother’s turn to say goodbye, Nancy let go of her tail and watched her mother slowly circle the carcass. She circled again and again and finally she collapsed to her knees. There, her sadness overtook her and she collapsed from her knees toward her side. And then, incredibly, Nancy watched as her mother shut her eyes and died.
The laughing hyenas were waiting. A lion roared, jarring Nancy, making her remember that threats were everywhere. Then it was her turn. To circle her dead mother and murdered father. She felt her mother’s sadness. She nuzzled that big body, which was still warm. Her mother had so much more to teach. As did her father. How was Nancy going to learn? Should she join them? She looked at the holes in her father’s body, which was already reeked of decay, and she looked at her mother, stuck forever to the ground, and she made a pact with herself to remember this moment for the rest of her life, as though it were as much a part of her as her blood and bones. But she didn’t. She’d forgotten. And now Nancy realized that being aware meant more than trying to understand the present, or planning for the future. It meant knowing the past, and all the pain, or joy, that memories brought.
Bear
The bear watched the black bear descend to the battlefield below. When he reached the bottom of the cliff, he looked back up and waved the bear down. When the bear ignored the request, the black bear turned and charged toward the front lines. The bear watched him disappear into the fray.
The bear could just make out the city near the horizon when an explosion lit up the dark with brilliant colors. The bear had often seen the sky put on a show of lights deep inside night’s darkness. But he had never seen such vivid lights erupt from just one small area. This wasn’t the sky speaking. This was something the humans had created. It was beautiful, the bear thought, but sad, for he knew this beauty came at a cost.
The bear felt oddly calm as he watched the mural of warfare spread before him. For the time being he was satisfied just to watch, to see human and animal attack each other. He didn’t ask himself how this started. He knew, somehow, that the time was right, that perhaps this war had been in the works for years, decades, eons.
He wondered what the humans were thinking. Had they seen this coming? Were they prepared? They seemed to be. Or maybe they were always prepared to fight. There were maybe a thousand of them, all armed, slaughtering whatever animals they could shoot down or slice up.
As he looked down at the animals, fighting back, fighting strong, the bear had a guess as to why the battle below him was fought with so much vigor by the mammals. Their anger toward humans was tangible. It was everywhere. If the awareness had never occurred, would the anger be any less apparent? He feared the simple answer was no, it wouldn’t be apparent at all.
He would have loved to have seen the look on the humans’ faces when the initial attack began. Those funny creatures, with their delicate heads, their childlike vulnerability, being mauled by four-legged attackers. What did a human think when an otter went after him in the shallows of the river? Did he care? But what did he think when a thousand otters attacked?
And what did humans think when bears attacked? The bear assumed the humans would fear him more than the other animals; he was so much larger, quicker, and smarter, with teeth and claws that could make rag dolls of the humans’ precarious skin and weak bones. Who would fear a deer? But his dangerousness also made him the most obvious target, and the bear knew the damage those guns could do.
Below his perch he watched as a young buck, recently antlered, came out from nowhere to gore an unsuspecting young human, who was reloading his gun. The bear could almost taste the human’s blood as it sprayed high into the air. The young human fell to the dirt, coiling into a pose of certain death. The bear swelled with pride as he watched these lesser animals do everything they had to do. They had it so much harder than the bear, than the humans, but they fought with such stoic concentration. Always looking up, always staring into the sun, always looking behind and underneath and through. They had the most to fight for. Every fight for them was life or death—usually death.
I need to help them, the bear thought. But he didn’t want to join. He didn’t know why. The others had rushed into battle without questioning their speed. Even the other bears. They were still coming from the forest, from the hills, running, charging, dashing forward. But here he wa
s, sitting, watching. It wasn’t as though he didn’t want the animals to win. But what did he want for himself?
He’d just killed a human for the first time in his life. It hadn’t really given him any sense of satisfaction. Perhaps only those animals who’d been harmed by humans wanted to harm them back now.
A black cloud circled above him. He looked closer: not a cloud after all but a dense flock of nighttime flyers. These dark creatures swooped down closer to him than they should have. He tried to swat them away, but they were too fast.
Bats, he thought.
“We need you,” he heard the bats say, a hissing chorus. “Don’t just sit there. This is our chance. The time is now.”
“I don’t know.”
“There is nothing to know. This is the time to do.”
“I’m thinking.”
“This isn’t the time to think. We’ll have all the time in the world after the war is over.”
“Go and attack and leave me be.”
The bats soared down to the battlefield, but another flying creature took their place. The hawk circled above and then landed on the grassy expanse, ten feet from where the bear sat watching the battle below.
“What do you want?” the bear said.
The hawk hopped about on its thin legs, somewhere between graceful and awkward. He delivered a loud caw.
“Stop that,” growled the bear. But the bird didn’t seem to understand—maybe he couldn’t communicate the way the mammals could. The hawk hopped nearer, into swatting distance. His eyes, void of anything other than blackness, were unwavering. He was nearly looking through the bear.
When the shots went off below, flashes of the battlefield became clear. Even from his vantage point far above the warfare, it was evident that the animals were losing many of their own. The problem, the bear realized, is the guns were keeping the animals at too great a distance. “Once we get to the humans, they have no chance. They need to change strategy.” The bear considered his statement. “We need to change strategy,” he corrected himself.
The hawk dipped her head, turned her neck, flapped her wings. Then she flew off.
She was too fast and it was too dark for the bear to follow her flight. It occurred to him: The birds weren’t on either side. They were watching. They weren’t choosing.
The bear closed his eyes. The birds didn’t need to choose, but he did. It was foolish to sit here, alone, watching the carnage. It was cowardly, and he wasn’t a coward, even though he didn’t feel the same impulse to fight as the other animals seemed to feel. He wondered why. Then he realized that he could spend the rest of his life wondering. He would never leave the ledge.
“They might need me,” he told no one but the air. He thought again of his mother, feeding him the salmon she’d caught. She’d want him to help, especially if some of those fighting below couldn’t help themselves. He should have saved the fawn, he knew. He should have told her to run and hide and protect herself.
He climbed down the rocky ledge, nearly slipping a few times before jumping the final gap to the ground and landing with a resounding thud. He reared up on his haunches and roared his loudest roar. It was time.
The first thing he wanted to do was round up the wolves and any other bears he could find. Instead of charging to the front lines he went to the back, where the wounded were being tended. Two beavers were attempting to mend the bullet hole in a badger’s shoulder. Mice were picking out bloody debris trapped in the matted fur of a disabled moose. The bear approached the beavers first.
“Who’s in charge of this attack?”
The beavers drew away from the bear. Even in the heat of battle old habits lingered.
“I’m not here to harm you,” the bear reassured them.
“No one is,” one of them said. “Except the humans.” The beavers resumed their work on the badger. The bear moved in closer; the badger was clearly in pain but doing his prideful best not to show it. “You doing okay, friend?”
“As best as can be expected.” The badger let out a guttural wail. The bear guessed he would be dead in minutes.
Being near all these animals was hard for the bear. He preferred to be alone. But he knew his mother would have preferred to eat the salmon for herself and yet she fed him. These were not times of solitude.
“We need to organize. Mice. Come here, please.”
The mice scurried to the base of the bear’s enormous frame.
“You live with the humans more than most. You sneak around them. You know them better than any of us.”
The mice talked in unison. The bear couldn’t understand. He let out a polite roar. The mice quieted, several disappearing under his fur, hiding. Then one spoke for all.
“Yes. We do. They seldom know we’re there. We’ve been watching them forever.”
“What do you know?”
“They hate us. They leave food everywhere and are surprised when we eat it. They hate rats even more. Humans are one hundred times our size but we instill fear in them.”
“Why would someone fear you and the rats?”
“We don’t know, but we use it to our advantage. Oh, and this particular clan of humans loves to shoot those guns. They all have them.”
“I can see that,” the bear said. The badger was breathing heavily, his whine now a death rattle. “We need to disarm them and then attack with the wolves, bears, badgers. What we can’t do is sneak up on them. But you can. You must take them by surprise, bite their ankles and toes, crawl up their legs. If they really are afraid of you, they will be busy fending you off, and then we can charge.”
“We can do that,” said the mouse.
“Gather every small rodent and tell them the plan. I will tell the top predators.”
The mouse and his cohorts scattered over the battlefield, whispering the new strategy.
The bear looked over at the badger, who looked back with unseeing eyes, then coughed and died. The bear put his huge paw on the badger’s face and whispered to him. Then he ran into the darkness behind the battle and told the others his plan; they repeated it, and soon the animals were organized. The bear tried to enjoy the feeling of camaraderie. He missed being alone, but there was something striking about working with other animals, rather than hunting and devouring them. Of the many new concepts flooding his mind, this was one of the most appealing but also discomfiting. He was hungry, and yet couldn’t eat his soldiers.
The animals retreated to regroup. So did the humans. A cacophony of armaments and cries of death or temporary victory was replaced by an eerie silence. Only the birds overhead made a sound, pumping their wings against the wind coming in from the east. The earth seemed to take a deep breath. The bodies on the front lines remained where they had fallen, ugly lumps of stiffening carbon. Soon, they’d be fodder for the flies—and perhaps for some of the soldiers, animals who wouldn’t eat their fellow compatriots alive, but would devour a fresh corpse.
In the distance, the bear could see lights from the cigarettes of the humans, tiny orange bursts.
“I don’t see why we can’t just attack them like we do our prey,” said the wolf-pack leader, a dignified animal with a silver coat that resembled the moon.
“Not even you, friend, can outwit a gun,” the bear offered.
“And you think mice and rats can?”
“I do. Humans don’t know what to make of us. They admire us for our beauty and power. They fear us because we are stronger. That fear is rational. Their fear of rodents is not rational. We will use this weakness. The rodents will sneak up on the humans as they aim those guns, climb up their legs.”
“It seems too simple a plan,” the wolf said.
“Do you have another? Because as I watched from atop the cliff, I saw the humans massacreing us.”
The wolf pack was wary of the bear. The bear knew this, and while he wasn’t afraid of them individually, he knew they demanded respect as a unit. Four of the wolves rose up and began circling the bear.
“We must not
fight among ourselves,” the beavers pleaded. “We need all of you, the bears and the wolves, if we are going to win this.”
The old silver-haired wolf bared his teeth and then stopped.
“Yes. You’re right.” He shot a purposeful glare at the four who were circling, and they fell back behind him.
“If this doesn’t work, we can pull back and try something else,” the bear offered.
“We need to do it now, then,” the wolf said. “If we wait too long, day will break and then the humans will have the advantage. They have other weapons. Flying machines. Poisons. We are evenly matched in the night. The day belongs to them.”
The bear nodded.
He beckoned for the mice and rats. Scores and scores came to him, a speckled blanket of fur and tails.
“You know what to do, friends?”
An affirmative murmur.
“Get to it then. They will shoot some of you. Many of you will live. Be brave, be quick, be relentless. Tap into their fear of you. Tap into it and don’t let go. Our friends in the sky, the bats, will be watching as we creep slowly toward the front lines. When we hear the signal that the rodents have attacked, the guns will drop. The wolves and the moose and the elk will attack with the full force of nature.”
The rodents were off. The bear watched the orange bursts. As the stealthy rodents neared the humans, the predators and larger prey waited patiently. In this lull in the battle they could hear the sobbing and lowing of the wounded, the occasional blast of a gun, a muffled cry.
Then, just as they got used to this quiet, the air was broken by noise. The bear and the rest of the infantry heard the human screams. From ahead and above, the bats shrieked ferociously.
“Now!” the bear yelled.
The rodents were right. The humans hated them. Even the strongest of the humans, the ones with the deepest voices and the thickest beards, screamed as the vermin attacked. They dropped their guns, their coats and trousers. The ground moved with grey uneasiness; the vermin were living grass and wind. The bear ran toward his new prey, and, running, he met up with the black bear. The bear had assumed the worst when he couldn’t find the black bear’s scent nor see his scarred visage.