by Taylor Brown
Anse stiffened, full of fire. He would have pit his Huey against both the man’s bulldogs, then and there. He ran his tongue along his teeth.
“It ain’t his mouth that’s keeping us alive out here,” he said.
Wilde cut his eyes at him.
“Let’s hope not.” His gaze ran back over the shepherd, the bright eyes, the black saddle of his coat. “You know Olde English Bulldogges like mine were nearly extinct by the 1940s. It was only in the last few years we started reviving the breed in America, re-creating the English bull-baiters of the early eighteen hundreds.”
“Bull-baiters?”
“Dogs bred to bait bulls and bears, even lions. To fight them. Bull was tied to an iron snake, pepper blown up his nose to rile him. Then they loosed the dogs. Outlawed as a blood sport in England in 1835. Breed started to die out.”
“’Least they died in peace.”
“Peace,” said Wilde, as if he’d forgotten the word.
* * *
They were five klicks into the bush when Huey raised his nose and started to high-step in a tight circle, prancing like a show horse. Anse raised his fist, halting the patrol. They knelt on either side of the trail, taking defensive positions, while Wilde came ducking up.
“What is it, Private?”
“He’s alerting,” whispered Anse. Huey’s snout jabbed the air, sniffing here and there. Anse’s heart thundered with love, fear. “Could be an ambush.”
A first pop, like a dam breaking, then the air was full of shrieking metal. Tracers zipped across the trail and men fell screaming. Branches dropped from the trees. An enemy machine-gun nest raked fire through the jungle, searching for the soft flesh of the patrol.
Anse found himself on his belly, his serpent brain driving him hard into the dirt, his trained finger snapping rounds toward the nest. They were pinned, automatic fire screaming over their heads. Men lobbed grenades toward the machine gun but they fell short, harmless as fireworks. Curses pierced the air and shrieks and Anse realized he had hold of Huey’s collar. He was holding the animal tight against his side.
Protecting him.
Then Master Sergeant Wilde was up and running straight into the flashing muzzle fire of the nest. It seemed impossible that he would not be hit, blown red and broken through the trees, but nothing touched him. He leapt over the berm, his arms held high over his head—a Ka-Bar knife in one hand, a nonissue revolver in the other. The pair of NVA machine-gunners rose against him, and the three of them locked together, fused, pummeling and screaming, a single three-headed beast tearing itself limb from limb. Huey lunged and lunged against Anse’s fist, trying to help, to save this gold-toothed Tennessean he thought part of his family, his flock. This man who would pit him against his bulls if he could.
This monster.
Anse loosed the dog.
Huey tore through the bush, driving himself into the fight. Shots, screams, and the dog ripped one of the NVA free of the melee, caging an arm in his jaws. Anse followed, charging toward them, his heart churning with fear. He leapt the berm and there was no time. He saw Wilde and the other soldier grappling over the revolver. The Vietnamese was kinking Wilde’s wrist like a duck’s head, turning the pistol back on its owner. Meanwhile Huey stood over his enemy, gripped one arm in his teeth while the soldier’s other hand drew the black blade of a bayonet from his belt.
Anse drove his rifle like a spear into the chest of Wilde’s adversary and pulled the trigger three times, then aimed at the man on the ground. Too late. The soldier’s hand was empty, the bayonet plunged to the hilt in Huey’s chest. One of the dog’s ears had been shot away, a red furrow along his skull. Despite all, the dog had not let go. His teeth were locked in the man’s flesh, vising the bones of his forearm.
Anse stood flat-footed, stunned, his weapon forgotten. He could not think what to do. Master Sergeant Wilde stepped forward, revolver in hand, and shot the soldier in the head.
Still Huey didn’t let go. His legs began sliding wide beneath him, scissoring open, and he sank to his belly, splayed flat like a spider, the arm held tight in his teeth. The small wooden handle of the bayonet ticked from his chest, prodded again and again by his heart. It might have been an experimental device of some kind, a switch surgically implanted so that men could toggle his modes: detect, pursue, assault.
He looked up at Anse, as if to ask if he was doing right. There was blood along his gums, bubbling between his teeth. A crimson necklace shone between his forelegs. His ribs strained beneath the black saddle of his coat, like the bones of buried wings. A wet sound rattled in his throat.
He was going to die.
Anse fell to his knees, burying his face in the scruff of Huey’s neck. He wanted to tell him that he was the best dog that ever lived. The most loyal and brave and strong. That Huey was his heart. His blood. That he loved him. That he was sorry for letting him loose.
Instead he bawled.
He was nineteen years old. He was in a foreign country, and he had just killed one man and seen another killed. His best friend was dying, and he could do nothing but cry. His uniform felt like an oversized costume, something he would wear on Halloween. His boy-sized body quaked beneath the badges, the belts and webbing. He thought Master Sergeant Wilde would tear him from the dog, slap him, tell him to act like a man. He didn’t. Anse felt the man’s shadow on him, unmoving. He felt the others gathering around him, solemn. A ring of them, striped like green tigers, their rifles barbed against the world. There could be an enemy reaction force on the way, but no one said a word.
Huey was whining now, whole stories of hurt escaping through his clenched teeth.
A hand on Anse’s shoulder.
“It’s time,” said Wilde.
Anse lifted his face. His cheeks were smeared with blood and fur.
“I’ll do it.”
“No, you won’t. Detroit, you and Whoa-Boy take him behind those trees.”
The shot, when it came, broke Anse’s heart.
Master Sergeant Wilde emerged from the green razors of palm. He pushed his boonie hat far back on his head, a ragged halo over the bald dome of his skull. His face was painted black, white-streaked with sweat or tears. He knelt in front of Anse.
“He died game, kid, with the bull in his teeth.”
He handed Anse the dog’s chain collar, along with a scrap of black velvet, red along one edge. The inner folds, white-pink like a rose, were tattooed with a series of greenish dots: HU421.
Huey.
“Hate Charlie Cong, kid. Or me. Not yourself.”
Anse lunged at the man, but the others were ready; they held him back. Anse thrashed and growled and spat until he sank between them, exhausted, slavering.
Detroit, silent, untied the leather thong from his neck, pocketing his own talisman—a medal of Saint George, patron saint of the cavalry—and Whoa-Boy handed Anse his knife. Anse looked up at them, his vision blurred with tears.
“Take him with you, kid,” said Wilde. “He’ll keep you alive.”
Anse took the makings, looked at them in his hands. His eyes burned, as if he could feel the image being seared into his vision. He kissed the scrap of flesh, which smelled like Huey. Then he punched a hole and strung the shorn ear from his throat, like the trophy of a thing he’d killed. A creature too noble for the world of men.
CHAPTER 15
WHISPERS
“It’s time,” said Anse.
Malaya looked at him. It was just past dawn, the world still bruised with night. The old jockey’s face was hard in the early light, creased with wear.
“Time for what?”
Anse lit a cigarette in the nest of his palms. His sunflower seeds were gone. He nodded toward the center of the sanctuary.
“To fill the empty enclosure.”
Malaya watched the smoke curling from the man’s nose. They were standing in front of Matilda’s pen, ready to fork the elephant’s daily ration of alfalfa through her feeding chute. Hers was the only electrified enclosur
e at Little Eden. The wires thrummed with eight thousand volts of charge, meant to keep the elephant from edging too close. In reality, she could swing the three-ton wrecking ball of her body through anything short of a brick wall—and maybe that.
She came hobbling toward them, her wide gray ears flapping gently, swimming through the dawn like a pair of manta rays. Malaya watched her come, then looked at Anse.
“You talking about the cage I think you are?”
“Enclosure,” said Anse.
“Why now?”
“It’s time. I can feel it.”
Matilda was standing before the fence now, head turned, one great black eye watching them. In Africa, Malaya’s team would find evidence of elephants meeting one another in the dead of night, in the deepest bush, as if by appointment, their tracks converging from miles and miles apart. The distances were too vast for the herds to hear one another. Rather, biologists said the elephants could sense seismic vibrations through hypersensitive nerves in their feet. The earth spoke to them, it seemed—underground messages passing through the land, rising through the roots of their flesh. In the dry season, matriarchs could detect thunderclouds rising on the far sides of nations and steer their herds for the lifeblood of rain. In the Sudan, the very day a peace treaty was signed after two decades of war, refugee herds had begun their long migration home, as if they could sense the cessation of the guns. As if their ears were satellite dishes, their trunks antennae. As if Reuters whispered headlines on the wind.
Anse shook his head again.
“I just know,” he said.
Malaya nodded. She knew this day would come. Henrietta’s memory haunted the sanctuary. The spirit of the lioness seemed ever-present, lying in the shards of sunlight scattered beneath the trees, in the breaths of wind that rustled the leaves. Malaya had seen the other animals casting long glances in the direction of her empty enclosure. The elephant, the ocelot, the monkeys. She’d seen the pantheress, Midnight, freeze midstride on the beam of her cat-tree and swivel her ears toward the heart of the sanctuary. Even the circus tigers sometimes stood staring in that direction, their jaws open, as if trying to taste her ghost on the breeze.
She looked at Anse.
“Where is he, this lion?”
Anse blew smoke from his nostrils. His eyes roamed the vast swell of the elephant’s body, like the scarred terrain of a moon.
“What makes you think it’s a he?”
Malaya grinned, cocked her head.
“I just know,” she said. “I can feel it.”
Anse blew a wisp of smoke from his mouth, almost smiling.
“I’ll show you tonight.”
* * *
They drove north on the interstate after work. The sun hung fat and orange over the dusky pines and a string of red taillights raced between the trees. Soon they were crossing dark rivers and broad prairies of marsh grass where old rail trestles flanked the interstate. Seaward lay the barrier islands, like giant freighters anchored just off the coast.
Anse lifted his hand from the wheel, pointing across the wetlands.
“I heard that’s how Savannah got its name, all the marshes surrounding the city like savannah grass.”
Malaya looked across the wide expanse of salt marsh. The cordgrass wavered in the dusk, high enough to hide lions or leopards. She cocked her head.
“Never thought of that, but I can see it. In school, we learned it was from a band of Shawnee that settled down here—their name sounded like Savannah, meant southerners.”
“That’s more likely, I reckon.”
“I like your version, though.”
Malaya looked out across the marshes, squinting, as if she might spot a pair of eyes smoldering from the reeds or floating along a mudbank. She shivered. More than once lately, she’d caught a flash of light in the trees around the sanctuary, like the lens of a spotting scope might make, or glimpsed a flutter of shadow in the underbrush. She thought of the tattooed man at the grocery store, whose clear eyes cut her naked.
“You ever wonder if anybody suspects us? Sometimes I feel watched.”
Anse growled, steering the big pickup around a minivan.
“We ain’t doing anything wrong.”
“Well, it’s illegal to start.”
“Malum prohibitum,” said Anse.
“Malum who?”
“Latin,” said Anse. “Means ‘wrong because prohibited.’ Wrong because it’s against the law. As opposed to being wrong in and of itself.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
“My daddy used to say it growing up, when we were hungry and he’d kill a deer out of season or make a little whiskey in the woods.”
“Sounds like a rationalization.”
Anse flashed an eye at her, iron-hard beneath his hat brim.
“You ever had hungry mouths to feed?”
Malaya eyed him back.
“I was one.”
They were back again into the pines. She looked at the billboards floating past, advertising fireworks stores or accident attorneys or Jesus Christ.
“I’m sure Robin Hood and Jesse James thought the same way. Malum whatever.”
“Probably they did,” said Anse.
“See how that turned out for them.”
Anse cocked his chin her way, keeping his eyes on the road.
“You getting cold feet?”
Malaya had removed her work boots. Now she leaned back and set her socked feet on the dashboard.
“These feet are blazing, old man. Ready for hot coals.”
Anse grunted. Malaya thought he’d tell her to get her damn feet off the dashboard but he didn’t. He kept looking straight ahead, jaw muscles throbbing, as if working a bone.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What’s what?”
“You’re gonna be sipping your meals through a straw, you keep grinding your teeth like that. Now spit it out, whatever it is you’re chewing on.”
Anse’s temples quit pulsing. He blinked a couple of times.
“I’ve been wanting to tell her,” he said.
“Who, Tyler?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, why haven’t you yet?”
Anse stared down the highway. Far into the distance.
“I’m afraid,” he said.
Malaya nodded. “She’s a tough one. I might be scared, too.”
Anse cast an eye her way.
“You ain’t exactly helping right at this moment.”
Malaya took her feet from the dashboard and folded them beneath her, perching cross-legged on the leather seat.
“You ever hear the story of the blind men and the elephant? My grandfather used to tell it in the day.”
“I don’t know. Might have.”
“There’s six blind men examining an elephant. Each touches a different part. Trunk, tusk, ear, tail, leg, et cetera. Just one part. Of course, each blind man thinks it’s something else. One says it’s a tree branch, one a spear, another a sail, a rope, a tree trunk, so on. They can’t agree. Finally they come to blows, trying to pound what they believe into one another.”
Anse squinted. “So the elephant’s the world and what, we’re each just hanging on to some little piece, never grasping the big picture?”
“Maybe,” said Malaya. “Or maybe we’re all just groping blind for body parts. Either way, I think you should give her the whole story, or else you’re liable to catch an ass-whooping. Can’t say I’d blame her, either.”
A thin smile quivered across the old jockey’s face. He cocked his head, talking from the side of his mouth.
“I like the story of the blind elephants better,” he said.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Six blind elephants. First one feels a man. Says, ‘Man is flat.’ Rest of the elephants feel the man, too.” Anse looked at her. “They all agree.”
* * *
They were nearing Savannah when sleep fell over Malaya, heavy as a spell, her head bobbing in the gentle hu
m of the cab. She’d been rising early to run along the dewy streets of town, pausing to squeeze out sets of pull-ups and dips on the monkey bars of the county playground. The sun would be unrisen, a cool glow in the piney air, and she would wring her flesh with knuckled ferocity, like a dishrag, squeezing out the black feelings of anxiety and fear that always seemed to build up overnight. They would turn cool on her skin. She had a mission now. A purpose. She could feel her body hardening, tightening, her body honed sharp as the point of a spear.
She drifted now, riding the edge of dream. She was seated high on the back of a mammoth, woolly and thunderous, convoying through a valley at night. The yellow eyes of wild things glowed from the hillsides. Hyenas or wolves or wild dogs. Waiting, watching the heavy sway of ivory and meat. The night grew darker, quieter. Malaya was sure a blast would come at any moment and the wolves would descend from the hills, but the rising sun broke across the land, overwhelming the ridges and avalanching down the slopes.
Then they were out of the valley and moving through the thornveld, a landscape she knew. They were passing through Zululand, she realized, heading toward Thula Thula, the game reserve of Lawrence Anthony, hero of the Baghdad Zoo, struck dead by a heart attack at sixty-one. The woolly mammoth she rode was no longer a mammoth but one of the elephants from the rogue herd that Anthony had saved, giving them refuge on his reserve.
The entire herd, twenty-some members strong, had walked twelve hours through the night and turned up at Anthony’s home the very weekend he died, as if they’d sensed the stoppage of the man’s heart. A man the Zulu called umkhulu—grandfather. Who could, they said, speak to the elephants. The herd had not visited the house in months and they spent two days roaming around the compound, their cheeks streaked black with stress secretions. While the people scattered Anthony’s ashes in the dark water of the Mkhulu Dam, the solemn gut-rumbles of the elephants were heard in the surrounding bush, like the sound of distant thunder.
Malaya, who’d been on the riverbank that day, was among the elephants now. She was buoyant upon their backs, among the stone-gray boulders of flesh, until she saw what she hadn’t seen the day of the memorial service. She saw men bunched at the boundaries of the reserve, watching, waiting to strike in the wake of the great man’s death.