The Elephant Mountains

by Scott Ely

  He supposed his father, a wonderful shot, had learned to shoot during the Iraq War. But he found it hard to get his father to talk about the war. He did persuade him to reveal that he was in a “special unit.” But nothing much beyond that. He liked to imagine his father parachuting into the desert wearing night-vision goggles. His black parachute was like a piece of the night sky. Silently floating down amid enemy soldiers who had no chance at all. He wondered how many men his father had killed. But that was a question he knew better than to ask.

  “But what was it like?” he asked.

  “Sand,” he said.

  “Sand?”

  “Yeah, lots of sand.”

  He heard his father begin to snore from where he slept on the couch just inside the door to the porch. His father was partial to sleeping on couches, dropping off to sleep with a book in his hand. His mother had complained about that habit. He wondered if he had bad dreams of the war, dreams of sand. But he had never heard him cry out in his sleep or wake suddenly from a nightmare. His father slept with a MAT-60 submachine gun. Stephen liked it that now he knew the names of weapons like that. He imagined himself sitting on a bench in the locker room at his school and casually mentioning the rate of fire of that French machine gun. His father wrapped his arms around it as if it were a woman. He wondered if his father slept with the machine gun when he and his mother were together. He could not imagine any of his mother’s young men sleeping with a machine gun. But perhaps they did now, that is, if New Orleans was filled with anarchy.

  To Stephen anarchy was nothing more than a word until last week when they discovered a man’s body in the big creek with a bullet hole in his head. The man was dressed in a business suit. It was the first time he had seen a dead person. As they sat there in the john-boat, Stephen wondered how they were going to get him aboard without turning the boat over. He thought perhaps the best plan was to let him stay right where he was. But he did not say any of this to his father. Stephen knew that dead folks were supposed to be buried.

  “Shouldn’t we bury him?” he had asked.

  “No, we don’t have time to bury everything that’s dead around here,” his father said.

  Stephen supposed his father had seen plenty of dead people, and now they did not bother him at all. The dead man did not bother Stephen that much. He had not been in the water long enough for the turtles to get at him. He looked like if they towed him to shore and stood him on his feet he might wring out his clothes and walk away and nobody would know he had been dead at all.

  His father gave the body a push out into the current with a paddle blade. It paused, spun slowly and then floated off down the creek toward the river only a few miles away. Stephen wondered if it would float all the way to the Gulf. He imagined the man’s bones coming to rest in deep water, lying there in that absolute darkness forever. It was then he realized they were not living in paradise after all.

  “I learned about killing people in Iraq,” his father began. “You have to be careful.”

  He stopped and looked off down the creek. The body had disappeared. Stephen thought he was going to tell him that it was kill or be killed if a soldier planned on staying alive. His father then continued in a voice so low Stephen had to listen carefully.

  “You cut yourself off from those you kill,” his father said. “They’re just targets. But if you push too hard on that, then you cut yourself off from everyone.”

  “Everyone?” Stephen asked.

  “Yes, from love. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But he did not understand. His father’s comment about war being equated with sand made just about as much sense.

  “We don’t know what we’ll have to do out here,” his father said. “Be careful.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stephen said.

  Stephen wanted to ask his father a thousand questions but decided to keep silent. It seemed to him that his father was expecting trouble, and the thought of that both attracted and repelled him. His father had been tested in Iraq. Now it was his turn.

  Stephen reached down and felt the barrel of the Saiga-12 under his cot. The Russian-made combat shotgun had a twenty-round ammunition drum and a skeletal collapsible stock. He had fired it many times on his father’s shooting range.

  “Just keep shooting, even when they’re down,” his father cautioned him. “Even with double-ought buck it won’t be as easy as you think.”

  He wondered what it was going to be like if they had to defend themselves. They were only five miles from the little town where his father had his boat shop. Everyone knew they had ample stores of food and fuel and water, all commodities worth killing for. His father liked to say that they now were living in a world in which anything was permitted.

  They were all right during the storms because his father had built the house to withstand them. His father liked to say that if a tornado hit the house it would just bounce off and go on its way. The pilings the house sat on were steel, not wood. The house was made of concrete blocks over a steel frame. It was attached to the pilings with special tie-downs, and the metal roof was secured in the same way. Steel hurricane shutters protected the windows and the screened porch. So even the hurricane that hit them directly did no damage, although it made more noise than he thought was possible. And when it was over, they had fresh water from the big storage tank fed by a cistern. His father had released a few snapping turtles into the cistern. He liked to say you can’t have a cistern unless you have a turtle or two in it. The water was filtered when it came out of the cistern, so the turtles would not do any harm. They had plenty of gas and diesel fuel in big underground storage tanks.

  As he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, he found himself imagining holding the shotgun in his hands and firing at the dead man in the creek, who now was alive and bringing up an assault rifle on him. The shotgun recoiled against his shoulder, the ejected shells spinning out, their brass bottoms gleaming in the sunlight. The man’s rifle barrel was swinging upward, but then the force of the buckshot caught him and he tumbled backward, like a wide receiver Stephen had laid a good hit on. His coaches had praised him for his willingness to hit much larger boys.

  “Good boy,” he heard his father saying in his dream as he drifted off to a dreamless sleep. “Good boy.”

  TWO

  Late one afternoon Stephen put on waders and followed a deer trail to the edge of the marsh to try to shoot a couple of ducks. They would have them the next day for dinner. He took up a stand hidden from the house by a tree line and well concealed from approaching ducks by the marsh grass. He tried to stay still. He watched an alligator swim across the marsh to the creek. A banded water snake swam by a few feet away. Dragonflies darted about among the marsh grass. At dusk he expected to ambush some wood ducks when they came in to roost, or perhaps a teal.

  He willed himself to be motionless, like a cypress stump or a clump of marsh grass, to be separate from time, to step out of the flow. It was something his father had taught him to do.

  “Don’t even think about time passing,” his father told him. “Ignore it. Then you can wait. Most people can’t do that.”

  He could not imagine his mother waiting for anything. She was not good at that. Then he felt bad for thinking things like that about her. She had worked hard in that bank; she had taken care of him.

  He pushed the thoughts of his mother into some distant recess in his mind. He watched the play of the sunlight on the water, a ripple that could be a gar or an alligator or a snake. He imagined being a dragonfly sitting on a stalk of marsh grass, looking at the world through its faceted eyes.

  But by the time the sun slipped behind the trees and it began to grow dark, he had still seen no sign of a duck.

  He heard a motor in the creek. Pretty soon a powerful light was shining among the cypresses and then out into the marsh. Someone had come up from the river. He’d had been told over and over if someone showed up he should hide himself and let his father deal with intrude
rs. By now Stephen expected his father had heard them too and seen their light, so he would be ready. He carefully walked out of the cover of the trees and into the marsh a little way so he could see the house.

  The boat slowed to a crawl. The searchlight played over the house, but there was no sign of his father. Then they reached the dock, and someone cut the engine.

  “Walter,” someone yelled. “Walter.”

  The light disappeared. He took that as a bad sign. The men in the boat had decided not to expose themselves. Were they friends of his father? They knew his name. He could not see anything, just the outline of the roof of the house against the lighter darkness of the night sky. The moon was not up yet. His father did not reply.

  “Walter,” a different voice called, this one not as deep.

  He heard the whistle of wood ducks overhead, along with the thrum of their wings. Then there were splashes in the marsh. The ducks had gone to roost at the last possible moment. Almost at the same instant, the shooting began, most of it from AK-47s, but then there was also the sound of his father’s machine gun. Someone began to scream, the sound so terrible he clapped his hands over his ears. He just hoped it was not his father. He thought again of his father’s instructions: if something like this happened he was to stay away. His father would come find him. If he did not come, that would mean he was dead.

  But it could be his father screaming. He started along the trail that wound through underbrush and high grass. Because it was under a foot of water, he had to move carefully so as not to make noise. The screaming faded away to a few murmurs and then stopped. Now he was out of the water, and it was easier to be quiet. Then the searchlight came on again. Through the trees he could see the figures of three men. None of them looked like his father. Three bodies lay on the ground.

  He sat down and slipped out of the waders. It was going to be impossible to move silently in them. Ahead of him was a clear sandy area. They would not be able to see him approach because they would be blinded by the light. He wished he had the Saiga-12 instead of the Browning filled with duck loads. He took out two shells and held them between the fingers of his left hand so he could reload quickly. The shotgun held one in the chamber and four in the magazine. The men were talking, but he could only catch a word here and there: “ammo,” “gas,” “Walter.” One of them kicked at a body with his foot. They all laughed.

  Now he was moving forward at a crouch. He was just about to enter the edge of the circle of light, the men no more than twenty-five yards away. He eased off the safety of the Browning. As he took a deep, slow breath to calm himself, he thought of his dream-fight with the dead man in the creek. And he found himself lost in that dream so that the two things, the dream and the men standing in the clearing, bled into each other. He stood motionless, watching it happen as if they were being projected on a giant screen before him. His legs and arms felt heavy. He could not imagine he would have the strength to bring up the shotgun. As he took another deep breath, he heard the sound of his own heart beating. He pulled himself away from the sound and its hypnotic effect. The men and the night around him sprang into sudden sharp focus as if his body had been awakened and propelled into action by a sudden electric shock.

  He ran toward them, his bare feet making little squeaks in the sand. The man closest to him turned toward him, and—just like in his dream—he saw him raise his rifle. He put two shots into the man’s chest. The man crumpled. The other one was firing, and he heard the bullets zip by his head. Suddenly the light went out. Had a stray round hit it? Was there another man in the boat? He shot the man before him too and tried desperately to bring up the shotgun on the third man. The removal of the light had reduced the man to a dark figure standing before him. Stephen realized that the third man had had plenty of time to kill him. But when he turned toward him, he saw the man was fumbling with his rifle. It was jammed.

  Stephen swung the barrel of the shotgun up to the man’s chest. The man dropped his rifle and held his crossed arms over his face.

  “Don’t!” he screamed. “Please! I didn’t shoot him! I can’t! It’s jammed!”

  For the first time Stephen realized his father was lying facedown in the sand only a few feet away. Now that Stephen’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, he could see the dark outline of the submachine gun by his side.

  “I didn’t!” the man continued to say. “I didn’t!”

  Stephen turned back to him and brought up the shotgun.

  “No!” the man cried. “No!”

  It seemed it should be easy to pull the trigger, to empty the shotgun into him. Vengeance for the death of his father. But he found he could not.

  “Walter was my friend,” the man said.

  Stephen almost shot him for that.

  “I want to see your face,” he said.

  “What for?” the man asked.

  Stephen did not have an answer for that. He had already pulled the mini-flashlight out of his pocket. He pressed the button and shined the light on the man’s face. He was a little redheaded man wearing an Atlanta Braves cap. His skin was a pale white. Stephen imagined he must be one of those people who never tanned. He had had his nose broken at some point in his life. He was breathing hard as if he had just finished a race. Stephen felt as if he had been looking at him for a long time, but he knew that it could not have been more than a few seconds. He turned off the flashlight.

  “Get out of here,” Stephen said.

  The man was gone in an instant. Stephen heard his feet on the sand and then on the dock. The motor started, and the johnboat moved out along the channel toward the creek.

  Stephen now regretted he had not shot him.

  He would’ve killed me if his rifle hadn’t jammed, he thought.

  Then he turned to his father. It seemed that none of this could be real, that any moment his father was going to come out of the house, angry at him for disobeying his instructions. Stephen resisted the temptation to lose himself in that dream, and again sand, the insects, the hot sticky air, the scent of his own sweat overwhelmed the dream. He reached out and put his hand on his father’s back. He was still warm. But he knew this kind of stillness, the face in the sand, could only mean death.

  He rolled him over, not an easy job. Stephen felt wet spots on his chest and back where the bullets entered and exited the body. In the daytime he would be looking at his father’s blood, bright against his khaki work clothes. He was glad the face was unmarked, or at least he thought it was. He reached into his pocket for the flashlight but realized he had dropped it. He would go to the house for a gas lantern. He ran his hand over his father’s face and felt no wounds, only sand. He brushed it away. Then he touched his father’s face again, feeling the stubble of his beard, the strong thrust of his arched nose, his square chin.

  If he had not gone hunting, this might not have happened. He imagined coming to meet the men with his father. The two of them might have survived.

  No, I’d be dead too, he thought. There were too many of them. Or I could have started shooting when they came into the marsh. But they were out of range. Too far. Too far.

  Crying took him by surprise. It came as a relief. He listened to his sobs as a counterpoint to the choruses of frogs. He lay on his back beside his dead father and wept as the moon rose over the cypresses along the creek. Some of his killers were dead, but he found no satisfaction in that. He realized he was going to have to bury them along with his father. If he did not, they would rot and stink. Vultures would fill the yard and roost on the roof of the house.

  He got up and blew his nose and wiped his eyes. Then went to the house for a lantern and a shovel.

  After he lit the lantern, he placed it next to his father’s face. He was right. It was unmarked. A cloud of insects, mostly moths, danced around the light. He sat there for a long time looking at his father and brushing away the moths that settled on his face. Then one by one he looked at the faces of his killers. They were unshaven, rough-looking men dressed in the
same sort of work clothes his father wore. One had his name, Ed, stitched on his shirt. He wondered if they ever did anything criminal before the hurricanes arrived. They looked like ordinary working men. But like his father they had stayed behind deliberately, in their case to loot and kill.

  He began to dig his father’s grave. It was not difficult going in the sandy soil but still hard work. It took him a long time, and he did not like to have to think about his father lying a few feet away while he was doing it. The lantern was running low on fuel and beginning to flicker, its circle of light gradually diminishing. He realized he should have filled it before he started. He hated to just roll him into the grave, but he had no way of lowering him gently. When he pushed the body into it, it landed with a heavy thud.

  “I’m sorry, Father, I’m sorry,” he said.

  His voice sounded unusually small and insignificant. When he turned off the lantern and looked up at the sweep of the stars overhead, he felt even smaller. And he was not really sure what he was sorry about except that he was duck hunting when his father was murdered. He stood by the side of the grave and cried for some time before he worked up the nerve to drop the first shovelful on him.

  When he swung the shovel out over the grave, he paused, the blade with its load of sand suspended over his father. He delayed the moment of dropping it, a moment when his father seemed not dead and the grave did not yawn before him. But it was going to be impossible to hold everything in suspension. He could not stay frozen over the grave, not even for five more seconds. So he gave the shovel a little twist in his hands, and the sand dropped, the weight on his arms gone, and the load fell onto his father’s body with a heavy plop.

  After the first, the next one was much easier. He wondered if he should say some words over him now or wait until the grave was filled. He decided to keep working. So he applied himself to his task and shoveled with a methodical regularity, dropping shovelful after shovelful into that rectangular patch of darkness.