The Elephant's Girl

by Celesta Rimington

  “She’ll never remember what you need,” the wind says.

  I wonder whether a ghost might be able to hear the wind speak, too. But Miss Amanda sets teacups in saucers on the kitchen table and begins pouring tea from her fat teapot, as though she’s heard nothing. The teacups remind me of our last visit and that I lost track of time before.

  I’m going to need to get a watch.

  “Miss Amanda, do you have a clock?”

  “Yes darlin’, and it still works!” She points at the wall in the kitchen.

  Sure enough, the clock hands show ten-fifty, which seems right, and the second hand is moving at an accurate speed around the face.

  “Just a minute, please,” I say to her, unhooking my radio from my waistband. I press down the call button and speak clearly. “Willow to Hostler.”

  The radio crackles to life. “Hostler here. Go ahead, Willow.”

  “Just checking the time. Do you have ten-fifty?”

  “Yes,” he answers. “But you can have until twelve-thirty, instead of noon, if that helps.”

  It does help, but I realize he still thinks I’m at the ball field with Fisher. I don’t want to explain all that over the radio, though. “Got it. Willow out.”

  I step all the way into Miss Amanda’s ham-shaped, vintage trailer and take in a deep breath of lemons and mint. The extra half hour is a good buffer, but I’m going to pretend I don’t have that extra time, just in case.

  I can give myself one hour with Miss Amanda. One hour, and then I have to leave to meet Roger. After lunch, I’ll find Fisher and explain why I left the ball field. I tell myself this because I don’t want to forget what I’m doing or go missing for hours, like what happened to Mrs. Leigh when she was with her ghost friend.

  Miss Amanda sets her teapot on the table. “Now then,” she says, sitting and smoothing her skirt, “what did you want to show me?”

  I reach into my pocket for the letter and the train ticket, and I wonder if the best chance of getting results with Miss Amanda’s faded memories is to focus on one thing at a time. Maybe too many things at once is distracting. So I pull out the letter first.

  Miss Amanda points at it and then clasps her hands together, as though she’s keeping herself from touching the paper. “Where did you find this?”

  I haven’t unfolded the letter yet, so she can’t see exactly what it is, but she looks like she might know. She motions at the empty kitchen chair like she wants me to sit down, so I do.

  “It was in the gift shop desk—in the storeroom. Isabel, the lady who runs the shop now, said she found it after you had gone. It doesn’t have your name on it, but she assumed you wrote it.” I open the letter and hold it faceup for her to see the writing. “Did you?”

  A bit of sunlight flickers through the window, and Miss Amanda’s face lights up with it. I’m still surprised that ghosts aren’t see-through. But she has a softness about her that makes her different, like an old picture that’s slightly blurry.

  She reaches for the paper. “May I have a look?”

  I let her take it and watch how the paper seems to move a smidgen before she touches it, drawn to her like a magnet.

  Her blue eyes scan the words, and then she startles like someone snuck up and surprised her. “Of course! I have a picture of Eden…and of Angus Fenn.”

  She lays the letter flat on the table and stabs her pointer finger at Eden’s name. “The fortune is hers. We have to find that box and return it to Eden.”

  “Can you show me the picture, Miss Amanda? Maybe a picture will help you remember.”

  Miss Amanda walks to the other end of the trailer and stares at the bookshelf over the bed. I run my fingers lightly over the smooth tabletop. It’s not dusty like a table would be if it had been inside an abandoned trailer for seven years. Everything appears as it should when Miss Amanda is using it, like the day I first saw her and she was sitting at her outdoor table having tea. Maybe the outdoor furniture and the awning look like their previous versions when Miss Amanda is out there, and the inside of the trailer looks like it did seven years ago when she is inside. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s also the only thing that can explain this.

  Miss Amanda finds a brown leather photo album and brings it to the table. She sits beside me and turns the pages. The album is full of black-and-white photographs behind glossy plastic. The first ones look like family photos, but then they change to photos of animals in show costumes and people of all sizes dressed like clowns and acrobats. She pauses at a picture that I think is a young Amanda Holtz staring up at me.

  “I used to work for the circus,” Miss Amanda says. “And not just any circus, mind you—the Fenn Circus. I met the dashing Angus Fenn when his circus stopped outside my hometown.”

  Miss Amanda’s memory certainly does work better when she talks to me. She’s already told me something I learned from those internet articles. I want to tell her I looked her up and what I found, but that might interrupt her from telling me something new. Her face almost looks younger as her eyes light with what seem to be happy memories.

  “Angus discovered that you couldn’t get Southern cooking quite like what he found in my father’s restaurant, so I saw him in there often. I found Angus’s life—the traveling life and the business of acquiring animals and hiring trainers and performers—very intriguing,” Miss Amanda continues. “I also found Angus…well…”

  “Dashing?” I use her word. It feels round and full in my mouth and makes me think of splash and clash, which doesn’t have anything to do with Angus Fenn, but I think I’ll keep using this word.

  She nods. I never wondered before if a ghost could blush, but I would say Miss Amanda has managed it. She has a faraway look, and I think she’s remembering Angus after a long time of forgetting him.

  Miss Amanda scans the album again, dragging her finger over the pictures. “He’s got to be here,” she mutters. She turns the pages faster and faster until it feels almost frantic. She stands from the table and walks back to the shelf at the other end of the trailer. “Got to be here.” She places one hand on her hip and the other on top of her head like she’s thinking.

  After a long pause, she suddenly exclaims, “I knew it!” She pulls something from the shelf and turns around, showing me another leather-bound album. “I have two!”

  She brings the second album back to the table, opens the cover, and finds the photo she wants on the first page. “Here he is. Angus Fenn. And that’s me at the desk.”

  I lean over the table to get a closer look at the man in the picture. He’s wearing a long-coated suit. He has kind eyes and a trimmed beard. He seems to be standing in a low-ceilinged room, or a hallway, and he’s leaning with one hand on the corner of a desk. The beautiful young woman sitting at the desk behind him must be Miss Amanda. She has shoulder-length hair that is mostly straight but curls up at the ends. Several piles of paper are stacked on the desk, and Miss Amanda is holding a pen, as though she stopped her work just for the photo.

  “Is that an office, or a closet?” I ask.

  “It’s a train car.”

  I look again. I can see it now. It looks like the old passenger cars in Roger’s train books. It has the same lantern-style lights on the walls and the same wood paneling as the antique passenger train car Roger restored for the zoo. “Isn’t this a passenger car? Where are the seats?”

  “Angus took them out,” Miss Amanda says. “He modified several train cars to suit the needs of his circus.”

  Miss Amanda runs her finger over the photos. “St. Louis…hmm, I forgot about that.” She turns the page. “Montgomery, Nashville, Chicago, Des Moines…” Her voice trails off. She stares at the pictures a moment, and then she smiles. “We usually stayed in one spot for a month or two, depending on ticket sales,” she explains. “Then, before we’d overstayed our welcome, we’d move on. It was always c
hanging. Angus searched for just the right towns, the wide-open spaces, and the right talent. And then we moved on to bigger cities and more acts and more ticket sales.”

  It seems Miss Amanda remembers things pretty well if she has a picture for reference. Maybe we just have to come across the right ones.

  Every photo shows the same circus tents, performers, and animals like monkeys and lions, but each photo has a different landscape. And then, suddenly, there’s a picture of elephants.

  “Did you know the elephants, Miss Amanda?” I ask, pointing to the picture. I think I can tell that one of them is Nyah. One of them could be Tendai, but I’m not sure. I count four African elephants, and they’re all wearing fancy circus gear on their heads and backs. I don’t think I like seeing Nyah wearing all of that.

  Miss Amanda looks at the elephant picture and takes a sip of her tea. When she sets the cup back in the saucer, it looks as full as it did before.

  I remember to check the clock and glance at it quickly.

  Eleven-ten.

  It feels like it’s only been five minutes since I walked in here, not twenty.

  “I knew the elephants,” Miss Amanda says. “I liked them and visited them a lot at the beginning. Angus knew I liked them. But then…”

  Miss Amanda shows me a picture of a bright-eyed woman in a glittery orange costume. This picture, although faded with age, is in full color. So are the others next to it. The young woman’s wavy hair almost reaches her waist.

  “This is Elle,” Miss Amanda says quietly.

  “Not Eden?”

  She shakes her head. “Elle. She was an acrobat, but she also had a talent with the elephants. She joined Angus’s circus about four years after I began working for him.”

  She pauses, and the trailer is eerily quiet. I can’t hear the wind or any sound from the clock or the low hum of a normal kitchen. It’s just silent. I’m beginning to wonder whether Miss Amanda has lost the direction of her thoughts or has no more memories to share. I’m about to ask about Eden again when she makes a little throat-clearing sound.

  “Angus had a lot of inheritance money from his family in England. He brought his fortune to the United States and used it to create shows. He featured everything that fascinated him. Different and beautiful and wild things. But he was a bit irresponsible with his money. He’d find unusual places and things to spend it on, and people would take advantage of that. He realized he would no longer have a fortune if he didn’t have someone watching out for it.”

  “So is that what you did for the circus? Took care of the money?” I already know it is, because the article I found said Amanda Holtz was the finance manager for the Fenn Circus. But since talking to me helps her remember, I figure asking questions is a good way to keep it rolling.

  Miss Amanda nods. “Mm-hmm.” She’s looking at another photo of the same beautiful acrobat—Elle. In this one, the acrobat is in a fancy gown and wearing long lace over her hair. She has her arm linked through the arm of a slightly older-looking, suit-wearing Angus Fenn. Elle and Angus are standing in front of a line of train cars with signs hanging over the doors. The people around them seem to be celebrating.

  “I shouldn’t talk about this with you, darlin’,” Miss Amanda says, slowly closing the photo album.

  “Why?” I’m suddenly worried my outburst of questions ruined everything.

  “You barely know me,” she says, shaking her head with a hint of disgust. “What I have to say is not what I would tell a child. Matter of fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever told anyone, child or not.”

  This only makes me more eager to know. This is a good story. I feel I can almost touch it. “Miss Amanda, you can tell me. If you remember it well, maybe it’s something you’re supposed to tell me. Maybe it will be helpful.”

  “You’ll think less of me,” Miss Amanda says, looking again at the yellow paper on the table with her letter written on it.

  I look at the clock.

  Eleven-thirty-five.

  I should leave in fifteen minutes to meet Roger. I can’t lose track of time with Miss Amanda again. Just in case forgetfulness is related to ghost food, I decide not to drink her tea this time.

  I place both hands on the table and give her my best serious face. “Roger always tells me, ‘Everyone makes mistakes. You prove what you are made of when you try to make it right.’ Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  If Miss Amanda were alive right now, instead of a ghost, I think she would’ve taken a deep breath and sighed. Instead, she pushes the letter toward me, turning it slightly so I’m looking at it right side up. “This”—she points at the name Eden—“is Angus and Elle Fenn’s daughter.”

  I feel my heart quicken, like I’m running toward something important.

  Miss Amanda nods. “Angus married the beautiful acrobat, Elle, who became a caretaker for his African elephants. I loved him long before Elle joined the Fenn Circus. I thought he knew that, but he didn’t love me in that way. He loved her.”

  Miss Amanda traces the edge of the photo album with her fingers. It’s suddenly rather cold inside the trailer. I shiver and fold my arms across my chest, hugging them to me.

  “Even after Angus married Elle, he asked me to safeguard the fortune he kept inside a locked metal box. He said he was less likely to waste it on the latest inventions that the salesmen were always pushing at him. Word had gotten around in the selling trade that Angus Fenn would hand over a lot of cash for something interesting. So he asked me to keep the box of his extra savings hidden away where only I could get it. He figured if he had to ask me where the money was, he’d think twice about whether it was a good idea to spend it.

  “So I did as he asked. It made me feel…” She makes a face like the words she wants to say taste bad in her mouth. “It made me feel like I had something Elle did not. I figured that if Angus was asking me to safeguard his fortune, then Elle must not know about it. I realize now that was probably wrong.”

  Grown-ups don’t talk to me the way Miss Amanda does. They always seem to assume I can’t handle things the way they are.

  “I did what he asked,” she continues. “I kept it somewhere Angus didn’t know about, so he wouldn’t spend it unreasonably. He never asked for it, and I kept it hidden. Trouble is, I can’t remember where I hid it, or where it is now.”

  “You kept it hidden, but you didn’t…” I’m struggling to come up with a word less harsh than steal. “You didn’t take it?”

  Miss Amanda’s eyes are extra round. “Oh, heavens, no. No, I would never…” She sits up very straight. “At least, I don’t think I would ever take his money.”

  “But you said before, when I saw you last time, you said you hid it beneath a loose board in the gift shop. So if you didn’t take it, how did Angus Fenn’s fortune end up at the Lexington Zoo?”

  A prickly feeling washes over me like a stinging rain, and I have to get to the bottom of this. Something inside me, something deeper than my heart and my stomach, has to know what happened. I don’t know why, but someone—or something—is depending on this.

  Miss Amanda opens her photo album again, shaking her head and studying the pages. The sunlight shining through the window makes the veins in her wrinkled hands look like purplish rivers on a map. It still seems like I could touch her and she would be solid, but then again, the photo album pages still move with a tiny space between them and her hand.

  I catch another glimpse of elephants in a photo. Although we need more information about the lost fortune, Nyah is also counting on me for something else. “Do you know what happened to the elephants from the circus? Do you know all their names?”

  Miss Amanda keeps turning the pages. I want to make her stay with the elephant picture. She is looking for something about Angus Fenn’s fortune. But she’s not staying on any page long enough to notice anything. What if she’s missing
chances to look at a picture and remember what Nyah needs her to tell me?

  “Do you know Nyah and Tendai?” I ask. Discussing memories with a ghost is mostly like running in place—it’s a lot of effort to go nowhere. “Miss Amanda…” I place my hand on the photo album and hold it there. “Why did Nyah and Tendai come to the same zoo you did? Did you bring them here? Where are the other elephants?”

  Carefully avoiding Miss Amanda’s hand, because I still don’t want to know if my hand will go through hers, I turn the pages back to the elephant picture. “Do you know what Angus Fenn did with all his elephants?”

  She looks at the picture and then at me. Her berry-colored lips press together, and she takes another sip of her bottomless tea.

  “Nyah and Tendai. Yes. They arrived at the zoo after I had been here a few years—after I left working for Angus.”

  She smooths a section of her silvery hair. It’s tucked neatly behind her ear on one side. “Nyah and Tendai.” She repeats their names like speaking them makes the memory solid. “It was a surprise when they showed up here, that’s for sure.” Miss Amanda is staring at the table, and for the first time since I’ve met her, she seems as small as she looks. The air between us is heavy and sad. “I never saw Angus when he brought them here. I only learned Angus had arranged for the elephants to come to this zoo after Nyah and Tendai arrived. I immediately searched the news and learned his wife, Elle, had died. Angus had quit the circus life and left it all to Eden and her husband.”

  “Oh.” I’m sorry for Angus Fenn because his wife died. I’m sorry for this man who owned Nyah and Tendai and dressed them in those circus costumes. But I’m sorry for Miss Amanda, too, because she loved the “dashing” circus man with the kind eyes and because he married Elle instead. “Do you think he left the other two elephants with Eden at the circus?”

  “I never did find out where the others went, but I always thought that maybe, when Angus sent Nyah and Tendai to the zoo, he meant for me to have them back. Perhaps he didn’t know I loved him, but he knew I liked the elephants. I thought about contacting him. But when I got brave enough to try, he had died.”