The Mourning Parade

by Dawn Reno Langley

  Sophie rocks backward on her front legs. The woman laughs and reaches a hand out, touches the elephant’s trunk lightly. Politely. There is no smell of fear in this woman, no hook in her hand, no harsh commands in her voice.

  She quietly stands still and regards the elephant, calmly gazing into her eyes, and there is a peacefulness that fills the void between them. The elephant no longer reaches for the bananas. Instead, trunk still upraised, she exhales with a deep shudder and releases a billow of breath in the woman’s direction.

  The breath pushes the woman away, causes her to shriek so loudly Sophie, too, backs away. Then the woman laughs again, and Sophie cocks her head and scrutinizes the woman as if wondering exactly what is so funny. For another moment, they stare at each other, then Sophie’s knee begins to throb, and she bounces her trunk against the sore, knowing what is coming. The pain. She lifts her leg a few inches from the ground, and the burning subsides momentarily, but she can’t stand with her leg up in the air for long. The pain will return.

  The woman, still watching, grabs her paper and pencil, scratches something on the page.

  Then, noises from up the road. The scent of more humans floats toward where Sophie stands, one leg up, an eye on the distance. The tightness in the elephant’s chest returns.

  The woman hears the sounds, too. She swings her hair to her other shoulder and chews on the ends, then reaches up to pat the elephant’s trunk before she turns and walks toward the men coming in their direction.

  Sophie turns her head, but out of one brown eye, she watches the group of humans move away and listens for a long time until she can hear nothing except the calls of some monkeys in a nearby grove of trees.

  Nine

  Friendship is unnecessary like philosophy,

  like art . . . It has no survival value; rather it is

  one of those things which give value to survival.

  -C.S. Lewis

  “Nervous habit or does it taste good?”

  Natalie jumped and let loose an embarrassed yelp that sent birds fluttering through the trees.

  Mali emerged from the shadows of a eucalyptus tree, laughing so hard and long that tears rolled down her face. She clapped her hands and tried to speak, but every time she opened her mouth, all she could do was giggle. Finally, she managed, “I’m so sorry, but if you could have seen your face . . .”

  Natalie thought, but Mali’s laughter was contagious and exactly the remedy for the tension she’d been feeling.

  When her laughing finally subsided, Mali took Natalie’s arm and looked up into Natalie’s face, her mouth still upturned in a smile. Wearing a dark turban on her head, a food-stained long-sleeved black shirt, and an ankle-length multicolored skirt with a pair of old, dusty flip-flops, Mali was still beautiful because of the light in her dark brown eyes.

  “So, why are you here? Sophie misbehaving?” Mali asked casually as if it were no surprise to find Natalie here so early in the morning.

  “We were having a conversation about how to fix the world’s problems,” Natalie answered, returning Mali’s grin. “Sophie has some wonderful ideas on how to achieve world peace, and she agrees with me that the economy could be fixed by printing some more money.”

  “I quite agree with you, Dr. DeAngelo,” Mali said, sending herself into another peal of laughter.

  Behind her, Sophie shuffled to the other side of her pen, favoring her leg a little but not acting as if she were in pain. Natalie stuck her notebook in her back pocket, determined to return later in the day to get a better look at Sophie’s wound.

  “I was heading for the greenhouse to get some vegetables for lunch. Want to come?” Mali tugged Natalie’s arm.

  Natalie nodded, grateful for the interruption, especially since Mali was the only person other than Andrew who’d been warm and welcoming.

  They meandered down the path that wove through tall palm grasses, and Mali chatted about what she wanted to make for lunch and dinner, inane conversation that they would forget within an hour, yet Natalie felt a kinship she hadn’t felt with another woman for a long time. She hadn’t been close to anyone for more than a year.

  Some of her best friends had opened up to the media, telling personal stories about Danny’s childhood and the strong connection he and Natalie had. They shared anecdotes about Stephen. Treasured moments. They betrayed her, cruelly depriving her of her private grief. She shuttered herself from all relationships after that, wouldn’t accept anyone’s apology. Yet no matter what she said or did—or what she didn’t say or didn’t do—every move she made, every time she went to a celebration instead of to church, every moment she spoke out about gun control, every story about her daily life found its way into news reports. Grieving mother. Well-known vet. Divorced. The media was fascinated with the woman who’d lost both her sons in a school shooting. They made her boys their salacious headlines. Nothing hurt her more.

  Maybe now, in this place, where she was only Dr. Natalie DeAngelo, the vet, rather than Natalie DeAngelo, the mother of two of the Lakeview School shooting victims, she could relax. Here she was simply an American volunteer instead of a victim. She wasn’t the grieving mother here; she was simply Natalie.

  And that’s the way she wanted to stay.

  Suddenly they were walking under a huge green netting Natalie hadn’t even noticed until it replaced the blue sky. Mali walked ahead, into the midst of a huge nursery, at least an acre’s worth of tender, green plants. A pungent and spicy smell assaulted Natalie’s nostrils, damp and fermented, like the smell of a green lake overgrown with algae. Yet there was a biting fragrance to it so undeniably Thai that Natalie felt if she opened her mouth, she should have been able to take a bite out of the smell itself.

  “How do you keep the elephants away from this?” They moved down the aisle between plants that ranged from barely-sprouted seedlings to fully grown vegetables ready to be harvested. “Surely this would be dessert for them.”

  Mali picked a leaf off one plant, crushed it between her fingers and brought it to her nose. With a smile, she beckoned for Natalie to take a whiff. Spicy yet sweet. Pleasant.

  “We have an extensive web of fencing around the perimeter of the compound.” Mali pointed outside the tent. “Andrew’s design. It’s been interesting to see the animals adapt to it, but they finally understand. Fence is bad. River is good. Before the fence, we never would’ve been able to raise these.” She wiggled her fingers at the thousands of plants in front of them: yellow squash blossoms, cilantro and basil, reddish-green tomatoes, some white gourds Natalie had never seen before, and dozens of glossy purple and red peppers. The food grown here obviously fed the dozens of people who worked and volunteered for the sanctuary, and probably supplemented the elephants’ diets, as well.

  “The fence keeps them in and keeps others out.” Mali motioned again, clockwise to indicate the larger world, then counter clockwise to indicate the smaller world that constituted the sanctuary itself. “We have a small banana plantation and some rice paddies, too. The little boy you met—the one who doesn’t talk—his parents work the paddies for us.”

  “Does he understand English?”

  “Oh, Anurak understands English fine. I’ve been speaking English to him since he was a baby. His parents—my cousins—speak only Thai. They’re Karen, so he’s bilingual. A bright little guy.”

  She continued walking down the aisles, deftly pinching leaves off various plants, releasing scents, some of which Natalie recognized: oregano, mint, cilantro. Some she did not. Mali plucked ripe peppers and long cucumbers, stretching her shirt out to create a makeshift basket.

  “Can I give you some advice?” Mali’s clipped English accent seemed so out of sync with the way she dressed and the exotic tilt of her head.

  Though the question came out of left field, Natalie felt she had no choice but to say, “Of course.”

  “If you’re here for the
elephants, you should speak with one of the mahouts. They’re the ones who know them best. Ask for help. Let yourself be taught. I respect your education and am certain everyone else does, as well, but the elephants will not know how many years you attended school. They’ll be able to sense your insecurity before you step into range of them. What they need to know is whether you can communicate with them, and that doesn’t happen overnight.” She gathered a colorful cornucopia of bright red, persimmon, and lemon yellow vegetables as if collecting summer flowers into a fragrant bouquet.

  Natalie pulled out the bottom of her own shirt like she did as a kid in her grandmother’s garden, and Mali rewarded her with the heavy weight of a large head of broccoli and a royal purple eggplant. Then Mali glanced at Natalie sideways, her tongue caught between her teeth as if considering whether to finish her thought.

  “My son—” Mali looked off past Natalie’s shoulder as if considering a thought. “He could help you. Siriporn is a mahout. He learned with my Karen cousins. And maybe it’ll keep him busy. He’s been spending far too many hours with the Red Shirts anyway.”

  Natalie remembered the rally she and Andrew passed on the way from the airport. “He’s with the protestors?”

  “My son is a dreamer,” Mali added a sarcastic lilt to the last word. “He thinks he can change the world and doesn’t realize how dangerous that is.”

  Natalie’s smile melted from her lips, and she turned her head quickly so Mali wouldn’t witness the tears that had unexpectedly sprung into her eyes. She had no right to feel angry but a small knot of fury filled her chest.

  ‘My son.’

  Mali had said it so easily. Nonchalantly. As if it was no big deal to have a son. As if he were no more important than one of her squash plants. She had said his name as if he angered her. Her eyes hadn’t warmed. She hadn’t added comments about his age or how he looked nor had she bragged about his talents. The tingles down Natalie’s neck were because of Mali’s omissions, and it wasn’t the first time she’d felt the emotion. Natalie experienced it every single time someone talked about a son or a daughter in a way that felt too casual to her. It infuriated her that parents took their children for granted though she knew deep down in the most logical part of herself that she was being irrational. In her very soul, she knew Mali would feel as much pain as Natalie did herself if she had experienced a loss like Natalie’s. But that part of her soul was tucked away safely and the emotions now coursing through her hovered right below the surface. They were the ones that protected her from the deepest part of her pain.

  “ . . . I could send him to introduce himself to you at dinner tonight,” Mali continued. She had not stopped talking, Natalie knew, but even if someone had offered to give her boys back to her—unharmed—at that very second, she could not have repeated what Mali had said.

  She turned back to Mali and forced a stiff smile.

  “Do you have children?” Mali asked.

  Natalie caught her breath, taken off guard by the unexpected question. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes. I had two boys.”

  It was Mali’s turn to pause. From the corner of her eye, Natalie felt the burn of her surprised stare. “Had?”

  Unable to speak because of the strangling lump in her throat, Natalie nodded.

  For a moment, they walked in silence, then Mali stopped and put a hand on Natalie’s forearm. “The Buddha said that ‘every day we are born again. What we do today matters most.’ Your boys would be proud of what you’re doing, Natalie.”

  They stood on the path, Mali’s hand still on Natalie’s arm, its weight and warmth strangely comforting. Neither spoke. Memories of the boys filled Natalie’s mind. Christmases. First days at school. Silly little moments that meant nothing: a giggle in the middle of a supermarket aisle, the crazy cross-eyed look Stephen gave her one night when she washed him in the bathtub, the first word Danny learned. “Ducky,” he had said. “Ducky.”

  “They would have been,” Natalie said, finally, and she put her own hand on top of Mali’s. “They would’ve been proud. Thank you for reminding me of that.”

  Mali placed her fingers on her heart, then reached up to touch Natalie’s. “I might have gone to university to learn about people’s minds, but it’s their hearts that truly matter. We are mothers. I understand. Believe me.”

  As they walked back to the pavilion where several women already stood at the cook-stoves, Natalie thought about Mali’s advice to learn from the mahouts. Was it necessary? After all, she wasn’t here to learn how to train an elephant. She was here to treat broken bones and diagnose illnesses and to possibly heal an aging matron with a horrible leg wound. That was what was exciting. Not elephant training. Other people could train animals. She was here to treat them.

  But it was the right thing to do. The boys would have told her that.

  Ten

  Of all the animals, the boy

  is the most unmanageable.

  -Plato

  From where Natalie sat, she watched six elephants taking their baths in the filtered sunlight through the monkey pod, cashew, and breadfruit trees that lined the deep green hills and mountains around them. The constant hum of busy insects and the oppressive afternoon heat lulled her. She sat as still as possible, feeling the drops of perspiration lazily crawl down the back of her neck. It was useless to keep wiping them off. Though her body was still, her mind whirred with thoughts of Sophie and how to deal with her injury. The physical wound was the easy one to heal; the emotional one, lots tougher.

  In the water, the younger mahouts played with their elephants, perfecting their dives and calling to each other as they hopped nimbly from one large gray head to another. The elephants joined in, spraying water from their trunks purposely toward the boys. The spray often floated Natalie’s way, offering a pleasant mist on her arms and legs.

  One of the mahouts—Chanchai, whose name meant “skilled winner”—had a reputation for being as sharp-tempered as any bad elephant the sanctuary had ever taken in. One of his wide-set eyes turned to the right, and so did the other. Whenever he looked at someone, he had to turn his head, which, ironically, caused the other person to shift out of sight. His pugilist nose told the tale of far too many fights on Bangkok streets, most of which (it was rumored) were with elephants. Mali told Natalie that morning, “If you sit and talk to him, he’ll tell you about the many bones he’s broken in his body and show you a few appendages that haven’t healed quite straight. Even his voice seems broken. He either barks or squeaks.”

  He sat up now with one knee resting on Ali’s head, gazing over at the other boys who laughed and talked as the elephants surged backward and forward in the clear, cool water. Ali, the first elephant Natalie had met, was also the largest bull in the herd. At thirty-two-years-old, he was known for his crazy temper when he went into mustph. The only ones who could control him were Chanchai and Mali’s eldest son, Siriporn.

  According to Mali, Chanchai had tried working with Sophie when she first came to the sanctuary, but Andrew had to rescue him when Sophie appeared determined to kill the mahout who was as mean as she. She did better with Siriporn and preferred him over and above anyone else at the sanctuary, though Siriporn couldn’t give her all his time. He managed the mahouts, often taking on responsibility for any rescues the sanctuary did, then rehabilitating the new elephants.

  Watching Chanchai in the late afternoon sunlight, Natalie believed that the mahout would have happily killed Sophie, too. Natalie couldn’t quite choose the right word, but she sensed there was a cruelty to him that even he couldn’t control. Like Sophie’s. After all these years, it still amazed her how animals and humans who worked together often shared some of the same traits.

  The rest of the mahouts pulled themselves up on the bumpy back of their dove-gray giants with arms like strands of twisted rope, bellowing in a language she didn’t understand. Last night, she had heard Chanchai repeating the only Ame
rican word he knew: drunk. Now, she heard it again. Over and over again: Drunkdrunkdrunkdrunk. DRUNK. Giggling uncontrollably, as if he were, indeed, drunk. His white teeth flashed giddily like bright slashes of sun against his brown skin.

  During their conversation, Natalie wondered idly what the mahouts said now as they moved back and forth on their elephants, glancing in her direction every once in a while. The words seemed more than guttural commands. Gossip, perhaps. But what did Thai mahouts gossip about? What they did with the kitchen girls last night? What their mother said about their dreams to move to India? Several had told Andrew they were leaving at the end of the dry season.

  As the late afternoon cicadas buzzed and the boys’ voices blended in with that summertime sound, Natalie let her mind wander and noticed crazy details: how she couldn’t stop twisting the candy wrapper she had pulled off a piece of soft chocolate moments before this drama began to unfold, how Chanchai raised his eyebrows when Ali’s eyes widened and rolled back in his head like gray and white kaleidoscope circles, how the water eddied in patterns that caught the sunshine like a mirror, and how Ali, even though blind in one eye, had no problem finding his way around and acting like the big male he was. She thought about Sophie again, wondered how much of her lack of control was PTSD and how much was physical pain. She longed to get close enough to examine the wound and treat it. Though she had no doubt Hatcher had tried his best, she couldn’t help but wonder if she might have better luck.

  One of the mahouts yelled a warning, but it was too late; Ali rolled completely underwater taking Chanchai with him. They swam dangerously close to Kalaya, an old logging elephant, bringing screeches from the mahout atop her. For a long time, Ali remained under water with no sign of Chanchai. Natalie held her breath. She should do something, but what?