“I appreciate what you’re doing, my dear,” she said, “but the only other charities I care about are the ones that deal with horses.”
“Well, we did just rescue a starved race mare.”
Margo Pennington sounded surprised. “A race mare?” she repeated. “A thoroughbred?”
“Yep. Well bred, too,” I replied. “But you know how breeders are. Some of them just don’t care what happens after they’re done running their horses. I don’t know where she’ll go if we close down.”
“Oh, poo! A good breeder always keeps a spot open for old horses,” she countered.
“The good breeders do,” d I agreed. “But they’re few and far between. If we run out of funds, we might have to euthanize her.”
There was a silence. “You say the sanctuary has been taking in old racehorses?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, thinking that somewhere out in the pasture of fifty-seven fat, homely, short-strided, lumpy mongrel horses there had to be at least one more thoroughbred.
“But didn’t you say your organization was called ELLI—for elephants?”
I thought for a moment. “Did I say ‘elephant’?” I gasped. “I must have Margo on my mind. ELLI stands for Equine Liberation League Internationale. For the horses. They come from everywhere, you know.”
“Well, that certainly sounds like a worthy cause,” Mrs. Pennington reflected. “Horses.”
“Yes, ma’am. Horses,” I agreed, suddenly realizing I was onto a good thing. “Ex-racehorses.”
“Well, I’m certain Tom probably won’t agree with what I’m doing, and I don’t like to contradict his plans,” Mrs. Pennington said. “So you’ll have to promise me we won’t breathe a word of this to him.”
“He’s not speaking to me,” I cheerfully reassured her. “But it’s a worthy cause. You have to think of all those horses.” I waited for her while she thought of them.
“Okay, I’ll come,” Margo Pennington announced. “For the horses.”
“And an elephant or two,” I added quickly. “And we would love for you to bring any friends along.”
“I suppose I could,” she agreed.
“That’s so kind of you,” I gushed. “So very kind, and we would be so very grateful. And the ex-racehorses would be so very grateful, all those ex-racehorses just waiting to be rescued would be very grateful. And the elephants, of course. Hugely grateful. Bring everyone you can.”
“Thank you, dear,” Margo Pennington replied. “If you don’t mind, I might even be able to convince Victoria to come. She knows an awful lot of horse lovers in her circle of friends.”
“Victoria?”
Yes, Victoria Cremwell, of the Boston Cremwells,” Margo Pennington replied. “She’s the woman Tom’s going to marry.”
Chapter 30
I SAT WITH THE PHONE CRADLED IN MY LAP.
“I don’t suppose you have a proverb for a fool who never saw this coming,” I said to Diamond.
“Only this,” said Diamond. “You have to invite the bees to get honey.”
I stood up and placed the phone back into its cradle. “Well, I’ve certainly been stung in the butt.”
Diamond gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “Bees bring honey, people bring money. It doesn’t matter who they are.”
“It does matter,” I protested. “I have a strong impulse to call Margo Pennington back and tell her to forget it. I don’t think I can stand to meet Tom’s fiancée.”
“Well, then,” said Diamond. “Here’s another proverb for you: cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Is that Kenyan?”
“No, you idiot,” said Diamond. “That’s just common sense.”
Mrs. Elisabeth Wycliff had a wonderful barbecue planned.
After overhearing me and Diamond arguing over the type of fund-raiser to hold, she made copious lists and hand-wrote the invitations herself, in a fine calligraphy, which stated that Mr. and Mrs. Harold Wycliff were requesting the honor of the presence of their many friends. She had even issued a special invitation to one of Harold’s more influential business acquaintances, the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. There were three major problems, though. One was that the host himself and most of their friends were deceased and wouldn’t be able to make it. Secondly, Mrs. W. preempted us by getting the date wrong by several weeks earlier than we had planned, and thirdly, she decided that her living room was the perfect intimate venue, which meant that supplemental guests eventually included several members of the local fire department as well as a few individuals from law enforcement.
Luckily, Richie spotted the smoke early on and pulled Mrs. Wycliff, dressed in her flannel nightgown and pith helmet, to safety before calling the fire department. They had just arrived, sirens wailing and lights flashing, when Diamond and I pulled into the driveway to start our day. We both jumped from the car and raced to Mrs. Wycliff’s side.
“There’s plenty for everybody,” announced a delighted Mrs. Wycliff as the firefighters quickly clambered from their fire trucks and began pulling hoses from the back. “No need to rush.”
“Oh, thank heaven! The cats!” Diamond shouted as a man came out of the back door, two cats under each arm. Another fireman led the black Labs.
“They’re fine,” he reassured her. “I got them all.”
“What on earth are those?” I asked the fire chief as his men carried out several lumpy, smoldering objects.
“I believe she was roasting the pillows to her kitchen chairs,” he replied. “Luckily there wasn’t much actual fire because of the fire retardant in the material, but there’s an awful lot of smoke.”
“Glad there was no other damage,” Richie replied. “Pillows are easy enough to replace.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to replace her whole kitchen set,” said the fire chief. “She used the chairs for kindling.”
Mrs. Wycliff stood on the front lawn, wrapped in a blanket, and watched the proceedings. “I had such a wonderful dessert planned, too,” she mourned. “Pity these bush parties break up so early.” She coughed hard several times, and a concerned-looking Richie took her hand to lead her to the ambulance.
“I couldn’t possibly leave my guests,” she protested as they gently lifted her onto a gurney. “I was planning to entertain them with a song. Everyone loves my voice.”
“You can sing later,” Richie reassured her. “As soon as we know you’re okay and they let you come back home.”
“But I’m fine,” she insisted. “Listen.” She cleared her throat and started on a shaky rendition of “Meet Me in St. Louis.” As the men lifted her into the ambulance and pulled away, Richie turned to me. “This is just what I’ve been warning you about. She can’t run this place. We could have had a catastrophe. She has no family, you know, and the hospital may not even release her unless there’s someone here to watch over her.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I’ll have to call Tom to see what we can figure out.”
“No! Not Tom!” I grabbed his arm. “Maybe we can help.”
“She needs constant supervision,” Richie said, running his fingers distractedly through his hair again. “How could you do that?”
“I can watch her,” Diamond volunteered. “I don’t mind.”
“You’d have to move in with her,” Richie countered. “She can’t be left alone anymore.”
Diamond shrugged. “She’s like a mum to me, anyway.”
Richie considered this. “You’d have to move in right away. How long will it take you to pack?”
“I’m packed,” Diamond replied. “I live packed.”
The house was empty without Diamond-Rose. There was no one to wake me up at the first light of dawn with a loud rap on my bedroom door followed by a barrage of gorilla hoots. My morning coffee didn’t accelerate my heart rate to supersonic speeds. There was no one paring her toenails at the table because the light was better in the kitchen. Or flinging a safari knife across the room to secu
re the last lamb chop.
And no one to sit with on the back porch during lonely evenings to talk of things wild and domestic, and ponder what it really meant to be civilized.
The day had barely started when my phone rang. I peered out from under my pillow, trying to make sense of the clock on the nightstand. It was almost five.
“You’d better have a good reason for calling me in the middle of the night,” I said, annoyed.
“You’re wasting the day!” Diamond exclaimed into my ear. “You know, a person cannot pick up a pebble with one finger.”
“Why are you picking up pebbles this early in the morning?”
“It’s an old saying,” Diamond answered. “It means I need your help.”
“Sorry, help doesn’t start until after seven a.m.,” I said. “Call back later.”
“It’s about the fund-raiser,” Diamond said. “Come for breakfast, and I’ll tell you what I came up with.”
“I’m not leaving my bed this early.”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Diamond scolded. “I’ll make the coffee. Mum is already barbecuing eggs, and you can bring the usual.”
There was a bloodcurdling scream in the background.
“Elisabeth just have some of your coffee?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s Samantha,” Diamond explained. “She’s a cockatoo. Brought in late last night. Her owner died and left her to the sanctuary.”
“Cup you!” the bird yelled. “Cup you!”
“What?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Diamond said, “but I think she wants a cup of orange juice.”
“Cup you!” the bird repeated. “Cup you! Cup you!”
“It sounds awfully like cursing.” I yawned and sat up.
“Yeah,” Diamond agreed. “But the poor thing isn’t quite getting it.” She turned away from the phone. “You’re saying it wrong,” she corrected the bird. “Listen carefully. It’s fuck you. Fuck you.”
“Don’t say another word,” I yelled at her. “I’ll be right there.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table in Elisabeth’s new folding chairs, Diamond and Elisabeth Wycliff, along with a large pale pink cockatoo, who sat on the back of a chair, shredding a paper cup. She quickly dropped the cup and turned to me with shining onyx eyes.
“Meet Samantha,” Diamond said. “She’s very friendly.”
I reached over to stroke the soft pink feathers. “Wow,” I said, “she’s beautiful.”
“Cup you!” The orange crest on Samantha’s head stood straight up as she opened an amazingly large beak and clamped down on the tip of my finger. “Cup you!” she squawked. “Cup you!”
“I see she’s a carnivore,” I said, pulling my throbbing finger from the bird’s grip.
“Oh, no,” said Elisabeth, holding her hand out to the bird, who stepped lightly onto it and cooed. “She’s very gentle and sweet. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Isn’t that right, Sammy?”
“I love you,” Samantha murmured to her, then squinted in my direction. “Cup you.”
“Sit down and enjoy breakfast,” Diamond said to me, pulling out a folding chair and serving me two char-grilled eggs. “Mum cooked.” Diamond had set up a small barbecue in the kitchen to channel Mrs. Wycliff’s proclivity toward arson into a more useful skill. A saucepan filled with thick black coffee sat on the coals next to a small frying pan. Diamond gave me a significant raise of the eyebrows. “We want to keep Mum happy,” she said, “don’t we?”
“So what plans have you made for the fund-raiser?” I asked, taking a small taste of blackened eggs before surreptitiously slipping them downward to the black Labs. Diamond poured me a cup of coffee.
“We’re going to have food-on-a-stick,” she declared.
“Did you say ‘food-on-a-stick’?” I repeated. “That’s just a sneaky way of saying barbecue! I hate barbecues! They’re…cheesy.”
“Food-on-a-stick is not barbecue, it’s a theme,” Diamond said, picking up the list she had made. “And themes are fun.”
“Food-on-a-stick is not a theme, it’s a barbecue,” I argued. “It’s where you cook it.”
“It doesn’t matter where,” Diamond said, “it’s the spirit. Food-on-a-stick has a fun spirit that will hook people in.”
“It’s stupid,” I said, picturing Tom’s elegant mother waving a barbecue-sauced drumstick between her dainty fingers and slugging from a can of beer. And I could imagine Tom’s fiancée—Victoria—laughing herself silly over our attempts to appear sophisticated. “And besides, how do you get everything on a stick? Like drinks, for instance? How do you put drinks on a stick?”
“You make margaritas and piña coladas”—Diamond smiled triumphantly—“and freeze them with a stick in the middle.”
“That solves only drinks,” I protested. “The rest is still just barbecue.”
“No, the trick is to have the unusual,” Diamond answered. “And since Mum and I figured out the theme, your contribution is to figure out how to do the soup and salad.”
“I even thought of dessert on a stick,” Mrs. Wycliff put in modestly. “Ice cream cake! And I invited a very special guest, an old friend of mine, and I’m going to donate all my old ball gowns, just like they do at the Smithsonian. Oh, it’s going to be a grand party.”
Chapter 31
OUR FIRST HORSE RESCUE APPEARED TO BE A SUCCESS.
The pregnant rescue mare foaled a tiny filly, and Mousi made friends with the Gang of Fifty-seven, as I had taken to calling the original horses out in the field, though some of their numbers had been sold. Some of the new rescues were turned out with them.
But mostly Diamond and I were inordinately proud of our success with Silky, because the bay mare was still alive.
We had all taken turns feeding her. Even Mrs. Wycliff helped, though I suspected by the occasional strong smell of brandy on Silky’s breath, the mash had been spiked. We were giving her small handfuls of grain now, the IVs were gone, and today Dr. Harry had an appointment to remove the sling that was keeping Silky upright and off the damaged leg. He had strongly suggested that if she failed to stand on her own, she should be euthanized. She would lose stewardship over her life.
Diamond was waiting impatiently in the barn. She had been trying to capture Dr. Harry’s attention for weeks, offering him a puff of her cheroot, leaning into him when they worked on Silky, trying to impress him by double flipping her safari knife high in the air and ending with his jacket pinned to a stall door, even though he sometimes was wearing it. Occasionally she would entertain him with a private but earsplitting rendition of the night mating call of the spotted hyena, always brandishing her chestnut hair like a flag of availability when he looked her way. She had even offered to lasso and tie him in under a minute to show him her roping skills, but I knew none of it was going to work. I knew as soon as I saw Dr. Harry’s neat haircut, the clean oxford shirt and navy slacks he wore under his coveralls, the way his boots were always polished, the tidy way he packed up his instruments when he was finished. I knew as soon as I saw him eye Diamond’s crusty safari clothes, her boots that had accumulated twenty years of exotic grime, the thick gray knee socks, twin companions to the boots in terms of hygiene. I knew from the look on his face when she tossed things into a heap in the aisle, used syringes and cotton wipes, and baling twine and empty medicine packets, which he promptly retrieved and threw away.
“You don’t need to worry, I got it covered,” Diamond said when I came into the barn that morning. “I’ve already planned my day around helping Dr. Harry.”
“I know,” I reassured her with a smile. “I won’t get in your way, I just want to see how the mare does. I’ll leave as soon as he checks her over.” I walked over to Silky and rubbed my fingers up and down the thin blaze on her face.
“Oh, Neelie,” Diamond suddenly said, giving me a mournful look. “Am I trying too hard? You know, with him? Before I was married, I never had any trouble getting a guy in Kenya, but maybe that was because it was me or t
he monkeys.”
“You’re very attractive,” I reassured her, “but with my two hundred percent failure rate, I’m the last one to give advice. Are you sure you’re really ready? I mean, you’re the one who talked of hearts and roads and intersections and all that.”
“I know.” She sighed. “But I’m lonely. And I’ve decided to put myself officially back on the road map.”
Punctual as usual, Dr. Harry arrived a few minutes later, bounding into the barn and bidding us all a friendly good morning before examining the mare.
“Swelling isn’t down yet,” he said, looking over the leg, “but let’s see how she stands.” He unhooked Silky from the sling and eased her gently down, onto her feet. She took a wobbly step and collapsed in a heap into the straw bedding.
“Oh no!” Diamond and I exclaimed together.
“Give her a minute,” Dr. Harry cautioned.
The mare struggled to regain her footing. She extended her front legs and pressed against them to stand, then groaned from the effort. She fought for a few minutes more, trying to throw her body forward to lift it, but it was too much of an effort and she finally dropped down. Dr. Harry hooked her up to the sling, and we helped him work the winch to lift her again to her feet.
“You’re lucky she’s tolerating this,” he said to us when we were finished. “A lot of horses fight the sling like crazy, but I think it’s time we did the right thing by her. Even if we save her, she won’t be much use.” He waited for our response. Diamond moved to the horse’s side.
“What do you think, Neelie?” she asked.
I looked at the mare. Diamond and I had taken turns gently brushing her scrungy hair. Tufts of new growth were beginning to cover her still-bony frame. She had put on a little weight and nickered for her meals now. And her eyes had taken on a cautious interest in her surroundings. Regaining her trust would take a long time, but she was fighting to live, at least that much belonged to her.
An Inconvenient Elephant Page 20