The White Elephant

by Sid Fleischman

  “Behave, Walking Mountain! Our guest is bad mannered. But give him extra room, eh?”

  The old elephant rumbled and grumbled from the depths of his throat.

  Even in the dark, Run-Run could tell the animals apart. Walking Mountain gave off an earthy smell. The white elephant carried about him the scent of lime blossoms and incense.

  It was all too clear that Sahib had never labored, except to eat and drink. The animal’s tusks hadn’t a scratch on them. They looked as polished as glass.

  But how curious Sahib was! Like a mongoose, Run-Run noticed. His trunk had already explored the thatch of the roof and the cracks between the logs. He boldly sniffed at Run-Run’s small bundle of possessions. The boy knotted the cloth a second and third time.

  In the middle of the night, Sahib began pulling at his leg chain. Run-Run thought about this for a while. Then, with a sudden and happy grin, he knew a way to put his unhappy burden at an end. Hadn’t the black-toothed mahout said that the noble Sahib must be allowed to do as he pleased?

  And wasn’t it clear that the imperial guest now wanted his leg freed from the elephant chain?

  Run-Run would be glad to oblige! And if the white elephant chose to run free as a jungle parrot, whose fault would that be?

  The boy silently unlocked the leg chain. To the distant song of old Bangrak’s wind chimes tinkling in his ears, he fell back to sleep. Smiling.

  CHAPTER 5

  He was heading upriver, curiously following a peacock.

  Run-Run AND A Wave OF THE Hand

  On his thick bed of hay in the elephant stable, Run-Run awoke with a sweaty sense that something was wrong. Was he seeing a ghost in the shadows?

  Wrong, indeed! It was only Sahib, white as a spirit, asleep on his feet beside Walking Mountain.

  “Rude guest! Why didn’t you run away? Are you so pleased with my poor hospitality you chose to stay?”

  The boy dismissed the matter with a scratch of the head. He fed the animals, ate a bowl of rice with three dashes of hot sauce, and began the day’s work. It was barely dawn.

  He led Walking Mountain out of the stable and rode to the hillside plantation. Left behind and unshackled, the white elephant had all day to wander off, in command of his own life.

  But at midday, when the boy and Walking Mountain returned to the stable, there inside stood Sahib, swaying contentedly. He had eaten the hay Run-Run had slept on and the juicy sections of sugarcane Run-Run had been saving for himself. Walking Mountain would never have been so rude and selfish!

  Run-Run’s temper ignited. But he remembered the warning: He must not shout at the sacred elephant. He could not scold his unwelcome guest.

  Run-Run climbed up Sahib’s trunk as he might a coconut tree. He seated himself and gave the beast a prod. At least the white elephant knew his commands. Leaving the stable behind, they lumbered down to the river. Grumpily, Walking Mountain followed along behind.

  “Hear me, big brother!” Run-Run called back. “Do not be jealous. I must tend this white heap of an important being, but it is you I love!”

  Sahib allowed himself to be washed and the tuft of his tail to be brushed out. He chirped as softly as wind chimes. He drank. He gurgled contentedly. He flapped his ears like great palm fans. Then he trumpeted to the world, loudly.

  Walking Mountain looked on with mild scorn and then turned away. He gave a short but louder trumpet blast, as if to say such jungle tricks were nothing special. Anyone could flap his ears and trumpet to the sky.

  Run-Run now checked Walking Mountain’s feet for thorns and his toenails for bruises. He knew that an elephant’s toenails were tender to the touch. He had seen mahouts punishing their beast by striking their toenails. Never had he treated Walking Mountain with such unkindness.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Run-Run noticed the white elephant wandering off. He was heading upriver, curiously following a peacock. The bird strutted as proudly as Prince Noi himself, screaming from tree to tree and rattling open its huge sunrise of a tail.

  Run-Run watched quietly. Would Sahib vanish around a bend and keep walking?

  He might.

  He did!

  The boy smiled with all his teeth. He waved his hand.

  “Farewell, white elephant,” he muttered. “Good-bye, Sahib Pest!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Taking a few steps forward, Sahib dug his polished ivory tusks around a dried stump.

  Dangerous Mischief

  Two days later, the morning sun rose hot to the touch. The mud plastered over Walking Mountain’s hide had curled and was dropping like a fall of leaves. Well before noon, Run-Run gave his elephant a tap. “Enough, beloved! Let us not melt like temple candles! Catch your breath, magnificent one.”

  Resting for the first time in hours, Run-Run was startled to look over and see Sahib standing out in the sun with crows landing on his shoulders. “Pest! So you are back, runaway beast! No one to wash your tail or fetch for you? What are you gazing at? Walking Mountain at hard work to feed you?”

  The white elephant flapped buzz flies from his ears, startling the crows into flight.

  Run-Run was careful to keep his voice polite so as not to offend by his tone. “Do you see any shade here in the ill-tempered fields? Even the flies are falling dead in midair. And if you fall to your knees with heatstroke? Who will the prince blame? He’ll shout, ‘Bring me that elephant brat!’”

  Run-Run wiped his forehead with his bare arm. “So! Be so kind as to run away again. Kindly vanish!”

  The sacred elephant ignored the boy’s earnest suggestion. Taking a few steps forward, Sahib dug his polished ivory tusks around a dried stump. Pushing with his forehead, he lifted the root out of the earth and flung it aside. Just as he had seen Walking Mountain do.

  Run-Run gave the beast a forbidden shout. “Wicked rascal! Have you no kindness? If the prince discovers you plucking trees, he will twist my head from my shoulders like a chicken!”

  The white elephant ignored him and, using his tusks as skillfully as the white man’s fork, lifted another stump.

  Run-Run gave out a great groan. He looked around at the mahouts at work clearing nearby fields. Had anyone caught sight of the white elephant’s daring mischief?

  He saw a thin-chested mahout pointing a finger like a dried twig. Run-Run recognized him as the neighbor everyone called Fish Eyes.

  Run-Run climbed onto Sahib’s neck. Where to hide? Where? Hardly a plantation tree was left standing! But there lingered the hot sun, still low enough to blaze into everyone’s eyes.

  Run-Run quickly prodded the white elephant to turn around and stride toward the morning sun. Let Fish Eyes gaze all he wished! Let Fish Eyes blind himself!

  CHAPTER 7

  “A cheeky scrap of nothing, you are!” said Fish Eyes.

  Run-Run AND Fish Eyes

  The next day, to keep the white elephant from further mischief, Run-Run again chained Sahib’s rear foot to the stable’s teak post. At the plantation he had bought a broken load of partly soured hay, the best he could afford for his two animals. He picked out and burned the spoilage. While the animals made crackling sounds at their breakfast, he fixed himself a rice cake in the ashes of his fire.

  And there stood the mahout Fish Eyes. He was a long, bony man with sweeping mustaches as stained as drainpipes under his nostrils. He claimed the power to tell your future, for a coin or two, by reading a toss of dog bones. It was said that, so cunning was the mahout, that he could plant weeds and harvest rice.

  “So the prince has blessed you with a white elephant,” he remarked, snickering broadly.

  “I am a lucky one, eh sir?” replied Run-Run, thinking it better to thicken his skin for this conversation. “Imagine! A dung beetle like me with two great elephants! Surely, the world is jealous.”

  “Spare me such good fortune!” replied the mahout. “Boy, does the prince know I saw you working the white elephant in the field?”

  “Does the prince tell me what he knows?” Run-R
un replied. “Do I tell the prince what I know?”

  “You worked a sacred elephant,” Fish Eyes said, no longer snickering. His eyes, sparking like flints, bore into Run-Run.

  “With respects, perhaps you are mistaken,” said Run-Run, beginning to eat. What could this bony nuisance of a man be after?

  “With respects, my two eyes saw you.”

  “The sun was in your two eyes,” Run-Run remarked simply. He would confess nothing to this man. “The white elephant may have enjoyed scratching his forehead against a stump when my back was turned. To scratch an itch is not work, venerable mahout.”

  The man brushed aside his mustaches and leaned forward. “What do you suppose the prince would pay to learn that you are thumbing your nose at him, eh? And mistreating the noble elephant?”

  “The next time you see such nonsense, put spectacles on your nose!”

  “A cheeky scrap of nothing, you are!” said Fish Eyes.

  “I mistreat nothing, sir.” Run-Run was not going to be frightened by this troublemaking mahout. “And you, sir? All the world can see the sores on your elephant’s trunk. A kind master would rest him to heal.”

  “Mind your own business, maggot!”

  “Kindly set me the example,” Run-Run snapped back, surprised at his own boldness.

  Fish Eyes rose. He chose to smile, deepening the creases in his face, and swaggered off.

  Run-Run finished his meal silently, his appetite knotted up inside his stomach. He must not allow the white elephant to work in the fields again.

  He watered his animals and found a small thorn in Sahib’s foot. The elephant showed no gratitude, except to spray Run-Run with water.

  The next morning, the boy took extra care with Sahib’s leg irons. He wound up the chain short and firm. Before leaving the stable, he checked again. “Stay, Sahib!” he commanded.

  The white elephant trumpeted in protest, as out of sorts as a child left behind.

  CHAPTER 8

  The great cat leaped onto the white elephant’s back.

  At THE River

  Run-Run could not believe his eyes! Was he having visions in the heat shimmering over the fields?

  There came the white elephant, swaggering and as free as a cloud. He hadn’t escaped the leg chain. He had worked the teak stake out of the ground and was now dragging it behind him like an anchor.

  The beast gazed with his huge and curious eyes at every move Walking Mountain was making. He turned and approached a dead jackfruit stump. Swinging his tufted tail, he uplifted the root as twisted as a tangle of snakes.

  “Devil!” the boy whispered, fearful of uttering a curse of greater fury. “Behaving like a beast for hire! Perhaps the prince will take pity and merely skin me from my bones, eh? And where have you been? You are crawling like a tree with red ants.”

  Run-Run wasted no time leading the white elephant to the river. He worked the leg chain loose. After scrubbing Sahib of ants, he prodded him to the mud wallow and a good roll in the mud.

  When Sahib had had enough and began to find his feet, Run-Run’s breath caught like a bone in his throat. He peered and then blinked at the sight of his white cloud of an elephant rising from the mud. Sahib’s hide had turned red.

  “Oh, royal pest!” Run-Run declared with breathless amusement. “Have you rusted like an iron pot? Not even the great prince would know you!”

  Run-Run’s amusement turned to growing delight. He gazed at the red elephant and thought: What was there now to fear? For all to see, he commanded a work elephant shimmering with mud. He snapped his fingers like a bazaar magician. The white elephant had vanished in a puff of air.

  The next day, Run-Run allowed the muddy elephant to amuse himself plowing up tree stumps. “How eager you are to try out your tusks!” he called. “Have your days been so boring in the prince’s stable, eh? Nothing to do but to stand and be brushed and admired like a peacock in a cage?”

  When Run-Run caught sight of the meddlesome mahout across the fields, he smiled openly. What could Fish Eyes see with his crafty eyes? Nothing but another tusker covered with red mud.

  Later, Run-Run found a spot in the river, free of the other mahouts, to water and replaster his elephant with mud.

  “Don’t you look beautiful!” he declared, giving Sahib an affectionate pat. “Tonight your earnings will provide a dinner of sugarcane and two stalks of bananas! And coconuts, why not, to chew like peanuts in the shell?”

  Nearby, Walking Mountain rose from the water, ears wide and quickly alert.

  As suddenly as a flash of summer lightning, a tiger broke from the trees. Run-Run saw a streak of yellow through the air. The great cat leaped onto the white elephant’s back. Was that tiger crazy, to attack an elephant? His claws dug in, and Sahib let out an astonished bellow.

  Run-Run saw that Sahib was not trained to protect himself! Was that left to gun bearers? The white elephant dropped to a knee. Run-Run picked up a river rock to throw.

  He saw Walking Mountain’s ears flaring. Jungle smart and trumpeting, the old elephant rushed forward. He knocked Sahib around and off his legs. The tiger bounded to the riverbank and swiftly turned for another attack.

  Walking Mountain thundered forward, his great tusks swinging. He skewered the tiger. With a mighty toss of his head, the old elephant flung the tiger into the air like a discarded toy. Gored and bleeding, the tiger gave a furious cry and fled back into the trees.

  Run-Run had seen two ears. This was not the murdering old tiger he’d hoped to meet someday. He rushed through the river shadows to comfort his white elephant. And then he turned to old Walking Mountain and hugged his trunk. “You are brave, great brother! How I love you!”

  CHAPTER 9

  He talked all the while, closely, softly, to comfort the injured animal.

  Tiger Claws

  Old Walking Mountain couldn’t do the work of two, but he tried. Run-Run was almost too busy to eat. For days, he washed the white Sahib’s injuries with fresh water. He used his elephant file to make charcoal powder. Mixing it with the clearest mud he could find, he made poultices to slap over the wounds. Two and three times a day he refreshed the charcoal and mud. He talked all the while, closely, softly, to comfort the injured animal.

  “How fine you look, eh?” he muttered, petting the elephant. “See how you heal? But listen to me, Sahib. You must have eyes in the back of your head for murderers. You have tusks to protect yourself. Better than rifles, your tusks! Did you see Walking Mountain? Did you pay attention? Remember when you were a baby and tried to lap water with your lips like a pariah dog? Someone had to teach you to use your trunk, to blow a waterfall down your throat. Your tusks, too, must learn to protect you.”

  He threw an arm around Sahib’s trunk and gave a hug. “How jealous the plantation mahouts must be to see an elephant brat like me with two handsome beasts! Let them think what they like!”

  In the small stable at night, Run-Run saw Sahib rub his side against Walking Mountain, as if to find comfort in the old elephant’s presence.

  “I think he is beginning to admire you, big brother,” Run-Run remarked in the morning. “Give him a honk. Give him a chirp.”

  But while Walking Mountain tolerated his stablemate, he gave no sign that he was prepared to become friends.

  Weeks later, with the tiger wounds healing well, Run-Run was awakened from his sleep. The tip of an elephant’s trunk was sniffing his nose, his mouth, his ears, and touching his neck. He thought it must be Walking Mountain showing his old affection.

  He rose to an elbow and pushed away the trunk. That’s when he saw that it was Sahib. Sahib, who now smelled of the earth.

  CHAPTER 10

  Run-Run caught sight of Prince Noi not far off on his hunting elephant.

  Sahib IN Danger

  The rumor had spread from village to village that a white elephant could be seen and, perhaps, even touched. The visitors would bring gifts of banana stalks and frangipani blossoms and even a hoarded coin or two.

>   Run-Run did not welcome these intruders. Sahib was well and eager to be out and about and working with his mahout in the fields. Still unaware of his great strength, he was apt to give Run-Run a nudge of affection, knocking the boy into the dirt.

  “Big cousin!” Run-Run would say, laughing. “I beg you to remember I am not an elephant!”

  The hot season was ending, and the days were pleasant. One day shabby clouds came sweeping across the sky. Run-Run and Sahib were clearing stumps. Walking Mountain had begun to limp in the mornings and did little but watch.

  Run-Run caught sight of Prince Noi not far off on his hunting elephant. He patted Sahib as if to comfort himself. Let the prince look over as the road led the hunting party closer. He would see only a mahout and two work elephants covered with red mud.

  And then the breeze shifted. Winds from the teak forests in the north slid across Run-Run’s face. Dark clouds as full as water buckets rushed overhead. Within moments the boy and his elephants were standing in a downpour.

  Run-Run’s breath caught. Sahib was turning white as a cloud! The prince would be certain to notice.

  Run-Run looked for a place to hide. There wasn’t a tree left standing.

  But there stood Walking Mountain.

  Run-Run ran up Sahib’s trunk. Seated on the elephant’s neck, he called out sharp commands.

  “Turn! This way! This way!”

  Sahib, his tusks in the earth, was following his own commands. His tusks got a good grip on a jackfruit root.