A PERFECT FRIEND
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2000 by Reynolds Price
Frontispiece © 2000 by Maurice Sendak
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Book design by Michael Nelson
The text of this book is set in Goudy.
Printed in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Price, Reynolds, 1933-
A perfect friend / Reynolds Price.
p. cm.
Summary: Still grieving over the death of his mother, eleven-year-old Ben finds solace in the special relationship he forms with an elephant in a visiting circus.
ISBN 0-689-83029-7
eISBN: 978-1-439-10627-3
[1. Elephants—Fiction. 2. Circus—Fiction. 3. Human-animal communication—Fiction. 4. Grief—Fiction. 5. Death—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P93163 Pe 2000
[Fic]—dc21
99-55397
Dedication
FOR MARCIA DRAKE BENNETT and PATRICIA DRAKE MASIUS
FIRST FRIENDS
BOOKS BY REYNOLDS PRICE
A PERFECT FRIEND 2000
FEASTING THE HEART 2000
LETTER TO A MAN IN THE FIRE 1999
LEARNING A TRADE 1998
ROXANNA SLADE 1998
THE COLLECTED POEMS 1997
THREE GOSPELS 1996
THE PROMISE OF REST 1995
A WHOLE NEW LIFE 1994
THE COLLECTED STORIES 1993
FULL MOON 1993
BLUE CALHOUN 1992
THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE 1991
NEW MUSIC 1990
THE USE OF FIRE 1990
THE TONGUES OF ANGELS 1990
CLEAR PICTURES 1989
GOOD HEARTS 1988
A COMMON ROOM 1987
THE LAWS OF ICE 1986
KATE VAIDEN 1986
PRIVATE CONTENTMENT 1984
VITAL PROVISIONS 1982
THE SOURCE OF LIGHT 1981
A PALPABLE GOD 1978
EARLY DARK 1977
THE SURFACE OF EARTH 1975
THINGS THEMSELVES 1972
PERMANENT ERRORS 1970
LOVE AND WORK 1968
A GENEROUS MAN 1966
THE NAMES AND FACES OF HEROES 1963
A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE 1962
A PERFECT FRIEND
BENJAMIN LAUGHINGHOUSE BARKS WAS CALLED BEN. By the time he was nine, he asked his friends to call him “Laugh.” Laughinghouse had been his mother’s last name before she married his father. But nobody wanted to call Ben “Laugh,” nobody but a red-haired boy named Duncan Owens, who became his second-best friend. Ben was generally friendly to young and old people, but even that early “Laugh” didn’t seem right for a serious person. His cousin Robin Drake was one year younger, and she knew Ben as well as anybody. She tried to call him “Laugher” for a while; but when Ben’s mother died the year he was ten, he finally asked Robin to call him anything except “Laugher.”
He was the only boy in school who had a girl for his best friend, and he could usually smile at Robin’s joking. After his mother died, though, Ben’s out-look changed; and he went on feeling sad for a long time. Even a whole year later, he still missed his mother at night; and the sadness would keep him awake sometimes. Then he would lie very flat in the dark, with both his arms stretched down by his sides, and think about elephants to help him sleep. Sooner or later they always helped him. Just the thought of their power and the awesome gentleness with which they treated each other most times could ease his mind and send him on into sleep like a boat on a calm dark lake.
Some people love horses or tropical fish. Some are devoted to cranky parrots that can bite off a finger. Ben knew one boy who kept a mighty boa constrictor right by his bed—a snake that could choke him to death as easily as strangling a kitten. Ben Barks loved elephants long before he’d seen one. He sometimes wondered how that love started. Since he lived in a small quiet town and had never even been to a zoo, Ben guessed his mother had been the cause.
By the time he was three years old, his mother would sit with Ben at a kitchen table and draw good pictures of elephants with a pencil. When she was a child, she’d seen an elephant in a traveling circus, and she and Ben’s father had a few books and magazines with photographs of actual elephants who lived far off in Africa and Asia. But Ben’s mother never copied those pictures. For some mysterious reason of her own, since childhood, the idea of elephants was planted in her head; and when she drew her idea on paper, the elephant always looked realer than any photograph—to her and her only child Ben at least.
Good as she was, she always asked Ben to draw along with her. At first Ben’s drawings were funny, but they managed to look more or less like elephants. When Ben and his mother each finished a drawing, she would help him color his picture with crayons. Ben colored them red or blue or yellow—impossible colors.
His mother let him do that for a while. But when he was five and the idea of elephants was safe in his own head, his mother said “Ben, in Africa and Asia, all elephants are gray or brownish gray. Let’s respect the way they really look.” From then on Ben made his drawings true to life or as true as he could since he still hadn’t seen a live elephant.
Soon after that Ben’s mother mostly let him draw alone. He was his parents’ only child; and since they lived on the edge of town with few close neighbors, he had no playmates except his cousin Robin and occasionally Duncan Owens, when Duncan’s mean father would let him play. Robin lived a mile away. On weekends she and Ben would ride their bicycles to visit each other, and then they’d act out the stories they’d read or seen in movies. Ben went to every movie that starred real elephants, and most times Robin went along with him. In a lot of their games, Ben would ride an imaginary elephant and sometimes let Robin ride behind him through the nearby woods. It could make them happy for a whole afternoon; and once Ben started school and could read, he spent many evenings reading about real elephants in his father’s books.
That way he learned a lot about them. Elephants lived in good-sized families and guarded their babies carefully. They were stronger than anything else alive on land; and they had huge brains that made them at least as smart as the smartest other creatures—whales, dolphins, pigs, gorillas, and chimpanzees. The only thing elephants did that seemed wrong to Ben was butting down whole trees just to eat the top leaves. Now and then they also tramped down the gardens of helpless people who were trying to grow their food and live in elephant country. Even one elephant could ruin a whole cornfield by just walking through it. And when they got angry occasionally, some elephant might badly hurt or kill someone. That would only happen, most times anyhow, when they felt their young were in real danger.
When Ben was seven the year after he began first grade, his parents surprised him by taking him and Robin to an actual circus that was visiting the nearest big town for two days. It was Ringling Brothers, the Greatest Show on Earth—or so it said on its red-and-blue posters. Ben knew the whole thing was his mother’s idea, and he secretly wished that he could have gone with nobody but her. He liked his father and Robin; but he and his mother had spent almost their best times together, drawing elephants and trying to imagine their lives. His mother got tickets for the whole family, though. So Ben concealed his disappointment, and off they all went. The whole way there Ben had told himself silently to concentrate on the great sights to come and not t
o let Robin or his joking father keep him from seeing and memorizing every good thing and of course every detail of the elephant troop.
But before the show started in the huge main tent, Ben and the others walked through a long but smaller tent where all the circus animals waited. There were lions and tigers and leopards pacing back and forth in cages, looking fierce and lonely at the same time. There was one lone gorilla crouched down in the corner of a cage with the thickest bars of all. His face was as sad as anything Ben had ever seen—and sadder still because there was nothing anybody could do to cheer him up, short of sending him back to the African mountains.
Then the last thing before Ben and his family entered the main tent was two lines of elephants. One was on Ben’s left, one on his right. By the shape of their heads, Ben knew at once they were Indian elephants, who were easier to tame than the ones from Africa, though even the smallest one was twice as tall as Ben’s father. When they came into sight, Ben stopped in his tracks. However many elephants he’d read about or seen in movies, he had never guessed at the high excitement he would feel when he first saw one, alive and nearby.
He felt as if he were flying through space with just the power of his own two arms, and the speed had emptied the air from his lungs. But that didn’t scare him. Ben had always liked a great many things in the world around him. A well-played game or an arrowhead he might find in the woods could make him happy for hours. But the sight of these elephants made him happier than he’d ever been before. Joyful as he was, soon he got his breath back and counted the elephants carefully.
There were fifteen on one side, fourteen on the other—twenty-nine live elephants in all. They looked enough alike to be a single family; but each one of them was moving a little, side to side as if dancing alone with nobody near. None of them were looking at each other but were facing straight forward, chewing mouthfuls of hay. Each one had a small chain around an ankle, and each chain was hooked to an iron post in the ground behind. Of course they all could have pulled those up with no trouble whatever and gone anywhere they wanted to go unless men with powerful elephant guns shot and killed them.
Ben even realized that, with their famous strength, any one of them could take a single step, break free completely, and kill every person in the whole crowded tent. Their family together could tear up every building in town, including the water tank, and crush all the people. But they just continued their gentle dance and seemed not to make any harmful plans. Ben could hardly believe he was in the same space with such peaceful and noble creatures. A few yards ahead of him, a human family with several children were feeding peanuts to one old-looking elephant. With excellent manners she was taking the nuts from the children’s hands with the tip of her trunk and then transferring them straight to her mouth.
Ben’s parents had moved on a few steps ahead, but now his father looked back and grinned. “Son, you want to buy a bag of peanuts?”
It turned out Robin was standing just behind him. She said “Oh yes!”
Ben mostly trusted Robin but hearing her say “Yes” made him want to say “No.” Robin was wrong. To stand here and feed little dried-up peanuts to these enormous creatures seemed l1ike a bad joke. Ben shook his head No and walked on forward, ahead of the others, toward the main tent. He knew his feelings were stingy-hearted, but all he wanted to do right now was be alone in a private place with all these elephants—or even just one. Nobody else but his mother would be near, and no other noise but the sound of her voice could be heard around them. He told himself that was crazy to hope for. And when he stopped at the main tent door and turned to smile at his family, it was one of the hardest things he’d done.
Under the main tent there were three wide rings on the ground. Ben’s father had already told him how everything that would happen in the show would happen inside those rings at the same time. It would be up to Ben to figure out which ring to watch at any moment. If he wasn’t careful he’d miss the best part. So all through the long and busy performance, Ben smiled at the clowns, felt scared for the man who went into one wide cage with lions and tigers roaring together; and he crossed his fingers for the men and women on the trapeze swings and high wires. Mainly he watched the elephants do every one of their acts.
For the first time Ben saw in person how patient they were and how respectful to the people who gave them orders with sticks and whistles. That much made him glad. He was sorry, though, that all their stunts were silly child’s play thought up by the humans that owned them. He was sorry too that he still hadn’t touched one or stood where one could see him clearly; but he wasn’t sorry about the peanuts. Handing a peanut to an elephant would be like handing a penny to a king or giving a single scrap of bread to a starving orphan, bareheaded in the snow.
It was soon after that when Ben realized he truly loved elephants in a stronger way than anything else alive but his mother. The simplest picture of any elephant would still catch his eye. He would sit down right then, study it closely; and soon he would feel the best kind of peace inside his head. He wouldn’t have to wait till night came and then just ask them to help him sleep. So he went on drawing them better and better, and then he made models of them with clay. It gave him more pleasure than any other animal or friend, and no other kind of game could help him that much.
Ben often prayed that his father would buy him a baby elephant to raise. They had a broad field of grass and weeds behind the house. On the edge of the field was a small clear pond, and then the woods started. In the woods there were more trees than any one elephant could ever push down, or so Ben believed. He could easily imagine the pleasure of coming home from school each afternoon to find an elephant waiting and pleased to see him after such a long day. He had heard that elephants could speak with each other, over miles of distance, in sounds so low no human could hear them. Ben’s ears were keen and he told himself he would learn to hear their secrets and to share his secrets with them. He’d already had some secret talks with his family’s dog. Surely an elephant would speak with him too. Couldn’t his father place a want ad in some city paper and find a young elephant that might have outgrown its narrow home and needed more space?
But his father told him an elephant cost more money than they would ever own. It would also need more space and food than their field could provide.
Ben understood that but was badly disappointed, and he went on asking for an elephant in his prayers at night. What he mostly said in silence was “Please make me strong and gentle enough to be a good keeper for a real live elephant. Then let somebody give us one, and let it be happy in our back field.” Ben had also prayed when his mother was sick. But she died anyhow in terrible pain with Ben at her bedside, holding her hand and begging to help her. So Ben knew his prayers were probably useless. They gave him hope, though—the kind of hope that lucky people have and everybody strongly needs. It helped Ben believe he would grow up someday and find the necessary time and money to bring the things he loved closer to him where he could guard them, day and night, from enemies, sickness, and unfair punishment.
After Ben’s mother died, leaving him and his father alone in a sad house, Ben’s cousin Robin spent even more time than usual with Ben. She also missed his mother, who had been her favorite aunt. So she and Ben began to make up serious games about death. At first they looked for dead birds or insects to bury in shallow graves with flowers on top and rocks to show where the small bodies lay. Then Ben told Robin the legend that says that elephants who live in the jungle or on the plains will go to the same secret place to die. Just the ivory tusks of all the dead elephants would be of great value to find and sell; and since the elephants’ graveyard gets bigger by the year, greedy people are always hunting for it.
Ben also told Robin that the legend was probably wrong, but that didn’t stop them from spending long days pretending to hunt for the elephants’ graveyard in the thick woods back of Ben’s home. Every now and then either Robin or Ben would find a smooth white rock that they’d pretend was a genuin
e piece of a tusk or a tooth. Once they even found the long white rib of a big buck deer that had died long ago. They told themselves it was ivory for sure and that they must be very near their goal—the elephants’ graveyard with all its treasure—but of course they weren’t. Deep down they knew there was no such place.
Robin was ready to go on hunting, but Ben just said “You can but I won’t.”
She understood why. Ben had given up hope of finding anything grand or rewarding. He also knew that in the real world of Africa and Asia, elephants would stop by the bones of their dead family members and turn them over very slowly with their trunks. Sometimes they’d stand and do this for hours as if they knew the bones were all that was left of some live creature that once took close care of them when they were young and could never be repaid.
After Ben gave up hope from such games, he and Robin gave up playing so seriously. She did once suggest that they ride through the human cemetery on their bikes. It was a small green place on a hillside, and at the bottom was a narrow river with a long sandbar that Ben liked to wade out to. Ben didn’t suspect that Robin had a private plan, so he readily agreed to the trip. It was too cold to wade; but once they’d stood by the river and skipped flat rocks on the surface, Robin picked some cattails—tall brown and green plants—and started back uphill alone, where they’d left their bikes. Ben eventually followed her until he saw she was squatting down by his mother’s white gravestone. He hadn’t been there since the day of her funeral, and he wasn’t going now. Deep as his mother was buried in the ground, Ben was afraid he might hear her moan. He picked up his bike and called back to Robin “You coming with me or not?”
“Did you forget what today is?”
Ben said “It’s a Wednesday sometime in January.”
Robin had finished arranging the cattails in the jar for flowers that stayed by the grave. So she stood and smiled. “It’s your mother’s birthday.”
Ben thought for a moment, then pedaled away slowly.
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