The Masterwork of a Painting Elephant

by Michelle Cuevas

  “Not a lot of elephants would let you use their tail to paint a picture,” the man said. “I felt black and white today, but the two of you colored me in.”

  SIXTEEN

  Postcards

  [In a postcard (from Pigeon to the residents of the too-small-for-a-name town) that has a picture of the Musée des Égouts de Paris.]

  THIS IS A MUSEUM ABOUT THE VAST SUBTERRANEAN WORLD OF SEWERS. IT IS STRANGE. WHEN WE TOOK THE TOUR THEY TOLD US IF IT RAINS, THEY’VE GOT 30 MINUTES TO GET EVERYONE OUT BEFORE THE TOUR AREA FLOODS.

  PIGEON

  [In a postcard (from Pigeon to Darling Clementine) that has a picture of a shop called Deyrolle on rue du Bac. It’s a tiny place, a taxidermy shop.]

  AT THIS SHOP, NO ANIMAL IS TOO EXOTIC, OR TOO ORDINARY, TO BE STUFFED. LIONS, TIGERS, A CHIMPANZEE, A KANGAROO, A WARTHOG. SOME ARE ONLY FOR DISPLAY, BUT SOME ARE FOR RENT OR FOR SALE. JUST THINK: YOU COULD HAVE A ZEBRA AT YOUR NEXT BIRTHDAY PARTY.

  PIGEON

  P.S. THEY ALL DIED OF NATURAL CAUSES.

  [In a postcard (from Pigeon to Mama and Papa) with a picture of the Chapelle Expiatoire on the front. This postcard has no address.]

  THIS IS WHERE LOUIS XVI AND MARIE-ANTOINETTE WERE LAID TO REST AFTER THEY WERE GUILLOTINED. IT IS A MAGICAL, HAUNTED PLACE IN THE HEART OF PARIS.

  PIGEON

  [In a postcard (from Pigeon to the Amazing Singing Hoboes) that has a picture of a music festival called Fête de la Musique and a crowd of musicians on the street.]

  THIS IS A FESTIVAL WHERE AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS SING AND PLAY IN PUBLIC SPACES ALL OVER FRANCE. JUST LIKE YOU, BUT WITH MORE MEMBERS OF THE BAND.

  PIGEON

  [In a postcard (from Pigeon to Pierre the Turtle) that is colored pure black.]

  THIS IS A RESTAURANT CALLED DANS LE NOIR. YOU EAT IN THE DARK AND ARE SERVED BY BLIND WAITERS. KIND OF LIKE BEING INSIDE A SHELL.

  PIGEON

  [In a postcard (from Birch to his acrobat) that has on it a picture of the Louvre Museum.]

  I LOVE YOU TILL THE END.

  BIRCH

  SEVENTEEN

  A Wolf in Frog’s Clothing

  The art opening in Paris was very fancy. The gallery filled with fancy people in fancy clothing. The men wore black tuxedos and the ladies shimmering dresses, with diamonds in their ears and around their necks. Everyone listened to fancy music that tinkled through the air from the grand piano, and even the food was fancy: tiny mushrooms filled with heavenly cream and puff pastries oozing with crab served on fancy silver trays by fancy waiters.

  Birch was nervous and paced back and forth in the gallery. He had on a bow tie and a top hat and looked quite dapper. Slim Spatucci gave us a thumbs-up and went out and told the piano player to stop playing. This was the moment I had been waiting for.

  “Birch,” I whispered, “are you ready?”

  “Ready?”

  “Ready for me to tell the world that you’re the real painter.” Birch was shocked, but managed to nod his head. I could feel his body tremble with joy.

  “Your attention, please,” I shouted. “I’ve got an announcement to make about our identity.”

  The crowd chattered excitedly. Birch smiled as he thought of the acrobat and floating with her in a bubble of love. The announcement meant more to Birch than anything had in a long time.

  “Please be quiet,” I said.

  Birch held his breath. The room grew silent. It was so silent that you could hear a fly tapping its head against the window. “Do you mind?” I asked, and the fly sat still and was quiet.

  “You are all here,” I said, reading from the speech I had written, “because you are fans of me, Pigeon Jones, the boy wonder artist who resides on the back of an elephant. Well, there’s something you all need to know.”

  “That’s right, there is something you should know!” a voice shouted from the back of the room. A man stepped forward wearing a frog suit.

  “That boy is my son!” he shouted.

  I dropped the pages of my speech and they fluttered to the ground. Birch said nothing, but in his heart, the hope he had felt at everyone knowing the truth burst like a bubble. It was as if my small hands, the same soft hands he’d held when I was a baby, had done the bursting.

  I stared and stared at the man, then finally asked, “But how? How did you know where we were?”

  “I read about you in the paper. My son, the famous artist. I’ve been searching for you forever.”

  “Papa?” I said, unsure. “Is it really you?”

  “Of course it is. Look, I’m wearing my old frog suit.”

  Birch walked toward the man slowly, carefully, and leaned down. I stared at Papa and he stared at me. I didn’t recognize him, but then again I’d been so young when they left me at the orphanage. I stared harder. Yes, something about his eyes did look familiar.

  “But where’s Mama?” I asked.

  “Why, she’s away with the traveling circus troupe, but she will be back soon,” he said.

  “Is that where you’ve been?” I asked. “The circus?”

  “Yes, we had to, Pigeon. We set out to make a life again in the circus. We were always going to come back and find you.”

  I leaned down and hugged Papa. His twisted mustache tickled my cheek. “And now I’ve found you,” Papa said. “And you can finally join the circus with me.”

  “I’ve always wanted to join the circus!” I shouted.

  “Wonderful!” Papa said. “You and your elephant are quite famous. You’d be a real draw for the crowds.” The guests in the gallery cheered, and a few women dabbed their moist eyes, tearful about the touching father-son-elephant reunion.

  I asked Birch to rush to the hotel so we could start packing. As we turned to leave, Slim Spatucci shouted, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Slim,” I yelled with excitement, “it isn’t every day that a boy finds his long-lost father!”

  At the hotel we threw my belongings in a suitcase. Birch cleared his throat. “Pigeon, I think there’s something suspicious about that man who says he’s your father.”

  “What do you mean, ‘says he’s my father’? He is my father. You saw him—he’s wearing a frog suit.”

  “Right,” said Birch, “but there’s something very familiar about him. I don’t think he’s who he says he is underneath that frog suit. That twisted mustache, the way he scuttles like a crab, even his voice. If I had to say, he reminds me a lot of the evil Ringleader.”

  “Why can’t you be happy for me, Birch?” I asked. “I finally found my real family.”

  We didn’t speak for the rest of the evening. How dare he say those things about my papa? While I brushed my teeth, I did ponder what he had said about real things hidden behind not-so-real ones. Mama had hidden behind her beard and Papa behind his frog suit in the circus. And then there was me. A lot of real things were hidden from me. I didn’t know what a real bed felt like or what sitting at a dinner table felt like and, saddest of all, I had no idea what grass felt like underneath my toes. I could picture it, though. In my dreams my foot is dangling, shivering, stretching. I cling to Birch and dig my fingers into his back. I close my eyes and move my foot an inch closer to the ground. Closer and closer still. I can feel the warmth of the sun stored up in the soil. And then there’s a soft breeze, barely perceptible, just enough to stir leaves and long blades of grass. One blade tickles my big toe. A small thing, to be sure, but I know I’ve never felt anything like it, never felt anything quite so real. I wondered if I ever would.

  EIGHTEEN

  Sometimes the World Is Littered with Peanut Shells

  The circus was magnificent. There were brightly colored striped tents, and in the center ring a man held a stick in front of his face, blew on it, and breathed fire from his mouth like a dragon. To our left, a lion tamer got closer and closer to a lion, eventually holding its jaw and placing his head inside. Tiny drops of lion drool dripped in and tickled the inside of the man’s ear, but he didn’t flinch, whic
h was probably a good idea. Children and parents packed into the tents, and the toddlers cried and laughed, wiping their tears with fingers sticky from cotton candy.

  “And now,” the announcer shouted, “in our center ring we present the world’s largest artist and the world’s pickiest art critic!” The spotlight came on, and Birch and I stood in the center ring beside an easel with a canvas and a palette. The canvas was very tiny. Birch wore a black-and-white-striped shirt, a red scarf, and a beret. I wore a three-piece suit and puffed on an unlit cigar.

  “Paint! Paint!” I shouted. My role in the circus act was to play an art critic. Birch painted the first canvas, and then I shouted, “Bigger! Bigger!” And so a clown would bring out the next canvas, bigger than the last. This went on until Birch was painting a canvas as big as an elephant.

  The paintings were awful—not real art like Birch usually painted, but circus art. There were pictures of clowns and dancing poodles. I thought Birch would be happy that I was happy, but he wasn’t. Instead he seemed sad all the time. His ears drooped, his tail drooped, and his trunk drooped too.

  When we finished our act, the lights went black and the crowd cheered. When the roar stopped, I heard a voice from the shadows. “Psssst!” it said. “Psssst! There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “The man in the frog suit is not who you think he is,” the voice whispered ominously.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, starting to feel a bit faint. “He’s my father.”

  “He’s an imposter. He tricked you and your handsome elephant friend to perform in the circus.”

  Just as she said this, the lights came on and two thugs came around the corner and grabbed the owner of the voice. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and she was dressed in all reds and oranges like a great plumed bird.

  “Let go of me,” she shouted, and struggled, but it was no use.

  “It’s her,” Birch whispered, backing away.

  “Her who?” I asked, but then stopped, remembering all the paintings of red and orange birds Birch had painted. “The acrobat you loved,” I whispered. Birch nodded, turned, and ran out of the tent.

  * * *

  Birch and I spent the remainder of the evening behind a Dumpster, sharing a bag of peanuts for dinner and trying to hatch a plan. Around Birch’s feet was a soft blanket of discarded shells, and as he paced back and forth it sounded like we were trudging our way through a forest of dead leaves.

  “We must save her!” he pronounced bravely as an accordion player started playing in the distance. “But how?” he said as the music became sadder and sadder. I was upset as well. I didn’t know what the acrobat meant when she said Papa wasn’t who he seemed. Doubt and darkness crept into my heart.

  I thought about our time on the train. Beancan Bill’s talking aluminum can had given me some advice. He had said that when things seem the darkest, sometimes that’s when you can see things the clearest. When he was a young bean can, he got opened, eaten up, and thrown in a gutter. He told me that for the first time in his life, he was so close to nothingness he could see the stark, aluminum anchovy-gleam of the world for exactly what it was; he could see what remains when idealism goes away. He said the world still looked pretty magnificent. Even from that gutter, if he turned the right way he could still see the stars in the sky, and he knew he’d always be all right, no matter what.

  “Well, we’re not getting anything done behind this Dumpster,” Birch said.

  We walked to our tent, marching to the lilt of the accordion music. I pondered the steps we had taken along the road of our adventure. Hopped a train, liberated a zoo, lived in Hollywood, conquered the art world, ventured to Paris, joined a circus—and now we had witnessed a potential kidnapping. It was a lot to take in.

  “It’s gone,” Birch said when we entered our tent. He was frantically looking under blankets and chairs with his trunk. “My paints and canvases, and all the money we made from the art! All of it!”

  Boy, were we blue. Usually Birch and I were a team, and when one of us was feeling down, the other would shout, “Someplace, there are trees full of sparrows. Somewhere, the trees are singing.” But not this time. This time we both stayed sad and angry. I wondered if joy, like us, is a traveler and can’t ever stay put in one place for too long.

  NINETEEN

  The Triumphant Return of the Bumbling Pigeon

  Birch narrowed his eyes and marched like an elephant on a mission toward the man in the frog suit’s office. I’d never seen him like that before. He was dashing. He was valiant. He became the moment before thunder when the sky turns indigo and only the treetops dare to move and chatter.

  He didn’t even bother to knock when we stormed right into the tent.

  “Where is she?”

  “Where is who?” the Ringleader asked, twisting his mustache between his fingers. The frog suit lay on the floor. Birch and the acrobat had been right—the man in the frog suit hadn’t been my papa. It had been the evil Ringleader all along.

  “You know exactly who we’re talking about,” I growled.

  “Oh, fine,” the Ringleader said. “Here she is.”

  Two bulky guards brought the beautiful acrobat in from behind the tent. She pushed them away and ran to Birch.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the Ringleader continued. “Dahlia signed a contract with the circus. And you, Birch? Well, you belong to me.” He motioned to the guards, and they grabbed Birch by his ears.

  “And to prove I still own you, I’d like you to go wash the clown cars just like you did when you worked at my car wash.”

  The guards put a bucket of water in front of Birch and laughed.

  “All right,” I said. “As a matter of fact, Birch and I have seen some dirty things around here that need cleaning.” Birch leaned over the bucket and filled his trunk with water. Then he aimed his trunk right at the Ringleader and sprayed water with the force of a circus cannon.

  Everyone laughed. The beautiful acrobat’s laugh sounded like mice tap-dancing on a xylophone, and Birch’s laugh sounded like a bear tap-dancing on a bass drum. My laugh sounded like a pig snorting, and even the guards laughed. They sounded like someone trying very hard not to laugh.

  “You don’t own Birch and you don’t own her,” I said when the laughing was done. “And we’re all leaving.”

  “Fine,” the Ringleader said. “That’s fine, you can all just go and leave me here alone.” His mustache was wet and fell down his chin like a clown’s frown.

  “Leave me. I deserve it,” the Ringleader cried. “I deserve to be alone. I’m garbage. Garbage, garbage, garbage. That’s me, garbage!” he shouted.

  Someone was listening to the Ringleader. Someone heard his cries. Someone came flying and bumbling into the tent. It was our old friend the pigeon, lover of garbage and all things yucky. The pigeon stared lovingly at the Ringleader and tilted her purple head to the side. She then waddled her fat body over to the Ringleader and gracelessly flew up to his shoulder, where she began cooing and rubbing her head against his neck, ear, and face.

  “Git,” the Ringleader said. But the pigeon would not go.

  “Git,” the Ringleader said, but the pigeon only loved him harder.

  “Git,” the Ringleader said, but didn’t really mean it.

  The Ringleader recognized a part of himself in the bird on his shoulder. Many people only saw a fat, clumsy, dim-witted garbage-eater when they looked at a pigeon, but from up close, the Ringleader saw something else. He saw the emerald green feathers of the pigeon’s neck rivaling those of the peacock; the way the shades of gray start dark at the head and fade lighter and lighter across the body like the sky over the sea; her eyes each a drop of honey at the tip of a spoon. The Ringleader got up close and saw that like him, like anything, this pigeon deserved to be loved.

  “Stay,” he said, and so the pigeon stayed.

  The Ringleader finally filled the hole inside himself, the one he’d been trying
so hard to fill with meanness and revenge. There are openings all around us: in the walls, the trees, the sky, and our lives. The goodness knocks softly, doesn’t even glance at its watch, and just waits for the heart to open the door.

  Before we left, the Ringleader gave us back our money and possessions, but swore he hadn’t stolen anything. “I was afraid thieves might rob you,” the Ringleader said. “I was just keeping your things safe.” Birch winked at me, and then shook the Ringleader’s hand with his trunk. The Ringleader blushed red and smiled at such elephant-sized forgiveness.

  “Well,” Birch said to Dahlia as we stood by the gates to the circus. “I guess this is goodbye. We can’t stay here. Pigeon needs to be home where it’s calm. He needs to go back to school. He needs … me.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I understand.” They both looked as if they wanted to say more, wanted to hold out the one dazzling green leaf that held the truth. Instead, the moment passed, and the leaf began to yellow, curling in on itself like the tip of a genie’s shoe.

  “Goodbye, good, kind Birch,” she said, and softly kissed the front of his trunk.

  I cried that night for the loss of my papa, even though I had never actually found him. I cried until I got the hiccups. Birch got me a glass of water and rubbed my back until I felt safe, as always, like a bird in a tree’s branches. I realized that Birch had given up Dahlia for me. She was a dazzling phoenix, but, like the Ringleader’s, Birch’s heart belonged to a silly pigeon.

  Birch and I turned and began the long walk to the docks and the boat that would take us home. I thought about direction. I thought about the Ringleader. I thought about how a man can get turned the wrong way and be stuck there. Sometimes he needs something big to change that. And sometimes he just needs a fat bird to perch on the rusty weather vane of the heart and spin it in a different direction.