The Resolutions

by Brady Hammes

  * * *

  —

  JONAH AWOKE WITH A BUTTERFLY on his face, which he interpreted as a good start to the day, though a moment later he saw it swallowed by a toad and was forced to reexamine the omen. He put together a quick breakfast, then collected the ARUs from the trees, which required some elementary ropework he’d learned during an introduction to rock climbing class back at Vanderbilt. He had two hundred hours of new media to decipher during his time in Chicago, and he hoped there might be something in there that would jump-start his thesis.

  He packed up his equipment and started back to camp. His flight left in a little over a week, and his plan was to spend the intervening days collecting data before heading back to town, where he would catch the train to Libreville. It was a lot of traveling, but he knew it would be worth it once he was back in Chicago, surrounded by deep-dish pizza, cold beer, and the familiar faces of his family.

  * * *

  —

  HE FOUND HER IN a dry riverbed, bathing in a pool of her own blood, surrounded by Kibo and four other grief-stricken elephants. They paced circles around her, laying their trunks on her collapsed body in the style of a funeral procession. Though he was a good twenty yards away, there was no question it was Kibo’s mother. There was also no question that the slaughter had been carried out by Slinky, who had likely butchered the animal as a warning. Once the elephants had disappeared into the forest, Jonah approached the corpse. Her face had been removed by crude machete work and the rest of her body lay rotting in the sun, sizzling with flies, emitting an odor that made Jonah’s stomach buck. He considered trying to conceal the corpse with palm fronds, but the vultures were hovering overhead, and he knew it was only a matter of time before there would be nothing left but clean, white bones. He snapped a few photos for evidence and then, fighting back tears, continued back to camp.

  He hiked for another hour, experiencing a sadness he could not have anticipated. He’d grown close to these animals in his time here, had come to know them not only through their vocalizations, but also their physical attributes, the subtle markings on an ear, the curvature of a tusk. Most of his time was spent observing these animals, and he appreciated their company more than most humans. But what was it all for? he wondered. What was the point of his research if he couldn’t provide basic security for his subjects? He’d always believed his presence had shielded the animals in some way, provided cover, but that was obviously just a comforting myth. Since Marcus left, his time here had been nothing but a series of escalating failures culminating in this, the death of something like a pet. He could notify the government rangers, but he knew Slinky was tracking his movement, and any act of vigilance might be dealt with in a similarly gruesome manner. He could send an email to Marcus, but there was only so much he could do from back home, a dead elephant from an obscure African country not exactly the kind of thing that made the evening news. Marcus would probably just send another email to his friend at the World Wildlife Fund, who would respond in the same exasperated tone, saying I know, I know, we’re doing everything we can.

  So his options were limited.

  Approaching his camp, Jonah saw what looked like two large teeth hanging from a tree. Immediately, he realized they were tusks, washed and drying in the sun. A motorcycle was parked next to the tusks, and a moment later he saw Slinky emerge from his tent, raising a hand in greeting. “Hello, friend,” he called. “You have a good night in the forest? I wait here all night for you, but then I get so tired and sleep on your air mattress. Very soft.”

  “Look,” Jonah said. “If you really want the camera that bad, you can have it. This is insane.”

  “No,” Slinky said, as if he’d recently soured on the idea. “I don’t want your camera anymore.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Mateo tells me things,” Slinky said, drawing near.

  “Mateo?” Jonah had always had a bad feeling about the guy, so it made sense that he was friendly with Slinky.

  “He tells me you set up your cameras to film us,” Slinky said, clapping Jonah on the shoulder. “He says you show these videos to the government.”

  “That’s not true,” Jonah said. “I only film the elephants.”

  “Mateo tells me not to trust you. He says I should have killed you a long time ago.”

  “And why didn’t you?” It was a question that had occupied Jonah since they first met, and he was genuinely curious to hear Slinky’s answer.

  “Because I got to thinking that maybe there’s a way we can work together. There’s something you can help me with. A small favor.” Slinky motioned for Jonah to walk with him, then began laying out what he had in mind. He told him that with Mateo’s help, he’d been selling his ivory to a Chinese national who worked for a mining company in the northeastern part of the country. The Chinese guy, Slinky explained, had been flying back and forth between Libreville and Guangzhou—“very easy,” Slinky said, clapping his hands together and smiling—until two weeks ago when his partner was apprehended with eighty pounds of raw ivory at the Singapore airport.

  Jonah wasn’t sure where Slinky was going with his story—or even what physical direction they were headed—but it seemed unwise to interrupt, so he continued listening, hoping he wasn’t being led to a shallow grave in the forest. Slinky explained that with his Chinese connection temporarily severed, he was forced to find a new place to unload his product. He said he had a cousin in the United States, a former student at DePaul who now owned a jewelry store in Hyde Park. The cousin, Andre, was living in the States on an expired student visa, which meant flying back to Gabon to retrieve the product wasn’t an option. Slinky said he’d considered doing it himself, but after a few run-ins with INTERPOL, it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. Which was where Jonah came in. The plan, according to Slinky, was for Jonah to ride with Mateo back to Libreville, where he would take possession of a hundred pounds of ivory before catching his flight back to the States. In Chicago, he would transfer the ivory to Andre in exchange for $50,000, with which he would then return to Gabon after the New Year. And if all that happened without any trouble, without any dérangement, then Slinky would leave Jonah to study his elephants in peace. He said that despite Jonah’s impression of him, he was a very honest businessman. “So what do you think?” he asked.

  The question was obviously rhetorical. It wasn’t a proposition so much as a directive. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Why not?” Slinky asked, seemingly perplexed that Jonah hadn’t jumped at the offer.

  “Because I’d get caught.”

  “Ahhh,” Slinky said, swatting away his concern. “But how do you know until you try?”

  “I don’t know how it works in China, but I can assure you the U.S. government is extremely intolerant of ivory smuggling.”

  “Not to worry. I have a long list of tricks. Besides,” he said, pointing to the tusks hanging from the tree, “too late to put this one back together.” Slinky spit out a hearty laugh and reached for his cigarettes. He lit one and exhaled a cloud of smoke in Jonah’s face.

  “Take whatever of mine you want,” Jonah said, shaking his backpack from his shoulders and tossing it in his tent. “Hell, go ahead and shoot me if you have to, but I’m not helping you smuggle ivory.” He grabbed his canteen and water purifier and began walking to the river to pump drinking water.

  “I don’t want to shoot you, my friend,” Slinky yelled after him. “I want to convince you. And I will. You’ll see.”

  GAVIN

  HE WOKE TO THE CONCUSSIVE blow of the ski patrol mortaring the guts out of West Basin. He rolled out of bed and went to the living room. A foot of snow had fallen overnight, and the lanes of corduroy were now blanketed with pillows of white. He found a nearly empty box of Cheerios and some milk and washed it down with two cups of strong coffee. Afterward, he changed into his ski clothes, poled out
to the slopes, and glided to the base of the mountain. The lifts weren’t open yet, though a few dozen anxious skiers were queued up, chatting with one another. “Hey,” a woman’s voice called to him. “Where’d you come from? Mountain’s not open yet.”

  Gavin saw Mariana lift her goggles and wave her ski pole at him. She wore slim black snow pants and a purple Patagonia parka, her black hair spilling out the back of her helmet. Gavin ducked beneath the lift rope and slid in line next to her. “Morning!”

  “I thought about calling you,” Mariana said, “but I wasn’t sure you’d be awake.”

  “The bombs woke me up.”

  “Want to make some turns with me?”

  “Sure.”

  The lifts soon jolted to life, and a few minutes later they reached the front of the line, where a chair arrived and seated them with a swift kick to the back of the knees. A moment later their skis lifted off from the snow and they were ferried up the mountain.

  “Do you ski every day?” Gavin asked.

  “Almost,” she said, tucking her poles beneath her thigh. “It’s like my gym. I usually go for an hour or two in the morning.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “It is. Jesse doesn’t ski though, which is kind of a bummer. I usually end up going by myself.”

  “How are the wedding preparations coming along?”

  “Fine, I guess. I’m just assuming everything will fall into place.”

  “New Year’s Day, right?” Gavin asked. Below him, a father coached his young son down the mountain.

  “Yeah, it’s kinda terrifying.”

  Gavin paused, unsure what to make of her comment. “Not exciting?”

  “No, it is,” she said, as if realizing how it sounded. “I guess it’s both, if that’s possible.”

  “I think so.” A gust of wind kicked up, and Gavin turned his back to shield her from the blowing snow. “And afterward? I assume there’s no honeymoon planned.”

  “Not right now at least,” she said. “Not with the play happening. Assuming the play actually happens.”

  “You guys think you’ll stay in the area?”

  “I don’t see why not. We both love it here. It’s a good place to raise kids.”

  “So kids are part of the equation?”

  “I think so. I’ve always imagined I’d be a pretty good mother.”

  “Yeah,” Gavin said with a smile. “I don’t doubt it.”

  Mariana waved away the thought. “But that’s getting ahead of myself. Right now, I’m just focused on pulling this wedding together. We’re doing most of the planning ourselves. And by we, I mean me.”

  “That’s ambitious, considering the play and all.”

  “I have a hard time relinquishing control. I’ve always considered it an admirable quality, though lately it’s become a problem.”

  Gavin smiled at her. “Maybe you’re just a woman who knows what she wants.”

  “Maybe.” Mariana tapped her skis together and watched the snow float to the ground. “What about you? Got a girlfriend?”

  “I did,” Gavin said, hoping that might be enough to appease her.

  “What happened?”

  He hesitated, unsure how to explain the dissolution of his relationship. “She went camping.”

  Mariana laughed. “And what, never returned?”

  “She was trying to prove a point or something.”

  “That being?”

  Gavin shrugged. “That I was expendable? I don’t know what she was thinking, to be honest. It apparently wasn’t working though, so it’s probably for the best.”

  “How long were you guys together?” she asked.

  “Four years.”

  “So it was serious.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Was there talk of marriage?”

  “By me. Not so much by her, which should have been a sign.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mariana said. “That must be hard.”

  Below, a man in blue jeans and a Dallas Cowboys parka barreled down the hill with no poles, his skis pointed inward in a kamikaze pizza pie. He hit a mogul and shot into the air, face-planting directly beneath the lift.

  “Beautiful,” Mariana said. “Really solid form.”

  * * *

  —

  GAVIN FOLLOWED HER DOWN a gentle cruiser called Porcupine, carving figure eights in the untouched snow. They made their way back to the top of the mountain, then dropped over to the east side, bombing down Ash Pond and Walkyries Glade, Gavin working hard to keep up. She floated through the trees as if on tracks, working a line she seemed to know by heart, whereas Gavin had to stop every hundred yards to catch his breath and rest his quivering thighs. She led him to some untouched runs off lift four, and they skied those until they were tracked out. On the ride back up, she leaned close, her breath on his cheek, and directed his gaze toward a flock of bighorn sheep congregating on a saddle ridge in the distance. The sky was a luminous shade of blue, and everything was covered in new snow, and there was this woman sitting next to him, this woman who smiled a lot and didn’t complain much, an unflappable beauty who would soon marry someone other than himself. He tried to broker peace with this fact, but its inconvenience annoyed him, so instead he swept it aside in order to enjoy the unsustainable reality of the present moment.

  They stopped in the lodge for Irish coffee, clomping their way in ski boots to the nearly empty bar. The holiday crowds would soon descend upon the mountain, but now it was quiet, aside from a woman vacuuming the floor.

  “I have a question for you,” Mariana said, staring into her coffee, as if afraid to ask. “But you don’t have to answer.”

  Gavin smiled uncomfortably. “What’s that?”

  “Why didn’t you call me again?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She took a drink and looked him in the eye. “All those years ago. After our date. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I believe I did call you,” Gavin said, wondering where she was going with this. “And you didn’t call back.”

  She shook her head. “Not true. Because I would have called back.”

  “Are we sure about this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly, acknowledging the missed opportunity. “I honestly don’t remember. I think I was in a weird place then. I still am, I suppose.”

  “I guess I’m just curious. Most people want to know why they were rejected.”

  “Whoa,” Gavin said. “I did not reject you.”

  “Then what was it?” Her questioning had been slightly teasing, almost playful, but now it acquired a sharper edge, as if she wanted an explanation.

  Gavin tried to summon some recollection of the date. He was so much younger then, so inflexible in his standards. He approached potential partners with a list of requirements, and anyone who didn’t satisfy his obnoxiously rigid criteria was immediately tossed aside. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “But it certainly wasn’t rejection. I think it was looking for someone who only existed in my mind.”

  Renee snorted into her coffee. “Did you find her?”

  “I did not,” he said resignedly.

  She rolled her eyes. “Shocking.”

  “There was also the matter of geography,” Gavin said, trying to lighten the mood. “I had a rule back then about not dating girls on the west side.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  “In hindsight, yes, very dumb. My loss appears to be Jesse’s gain.”

  Mariana smiled.

  “Does he know about our history?” Gavin asked.

  Mariana laughed and shook her head. “We met for a glass of wine one night five years ago. I’d hardly call it a history.”

  * * *

  —

  SHE INVITED HIM TO
dinner that night. The rest of the cast came as well, a meet-and-greet, though Gavin was the only one doing the meeting. He picked up a bottle of wine on his way over, along with a lemon meringue pie from a bakery located next to the liquor store. Mariana greeted him at the door, taking his offerings and shepherding him inside. She introduced him to Don Stuckler, a sixty-something retiree in a Pendleton jacket and large silver-rimmed glasses, who would be playing James Tyrone; as well as Pat, a gray-haired woman with a faint Texas accent who joked that it might not be a bad idea to start calling her “Mama.” Colin, the actor playing their son Edmund, a redheaded high school kid, was cuddling on the couch with his girlfriend, Madison, who, Mariana explained, would be playing Cathleen, the maid.

  Jesse, who had been working out in the garage, came through the door as they were sitting down to eat. He took his place at the head of the table, appearing slightly uncomfortable among the room full of thespians.

  “I can’t say I’m too familiar with your show,” Jesse said to Gavin, shoveling salad onto his plate, “though Mariana tells me you’re quite good in it.”