Hatcher had awakened her at five that morning, banging on her cabin door and hollering that he needed her immediately. Without posing a single question, wiping the sleep out of her eyes, or throwing on a bra, she’d gone to the clinic in the t-shirt and boxer shorts she’d worn to bed. Four hours later, she still stood next to him helping repair the damage from an early morning dog-and-elephant fight. Thankfully, this time Sophie wasn’t involved, but Thaya and Olan, the oldest bull at the sanctuary, and five dogs were. No one knew exactly what started it, but two of the smaller dogs had broken legs, one of the lab mixes had a crushed front paw (Olan had stepped on it), and the other three had open wounds from being caught up in the melee.
Natalie and Hatcher speculated about the cause of the battle. “It’s got to have been that black lab mix. The one with the white front paw,” Hatcher said. He knew the dogs much better than she, since she had to ensure they didn’t get entangled with Sophie. In fact, she knew that at least four of them lived in his cabin with him. “What did the kids name him? Bonzo? Banzai? He’s a banshee, that’s what he is. Always acting dominant, no matter who’s around.”
Natalie grunted as she concentrated on putting the final stitches into a cut on the eldest lab-mix who answered to the name Salé. She slipped her mask down for a moment and relished the coolness of fresh air against her sweaty skin. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the little ones. They move too fast around the ellies’ legs. Bet they were chasing each other like they always do, and the rest of them joined in. The ellies were probably dancing, trying to get out of the way and the dogs were caught in between.”
Olan never went far from the feeding platform. He was older than Ali and much less sociable. An injury to his right leg had resulted in severe arthritis that got worse every year, making it hard to move more than a couple of feet. Once in a while his mahout brought Olan to the river, but those trips became fewer every month.
The elephants weren’t badly injured—just scratches. They milled about anxiously, yet to settle down. Natalie and Hatcher had been setting bones, stitching wounds and operating all morning, and even worse, they’d had cameras in their faces the whole time, one of the reasons for being soaked in sweat.
The only one who seemed to be enjoying the drama of the whole event was Anurak. He hadn’t stopped grinning since the cameras came into the room. Even now while wiping her brow, he grinned with his missing front tooth and the cowlick that stubbornly stuck up in the middle of his head. He actually posed for the camera any time the crew was in sight, hand on his hip like a model. If not for being so immersed in operating, she would have laughed at his goofiness.
Rob, a chunky and happy-go-lucky guy from China, spoke perfect English. He’d told her when they first met that he learned the language by watching American TV. Even now, idioms crept into his conversation. Sidecar was the exact opposite of Rob: a small and skinny guy from southern India, he wore wire-rimmed glasses that he constantly pushed up the bridge of his nose. He was serious, where Rob always joked. The two of them constituted a great pair, partners who worked in perfect concert with each other, an artistic coupling.
“Closing up here,” Hatcher said, pulling some thread through his needle. “We’re almost done.”
She flexed her fingers, working out a wrist cramp, and pulled off her gloves and mask. She needed to soak in the shower. Cleaning up the countertop where she’d been working, she dumped the surgical instruments into the sink, filled it with disinfectant, then motioned for Anurak to scrub them.
When she turned, ready to leave, she spotted Hatcher and Seth in the far corner of the room, standing head to head, talking animatedly. She had a feeling the conversation had nothing to do with the surgical procedures they had just performed. If circumstances had been different, she might be curious, but right now, she was done. Everything was under control.
She told Anurak that he and Decha should leave, and the boy’s face was as crestfallen as if he’d been told Santa wasn’t coming this year. But when she made the sign for lunch, his face brightened a little, then his head cocked as it did when he sensed something out of the norm.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head as if to silence her and lifted a finger. She opened the door and felt the rumble at the same time she heard the roar.
Sophie trumpeted, again. The screaming, high-pitched sound she made when upset. The trumpeting turned into a roar, and Natalie took off running toward the elephant’s enclosure.
Even before she saw Sophie, Natalie heard Chanchai, the mahout, screaming at the top of his lungs. She pumped her legs faster, pushing herself to gallop, certain she would find a devastating scene.
As she came to the curve in the road where the enclosure loomed into sight, she saw Chanchai, ankus high above his head, waving it menacingly at Sophie. The ankus. The one thing that terrified her. The elephant’s screams were full of that fear.
“What the hell are you doing?” Natalie yelled. She reached for the ankus as Chanchai pulled back to strike Sophie again. The sharp tip caught Natalie’s palm, and she cried out and doubled over. Still, she had to stop him. She screamed again, “Chanchai, what the hell are you thinking? You know you can’t use the ankus with her! Do you want to get yourself killed?”
Wild-eyed, he ignored her and yelled another command. A garbled word. Another slash with the ankus.
Sophie surged forward.
__________
The woman grabs for the howling mahout’s red and black shirt but misses. Ducking out of the way, the mahout pokes and yells at the elephant, trapped in the enclosure.
Sophie hates this man, his violence, his unfathomably black eyes. She wants to flee, to run far away from him, but her back is against the columns that support the enclosure’s roof. She has nowhere else to go, and the mahout is taking advantage of it, poking the silver-sharp pole at her through the bars. She widens her eyes, her large pink ears flare, she pushes against the bars, flails her trunk everywhere, tries to reach the mahout. Trumpets, then trumpets again, as loudly and ferociously as she can. She could kill this mahout easily, could stomp on him or gore him with her tusk, but she has been taught to fear the men, to fear the ankus, and since she has not tried to defend herself against anything but the dogs, she has no true idea of her own strength.
Still, the mahout screams and pokes, jabbing the ankus at her every time he’s within reach. He yells commands, but none of them make sense, nor does he give the elephant a chance to accomplish what he’s asking.
Behind her, the elephant hears humans running and voices shouting but she instinctively knows that if she looks, she’ll lose control over the greatest danger: the mahout waving the ankus. Another roaring trumpet travels up through the elephant’s vocal cords, almost ripping them, she has exerted so much power. Her throat tightens. The cry comes out strangled, high-pitched, full of terror.
Finally, the woman catches the mahout’s shirt and swings him around to face her.
“Stop! Put the ankus down. Now!” she screams.
The mahout stares beyond the woman to Sophie, his eyes still as black as a rock, but he lowers the ankus even while he ripples with anger like the currents of the river.
Sophie rocks forward and back, then side to side on her back legs, her nerves still unsettled. She feels trapped. She smells the other men behind her. They are not mahouts. They don’t smell like mahouts, don’t sound like mahouts. Still, they are men.
“Leave. Now.” The woman points to the road, and nods at the mahout, expecting him to respond to her command.
The mahout seems to know what Sophie does, that there will be a great price to pay if he rouses her once again: his life. He scurries up the road like a spider, as if afraid Sophie might follow him.
But the other men do not leave. They speak quietly with the woman, holding their giant cameras on their shoulders, sometimes pointing them at the elephant, sometimes at the woman, but never coming any closer to Sophie than the enclosure’s gate.
They finally move away, and woman comes into the enclosure, touches Sophie’s trunk, speaks quietly, and when she softly sings into Sophie’s right ear, the elephant begins to relax.