With the sun directly overhead on the end of the platform where they sat, the day’s humidity made North Carolina’s summer appear more like autumn. Natalie felt logy, unable to move. Her t-shirt and shorts stuck to her skin like Saran Wrap.
After they finished eating, Andrew invited her to meet the elephants that she hadn’t met that morning. Their giant heads bobbed at the edge, even with the concrete platform. She guesstimated the platform to be a dozen feet off the ground. The herd had wandered in from the meadow where they freely roamed only an hour before. Now they waited patiently for their specially prepared meals. Quiet. Dignified. Enormous grayish-pink ears waving away insects. Shifting from one foot to another. Inquisitive trunks reaching out like snakes. Large caramel brown eyes watching her passively.
“All of these lovelies have been abused. Humans train elephants to do things that they should never do,” Andrew stated as he walked slowly in front of her, gently touching the trunks reaching out to touch him. “They are not meant to pirouette on their hind legs, yet circuses have forced them to perform that way for centuries. Their backs are not strong enough to withstand more than one hundred pounds, yet trekking camps outfit the ellies with wooden boxes that weigh far more, then they fill those boxes with humans. That’s far more than their spines can withstand. And elephants do not paint. Whoever concocted that bloody ridiculous idea knew that these dignified creatures will do anything for their mahouts.”
Natalie’s mouth twisted. Physical abuse made her stomach churn. It enraged her. Channel your anger, she told herself. Control it. She’d come unhinged more than once during her career, and the aftermath of her rage was never pretty. She’d lost more than one client through the years. Control it. Make it work for something good.
“Some of our ellies are ancient: rheumy-eyed and slope-backed. Others, like that one to the right: alert and adolescent. None of them move very quickly, but they can, if they want to. I’ve seen some elephants sprint, so keep that in mind.”
“I know. I saw them do that during the time I spent at the Wildlife Farm in Texas. That was about fifteen years ago, but I remember it well.”
He stole a glance at her. “Then you know elephants charge anything they consider a threat, and though they appear benevolent and lazy now, you must respect their sheer size and powerful strength. Not only can they bring down a full grown oak, but they can topple trucks by simply leaning against them. They do it here all the time. And their trunks are not used only for eating, smelling, and drinking, but you know that, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “I’ve seen an elephant toss a guy who weighed more than two hundred pounds as if he was a piece of tissue paper. Broke his back, both legs and dislocated his shoulder. Poor bugger.”
She groaned and sucked a breath between her teeth making a whistling sound that caused the large bull elephant near them to raise his head and look at her quizzically
“Make sure you stay where they can see you, love,” Andrew told her. “They’ll watch you. Size you up. If you’re going to administer medicines or treat them, they will have to build a relationship with you first.” He winked at her. “Some’ll be more anxious to cross that bridge than others. Like this ol’ flirt.” He walked to the large bull whose enormous tusks rested on the concrete platform. The elephant rumbled contentedly.
“This is Ali. He’s about thirty-two years old. He’s a bit scarred from the way he’s been treated over the years, but still quite handsome, eh? His mahouts weren’t too kind to him when they were training him, yet he still loves humans. Amazing, huh? This guy does fine and loves the ladies. Don’t you, ol’ boy?”
Andrew reached into one of the large palm leaf baskets the volunteers placed on the platform and found a couple of small plantains. He waved them in front of Ali’s trunk, causing the elephant’s trunk to follow the snack like a cobra dancing to flute music. Andrew kept the bananas out of range for a moment before Ali greedily grabbed them.
Andrew chuckled and reached for more, then handed them to Natalie. “We all need to help at mealtimes.”
Natalie gingerly held out the mushy, rotten bananas toward Ali.
“Make sure you stay where he can see you and hold the food close enough for him to reach. Believe me, he’ll find it.”
Sure enough, Ali stretched his trunk in her direction and grabbed the bananas. His trunk felt soft and wet but strong. When he wrapped the tip of it around her hand to grab the bananas, one of her rings slipped off her finger, and she watched it fly over the railing. It flipped to the ground, landing near the elephant’s heavy foot.
“Oh crap, that’s the ring . . . that’s a special ring. Stephen—my son—gave it to me.” She hesitated, watching Ali’s legs shift. She pointed to the mahout who sat near her on the crossbars above the elephant’s head, pantomiming that she’d lost her ring and that it was on the ground. If Ali shifted even half a foot, he’d step right on it. As easily as a child shimmying down a tree, the mahout jumped off the porch, picked up the ring and hopped back up to where Natalie waited. She thanked him, and told Andrew she felt somewhat guilty that she’d made so much of it. In this country of Buddhists, such a connection to personal valuables was unusual. Sentimental value outweighed monetary value any time.
“No worries,” Andrew answered. “I’ve kept every scrap of paper Sivad colors for me.”
Natalie wiped the simple, silver ring clean and stuck it in her pocket, fighting back the memory of eight-year-old Stephen at Christmastime, so proud of his gift that he smiled, baring the gap where he’d lost his first tooth. Her hands trembled a bit when she turned back to the task of feeding Ali. Overly ripe bananas, some melons, small pomegranates, squash, and a few potatoes seemed an odd mix, but Ali didn’t seem to mind. He grabbed each handful with his trunk, then leisurely lifted the pungent mush into his mouth, never taking his lushly-fringed brown eye off of her. She talked to him quietly as she fed him, making sure to remain in his line of sight, as Andrew had directed.
All along the platform, mahouts and volunteers mirrored Natalie’s actions. The mahouts—young, fairly small, and agile men—laughed among themselves as they hand-fed their elephants. On occasion, one of them would shout a sharp command and though Natalie didn’t know what they were saying, she studied the elephant’s response and the techniques each mahout used to keep his charge in line.
“I wonder if some of the training skills we use with horses would work with the elephants,” she mused, more to herself than to Andrew.
“Probably.” Andrew watched her, smiling. “You always wanted to work with animals since you were a wee thing, didn’t you, love?
She nodded. “I volunteered at horse farms long before I opened the clinic, and, even as a little girl, I’d sit for hours watching the horses and our dogs, learning their cues and reading their responses, mainly to keep from getting kicked or bitten.” She laughed a little, remembering. The day Dr. Slater, one of her favorite professors at NC State’s vet program, told her in earshot of other students, “At least you don’t anthropomorphize animals like ninety-nine percent of those other buffoons.” They’d barely finished a particularly tough day that had sent three other students to the infirmary with damaging bites from the orangutans they’d been studying. Only six students, including Natalie (the only female in the group) were left out of twenty-four.
“Animals are not humans,” Dr. Slater told the group, “and the only good vet is the one who never forgets that.”
He was so right. So damn right on the money. Yet, her deepest, darkest secret is that she talks to the animal she treats. She can’t help it. She tries to think about her predilection in an intellectual fashion. She manages to occasionally convince herself that it’s just the rumbling sound she makes when she talks that calms down her animals, but she knows the communication between species has many layers. It’s deeper than just the sound of a human voice. It’s inflection, emotion, delivery, and the actual words. She thinks often of Dr. Slater and whether he’d believe now that animals understand language.
With Dr. Slater still on her mind, she finished feeding Ali the last bits of fruits and vegetables in the basket. Then she sat cross-legged on the platform in front of him, patting his trunk as he inquisitively checked out her legs and arms, touching her softly, snuffling a bit as he did so.
“Your bristly hair tickles, buddy,” she said, stroking Ali’s forehead. “You’re a big ol’ boy, aren’t you? You’re going to be my friend, huh? We’re going to get along fine.”
Ali’s long, gray eyelashes flickered as he watched her. He munched on some palm fronds, slowly and thoughtfully, as if considering whether to grant her his friendship. He reminded her of what the elephant version of Albert Einstein would look like: intelligent and funny with gray tufts of wiry hair creating puffs around the tops of his ears.
She smiled—a comfortable, natural smile. It had been a very long time since she’d smiled without forcing it, but immediately following the smile, the guilt resurfaced. She had no right to feel any kind of happiness.
She could feel her cheek muscles slackening and her eyes turning down at the sides. It felt as if her skin might slide right off her bones. She’d forgotten how many muscles it took to smile and how few to be unhappy.
“Come meet the folks you’ll be working with every day.” Andrew offered a hand to help her to her feet.
She ducked her head as he helped her up, not wanting him—or anyone else for that matter—to read the emotions she felt. Often, she couldn’t even identify them herself, but she did know one thing for certain. A bit of happiness and a spontaneous outburst of love for another being were feelings she hadn’t had in a while. She counted her steps as she followed along behind Andrew.
They walked along the platform that stretched from the main pavilion to a smaller seating area with a roof made of roughly hewn posts supported by large steel trusses. Further in the distance, Natalie saw another, smaller building that might have been offices or a storage area.
“That’s Thaya.” Andrew pointed to the elephant standing about ten feet away, a bit smaller than Ali, with a freckled, pink trunk and ears. “She’s afraid of the water for some reason, so we’re trying to help the old girl get over her fears. Never any good to have an anxious animal around. Besides, she’d be a lot cooler for her if she’d come into the river. Right now, though, she’s content with her mud baths.”
He gestured to the right of Thaya and pointed. “Khalan, her mahout. He’s Mali’s middle son, and he lets everyone know that he’s strong.” Andrew snorted as if that was far from true.
Khalan, a head shorter than she and more muscular than the others, flashed Natalie a mischievous, movie-star-white grin that showed off his dimples, then put his hands in prayer position at chest level and bowed respectfully. “Sawadee krup.”
“Sawadee ka,” she responded. The Thai language was gender specific. She had learned the feminine response to Khalan’s masculine ‘hello’ during her first visit to Thailand, and it was the only phrase she remembered.
Mali’s middle son wore a fluorescent orange and green short-sleeved soccer shirt over a ragged pair of knee-length black pants. It would be hard to miss him in any crowd, Natalie thought wryly. With a shy grin, he nodded to her before flipping over the railing like an Olympic gymnast. He climbed nimbly on bare feet over Thaya’s back, to straddle her neck. Yelling a gruff command, he dug his heels in and turned Thaya’s head. A flourish of her tail, and they ambled away, with his knees tucked against her ears, his face bent toward her ear, talking earnestly to her as if she were a dog. They walked away, Huck-Finn style, as if they were strolling along the Mississippi looking for a good place to go fishing.
“I’m surprised he’s riding on her back,” Natalie said to Andrew. “I thought trainers were getting away from riding that way.”
“As long as he’s right at her neck, she’s fine. The mahouts all know that. How ellies have endured everything that’s been loaded onto their spiky backbones without becoming crippled is beyond me. But you know my concerns. I’m sure you know their skeletal system better than I do, and I’ve been working with them for years.”
Probably not, she thought, but she didn’t repeat that aloud. If someone quizzed her right now to name each bone, she’d flunk, but she did know that their dorsal vertebrae stood almost straight up, meaning those bones could easily be broken. A pachyderm’s back wasn’t meant to take any weight at all.
The other elephants and mahouts started leaving the platform area, creating a long, slow-moving line that appeared headed for the dirt road that led to the river.
“We’ll meet the rest of them later,” Andrew said. “They don’t waste any time heading for their baths after filling their tummies. Things are pretty quiet here when they’re down at the river. Perfect time to catch up on administrative work we need to do. Let’s go meet the people who make this place run like a well-oiled machine. You’re going to need to know them. They’ll get what you want when you need it.”
He took her elbow and steered her back to the tables in the middle of the platform. A partial roof covered the area, creating a welcome piece of shade under the sizzling morning sun.
“This is Karina, my little sister.” Blonde and sturdy, Karina greeted Natalie with a firm handshake and a once-over that made Natalie slightly uncomfortable.
In a pinched, gruff voice, Karina asked Natalie where she’d received her degree, and when Natalie answered, Karina asked again, as if she didn’t believe a vet with a degree from the North Carolina State University School of Veterinary Medicine was good enough for the sanctuary. Though Natalie felt slightly offended, she responded each time with a smile.
“Karina grew up across the Channel in Belgium,” Andrew said, giving his sister a squeeze that made Karina roll her blue eyes. “Not quite an English lass, but we’ll forgive her for that. Right, sweet girl?” He laughed as his sister punched his arm as though they were still teenagers. “Karina cooks the books here. You’ll be talking to her about supplies and purchase orders and forging checks.” This time he ducked as Karina doubled her fist and swung at him like a drunk street fighter.
They bantered and teased each other a bit, but Natalie only vaguely heard their jabs. She thought about her brother, Stefan, and how he’d made it his mission as a child to find every slimy reptile in their backyard and hide each under her pillow, expecting her to scream. He gave up when the aquariums on her bookshelf became permanent home to the reptiles he’d “gifted” her: Freddy the frog, Thomas the garter snake, Willy the gopher snake, and Sylvia the snapping turtle. Little did he know she would actually enjoy the reptiles. After that, he left her alone.
Danny and Stephen had teased each other unmercifully, too. She often told them of their Uncle Stefan’s tricks, but times had changed, and the boys were more likely to zap each other with video game weapons than to hunt down reptiles.
Andrew continued to shepherd her through the group of volunteers. She nodded and shook hands, but if someone were to offer her a million dollars to repeat the name of the last person to whom she’d been introduced, she wouldn’t have had a clue. Part of her reasoned that it was all right not to remember since volunteers lasted a short period of time. Some came for a day, some for a couple of weeks, and only a select few stayed longer than that.
Then, one last person. “And this gorgeous woman is Mali. You met her daughter earlier. Sivad.” He hugged Mali as he had hugged his sister, but Natalie sensed this relationship was far from innocent. Mali was definitely not a sibling. This was his lover.
Shorter than Natalie by almost a foot, Mali radiated confidence that drew Natalie in. The Thai woman smiled and a deep dimple accented her left cheek. She greeted Natalie with a Wai, both hands in the prayer position over her heart, she bent at the hips, her thin body as straight as a bamboo pole.
“Good morning. I hope you’ll be happy here.” Mali’s voice, deep and modulated, carried only a trace of a Thai accent. Instead, she sounded as properly British as Peter Hatcher.
Natalie tried not to show her surprise.
“Mali’s probably the smartest person at this camp,” Andrew continued. “Whatever you need or want, she can either procure it for you or she knows someone else who can. She’s the person who’s been with me the longest, and I keep trying to promote her to administrative manager, but Mali’s stubborn.”
“No, that’s not true, Andrew. It’s simply that I like to cook.” Mali tilted her chin in his direction.
“Are you English?” Natalie asked.
“Not exactly.” Mali pulled off her apron, balled it up, and tossed it into an ever-growing pile of aprons and towels in the corner. “I spent most of my childhood there in a little town north of Liverpool because my father worked there. He was an attaché for the ambassador. Age two to twenty-two, I went to school at Oxford because my father insisted. But I was born right here, about fifteen kilometers away, actually. I guess since I learned to speak in England, the accent simply never left, but I’m Thai.”
“Mali’s family has always raised ellies. They’re Karen,” Andrew answered.
“Karen?”
“The original elephant trainers,” Mali said with a laugh. She pulled off her turban and roughed up her bluish-black hair with a sigh as if she’d been waiting all day to do so. “Our tribe lives on the Burma border, in the mountains. The largest group of peoples. The original settlers. Most of the mahouts here are Karen. They’ve come from generations of mahouts. Thousands of years. Some were involved in logging. All of my uncles, my brothers, and even my sons, are mahouts. They begin the process as children with elephant calves, and the two grow up together. Most of the chaps you see here at the sanctuary are Karen. I’m the only person in my family who went to university, and even I can’t stay away from the chang.”
Natalie assumed the word meant elephant.
“Master’s degree in Psychology, and look at me, I cook for people who spend their whole lives covered in elephant mud.” Mali’s robust laughter brought smiles to everyone around them. She glanced up at Andrew, and her eyes softened. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
For a brief moment, Natalie felt jealous of the relationship they had, but a memory of her husband Parker’s flashes of temper with her and her boys intruded. She squeezed her eyes closed and replaced the memory with a reminder to concentrate on the moment. Parker is the past. This is the present. Now is all that matters.
Mali lowered herself to a bench and gestured for Natalie to join her. “Come, let’s get to know one another. Andrew tells me you’re from North Carolina. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard the weather there’s nearly as hot and humid as this.”
“Not this warm.” Instinctively, Natalie knew this woman might become a friend, someone to talk to, someone who might share some of life’s treasured moments. That was, if Natalie could trust herself enough to let down her walls and let Mali in.