2

Hannibal Rex

The end of my first summer in Lost Nation was fast approaching, and I was becoming happily ensconced in my new life with my grandparents. For a six-year-old who had led a rather sheltered town existence until now, every day on the Farm seemed to hold several fresh surprises; and my grandparents themselves continued to be endless sources of fascination for me, with their ongoing rivalry and strange ways of incorporating me into it.

Recently everything they did around the Farm in their spare time seemed calculated to prepare for Kingdom Fair, which fell on Labor Day weekend, just before I would start school. They spent hours out in their respective gardens, earmarking the choicest vegetables for their individual displays at the horticultural exhibit. Never one to put away her work for the day and retire before eleven or midnight, my grandmother was now working nearly round-the-clock, putting up preserves for the canned produce competition, dispatching me on forays for blueberries and long blackberries to go into jams and jellies, baking pie shells for the pastry displays sponsored by the local Grange.

My grandfather was busy on fronts of his own. Now instead of reading in the big kitchen rocker after supper or taking me fishing, he washed and groomed the four Ayrshire milkers he’d selected to show at the cattle exhibit, selected some beautiful maple and fir boards for the lumber display, and circled his work horses around and around the barnyard, pulling a small buckboard wagon in preparation for the two-horse hitch driving competition.

My grandmother had a summer kitchen off the regular year-round kitchen. This was a large, unfinished room with a dry sink, a long wooden counter, and an old-fashioned kerosene range where she did much of the cooking in the summertime in order to keep the regular kitchen cool to eat in. The walls of the summer kitchen were emblazoned with blue ribbons from forty years of my grandmother’s triumphs at the fair. My grandfather’s ribbons hung over the milking stanchions in the barn.

It is hard to convey exactly how determined each one of my grandparents was to win the greatest number of ribbons. Suffice it to say that never since then have I witnessed such single-minded rivalry between two people. For weeks it infected the entire household.

As Labor Day and the fair drew nearer, a special anticipation hung in the air all up and down Lost Nation Hollow and throughout Kingdom County. One day on our way into the village to deliver our milk to the cheese factory, my grandfather and I spotted many bright red-and-yellow posters on the sides of barns and sheds, in store windows, plastered to roadside trees and telephone poles. They depicted a performing elephant rearing up on its massive hind legs with its trunk raised majestically. Of course I had seen pictures of elephants before, but compared to the Elephant Child in my Kipling storybook, or even the gigantic beasts in the caravan of elephants in The Arabian Nights, the elephant on the posters was huge almost beyond belief, dwarfing the midway Ferris wheel sketched in the background. Covering its back was a vast tapestry of many brilliant colors. Its headdress glittered with rubies and emeralds, and its alabaster tusks were long and curved, and as lethal-looking as twin ivory scimitars. “See Hannibal Rex, King of the Big Top, the Third Largest Elephant in Captivity,” the posters announced.

Even now, I vividly remember the thrill of that gaudy scene repeated a hundred times all over the county. I hoped my grandfather hadn’t forgotten the promise he’d made to stake me to a day at the fair, but was too shy to remind him of it.

 

Fair day arrived at last. Lately my greatest fear had been that it would rain, but today was cloudless. My grandfather had put the high sideboards on his truck and taken his four show cows and two horses into the fairgrounds the evening before. Uncle Rob had carted in my grandmother’s displays.

While my grandfather and I did barn chores, my grandmother packed our lunches since like most farm families at the time, they deemed it wasteful to purchase lunch at the fair. Immediately after breakfast we headed down the hollow in the mist.

The fairgrounds weren’t crowded this early on opening day. Except for the carousel, most of the midway rides and game booths weren’t set up yet. But the freshly painted dairy barns sparkled white in the sunshine, the stalls had been draped with colored bunting and decorated with cedar boughs and wildflowers in sap pails, and as the farmers moved quietly along the aisles with hay and grain and wheelbarrows carrying out manure, there was an anticipatory, festive air about the scene that reminded me of Christmas.

In the lower end of the Ayrshire barn, a boy of eight or nine was helping his father milk cows. He had a peashooter, and every once in a while he’d ping a pea in our direction. One drilled me in the forehead and smarted like a bee sting. “Who’s that?” I asked my grandfather.

He waited until the man and kid went outside for sawdust. Then he said, “That’s Preston T. Hill and his boy Hermie from down on the county road. Preston’s the town poundkeeper. He rounds up stray animals and such. His boy’s a young pissant if you want the truth. You let me know if he hits my cows with that peashooter. I’ll kick his ass over the grandstand.”

“Elephant’s coming! Elephant! Elephant!”

Hermie Hill was rushing past the open end of the barn, shouting as he ran. Several other boys came charging along behind him. They were chasing a boxy, round-shouldered old truck with slatted openings in the sides. In faded letters on the back were the words “Hannibal Rex, King of the Big Top.” Without a moment’s hesitation I joined the gang of boys running behind the truck as it coughed and bounced its way across the racetrack toward the infield in front of the grandstand. Through the slats I caught a glimpse of something gray and enormous. As the battered vehicle jolted and rocked along with its enormous weight, I was breathless with anticipation.

The truck lurched to a halt and a spry, undersized, unshaven man in a dirty blue T-shirt and jeans, scuffed red cowboy boots, and a wide-brimmed big-game hunter’s hat jumped out with a scowl on his face. He made a short dash toward the gaggle of us kids behind the truck, then pulled up short and stamped one red boot. “Scat!” he yelled.

Just the way you would to a cat.

“Scat!” he shouted again. “No kids yet. This elephant’s a man-killer until he’s been fed and watered. No elephant rides until noon.”

The little man in the big hat could have devised no more enticing come-on for us. We’d stopped in our tracks when he’d rushed at us. Now we surged forward again, determined to see this man-killing elephant, this Hannibal Rex, the third largest elephant in captivity.

In the meantime, out of the passenger side of the cab stepped the skinniest, slinkiest woman I’d ever seen. She wore a spangled blue costume, like a cowgirl, and appeared to be much younger than the man in the big-game hat and boots. She stretched out her arms as though they’d been riding all night and she’d gotten very stiff. Then suddenly she was standing on one leg with the other leg folded flat up against her back, like a stork’s leg. She reached up over her shoulder and scratched the ankle of the lifted foot.

“Double-Jointed Woman, Freaks of the World Show,” the man said to us over his shoulder. “Also the wife, name of Mrs. Twist. Step back away now. I’m about to let Hannibal out of this truck. He’s a rogue, he’s a man-killer and a child-killer, back, back, back. You, rube!” He whirled and pointed straight at me. “Fetch me a bale of hay. Hannibal ain’t quite so apt to tromp you to mush if you hay him a little now and then. Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

I ran for the cow barn, tremendously proud to be singled out to fetch hay for Hannibal. My grandfather was still milking, and Mr. Preston T. Hill was talking vehemently to him about school taxes. Gramp listened to me without comment, then finished his milking unhurriedly while I shifted from foot to foot and Mr. Hill ran on about taxes. Finally my grandfather picked up a hay bale and headed out of the barn toward the infield, with Mr. Hill and me beside him.

We arrived just as the elephant man was unchaining the massive rear door of the truck. It dropped down onto the grass with a resounding thump, converting itself into a makeshift ramp. Out of the dim interior of the truck drifted a nearly overpowering odor of old straw and manure and a musty, ineffable presence of elephant.

Hannibal looked leviathan as he backed out of the truck down the ramp. Until that moment, the largest animals I’d ever seen were our team of workhorses. Hannibal would have made half a dozen of them. I simply could not believe how big he was. He was taller than our milk house at home, and nearly as wide. At six, I could scarcely have been more incredulous if the showman had produced a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Hannibal felt cautiously, almost daintily, for the ground with each hind foot, then lumbered around to face us as the elephant man jabbed at his legs with a long pole ending in a sharp hook.

Mrs. Twist was now sitting on the grass with her back against the front truck tire and her legs crossed behind her head.

“Christ Jesus!” Mr. Preston T. Hill said to her. “Who the hang are you?”

“Freaks of the World Show,” she said.

“Freaks is right,” Mr. Hill said.

“Stand back, he’s a rogue, he’s a child-killer and a baby-killer!” the elephant man said, feinting another dash at us boys.

“Oh, pipe down, Show,” Mrs. Twist said in a bored voice. “Han never hurt nobody in his life.”

“Yes, he did too,” the little man she’d called Show shouted.

“You there, rube,” he said to my grandfather, “break that bale open and scatter it out here for Hannibal. Same as you would for a cow.”

My grandfather set the hay bale down. “What did you call me?” he said.

“Nothing,” Show said. He was in perpetual motion. Now he was driving an iron stake into the ground, now fastening the elephant’s leg chain to it, now jabbing at the animal again with his hook.

“He could yank that stake clean out of the ground with one quick jerk. Be on the rampage seconds later,” Show said to my grandfather. “Annihilate half the midway crowd, the way he done down in Arkansas a few years back.” He brandished his hook. “This keeps him in line, you better believe.”

“Did you call me rube?” my grandfather said.

“No, I was talking to them infernal kids,” Show said. “Hannibal don’t take to kids at all. He killed a young scamp was teasing at him with a water pistol over in Albany two years ago this past June.”

My grandfather gave Show a skeptical look. Then he cut the baling twine and spread out the hay for Hannibal. “That’ll be fifty cents,” he said.

“Put it on my tab,” Show said. “I don’t have fifty cents or five cents and won’t until after I commence giving rides this afternoon. I coasted in here with the fuel needle on empty the last five miles.”

“That’s the Jesus truth, mister,” Mrs. Twist said, her legs comfortably folded behind her back. “That’s the plain sad Jesus truth. Show don’t have one thin dime to his name and neither do I.”

“Yah!” Hermie Hill called out suddenly. “I ain’t a-scart your stupid old elephant.” He whipped out his peashooter and zinged one at Hannibal. It bounced off his massive shoulder. If the elephant noticed at all, he gave no sign of it. But Show saw what Hermie had done.

He made a sprint at Hermie, who ran around the truck, laughing. “Hannibal made boy-soup out of a young fella in Macon for doing less than that!” Show yelled. “All he done was poke Han with a little stick. Boy looked like smashed shortcake afterward.”

“Hear him, won’t you?” Mrs. Twist said amiably.

“Listen, mister,” Mr. Preston T. Hill piped up, “I’m here to tell you to keep your critter hitched and under control. I don’t care how big he is. If he gets loose and does any damage, I’ll have him impounded before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Very cautiously, I edged several steps closer. Hannibal had short yellow tusks and saggy, smooth-looking skin, all variations of gray. His massive ears hung halfway to his knees, and he was swinging his great head and trunk back and forth in time to the distant strains of calliope music from the midway. He did not seem interested in any of us boys so I inched closer.

The showman ran two buckets of water from a hose stretching from the grandstand, and Hannibal drank both immediately, one right after the other. Until now I’d had no earthly idea how an elephant drank. I was delighted to see Hannibal suck the water up into his trunk and then squirt it back into his low-slung mouth. He ate most of the hay, swinging it into his mouth with his trunk in small neat bunches. Suddenly Mrs. Twist flipped me a peanut to give him. My heart beat faster as I stepped closer and held it out. Very delicately, the gigantic beast removed the peanut from the palm of my hand with the moist end of his trunk. It tickled, and I jumped back, but Hannibal paid no attention to me at all. He did not look in the slightest way dangerous.

“This elephant’s getting on in years,” my grandfather remarked to me. “He’s not very well taken care of for an old elephant. See these hook marks on his legs?”

Now Hannibal was swaying to the distant carousel music and tossing wisps of loose hay and dust onto his back with his trunk. As I peered up at the raw-looking gashes Show had made with the hook on the elephant’s legs, Hermie Hill suddenly dodged out from behind the back of the truck and let him have it again with the peashooter. This time the missile struck the inside of the huge animal’s ear. Hannibal gave a snort and stamped his back foot once.

“By the Jesus!” Show shouted, and took off after Hermie at a bandy-legged gait.

“You ought to take that kid to the woodshed, Preston,” my grandfather said to Mr. Hill. “That’s a mean boy you’ve got there if I do say so.”

“He don’t like elephants,” Mr. Hill said. “Neither do I. They’re too damn big if you ask me.”

I reached out and touched Hannibal’s side. His skin was dusty, and rougher than it looked.

 

“Come here, Austen,” my grandfather said when we were back in the cattle barn. He took a bill out of his shirt pocket. “Your work this summer was satisfactory. Here’s your pay.”

He handed me the bill. To my astonished delight it was ten dollars. Ten whole dollars to spend at the fair. I was rich beyond my dreams.

“It’s yours to do as you please with. You can husband it along or you can binge it away like a drunken lumberjack. I don’t care which. I’ll tell you just one thing. Keep your money safe. The midway’s full of pickpockets. I worked for a traveling fair one summer when I was a kid and I know.”

Terrifically happy, I headed for the midway while my grandfather got ready to take his Ayrshires to the judging ring and rack up some ribbons against my grandmother. The grass was still wet, and the thick red and black wires snaking out to the rides from the humming generators glistened with dew in the early-morning sunshine. The food booths were still serving breakfast, and the air was laden with the sharp, exciting aromas of cooking bacon and sausage, strong coffee, gasoline fumes, and cigar smoke. Some of the rides were in full swing. The lilting calliope music led me to a huge old-fashioned carousel with a menagerie of carved wooden circus animals painted every color in the rainbow: pink zebras, orange hippos, blue giraffes, yellow-and-green tigers, and a bright red elephant, which I regarded with scorn now that I had seen and fed a peanut to Hannibal Rex, the real McCoy. There were pony rides, and little boats and cars on rails, but I wanted no part of these kiddie rides, either.

Farther down the midway, rough-looking roustabouts with iron bars and outsized wrenches were setting up the big-kid rides: the Octopus, with its long steel arms extended like a huge Tinkertoy construction; the blue-and-silver Tilt-a-whirl, slanted skyward like the deck of a ship in a storm. From somewhere nearby, the recorded music of a brass band blared out over the midway. The Ferris wheel didn’t have its seats fitted on yet but it looked as tall as my grandfather’s barn. Just gazing up at it made my head swim, and I wondered if I’d have courage enough to ride it later on.

Here on the midway was where all the color and music and excitement of the fair seemed to be concentrated. There were games where you covered a red circle with three silver disks, threw a ball as soft as a pincushion at wooden Kewpie dolls, pitched dimes onto colored plates and glassware. There were shooting galleries, horse race games, basketball throws. A barker with a motorcycle hat and a black leather vest over a gargantuan bare belly urged me to try his hammer-and-bell, where you used a sledgehammer to drive an iron weight up to a bell for a cigar. I grinned and moved on down the midway.

A whistle blasted out nearby. “Step right up and give her a try, can’t win nothing walking by.”

I turned and was startled to see that the man with the whistle had a big blue-and-yellow snake with a green head coiled around his naked upper body. It was a huge tropical snake. Some of the coils drooped down over the man’s bare ribs and some were thrown over his shoulders. The snake’s long neck spiraled down his arm. Suddenly its bright green head shot out at me and hissed loudly.

I jumped back and the man laughed. To my humiliation, I realized that it was not a snake at all, but an amazing tattoo following the contours of his body in the uncanny likeness of a snake. The thing’s green head was tattooed on the back of the man’s hand. Its split black tongue was represented by his darkly-inked middle and index fingers.

The strange individual with the snake tattoo laughed again, not pleasantly. He was standing in front of a baseball-throwing booth, where the idea was to knock down a pyramid of three brown milk bottles with one throw. “Come on, kid,” he said to me in a voice like a snake’s hiss. “Give it a try. Knock ’em down, you get the clown.”

He pointed at a stuffed circus clown hanging over the front of the booth in a row with many other brightly-colored stuffed creatures. “Dime a throw and here we go,” he said, thrusting a baseball out toward me.

I stood stock-still, staring at the stuffed prizes. Next to the clown was a pink crocodile. What a treasure that crocodile would be for my grandmother. I imagined it in Egypt, next to the extinct Sphinx, imagined my grandmother looking at it with satisfaction, then looking approvingly at me.

“That’s Lyle the Pink Crockingdile, kid,” the Snake Man hissed. “Want it? All you got to do is knock down the bottles. Dime a go.”

I hated to break my ten-dollar bill, but I had to have that crocodile for my grandmother. I held out the bill.

“Hey, we got a player,” the Snake Man said. He blew his whistle. “Take his money, Satan.” He whipped out his hand, and it was exactly as if a big green-headed snake was taking my money with its fangs. At the same time he made a hideous reptilian hiss through his teeth.

My ten-dollar bill disappeared. The barker tossed me the baseball. It felt punky compared to the one Rob and I played catch with in the dooryard at home, but I started to wind up the way Rob and my father had taught me.

“Hey, hey, we got a regular Babe Root here,” the Snake Man chanted, and gave a blast on the whistle just as I released the ball, which whizzed two feet over the top milk bottle, missing everything. “Got to hit ’em to knock ’em down, kid. Want your change?”

In the embarrassment of missing by a country mile, I’d started to walk off without my money. I turned back and the snake hand lashed out and slapped a handful of coins into my palm. I retreated fast, nearly dropping my money.

Immediately the whistle blasted out again and he was chanting, “Step right up, give her a whirl, win a panda for your pretty little girl.”

Already I knew that something was not right, though I was unsure what. The midway music roared in my ears. The noon sun seemed too bright, too hot. I looked at the money in my hand: three quarters, a dime, and a tarnished buffalo nickel.

I ran back to the baseball throw booth. “Mister,” I said. “Mister. You didn’t give me the right change.”

“A dime a throw and it’s a go,” the Snake Man chanted as though he hadn’t heard me. “Hey, hey, hey.”

“You didn’t give me the right change,” I repeated. “For my ten-dollar bill.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, kid,” the Snake Man said.

Again I wailed out something about change for my ten dollars. By now a crowd was gathering around us.

“Listen, bub,” the Snake Man said in a weary voice, “you give Satan here a one and Satan give you back ninety cents. Satan’s honest as the day is long. Ain’t you, you old devil?”

He held the snake-hand up to his head, and it nodded vigorously and let out an angry hiss in my direction.

Long and loud, the Snake Man blasted his whistle, as though to blast me from the face of the earth. I turned away, the tears starting now, and bumped smack into my grandfather. “What’s all the ruckus about?” he growled.

Even as I poured out my story, I knew that my grandfather would get my money back for me. He would never let the Snake Man get away with this.

My grandfather stepped up to the baseball throw booth.

“Hey, Gramps, win a stuffed animal for old Grandma? Step right up—”

“This boy handed you a ten,” my grandfather said, cutting the Snake Man off. “I gave it to him not twenty minutes ago. You gave him change for a one.”

“Like hell he handed me a ten,” the Snake Man said. He reached for the money pouch on his big studded belt. He fanned a large number of bills out in his snake-head hand, like playing cards. There were a couple of dozen ones, a few fives, a two, and a twenty.

“See?” he said, holding the flapping handful of bills up to the crowd. “No tens. You find a ten, you can have it, Gramps. Otherwise, move along.”

“You’d best produce it,” my grandfather said. It did not sound like a threat. It sounded like a statement of fact.

“Look, Clyde,” the Snake Man said. “See this whistle? All I got to do is blow one long, two shorts, one long, and yell ‘Hey, rube!’ There’ll be twenty carnies here before you can fart twice. There ain’t no ten dollars. Now shove along.”

“You go ahead and tootle your whistle,” my grandfather said. “I’ll take the boy’s correct change myself.”

As my grandfather reached toward the fanned-out bills, the barker jerked them back and blasted the S.O.S. signal on his whistle. “HEY, RUBE!” he yelled. “HEY, RUBE!”

Instantly other carnies up and down the midway took up the age-old war cry: “HEY, RUBE!” Within seconds the grassy aisle between the game booths and rides was swarming with men running toward us. The Snake Man continued to blast his whistle as they rushed up to his booth. Some carried short chains, others had iron bars. One man wielded a pipe wrench. He menaced with it like a short baseball bat. He could kill somebody with that, I thought. He could kill my grandfather.

The barker held up the green snake-head like a rearing cobra. “Back off, Gramps,” he hissed. “Satan says back off or meet him in hell today.”

My grandfather looked around himself unhurriedly. I recognized a man with a stocking cap on his head from the Ferris wheel, and an eye-patch man from the dime toss. The hammer-and-bell man with the motorcycle cap and vest and the big belly had a blackjack.

My grandfather towered over most of the carnies by a head or more, but there must have been fifteen of them, all armed.

He shook his head slightly. “All right, gentlemen,” he said. “I could still maybe take two or three of you. I can’t take a dozen of you.”

“This seems to be your lucky day, Gramps,” the Snake Man hissed. “Come back and play the game. You might win.”

My grandfather looked at him carefully. “All right,” he said. “I will.”

But the barker never heard him. “Step right up, give her a try,” he chanted, lashing Satan out at passersby and hissing as though my grandfather and I and my ten dollars were the furthest things from his mind.

I fought back my tears. In a matter of minutes, the best day of my life had turned into one of the worst. Everything about the midway now seemed to mock me. The brassy, carefree music, the delicious smells of fried food, the colors and the crowd and the excitement. Everything was a cruel reminder of my carelessness and gullibility.

Back at the cattle barns the judges had been through with the awards. Four large shiny blue ribbons, one for each of our show Ayrshires, hung above our stalls. But my grandfather barely glanced at them. He’d fully expected to win the cattle judging division all along.

Not knowing what else to do, I wandered out of the barn and over to Horticultural Hall, where I found my black-clad grandmother standing off to one side of the exhibits, frowning at three women judges sampling the baked goods. She seemed as self-possessed and inscrutable here as in our farmhouse kitchen. How could the judges dream of not conferring blue ribbons upon her raspberry tarts, strawberry rhubarb pie, yeasty-smelling salt-rising bread? The stony and impassive stare of her friend the Great Sphinx himself could hardly have been more intimidating than her gaze.

“Well, Tut,” Gram said, “how many blue ribbons does your grandfather have? What’s the tally thus far?”

“Four,” I said.

“Ah,” she said. “Only four?”

I nodded.

“Sample my miniature angel food cake, ladies,” my grandmother called out sharply to the cowed judges.

She glanced at me, her eyes watchful and appraising. “Winning is all, Tut. Remember that, now and later. Winning is all. Do you think failure of any kind ever once entered the mind of the great archaeologist Mr. Howard Carter? No, it did not. Achieving your goal, be it a blue ribbon or the discovery of a new tomb, is all.”

My grandmother moved off down the aisle after the triumvirate of timorous judges as they headed for the preserves section, having duly placed a blue ribbon on her miniature angel food cake. Penniless and defeated, I drifted back outside, unable to tell my grandmother how I had let myself be cheated.

Suddenly there was an unearthly shriek from the infield in front of the grandstand. It was followed immediately by another blast, even louder than the first.

I ran down across the racetrack toward the infield, where Hannibal was trumpeting steadily, his trunk lifted high above his head. I had never heard such a piercing, angry roar in my life. As I approached, the elephant reared up onto his hind legs, screaming to high heaven. Little Show was trying to get his hook over the animal’s head to pull him down.

“Hut, hut, hut!” Show shouted.

The elephant dropped onto his front feet and reared right back up again. As he towered above us, I saw the crumpled figure of a man lying beside Show’s truck. No, not a man. A boy. Hermie Hill!

Now Hannibal was dragging Show all over the lot. Show was swinging from his hook, being tossed from side to side like a doll. Again the elephant raised onto his hind legs, shaking Show off like a child. For a terrible moment, Hannibal was poised directly above Hermie. He let out a long furious blast and just as he was about to come down on his victim, my grandfather appeared from nowhere, scooped Hermie up and rushed him around the truck. It all happened so fast that for a few moments I didn’t fully understand what I’d seen. The elephant gave one last inhuman cry. Then he dropped down onto all fours again and stood there quietly.

My grandfather had laid Hermie on the ground beside the Double-Jointed Woman, Mrs. Twist. Hermie was bleeding from the nose and moaning. “Fetch the ambulance, quick!” Gramp said.

Somebody ran to call the ambulance. Mrs. Twist hurried to the truck cab and came back with a blanket to put over Hermie. “It weren’t Hannibal’s fault, mister!” she shouted to my grandfather. “Han ain’t to blame.”

By now Show had gotten Hannibal safely inside the back of the truck. He ran up and pointed an accusatory finger at Hermie, moaning on the ground. “I tol’ him to stop it with that bean shooter,” he yelled. “He hit Han smack in the eye with it. I swear to God he did. Hit him right smack in the eye, and when the kid come near him, Han snatched him up and throwed him. Oh, Jesus!”

Siren wailing, the ambulance came tearing across the infield from the first aid station. Volunteer attendants in red jackets with gold lettering that said “Kingdom County Fire Department” leaped out and loaded Hermie’s crumpled body onto a stretcher and into the back. The injured boy looked totally helpless. In my heart I secretly rejoiced over the bully’s fate, and was enormously proud of my grandfather’s heroism.

“You saved the kid’s life, mister,” Mrs. Twist said as the ambulance went racing out of the fairgrounds.

“It’s barely worth saving,” my grandfather said. He rounded on Show. “You ought to control your animal.”

“He never done nothing like this before,” Show cried. “I swear it.”

By now Sheriff White had arrived with Mr. Preston T. Hill. Mr. Hill was already hollering about Hermie, the elephant, hospital and undertaking bills. He kept trying to get at Show. Sheriff White had to hold him back.

“What a circus,” my grandfather said. “Let’s get out of here, Austen.”

On the way back to the cattle barn Gramp told me that he believed that one and possibly both of Hermie’s legs had been broken. He didn’t know what other injuries Hermie might have sustained but he didn’t think the boy would die. He said if he knew Preston Hill, he was far more concerned about losing Hermie’s free help around the farm than losing Hermie, anyway.

“Now, Austen,” my grandfather said to me in a tone indicating that the subject of Hermie Hill and the elephant was closed, “I intend to visit some people this afternoon. I want you to come with me.”

I was sharply disappointed. Although I was always happy to go anywhere with my grandfather, I had counted on spending the afternoon on the midway even though my money was gone. A few minutes later when my grandfather and I drove out of the grounds together in the blazing noon sun, it seemed to me that I had lost my day at the fair forever. As the midway music receded behind us, so did all my hopes.

 

My grandfather said nothing more to me that afternoon about the fair. We spent the next several hours driving the back roads of the county visiting people he knew, mostly in remote mountain hollows and far up country lanes. He did not stay long in any one place. Some of the people he wanted to see were at the fair themselves. He said that was all right; he’d catch them there this evening. He did not invite me up into the barnyards and dooryards with him or tell me what he said to the men he spoke with. When I asked him who the people were, he said only, “Neighbors.”

The Farm seemed preternaturally quiet when we arrived around five o’clock. Just knowing that my grandmother wasn’t there made me uneasy as I rounded up the remaining Ayrshires and drove them down through the pasture to the barn to be milked. We headed back to town as soon as chores were over, not bothering to fix supper; we’d snacked on crackers and cheese and soft drinks that afternoon during our long ride up and down the hollows.

By the time we reached the fairgrounds it was growing dusky. The sky above the grounds was a rich indigo. Beneath it the midway lights gave off an alluring glow in the early fall twilight. I wanted to ask my grandfather if we could go back to the midway, but Kingdom Fair seemed destined to be a place of turmoil for us that day. No sooner had we finished milking the four prize-winning Ayrshires at the cattle barn than my Uncle Rob Roy ran in with alarming news. “Dad, quick!” he shouted. “They’re going to shoot Hannibal!”

“What are you talking about?” my grandfather said. “Who’s going to shoot Hannibal?”

“Preston Hill, the old son of a bitch.”

“What, did Hermie die?”

“No, Hermie’s got a fractured leg and arm, maybe a ruptured spleen, they aren’t sure. He’s going to be all right, more’s the pity. But Old Man Hill bulled right ahead and hauled that little moron they call Show up in front of Kip Pierce, and Kip fined him a hundred dollars for not keeping Hannibal properly confined. Show doesn’t have one hundred dollars. Now Kip’s saying the elephant has to be destroyed according to some town ordinance . . . I don’t know, just hurry.”

My grandfather swore savagely. But he headed fast for the infield. Already a good-sized crowd had gathered around the elephant, which was staked out behind the truck again. Sheriff White was there, looking very uneasy. With him were Justice of the Peace Kip Pierce, Mr. Preston T. Hill, and Show. Mr. Hill was toting his deer rifle, and Show was pleading with Justice Pierce and Sheriff White, begging for just three days to raise the fine money from his elephant rides. Backlighted by the glowing midway, it was a nightmarish scene.

“What’s the trouble here?” my grandfather said.

“Nothing at all to do with you, Austen,” Justice Pierce said.

“I’ll tell you what the trouble is,” Mr. Hill shouted. “This beast broke one of my boy’s legs and one of his arms and now he’s laid up in the horsepittle. He won’t be able to work for two months, never mind putting me in the poorhouse with doctor’s bills.”

Mr. Hill was so mad that flecks of saliva were flying out of his mouth. “That animal’s been declared a public menace, Austen Kittredge. I’ve got authorization to destroy it. Right, Kip?”

“That’s true, Austen,” Justice Kip Pierce said, not happily. “We can’t have an animal like that running loose on the rampage. The law on such matters plainly stipulates a fine not to exceed the value of the damages, which I estimate as no more than one hundred dollars medical bills, or forfeiture of the animal if it’s dangerous to public safety or private property, or both. I told this fella here if he’d pay the fine and clear out of town we wouldn’t destroy his elephant. I was as reasonable about it as I could be. But he says he rolled in flat broke. In view of that I’ve authorized Preston here, as poundkeeper, to shoot it.”

“You men would shoot an elephant?” my grandfather said in an incredulous voice. “You’d do that? In cold blood?”

“It’s a what-you-call-it—a rogue,” Sheriff White said. “It’s dangerous to the public safety, Austen.”

“Clear out of the way now,” Mr. Hill said to the growing crowd. He began putting shells in his rifle. I noticed that his hands were shaking.

“You fellas listen to me now,” my grandfather said. “Hermie asked for what he got. He provoked the animal, nearly put out its eye.”

“A fine not exceeding the damages incurred or forfeiture of the animal or both. That’s the written law,” Mr. Pierce intoned.

“Give me three days,” Show implored. “I’ll raise the money from elephant rides.”

“Who’s going to ride your elephant after what he did to young Hermie?” Sheriff White said. “You won’t be any closer to raising that money three days from now than you are today. You didn’t have a single customer this afternoon once word about Hermie got out.”

More fairgoers were pouring in from the midway. News of the elephant’s impending execution had evidently spread to the entire grounds and everyone seemed eager to be present. Mr. Hill was still fumbling to get his shells into his gun. Sheriff White was directing the crowd away from the line of fire. I felt as though I was about to witness a murder I was helpless to prevent. Show was frantic, running here, there, everywhere.

“Simmer down,” my grandfather told Show. “Can’t you get your carny cronies down on the lot to pony up that hundred dollars for you?”

“They ain’t my cronies,” Show said. “They hate my guts. I’m circus, they’re carnival.”

“That’s the Jesus truth, mister,” Mrs. Twist said. “For once in his life the runt’s told the truth. Carnies ain’t like circus folks. With carnies, it’s dog eat dog, except maybe they gang up on some rubes with their billies and such.”

“Preston,” my grandfather said, “you seem to be having some trouble loading that gun. You sure you want to go big-game hunting here tonight? You hit old Hannibal in the wrong place, he’s going to trample you before you can shoot again.”

Mr. Hill hesitated. He looked warily at Hannibal. “Put him back in the truck,” he said to Show. “We’ll shoot him through the slats.”

“God Almighty,” Sheriff White said. “I don’t know about that. Shooting a helpless animal inside a truck?”

“Come on,” a man in the crowd said. “Shoot him. We footed it clear up here from the girlie shows to see an elephant shot. Now blast him, goddamn it.”

“Austen’s right,” Kip Pierce said with all the magisterial deliberation of a Supreme Court justice. “Do you good folks have any idea what mayhem this animal is capable of wreaking if Preston here don’t put the first bullet in its brain? Do you want a wounded rogue bull elephant loose on the midway? I don’t believe so. We’ll put him in the truck and drive it out to the town gravel pit on the river road and fill it full of holes.”

“Yes!” Preston said. “Now you’re talking.”

“Let’s get to it, then,” a drunk yelled, and some other men growled in assent. In the dusky glare from the midway the faces of the nighttime fairgoers were hard and unyielding. Mrs. Twist sobbed and ran to Hannibal and put her arms around his trunk.

In that moment a sense of collective hesitation seemed to fall over the entire fairgrounds, broken only by the faraway noise of the midway and the creaking of the truck springs as Hannibal, oblivious to his fate, once again began to rock to the distant music.

Then my grandfather spoke, breaking the spell. “Kip, I’ll pay your one-hundred-dollar fine and take personal responsibility for the elephant. I’ll guarantee the public safety if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“How can you do that, Austen?”

“I’ll take him up on my farm. I’ve got plenty of work he can do up there. We can keep each other company when the boy’s off at school. An elephant’s the best company there is for a fella who understands them and doesn’t abuse them.”

“No one can prove I ever abused that animal,” Show said. “It cannot be proved.”

My grandfather made a harsh sound in his throat, a sardonic approximation of a laugh. But I was thunderstruck by his announcement that he would take Hannibal home with us. I wanted to shout out loud. An elephant! An elephant on the Farm in Lost Nation. Through my mind flashed a wildly improbable montage of Hannibal plowing our cornfields, Hannibal hauling logs out of the woods to my grandfather’s sawmill, Hannibal pulling our hay wagon and myself high on the load of hay, driving him. Then almost as quickly I was overcome by a great wave of despair. Surely such a marvel as this could never come to pass, except maybe in one of my storybooks.

“I’ll pay the fine and take the elephant,” my grandfather repeated.

“Like hell you will!” Mr. Hill said. “I intend to haul that animal out to the gravel pit and shoot it, Austen Kittredge. He half-killed my boy.”

“You’ve nearly killed him yourself a dozen times over,” my grandfather said. “But you aren’t going to harm that elephant. No one is. I said I’ll pay the hundred dollars. I’ll pay it by ten o’clock tonight. In the meantime, Kip, you better stand guard over Hannibal so nobody gets an itchy trigger finger. Mason, you might want to escort these people”—nodding at Show and Mrs. Twist—“to the county line. The quicker they get out of here the better. Is that fair?”

“I guess it is,” Justice Pierce said after a pause. “But where are you going to get a hundred dollars between now and ten o’clock, Austen?”

“Yes, how do I know I’ll get my money?” Mr. Hill said.

My grandfather looked at him. “Did I say you’d get it, Preston?”

“Well,” Preston T. Hill said.

“You wouldn’t be questioning my word?” my grandfather said softly.

“The written law says forfeit the animal or pay the fine or both,” Justice Pierce said. “If Austen can pay the fine and guarantee the public safety, as he says . . .”

“Can you keep the last of the great ivory hunters here off Hannibal until ten o’clock?” my grandfather said. He jerked his head at Mr. Hill.

“Nobody,” Kip said, “but nobody, will touch one hair on this elephant’s hide until ten tonight.”

“If you ain’t here at ten sharp with the money, I intend to shoot him,” Mr. Hill said.

“Well,” my grandfather said, “I intend to be here, Preston. With the money. If only to deprive you of the great satisfaction of slaughtering an elephant shut up in a truck.”

“Are you folks all set to skedaddle on out of here?” Sheriff White said to Show.

“I don’t know,” Show said slowly. “One hundred dollars is a mighty cheap price to pay for the third largest land animal in captivity. Especially when I’m not getting nothing out of it.”

“You’re getting out of having the elephant shot, damn it,” Kip said. “I thought you didn’t want the elephant shot.”

“He’s old anyway,” Show said. “I don’t know as I want this fella to have the benefit of him.”

“Mister,” Kip said, “I am giving you one last chance to get out of this mess and this county scot-free, with a safe-conduct escort from Sheriff White. Or would you rather go to jail for a hundred days? Because you are one half step away from there this minute.”

“Get in the truck,” Show said to Mrs. Twist. “We’ll go back down to Albany and hire a lawyer.”

“Good luck,” Kip said. “To you and your Albany lawyer.”

Mrs. Twist ran up to my grandfather. “You really going to buy Han, mister? You promise you won’t let nobody shoot him?”

“Nobody’s going to shoot him,” my grandfather said. “Best get going now.”

Mrs. Twist gave Hannibal’s trunk one last hug, then got in the truck with Show, who leaned out the window and called to my grandfather, “Hey, you, pops. You’re such a free spender. You got a loose five-spot on you? Gas tank on empty, and I wouldn’t want to run out on the road in this forsaken state. Probably get lynched.”

My grandfather thrust a few bills in through the window and Show grabbed them and without a word of thanks drove off across the infield toward the nearest exit. Halfway to the gate Sheriff White passed him and flicked on his blue light to lead the way.

“That’ll take care of him for an hour,” my grandfather murmured.

“Show?” I said, surprised.

“No. Mason White.”

My grandfather looked at me and shook his head slightly as if all the furor over Hannibal was nothing more than a momentary nuisance. “You and I have some unfinished business, Austen. Come on.”

My grandfather started toward the cattle barn with me at his heels. Inside the barn, in the dim light of the few bare overhead bulbs, I spotted a shadowy group of men near the far entranceway. These men were not loud and fast-moving and half-drunk like the raucous gang of townies who’d come rushing like sharks to a kill to see Mr. Hill shoot Hannibal. They were standing quietly in the weak light, dressed in checked shirts and wool pants or overalls. Most of them were tall and lean and wore slouch hats or caps embossed with the names of feed brands and tractors. Some carried log peaveys and pulp hooks. Others carried shotguns nearly as tall as I was.

As we approached, I recognized half a dozen of the men from the hollow farms my grandfather and I had visited that afternoon. Neighbors, he had called them then. That is what he called them again now, tilting his head toward them and saying to me quietly, “Neighbors, Austen. Being good neighbors.”

There could not have been fewer than thirty armed neighbors in the entranceway of the barn.

“All right, gentlemen,” my grandfather said, “if you’ll just follow along about ten paces behind me and my grandson here, and only step forward should I give the word.”

My grandfather looked soberly at his neighbors: men from the far mountain hollows, the last full-time hunters and trappers and six-cow farmers in Kingdom County. They looked soberly back at him. No doubt some of these men had been on the big river drives with him long ago. They were men he’d helped in haying and sugaring time, as they’d helped him. They had helped each other milk in times of sickness. Some of them had eaten and slept in his deer camp.

“Just one thing more,” my grandfather said to his neighbors. “Earlier I told you this would take about five minutes. I miscalculated. I’ve got a friend who’s in bad trouble. I’ve got to bail him out and that will take closer to an hour.”

One or two of the men nodded. The rest just waited silently. No one objected.

My grandfather had not often taken my hand that summer, except maybe to cross fast water in the river when we went trout fishing. Now he took my hand and led me up to the midway. Our neighbors drifted along some distance behind us, shadowy in the night. The dew-soaked grass under our feet smelled fresh as morning and the scent of fried food was pungent and mouthwatering on the damp night air. The strings of Christmas lights adorning the rides and booths, the hurdy-gurdy music and snapping cracks from the shooting gallery and crescendoing shrieks of kids on the fair rides were a thousand times more exciting tonight.

My grandfather made a beeline to the baseball throw booth. There was the Snake Man, right where he’d been that morning. “Step on up, give her a whirl, win a prize for your pretty little girl.”

My grandfather shouldered his way to the front of the crowd. “We’re back,” he said.

The Snake Man glanced at my grandfather. He gave a short laugh of recognition. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “It’s Old Gramps. Old Gramps and Babe Root, the kid who can’t throw and can’t count change. Sic ’em, Satan.”

The blue-and-yellow snake-arm with the frightful green head struck at me. I jumped back and the crowd laughed. But my grandfather calmly took a dollar bill out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “Play the game, Austen.”

I gave the bill to the barker, who held it up in Satan’s mouth and shouted, “See, folks. It’s a one. Not a ten or a twenty or a hundred. A one.”

He tossed me the punky, lopsided baseball and this time I threw quickly, with no windup. The ball grazed the rim of the top bottle. It teetered momentarily but didn’t fall. I was disappointed. More than anything I still wanted to win that stuffed pink crocodile for my grandmother. It, or one identical to it, was still hanging above the booth with the other stuffed prizes.

“Got to hit ’em to knock ’em down, kid. Play again?”

“Give the boy his change,” my grandfather said.

“Sure, Gramps. Whatever you say. Make change, Satan.” The green snake-head spit the change out into my hand. In a loud, hissing, mocking voice, the Snake Man said, “Twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, eighty-five, ninety-five, one dollar, rube.”

Satan reared up his head and hissed at me in derision, and as fast as chain lightning my grandfather reached out and seized the barker’s wrist just behind the tattooed snake-head, as he might grab a real snake that was threatening to strike me.

“Hold it,” my grandfather said. “The boy gave you a ten.”

“Like hell he did!” the Snake Man yelped. “He give me a one.”

“He tendered you a ten-dollar bill,” my grandfather said, not loudly. “You owe him nine dollars.”

“Where are your witnesses, old man? I’ll blow one long, two short, one long and yell, ‘Hey, rube!’ In thirty seconds flat you’ll be—Hey! Hey!”

The Snake Man yelled hey, all right. But he did not yell ‘Hey, rube.’ My grandfather had yanked the whistle out of his mouth and tossed it high over his shoulder into the swirling confusion of the midway. Just the way my grandmother might deadhead a rusty blossom on her moss rose in the dooryard at home—with no more thought than that.

“Boys,” my grandfather called over his shoulder. Out of the shadows along the edge of the midway came our neighbors, the one-horse loggers, the eighty-acre hill farmers, the poachers and moonshiners and mountain men from the wild northern hollows along the Canadian frontier.

“How much did I give this fella, boys?”

“I see you hand him a ten-spot, Austen,” Henry Coville from Lord Hollow said. “I’ll swear to it in any court in the land.”

“You handed him a ten outen your shirt pocket.”

“You give him ten dollars, Austen Kittredge.”

“It would have been that, all right. Ten.”

The Snake Man’s eyes were furious as an angry serpent’s. But he said nothing. My grandfather released his grip.

“You want to yell ‘Hey, rube!’ go ahead. Yell away.”

The Snake Man looked at the armed men crowded around his booth. Then he shrugged and shook his head. “Okay, Gramps,” he said. “You win.” He counted nine dollars out into my grandfather’s hand, a five and four ones.

My grandfather gave it to me. “This belongs to you, Austen. Keep better track of it this time.”

But he wasn’t through with the Snake Man yet. He got a dime out of his pocket. “I want to play your game,” he said. “Toss that ball here.”

To my surprise, my grandfather stepped off to the side and threw low and hard, knocking one of the two weighted lower bottles sideways into the other and upsetting all three.

“Remember what I told you about working for a fair one summer?” he said to me. “I learned a thing or two. Pick your prize.”

“I want that crocodile,” I shouted. “Lyle the Pink Crocodile!”

The Snake Man wordlessly took down the stuffed pink crocodile and shoved it at me with Satan, who no longer frightened me in the least.

“Now, gentlemen,” my grandfather told the men behind him, “we’ll bail out my friend.”

I clutched Lyle tightly to my chest as we moved a short distance down the midway to the coin toss glassware booth, diagonally across from the baseball throw. The red, green, and blue ice-cream plates, the decorated tea sets and cut glass pitchers and matched dinnerware sparkled beautifully under the overhead lights.

The barker with the eye patch was busy handing out change and prizes, though most of the coins people threw just bounced off the glassware onto a dirty sheet spread out on the ground below them. Again my grandfather handed me a dollar and told me to play.

The eye-patch man took my dollar and handed me back a dime to toss. I flipped it out toward the glittering array of glass and china, and it landed on the far edge of a turkey platter and slid off onto a plain white crockery tea saucer.

“Winner here,” the barker rasped out as he handed me the saucer. “We got a winner. Play again?”

I looked at my grandfather, who shook his head. “Give the boy his change,” he told the barker.

The eye-patch man spilled the remaining ninety cents he’d hoped to con me into spending into my hand, and started along the counter toward an old woman throwing dimes the way some people play a slot machine, one after another after another.

“Carnival man!” my grandfather called out.

Patch squinted at him with his one eye. “This young fella here gave you a ten,” my grandfather said. “You owe him nine more dollars.”

“Bull!” Patch growled. “He gave me a one.”

“Boys,” my grandfather said, and on cue, his neighbors materialized again.

“I won’t stand for this,” Patch shouted. “I’m going for the sheriff, by Jesus.”

“The sheriff’s tied up just now,” my grandfather said. “He’s escorting a man out of town.”

“Look,” Patch said. “Whatever trouble you had earlier with Snake, it don’t have nothing to do with me and my booth.”

“Why’d you come rushing to his defense with a billy, then?” my grandfather said.

“He yelled ‘Hey, rube!’ damn it. We got to come a-running when a carny hollers ‘Hey, rube!’”

“No, you don’t,” my grandfather said. “You’ve got to fork over the correct change or I’ll invite this man to take target practice on your wares.”

My grandfather jerked his head toward Cousin WJ Kittredge, who was squinting down the barrels of his shotgun to be sure they were clear.

“I’m real scart,” Patch said defiantly.

My grandfather shrugged. WJ inserted two large red shells in the barrels of his gun and snapped it shut. He looked up, just two coal-black eyes between his tangled black beard and slouch hat. Patch’s face turned pale. WJ lifted his shotgun and pulled back one of the hammers and Patch hollered, “All right. All right.”

He gave my grandfather nine dollars, and Cousin Whiskeyjack lowered the shotgun and vanished into the crowd.

My grandfather passed the adjacent booth, the Kewpie doll throw, without stopping. The barker there was a girl I didn’t recognize.

As we approached the hammer-and-bell, near the Ferris wheel, I saw Patch run up to confer with the shirtless man with the black vest. This looked like trouble.

“What the hell do you want?” the big-bellied man growled at my grandfather. He was already tapping a blackjack against his bare stomach. It made a hard smack each time it sprang forward and hit.

“The boy wants to play,” my grandfather said, and handed him a dollar.

The hammer-and-bell man held out the change, which my grandfather ignored. “Try it, Austen.”

I picked up the sledgehammer, then put it down. I couldn’t even lift it to my waist.

“Let me give you a hand,” my grandfather said, and took the hammer and with an easy-looking swing rang the bell.

“Okay,” the man with the blackjack said. “Here’s your cigar and here’s your change.”

“I gave you a ten,” my grandfather said.

“Did you now, rube?” Before I had any idea that he intended to do it, the blackjack man was yelling, “HEY, RUBE! HEY, RUBE!” at the top of his lungs.

From up and down the midway, for the second time that day, the carnies came swarming with their billy clubs and blackjacks and iron bars. One man was holding a broken bottle. Another palmed a knife. This time my grandfather didn’t need to speak to his neighbors. Instantly they appeared from the shadows, forming a loose phalanx around him, their peaveys and long pick poles and guns at the ready, waiting for the onrushing carnival men, who stopped in their tracks as a shotgun blast rang out over the midway, accompanied by a clangorous gong from the top of the hammer-and-bell.

Beside my grandfather, Cousin WJ Kittredge was drawing another bead on the bell, which now resembled a badly dented hubcap. This time when he fired it flew completely off the post.

“Jesus Christ Almighty, the rubes got guns!” a carny in a dirty white sailor’s hat yelled.

The mountain men stood silently around my grandfather, who was watching the hammer-and-bell man carefully. “You owe me nine dollars,” he said in his harsh voice, not loud. “I want it.”

Without a word the man handed him the money. My grandfather put it in his billfold and moved off with me in tow. The carnies gave way before us.

On down the midway we went, in a euphoric cloud of hazy colored light. We stopped at the rifle shoot, the basketball throw, the booth where you covered a red circle with three silver disks—all places where the barker had responded to the Snake Man’s “Hey, rube!” that morning. At each game my grandfather handed the barker a one and extracted change for a ten. At most of the booths my grandfather played the game after me and won a prize, which he let me pick out. Soon my arms were overflowing with stuffed animals, painted china figurines, framed pictures of baseball players and movie stars, and afterward, while my grandfather went up to the infield to purchase Hannibal, I rode on the big Ferris wheel, wedged into the swinging seat laden with my spoils from the midway. Up and up and up it went, and then stopped, swinging like a cradle, high above the midway in the cool night air.

I hugged Lyle and looked out over the seat bar. The booths below looked small and insignificant, the colored lights glowed eerily through the evening mist creeping up over the fields from the Kingdom River. The music, even the shrieks from the Octopus, sounded far, far away. Horticultural Hall gave off a warm glow, and the cattle barns glimmered like barns early in the morning before daylight when lantern lights have just come on inside. In the distance, beyond the rosy haze of the midway lights reflecting off the fog, I could see the fainter lights of the village of Kingdom Common, where not three months ago I’d stood alone on the station platform, waiting for my grandfather to take me up to Lost Nation.

“Hey, rube!” I said. Then I shouted it: “HEY, RUBE!

“HEY, RUBE!” I yelled, as the Ferris wheel started with a jolt and revolved on into the night, and on and on, until I thought it might never stop.

My grandfather did purchase Hannibal Rex. To the mortification of my otherwise triumphant grandmother—it was obvious that once again she was going to walk away from Kingdom Fair with more blue ribbons than my grandfather or anyone else—we brought the elephant home in the back of the lumber truck that very night and quartered him in the upper hay barn. That fall, after I started school, my grandfather used Han for a number of jobs around the Farm: hauling logs down out of Idaho, yanking some recalcitrant stumps out of a high pasture he was reclaiming northwest of the house, and, on more than one occasion just before winter and again in spring mudtime, pulling the lumber truck out of the quagmire our dirt road turned into whenever it rained hard. By degrees, Hannibal went from a wonder to a curiosity to a fixture on the Farm in Lost Nation.

I rode him off and on, and sometimes kids from the village came up to see him with their folks, but my grandfather discouraged this. As for the newspaper reporters who wanted to photograph him, he summarily put the first two who showed up off our premises. Apparently word spread because they were the last reporters we saw.

Sometimes one or two of the mountain people who’d helped my grandfather earn the money to bail Hannibal out and save his life came by to see him, usually just appearing in the dooryard as though they’d dropped out of the sky. These men my grandfather was always happy enough to see. I thought that Show and Mrs. Twist might appear someday themselves and try to buy the elephant back, but my grandfather told me he wouldn’t return Han to Show to be abused with that hook for any amount of money in the world. The showman never did contact us, and neither did his Albany lawyer.

My grandmother, for her part, rarely alluded to Hannibal at all. Most of the time she simply ignored his presence as if he didn’t exist. She did cut the article about Hermie Hill’s hospitalization out of the local paper and paste it in her Doomsday Book; and on especially cold winter nights, when the temperature fell to forty and forty-five below, she’d look up from her sewing and say to me, “You and your grandfather had better check on that animal before you go to bed, Tut.”

And we always did.

The times I remember best with Hannibal were three or four frigid nights in deep winter when my grandfather hitched him to a flat-bed sleigh and he and Han and I took hay up to the deer yarded in the deep evergreen woods of Idaho. After unloading the sled, we’d wait on the edge of the trees under the cold starlight, with Hannibal’s breath billowing up through the branches like steam from an open spot on the river. First singly, then in pairs and small family groups, the winter-thin deer came out of the woods to feed, unafraid of us or of Hannibal. Those were fine times for my grandfather and me, and I think Hannibal enjoyed them too.

But besides being a prodigious hayburner, Hannibal Rex was an old elephant when my grandfather acquired him. The long border-country winter was tough on him, even after Gramp moved him from the hayloft to a stall at the far end of the milking parlor, which was much warmer.

One afternoon the following spring, a few days after we’d turned Hannibal in with the cows in the upper pasture, he vanished. My grandfather followed his tracks into the Idaho woods and found him lying on his side, big as a gray granite outcropping, near where he’d helped us take hay to the deer the previous winter. Apparently he’d gone off to die there alone, peaceably, the way old elephants are said to do. I cried some, but my grandfather shook his head and reminded me that Han’s last year was a good one, semi-retired on a Vermont hill farm with a man and a boy who understood elephants. He rented Bumper Stevens’s bulldozer for half a day and buried him there, overlooking half the county. That summer he put up a cedar marker that said: “Here Lies Hannibal Rex, the Third Largest Elephant in Captivity. He Was a Good Elephant.” The marker is there to this day, though the inscription has faded to illegibility during the forty-five summers and winters since.