Oliphant

 

“Wake up, Adama” mum-mum whispers.  “A calve has fallen into the well again.”  I rouse feeling the heat of the day before I open my eyes.  I’m already sweating and my skin is hot to touch. 

 

There are two rooms in my mud and palm thatched home – I leave my younger brother asleep on the mat in our room while my pap and little sister sleep in the second.  Mum-mum hands me a sesame seed honey stick and I hustle into the wide bright day squinting.  A muscular sun makes the air vibrate like water ruffed by the wind. 

 

Eight households share our compound: six families and two single men.  Though the yard is stripped bare of village men, I can make out their wavy figures in the heated horizon and hear them calling to one another and whooping. 

 

I run to join the bunch trekking to the well.  Long leg strides make my heart bang in the back of my throat.  I follow their dusty foot stamps waving my arms, the thrill multiplying even as my stride falters and my thighs quake and stall.  Slowing to a walk, I listen to the river running through my neck, waves of blood pounding in my ears.  

 

Seeing me from afar, the men turn and smile at my flapping arms. 

 

“Courir petit peu.”

 

“Run little one.”

 

“Courir!”

 

Their cheers pull me like a rope and eventually I catch up.  

 

The tribes across the river call us farmers, but we only farm because our cows died in the drought.  The small rivulets which should cradle fast brown water this time of year are nothing but mud.  And the women draw water straight from the Niger, tongues clucking. 

 

The cassava shrubs are dead and leaves fall from kapok trees making yellow moons on the ground beneath their branches.  I’ve learned that the desert loves death more than it loves trees.  So, I’m careful to be kind to the kapok, to the baobab trees.  I give them names and treat them like old people. 

 

All of the wells have dried save one – and it is this one for which we pass through browning grass over baked earth, my feet becoming numb.  Finger sized lizards climb long stems to soak in the sun while I look to the sky, praying to Chiuta for rain.

 

Kalifa is telling Aly how he’s already seen five dead Oliphant this season when we hear the calve squalling in the distance.  “Listen to the little beast” I think.  And even though this is my first outing with the men, I’m convinced I’ll singlehandedly free the calve and earn the respect of the entire village.  “Today,” I tell myself, “my feet are on a new path.”   

 

I run to the well ahead of the men.  Vetches and nettle grow around the edge, a sign that water heals the earth.  And there, submerged in the mud, is the young Oliphant I’ve come to rescue.  Reaching desperately for the water at the bottom of the well, she lowered her trunk, toppled in, and remained trapped in the sweltering heat.  She bucks and rears heaving herself up the muddy banks only to slide back exhausted. 

 

The men round the lip of the well suspiciously eyeing the herd of restless Oliphants thirty feet away.  Soon, a plan develops and the men set to work tossing rope from one bank to another.  They’re gesturing clumsily but assuredly while wrapping rope around the calve.  Strong hands violently take hold of every inch of the cords – it seems there’s no place for mine.  Dejectedly I step away from the flurry of activity, my chance to prove myself a man slipping away.

 

From where I stand, I can see that the calve’s eyes are barely open, but it seems she’s looking at me.  She moans low.  I approach the edge of the well and kneel.  Bending down, I take the elephant’s course trunk in hand and squeeze.  I hum soft and low to the frightened center of the animal.  My knees begin to slip, but I find traction and continue to stroke the trunk of the calve and hum.  The sun bites the back of my neck and the broad flesh of the calve’s ears.  I smell the heat in the waxy weeds and in the shimmering air.  Yet I remain constant, stroking and singing comfort to the young animal while the men work to free her from the sucking mud.

 

Hours pass and eventually the young calve is freed.  She staggers toward me as if to indicate her thanks, and then stumbles in the direction of the herd which has been nervously standing by all morning.  A raucous cheer goes up from the men.  My chest is heaving.  I can think of only one thing to say: “I am Adama, the man who silences Oliphants.”  The men laugh, but they slap my back too.

 

That evening mum-mum cleans and salts fish and then peels the potatoes to fry.  My sister pounds black pepper and garlic together and adds it to the pot.  Typically we would just eat rice with fish sauce, but today, mum-mum is celebrating.  Having heard the tale of how I used magic to silence an Oliphant, like me, she believes I have become a man. 

 

Mum-mum looks on me with pride and says, “Tell me the story yourself, Adama.”  Full of smiles, I do.

Reviews

[Nancy Lee Shrader]

A wonderful winning piece. Congrats!!

[An Ordinary Woman]

This is great Eric! There are so many things I love in this piece. Naming trees & treating them like old people. wow I love that! Smelling the heat and cheers pulling me like a rope. And "Oliphant," I love that.

I visited a farm in Ky during a drought a cpl yrs ago and you describe it really well. Like you was there, too. And plus I have boys and know those "moments" first hand. I love those moments. As a matter of fact, we had one last week. :+)

I love this Eric. I started it last night but decided to wait until this morning. It went great with coffee.