Elephant Winter by Kim Echlin

the old elephant men got temple candles, one for every year of the elephant’s life, and placed them all around the elephant and burned them until the elephant stood up.”
    “Let’s try it.”
    “Sophie, I’m just trying to figure out a way of getting him out of the barn when he dies. How do you move a dead elephant? What will we do with the others? I’ve never lost one before.”
    “Jo, try, I’ll get the candles.”
    He stopped then because we’d been speaking different languages and he’d finally heard me.
    “Do what you want. You will anyway,” he grumbled. But I was already on my way out the door and across the field.
     
    When I got to my mother’s, Alecto was sitting in my big chair by her bed, talking to her with his blue board. My mother was laughing and she fell silent when I came in. Moore sat on her left shoulder and Alecto was tossing the two Grays sunflower seeds. They flapped playfully in a dry hill of seed husks littered over the carpet at his feet.
    Alecto smiled at me, nodded and lifted his fingers in a facsimile of a wave.
    “Your friend Dr. Rikes has been keeping me company,” said my mother. “Did you know he used to train birds?”
    “Have you met before?”
    “No,” said my mother.
    “Yes,” nodded Alecto.
    “Well that clears that up.”
    “I know the genus and species if not the individual,” she laughed. Her colour was better than it had been for weeks.
    Alecto’s head flicked back on his shoulders in an exaggerated way with his mouth open in a soundless laugh, like a black mamba snapped up straight, its jaws parted.
    “Sunflower seeds aren’t good for them,” I said, sounding prim even to myself.
    He tossed down another one.
    I caught my mother’s eye and said, “Can I get you a tea?”
    It was a joke we’d used for years to get rid of visitors who stayed too long—she’d started it with me when I was a teenager and my friends wouldn’t leave. But she just smiled and shook her head and said, “That’s fine, Soph. We’re fine. I’ll let Dr. Rikes here know when I’m tired.”
    He held up his board to her and then tipped it toward me. “May I have the pleasure of your company for dinner? I do very good order-in.”
    “Excellent idea,” said my mother as I read. “How about Chinese? I haven’t had it in ages.”
    He wrote at the bottom of his board to me, “You too?”
    “No thanks.” I really wanted to stay. This was the way my mother’s house used to feel, full of odd people and ideas, things to discuss and dissect, jokes and people cooking. “I have to go back to the barn. Lear’s still not up. Are there any candles? I need lots.”
    “In the junk drawer.”
    Alecto looked curiously at me and scribbled, “What for?”
    “It’s just an idea. There’s a phone in the hall when you want to order.”
    He wrote, “I’ll telepath them. First a consult with Eva is necessary!”
    My mother laughed. “I can call. I’m partial to moo shu, how about you?”
    It would have been so much more amusing to stay. I kissed my mother but she was already turned toward Alecto. He brushed my hand with his and let it stay there as he showed me a list of his favourite Chinese dishes.
    When I left the room my mother was up and leading him to the piano. She still played the odd jazz standard though her hands were too stiff for her beloved Beethoven.
    “Come now,” she said. “What key is that harmonica in? Let’s see what you can do.”
    I listened to them picking their way into “Autumn Leaves” as I fed the birds in the aviary, changed their water and dug through the drawer for my candles. Alecto could improvise, a talent both my mother and I admired. She was singing and changing the tempo on him. I left through the back door reluctantly, matches and candles in a plastic bag, a roll of tinfoil tucked under my arm.
     

     
    Jo was still sitting by Lear’s head when I slipped into the barn. There were dark blue circles under his eyes and two deep creases across