Elephant Winter by Kim Echlin Page A

his forehead. He’d slept fitfully all week, rising every few hours to check Lear. He was taking the others out to the yard but not on walks. He’d brought acoffee pot from his trailer to the barn and ate nothing but sandwiches. I quickly shaped nineteen candleholders from squares of foil and placed them in a large circle around the elephant. As I lit the candles, Jo said, “Don’t burn the place down.”
    We sat together, caressing Lear’s head and waiting. I had had no sickness with my pregnancy but from the beginning I was exhausted all the time. I fell asleep leaning on Jo and when I woke up the candles were burned down about half way. I opened my eyes and remembered where I was, smelling Jo and the barn, and I said, “Anything?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Maybe they had herbs, or they rang bells, or sang . . . we have no idea. Can you feel his breathing? It’s so laboured.”
    “Their lungs depend on the muscles surrounding them to force the air in and out. Lying on his side like this is making his problem worse.”
    I knew. Jo kept repeating that over and over. No elephant had ever died in his care. Lear’s breath was shallow and his body lay slack. His eyes had lost their panicked look and the lids drooped down. It seemed to me absurd that we hadn’t even taken his temperature. He had the lethargy of a fever. But Jo refused. “Why poke around when there’s no treatment if he does have a fever,” he said.
    “Jo, do you think he’s really nineteen?”
    “That’s what it says on his papers . . . I suppose he’d be twenty-one if you counted in gestation.”
    “I want to try twenty-one.”
    Jo’s face softened then, but he shook his head. “Sophie, I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m falling over. I’m afraid we’re going to lose him. Don’t leave the candles lit if you think you might fall asleep. Come and get me and I’ll take over. Who’s taking care of your mother?”
    “Alecto was over there when I left. She’s been a little better these past few days. She’s up and down.”
    “Better watch him.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “She seems to like him. He’s very sociable.”
    “I bet.”
    “Jo, what’s he doing here?”
    “He wants to do research. They’ve known him here a long time. He was the one who got them to bring me here.”
    Before I could ask what kind of research, Jo walked across the barn, dropped onto his cot and slept immediately, like a pebble dropped into a pond.
    Alone, I arranged the second set of candles around Lear. I knew no Buddhist scripture and no ceremony and I didn’t know what I believed about such things, but I whispered as I lit each candle, “Please, God.”
    Gertrude was the only elephant in the barn still standing. In the final stillness of the night, she let her head drop and dozed. Afraid to sleep, I stood up and swayed a little. I looked across the stalls at Jo, the moonlight falling through the slats on his face, a man who had chosen to make hishome among elephants, to sleep with them, to wake to their morning greeting. His long hair was tousled across his forehead and the worried lines on his forehead slackened in repose. He was the father of my baby. How strange to be here with this stranger in a barn. He was a man who slept on straw, who did not talk much. He knew about elephants, he walked with them and trained them and learned their ways. He tried to fulfil his purpose. In the silence of that barn where everything slept, I looked over at Jo sleeping, Jo whose hands had touched me, Jo who was teaching me to take care of elephants on snow-swept fields, Jo, who tonight had given up hope.
     
    When the candles were half burned down, Lear began to stir. I was standing, leaning on the stall wall, my head dropped and dozing. I snapped awake as Lear raised his head and neck heavily and rumbled out loud,
hrhrhrhrhrhrhr.
He rolled up stiffly from his back hip and shoulder and heaved his great bulk forward for the first time in five days. I was