The Gravediggers and the Elephant

THE GRAVEDIGGERS AND THE ELEPHANT I Alan Levin THERE WAS A MAN in the barrio who kept an elephant. He was a small man, name of Baraz, very dark and shriveled in the face like an olive that has been on the tree too long. No one was sure from where he came; some said the Philippines and some said Morocco and some Peru. His Spanish was very formal and he spoke with a strange accent and never grew angry or joyous but wore always on his face a look that was half an impatient grimace and half a wistful smile. He spoke English like a native and sometimes he could be heard through the doorway of his house talking rapidly and loudly to himself in a language neither English nor Spanish. The elephant he called Chi-Chi, although her name, according to the tattoo on her ear, had once been "Empress of Ethiopia." She was an African elephant, a pretty big one and no longer young. She lived out back of his house in a weedy quarter-acre lot with a tarpaper roofed lean-to she could stand under to get out of the sun. On hot days the old man would spray her with a hose, but the ground was not right for a mud puddle and she was unable to coat her back as elephants will. Her skin in the summers dried and cracked deeply and on her face it turned white and dusty. Once a week a boy in a straw cowboy hat came to the house in an old flatbed truck loaded with a half-ton of hay. To supplement this fare, the old man picked up overripe apples and peaches that the grocery was throwing out, and some of the kids on the street saved vegetable parings from their mothers' kitchens. Chi-Chi liked these treats, but they aggravated her digestion, giving her diarrhea, which disturbed the neighbors. Otherwise she was quiet and well behaved. She had one trick, which was to run for short distances on tiptoe, knees bent, like a great awkward ballerina. Then she would stand still, small dim eyes lost in the folds of her skin, ragged ears flapping nervously against her head. She never trumpeted; the only sound she ever made was an asthmatic wheeze on cold mornings, when her breath came out in great steamy clouds. Even on the night they came to kill her, she never trumpeted. The Missouri Review · 13 Baraz spent the night digging a grave. He drank some water at dawn and kept digging. The earth was not hard, but he was a small man and Chi-Chi a big elephant and by noon the hole was yet not half big enough for her head. The boy from the country arrived at noon, beeping his horn. "I don't need the hay. Chi-Chi is dead," Baraz told him through the fence. The boy looked through the fence. "What are you doing?" "Burying her." The boy shook his head. He had a piece of straw in his teeth. "You can't bury her." "I can." Baraz looked the boy over. "You are half-grown and skinny, but maybe you like to work hard. Maybe you will help?" "You can't. She will rot. It's not good. It could spread disease." "I will bury her deep. Any friend would do as much." The boy shook his head. "And how will you put her in the hole? A bulldozer?" "The neighbors will help. The boys, they will want to help." "The neighbors? The neighbors do not want an elephant buried next door. It will smell and bring flies and maybe rats. Maybe even buzzards." "I said I will make the grave deep. You could help me dig." "Call someone. Call the firemen to take her away." "They will take her for dogfood. I was with the circus." The boy looked again through the chain-link fence. It would not be nice to take this man's elephant away for dogfood. Still it was like a mountain. It would take a week. He felt bad for the little man sweating there in the trench in his...