Leaving Time(112)

Hot wire was a two-person job, particularly with the African elephants. One of us would have to string the fence while the other pushed the animals back with a vehicle. I was reluctant to go with him for two reasons: I didn’t want Jenna to wake up and have her worst fear—that I was indeed gone—realized, and I didn’t know where my relationship with Gideon stood right now. “Get Thomas,” I suggested.

“He went into town,” Gideon said. “And Nevvie’s doing a trunk wash on Syrah.”

I looked at my daughter, fast asleep on the couch. I could have awakened her and taken her with me, but it had taken so long to get her to sleep, and Thomas—if he found out—would have been furious, as usual. Or I could have given Gideon twenty minutes of my time, tops, and returned before Jenna roused.

I chose the latter, and it took only fifteen minutes—that’s how fast and how smoothly we worked in tandem. Our synchronicity made my heart hurt; I had so much I wanted to say to him.

“Gideon,” I said, as we finished. “What can I do?”

His gaze slid away. “Do you miss her?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Of course I do.”

His nostrils flared, and his jaw seemed made of stone. “That’s why we can’t do this anymore,” he muttered.

I could not breathe. “Because I’m sorry Grace is gone?”

His shook his head. “No,” he said. “Because I’m not.”

His mouth contorted, twisted around a sob, and he fell to his knees. He buried his face against my stomach.

I kissed the crown of Gideon’s head and wrapped my arms around him. I held him so tightly that he could not fall apart.


Ten minutes later, I raced back to the cottage on the ATV to find the front door was open. Maybe I had forgotten to close it, in my haste. That’s what I was thinking, anyway, when I walked inside and realized Jenna was gone.

“Thomas,” I yelled, racing outside again. “Thomas!”

He had to have her; he had to have her. This was my prayer, my litany. I thought about the moment she had awakened and found me missing. Had she cried? Panicked? Gone to find me?

I had been so sure I’d taught her about safety, that she was capable of learning, that Thomas was wrong about her getting hurt. But now I looked at the enclosures, at the gaps in the railing that a toddler could so easily crawl through. Jenna was three now. She knew her way. What if she’d wandered out the door and through the fencing?

I radioed for Gideon, who came immediately when he heard the terror in my voice. “Check the barns,” I begged. “Check the enclosures.”

I knew that these elephants had worked with humans in zoos and circuses, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t charge someone who invaded their domain. I also knew that elephants preferred the lower voices of males—I always tried to make my voice huskier when I spoke to them. Since high-pitched voices are nervous voices, elephants associate female pitches with anxiety. And a child’s voice would fall into that category.

I knew a man once who owned property high up in the game reserve, who had gone bushwhacking with his two little girls and found himself surrounded by a wild elephant herd. He told his daughters to roll themselves up in a ball and be as small as possible. No matter what happens, he said, do not lift your head. Two large females came forward to smell the girls and pushed against them a little bit, but they did not injure a hair on the head of either child.

But I would not be there to tell Jenna to get into a tiny ball. And she would be fearless, because she’d seen me interact with the elephants.

I drove the ATV into the closest enclosure, the African one, because I did not think Jenna could have gotten too far. I raced past the barn and the pond and the high spot where the elephants sometimes went in the cool mornings. I stood at the top of the highest ridge and took out my binoculars and tried to spot movement as far as my eye could see.

I spent twenty minutes driving around, tears in my eyes, wondering how I would explain to Thomas that our daughter was missing—and then Gideon’s voice crackled on the radio. “I’ve got her,” he said.

He told me to meet him at the cottage, and there I found my baby on Nevvie’s lap, sucking on a Popsicle, all sticky palms and cherry lips. “Mama,” Jenna said, holding it out to me. “I scream.”

But I couldn’t look at her. I was too busy focusing on Nevvie, who seemed oblivious to the fact that I was so angry I was shaking. Nevvie’s hand rested on my daughter’s head like a blessing. “Someone woke up crying,” she said. “Looking for you.”

It was not an excuse. It was an explanation. If anything, I was the one to blame, because I had left my baby alone.

Suddenly I knew I wouldn’t yell, and I wouldn’t reprimand Nevvie for taking my daughter away without asking me first.

Jenna had needed a mother, and I hadn’t been there. Nevvie had needed a child, so that she could still parent someone.

At the time, it seemed a match made in Heaven.


The strangest behavior I have ever witnessed among elephants happened in the Tuli Block, on the bank of a dry riverbed during a prolonged drought, in an area where many different animals passed. The night before, lions had been sighted. That morning, there was a leopard on the bank above. But the predators had gone, and an elephant named Marea had given birth.

It was a normal birth—the herd protected her during labor by facing outward; they trumpeted in ecstasy when the calf arrived; and Marea managed to get him up on his feet by balancing him against her leg. She dusted him and introduced him to the herd, each family member touching the baby and checking in.