Leaving Time(92)

I could have postponed it, but then Nevvie would have asked why. And I didn’t feel like talking about last night.

Grace held out her arms for Jenna, and I thought about our conversation yesterday. “Did Gideon—” I began.

“He finished,” she said, and that was all I needed to know.

I followed Nevvie out to the African enclosures, peeking at the upstairs level of the barn, with its sheet of plastic and the overpowering smell of fresh paint. Was Thomas in there, even now? Was he angry, to find his handiwork destroyed? Devastated? Indifferent?

Did he suspect me of doing it?

“Where are you today?” Nevvie asked. “I asked you a question.”

“Sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Do you want to take down the fence or drive her forward?”

“I’ll get the gate,” I said.

We had built a hot-wire fence to separate Hester from Maura when we realized Maura was pregnant. To tell the truth, if either elephant had wanted to get to the other side, she could have easily torn it down. But these two had not been together long enough to bond before they were separated. They were acquaintances, not friends. They had no great affection for each other yet. Which is why I didn’t think Nevvie’s idea was going to work.

In Tswana, there is a saying: Go o ra motho, ga go lelwe. Where there is support, there is no grief. You see this in the wild, when elephants mourn the death of a herd member. After a while, a few elephants will peel off to go to a watering hole. Others will investigate the brush for sustenance. It comes down to one or two elephants left behind—usually the daughters or young sons of the fallen elephant—who are reluctant to resume their daily lives. But the herd always comes back for them. It may be en masse, it may be just an emissary or two. They vocalize with “let’s go” rumbles and angle their bodies to encourage the mourning elephants to join them. Eventually, they all do. But Hester was not Maura’s cousin or sister. She was just another elephant. Maura had no incentive to listen to her, no more than I might have followed a complete stranger who walked up to me and suggested we go to lunch.

While Nevvie drove off in the ATV in search of Hester, I disconnected the fence controller and unwound the wire, creating an open gate. I waited until I heard the engine revving and spotted the elephant following Nevvie placidly. She was a sucker for watermelon, and there was a whole one on the ATV for her that would be placed closer to Maura.

I hopped on the vehicle as we drove to the site of the calf’s grave, where Maura still stood, her shoulders sloped and her trunk dragging on the ground. Nevvie cut the engine, and I hopped off, setting the food for Hester a distance away from Maura. We had brought a treat for Maura, too, but unlike Hester, she did not touch hers.

Hester speared the watermelon on her tusk and let the juice drip into her mouth. Then she curled her trunk around the melon, plucked it from the ivory skewer, and crushed it between her jaws.

Maura didn’t acknowledge her presence, but I could see her spine stiffen at the sound made by Hester’s crunching. “Nevvie,” I said quietly, climbing onto the ATV again. “Turn on the engine.”

Lightning fast, Maura pivoted and thundered toward Hester, her head shaking and her ears flapping. Dirt chuffed, a cloud of intimidation. Hester squealed and threw back her trunk, just as willing to stand her ground.

“Go,” I said, and Nevvie angled the ATV so that Hester was headed off before she could get close to Maura. Maura didn’t even turn toward us as we shepherded Hester away, to the other side of the hot-wire fence. She faced the raw, dark grave of the calf, which stretched like a yawn across the earth.

Sweating, my heart still pounding from the confrontation, I let Nevvie lead Hester deeper into the African enclosure while I reaffixed the wire joints, crimped them closed, and reattached the battery clamps. Nevvie drove up again a few minutes later, as I was finishing.

“Well,” I said. “I told you so.”


I took advantage of the fact that Grace was still watching Jenna and stopped off at the African barn to talk to Thomas. Climbing the spiral staircase, I heard no sound from inside the space. It made me wonder if Thomas had found the whitewashed walls and if that had been enough to snap him back to equilibrium. But when I reached the door, the knob turned in my hand and I stepped into the room to find one wall entirely covered with the same symbols I’d seen last night, and another wall half finished. Thomas stood on a chair, writing so furiously I thought the plaster might burst into flame. I felt as if my skeleton had turned to stone. “Thomas,” I said. “I think we need to talk.”

He glanced over his shoulder, so absorbed in his work that he hadn’t even heard me come in. He didn’t seem embarrassed, or surprised. Just disappointed. “It was going to be a surprise,” he said. “I was doing it for you.”

“Doing what?”

He stepped off the chair. “It’s called molecular consolidation theory. It’s been proven that memories stay in an elastic state before they are chemically encoded by the brain. Disturb that process, and you can alter the way the memory is recalled. To date, the only scientific successes have occurred when the inhibitors are given immediately after the trauma. But let’s say the trauma’s already past. What if we could regress the mind back to that moment, and give the drug. Would the trauma be forgotten?”

I stared at him, completely lost. “That’s not possible.”