Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  “Not until she’s done grieving,” I said, and the word triggered my silent wish of just days ago: that one of these elephants would die, so that I could continue my postdoc research.

  I felt as if I had subconsciously willed this. Maybe Thomas was right to accuse me. “I’m going to stay here,” I announced.

  Thomas stepped forward. “You don’t have to—”

  “This is what I do,” I said tightly.

  “What about Jenna?”

  I saw Gideon take a step away as our voices escalated. “What about her?” I asked.

  “You’re her mother.”

  “And you’re her father.” For this one night in a year of Jenna’s life, I could pass up putting my baby to bed so that I could watch Maura stand over hers. This was my job. Had I been a doctor, this would have been the equivalent of being paged for an emergency.

  But Thomas wasn’t paying attention. “I was counting on that calf,” he murmured. “It was going to save us.”

  Gideon cleared his throat. “Thomas? How about I take you back to the cottage, and I’ll have Grace bring a sweater to Alice?”

  After they left, I took notes, marking the times Maura ran her trunk along the spine of the calf, and her listless toss of the amniotic sac. I wrote down the differences in her vocalizations—from a cooing rumble of reassurance to the call of a mother trying to get her calf to return to her side—but it was a one-sided conversation.

  Grace returned with a sweater and a sleeping bag, and sat with me for a while in silence, just watching Maura and feeling her sadness.

  “It’s heavier here,” she remarked. “The air.” Although I knew that the barometric pressure could not be affected by the death of an elephant, I understood what she meant. The quiet pushed in at the soft spot at the bottom of my throat, in my eardrums, threatening to suffocate us.

  Nevvie came to pay her respects, too. She didn’t say anything, just handed me a bottle of water and a sandwich and stood a distance away, seemingly shuffling through a deck of memories she didn’t want to share.

  Just as I was nodding off, at three in the morning, Maura finally stepped away from the calf. She scooped the baby up in her trunk, but it slipped out of her grasp twice. She tried to lift it by its neck and, failing that, its legs. After several aborted attempts, she managed to curl the body of the baby under her trunk, the way she might lift a bale of hay.

  Carefully, slowly, Maura started to walk north. In the distance, I could hear a contact call from Hester. Maura responded softly, muted, as if she were worried about waking the calf.

  Gideon and Nevvie had taken the four-wheelers when they left, so I had no choice but to travel on foot. I didn’t know where Maura was headed, so I did exactly what I shouldn’t have done—I ducked through the opening in the gate made for the vehicles and walked in the shadows behind her.

  Luckily, Maura was either too lost in her own grief or too focused on her precious load to notice me, slinking along behind the trees as quietly as possible. We walked, twenty yards between us, past the pond and through the birch woods and across a meadow until Maura reached the spot where she liked to come at the hottest part of the day. Underneath a sprawling oak was a carpet of pine needles; Maura would lie on her side and nap in the shade.

  Today, though, she placed the calf there and began to cover him with branches, breaking off pine boughs and kicking up fallen needles and tufts of moss, until the corpse was partially covered. Then she stood over him again, making a pillared temple of her body.

  And I worshiped. I prayed.

  • • •

  Twenty-four hours after Maura had delivered the calf, I had still not slept, and neither had she. More critically, she had not had any sustenance. Although I knew she could go without food for a little while, she had to have water. So when Gideon found me, safely on the far side of the fencing again, I asked him for a favor.

  I needed him to bring back one of the shallow tubs we used for foot soaks in the barns, and five half-gallon jugs of water.

  When I heard the ATV approach behind me, I looked at Maura to see if she’d react. Usually the African elephants were curious when it was feeding time. But Maura didn’t even turn her head in the direction of Gideon’s approach. As he idled to a stop on the path, I said, “Get off.”

  What I was doing would have been strictly forbidden in the game reserve, because I was planning to adjust the ecosystem. It was also reckless, because I was encroaching on the personal space of a grieving elephant mother. And I didn’t give a flying fuck.

  “No,” Gideon said, figuring out exactly what I was up to. “You climb on.”

  So I did, wrapping my arms around him as we drove through the small opening in the fencing, into the enclosure with the elephant. Maura charged, flying toward us with her ears spread and her heavy feet thundering on the ground. I felt Gideon throw the ATV in reverse, but I put my hand on his arm. “Don’t,” I said. “Turn it off.”

  He looked over his shoulder at me, wild-eyed, caught between obeying his boss’s wife and his own instincts for self-preservation.

  The vehicle shuddered to a stop.

  So did Maura.

  Very slowly, I got off the ATV and pulled the heavy rubber tub from the flatbed on the back. I set this about ten feet away from the vehicle and then poured several gallons of water inside. Then I climbed behind Gideon again. “Reverse,” I whispered. “Now.”

  He backed up as Maura’s trunk twitched in our direction. She stepped closer and drank the whole tub of water at once.

  She angled herself, so that her tusks were only inches away from my skin, close enough for me to see the nicks and scars on them from years of use, close enough for her to look me in the eye.

  Maura reached out with her trunk and stroked my shoulder. Then she lumbered back to the body of her calf and resumed her position sheltering him.

  I felt Gideon’s hand on my back. It was partly comfort, partly reverence. “Breathe,” he instructed.

  After thirty-six hours, the vultures came. They circled overhead like witches on their brooms. Every time they swooped, Maura would flap her ears and bellow, scaring them off. That night, it was the fisher cats. Their eyes flashed neon green as they crept closer to the calf’s body. Maura, coming out of her trance as if a switch had been flipped, ran at them with her tusks to the ground.

  Thomas had given up asking me to come home. Everyone had given up asking me. I would not leave until Maura was ready to leave. I would be her herd, and remind her that she still had to live, even if her calf couldn’t.

  The irony did not escape me: I was playing the role of the elephant, while Maura was acting rather human by refusing to stop grieving her dead son. One of the most amazing things about elephants mourning in the wild is their ability to grieve hard, but then truly, unequivocally, let go. Humans can’t seem to do that. I’ve always thought it’s because of religion. We expect to see our loved ones again in the next life, whatever that might be. Elephants don’t have that hope, only the memories of this life. Maybe that’s why it is easier for them to move on.

  Seventy-two hours postdelivery, I tried to imitate the “let’s go” rumble I’d heard a thousand times in the wild and to point myself in that direction, like an elephant would. Maura ignored me. By now, I could barely stand, and my vision was blurred. I hallucinated a bull elephant breaking through the fence, only to realize that it was an ATV approaching. On it rode Nevvie and Gideon. Nevvie looked at me and shook her head. “You’re right, she’s a mess,” Nevvie said to Gideon. And then to me: “You’re going back home. Your girl needs you. If you don’t want to leave Maura alone, I’ll stay with her.”

  Because Gideon didn’t trust me to hang on to him without falling asleep, I did not climb behind him on the ATV. I sat in the circle of his arms, the way a child might have done, and nodded off until he parked in front of our cottage. Embarrassed, I leaped off the vehicle, thanked him quickly, and walked inside.

  To my surprise, Grace was asleep on t