Elephant

By Will Hartman

The rope broke the first time they tried to hang the elephant so Sheriff Bater had to get a thicker rope and string him up a second. It was a sunny summer day and almost the whole town of Erwen, Tennessee had gathered in the common to watch the execution. Everyone was dressed in their Sunday best although it was Wednesday. When the elephant went up the second time the crowd clapped and hooted as the animal thrashed and kicked its stumpy legs straight out from its body. This time the rope did not break and when the elephant struggled for its last breaths, its trunk coiled around the rope like it was yanking on a closet light. The crane from which he hung rocked slightly with the momentum of the struggling elephant and seemed for a moment that it might topple over. But it didn't. With a great gurgled sigh the elephant died and hung like a lumpy gray coat in the closet. The whole town cheered again.

        Jeb Abbey and Lauren Lacey did not cheer from the back of the crowd with the rest of the town, although Jeb had wanted to. The elephant deserved it, Jeb thought. Jeb had tried to hold Lauren's hand when the elephant was hoisted up by the crane but Lauren had crossed her arms when his hand touched hers.

        "The poor thing," were the only words that Lauren said to Jeb during the hanging. Lauren was a pretty girl, one of the prettier in Erwen, with dark hair and a delicate face like a carefully made porcelain doll. Everyone in town always told him that they were a good couple. She would be a good girl to marry and he was glad that she had had to come back to Erwen from Asheville when she couldn't find a good enough job there. She had wanted him to go with her, but he had just gotten a job at the bank and told her he needed to make some money first.

        "It did kill Willie. It got what it deserved." Jeb should have agreed with her pity but couldn't; it was hard enough not to cheer with the rest of the crowd. She did not answer him but continued to keep her arms crossed. "Oh, come on Lauren. Don't be like that," said Jeb when she wouldn't hold his hand after he tried a second time.

        "I'm going to be like that Jeb Abbey." They had just gotten into a fight about Jeb going to a strip club in the neighboring county over the weekend. Lauren's cousin Nancy, who worked at the strip club as a waitress (unbeknownst to almost everyone in Erwen, who thought she was in Nashville doing secretarial work), had seen Jeb go to the upstairs of the club with a fat stripper. Lauren could only assume that going upstairs meant he had gotten a blowjob, which was not true; Jeb had fucked Virginia-the stripper-for fifty bucks that his friend had loaned him. Jeb would not consider Lauren a prude, but she was saving herself for marriage, or at least she said so, which was hard on him. Before coming to the hanging, when Lauren had turned on Jeb, he had sworn he had only gotten a lap dance. Lauren said she did not want to talk about it anymore when they approached the common and had been brooding since.

        "That'll teach that son of a bitch!" someone yelled from around the elephant, Jeb could not tell who. It might have been Sheriff Bater who was grinning and rubbing his hands together. The widow of Willie Hollie, the man who had been trampled to death by the elephant, dressed all in black limply shook Bater's hand and dabbed at her eyes with a clean, white handkerchief.

        "Let's go sit on the swings," said Jeb to Lauren and although she did not answer, she allowed Jeb to guide her away from the crowd to the swing-set at one end of the common. Behind them was the brick town-hall with its large white faced clock where the elephant's trial had been. On the other side of the common was the Erwin Baptist Church where the crowd was moving for a pot-luck dinner.

        "Where you going Abbey?" One of Jeb's buddies, Rob Wilson, yelled at him with cupped hands. Jeb turned around, made sure Lauren was not looking and gave Rob the finger. Among other things, Jeb did not like being called Abbey-he was never pleased with having a girl's name for a last name. Rob gave him a mocking smile and rubbed his thumb and pointer and middle fingers together in front of his face. Rob had loaned the fifty bucks to Jeb for the stripper.

        "I thought the elephant was going to tip the crane over when it was first hangin'," said Jeb as he and Lauren rocked on the swings. He thought Lauren was just mad about the stripper. The chain rings were rusty and the swings made a grimy creak.

        "Yeah," said Lauren, who had been looking at the ground, but looked up at the elephant in the middle of the common hanging from the crane. The only person left was Sheriff Bater who was just standing staring up at the elephant with his arms crossed. Bater leaned over his foot like he was peering over a cliff and spat a great glob of chewing tobacco on the ground. Everyone else had moved to the church on the other side of the common; it was whitewashed and looked liked polished bone in the summer sun. The sharp steeple of the church was usually the tallest thing in Erwen but today the crane was. The crane had been brought all the way from Asheville.

        "Do you want to get anything to eat?" asked Jeb. He could see smoke rising from the BBQ grills at the church and the silence was awkward. He did not know what else to say.

        "Not really." Lauren did not go to many town social events since she had come back to Erwen-she worked at the diner and saved her money. Jeb didn't mind this too much because it gave him more time to hang out with his buddies. They had been going out since their senior year of high school four years ago but took a break when Lauren moved to Asheville. She talked about going back there but he was pretty sure she wouldn't. At least he hoped she wouldn't because he wasn't going to leave Erwen. Outside of Erwen, the world seemed like place where he could get trampled.

        There was another hanging silence between the two as they creaked back forth on the swings. Eventually, he figured, she would forgive him provided that she never found out that he had sex with the stripper. If she found that out, she would surely leave Erwen. Once she forgave him, things would be back to normal and he could go back to hanging out with the guys. Until then, he would have to follow her around like a punished child pulling at her skirt hem for forgiveness.

        "Those circus folk didn't hang around too long," Jeb said. Lauren sighed and looked at him, chewing on a strand of her black hair.

        "Nope," she finally said and gave a faint smile like her mouth was gently being stretched. After a pause she said, "The circus owner was lucky he wasn't thrown in jail the way Bater was carryin' on about killin' that elephant." The owner of the circus that came to town had initially put up quite a fuss when they put his elephant on trial for murdering Willie Hollie but soon thought better of it and headed back north. Jeb was pleased about the quiet smile.

        "He's lucky that Sheriff Bater didn't whip him to the county line. He would have deserved it bringing that murdering creature down here." Jeb rocked his swing next to Lauren and gently jabbed her in the ribs.

        "Oh really, Jeb," Lauren sighed and looked down at the ground where she was dragging her foot in the dirt. She had on a light flower-print skirt that went to her bare knees. He thought she had said, "Oh really, Jeb," because he elbowed her too hard.

        "What?" He thought had been getting somewhere.

        "It wasn't his fault that the elephant killed Willie Hollie." Her voice was sharp and Jeb wanted to end this conversation, he knew he was not helping anything, but he couldn't.

        "He should know that his elephant wasn't tame to bring around decent people. He's just as much to blame as the elephant."

        "You think the elephant's to blame, Jeb?" Lauren stopped swinging and was starring into Jeb's eyes.

        "Sure!"

        "Really, Jeb! Can't you think outside of this town?" She sounded more disappointed then angry, which confused Jeb.

        "What? What's wrong with Erwen. It's our home and where our family is. Those circus folks and that elephant are not our people, Lauren. They're not our family."

        "Well, at least that circus owner seemed to have more sense then this whole town put together. It's not about who's from Erwen and who's not, Jeb. It's bigger than that. You just don't get it sometimes," said Lauren, "I'm going to go home now." Lauren stood up from the swing and started to walk across the common without looking back. Jeb hung back for a second trying to gain his footing. He thought about letting her go home and cool off but then decided that he would probably loose her if he didn't go after her. Lately, she had been talking about moving back to Asheville a lot which worried Jeb.

        "I'll walk you home, Lauren." Jeb got off the swing and strode up to Lauren's side but did not try to hold her hand.

        "If you want," said Lauren in a flat voice. Jeb felt a little discouraged and reassured himself he was the best looking guy her age and had a good and promising job at the bank in town. Why would she leave him? It made sense that they should be together in Erwen.

        They walked across the common until they got to Bater and the elephant. Bater had lowered the elephant onto the ground and was hooking chains under its head and stumpy legs.

        "Hey Sheriff," said Jeb as the walked up to him.

        "Oh, hello Jeb," said Bater breathing hard and holding a great floppy elephant ear. Sheriff Bater was almost fifty and still had not married. He used to be fat when he was younger which made his uniform look awkward; the uniform was too big for him now but he never got another one when he lost all the weight. He dropped the ear and shook Jeb's hand. Bater's skin hung from the hard corner of his elbow like a wet sheet being draped over a wooden chair and the flap of skin giggled back and forth as they shook. "How are you Lauren?"

        "Fine, Sheriff."

        "That was some hangin' Sheriff," said Jeb.

        "Yeah, it went great except for getting' rid of the damned thing." Bater kicked the elephant once in the head with his toe. "Didn't quite think it through enough. But no one ever said justice would be easy."

        "What are you doing with chains, Sheriff?" asked Jeb.

        "I figure that because Johnny Hank's dump truck is broke and won't be fixed until he gets that part from Asheville for another week, I'm going to have to drag it out of hear with my truck and dump it across the river somewhere. Can't go leaving this thing baking in the sun, can we? What a stink that would be!"

        "Don't you think dragging it is a little crude?" asked Lauren. Bater cocked his head at her like she had said a word he did not understand.

        "Maybe, I guess…but then who cares? It's just a stupid elephant." Bater mopped his bald head with a red handkerchief revealing a large sweat-stain underneath his arm.

        "It is just a stupid elephant, Lauren," repeated Jeb.

        "I really felt sorry for him," said Lauren.

        "Oh, yea. Not to mention poor Mrs. Hollie with three kids to feed," agreed Bater.

        "I was talkin' about the elephant," said Lauren.

        "The elephant?" asked Bater with a face of disbelief and a half smile.

        "You know her, Sheriff. She doesn't like to see anything die," Jeb said. Jeb put his hand onto Lauren's shoulder but Lauren cringed away from him like he had just dripped ice-water on her back.

        "Why would you feel bad for the elephant?" Bater had an ugly scar on the right side of his lip that twisted it up when he began to laugh and distorted his usually good-natured face and folded his loose skin into something sinister.

        "Come on, Sheriff. Take it easy on her," said Jeb. He did not want to seem like a skirt-hugger to the Sheriff but knew Lauren's feelings were being hurt.

        "Well, I just felt bad," said Lauren who had turned red in the face and glared at Jeb, "I think I'll just be goin' home. Why don't you stay and help the Sheriff, Jeb?"

        "Oh, Lauren. I didn't mean to laugh at you but feelin' bad for the elephant? But really, Lauren. I mean, it killed Willie Hollie!" Bater was still laughing. Lauren did not turn around and kept walking away from the Sheriff.

        "Girls! I wouldn't worry about it Sheriff. She's just pissed at me for this dumb thing that happened last weekend," said Jeb and winked at the Sheriff before running to catch up with Lauren. "Hold up Lauren!"

        "Don't tell me to hold up, Jeb Abbey! You were a real gentlemen back there," said Lauren who had crossed her arms again and was still walking at an unnaturally quick pace. "Why don't you just go ahead and have a good laugh with the Sheriff!"

        "He wasn't trying to be mean about it, Lauren. It just sounds pretty foolish when you say that you felt sorry about the elephant."

        "It sounds a little foolish to me that we just hung an elephant." They were off the common and crossing the road in front of the grocery store.

        "Well, come on Lauren. You goin' to call Sheriff Bater foolish?"

        "About as foolish as you getting a blowjob from a stripper!"

        "I told you Lauren, I didn't get no blow job." Jeb reached out and grabbed the back of Lauren's arm. Lauren didn't stop. She shrugged him off and kept walking.

        "I told you that I don't want to talk about it." They reached the path that cut to the bridge over the Nolichucky River. Lauren's house was just on the other side. Covering the entrance of the path was a waxy-green laurel branch that Lauren angrily pushed past and let swing back so Jeb had to duck.

        "Well, what do you want to talk about?"

        "How about how you were making fun of me with the Sheriff about the elephant." Two could tightly walk abreast on the trail but Lauren stayed in the middle.

        "I wasn't making fun of you, Lauren."

        "I heard what you said to the Sheriff when I left."

        "What'd I say?"

        "I don't know exactly…but I know you said something to make fun of me. You'll be an Erwen good-ol'-boy yet Jeb Abbey." Lauren turned on Jeb and jabbed one of her thin fingers into his chest.

        "We were not making fun of you Lauren!"

        "And there's nothing wrong with feeling bad for the elephant. I do feel bad for it and I think this whole town is stupid for hangin' it. That elephant wouldn't have killed Willie Hollie if he wasn't such a drunk and decided to pull on its tail!" During the last act of the circus, when the elephant was balanced on one foot on top of a box like a ballet dancer in mid leap, Willie Hollie-with a bottle moonshine whiskey in his hand-had run into the ring and yanked on the elephant's thin, scruffy tail. The elephant lifted its trunk and gave a loud trumpet before it turned, still on one foot on the block, and came down on Willie, crushing him to the ground with a great round foot. Willie was probably dead almost immediately, but even as the ring master, a fat round man with a black mustache, tried to control the elephant with his flimsy whip, the elephant stepped off the block and calmly sat down on Willie where it refused to move for a good hour.

        "Okay, Okay!" Jeb decided that talking about elephants was just keeping him on the block. The guys were probably having some beers and stuffing their faces at the pot-luck with grilled chicken and pasta salad and baked beans. "I agree with you, Lauren, hanging the elephant was wrong and foolish." Lauren glared at him in the eyes for a moment. She still looked beautiful to him, even though she was pissed off, but there was also something cold and distant in that stare that he did not like and made his shoulders cringe slightly.

        "You don't mean it." She turned and began walking back down the path.

        "I do!" He did mean it, somewhat. Or he would mean it, he told himself, because although he would probably rather be drinking beer and eating BBQ with his friends right then instead of arguing with Lauren, she was the best part of Erwen.

        Lauren didn't answer. Jeb sighed and followed after he down the path. He could hear the rapids on the other side of the dense curtain of laurel and Jeb knew they were almost at the bridge next to Lauren's house. There was a slight stitch in Jeb's side; a little hard ball of muscle from Lauren's quick pace.

        "Slow down, Lauren, please?"

        Lauren still did not answer Jeb but she did slow down. They stepped out of the woods and laurel trees onto the paved road.

        "We don't have to fight about the elephant."

        "Yes we do, Jeb, because you don't take me seriously."

        "I do take you seriously, Lauren."

        "No, Jeb, you don't. It's just like you to go to a strip club and embarrass me with your friends. It's just like you to make fun of my opinions with the Sheriff even though you're just as foolish as the whole rinky-dink god damn town! I wish I could get away from this town! Why couldn't I been born in Philadelphia or Boston?"

        "Don't say that Lauren. I wasn't tryin' to embarrass you by goin' to the strip club or making fun of your opinions about the elephant. I'll admit that you are probably right that hangin' an elephant is pretty foolish to do. Why, look at the trouble that Bater went through just to put on the show. I do see what you mean and I'm glad you weren't born in Philadelphia or Boston, Lauren." Lauren and Jeb stepped onto the bridge that spanned over the Nolichucky. It was going to be paved later that summer or the next, whenever the town got around to it. Now its bottom was just 2 X 4s stacked on their sides' next to each other. When a car or truck passed over the boards, they rattled and clattered like wooden wind chimes banging together. Down below the bridge ran a train of white rapids making a soft, dull rustle.

        "Do you remember the first time I kissed you here?" said Jeb. Lauren turned to him and suddenly her body lost its rigidity; she slunk her shoulders, cocked her head, push a hip towards him, and gave him her softest smile. It was the same smile that she had given him when they first kissed. She had only let him kiss her for a moment then pulled away. He had felt foolish and frozen as she walked away from him on the bridge. But then she turned her head and gave him that soft smile while her right hand brushed against the back of her leg with each stride. The foolishness dissappeared and he strode quickly up beside her. He made her laugh the rest of the walk to her house and she bit her lip, both of them pretending the kiss did not happen but knowing it certainly did. Jeb loved her laugh. It was soft and kind and made Jeb feel important for making her laugh.

        "Of course I remember that, Jeb Abbey." Lauren said still smiling. Jeb liked the first kiss line, he had been saving it for a time when Lauren was really pissed at him, and he liked what that smile meant. "I liked it when you're like that boy who kissed me for the first time."

        "I like you because you feel bad for the elephant when no one else does, Lauren. I am sorry about making fun of you with Bater and the other stuff. And I mean it." And he did. Although he did not want leave Erwen, for Jeb, Lauren was part of the outside world that did not overwhelm him and he could manage. He did like the fact that she was different, but only when she was different in Erwen.

        "Oh, I know you mean it, Jeb." Lauren threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard. He encircled his hands around her waist and pushed her back against the rail of the bridge.

        "Why don't we walk back to my house?" asked Lauren and removed herself from Jeb but slid her fingers into his right hand.

        "I couldn't think of anything I'd like to do better, Lauren," said Jeb with a grin. He couldn't think of how this could have gone any better either.

        "I guess, Jeb, whether I like to admit it or not, I can be happy in this town because of you." When Lauren said this she leaned into Jeb's side.

        "I'm happy in this town, too, Lauren."

        As Jeb and Lauren stepped off the bridge and could see Lauren's rusty mailbox, they heard the click of the boards. Jeb turned around and saw Sheriff Bater in his big, green truck. As he passed he waved and smiled-his lip twisted up. Behind the truck, Jeb saw, dragged the hanged elephant. Behind the elephant, all down the road, there was a great streak of blood staining the road where the asphalt had rubbed right through the skin. As the elephant passed Lauren and Jeb, Lauren buried her head in Jeb's arm and gave a small cry. Flaps of loose, gray skin hung behind the elephant's head where it had been torn from the face.

        It was a vulgar and foolish thing to do, hanging an elephant, Jeb reckoned, but he liked it just the same-like the rest of the people in Erwen it gave him a sense of satisfaction of teaching the larger, foreign world a lesson. Looking at that wrinkled, ripped skin, for a moment, Jeb thought of Virginia the stripper; her sweaty stretched skin, tinted grey under the eerie lights, plastered and rubbing against him. It wasn't that he was sick of Lauren saving herself that made him have sex with the stripper. He did love Lauren but there was just something comfortable about the vulgarity that aroused him that she would never have.

        For all the trouble that he had gone through today with Lauren, even if they got married, he would probably sleep with more strippers (just not with ones where her cousin worked); and he did not mean to say it out loud but for some reason he said, "It was worth it." When the head of the elephant hit the transition between the bridge and road its head bounced up revealing the bloody raw meat.

        Lauren withdrew her head from his arm-pit and glared at him. Jeb froze and swore, but only in his head. Then with stiff wrists and elbows, she pushed him away from her and walked off the bridge.

        "Oh come one, Lauren!" yelled Jeb after her, "I didn't mean it. We shouldn't have hung the elephant!" Lauren kept on walking away from him.

        "Lauren! I'm sorry. Please forgive me!" Jeb held up his arms like he was hoping for an embrace. He did not know if he was apologizing for the elephant or the stripper.

        Lauren stopped and turned around. "I don't know if I'll forgive you, Jeb Abbey... I probably will, because lucky for you I don't have anything else going for me in this shit-hole of a town that I can't get out of, but sometimes you can just be such a bastard!" Lauren left Jeb standing with his arms raised and followed the bloody track to her drive-way. If she went to Asheville, Jeb thought watching her walk away, he would loose her to someone different then himself-different from Erwen. Jeb didn't try to follow her, not today, but turned around and began to walk back to town when her heard the screen door of Lauren's house slam loudly shut.

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