Water for Elephants: Chapters 4–8

Only five are prepared to part with the requisite two dollars, and they form a surly line.

He passes me the bottle.
“What the hell is this?” I say, staring at the brackish liquid.

Camel interrupts my reverie.

He has ringmaster written all over him, from the scarlet coat and white jodhpurs to the top hat and waxed curled moustache.

When we reach the platform at the end, we’re facing the back of a different kind of car. Through its window I can see burnished wood and intricate light fixtures.

His chiseled face is impassive, his dark hair shiny with pomade.

“I studied veterinary sciences.”
His mien changes instantly, utterly. “Vet school? You’re a vet?”

I awoke because of a dream, but I can’t recall specifics. I close my eyes, reaching tentatively for the corners of my mind.

I could have sworn that just a few seconds ago I was twenty-three, and now here I am in this wretched, desiccated body.

“This food is for the residents. It’s designed specifically by a nutritionist who specializes in geriatric—”

I strain to hear, but my old ears, for all their obscene hugeness, pick up nothing but snippets: “serious, serious depression” and “manifesting as aggression, not uncommon in geriatric patients.”

If it weren’t for the vehemence with which he slams the door, I might think he didn’t hear me.

“Shall we have a look at that horse then? I doubt it’s anything serious. Marlena coddles them terribly. Oh, here’s the little lady now. Come here, darling,” he calls brightly.

Up close she still looks remarkably like Catherine—delicate features, pale as porcelain, with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

August and I wait outside, listening to passionate entreaties and tongue clicks.

“This horse is foundering,” I say.
“Oh dear God!” says Marlena, clapping a hand to her mouth.
“What?” says August. “He’s what?”
“Foundering,” I say. “It’s when the connective tissues between the hoof and the coffin bone are compromised and the coffin bone rotates toward the sole of the hoof.”

He carries a silver-topped cane, which he swings extravagantly with each step.

“If this horse keeps working, his coffin bone will rotate until it punctures his sole, and then you’ll lose him,” I say unequivocally.

Uncle Al is a buzzard, a vulture, an eater of carrion.

Those two flats easily held his few decrepit wagons, and because the train cars were already emblazoned with BENZINI BROS MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW ON EARTH, Alan Bunkel retained the name and officially joined the ranks of train circuses.

The Fox Brothers Circus has just collapsed, and Uncle Al is ecstatic because they employed the world-famous Charles Mansfield-Livingston, a handsome, dapper man with a parasitic twin growing out of his chest.

The boss hostler is furious, whacking the beleaguered men of the Flying Squadron with flagrant abandon.

Diamond Joe and I carry buckets of offal from behind the menagerie to the main train. It’s from the local stockyards, and is repulsive—smelly, bloody, and charred.

If the car hadn’t been adulterated for the mysterious and missing goats, it would hold thirty-two horses.

Even though the rest of the horses are now in unfamiliar slots, they seem largely unperturbed, probably because we loaded them in the same order.

The names scratched into the posts no longer match the occupants, but I can extrapolate who’s who. The fourth horse in is Blackie.

I can’t see the difference, but since I’ve already ascertained that it’s a bad idea to argue with August, I oblige.

The bucket crashes to the floor, splattering chopped entrails everywhere. The cat drops off my arm and pounces on the meat.

“You wasted no time ingratiating yourself, did you?” he says.

“My dear fellow! So glad you could join our little soirée. I see Marlena has set you up with a drinky-poo; has she shown you the dressing room yet?”

He waggles a finger in reprimand. “Tsk tsk, darling.”

The dinner is sublime: We start with oyster bisque and follow with prime rib, boiled potatoes, and asparagus in cream. Then comes lobster salad. By the time dessert appears—English plum pudding with brandy sauce—I don’t think I can take another bite.

August is gracious, charming, and mischievous—so much so that as the evening wears on I begin to think the incident with Rex was just a joke gone awry.

Then we slosh buckets of water across the floorboards, using push brooms to sluice the resulting muck from the car.

“Chucked from the train. When it’s moving. If you’re lucky, within sight of a train yard’s red lights so you can find your way to town. If you’re not, well, you’d just better hope they don’t open the door while the train’s crossing a trestle.”

I poke my head in with more than a little trepidation, but Kinko is gone.

For a long time, I felt betrayed that not one of my five children offered to take me in. No longer. Now that I’ve had time to mull it over, I see they’ve got enough problems without adding me into the mix.

But despite bowdlerizing content, my family has been entirely faithful about visiting.

My platitudes don’t hold their interest and I can hardly blame them for that. My real stories are all out of date.

So what if I can speak firsthand about the Spanish flu, the advent of the automobile, world wars, cold wars, guerrilla wars, and Sputnik—that’s all ancient history now.