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WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
SARA GRUEN
FOR BOB,
STILL MY SECRET WEAPON
Helena
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to the following people for their contributions to this book: To my
husband, Bob—my love and greatest champion.
To my editor, Chuck Adams, who provided me with the kind of criticism, attention to
detail, and support that took this story to a different
level. To my critique partner, Kristy Kiernan, and my first readers, Karen Abbott,
Maureen Ogle, Kathryn PufFett (who happens to be my
mother), and Terence Bailey (who happens to be my father), for their love and support
and for talking me off the ledge at regular
intervals. To Gary C. Payne, for answering my questions on all things circus, offering
anecdotes, and checking my manuscript for accuracy
To Fred D. Pfening HI, Ken Harck, and Timothy Tegge, for graciously allowing me to
use photographs from their collections. Special
thanks to Fred for reading and helping me fine-tune the text.
To Heidi Taylor, assistant registrar at the Ringling Museum of Art,
for helping me track down and secure the rights to various photographs, and to Barbara
Fox McKellar, for allowing me to use her
father's photograph.
To Mark and Carrie Kabak, both for their hospitality and for introducing me to Mark's
former charges at the Kansas City Zoo.
To Andrew Walaszek, for providing and checking Polish translations. To Keith Cronin,
both for valuable criticisms and for coming up with a title.
To Emma Sweeney, for continuing to be all I could ask for in an agent. And finally, to
the members of my writing group. I don't know what I'd do without you.
I meant what I said, and I said what I meant...
An elephants faithful—one hundred per cent! —THEODORSEUSS GEISEL, Horton
Hatches the Egg, 1940
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
Prologue
Only three people were left under the red and white awning of the grease joint: Grady,
me, and the fry cook. Grady
and I sat at a battered wooden table, each facing a burger
on a dented tin plate. The cook was behind the counter, scraping his griddle with the edge
of a spatula. He had turned off the fryer some time ago,
but the odor of grease lingered.
The rest of the midway—so recently writhing with people—was empty but for a handful
of employees and a small group of men waiting to be led to the cooch tent. They glanced
nervously from side to side, with hats pulled low and hands thrust deep in their pockets.
They wouldn't be disappointed: somewhere in the back Barbara and her ample charms
awaited.
The other townsfolk—rubes, as Uncle Al called them—had already made their way
through the menagerie tent and into the big top, which pulsed with frenetic music. The
band was whipping through its repertoire at the usual earsplitting volume. I knew the
routine by heart—at this very moment, the tail end of the Grand Spectacle was exiting
and Lottie, the aerialist, was ascending her rigging in the center ring.
I stared at Grady, trying to process what he was saying. He glanced around and leaned in
closer.
"Besides," he said, locking eyes with me, "it seems to me you've got
a lot to lose right now." He raised his eyebrows for emphasis. My heart skipped a beat.
Thunderous applause exploded from the big top, and the band slid seamlessly into the
Gounod waltz. I turned instinctively toward the S a r a G r u en
menagerie because this was the cue for the elephant act. Marlena was either preparing to
mount or was already sitting on Rosie's head.
"I've got to go," I said.
"Sit," said Grady. "Eat. If you're thinking of clearing out, it may be a while before you
see food again."
That moment, the music screeched to a halt. There was an ungodly collision of brass,
reed, and percussion—trombones and piccolos skidded into cacophony, a tuba farted, and
the hollow clang of a cymbal wavered out of the big top, over our heads and into
oblivion.
Grady froze, crouched over his burger with his pinkies extended and lips spread wide.
I looked from side to side. No one moved a muscle—all eyes were directed at the big top.
A few wisps of hay swirled lazily across the hard dirt. "What is it? What's going on?" I
said.
"Shh, " Grady hissed.
The band started up again, playing "Stars and Stripes Forever." "Oh Christ. Oh shit!"
Grady tossed his food onto the table and leapt up, knocking over the bench.
"What? What is it?" I yelled, because he was already running away from me.
"The Disaster March!" he screamed over his shoulder.
I jerked around to the fry cook, who was ripping offhis apron. "What the hell's he talking
about?"
"The Disaster March," he said, wrestling the apron over his head. "Means something's
gone bad—real bad."
"Like what?"
"Could be anything—fire in the big top, stampede, whatever. Aw sweet Jesus. The poor
rubes probably don't even know it yet." He ducked under the hinged door and took off.
Chaos—candy butchers vaulting over counters, workmen staggering
out from under tent flaps, roustabouts racing headlong across the lot. Anyone and
everyone associated with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular
Show on Earth barreled toward the big top.
Diamond Joe passed me at the human equivalent of a full gallop. W a t e r for E l e p h a
n ts
"Jacob—it's the menagerie," he screamed. "The animals are loose. Go, go, go!
He didn't need to tell me twice. Marlena was in that tent.
A rumble coursed through me as I approached, and it scared the hell out of me because it
was on a register lower than noise. The ground was vibrating.
I staggered inside and met a wall of yak—a great expanse of curlyhaired chest and
churning hooves, of flared red nostrils and spinning eyes.
It galloped past so close I leapt backward on tiptoe, flush with the canvas to avoid being
impaled on one of its crooked horns. A terrified hyena clung to its shoulders.
The concession stand in the center of the tent had been flattened, and
in its place was a roiling mass of spots and stripes—of haunches, heels, tails, and claws,
all of it roaring, screeching, bellowing, or whinnying. A polar bear towered above it all,
slashing blindly with skillet-sized paws. It made contact with a llama and knocked it
flat—BOOM. The llama hit the ground, its neck and legs splayed like the five points of a
star. Chimps screamed and chattered, swinging on ropes to stay above the cats. A wild-
eyed zebra zigzagged too close to a crouching lion, who swiped, missed, and darted
away, his belly close to the ground.
My eyes swept the tent, desperate to find Marlena. Instead I saw a cat
slide through the connection leading to the big top—it was a panther, and as its lithe
black body disappeared into the canvas tunnel I braced myself. If the rubes didn't know,
they were about to find out. It took several seconds to come, but come it did—one
prolonged shriek followed by another,
and then another, and then the whole place exploded with the thunderous sound of bodies
trying to shove past other bodies and ofFthe stands. The band screeched to a halt for a
second time, and this time stayed silent. I shut my eyes: Please God let them leave by the
back end. Please God don't let them try to come through here.
I opened my eyes again and scanned the menagerie, frantic to find her. How hard can it
be to find a girl and an elephant, for Christ's sake? When I caught sight of her pink
sequins, I nearly cried out in reliefmaybe I did. I don't remember.
S a r a G r u en
She was on the opposite side, standing against the sidewall, calm as
a summer day. Her sequins flashed like liquid diamonds, a shimmering beacon between
the multicolored hides. She saw me, too, and held my gaze for what seemed like forever.
She was cool, languid. Smiling even. I started pushing my way toward her, but something
about her expression stopped me cold.
That son of a bitch was standing with his back to her, red-faced and bellowing, flapping
his arms and swinging his silver-tipped cane. His high-topped silk hat lay on the straw
beside him.
She reached for something. A giraffe passed between us—its long neck bobbing
gracefully even in panic—and when it was gone I saw that she'd picked up an iron stake.
She held it loosely, resting its end on the hard dirt. She looked at me again, bemused.
Then her gaze shifted to the back of his bare head.
"Oh Jesus," I said, suddenly understanding. I stumbled forward, screaming even though
there was no hope of my voice reaching her. "Don't do
it! Don't do it!"
She lifted the stake high in the air and brought it down, splitting his head like a
watermelon. His pate opened, his eyes grew wide, and his
mouth froze into an O. He fell to his knees and then toppled forward into the straw.
I was too stunned to move, even as a young orangutan flung its elastic arms around my
legs.
So long ago. So long. But still it haunts me.
I DON'T TALK MUCH about those days. Never did. I don't know why—I worked on
circuses for nearly seven years, and if that isn't fodder for conversation, I don't know
what is.
Actually I do know why: I never trusted myself. I was afraid I'd let it
slip. I knew how important it was to keep her secret, and keep it I did—for the rest of her
life, and then beyond.
In seventy years, I've never told a blessed soul. One
IT am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.
II When you're five, you know your age down to the month.
JLEven in your twenties you know how old you are. I'm twentythree,
you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties something strange starts to
happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm—
you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're
not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the
beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.
You start to forget words: they're on the tip of your tongue, but instead
of eventually dislodging, they stay there. You go upstairs to fetch something, and by the
time you get there you can't remember what it was you
were after. You call your child by the names of all your other children and finally the dog
before you get to his. Sometimes you forget what day it is. And finally you forget the
year.
Actually, it's not so much that I've forgotten. It's more like I've stopped keeping track.
We're past the millennium, that much I know—such a
fuss and bother over nothing, all those young folks clucking with worry and buying
canned food because somebody was too lazy to leave space for four digits instead of
two—but that could have been last month or three years ago. And besides, what does it
really matter? What's the difference between three weeks or three years or even three
decades of mushy peas, tapioca, and Depends undergarments?
I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other. S a r a G r u en
EITHER THERE'S BEEN an accident or there's roadwork, because
a gaggle of old ladies is glued to the window at the end of the hall like children or
jailbirds. They're spidery and frail, their hair as fine as mist. Most
of them are a good decade younger than me, and this astounds me. Even as your body
betrays you, your mind denies it.
I'm parked in the hallway with my walker. I've come a long way since my hip fracture,
and thank the Lord for that. For a while it looked like I wouldn't walk again—that's how I
got talked into coming here in the first
place—but every couple of hours I get up and walk a few steps, and with every day I get
a little bit farther before feeling the need to turn around. There may be life in the old dog
yet.
There are five of them now, white-headed old things huddled together
and pointing crooked fingers at the glass. I wait a while to see if they wander off. They
don't.
I glance down, check that my brakes are on, and rise carefully, steadying myself on the
wheelchair's arm while making the perilous transfer
to the walker. Once I'm squared away, I clutch the gray rubber pads on the arms and
shove it forward until my elbows are extended, which turns out to be exactly one floor
tile. I drag my left foot forward, make sure it's steady, and then pull the other up beside it.
Shove, drag, wait, drag. Shove, drag, wait, drag.
The hallway is long and my feet don't respond the way they used to. Its
not Camel's kind of lameness, thank God, but it slows me down nonetheless. Poor old
Camel—it's been years since I thought of him. His
feet flopped loosely at the end of his legs so he had to lift his knees high and throw them
forward. My feet drag, as though they're weighted, and because my back is stooped I end
up looking down at my slippers framed by the walker.
It takes a while to get to the end of the hall, but I do—and on my own pins, too. I'm
pleased as punch, although once there I realize I still have to find my way back.
They part for me, these old ladies. These are the vital ones, the ones who can either move
on their own steam or have friends to wheel them Water for E l e p h a n ts
around. These old girls still have their marbles, and they're good to me. I'm a rarity
here—an old man among a sea of widows whose hearts still ache for their lost men.
"Oh, here," clucks Hazel. "Let's give Jacob a look."
She pulls Dolly's wheelchair a few feet back and shuffles up beside me, clasping her
hands, her milky eyes flashing. "Oh, it's so exciting! They've been at it all morning!"
