Larger Than Life (Novella) by Jodi Picoult Page A

says,belong to the state, and to move one across the border, international permission has
     to be obtained.
    I travel to Trendler’s reserve and explain the situation, hoping she will agree to
     take in another stray. The moment I mention that Lesego is a survivor of poaching
     I know I have her sympathy, since Trendler has spoken out publicly and forcefully
     against the killing of rhinos and elephants for ivory. On a handshake, she agrees
     to house Lesego, and then she introduces me to the other orphans—several rhinos and
     a vervet monkey and a hawk, even another elephant calf.
    She leaves the details, however, to me. So from the sanctuary I travel to Pretoria,
     chasing down a CITES wildlife export permit, and an import permit to South Africa,
     until I finally have a thick file stuffed with all the necessary paperwork to set
     Lesego’s transfer into motion. My final destination, seven days later, is the first
     place I’d gone—the Department of Wildlife in Gaborone. Wilhelm Otto calls me the Orphan
     Calf Lady and invites me into his office. As I wilt in the heat on the far side of
     his desk, he sifts through the stack of papers for ten minutes.
At this rate, Lesego will be fully grown before she’s translocated
, I think. Finally, Otto glances up at me. “T’s crossed and i’s dotted,” he pronounces.
     “Well done, Ms. Metcalf.”
    “Doctor,” I correct.
    His eyes narrow. “Yes. Well.”
    I’m not going to get into a pissing contest with the man who controls Lesego’s fate.
     “What happens next?”
    “We’ll get a bush vet dispatched as soon as we can, maybe by the end of the week.
     Your calf will be darted and flown to the facility in South Africa.”
    He offers me a ride to a local hotel, but I am itching to get back to the game reserve
     to see Lesego. And, I suppose, to give Neo the good news.

    We know, at the reserve, when visitors arrive. They have to be radioed through the
     gate, even though it is another forty minutes of driving through the bush to reach
     the camp itself. So it is not a surprise to find Grant waiting for me when I pull
     in. “I did it,” I say,triumphant. “It wasn’t easy—it was the opposite of easy—but the vet will be here by
     Sunday, and Karen Trendler agreed to take her and—” When I see his expression, my
     sentence falls away, one syllable at a time, pebbles from the edge of a cliff. “Grant,”
     I whisper. “What’s wrong?”
    I am thinking of those little yellow telegrams.
    But Grant walks me to my hut, explaining on the way. Once she realized I had left,
     Lesego had stopped eating. No matter what Neo did to encourage her otherwise, she
     had refused. The calf had not eaten or drunk since I’d gone away—a full week now.
    “It’s my fault,” I murmur.
    “I called Dame Sheldrick’s orphanage in Kenya,” Grant says. “She started taking in
     orphaned calves in the nineteen seventies, when poaching became widespread in Tsavo.
     I figured if anyone could help us, it would be her. Alice … her keepers
rotate
. No one person watches an elephant, because the calves get too attached.” Grant stops
     walking and looks at me. “Before, if a keeper left for even a single day, the calf
     stopped eating. It started to mourn. Those first calves of hers,” he says, “they died.”
    At that, I break into a run. I fly down the path of the researchers’ village toward
     my hut. A flashlight has been rigged to hang over the porch, where Neo sits with Lesego.
     His hand strokes the stark planes of her brow, the sunken cheeks. I can see the knobs
     of her spine. She has deteriorated so far, so fast.
    I’ve left her before, but for minutes at a time. How long had she waited for me before
     beginning to give up?
    Neo looks up at me, his face ravaged.
    “I’m back, Lesego,” I croon to the calf. She struggles to get up, but she is too weak.
     Her eyes are dull, flat. Her skin sags, sallow, under her chin. I try to lift her
     head, but it is too