The Cowboy and his Elephant by Malcolm MacPherson Page A

His presence in the paddock on a horse forced them to back away. Using his skills as a cowboy, he cut the other elephants away to allow her time to eat and drink. He visited her stall, where she was separated for her own protection. He visited her in the late afternoons and evenings when the sun was setting. He fed her carrots. He talked to her. She moved closer to him and lifted her trunk to smell him.
    Until now he had not stopped to wonder if she had a name. He asked Jackson when he next came by.
    “Amy,” he replied automatically.
    “Nice,” said Bob, then tried out the name aloud a couple of times. “It fits her, don’t you think?”
    “If you say so, Mr. Norris.”
    “Where does it come from? Amy?”
    “I don’t know. Someplace. It was written on her crate.”
     
    A s a rancher and horseman, Bob believed that “no better word was ever spoken of a man than that he was careful of his horses.” He added goats to that list, and dogs, cats, and cows, “any damn thing except rattlers and ostriches,” he liked to say. Now he included one baby elephant on this list as well.
    On a day when the sun was warmer than usual and the sky was bright he paused a moment to watch as Jacksonchased Amy around in her paddock. She was terrified, Bob guessed, because men on foot running like Jackson had killed her family. She was trying to get away to a corner of the paddock.
    Amy did not belong to Bob; she was a strange animal, and he did not know her behavior, but he knew a frightened, traumatized baby when he saw one. He climbed the fence rail and poised himself to jump down into the paddock. He watched as Jackson, chasing her, raised a length of two-by-four. Bob straightened up. Jackson swung and hit Amy hard across the rump.
    Bob was off the fence and running across the paddock. He snatched the board out of Jackson’s hands. He was trembling with anger and had trouble controlling his voice when he told him, “You hit her again, Mr. Jackson, and we’re going to have a problem.” He threw the board over the fence and walked off in disgust. Jackson stood there looking between Amy and Bob. He did not know what was happening, but he sensed the presence of powerful emotions that he did not grasp. These elephants were a commodity to him, and he could not comprehend anyone feeling protective of them simply as animals. He got in his truck and drove off. He would not hit her again.
     
    A my was still not eating as Bob imagined she should. She was not properly weaned, and she was frightened much of the time. An occasional lassitude indicated a serious depression.She had started to come into her own, induced by the carrots, but then she had slipped back, and then further back.
    He tried to understand her. He had no knowledge of where she had come from. But he imagined a jungle with vines to swing on, odd beasts, and people wearing jodhpurs and pith helmets, and natives with bones in their hair. He knew that his view of Africa was outdated, if it had ever been real. Still, Amy missed her home. She missed her family, her mother and sisters. Bob could not replace what had been taken from her, but he could act as a surrogate for them—he could be Amy’s mother—for a while.
    Jackson had told him about the cull in Africa. Bob would have preferred to be spared the gory details. He hated the words “slaughter” and “killing,” and preferred “harvest” and “cull,” which made what happened sound less cruel and wanton. Jackson told Bob about how Buck deVries had saved Amy. He described her journey through Europe to the United States with the five other babies he had bought in southern Africa.
    Bob told Jane, “No creature Amy’s age should have to live with such dark, horrible memories, and nothing happy to replace them with.”
    Amy had lost her universe. Bob imagined, as he said, that her simple elephant soul ached. She had been pushed around, transported in trucks that reeked of diesel fumes, limited to a
kraal,
packed in