Read Online An Inconvenient Elephant by Judy Reene Singer - Free Book Online

she saw the stricken look on my face. “Don’t worry—the maps have this as a shallow.” She held up the GPS. “Let’s hope they’re right because we’re going to drive right through it.”
    â€œHere we go, we are making water,” Grisha announced, rolling the truck forward and down the slight bank. He held his cigarette over his head as though to keep it dry, and we sloshed slowly through the pond and up the other side. I let out a sigh of relief, then worried if Tusker and his friend would know enough to follow us. He did, but not before stopping to douse his back with a good spray.
    We passed a solitary leopard feeding on a just-killed springbok, the soft brown fur and white fantail of its prey brilliantly stained in red. The leopard lifted its head to stare at us. Its mouth was also outlined in carmine, like ghoulish lip paint, and I shuddered.
    The heat was unendurable. My shirt soaked in sweat, then dried from the lack of humidity, then soaked again, getting stiffer and stiffer with each cycle. We were all streaming perspiration, and several times I thought I saw a pond of water glimmering in the far-reaching, flat, sandy expanses that now lay ahead of us.
    The water may have been a mirage, but we drove past a disturbing sight that wasn’t. Piles of thick bones like bleaching tree stumps were heavily strewn about, and Grisha called to me as we passed very close to a blanched, dried carcass that was opened like a large cave.
    â€œDo not look, Plain-Neelie.”
    Of course I looked. I could mentally reconstruct the body that had once held these bones. The massive flat fan of the scapula, the elegantly curved jaw like a huge French horn, the long, thick femurs all reduced to white artifacts.
    There are no creatures except one that have skeletons that enormous.
    Elephants.
    It wasn’t a normal kill. There were too many. Yawning, empty ruins. Some half decayed. Some of youngsters. Macabre xylophones of death, the music of their hearts terminated a long time ago.
    â€œPoachers,” said Diamond with disgust. “Look at the tusks hacked off.”
    I covered my eyes—the sight was unbearable. Tusker and the bull stopped their journey to examine the area. Tusker walked over to one pile and touched it gently with his trunk. He stood over it for a long time, sniffing, turning the bones, stroking them, then lifting a large bone and tenderly, tenderly holding it, paying tribute to death with a low rumbling sound, then laying the bone reverentially back into its nest, until finally, reluctantly, he moved on.
    Grisha lit another in a chain of cigarettes. “We are near last sexual of park,” he declared, pointing to an odd line of baobab trees. “That is beginning of Chizarira Park. We are ending here.” He checked his watch. “It is taking us nine cows, Plain-Neelie.”
    â€œCharlotte said she would tie something around a tree where we should meet her,” Diamond said, pulling binoculars from her pack, along with the compass and the GPS.
    â€œWow,” I said, “you really do know what you’re doing.”
    She gave me an amused look. “Twenty years of running safaris,” she replied. “Remember?” She did a few calculations. “We need to drive about five miles east southeast.”
    â€œ Da .” Grisha nodded and turned the Rover. I threw oranges while Diamond navigated. Tusker and his friend followed along, more or less out of curiosity now, because they were stepping over most of the oranges, apparently satiated.
    Within ten minutes, Diamond spotted a large red rag that was secured around a baobab tree. As we approached, a group of men carrying rifles appeared on horseback from behind the trees. I held my breath, but a petite woman with cropped brown hair and a very large rifle rode up in front of them.
    â€œCharlotte Pope!” Diamond yelled, jumping to her feet. “If you aren’t a