Read Online Did Not Survive by Ann Littlewood - Free Book Online Page A

scuffed straw and wood chips out of the way. Each step seemed deliberate, not like the nervous tapping of a blackbuck antelope or a deer. I wondered how many ribs those feet had broken when she was mauling Wallace.
    â€œHas to get her mojo working,” Ian said, which was the liveliest thing I’d ever heard out of him. He seemed almost relaxed around the animals, and his words flowed more easily.
    Damrey circled back toward us, checked again that Ian really did have raisins, and turned around to present her butt to the bars. Ian took the stick from me and waited. Instead of urinating, she turned around and sniffed at us again with her gray and pink trunk tip, the wet little finger on the end working. She blew a long snort, picked up some straw, and threw it on her back. She walked to the far end of the stall, rubbed her side against the rough wall a bit, and then stood rocking from side to side with her back to us. Ian didn’t say or do a thing.
    I felt as though I were deaf. Damrey was fairly shouting at me with body language, and I had no idea what she was saying, except that she didn’t feel like standing near me and emitting bodily fluids.
    After a minute or so, Damrey walked to the door to Nakri’s stall and squeaked. Nakri squeaked back. Damrey ignored us some more.
    â€œCome on,” Ian said to me. “Time out.”
    Damrey wasn’t cooperating, and he was withdrawing his offer to trade a treat for pee. We walked into the work area, where Sam was measuring quarts of grain into five gallon buckets.
    â€œNo pee?” Sam asked. “We haven’t got all day.”
    Ian didn’t say anything.
    We stood around for three or four minutes watching Sam work and went back out. Damrey stood at the far end of the stall next to the bars with one hind leg stretched behind her and rocked, shifting her weight from front to back. “What’s she doing?” I asked.
    Sam answered from the doorway behind us. “She does that when she’s upset. She spent years in a circus, and they chain their elephants most of the time when they’re on the road. She’s pretending she’s chained by that leg.”
    It was weird, watching her tug on that invisible chain over and over. For the first time, I noticed the faint pink line circling her ankle. An old scar.
    Ian said, “Damrey. Pee.” Damrey stopped her repetitive motion, came right on over, and started in with the smelling again. Her deep-set little eyes seemed filled with suspicion, the long, sparse lashes waving as the wrinkled gray eyelid moved. Sam stepped up to the bars to our right, where they were wide enough apart for a person to slip through sideways.
    â€œIt’s me, isn’t it?” I said.
    â€œShe doesn’t know you yet,” Sam said.
    â€œAnd I’m associated with Wallace’s body.”
    Neither elephant keeper said anything.
    Damrey turned toward Sam and draped her trunk over his shoulder. He rubbed the trunk, his hand moving firmly over the rough, wrinkled hide. It looked like old friends comforting one another in a tough time, trying to get each other through. Would she really turn on a person she knew, who’d been careful and gentle with her? It could happen, I knew it could happen. But this particular elephant? “See?” Sam said. “She hasn’t got a mean bone in her body. Wait till you get to know her.”
    Huh. So that was why Sam tagged me for this job. I was the chief witness against her, and he wanted a chance to show me the Damrey he knew. I didn’t like being manipulated, but I wasn’t going to hold it against him. The facts would speak for themselves. But I wished he’d get out of her reach. Hadn’t Mr. Crandall forbidden physical contact? Had I misunderstood that?
    â€œPee,” Ian said quietly, holding out the raisins for her to smell again.
    â€œHave Iris give her the raisins, and we’ll try again tomorrow,” Sam said,