Read Online Elephant Bangs Train by William Kotzwinkle - Free Book Online

began between his haunches. He circled her, to get behind and mount, but she turned her tail away from him with express denial. He playfully offered her his trunk, but she refused it. He raised up on his back legs and blew a sweet note, but she did not move, and the look in her eyes cut through him like the claws of a cat. His disgrace was already a legend. She shuffled away from him, into the forest.
    The great swelling between his haunches was not relieved. The baboons suggested he insert it in a mud bank. Bellowing with rage, he shook the trees with his trunk, tearing their roots, and the baboons leapt away, howling with laughter.
    He stood defeated in the dismal grove. What cow would have him now? An old cow, perhaps, with bumps on her head, was the best he could hope for. Then, from faraway, he heard a familiar sound.
    He listened as it grew louder, and his rage mounted slowly from tail to trunk. He moved quickly through the trees on to the plain. There, in the bed of grass, he saw the strange path once again, and the long shining bones, and in the distance, the great shadow slithering through the trees.
    The light was fading and the day had grown cooler. The ground trembled and the rumbling grew louder. A dark cloud streamed in the sky, and circling above it were the birds of death. The serpent came out of the forest and on to the plain, its bright eye shining.
    He trotted towards it, until the serpent's head was fully exposed, and then he charged. The plain blurred, and he closed in with head down.
    The serpent saw him and screamed, but his rage was full and he rammed it directly. Darkness fell and cats' eyes glistened; the serpent shuddered and gave way. He hooked it in the belly with his tusks and drove it off the path. The serpent screeched, lashing its tail. He backed away dizzily, his head throbbing, and charged once more, burying his tusk in the serpent's eye.
    The serpent did not move. He had killed it. He sounded his triumph and walked away with deliberate slowness. He heard angry voices, like those of the baboons, cursing him, but he did not recognize the tongue, and did not care. The dark-eyed cow was waiting in the trees, and as he came towards her, she turned slowly and showed him her haunches.
     

 
    The Magician
    T HE MAGICIAN stood in the alley outside the cabaret, breathing the night air. Under the light of the stage door sat his wife, sewing a silver button on his evening jacket. A sturdy, buxom woman, she cut the thread with her strong teeth, then stood and held the jacket out.
    The magician turned and stepped towards her lightly, a magician's walk, pointed-toed across the stones, through the mist rolling in from the river, as a ship edging out to sea sounded its mournful horn.
    'The horns of Tibet,' said the magician. 'You hear them down the mountain passes, invoking the Buddha.'
    'Yes, darling,' said his wife, holding out his jacket, smiling patiently.
    The night is hypnosis, he thought, not daring to look in her eyes, for he would go tumbling into them. From within the cabaret came the sound of a trumpet; in the stage doorway his wife's eyes were wickedly bright, and he could not resist.
    'Please, darling,' she said, for he hadn't much time before his act, but she let him fall, until she could feel him inside her, rummaging around in her old loves, her flown and tattered past. What a strange one he was, always exploring around inside her with those eyes of his, peering into the dear dead days of a woman. It was bizarre play, but she let him, for some men demanded much more, and it was more painful in the giving. That was the way of the waterfront, where strange men came ashore. Into their arms she'd fallen, for she loved a sea story, and their dark songs. But then along he'd come, the top-hatted magic one, and she had said so here you are at last, which was all a magician needed, some portentous note to thrill him for an age or two. So they'd married, and he was still looking around inside her,