The Green Elephant
THAO VU
“Where are they?” asked the boy in the passenger seat. A youth with a clean face and clear voice, and money, too.
“Look ahead,” his driver said, handing him a binocular. “See that boulder—”
The boulder was hard to miss. Majestic. Massive, the size of Mbombo’s thumb in the boy’s bedtime stories. Beneath a giant baobab, its impeccably smooth surface simmered in the afterglow. The boulder reflected light and turned gold. When its spark pierced the boy’s corneas, he sensed a significance.
“There,” the old man exclaimed. “They’re coming!”
An elephant herd lumbered solemnly into view, heading toward the mangrove swamp for water. They stomped a long path across the savanna, like destitute men rolling their dice across the table, habitual and final.
Speechless, the boy marveled at the last green elephants right in front of him.
They were in all shades of green, from the young calves, running and leaping happily like mint, to the elder, trudging with difficulty, sage and thin.
“Sumthin’ wrong,” the old man whispered. “Watch ’til they cross the rock.”
Obediently, the boy waited for the herd to cross from one lens of his binoculars to another, until the last of them—the eldest elephant—arrived at the boulder. The golden light flung the old elephant into a hysteria. From a distance, they heard him trumpeting, roaring. They saw him dig his tusks into the ground, digging up sumthin’, trampling on sumthin’, spinning a whirlwind of dust.
“What is he doing?” the boy asked.
The driver shook his head. No one knew.
The old elephant continued to sway sideways in distress. The herd stopped in their tracks. Young calves were no better informed than the two humans about the trigger, where the golden boulder marked the spot. No one knew much about the old elephant anymore. At eighty, his days were numbered to an ancient grave, where he would be hollowed inside out, secrets exposed through rib cages, no flesh, no blood, no obstruction. One moment in front of the boulder was more than his time remaining laid out and combined.
“What are they doing?” the boy turned to his driver again.
“What else?” The old man sighed. “Comforting him.”
The other green elephants gathered around their elder, caressing his mouth with their trunks, dabbing into his curse of being a green elephant. Everyone on the savanna knew and now the boy knew it, too. Green elephants carried memories with the moss on their skin. The more they remembered, the greener they became. When a green elephant stood hypnotized in front of an acacia, it was because of one no longer there. Even lions made a point of never attacking a baby green elephant, seeing it rest among mossy boulders half the size of a sun, for the child might have cried itself to sleep among fresh remains.
THAO VU graduated from Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, MA) and National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan), and is writing her debut novel through the MFA program at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA). Her recent and forthcoming work can be found at Bending Genres, BULL, MockingHeart Review, THIMBLE, Villain Era, Zin Daily, and at vuqythao.com.
