“Thar, thar, sugar,” he said to the elephant, smiling genially. “What’re you all put out for?”
The men in coveralls began waving the visa applicants inside. Some of them were reading off SkinWerks notes glowing on their hands, in reflexive voices: “Inside! Inside! Welcome! Huanying guanglin! Bienvenue! Welcome! Huanying guanglin! Bienvenue! Inside!” A 3D holographic sign with the same words, in puffy lettering, was, in a flash, projecting from above the doors.
Suleiman, who had dawdled, and who didn’t like the looks of the men in white coveralls, knew immediately that the navy-jacketed man from the embassy was making a profound mistake by getting so close to the tembo. When Suleiman was a child, his elder cousin, Amani, had been lucky enough to live and work seasonally at one of the game preserves south of the capital. When Suleiman had visited, he saw Amani carefully drive wild elephants away from the touring Land Rovers by smacking their feet—but it was perilous work, and one risked death. But this American man, he acted as if he had never seen a tembo in his life.
When the elephant began to charge, Suleiman watched stunned as the man ran toward it. He did not know why, but he too began running toward the animal. There was perhaps a vague sense that he must start acting larger than himself—is this American, this running toward a monster? But mostly, Suleiman simply heeded an innate decency and courage he himself did not know he possessed.
“No!” he shouted. “Toka!”
Layang let out a sneezy, squeaky cry—the splurty sounds of a knotted cornet—then knocked Mason off his feet with the base of her trunk. His eyeglasses went flying. Everything happened so fast, Mason was still smiling, still believing, when the animal’s front feet slammed down only inches from his knees. He had made no sound. He felt nothing. He still held his hand out toward the animal and was almost laughing, with a strange sense that his cropped hair had suddenly grown miles long and caught fire.
“Oh,” he finally said. “Hey.”
Then there was Suleiman over him, trying to wrestle with one of the elephant’s feet. “Toka! Mama tembo, toka!”
Suleiman had never been so close to a tembo, never touched one. The softness and warmth of the animal’s huge ankles surprised him—he had expected a kind of hard rubberiness. He realized he didn’t know what he was doing, but Layang seemed to respond to him, and backed away, but only for a moment. Suleiman turned toward the man and tried to lift him up. Layang had risen to her hind legs, preparing to pounce down on Mason with a 1,500-pound coup de grace.
Suleiman spun around and staggered back, positioning himself between the angry elephant and Mason. The beast moved its head side to side in a brutal fashion, as if trying to shake its own brains out, and glared down at the humans. Suleiman was able to pull the man up to his feet, looping his arm around his chest, and yank him back. For reasons he could not grasp, the man was resisting him, pulling at his forearms fiercely.
“I’m OK,” Mason seethed. “Let me go!” But Suleiman had no intention of letting him die. He kept trying to heave him away from the elephant.
Mason, trying to regain his balance, thumping the heels of his own trainers down on a short set of three cement stairs, could see the blaming, sweeping rage in the elephant, its ears engorged with blood, its reddish-brown eyes furious. The unfamiliar tenderness of the man, the unplanned human-to-human connection, was humiliating to him. He didn’t want to be rescued. It was a goddamn elephant, not a suicide bomber.
Still, as they stood back now, watching, Layang all at once thrust her feet down so hard on the pavement the nearby trees rustled. Then the elephant seemed to back off.
“Thanks,” said Mason stiffly, gaining a footing, gazing at the small, lean man, who was grinning. The dark blue insulated coat he had been wearing was missing an arm, and all he wore under the coat was an old faded-red T-shirt that read OPERATION GET DOWN—DETROIT, MI.
“Go inside now,” Mason said. “It’s OK. Just go in.” He wiped some of the dust off his saggy khakis. He knelt down, retrieved his broken spectacles, and reset them on his nose. One of the lenses was shattered; he popped it out and let it fall on the ground.