Elephant Song

SEVENTEEN

On Workday, the First of May, the beginning of the third year since the crash, the column of bulls was forming for the trip back to Miira. The bullhands all wore their new gray and maroon striped robes, although most wore their trousers as well. Shiner Pete had gone ahead with the horses. Little Will and Packy were checking a slight scrape on Reg's left front leg when a delegation of eight bullhands came up behind them.

"Packy, we want a word."

Packy stood, turned around, and looked at the speaker. "What's up, Moll? Why didn't you folks leave with the horse-wagons?"

The woman pointed her bullhook at the houses of Tarzak. "The bunch of us here, and our families, are staying. We aren't heading back to Miira."

Little Will stood. "What do you mean, not going back? You have to. Miira is where the bullhands live."

Moll smiled and shook her head. "Little Will, I haven't been a bullhand since Number Three went down killing Big Nance." Moll cocked her head toward the others standing behind her. "None of us has bull to push."

Packy rubbed his chin and shook his head. "Moll, there's still the White Top Mountain Road to build."

"You can build it without us. We want to stay in Tarzak. There's more people here; more things to do. Better ways of making a living than cutting dust on a chain gang."

Packy nodded. "We'll miss you." He looked around her at the others. "All of you."

"We'll get together next Season."

He looked back at Moll. "What're you going to do?"

"I think I'll try my hand at fishing. I've been looking at those boats in Sina; talked to a few people."

Little Will slowly shook her head. "Moll, won't you miss the bulls?"

"Sure. But we'll get a glimpse of one every now and then." She cocked her head back toward Mad Man Mulligan. "Mad Man is keeping Ming in Tarzak."

Little Will held her hands to her mouth. "Not Ming."

Packy's face darkened as he walked around Moll and grabbed Mad Man by the front of his robe. "Like hell you are!"

Mad Man pulled the boss elephant man's hands free from his robe. "Like hell I'm not!"

"Ming isn't yours. She belongs to the show."

"Show me the papers, Packy! There ain't no show!" Mad Man took a deep breath and exhaled as he smoothed the front of his robe. "Packy, I ain't been paid a lousy quarter-note since the crash. I been pushing bull for two years, and no pay. I figure I earned that bull. You figure different, we can have it out right here and now."

Packy looked down the column of bulls, then down at the ground, shaking his head. "Damn."

Little Will touched the boss elephant man's arm. "Packy?"

He pulled his arm away and began walking slowly toward Robber. "Mad Man's right, Little Will. Damn him, but he's right. I'm sorry."

Little Will saw Mad Man look down at the sight of her tears. He looked up again. "I know what Ming was to Bullhook, Little Will. You know I'll take care of her."

Robber began moving toward the first delta bridge. Little Will turned away from Mad Man and started walking after Packy. "Let's go, Reg."

Her pachyderm lumbered after her, followed by the rest of the column.

On the second night from Tarzak, the bullhands were preparing to make camp outside the timber town of Porse, when a wagon pulled by a pair of Perches thundered down the road from Miira. The driver pulled up the team just outside of camp, then jumped down from the wagon as the cloud of dust that had followed him slowly covered the horses and moved through Porse's only street. The driver was Shiner Pete.

"Packy!"

Little Will rushed up to her husband. "Pete, what is it?"

"Where's Packy?"

She pointed toward the trees. "He's over there hobbling Robber. What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "Not sure." He ran toward Packy.

The boss elephant man stood and brushed off his hands as he saw Pete and Little Will running toward him. "Hold your bosses. What's this about?"

They stopped and Pete held up his hand as he caught his breath. "In Miira. Can't go into town. Mange says to head the column down the Kuumic Road as soon as you hit the edge of town. He's already headed the hostlers, horse teams, tools, and wagons that way."

"Spill it, Shiner. What's goin' on?"

Pete shook his head. "A disease. Right now that's about all Mange knows. Just about everybody who was left behind in Miira when we went down for The Season's got it. Snaggle-tooth, The First Lady, and Walking Rug are all dead." He looked down and closed his eyes. "I don't understand it. Waxy and Dot the Pot are down with it, and they were with us in Tarzak."

"What about Cookie Jo?"

"She went out with the hostlers."

Packy placed a hand on Pete's shoulder and looked back toward where the bullhands were gathering around fires to cook the evening meal. "What's this bug like? Nothing unusual, but we've had a few hands griping about headaches and stomach cramps."

Shiner Pete's shoulders slumped as he nodded. "That's it. Dammit, but that's it. Mange said that if the bullhands show symptoms, you should separate those who have it from those who don't. Drop the sick ones off in Miira, then the rest of you head out to build the White Top Mountain Road." He pointed down the road toward Tarzak. "That means that everybody picked it up at The Season. All the towns'll have it."

Little Will placed her arm around Shiner's waist. "Can't Mange do anything?"

Shiner Pete shook his head, then looked at Packy. "I can take the sick ones in the wagon."

Packy looked toward the campfires. "Dammit all to hell anyway." He looked back at Pete. "If Mange wants the sick separate from the healthy, I'll get one of the sickies to drive the wagon. You stay with us." He looked back at the fires. "Guess we better go and tell 'em." He began walking toward the fires.

The next evening the column turned at Miira and entered the Great Muck Swamp, the smell of Miira's burning houses still in their nostrils. In the days that followed, as they moved along the Miira-Kuumic Road, three times they met wagons filled with the sick, heading the other way.

When they reached the place where the road crossed the Upland Mountains, they found the hostlers and road gang already at work, carving their way up to the frozen lakes at the foot of White Top Mountain. That night Little Will and Shiner Pete sat at the same fire as Packy and boss hostler Skinner Suggs. Skinner had just passed a map to Packy, and as the boss elephant man studied it, Skinner talked to the fire.

"We got Kraut Messer's trail half blazed, but it's going to be a rough road to build." He reached back, picked up a rock, and handed it to Shiner Pete. "We have at least four ridges of that stuff to cut through."

Little Will looked at the rock in Shiner's hands. It was cloudy, and speared with shafts of black mineral, but the light from the fire could be seen through it. She looked at Skinner. "What is it?"

"According to Windy Fedder, it's called pegmatite. That clear stuff is quartz, and it's just like tryin' to chop through solid glass. But it's either that, or run the road half-way around the damned swamp."

Packy took the rock, examined it, then handed it back to Skinner. "Steengrease?"

"I can't see any way around it."

The punk from rotting frond trees mixed with powered charcoal and treated with the acid from the fruit of the death tree explodes after the mixture has dried into a semi-solid goo. It explodes when jarred, when ignited, when heated, or when the mood is upon it. Butterfingers McCorkle from Miira discovered it; Firehole Steen from Kuumic manufactured and used it for mining—for a brief time. Firehole's pieces were never found.

The concoction was called Steengrease.

Soon after the road was begun, the road gang was out of the jungle and into the sparse trees and grasses of the Upland foothills. Each turn and curve of the road took them higher and closer to the base of White Top Mountain. Five times wagons were sent to Miira filled with the sick. The fifth wagon returned with a few of the ones who had recovered from the still unknown disease.

By the time the nights became chill enough to require blankets for the bulls, five more bulls and bullhands had left the gang. Two bulls were steered north toward the Emerald Valley; three went south to Kuumic to help work the mines. And a coldness entered Little Will's heart as she counted the twenty-three bulls left to build the White Top Mountain Road. The image of Bullhook Willy, the full line of bulls, and the show filled her mind. The image and the coldness combined to form a resolve—a mission—to preserve what she knew and what she was.

Then bullhand Slim Kim and her bull Tori were torn apart as Steengrease exploded unexpectedly at the cut through the first ridge. And then the bulls numbered twenty-two.

The months passed, the newly stricken were replaced in part by the recovered, and the gang heard from Goofy Joe how those who had not recovered were filling Miira's Big Lot. The road gang had reached the last, and the biggest, of the pegmatite ridges.

It was too steep to go over, and there was no way around. Working on the rock with hammers and chisels left everyone with a hammer bleeding from the cuts made by numerous splinters of razor-sharp quartz. Within that same hour, Sterno Ti Myati had her left eye closed forever when a splinter punctured it.

The Steengrease was brought up. Three times before, Shiner Pete had worked with those who had worked the touchy explosive. At the fourth cut, Shiner was the sole remaining member of this select, and highly scarce, group.

For the fourth time that day, Shiner Pete worked his way up the cut with a bucket of Steengrease to fill the cracks in the cut's jagged face. Once the cracks were filled, grease-smeared strings implanted in the cracks, and Pete safely down the hill, the ends of the strings were drawn together and prepared for ignition.

Little Will stood by Reg's left front as her husband prepared to set off the charges. She was with the rest of the bullhands and elephants, far back from the hill. As Pete talked with Packy, Little Will studied the cracks in the pegmatite. She saw the slope of the hill, the amounts of Steengrease Pete had placed into the cracks. She had seen the differences in fuse lengths, and had seen Steengrease used before. She turned to the other bullhands. "All up! We have to move!"

Slobby Mike Kuboski had laughed. "I'm just a little wore. This is the first time I've had to sit on my buns all day. I don't feel much like moving."

Little Will looked at Slobby Mike, then at his bull, Dancer, then at the other bullhands. "If we don't move, the rocks from the blast will kill us." She pointed down. "A lot of the big ones are going to land right here."

There was laughter all around. They were a long way from the cut. Little Will looked at them all, then turned and moved Reg a hundred yards from the rest. The rest of the bullhands talked it up as though they were humoring a child's whims, but they followed—all but Slobby and Dancer.

Shiner Pete and Packy had looked around, surprised that the bulls had moved; but they returned to their work. Packy moved off and hid behind a tall standing rock. Pete had the fuse ends behind another rock. He prepared to slam the ends of the fuses between two rocks. Little Will moved a step forward as she saw a huge mass of rock falling upon Pete. But he hadn't even set off the charges. She bit her lip and turned to the singer-turned-harness worker, Canary Mary. "Canary, I... I see a mass of rock landing right where Pete is standing right now!"

The singer put her arm around Little Will's shoulders. "Don't worry, honey. Planting the charges was the dangerous part. Everyone's far enough away from the blast—"

"No!" Little Will shook her head. "You don't understand. I've seen this before when Stub went over the cliff in the Snake Mountain Gap. I can see things that'll happen." She pointed toward Slobby and Dancer. "A horrible thing will happen there. I don't know how I know, but I do." She pointed at Shiner Pete. "Right there will land one of the largest rocks from the blast. I know it. I just know it!" Canary Mary had patted Little Will's arm as Shiner Pete swung the rock down upon the fuse ends.

It was a deafening roar against the ears, clouds of gray and white powder climbing into the sky. Above the powder there were quartz shards, and many huge slabs and boulders. Many of the monsterous hunks of hill fell where the bulls had been standing—where Slobby and Dancer still stood. But Little Will was watching the lone slab that tumbled in the air, reached its peak, then began dropping toward Shiner Pete.

Pete was crouched against a rock, his face and eyes covered. The noise of the blast still reverberated from the hills. Little Will screamed at the falling rock, ran at it, and waved her hands. All saw it. The young woman ran in panic toward the cut; the rock—five tons if an ounce—changed direction and landed twenty feet from Shiner Pete. Slobby and Dancer were crushed.

That night Shiner Pete and Little Will huddled under a blanket before a fire. "They said you moved the rock."

Little Will nodded once. "I think I did. Since then I've tried twice to move small things, but I can't. I don't understand it. The Ssendissians never said anything about moving things with thoughts."

"They wouldn't. They just talk and listen with thoughts. They don't move things." He squeezed her hand. "Maybe everybody's eyes were tricked."

Little Will sighed, closed her eyes, and nodded. "Maybe." She ran the images through her head, then began crying.

Pete put his arm around her shoulders. "You're thinking about Dancer."

"Twenty-one, Pete. We have twenty-one bulls left with us."