Water for Elephants Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand appears on my shoulder. It belongs to the superintendent.
    The coroner exposes first my father and then my mother.
    They don’t look like my parents, and yet they can’t be anyone else.
    Death is all over them—in the mottled patterns of their battered torsos, the eggplant purple on bloodless white; in the sinking, hollowed eye sockets. My mother—so pretty and meticulous in life—wears a stiff grimace in death. Her hair is matted and bloodied, pressed into the hollow of her crushed skull. Her mouth is open, her chin receding as though she were snoring.
    I turn as vomit explodes from my mouth. Someone is there with a kidney dish, but I overshoot and hear liquid splash across the floor, splattering against the wall. Hear it, because my eyes are squeezed shut. I vomit again and again, until there’s nothing left. Despite this, I remain doubled over and heaving until I wonder if it’s possible to turn inside out.
    T HEY TAKE ME SOMEWHERE and plant me in a chair. A kindly nurse in a starched white uniform brings coffee, which sits on the table next to me until it grows cold.
    Later, the chaplain comes and sits beside me. He asks if there is anyone he can call. I mumble that all my relatives are in Poland. He asks about neighbors and members of our church, but for the life of me I can’t come up with a single name. Not one. I’m not sure I could come up with my own if asked.
    When he leaves I slip out. It’s a little over two miles to our house, and I arrive just as the last sliver of sun slips beneath the horizon.
    The driveway is empty. Of course.
    I stop in the backyard, holding my valise and staring at the long flat building behind the house. There’s a new sign above the entrance, the lettering glossy and black:
    E. JANKOWSKI AND SON
    Doctors of Veterinary Medicine
    After a while I turn to the house, climb the stoop, and push open the back door.
    My father’s prized possession—a Philco radio—sits on the kitchen counter. My mother’s blue sweater hangs on the back of a chair. There areironed linens on the kitchen table, a vase of wilting violets. An overturned mixing bowl, two plates, and a handful of cutlery set to dry on a checked dish towel spread out by the sink.
    This morning, I had parents. This morning, they ate breakfast.
    I fall to my knees, right there on the back stoop, howling into splayed hands.
    T HE LADIES OF THE CHURCH auxiliary, alerted to my return by the superintendent’s wife, swoop down on me within the hour.
    I’m still on the stoop, my face pressed into my knees. I hear gravel crunching under tires, car doors slamming, and next thing I know I’m surrounded by doughy flesh, flowered prints, and gloved hands. I am pressed against soft bosoms, poked by veiled hats, and engulfed by jasmine, lavender, and rose water. Death is a formal affair, and they’re dressed in their Sunday best. They pat and they fuss, and above all, they cluck.
    Such a shame, such a shame. And such good people, too. It’s hard to make sense of such a tragedy, surely it is, but the good Lord works in mysterious ways. They will take care of everything. The guest room at Jim and Mabel Neurater’s house is already made up. I am not to worry about a thing.
    They take my valise and herd me toward the running car. A grim-faced Jim Neurater is behind the wheel, gripping it with both hands.
    T WO DAYS AFTER I BURY my parents, I am summoned to the offices of Edmund Hyde, Esquire, to hear the details of their estate. I sit in a hard leather chair across from the man himself as it gradually sinks in that there is nothing to discuss. At first I think he’s mocking me. Apparently my father has been taking payment in the form of beans and eggs for nearly two years.
    “Beans and eggs?” My voice cracks in disbelief. “Beans and eggs?”
    “And chickens. And other goods.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “It’s what people have, son. The community’s been hit right hard, andyour father was trying to help out.