McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [14]
“You can’t kill an elephant that way,” he announced.
His tone was so authoritative, so dismissive, he wondered where his voice was coming from. He sounded as if he were reciting Leviticus. “A gun, even a stick of dynamite, that will in no way pierce this beast’s hide.”
The men of Olson exchanged glances. There was a problem at hand, but some of them were known to be clever, and it was only a matter of time until someone yelled, “Electricity!”
Nash shook his head. “Edison himself attempted that once and failed. It just made the elephant angry.” His second lie.
This caused murmurs, and Nash knew where this would go, a building kind of frustration and impatience. As soon as one man was telling the rest he could call his cousin in Frazer, who had a cannon from the War Between the States that might still work, Nash stopped them. He found himself saying, more of a circus man than he’d ever been, “We will settle it tonight, gentlemen. We will not leave this town without settling it, publicly, fully, and demonstrably.” He wasn’t sure why he added that last word, but it seemed to hold promise to the men, who, upon being assured that Mary would die somehow, turned, and walked away, holding their pistols or their rifles forlornly.
So the Colonel sat in his wagon, which was parked atop its brass brake shoes in a swampy depression nearest Mary’s freight car. He was unsure of what to do. His elephant had killed someone—apparently done so with vigor, though he hadn’t seen it, and continued to have his doubts. There was a very reasonable demand for vengeance. The idea of having a murderous animal in his charge made him feel ill. But what made him feel worse was the deeper source of his lie to the townspeople: if Mary were killed, he could never pay off his loan.
The finances of a circus were as arcane and toxic as the combinations of Ural Mountain herbs the property men used to jazz up the Sterno squeezings they swilled on long winter evenings. There were loan-outs, buybacks, reverse repurchase agreements for contracts based on projected earnings. In short, Nash only owned Squonk and Mary’s contract because he had guaranteed a bank in Chicago $8000, payable in installments through the end of the summer season. He had paid off $1500 so far. There was no way he could now make up the balance, and for him, financial responsibility was the basis of modern civilization. He had never pitted that belief against his belief in animals’ basic nobility, and when the two forces rubbed together like this, the friction upset him.
At three o’clock he called Joseph Bales into his wagon to see how best to proceed. Bales entered with his head hung low, and when Nash began to speak—he began with an overall statement of how he still believed in the intelligence of the elephant, and was about to discuss whether female elephants perhaps fell under the sway of musth—Bales interrupted him. “Hanging,” he said.
“Pardon?”
It was a conversation Nash would recall, helplessly, without conscious effort, many times for the rest of his life. The specifics were worn away, but the general feeling of dread was quite solid.
“Mary committed a crime,” Bales said. “She should pay. By hanging. It would be poetic.”
Usually Bales spoke in sentences forged from many dependent clauses welded together by sarcasm. Tonight he sounded like a different person. Determined, a man who has made the right choice quickly, begging for no time to reconsider it. He leaned forward and pointed with one articulated, bony finger, out the window. And there, on the hilltop, was the hundred-ton railroad derrick, looming just like a gallows.
Nash shook his head, but said nothing. Bales stood, put his hand on the door handle, and as a way of departing, jammed his hat down upon his head. His back