Living Proof - Corii Liau

It’s not unusual in Eden for camps of diametrically opposed positions to claim a single example as living proof of their most cherished beliefs. Like an abrupt and strange pulling back of the carpet, I saw this occur every now and then, in that environment of cheerful communities, willful ignorance. I could not pinpoint when these little outbursts between neighbors would occur, but when they did, I would eavesdrop hungrily, like a raven close to fresh highway kill.

It was the night that the elephants came through Eden. It wasn’t a circus, and it wasn’t a show. It was just curious, really. A band of thin brown men dressed in loose-fitting crinkly cotton tunics, and shoes with curled leather toes, and dreaded red, blonde, and brown hair piled high like snakes on top of their heads, led a troop of elephants, four in all, down the main street of town. They appeared at the north end of the street, silent. The men leading the elephants made no sound really, only an occasional “hup” or “tsch!” or some other brief commands or encouragement. The elephants themselves made no sound except for the formidable puff and hush of each enormous foot planting squarely in the dust of the street. I could have sworn that it was this ineffable sound that drew me out of the bar in the first place. The night was warm, and so several of the patrons from the bar were out there before me, and everyone pointing with awe, some of the children who had accompanied their parents on a night out were shouting and jumping with delight.

The smell of the elephants enveloped us as they trooped by, strong and wild and more rank than any stable that needed to be mucked out.

“Living proof of God’s will,” Mr. Palo said to his small daughter, whose eyes were wide as dollar coins, her hand gripping her father’s sweaty and red with excitement.

Ava Surra, who stood between me and Mr. Palo, snorted.

Mr. Palo looked at Miss Surra quizzically. “Something wrong?”

Ava screwed up her mouth, and tilted her head at the passing elephants. There were four elephants, ranging from the largest to the smallest, each one in back holding on to the one in front with entwined thick-trunk-to-thin-tail. “I would say that nature had more of a hand in that long nose and huge ears than God.”

It was Mr. Palo’s turn to snort. “Oh right, Ms. Smarty Pants here believes that we’re all descended from monkeys.” His eyes started to bulge a little from the challenge.

Ms. Surra straightened and drank her drink. “And why not? Even by your own fairytales, God should love all creatures great and small, so even if he had created the elephant out of whole cloth, or monkeys to be the start of us all, why wouldn’t that be a story you could tell your daughter?”

I raised my eyebrows and drained the last of my drink. I tapped Ms. Surra on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, I know we haven’t met,” I said. She whirled and looked at me hotly.

“No, we haven’t.”

“Would you like a drink?” I asked, gesturing towards the bar.

I saw Mr. Palo over her shoulder, shaking his head and lifting his daughter up on his shoulders. The elephants and their handlers made their steady way down and disappeared into the gloom past the streetlights, southwards into the night.