THE TURQUOISE PEN

POCKETS OF DEATH AND ELEPHANTS

Noël R. King

"It’s no good," the doctor sighed, sitting back on his stool. "That’s a good-sized pocket of death we found in there."

"But. . . . but. . . . DEATH?" spluttered the patient. "What kind of death? Cancer? AIDS? Some weird tropical disease?"

"Nope," said the doctor. "Death, just death."

"That impossible! You must be joking! What kind of doctor are you, anyway? People have to die of something. What is it, Doctor? WHAT IS IT??"

"Well, that’s just it," said the doctor. "Everybody thinks you have to die of something. In your case, it’s nothing. You are dying of nothing."

"Can’t we do something? I mean, you can’t just send me home like this! Help me, Doctor! Help me!"

"Well, sure, we can do all kinds of things, but nothing will help you, I am afraid. Death is death."

Good heavens, thought the elephant as it watched the little man walking toward it with a pitchforkful of hay in his little hands. What am I doing here? Is this really a life? Am I even alive?

Depressed, the elephant munched, shivered away some flies, munched some more. At least this hay is real, it thought. It stinks.

"That’s right," the little man was saying now to another little man who was cleaning out the stall behind the elephant. "I’ve got a pocket of death in me, he says. Told me so this morning."

"I coulda told you that for free," said the other little man.

Oh, oh, oh, the elephant moaned to itself. How did I get here? Why can’t I just go home? Where is my mama?

Home, home on the range, where the deer and the buffalo roam . . . where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.

"Saw another pocketa death in the office today," the first man said to the second. "Kinda shook me up, you wanna know the truth."

"No sense crying over it," said his buddy. "Death is death, you know. You’re a doctor!"

"Yeah," said the first guy. "That’s what I told him. I sat back on my stool and said, ‘Death is death, you know,’ and then he wanted to know what the heck kind of doctor I was. I’m just a death doctor, I shoulda told him."

"Oh my," said the first guy. "Is that an elephant I see over there?"

"Well I’ll be—," said the second guy. "Where are we?"

"I think we are in a very strange dream," said the first guy, "and I don’t like it one bit."

The elephant looked at them and saw they had no hay. I must be dreaming, it said to itself. Where’s my big old fence? Where’s that smelly old hay? Where’s my mama when I need her?

Oh, the places you’ll go! she told me.

But where, mama? Where will I go?

Wherever you go, that’s where you’ll be, she said.

I’m here, mama, I’m here!

And so you are, my child. And so you are.

Welcome home.

—As circumstances warrant, through her Turquoise Pen column Noël R. King, South Riding, Virginia, reports on strange and wonderful things, including pockets of death and elephants.