Daniel Rusk had found a gap wide enough for his camera lens, but his finger stayed off the record button. Beyond the service gate, an elephant calf was trying to reach a clump of grass. Each time she lowered her head, she stopped short and brought it up again.
He adjusted the focus. A tire encircled her body just behind the front legs.
For a few seconds he tried to make sense of its position. Perhaps she was standing beside it. Perhaps the angle through the gate made the rubber look closer than it was. Then she turned, and the tire turned with her, pressed into a narrow, swollen band around her chest and belly.
“Oh, honey,” he said.
The calf looked toward him. Her ears moved once, but she made no attempt to approach. Above the tire, the contours of her bones were plainly visible.
Daniel lowered the camera and put a hand on the gate. Heat came through the metal into his palm. It was late July in western Arkansas, and even the insects seemed to have retreated from the open ground.
He had spent twenty-two years documenting animals in trouble. The rescue group in Fort Smith had sent him to Oriven wildlife park because complaints kept arriving and useful photographs did not. The public entrance had been closed since spring. Repeated inspection problems, followed by unpaid accounts, had finally stopped the cars from turning in.
From the road, the place still looked almost ready for customers. A painted zebra leaned cheerfully across the ticket booth. There were arrows pointing toward pony rides and the little barn where children once bought handfuls of feed. People heading to the lake had stopped here for years, especially to see the two adult elephants advertised on roadside boards.
Behind the visitor buildings, the paint had given way to bare wood. A drinking tank lay on its side. Rain had collected in the lid of an abandoned feed bin, and Daniel could smell it from the gate.
He had expected to film dirty water and animals pacing worn paths along their fences. He had not packed anything that could help an elephant.
The calf shifted a foot. Rubber rubbed against her skin, and Daniel saw the damaged tissue along its lower edge. Flies settled there as soon as she stopped moving.
He reached for his phone. The signal disappeared while he searched for the coordinator’s number, then returned when he held the phone above his shoulder.
“Daniel? Did you get in?”
“I’m outside the rear entrance. Listen, there’s a calf here with a tire stuck around her torso. The skin underneath is open. I need a veterinarian, and I need somebody who can get this gate unlocked.”
The coordinator asked him to repeat the location. He gave her the service road outside Bellwyn and described the buildings she would pass.
“Is there an adult elephant with her?” she asked.
“Not that I can see.”
“Keep the fence between you and that calf. We’ll get people moving.”
Daniel looked across the enclosure. Beyond the calf, the ground descended toward a nearly dry drainage channel. A screen of pines hid part of a second holding area. Nothing stirred beneath them.
“She’s having trouble bending down to eat.”
“I understand. But you can’t help her by getting hurt. Stay where you are.”
He almost snapped at her. She was doing exactly what he had asked, and still he wanted to argue with someone.
“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry. Please send them fast.”
The call ended. He checked the chain on the gate, although he could already see the locks. One was dull with age; the other still had a bright edge around its keyhole. Both secured a doubled length of chain.
Gravel shifted behind him.
A girl stood near the ditch with a plastic grain measure held against her stomach. She was about seventeen, in oversized work boots and a shirt damp down the middle. A faded green kerchief was knotted around her wrist.
“You can’t film back here,” she said.
Daniel moved his hand away from the chain. “Are you the person taking care of her?”
The girl glanced at the calf before answering. “Sometimes.”
“Then I’m glad you came. I’ve called for help.”
Her grip tightened on the grain measure. For a moment she looked ready to turn and leave.
“My name’s Daniel.”
“Tessa.”
“Tell me about that tire.”
She rubbed a spot on the plastic with her thumb. The calf had begun nosing at the same grass again, unable to get a useful mouthful.
“Tessa?”
“It happened in October.”
Daniel stared at her. Sweat ran from his hair into one eye, and he wiped it away too hard.
“October? Somebody must have reported—”
“We did.” Her answer came quickly now. “My mother called. I called. Mr. Dobbins called before he left. They kept saying there was a schedule for fixing things. Inspections were pending. We weren’t supposed to go where we didn’t have permission.”
“Curtis Voss owns it,” Tessa said. “He tells Mom she’ll need a judge’s permission before anybody touches his animals.”
Daniel glanced at the bright lock. “Does she still work for him?”
“Work, yes. Get paid, no. The checks stopped in March, and most everybody left. She couldn’t leave those back pens without somebody bringing feed.”
“And you come with her.”
“When I can.”
The calf lifted her head at Tessa’s voice.
“Nell,” the girl said, more softly. “That’s Nell. She was born the week we got out of school last year. They used to sell tickets just for the baby viewing. There were signs calling her their little wonder.”
Daniel unzipped his backpack and took out a bottle of water. He looked at the grain measure in Tessa’s hands.
“Would she take some from that?”
Tessa crouched beside him. He poured while she steadied the container, then she pushed it beneath the bottom rail. She kept her fingers outside the enclosure.
Nell came forward with short, uneven steps. Her trunk passed over the water, came back, and dipped into it. She drew up a little and brought it to her mouth. The movement took longer than Daniel expected.
He reached for a second bottle.
“Has anyone treated that sore?” he asked.
“Mom tried to look once. Nell made a noise, and Ada hit the divider so hard the post bent. Mom didn’t try again.”
Daniel paused with the bottle open. “Ada’s her mother?”
Tessa pointed toward the pines.
From this angle he could see repairs in the dividing fence: mismatched panels, several lengths of cable, a heavy timber bracing a section that no longer stood straight.
“After that last inspection, Nell was down here and the other elephants were supposed to stay in the upper lot,” Tessa said. “Try keeping Ada there with her baby on this side. Back she’d come, however often they moved her. Those pines let her watch Nell without facing people.”
Nell searched the empty container with her trunk. Tessa waited until she moved away before drawing it back for more water.
Then the calf’s head rose.
Daniel heard a faint sound, so low he first mistook it for a truck idling somewhere beyond the trees. Tessa caught his forearm.
“Stay down. Don’t go toward her.”
Nell answered with an unsteady rumble.
The adult elephant appeared beside the pines, stepping out where the shade ended. Dust clung to the creases above her knees. One ear had an old tear along its edge, and her trunk hung motionless as she studied the calf…
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