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“No.” Tean turned the bottle of cider. “I call him John-Henry. Should I be calling him John?”
“Everyone calls him John-Henry. Except Colt, I suppose. For a long time, he went by Somers, but...but that doesn’t seem to fit him anymore.”
Tean nodded.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Emery sat up like he might push back his chair. “That was inappropriate.”
With a shrug, Tean said, “I don’t even know if Jem and I are fighting. I mean, we aren’t. But yesterday was so weird. And last night. I don’t know. I thought our lives were…different, I guess. I thought things had changed. And the past few days have brought up things I thought we were done with.”
Emery grunted.
“John-Henry doesn’t seem like he’d be disappointed in you.”
“He is. He’s too kind to say it, but he is. My…temper, for lack of a better word. My inability to go along. I know I should have kept my mouth shut. I know that—that taking my frustration out on you and Shaw and the others, I know it was wrong. I knew it at the time.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “Although I still believe you were jackasses for going to see that woman on your own.”
Tean blinked. Then a fresh smile crept out. “An elephant named Casey killed someone—an animal keeper—in 1989.”
Emery’s silence had a stunned quality to it before he struggled his way to a “What?”
“By doing a headstand on him. It wasn’t the only time. In 1988, an elephant named—you won’t believe this—Tinkerbelle did the same thing.”
“Christ Almighty.”
“And in 1990, an elephant named JoJo did it.”
“What the fuck was happening from 1988 to 1990? Was this because of Reagan?”
“But in India, elephants that are required to work are given breaks, food and water, even a pension. They get to retire. Do you know how many people in the world don’t have a pension? How many people in India don’t have one, much less sufficient food and clean water?”
Those straw-colored eyes narrowed. “India is hardly the only country facing poverty and inequity. It’s certainly not the only country that has privileged treatment of certain animals. Take the United States, for example, and the quality of life of pets—”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Tean blew out a breath. “Never mind.”
“What did you mean, then?”
Tean hesitated, but the question was startlingly intent, and he felt the answer being drawn out of him. “I don’t know. I guess one way of thinking about it is that who you are, the kind of life you lead, how things turn out, all of it depends on where you were born, how you were raised, that kind of thing. That’s something I’ve had to recognize with Jem. And with myself, if I’m being totally honest.”
“And?”
“And, I don’t know, all we can do is try to recognize that, and look for how it affects us, and try to rise above it when it isn’t right.”
“And?”
“And I guess, thinking a little more broadly, that injustice is everywhere, and all we can try to do is make it right in our little corner of the world. And hope things get better. Hope we get better.”
Emery considered this. “And the world is a fucked-up place.”
“And that.”
“And don’t stand under an elephant when she’s doing a headstand.”
“That might be a tad literal.”
“Literal or not, it’s a valuable lesson.” Emery was quiet for a moment. “I suppose I’m the Tinkerbelle in that story.”
“Not necessarily. I’m kind of a Tinkerbelle too. I mean, Jem is just so…wonderful. I want to say he’s perfect, but that’s not fair to him. We’re all kind of Tinkerbelles, I guess. Doing our own thing. Thinking what we’re doing is right, maybe even good. But we’re doing it because we’ve been trained to do it. Or because we think we’ll be rewarded. And no matter how hard we try, we hurt other people, even if we didn’t mean to. I’ve done that to Jem. I guess, maybe, I’m still doing it.”
Emery nodded. He sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes again. The TV had gone back to two talking heads who were shouting over each other.
