Elk Talk

✦

✦

✦

B enny had been living with Ed and Jean for over a year.

His mother was Jean’s sister, and she was still in a hospital

bed in Cheyenne, comatose, because she had driven her

car into a snowplow on her way home from an art class one

night. Jean had offered to take in her eight-year-old nephew as

soon as she’d been told about the accident, and the whole family

had agreed that such an arrangement would be best for Benny.

When people asked Jean where Benny’s father was, she said

simply, “He’s not available at this time, ” as if he were a business-

man unable to come to the telephone.

Ed and Jean had a daughter of their own, married and living

in Ohio, and when they moved from town into the mountain

cabin, they were not expecting to share it someday with a child.

Yet Benny was there now, and every morning Jean drove five

miles down the dirt road so that he could meet his school bus.

Every afternoon she met him at the same place. It was more

difficult in the winter, on account of the heavy, inevitable snow,

but they’d managed.

Ed worked for the Fish and Game Department, and had

a large green truck with the state emblem on its doors. He

was semiretired, and in recent months had developed some-

✦

p i l g r i m s

thing of a belly, round and firm as a pregnant teenager’s. When

he was home, he cut and stacked firewood or worked on the

cabin. They were always insulating it more, always discover-

ing and fixing flaws to make themselves more resistant to win-

ter. Jean canned and froze vegetables from her garden in July

and August, and when she went for walks she picked up small

dry sticks along the path to bring home and save for kin-

dling. The cabin was only a small place, with a short back porch

facing the woods. Jean had converted the living room into a

bedroom for Benny, and he slept on the couch under a down

quilt.

It was the end of October, and Ed was gone for the weekend,

giving a speech about poaching at some convention in Jackson.

Jean was driving to pick up Benny at the bus stop when a

station wagon approached her, speeding, pulling behind it a

large camper. She swerved quickly, barely avoiding an accident,

wincing as the side of her car scraped the underbrush to her

right. Safely past, she glanced in the rearview mirror and tried

to make out the receding tail end of the camper through the

thick dust just lifted.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d met a car on that

road. Ed and Jean had the only house for miles, and traffic

consisted of the occasional truckload of hunters, or perhaps a

teenage couple looking for a secluded parking spot. There was

no reason for a station wagon with a camper to come out here.

She imagined that it was a vacationing family, lost on their way

to Yellowstone, miserable children in the back and a father

driving, refusing to stop for directions. At such a speed, he

would kill them all.

Benny’s bus was early that day, and when Jean reached the

highway, he was waiting for her, holding his lunch box close

to his chest, standing scarcely taller than the mailbox beside

him.

20 ✦

Elk Talk

“I changed my mind, ” he said when he got into the car. “I

want to be a karate man.”

“But we already have your costume ready, Benny.”

“It’s not a real costume. It’s just my Little League uniform,

that’s all.”

“Ben. You wanted to wear it. That’s what you told me you

wanted to be for Halloween.”

“I want to be a karate man, ” he repeated. He didn’t whine,

but spoke slowly and loudly, the way he always did, as if every-

one in his life was hard of hearing or a beginning student of the

English language.

“Well, I’m sorry. You can’t be one, ” Jean said. “It’s too late to

make a new costume now.”

Benny looked out the window and crossed his arms. After a

few minutes, he said, “I sure wish I could be a karate man.”

“Help me out, Ben? Don’t make things so hard, okay? ”

He didn’t answer, but sighed resignedly, like somebody’s

mother. Jean drove in silence, more slowly than usual, keeping

the speeding station wagon in mind at each curve. About half-

way home, she asked, “Did you have art class today, Benny? ”

He shook his head.

“No? Did you have gym class, then? ”

“No, ” Benny said. “We had music.”

“Music? Did you learn any new songs? ”

He shrugged.

“Why don’t you sing me what you learned today? ”

Benny said nothing, and Jean repeated, “Why don’t you

sing me what you learned today? I’d like to hear your new

songs.”

After another silence, Benny pulled a blue-gray wad of chew-

ing gum from his mouth and stuck it on the handle of his

lunch box. Then, gazing solidly at the windshield, he recited in

a low monotone, “There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was

✦

p i l g r i m s

his name oh. b-i-n-g-o, ” he spelled, carefully enunciating each

letter. “b-i-n-g-o. b-i-n-g-o. And Bingo, ” Benny said, “was

his name. Oh.”

He peeled the gum off his lunch box and returned it to its

place in his mouth.

That night after dinner, Jean helped Benny into his Little

League uniform and cut strips of reflecting tape to lay over the

numbers on the back of his jersey.

“Do you have to do that? ” he asked.

“I want cars to see you as well as you see them, ” she said.

He accepted this without further protest. Having won an

earlier dispute about the wearing of a hat and gloves, he let her

have this one. Jean found the old Polaroid camera in her desk

drawer and brought it into the living room.

“We’ll take a picture to show Uncle Ed when he gets home, ”

she said. “You look so nice. He’ll want to see.”

She found him in the tiny square of the viewfinder, and

backed up until he was completely framed.

“Smile, ” she said. “Here we go.”

He did not blink, not even during the flash, but stood in

place and smiled at the last moment, as a favor to her. They both

watched as the camera slowly pushed out the cloudy, damp

photograph.

“Hold this by the edges carefully, ” Jean instructed, handing it

to Benny, “and see what turns up.”

There was a knock at the door. Jean stood up quickly, startled.

She glanced at Benny, who was holding the developing picture

between his thumb and forefinger, looking at her in anxious

surprise.

“Stay there, ” she told him, and walked to the window at the

back of the cabin. It was dark already, and she had to press her

face close against the cold glass to see the vague figures on the

22 ✦

Elk Talk

porch. There was another knock, and a high voice, muffled

through the thick oak, called, “Trick or treat! ”

Jean opened the door and saw two adults and a small child,

all in brown snowsuits, all with long branches masking-taped

to their stocking caps. The woman stepped forward and ex-

tended her hand. “We’re the Donaldsons, ” she said. “We’re your

neighbors.”

“We’re elks, ” the child added, touching the two branches on

her hat. “These are our horns.”

“They’re antlers, sweetie, ” her mother corrected. “Bison and

goats have horns. Elk have antlers.”

Jean looked from the girl to her mother to the man beside

them, who was calmly taking off his gloves.

“You’re losing heat with the door open, ” he said, in a voice

that was not deep so much as low and even. “You should prob-

ably let us in.”

“Oh, ” Jean said, and she stepped aside so that they could pass.

Then she shut the door behind her and leaned her back flat

against it, touching it with her palms.

“Well, what’s this? ” the woman asked, kneeling next to

Benny and picking up the photograph he’d dropped. “Is this a

picture of you? ”

“I’m sorry, ” Jean interrupted. “I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t

know who you are.” The family in her cabin turned as one and

looked at her.

“We’re the Donaldsons, ” the woman said, frowning slightly,

as if Jean’s statement confused her. “We’re your neighbors.”

“We haven’t got any neighbors, ” Jean said. “Not all the way

out here.”

“We just moved here today.” The man spoke again in the odd

low voice. The little girl was standing beside him, holding on to

his leg, and he rested his hand on the top of her head, between

her antlers.

✦

p i l g r i m s

“Moved where? ” Jean asked.

“We bought an acre of land a half-mile from here.” His tone

suggested that he found her rude for pursuing the issue. “We’re

staying in our camper.”

“Your camper? ” Jean repeated. “I saw you today, didn’t I? On

the road? ”

“Yes, ” the man said.

“You were driving awfully fast, don’t you think? ”

“Yes, ” he said.

“We were in a hurry to get here before dark, ” his wife added.

“You really have to be careful on these roads, ” Jean said. “It

was very dangerous of you to drive that way.”

There was no response; the three of them looked at Jean with

politely empty faces, as if waiting for her to say something else,

something perhaps more appropriate.

“I wasn’t aware that there was land for sale at the end of

our road, ” Jean said, and she was met with the same uniform

expressions. Even Benny was watching her with a look of mild

curiosity.

“We were not expecting to have neighbors, ” Jean continued.

“Not all the way out here.” Again, silence. There was nothing

overtly unfriendly in their collective gaze, but it felt foreign to

her, and she found it unsettling.

The little girl, who could not have been four years old, turned

to Benny and asked, “What are you, anyway? ”

He looked up quickly at Jean for an answer, and then back at

the girl. Her mother smiled. “I think she wants to know what

your costume is, dear.”

“I’m a baseball player, ” Benny said.

“We’re elks, ” the girl told him. “These are our antlers.” She

pronounced it antlows.

The woman turned her smile on Jean. Her teeth were wide

and even, set close to her gums, like the teeth of those old

24 ✦

Elk Talk

Eskimo women who spend their lives chewing on leather. “My

name is Audrey, ” she said. “This is my husband, Lance, but

he’d prefer it if you called him L.D. He doesn’t like his real

name. He thinks it sounds like a medical procedure. This is our

daughter, Sophia. We threw these costumes together at the last

minute, but she’s very excited about them. She insisted that we

trick-or-treat when she saw your cabin this afternoon.”

“We were just on our way out, ” Jean said. “I’m taking Benny

to his school’s Halloween party.”

“Isn’t that fun? ” Audrey beamed. “Are the little ones allowed

to go? ”

“No, ” Jean answered quickly, although she had no idea what

the rules actually were.

“This will be our only stop tonight, then, ” Audrey said.

“Though we may go for a walk later, to talk to the elk.”

“Have you heard them? ” L.D. asked.

“Excuse me? ” Jean frowned.

“I say, have you heard the elk? ”

“We hear elk all the time. I guess I’m not really sure what

you’re talking about.”

L.D. and Audrey exchanged a brief look of shared triumph.

“L.D. is a musician, ” Audrey explained. “We vacationed here

in Wyoming last summer, and he was very taken with the elk

bugle. It’s a wonderful noise, really.”

Jean knew it well. Almost every night in the autumn, elk

bugled across the woods to each other. It was impossible to tell

how close they came to the cabin, but the sound was forceful

and compelling: a long, almost primate screech, followed by a

series of deep grunts. It was something she had known since

childhood. She’d seen horses stop in the middle of a trail at the

sound and stand there, heads pulled up high, breathing sharply

out of their nostrils, ears tensed, listening, preparing to run.

“L.D. made several recordings. He found it very inspiring

✦

p i l g r i m s

for his own music, ” Audrey went on. “Have you ever lived in

a city? ”

“No, ” Jean said.

“Well.” Audrey rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you, there’s a

limit, an absolute limit, to what you can endure there. Just three

months ago, I was getting ready to go out on some errands and

I suddenly realized I’d taken all my credit cards out of my purse

so that, if I was mugged, I wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of

replacing them. Without even thinking, I’d done this, as if it

was perfectly normal to live that way. And that night I told

L.D., ‘We’re leaving; we have got to get out of this crazy city.’

Of course, he was more than happy to comply.”

Jean looked over to Benny, who had been standing quietly

through all this, listening. She’d forgotten for a moment that he

was there, and she felt the same quick guilt that came when,

during dinner, she’d glance around the table and be surprised to

see Benny eating with them, sitting between Ed and herself.

“Well.” Jean pushed her glasses back farther on her nose.

“We’ve got to get going.”

“Listen, ” L.D. said, and he took a flat black disk from his

pocket. He slid it into his mouth and made the full screech of an

elk bugle ring through the small, heavily insulated living room

of Jean’s cabin. She saw Benny jump at the suddenness of the

sound. L.D. took the disk out of his mouth and smiled.

“Oh, honey.” Audrey winced. “That’s so loud inside. You

really shouldn’t bugle in people’s homes. Don’t be scared, ” she

told Benny. “It’s just his elk talker.”

Jean had heard one before. A friend of Ed’s was a hunting

guide who used one to call in bull elk. He’d demonstrated it for

Jean once, and she’d laughed at how fake it had sounded. “You

might as well stand in a clearing and call, ‘Here elky, elky, elky, ’”

she’d said. L.D. had the same device, but his sound was full and

alarmingly real.

Benny grinned at Jean. “Did you hear that? ”

26 ✦

Elk Talk

She nodded. “You do know that you can only hunt elk in

season and with a license, don’t you? ” she asked L.D.

“We don’t want to hunt them, ” Audrey said. “We just want to

talk to them.”

“Did it sound real to you? ” L.D. asked. “I’ve been practicing.”

“How’d you do that? ” Benny asked. L.D. handed him the

disk.

“They call this a diaphragm, ” L.D. explained, as Benny

turned the object over in his hand and held it up to the light.

“It’s made of rubber, and you put it in the back of your mouth

and blow air through it. It’s not easy, and you have to be careful

or you’ll swallow it. There’s different sizes for different sounds.

This one is a mature bull, a mating call.”

“Can I try it? ”

“No, ” Jean said. “Don’t put that in your mouth. It doesn’t

belong to you.”

Benny reluctantly handed it back to L.D., who said, “Get

your dad to buy you one of your own.”

Jean cringed at the reference, but Benny only nodded, con-

sidering the suggestion. “Okay, ” he said. “Sure.”

Jean took her coat off the hook by the door and put it on.

“Come on, Ben, ” she said. “Time to go.”

L.D. lifted Sophia from where she’d been sitting on his boots.

One of her antlers had slipped from its masking-tape base and

hung like a braid down her back.

“Doesn’t she look precious? ” Audrey asked.

Jean opened the door and held it so the Donaldsons could file

out onto the porch. Benny followed behind them, small, antler-

less. She turned the lights off and left, closing the door. She

pulled a skeleton key from the bottom of her pocketbook, and,

for the first time since she’d lived in the cabin, locked up.

It was a clear night, with a nearly full moon. There had been

no snow yet, none that had lasted, but Jean suspected from the

sharp smell of the cold air that there might be some by the next

✦

p i l g r i m s

day. She remembered reading that bears wait until the first

drifting snowfall to hibernate so that the tracks to their winter

dens will be covered immediately. It was getting late in the year,

she thought, and the local bears must be getting tired of waiting

around for proper snow.

The Donaldsons were standing on the porch, looking past

Jean’s small back yard to the edge of the woods.

“Last summer I got the elk to answer, ” L.D. said. “That was a

wild experience, communicating like that.”

He slid the diaphragm into his mouth and called again,

louder than he had in the cabin, a more powerful sound, Jean

thought, than a human had a right to make around there, and

disturbingly realistic.

Then there was silence, and they all stared across the yard, as

if expecting the trees themselves to answer. Jean had forgotten

her gloves. Her hands were cold, and she was anxious to get to

the car, and warmth. She reached forward and touched Benny’s

shoulder.

“Let’s go, honey, ” she said, but he laid his hand over hers in a

surprisingly adult manner and whispered, “Wait, ” and then,

“Listen.”

She heard nothing. L.D. had set Sophia down, and now the

whole family stood on the edge of the porch, their antlers

outlined against the night sky. They’d best not make their cos-

tumes too authentic, Jean thought, or they’d get themselves

shot. She pushed her fists down into the pockets of her coat and

shivered.

After some time, L.D. repeated the call, a long high squeal,

followed by several grunts. They all listened in the ensuing

quiet, leaning forward slightly, heads tilted, as if they were

afraid the answer might be faint enough to miss, although it was

unnecessary to listen so carefully: if a bull elk was going to bugle

back, they wouldn’t have to strain to hear it.

28 ✦

Elk Talk

L.D. sounded the call again, and immediately once more, and

as the last grunt vanished into silence, Jean heard it. She heard

it first. By the time the others tensed in realization, she’d already been thinking that it must be a bear making all that noise in the

underbrush. And then she’d guessed what it was, just before the

elk broke out of the woods. The ground was hard with cold, and

his hooves beat in a light fast rhythm as he circled. He stopped

in the black frozen soil of Jean’s garden.

“Oh my God, ” she said under her breath, and quickly

counted the points of his antlers, which spread in dark silhou-

ette, blending with the branches and forms of the trees behind

him. He had approached them fast and without warning, mak-

ing himself fully visible to confront or to be confronted. Clearly,

this elk did not want to talk to the Donaldsons. He wanted to

know who was in his territory, calling for a mate. And now he

stood, exposed, looking right at them. But the cabin was dark

and shaded by the porch roof, so there was no way the elk could

have picked out their figures. There was no breeze to carry a

scent either, so he stared blindly at the precise spot from where

the challenge had come.

Jean saw Sophia reach her hand up slowly and touch her

father’s leg, but, aside from that, there was no movement. Af-

ter a moment, the elk stepped slowly to his left. He stopped,

paused, returned to where he’d been standing, and stepped a few

feet to his right. He showed both his sides in the process,

keeping himself in full view, his gaze fixed on the porch. He did

not toss his head as a horse might, nor did he strike a more

aggressive, intimidating stance. Again he paced, to one side and

to the other, slowly, deliberately.

Jean saw L.D. raise his hand to his mouth and adjust the dia-

phragm. She leaned forward and placed her hand on his fore-

arm. He turned to look at her, and she mouthed the word no.

He frowned and turned away. She saw him begin to inhale,

✦

p i l g r i m s

and she tightened her hold on his arm and said, so softly that

someone standing even three feet away would not have heard

her, “Don’t.”

L.D. slipped the diaphragm out of his mouth. Jean relaxed.

Out of the woods came two females, one fully mature, the other

a lean yearling. They looked first at the male, then at the cabin,

and slowly, almost self-consciously, walked the length of the

yard to the garden. All three elk stood together for some time in

what Jean felt was the most penetrating silence she had ever

experienced. Under their sightless gaze, she felt as if she were

involved in a sé ance that had been held in jest but had acciden-

tally summoned a real ghost.

Eventually, the elk began their retreat. The older two ap-

peared decisive, but the yearling twice looked back at the cabin,

two long looks that Jean had no way of reading. The elk stepped

into the woods and were immediately out of view. On the

porch, no one moved until Sophia said very quietly, “Daddy.”

Audrey turned and smiled at Jean, shaking her head slowly.

“Have you ever, ” she asked, “in your entire life felt so incredibly

privileged? ”

Jean did not answer but took Benny by the hand and led him

briskly to the car. She didn’t look at the Donaldsons standing at

the threshold of her home, not even as she waited for some time

in the driveway for the engine to warm up.

“Did you see that? ” Benny asked, his voice tight with wonder,

but Jean did not answer him either.

She drove with only the low beams of her headlights on,

recklessly, veering to the other side of the road, heedless of the

possibility of oncoming traffic or other obstacles. She drove the

road faster than she ever had before, venting a fury that took her

four dangerous miles to isolate, and she did not begin to slow

down until she realized that not only had she been manipulated,

but she had been a participant in a manipulation. They had no

right, she thought over and over, they had no right to do such a

30 ✦

Elk Talk

thing simply because they could. She remembered, then, that

Benny was still with her, beside her, that he was entirely her

responsibility, and she eased her car into control again.

She wished, briefly, that her husband was with her, a thought

she immediately dismissed on the grounds that there were al-

ready far too many people around.

✦