This isn't a perfect book but it is a good one and it is a book that was entertaining throughout, in my opinion. Yes, there are a couple of characters that come straight from central casting: the alcoholic gumshoe haunted by the case that got away, and the plucky young girl who is just plucky plucky plucky until you kind of want to wring her neck. However, the elephant researcher and her floridly bipolar husband are more than enough to keep the pages turning, especially when a whole batch of fascinating elephants comes with.
There's a murder mystery, a missing persons case, and a ghost story all rolled into this thing, and I never once didn't enjoy what i was reading. Rather, I found myself not wanting it to end. As pure entertainment, or as a glimpse into the majesty of elephants, I would give this novel 5 stars, but I'm giving 4 because of the two cardboard characters.
"This is what it sounds like, when doves cry" --Prince Rogers Nelson The Moon, secretive and flighty, turned her dark side and within that cradle I was born-- a dove of dust fed glue-milk and told to sing.
The Sky was not crazy but loved Crazy's eyes. His silent daughter collected sand timers and seahorses because all girls love horses; all girls hear ship's bells and can feel those same ships foundering.
The Moon kept two faces in a sea shell-- one for the Sky and the other to use as a trowel to create The Sea of Suicide and The Sea of Insanity.
Every mother takes her child to the beach; every keeper takes her doves to the temple with a good sharp blade wrapped in her skirts for utility, for God, and for the fucking hell of it.
The Moon is dead now, dead before, dead always with only death to hand down, but Mama, I breathe and I sing just to spite you The Sky we both loved is gone and my heart is full of sea water and stones.
I put my song where the Moon was, as beautiful as I can make it, that it might shame you, and bring you back just to die again from the music of my mourning, the lightness of my empty bones. _____
I have eaten stars but they brought their own gravity with them-- their own geography with them-- and now they unbalance me, so that I lurch and roll as I fall.
On the surface of the sun, everyone is blind and everything is done gingerly-- every effort undertaken temporarily-- taking a million generations just to create a gesture that is gone in an instant.
Uncross your fingers and kiss me. Meteors remember, but are too thick and stupid to talk-- language eludes them and they are as celibate as nuns. I would forsake all liturgy if you would only be God's recollection and bless me.
I have eaten stars but their light is checkerboarded inside my skin-- their light diffuses until I am dizzy and that is when I lie and tell you I was home all day,
We took vows, two fools stepping off the cliff, full of the soulful certainty that marks conquerors and mental patients.
Rome blessed us, I suppose, just as it mocked Hannibal, driving him to fits of genius and savagery.
When you haunt my dreams, I think about the elephants. I know that um-thousand poor nobodies met their death in the mountains just to satisfy one man's idee fixe.
I know that they had dreams, wives and children left behind, empty bellies, infected feet, all the traveling gear of sufferers since time began, but I lose sleep and peace only over the beasts they took with them.
We made a point, you and I, not to mash the wedding cake in each other's faces as so many do. We were as sweet as swans on a summer lake.
Elephants have eyelashes fit for shy nuns or reclining models. They know low languages kept for themselves and their familiars, and we know only dropped chances, blood, and stupidity.
Hannibal impaled and beheaded stragglers, complainers. His own men's faces gaped from poles as warning to the rest to press on. Was he any kinder to the elephants?
We were undone by restless ghosts, of madness, and of remove. Elephants truly do remember every beating, and every mercy, every bone left behind, and every calf that lay still.
I loved you, and I love our son fiercely. If I can't forgive you, it's because of the elephants and the insanity of snow and thin air. Hannibal is dead. Rome still stands. Huge bones litter the Alps, with no heart mighty enough to find them, touch them, and mourn. _______
Down in the mines, Mordecai Centennial Brown finds Cerberus guarding the gates of Hell. He's alone. Spirits call to him. "Ah well," he says. "Ah well..."
Taking a triple headed dog by the jaw is a recipe for loss. Any chippie at the lunch counter could have told Mordecai that, but he never took advice about a dog, from a cat.
"Look at this blood, all this damage," said the doctor, shaking his head. "Lucky you ain't going to lose the whole hand, young man. Lucky you ain't dead."
Mordecai Centennial "Miner" Brown went on, with his acquired deformity, to fashion a curveball that broke so sharply, so unhittably, that it made him a star in the early days of the century.
Imagine the unlikelihood that he would wrestle Cerberus again, get loose and come back, curving himself around your dreams from underneath your bed.
He's in love with you, girl, or what's left of him is; you with that Cubs cap hung on the bed post and your long smooth restless legs. Hear him, how he cajoles. How he begs.
You don't look so good, showing up for work an hour late, circles like coal dust under your eyes, too much for concealer, and the witches in the break room whisper, "What's the deal with her?"
On October 8th, 1908, Miner Brown pitched his greatest game. You weren't born yet, and he wasn't dead. Now, all night, you see it, in dreams, in the rain, in your head.
He had that devastating pitch, and great command. Being dead isn't his fault, being alone isn't yours-- Go on, fluttering bird, stop fighting. Let him love you. Swallow hard. Hold his hand. _______
for both Karin's "remains" challenge, and my BFF Joy Jones' "poetry to the third power" challenge, both at Real Toads.
