Fifteen years, still shovlin coal.
Been at the mine, ain’t getting less full.
Mining for breakfast and dinner and lunch,
Traded mint leaves for nothing much.

Osta’s gone cause I got here first
Down where the taters make their birth.
Orsa’s cryin’ cause I took her place
Carvin’ up pillars under the Earth.

Hell, come find me; you’re in for a chase.
I’ve three daughters and ma – they never seen my face.
Slaving in the lowlands south of the sea,
I’m closer to heaven than you’ll ever be.

The coffee-stained eight on 2:58 AM flipped to a nine.  That flip sounded familiar.  For a moment, I swore it was the sound of a footstep.  But whose footstep?  An elephant’s?  A poacher’s?  A ranger’s?  I’d been trying to figure it out all night.
“EAH!  EAH!  EAH!  EAH!  E - ”
After smashing the snooze button and switching the alarm off, I took a few deep breaths and continued making my bed.  The Toltish blanket was still damp from a mixture of humidity and my own sweat.  I fondled the woven snowflake motifs as my trembling hands smoothed out the wool.  With the rifle watching me from under the floorboards, I stepped over it and softened up the pillows.  A mosquito tickled my shoulder.

Fifteen years, still shovlin coal.
Been at the mine, ain’t getting less full.
Mining for breakfast and dinner and lunch,
Traded mint leaves for nothing much.

A pulsing ruby hung in the sky.  Like a mirror, the Jeep’s windshield chopped her up into blades of inflamed light; I squinted.  The last of the Spring storms burned out last night, so not a single cloud – not even a feather – could dim her this morning.  A damn shame.
“Happy n‘versary,” I tilted my hat for her, “you’ve been up two hours.  Now get back to sleep.”
That government-issued safari hat didn’t please me too much, all things honest.  It made me look like one of those pale-belly tourists from on East, and unlike them, I didn’t come here to breathe through an instagram filter.  I came here because the world -
My stomach jumped as I drove over a gully of cracked mud.  From the passenger seat, the rifle rattled angrily.  I rode the breaks and looked away. 
Several more dry streambeds stretched out along the beat-down tire trails.  The rains probably carved them out last night.
“… a Toltish man of seventeen was declared missing at 7:30 PM this Friday,” the lady on the radio, with her plugged-nose announcer voice, caught my attention.
“During a press conference, Mayor Rícthonsen admitted the police spied on this man for months via internet, as the man supposedly supplied the weapons used in the tragic ivory shooting at the mall last week.  Yet when the police sent a message to Toltish authorities, the suspect already abandoned his apartment in Slumat.  The mayor refused to comment on his probable location, saying only that the ivory trade lost a major player.”
Clearing my throat, I turned off the radio.

Osta’s gone cause I got here first
Down where the taters make their birth.
Orsa’s cryin’ cause I took her place
Carvin’ up pillars under the Earth.

Even a half mile off the reserve, I knew the elephants were mourning. 
Their silence gave them away. 
My Jeep bounced up the hillcrest, and I strained for a clear look over the savanna.  Four pairs of sooty, banner-cloth ears hung limp, gathered in a semicircle around a fixed spot in the whispering brush.  Fumbling for my car keys, I wasted three seconds trying to put out the sputtering engine, then grabbed the rifle and slammed the door shut behind me.  After taking two more steps, I felt the keys slip out of my palm.  The elephants still hadn’t moved. 
“Please.”
My fingernails scraped the dirt as I picked my keys back up.  Then I approached the elephants.
In.  Out.  I tried controlling my breathing.  In.  Ooooout.  
About 100 meters of the electric fence lay crumpled inside a muddy streambed.  And one adolescent elephant lay there, her premature ivory tusks fractured like broken chalk.
She was scarcely larger than a St. Bernard.  The skin at her knees and shoulders hung loose on her bones, fading from crusty, yellow calluses to a web of radial wrinkles and scars.  Flies buzzed.    
I looked to the sky and swallowed.  Those gathered wriggled their trunks around her body, trying to lift her up.  Amongst themselves, they released brief grumbles, like car engines, when she didn’t move.  Staring down at the now dry mud, I saw it marked with boot treads and the imprint of an adult elephant, both continuing down the dirt road.  After counting up the elephants, I realized that apart from the baby, one other was missing – the mother.  Holding the rifle an arm’s length away, I shuffled down the tracks.  Several flies danced on the sun-baked barrel, then jumped off because of the heat.  The savanna, in response to a gust of wind, hissed on both sides of me.  My back twitched, suddenly itchy.   
    
Hell, come find me; you’re in for a chase.
I’ve three daughters and ma – they never seen my face.
Slaving in the lowlands south of the sea,
I’m closer to heaven than you’ll ever be.

With my free hand, I wiped the sweat off my pulsing forehead.  A spider web of veins thumped under my shining forearms as I crunched over the grass.  Legions of unseen cicadas roared faster than a heartbeat.  Damn cicadas.  Blinking the moisture out of my eyes, I saw three floating black specks, which morphed into the pale, golden-haired faces of my daughters.  They giggled and hiccupped, and we were standing on an icy mountain peak, all the earth cast in a cool blue shadow below us, while above the winter diamonds shown from heaven.  The only thing missing from the scene was my ma.  Eyes flashing open, I pivoted to see the grass rustling behind me.  After a second, the rustling stopped, and my hand instantly went to scratch my back.  I shut my eyes, and the orange sunspots shifted into muddy boots and bloody knives.  As the path narrowed, the grass, brushing against both my shoulders, murmured even louder until I saw the entire savanna shifting and swirling beneath a wall of air.  The green carpet spiraled into a dozen fluid shapes, at one moment pressed flat, windswept the next.  I covered my ears, praying to hear my own heartbeat as the static wind slapped me and yelled abuse until its lungs caught hoarse.  My hands went for the rifle…
“Where did you take her!”
I fired two warning shots into heaven.
“Where?”