The Memory of an Elephant
(As told to Buck Stonebroke
by Arthur ‘Don’t Call Me Art’ Dekko)
“When I was nine or ten years old my branch of the Dekko family drove to Monterrey over in Mexico so we could visit uncle Dan who was a Baptist missionary out to save souls in a heathen land. My old daddy said he, personally, couldn’t save a soul if he did his best but he wouldn’t mind seeing some of those ruins Old Mexico is so famous for and maybe ride a burro around for a little bit. The time of this reaccountment was around 1957 or ’58 and my Pop owned a ’56 red and white two door hardtop Buick Roadmaster.”
“Before we could get over the border the Dekko clan all had to pay a visit to Dr. Zal and get stabbed with serums of inoculations that might ward off any kind of infectious epidemea found overseas or across the border of any filthy foreign country. The Family Dekko used Dr. Zal as a, what-you-call-now, Primary Care Physician. What I liked about Dr. Zal was that if he had to inject you with a serum or antigen, you always got a candy sucker on a paper string whether you cried or not. I never did but a couple of times almost.”
“I rode in the back seat with my two cranky sisters, Nan and Shirl. We would fight, pinch and poke each other until my bitter old mom would turn around in the front seat and start whacking away at any available flesh she could reach until she would run out of breath. The Buick had a nice high roof so Mom could get a really good start on each swing of whatever she could locate to smack us with. Being of superior intellect, compared to my sisters, I sat on the driver’s side of the back seat and was therefore harder to reach or if I was reachable the swing had pretty much lost its sting by the time it got to me.”
“I don’t know how far or how long we were on the road as I split my time between irritating my sister as much as it would take to set off my mom, napping between rounds. All I know is that Pop finally pulled the Roadmaster up to the border of Old Mexico where no one spoke English and just went through all our clothes and made us get more shots as they couldn’t read Dr. Zal’s handwriting that confirmed the fact that we had received all our immunities prior to liftoff.”
“Well, they poked and prodded us, scratched on some more of that smallpox vaccine just in case we never got a tattoo and needed a scar on our deltoids to show how old we lived to be to those born after 1972 when the smallpox vaccine was discontinued being required for the general public; especially those who weren’t planning to leave the relatively sterile confines of the United States of America.”
“The brown-shirted military guys went through our clothes again as if they might have overlooked some contraband that would surely be subject to confiscation. There was some gesturing and shouting but after Pop bought Mexican car insurance and left the fellows a nice tip, they smiled politely and encouraged us to get out of there and back on the road toward Monterrey where bad things were about to happen and a half.”
“We drove through a lot of desolate mountain areas where you might be stopped, robbed and killed by some merry band of cut throat desperados but were more likely to see some poor skinny peon dragging a cart full of anything up a steep hill. I feel sure that if I lived there I would move to some flatter ground more receptive to cart pulling. Finally, we came over a rise and there she was, Monterrey, Mexico.”
“We got a hotel room, took a nap, Pop liked to nap, then we got dressed up in Sunday School clothes and went out to see what sights there were to be seen. There were young guys on the street selling long hunting knives, brass knuckles and I suppose other things as well. I was mostly interested in getting one of those shiny knives but the idea was nixed by Mom. We wandered around with a goodly following of traders and potential guides and tricky looking fellows offering to watch the Buick for only a few pesos, for which Pop had exchanged some amount of perfectly good American dollars while we were at the border.”
I think, mainly, we entered the little shop to get away from the street sales staff. It was one of those dank little shops that had all kinds of great tourista products from Mexico and Japan. It was sort of like a darker version of a Stucky’s souvenir shop without the pralines. I was drawn to a table full of carved elephants made from some sort of translucent stone. There were big ones, too big to carry around, medium sized, as big as your hand, and some very small ones that would fit in the front pocket of a pair of boy’s Sunday school pants. That’s where one of them ended up. I don’t even know why I took it. My hand just snaked out, grabbed and inserted it into my left front pocket. The crime went undetected by the shop owner, Mom and Pop and even my two cruel, yet ugly, sisters. We stayed a little longer than was making me feel comfortable as I was standing around with a small bulge in my pants that I imagined left the perfect silhouette of a tiny elephant.”
“When we exited I fairly fled rather than left the little shop and could not gather a sigh of relief as the little elephant seemed to grow and become more apparent and eye catching in the bright sunlight of the streets of Monterrey. Maybe we went to a restaurant and ate or shopped some more. I can’t remember because I was too preoccupied trying to figure out just what I was going to do with my newly acquired stone elephant. I felt compelled to keep it as it was a pretty little thing but I didn’t want to get caught with it and have to explain where it came from. I thought about saying that I had found it on the street but when I rehearsed the lines under my breath they didn’t sound too convincing.”
“Half dazed and in shock with anxiety I found myself back at the hotel where we all peeled out of our Sunday school duds and put on our regular clothes. Of course, my Mom picked up my pants to fold and guess who fell out of the front left pocket? I watched the little fellow free fall to the floor and bounce noisily several times on the stone floor in super slow motion. My sisters’ faces were full of satisfaction, my Pop’s stare was unmistakably deadly as he hated thieves, especially if the thief was his son, and Mom looked like she wanted to cry and scream simultaneously.”
“It didn’t take long under the hot lights of interrogation for me to come clean concerning my caper. Pop Dekko wanted to whip me with his skinny cowhide belt that was the fashion of the day but he just stared a hole in me and said he would take care of the punishment phase when we returned to Texas and told me to enjoy the rest of the vacation. Of course Mom Dekko was not too thrilled to have larcenous offspring as she was a good Christian and a better Baptist. I think maybe she felt my move into the world of sleight-of-hand was a reflection of her poor child rearing abilities.”
“At first the plan was to march me back to the shop and apologize and break out the pesos to legally purchase the little rock pachyderm but Mom was afraid I would be arrested and thrown into a Mexican Jail and get sick and die from drinking the water. At last Mom and Pop agreed that we would not forget the incident but would go ahead and keep the little replication and display it in Mom’s china cabinet that hung over the couch in the living room back at the Dekko homestead so I would get to see it and be reminded of my sin each and every day of the rest of the time I lived under their roof. I was. It taught me a good lesson in that I rarely steal anything now and if I were to I would at least steal something worth stealing…like one of those hunting knives or maybe a pair of brass knucks.”
“I don’t know what ever happened to that little fake ‘phant but I’m glad it’s gone. For all I know someone might have seen it in the china cabinet and, like I did, needed it for themselves. That would be fine with me as that was one albatross I didn’t need around my neck. Not another word was ever said about the little guy but I can see him in my mind’s eye just as clear as the sunny skies of Monterrey when it’s not raining.”
Your loving cousin,
Rev. Dr. Buck Stonebroke
