Katherine Applegate - The One and Only Ivan

I don’t answer.

“Ivan?” Ruby asks. “Can Bob fly?”

A memory flashes past, surprising me. I think of my father, snoring peacefully under the sun while I try every trick I know to wake him.

Perhaps, I realize, he wasn’t really such a sound sleeper after all.

treat

“How’s that foot, old girl?” George asks Stella.

Stella pokes her trunk between the bars. She inspects George’s right shirt pocket for the treat he brings her every night without fail.

George doesn’t always bring me treats. Stella’s his favorite, but I don’t mind. She’s my favorite too.

Stella sees that George’s pocket is empty. She gives George a frustrated nudge with her trunk, and Julia giggles.

Stella moves to George’s left pocket and discovers a carrot. Nimbly she removes it.

Mack walks past. “Toilet’s plugged up in the men’s bathroom,” he says. “Big mess.”

“I’ll take care of it.” George sighs.

Mack turns to leave. “Um, before you go, Mack,” George says, “you might want to take a look at Stella’s foot. I think it’s infected again.”

“Darn thing never does heal up right.” Mack rubs his eyes. “I’ll keep an eye on it. Money’s tight, though. Can’t be calling the vet every time she sneezes.”

George strokes Stella’s trunk. She inspects his pockets one more time, just in case.

“Sorry, girl,” George says, as he watches Mack walk away.

elephant jokes

“Ivan? Bob?”

I blink. The dawn sky is a smudge of gray flecked with pink, like a picture drawn with two crayons. I can just make out Ruby in the shadows, waving hello with her trunk.

“Are you awake?” Ruby asks.

“We are now,” says Bob.

“Aunt Stella’s still asleep and I don’t want to wake her ’cause she said her foot was hurting but I’m really, really”—Ruby pauses for a breath—“really bored.”

Bob opens one eye. “You know what I do when I’m bored?”

“What?” Ruby asks eagerly.

Bob closes his eye. “I sleep.”

“It’s a little early, Ruby,” I say.

“I’m used to getting up early.” Ruby wraps her trunk around one of the bars on her door. “At my old circus we always got up when it was still dark and then we had breakfast and we walked in a circle. And then they chained my feet up, and that really hurt.”

Ruby falls silent. Instantly Bob is snoring.

“Ivan?” Ruby asks. “Do you know any jokes? I especially like jokes about elephants.”

“Um. Well, let me see. I heard Mack tell one once.” I yawn. “Uhh … how can you tell that an elephant has been in the refrigerator?”

“How?”

“By the footprints in the butter.”

Ruby doesn’t react. I sit up on my elbows, trying not to disturb Bob. “Get it?”

“What’s a refrigerator?” Ruby asks.

“It’s a human thing, a cold box with a door. They put food inside.”

“They put food in the door? Or food in the box? And is it a big box?” Ruby asks. “Or a little box?”

I can see this is going to take a while, so I sit up all the way. Bob slides off, grumbling.

I reach for my pencil, the one I snapped in half with my teeth. “Here,” I say, “I’ll draw you a picture of one.”

In the dim light, it takes me a minute to find a piece of the paper Julia gave me. The page is a little damp and has a smear of something orange on it. I think it’s from a tangerine.

I try my best to make a refrigerator. The broken pencil is not cooperating, but I do what I can.

By the time I’m done, the first streaks of morning sun have appeared in flashy cartoon colors. I hold up my picture for Ruby to see.

She studies it intently, her head turned so that one black eye is trained on my drawing. “Wow. You made that! Is this the thing you were telling me about before? Art?”

“Sure is. I can draw all kinds of things. I’m especially good at fruit.”

“Could you draw a banana right now?” Ruby asks.

“Absolutely.” I turn the paper over and sketch.

“Wow,” Ruby says again in an awed voice when I hold up the page. “It looks good enough to eat!”

She makes a happy, lilting sound, an elephant laugh. It’s like the song of a bird I recall from long ago, a tiny yellow bird with a voice like dancing water.

Strange. I’d forgotten all about that bird, how she’d wake me every morning at dawn, when I was still curled safely in my mother’s nest.

It’s a good feeling, making Ruby laugh, so I draw another picture, and another, along the edges of the paper: an orange, a candy bar, a carrot.

“What are you two up to?” Stella asks, moaning as she tries to move her sore foot.

“How are you this morning?” I ask.

“Just feeling my age,” Stella says. “I’m fine.”

“Ivan is making me pictures,” Ruby says. “And he told me a joke. I really like Ivan, Aunt Stella.”

Stella winks at me. “Me too,” she says.

“Ivan? Want to hear my favorite joke?” Ruby asks. “I heard it from Maggie. She was one of the giraffes in my old circus.”

“Sure,” I say.

“It goes like this.” Ruby clears her throat. “What do elephants have that nothing else has?”

Trunks, I think, but I don’t answer because I don’t want to ruin Ruby’s fun.

“I don’t know, Ruby,” I reply. “What do elephants have that nothing else has?”

“Baby elephants,” Ruby says.

“Good one, Ruby,” I say, watching Stella stroke Ruby’s back with her trunk.

“Good one,” Stella says softly.

children

Once I asked Stella if she’d ever had any babies.

She shook her head. “I never had the opportunity.”

“You would have made a great mother,” I told her.

“Thank you, Ivan,” Stella said, clearly pleased. “I like to think so. Having young ones is a big responsibility. You have to teach them how to take mud baths, of course, and emphasize the importance of fiber in their diet.” She looked away, contemplating.

Elephants are excellent at contemplating.

“I think the hardest part of being a parent,” Stella added after a while, “would be keeping your babies safe from harm. Protecting them.”

“The way silverbacks do in the jungle,” I said.

“Exactly.” Stella nodded.

“You would have been good at protecting, too,” I said confidently.

“I’m not so sure,” Stella said, gazing at the iron bars surrounding her. “I’m not sure at all.”

the parking lot

Mack and George are chatting while George cleans one of my windows.

“George,” Mack says, frowning, “there’s something wrong with the parking lot.”

George sighs. “I’ll take a look as soon as I’m done with this window. What’s the problem?”

“There are cars in it, that’s what’s wrong. Cars , George!” Mack breaks into a grin. “I think things are actually starting to pick up a bit. It’s gotta be the billboard. People see that baby elephant and they just have to stop and spend their hard-earned cash.”

“I hope so,” George says. “We sure could use the business.”

Mack’s right. I have noticed more visitors coming since he and George added the picture of Ruby to the sign. People crowd around Ruby and Stella’s domain, oohing and ahhing at the sight of a such a tiny elephant.

I gaze out at the huge sign that makes humans stop and spend their hard-earned cash. I have to admit that the picture of Ruby is rather cute, even if she doesn’t look like a real elephant.

I wonder if Mack could add a little red hat and a curly tail to the picture of me. Maybe then more visitors would stop by my domain.