The Republic of Nothing Read Free

reckoned, trying to answer his own question. “It will all add up to something sooner or later. We’ll just have to see.”
    My father led me to the dead elephant. We half-ran, half-walked. “I had a dream about an elephant once,” I told my father, slipping on the sun-drenched, sea-drenched stones along the shore. “I dreamed I was riding on the back of an elephant with mountains all around. I was headed somewhere really fast and if I didn’t get there in time something terrible was gonna happen.”
    â€œYou were probably remembering something that happened to you in a previous life,” my father said. “You were probably a young prince in India or Africa. What colour was the sky?”
    â€œBlue. Very blue.”
    My father nodded. “Yep, that would have been one of your former selves, before you came to your mother and me. Ask your mother about it when you get home. She’ll know.” Thisis the way conversations went in my family. It wasn’t until I was nearly fifteen that I learned that other kids’ parents didn’t believe wholeheartedly in reincarnation.
    â€œLook at that sun,” my father said. He was right. It was something to look at. “When you die, your soul leaves your body and dives straight into the sunrise.”
    â€œDad, did you ever dive straight into the sunrise?”
    â€œSure, many times. It’s like falling off a log.”
    â€œOh.”
    The elephant was right there where he said it would be on the east side of the island. “The current skirts around to here,” my father explained.
    â€œWow,” I said. Before me was a mountain of strange, sad animal. I wanted very badly for it to be alive. “Too bad it’s dead.” I walked around to look at the elephant’s face but it was expressionless, revealing no secrets of its journey.
    â€œDon’t worry, Slim. His soul is already as light as a feather.”
    My father sat down on a beached log and studied the elephant. “A thing like this only happens once or twice in a person’s life,” he said. “Hants said that a crocodile washed in here once a long time ago. Two days later Canada was in the Second World War. Hants stuffed the croc’ and has it up on his wall at his shack. You’ve seen it. Maybe we better tell him about this. Stay here with her while I go get him. Don’t let any gulls or crows peck at it. I always hate to see things tore up by birds.”
    So I sat and waited. The dead elephant became boring very quickly. I was mad at it for not being alive. I felt cheated out of having an elephant for a pet. Then I started throwing stones at it. They made a dull thud as they hit the leathery carcass. A light breeze came up off the sea and I kept looking for living elephants on the horizon. Maybe there was another one out there who would make it ashore. But none came.
    Hants Buckler looked like something made out of erector set parts. His clothes were tied onto his angular figure with old pieces of fish net and he wore a baseball cap that said SAFE!
    â€œJesus, would you look at them tusks.”
    â€œIvory,” my father said.
    â€œThink we’re due for another war?” Hants asked, remembering the crocodile.
    â€œIf so, I plan on the republic staying neutral. We’re too highly evolved here to go to war.”
    â€œDamn straight,” said Hants. “It’s good having a man like you at the helm.”
    My father beamed. He always appreciated compliments like that, no matter how tongue-in-cheek. “What should we do with it?” my father asked Hants, the expert on flotsam and jetsam of all sorts.
    â€œThe flesh is of no use,” answered Hants, “but the tusks and the bones should be salvaged. I have an idea.”
    Just then the waves began to lap against my shoes. And when I looked out at the sea, I saw that the water looked like it was sprinkled with green and silver