Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert Page A

words for this gift. The three people on the beach—the old man, the young woman, the tiny, muddy young man—regarded the elephant tusk. No one moved until Cookie rose up stiffly and slouched toward the thing with suspicion.
    “No, Cookie,” Senator Simon said, and the dog assumed the posture of a Sphinx, her nose stretched toward the tusk as if to smell it.
    At last, in an apologetic and hesitant way, Webster said, “I guess he was a small elephant.”
    Indeed, the tusk was small. Very small for an elephant that had grown to a mighty size during 138 years of myth. The tusk was slightly longer than one of Webster’s arms. It was a slim tusk, with a modest arc. At one end was a dull point, like a thumb. At the other end was the ragged edge of its break from the skeleton. There were deep black, cracked grooves in the ivory.
    “He was just a small elephant, I guess,” Webster repeated, because the Senator had not yet responded. This time, Webster sounded almost desperate. “I guess we thought it would be bigger, right?”
    The Senator stood up, as slowly and stiffly as if he’d been sitting on the beach for 138 years, waiting for the tusk. He stared at it some more, and then he put his arm around Webster.
    “That’s a good job, son,” he said.
    Webster sank to his knees, and the Senator eased himself down beside him and put his hand on the boy’s lank shoulder.
    “Are you disappointed, Webster?” he asked. “Did you think that I would be disappointed? It’s a beautiful tusk.”
    Webster shrugged, and his face looked stricken. A breeze came up, and Webster gave a thin shiver.
    “I guess it was just a small elephant,” he repeated.
    Ruth said, “Webster, it’s a terrific elephant tusk. You did a good job, Webster. You did a great job.”
    Then Webster gave two hard sobs.
    “Oh, come on, now, boy,” the Senator said, and his voice, too, was choked. Webster was crying. Ruth turned her head. She could still hear him, though, making those sad noises, so she stood up and walked away from the rocks toward the spruce trees lining the shore. She left Webster and the Senator sitting on the beach for a good long time while she wandered among the trees, picking up sticks and breaking them. The mosquitoes were after her, but she didn’t care. She hated to see people crying. Every once in a while she looked toward the beach, but she could see that Webster was still sobbing and the Senator was still comforting him, and she wanted no part of it.
    Ruth sat herself down, with her back to the beach, on a mossy log. She lifted a flat rock in front of her, and a salamander scooted out, giving her a start. Maybe she’d become a veterinarian, she thought absently. She’d recently read a book, given to her by the Senator, about the breeding of bird dogs, and she had found it rather beautiful. The book, written in 1870, had the loveliest language. She’d been moved almost to tears by a description of the best Chesapeake labrador the author had ever seen, one that had retrieved a downed seabird by leaping over crashing ice floes and swimming far out past the point of invisibility. The dog, whose name was Bugle, had returned to shore, nearly frozen to death, but carrying the bird ever so gently in its soft mouth. Not a mark on it.
    Ruth stole a glance over her shoulder back to Webster and the Senator. Webster appeared to have stopped crying. She wandered down to the shoreline, where Webster was sitting, staring ahead grimly. The Senator had taken the tusk to a warm pool of tidewater to rinse it off. Ruth Thomas went over, and he straightened up and handed her the tusk. She dried it on her shirt. It was light as bone and yellow as old teeth, its hollow inside packed with mud. It was warm. She hadn’t even seen Webster find it! All those hours of sitting on the beach watching him search the mud, and she had not seen the moment when he found it!
    “You didn’t see him find it, either,” she said to the Senator. He shook his