Wells tower retreat pdf

His mien of coy potency resembles that of a gifted seven-year-old gymnast readying herself for her first public walk along the balance beam. Three months ago, I came to you seeking assistance with several problems. Inmates doing bodily harm to each other was a problem. Drug casualties were a problem. Another problem was videos filmed on contraband phones, videos which referenced conduct that is unbecoming to you and unbecoming to this institution.

One more problem was some chattering birds who told false stories to the BBC about conditions in our facility. Three months ago, I asked for your help with these problems, and there has been no trouble since. And so I call you my friends. A young man named Ter translates this information for Ron Tolenaar. Keep doing like this, the Moob will be a nice, quiet place. His lips, nose, and eyes bulge from his large crimson head, which looks like an infected thing that wants to be lanced.

Ron is serving his first year of a forty-year sentence for exporting prostitutes stuffed with narcotics to Holland, his fatherland. Ter, his cellmate, is small and mantis thin. He is seventeen years old and serving no sentence at all. Pancreatitis killed the uncle in December of last year. While I am privately gibbering darkly and visibly whacked-out, she is pepped up, thrilled. We embrace her congratulatorily. In the morning, the elephant is as we left it, unmolested by snacking carnivores.

Today, the animal will be cleaned and butchered, its flesh shared out among the locals. The hide and other mementos will be packed up for the Waldrips.

Though the tusks and the rest of it are, ostensibly, the prizes Robyn came to Africa to collect, the electricity has gone out of the safari.

Returning to the animal has a cleaning-up-after-the-party sort of feel. A team of a half-dozen Botswana men and women have turned out for the event. The equipment list includes an ax, a winch, and a bunch of cheap-looking plastic-handled boning knives. First order of business is a stropping orgy that lasts the better part of half an hour. I am ready for it to go away. Before the skinning commences, the tableau is beautified and made camera-ready. Breaking down an elephant is difficult and dirty work, made lighter by many hands.

The cleaning goes like this: First you take the ears. Each is the size of a manta ray. It is severed close to the head and laid in the dirt. Next, the trunk, the size of a middle-aged gator, is girdled at its bridge and then removed. Yet the flaying, surprisingly, inspires none of the mortal vertigo the killing did.

The trunk is stripped of its leather, and for a time it lies in the dirt, looking like an automobile transmission made of fresh raspberry sorbet.

He has taken up a knife, eager to do his share of the dismantlement. Out of respect for the animal, you gotta do it yourself. A cut has been made along the spine. Will slashes away, pulling at the skin, revealing a goreless expanse of fibrous white fascia. The winch is applied to help peel the hide. The resistance is sufficient to pull the truck forward at first when the crank turns on.

Once the skin has been freed, Will and the skinners begin blocking out the meat. The sound is of hard, wet work. Up front, they are getting at the skull.

Below the eyes, the look of the tuskless head, still actively suppurating, recalls a cliff face after a strong rain. Then the head itself is cut off, into the arms of a pair of catchers.

Later today or tomorrow, the skull will be buried for a period of ten days. Insects will attend to the finer details of cleaning the skull for its voyage to Texas. When the head is removed, the elephant begins to speak in a morbid throat-flatus.

Air escaping the trachea makes sounds of growls and shudders and sighs. This is not upsetting. By now, it is not elephant but a wrecked Volkswagen made of flesh. The carcass is winnowed to a pile of innards that calls to mind one of those inflatable-looking sports arenas.

In the flawless blue above, a fleet of delighted buzzards has begun to wheel. The work is mostly over. Will Waldrip can now retire from the job. He is abundantly daubed in blood and is exhausted, though chipper. An elephant gets six sets of teeth in its lifetime. This one was on its final set, and judging from its condition it was probably about Looking at this rummage sale of elephant flesh inspires an equally messy inventory of contradictory thoughts.

Then a sort of wordless, inner viola fugue that accompanies the sight of a magnificent organism that has been treading the savanna since the Kennedy administration, now scattered in pieces on the ground. A caged chicken once beat you at tic-tac-toe. No, but okay, look: We can assume that most people, for whatever totally arbitrary reason, have an affinity for elephants over chickens and pearl mussels.

Consider your fantasies of grenading the deer who eat your gardenias. Cry and drop into the lotus position and sing a song in Navajo? They go hunting because they find it exciting. As Robyn herself put it, you get a primal thrill. And whether or not you want to admit it, you had the thrill, the neurochemical bongload that hit you when the elephant died. It made Robyn Waldrip jump up and down and it made you go on a pompous, half-baked death trip, which is your version of jumping up and down.

You were at the party, bro. Its flesh has been hung out to dry. Jeff has an extra elephant tag for his concession in Tanzania. He offers this to Will senior, and Will declines. Our last evening in camp, we go for sunset cocktails at a locally famous baobab tree. The tree is craggy, Gandalfian, and 1, years old. At our approach, they take grudging flight in a storm of black wings. Suddenly the sounds of shrieking pierce the quiet of the dusk.

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Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. Everything ravaged, everything burned Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Retreat by Wells Tower. Retreat by Wells Tower. Two Brothers. One Story. Two Versions. Promotional chapbook. Get A Copy. More Details Original Title. United States of America. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

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