Blake's Backstory

Jackson Smith was in the african sahara, working on an elephant reserve.

It was a small camp but they had electricity, a few vets, some nature filmmakers. They were tightly knit and became close friends, over the few years they spent with each other in the wild.
Their task was to study and protect the endagered beasts, make sure that the herds of 40 or 50 that roamed the plains were safe from poachers.

They were a pacifist group and so didn’t have weapons, except for a few rifles and some personal side arms which they could use for hunting or protection from predators. Jackson owned one of the pistols and kept it with him in the wild.

They relied on sanctions and laws to protect them and the elephants. For the most part the poachers obliged, it wasn’t worth the risk of going to jail and getting fined for poaching on the reserve when they could travel a few miles to a neighboring province which had no sanctions and fill their trucks with harvested ivory and elephant’s feet.

Though they would have, the law prevented the group from coaxing elephants onto the reserve. However, over time, the elephants seemed to be drawn there, as if they knew it was a safe.

Jackson thought that the elephants could read their minds, and made the trek to be in their protection. In the 3 years that Jackson was stationed there, the population grew from 26 to 54, some of that was due to newborns, but most of it was migration.

If the animals died of natural causes, or were killed by the neighboring aboriginal tribes, the poachers were free to loot the corpses, so long as they didn’t encroach on the tribes who were also protected by stronger, national laws. A few poachers would regularly sweep the plains, usually at night, in the hopes of coming across an elephant carcass, the ivory would bring him several thousand dollars, enough to feed him family for half a year.

The aboriginals were friendly, and were free to hunt the elephants if they desired, using spears or traditional means since the animals were a means of survival to their whole tribe and a way of life for their culture. The tribes would use the whole animal, the flesh fed them, the skin clothed them and the ivory was fashioned into tools and jewelery.

It was rare, and the elephant was not their prey of choice, but from time to time a dozen or so tribesmen would take down a wayward elephant. It would take hours to chase and kill it and days to drag it back to their homes, usually piece by piece. So any effort by the tribes to bring down an elephant would usually be a failure. The elephant would escape, wounded.

In these cases Jackson and his colleagues could intervene. Since the wound was inflicted by a human, the language of the sanctions permitted them to work to save the creature and the tribesmen were not declared outlaws.

It was an occasion like this, where Jackson’s fate would first lead him to me.

About to turn in for the night, he heard gunfire, and saw faint lights in the distance. There was no moon that night, he would later claim that if the moon was out that night, I would be dead today.
Poachers wouldn’t normally try their luck, and if they did they were quick to turn and run at the first sign of others. So Jackson didn’t wake his colleagues. He felt for his pistol and sped out in the direction of the light.

Sure enough an elephant was down, and a couple of poachers were sitting on the hood of their jeep, waiting for it to die.

Jackson yelled at them to fuck off. They stuck around, doubting that the elephant would survive much longer. It had three spears in it, two in it’s left flank and one in it’s right shoulder. It tried to run, then turned to fight, Jackson figured. But if it was attacked by tribesmen, where were they now? They had him on the ropes. And why was there a gunshot?

Jackson got closer to the animal, it was Jesse, a 14 year old female and new mother. He hoped her calf was OK.

Jackson looked into her eyes, pleading with the last glimmer of life and hope, he whispered to her that she would be OK. The poachers laughed, and approached. Jesse was wheezing.

He would have to go back to camp for medicine. He could patch her up with what he had in his jeep but he would have to get adrenaline and antibiotics if she would survive.

He glared at the grinning poachers, then raced back to his jeep, He radioed his camp, no answer. He grabbed the bandages and made his way back to Jesse.

‘I’m gonna save this one, so fuck off you animals’.

The poacher replied in his own language, angrily.
Jackson began to dress the wounds around the spear, so that when he removed them blood loss would be minimal.

The older poacher jumped off the jeep and step closer to the scene, taunting Jackson and spitting on Jesse.

The poacher reached for the spear lodged in the beasts shoulder, knowing that if he pulled it out the elephant would most likely die.
Jackson reached for his pistol
‘Back away.’

The poachers eye’s widened, yet he began to grin and put his hand back on the spear. After glancing back at the second poacher, who he referred to as son, as in ‘son, watch this’, he pulled out the spear.

Jackson squeezed his trigger.

The poachers spun and hit the ground.

Jackson quickly dressed the open wound, and then the other two. Without risking removing the other two spears. He threatened the boy and raced back to camp to get medicine.

When he got back, the boy was holding his father in his arms, they were talking. The father seemed to be telling him to leave the country and find his aunt near the big city.

Jackson patched up Jesse, who’s eyes screamed of fear and panic. With the wounds dressed and the spears out, Jacskon injected the antibiotics and finally the adrenaline.

Jesse shot up and stormed off into the brush.
Jackson turned his attention to the man. He hit him in the chest, in the lung. There was no exit wound.

As the poacher coughed up blood, he pleaded with Jackson, not to save his life but to make sure his son wasn’t kidnapped. There were tales a a marauding militia made up of orphaned soldiers. Jackson had heard of them, but believed them to be hundreds of miles to the east.

The poacher died and Jackson brought his son back to camp.

They arranged to find his aunt.

Jackson did some digging and found that there was in fact a militia of rebels, laying waste to the tribes in the hills nearby and taking the children.

He forgot about elephants for a few months. He decided to join up with a group of peacekeepers, these ones armed, to track and bring the rebels to justice.

It was the eve of a big storm, the sun was just about to go down.

Jackson and a handful of well armed peacekeepers had gone rogue, tired of the red tape and bureaucracy required to get those kids to safety.
The attacked them while they ate.

In less than ten minutes, 5 of the adult rebels were dead, and 2 of the children. 4 of the other children had ran into the brush. The last adult rebel found cover and with 2 of the kids shot back at the peackeepers. I was one of the kids, lost in gunfire and thunder.

I was 9. I was forced to kill my mother with my own hands and watched others forced to do the same. On this series of raids, I was being taught how to do the forcing. I was trapped, wishing to kill my captors yet understanding that they were my only family now. That was, until I met Jackson that night.

He flanked us, and snuck up from behind. For some reason I turned, confused that I could feel thunder under my feet.

My captor was alerted and he turned and fired at Jackson.

Then the elephants came.

They trampled us. Me and the other boy ran off into the brush after being knocked around by giant legs.

Our captor was gored by Jackson’s old friend Jesse.

The elephants and the peacekeepers camped out near the site of the attack. Every now and then one of them would call out to us that we came to free them and they were safe. The elephants would call out in accord.

No one got much sleep that night, but one by one we reluctantly approached the camp of men and elephants, first close enough to see, then to speak to, close enough to take the food they offered, and then to share their fire.

Once the the day came, the government was forced to act and clean up the mess. The children went to the state. Most of them anyways.

I wouldn’t leave Jackson so he kept me by his side. I had no idea who my enemies were anymore, but I figured I would be safe with the man who commanded the elephants.

He lost his job at the reserve, watching him tearfully say goodbye to the elephants reminded me that I too had the capacity to love others.

The peacekeepers involved in the raid were all forced to leave Africa. Watching them eat and drink during their last days showed me the brotherhood of good men and character requied to taste the bittersweetness of righteous victory.
Jackson brought me with him to America, where he found me an orphanage and visited me with gifts and money every so often.

When he died, I was left a college trust fund, and the memory of man that had the courage to do what’s right, regardless of personal cost.