excerpted form

A Practical Agnostic

a novel

by

Stillson Graham

This is my advantage, as an outsider to this story. I can choose what to tell you and what not to tell you and how long to spend on a topic and in what order, etc. so that the images in your mind will be crafted only by what I tell you. For example, I could tell you that when I was a boy a circus passed through our town. I don’t remember much about it except that they stayed here overnight on their way to Sacramento.

When they left, they left behind a baby elephant, which had made its way through several pastures and ended up at a windmill in the middle of Francis Wains’ fallow cornfield. And that is where it was when it was found by Mr. Wains. Whether it was dumped by the circus company or had escaped we never knew, but the circus company never came back for it.

With a baby elephant in your mind, I’d wager you could come up with a number of scenarios that may or may not have to do with the rest of the story. But since you don’t know what the rest of the story is yet, any plot device or symbolism you ascribe to this elephant character is merely speculative.

In this case, there was a problem with the claim of ownership. The elephant (which was eventually named “Groucho” for some reason which has escaped my subsequent research), was claimed by two people: Mr. Wains, the man on whose land Groucho was found, and the owner of the local animal shelter. When it was clear that the circus was not coming back, the two men went to Sheriff Maxwell and demanded a decision.

At this point in the story, I can interject some kind of detail about the elephant that would reveal the meaning behind the story, or perhaps the lack thereof. While the sheriff was making his decision, Groucho, through what can only be described as mischief, trampled a barn and a pumphouse belonging to Mr. Wains, who then rescinded his ownership claim, and the elephant went to the animal shelter.

What is the point of this anecdote? It could be about what happens when people are slow to make decisions. Or it could be about misunderstanding the meaning of ownership. Or it could be about leaving behind parts of yourself and picking up parts of yourself. My point is that you don’t really know. Until you hear this entire story, you won’t know what the elephant means. In this way, I have created a lexicon for my story, or a mythology for my town. Elephant means something other than elephant and in addition to elephant.

This is what I have learned in college.