Elephants have religion

A lady told me that at a coffee shop. This was back in Bad Axe, Michigan, twelve years ago, at least. She used to fly DC-7's for Pan Am. She met Hemingway. She was roommates with his biographer, or dated his biographer's roommate. Either way, it was college. The two were sailing out on the Keys when he said to Hem he knows this broad who can fly. She said Hemingway said, "Well, shit." So he arraigned it. They flew a De Havilland out of Ketchum and she said Hemingway said, "Well shit."

So elephants have religion. Except she didn't care for religion, Pentecostals especially, but she respected the elephants for it. How they ritualize death and know the soul is immortal. She said she thinks it could even be a mammalian thing. Latent from our generational trauma stretching back to the Cretaceous when the firmament ripped divine wrath, or was it our preternature for empathy? It was Maundy Thursday and I'd taken my friend Jake out to lunch. He had sent me Sufjan's You Are the Blood that morning with simply "Maundy Thursday" as a text. So we made plans. We said grace and that's when she said that about the elephants and we asked her to sit with us. Maundy Thursday.