A Spear of Summer Grass (16 page)

“I was his first,” she said dreamily. “I will always belong to him. That’s how I know he isn’t really dead. Tusker knew it, too. She used to go out searching for him, and when I had him declared dead and married Tony, she was furious with me. She still doesn’t talk to me if she can help it. I’m glad. When she’s silent, it makes it easier for me to be silent, too.”

I did not know what to say. Silence and sorrow mingled in that house, and I suddenly felt a thrust of pity for Anthony. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with these two women who both pined for a ghost who might still be among the living.

“I shouldn’t have married Tony,” she went on. “I know that now. I was angry and tired and I had been waiting for so long. I just wanted to be loved again.”

She turned away, the mattress creaking under her, and I knew the conversation was over. She might have cried. I heard a brief snuffling, and then felt a shudder as she relaxed into sleep. I lay awake, watching for ghosts, but whether I expected to see hers or mine, I couldn’t have said. I thought about my Granny Miette and I wished she and Teenie and Angele had been there to cast a circle with black salt and holy water to keep the spirits at bay. I couldn’t remember the protective incantations she had taught me, and I didn’t have a gris-gris bag or a white candle. All I had was a prayer to Our Lady of Prompt Succour whispered into the darkness that shifted and sighed around me.

I slept deeply and late and by the time I awoke, breakfast was almost over and the garden was teeming with porters. Gideon pointed out the differences between the Kikuyu and Turkana and Swahili and Samburu.

“The Samburu are most like the Masai, and they, too, speak Maa, but they plant crops and this is unlike the Masai,” he explained. I could see the resemblance. Both tribes were tall and slender, although no one who had seen the two could reasonably mistake one for the other. The Masai might have been the poorest, but they carried themselves like kings.

He went on. “You see there, the fierceness of the Turkana? The rest of us carry the
panga,
but the knife of the Turkana is different.” What I had taken to be a peculiar sort of bracelet was in fact nothing of the sort. The Turkana bent blades to wear as bracelets, the sharp edge facing out and protected by a slim piece of leather. “The Turkana are quick to fight,” Gideon warned me. “And they bargain very hard. The Swahili come from the coast and are smaller men, but they carry heavy loads.”

Sixty pounds was the limit for each porter’s load by law, but a good headman would insist upon the porters carrying very near to it. Tusker had already explained that the porters would not respect a white hunter who paid well and expected too little. In return, they demanded two things: a leader who would stand his ground and who could shoot well. Failure in either respect could cause a fatal loss of respect among the men, and it was not unheard of for disenchanted bearers to simply walk away from a hunter they did not like, leaving him to make his way back—if he could find it.

“Of course, that won’t be an issue with Ryder. They fight like cats to be chosen,” she added, nodding toward the squabbling porters. Ryder waded into the fray and they stilled at once. He spoke quietly and within minutes had sorted out who would be coming and who would be left behind. He appointed a headman to keep the various porters in order, and I tilted my head toward Gideon.

“Why not him?”

Tusker shook her head. “The other tribes won’t stand for it. Ryder has tried, and even he’s found it to be more trouble than it’s worth. No, he’ll take Gideon as his personal guide and they will work together, but the headman will have to sort out the others, a full-time occupation, believe you me.”

“If it’s so difficult to keep the tribes in order, why not just choose them all from a single group?”

“Fatal,” she said flatly. “They band together and turn on the whites. There was a hunt went out a dozen years ago that took nothing but Kikuyu. There was some dispute over the payment. By the time the hunt was finished, the Kikuyu had taken the white hunter back to their village to stake him out and let every villager piss in his mouth. Since then folk have mostly mixed up their bearers. Damnation! Just realised I forgot the grouse paste,” she said. She lifted her voice to bark an order in Swahili and one of the porters hurried to retrieve the tins.

Tusker supervised the loading of the liquor and first aid supplies into the safari car, a battered old Ford that had been fitted for rough travel. The rest of the gear was portioned out for the bearers to carry, and Tusker ordered a cage of chickens to be lashed to the top of the car.

“Fresh eggs on safari,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “And if they won’t lay, chicken
fricassee.
”

She nodded to my guns. “Hope you’re prepared to use those.”

I lifted a brow. “It seems a bit much firepower for a single lion.”

She guffawed, thrusting her hands into her hair. It stood up in tufts over her head. “Silly child. We have to feed the porters. That’s the real reason Ryder let me come along. It’s damned hard to hunt a man-eater and feed the bearers as well. We’ll have to shoot enough game to keep them well fed. It’s the law, you know.”

“I didn’t, actually.”

She patted my arm. “Never mind. You’ll soon catch on. Mind you shoot what they like, though. A happy crew makes for a happy hunt, and if you give them eland more than two days running, you’ll have the lot of them ducking behind the
leleshwa
bushes to shit in a row. Fatty meat, eland is,” she advised me.

She walked away then, and Ryder appeared at my elbow. “Getting the lay of the land from Tusker?”

“She’s a unique character,” I said faintly.

“Not in Africa. But then Africa attracts all kinds.”

I followed him to where the cooking fire for breakfast had just fallen to grey ash. “She was telling me that I will be responsible to help feed the porters.”

He bent to scoop some ash, sieving it through his fingers into a small leather bag. “Yes, you will. Did she warn you about eland?”

“In graphic detail.”

“Well, she’s not wrong. Stick to antelope and you’ll be fine.”

He scooped another handful. “What are you doing?”

“Ash bag. It’s to help tell which way the wind is blowing when it’s too soft to move the grass.”

“If it’s too soft to move the grass, how do you know it’s blowing at all?”

“I don’t, but a lion will. If we’re on the wrong side of the wind, he’ll be gone before we ever see him or we’ll get the business end of his teeth.”

My gaze fell to his arm, the long white streaks of scar cording the brown muscle of his forearm. “Tusker told me,” I said, nodding toward his arm. “I can’t imagine living through something like that.”

He tied off the bag and straightened, dusting his hands. “No doubt she made it sound heroic.” He smiled. “Don’t be impressed, princess. Everybody out here has scars. Mine just happen to be on the outside.”

* * *

By the time the safari car was packed and the bearers loaded, the sun was riding high, casting short shadows over the grassy savannah. Ryder directed the hunt towards the
lugga
where Tusker said the lion had been seen. He had already visited the kill site to see the pug marks in the soft soil and talk to the Kikuyu. We were hunting a young male, large and fit and unpredictable, he had warned. He roamed the dry riverbed, scrutinizing the sign as Tusker and I kept a watchful eye out for leopards. The headman directed the porters to rest and Gideon took the other half of the
lugga.
After a lengthy consultation, they pointed us west, toward Lake Victoria and Uganda in the far distance.

We set off, Tusker driving the safari car and Ryder and Gideon walking. Some of the staff, including the cook whose duties exempted him from carrying anything, clung to the outside of the car as Tusker bounced them around the long plains. The others stretched out in a long line, singing songs in their various tongues as we wended our way westward.

I walked between Ryder and Gideon carrying my .22. The Rigby was far too much gun to carry for any length of time, but the .22 was manageable, although I noticed Ryder sending me sidelong glances to make sure I was holding up.

We came to the first river, a narrow crossing, but deep and tricky for the Ford. The porters came forward with sticks and rocks and began to hurl them into the water. The green water received them then suddenly began to heave like a pot coming to the boil. I saw a flash of teeth and tails as crocodiles thrashed their way out of the water and onto the sandy bank. They were hideous, like something prehistoric with their flat, dead eyes and their broad bodies. They ought to have been slow, but they weren’t. They hurled themselves awkwardly onto one another, fighting for space as they fled the water.

The headman kept a watchful eye on them as he waved Tusker forward. The car crossed, stately as a dowager, and behind her the porters hurried, each treading hard on the heels of the man in front. Gideon followed, and suddenly only Ryder and I were left. One of those scaly monsters opened his mouth and a small white bird hopped inside, pecking delicately at the morsels lodged between the monstrous teeth.

“Come on, princess. Before the crocs go back in and decide you look tasty.”

He took my hand and waded forward. I put one foot in front of the other, but my body moved of its own accord. My mind had pushed everything aside except those eyes, those hungry, waiting eyes that never blinked. If I had been alone, I would have stood there in the rushing green water and let them take me. But Ryder never let go, pulling me forward and keeping me so close to him that both of my hands were tucked under his and resting on his hips. We climbed out the other side and I pried my cold fingers from his.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

He smiled. “They’re just crocs. Not dangerous if you know what to do.”

“But I don’t know what to do,” I pointed out.

“That’s why you have me.”

He set a brisk pace after that, and I was glad. The speed and the golden light that spilled around us warmed me up. A small herd of zebra stopped grazing at our approach and lifted their noses. The porters began to sing again, and the miles unwound slowly behind as we walked. Ryder’s eyes kept to the middle distance, softly focused to show him where the ground might have been disturbed. He stopped from time to time to consult with Gideon and between them they kept the lion’s tracks before us. Sometimes the marks disappeared into the tall grass and we veered in a different direction, but always the lion had corrected back almost due west, taking us into the lengthening sun.

We stopped for a cold luncheon and began to walk again after the porters had rested. As we walked, Gideon raised his voice. “This is a thing that I know—Ryder knows the poems of Mr. Whitman.”

For a moment I thought Ryder was ignoring him, but then he spoke. “‘Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, you must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, it comes to me as of a dream, I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you...’”

He went on, reciting the rest. I had read Whitman. Mossy had bought me a copy that my Granny Miette had promptly confiscated and burned upon my arrival in Louisiana on the grounds that it was indecent. But I hadn’t thought it indecent. Whitman was real; Whitman was passion. Whitman was aching and bruising and wanting and having. Reading him was like a long drink of cool water on a hot day at noon.

“‘I am to see to it that I do not lose you.’” Ryder finished. I did not have to look at him to know he had shifted his gaze. He wasn’t staring at the pug marks then or looking for ant-bear holes or stray snakes.

Gideon spoke first. “I do not remember this poem of Mr. Whitman’s. What is it called?”

“‘To a Stranger,’” I said quickly. I glanced at Ryder and his mouth curved into a slow smile.

“Familiar with it?”

“Yes.” I tried not to think of the words on his lips.
Breast
and
beard
and
hands
and
body
.

Gideon spoke again. “I think that I like best the ‘Song of Myself.’ Will you say this one,
Bwana?
”

Ryder turned back to the tracks cutting through the long grass and began to speak. We walked on, each step marked with a syllable of the poem, the words slipping gently into my ears, music for our journey. Some words passed quickly, but others, whole phrases, clung to my skin. “‘...every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you... I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass... A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms...’”

He continued on through the first five stanzas, each word a murmured invitation. There was enticement in that poetry, metaphors that passed from his lips to my ears as surely as any kisses. The poem had been written to shock, to strip away pretension and artifice, and leave nothing but naked souls behind. His voice caressed the words, not a practiced orator’s voice, but a man’s, low and rumbling gently over the African plains. Gideon walked solemnly, enjoying the poem as entertainment, but I shivered with each step, creeping closer as he dropped his voice lower with each stanza. It was seduction by poetry, and if we had been alone, I would have taken his hand and pulled him close, putting my mouth to his and drinking every word.

But we weren’t alone, and just as he finished the fifth stanza, he stopped, raising his hand. He turned, silhouetted starkly against the dying sun.

“We’ll make camp here,” he announced.

“But there’s an hour of daylight left,” I protested. My knees were shaking and my ears buzzing with the sudden stopping.

He took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “We camp here,” he repeated. “The porters need time to set up the tents and start the cooking fires.” He slanted me a curious look. “What’s the matter, princess? Haven’t had enough yet?”

I didn’t answer him, and he didn’t seem to expect me to. He moved to stand in front of me. “Delilah,” he said softly.

I didn’t move away. “Yes?”

I looked into his eyes, wondering how they could possibly be so blue against the wide black pupils. He tipped his head down, then raised his hand, drawing one finger down my cheek. I shivered and leaned forward. He put his lips to my ear, grazing the curve as he spoke. “You need to go shoot some fresh meat.”