The Crocodile's Last Embrace (12 page)

The old woman thwacked Jade atop her head with the digging stick. Jade felt the sting even through her thick felt hat.

“Beat foolishness out of your head,” said Mumbi. She raised her hand to strike again, but Jelani caught her arm.

“Mother, stop!” he said. His tone was gentle but firm.

“Foolishness in her head,” repeated Mumbi. “I have seen the crocodile take hold of the lioness and drag her under. One waits for this one now.” She raised her stick again.

“Mother, go back to your hut,” ordered Jelani.

Mumbi waved her digging stick in the air as she returned to the gate. She called over her shoulder, “A lioness alone and away from a pride will die. Foolishness!”

“What did I do to earn that?” asked Jade, rubbing her head.

“Be grateful it was not a bigger stick,” said Jelani.

 

JADE’S CAMPFIRE BLAZED, providing warmth in the cool evening air as well as protection from whatever stalked behind glowing eyes. The air was rich with a fine spray, thanks to the arc of falls a few hundred yards downstream. Their muted roar made a backdrop to the jackals yipping in the distance. A few swallows fluttered overhead while she pitched her tent.

A second, smaller ring of stones housed Jade’s cooking fire. After photographing the falls from below, she had grabbed her pole and managed to land two large rhino yellowfish below the falls, but not until after they’d both put up a considerable fight. Once back in camp, she’d quickly scaled and filleted one, placing it in her skillet to cook. The other she filleted and gave to Biscuit. A fish eagle, reminiscent of the bald eagle with its great white head, had eyed Jade’s catch for a while, even following her up to the top of the falls. It flew away downstream after Jade tossed the head and entrails into the river.

Now the fragrant scent of fish browning in butter filled the air, and Jade inhaled deeply.
This is the life!
She’d known that she’d feel better once she got out of Nairobi. She loved Bev and Avery, but it was getting harder and harder to stay in Parklands. She grabbed a folded cloth and used it to remove the water pot from the fire. Since none of the shops were open on Sunday when she left, she hadn’t been able to replace the coffee that Bev took. Jade threw in a handful of spiced red tea and let it steep while she listened to her fish sizzle.

I should go to Lake Victoria and do a story there. Get away.
Then, before the thought was finished, another followed on its heels.
And what if Sam comes back when you’re gone? Do you expect him to hang around and wait for you?

She ignored her own question, since it broached the next one: what if he didn’t come back? Jade tended her fish instead and tried not to focus on life without Sam. It didn’t work. She knew that, ultimately, she’d need to leave Kenya to avoid memories. But with so many painful ones awakened after her trip to Europe, Jade wasn’t sure where she could go next. A bit of butter popped and Jade turned her attention to her dinner. After she flipped it over to cook on the other side, she carefully decanted a mug of tea. She took a tentative sip, followed by a second and a third. The brew ran hot and flavorful down her throat. She still missed her coffee, especially the aroma, but this would do for now.

Jade was considering mixing a batch of biscuits when a familiar call drifted down on the evening air from Ol Donyo Sabuk. Jade remained motionless and listened as the male lion hurled his throaty challenge to the last half hour of sunlight. As the call died away in a series of softer
harrumph
s, she felt her throat constrict and her eyes dampen. Her own words to Sam came back to her as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud.

“Stop it!” she scolded herself out loud. “He left you behind. You’re wasting your life fretting over one man.” She let her anger deepen in an attempt to drive out more maudlin emotions. “When I do see him, he’s getting a piece of my mind!”

In an effort to occupy herself, she decided to make the biscuits. She slid the fish onto her plate, covered it with the heavy cast-iron lid, and opened a box where she stored the wooden bowl, flour canister, lard tin, and baking powder. Her hands trembled and she felt her mind race from Sam to David to Lilith, never staying on one person for more than a few seconds.

She tugged at the canister’s lid and pulled it off in a jerky movement, spilling some of the flour.
Idiot.
Jade measured the flour using her shaking hand, closed the tin, and reached into the box for the lard can. But when she’d lifted it from the box, she dropped the can and yanked her hand back. Stuck to the bottom of the lard can was a dirty envelope coated with dried mud.

Jade’s heart hammered in her chest and ears, and her throat constricted. She tried to swallow the knot growing inside her. Reluctantly, she pulled off the envelope and opened it. Inside was a mud-stained photograph of her and Sam, taken at the Nairobi railway station the day Sam had left. A rent sliced through Sam’s face, as if someone had stabbed it with a knife. She turned the photograph over. On the back was written,
You’ll never belong to him. You belong to me even if I have to come out of the grave for you
. It was signed,
David
.

Jade’s cry pierced the air as the anguish knifed through her chest. She hugged her midsection to stop the sensation that her innards were spilling out. But the visceral pain was as relentless as a pack of wild dogs devouring her alive. She curled into a ball and collapsed on her knees beside the chop box. Biscuit, alerted by her outcry, hurried to his mistress’ side. Jade’s left hand reached for the cheetah’s comforting presence and clamped around his barrel chest. Her other shook as it gripped the haunted memento. Then, in a movement that might have been involuntary, Jade sat up and flicked the offending photograph into the cook fire.

It caught immediately and the reddened flames licked at her face and Sam’s.

Forgotten were the fish, the biscuits, the pot of tea. The river’s rush and tumble drifted into nothingness. Only her heartbeat was real, beating a rapid staccato. She thought she heard an elephant trumpet somewhere nearby. How many times could a person endure this measure of pain and survive? Each blow struck deeper, twisting her emotions, her body, and her mind.

Jade looked up from the fire with the sudden feeling that she was being watched. Her eyes darted from side to side as she searched the darkness for someone or something that stalked her. The darkness itself shifted and crawled like a giant, creeping maw opening to swallow her.

That was when she saw the wizened old native encased in his gray cloak swaying from side to side as he watched her from across the river.

She felt Biscuit strain against her grip and saw that he, too, was staring across the river. The ephemeral image pointed from his mouth to his head as though trying to tell her something. She tried to reply that she didn’t understand, but he vanished into an evening mist much as he’d long ago slipped away into the fog-shrouded forests of Mount Marsabit. Only an elephant’s distant trumpeting drifted back to her in the night air.

 

JADE WOKE TO THE MORNING SUN warming her tent. She didn’t recall having entered it. She pulled out her pocket watch and stared at it in disbelief. Seven thirty! She’d
never
slept so late. As she wound her watch and slipped it back in her pocket, she tried to recall what had driven her into her tent so early last evening. She remembered cooking her fish and starting to make biscuits. Beyond that, everything jumbled into a nightmare, the same one she’d fought her way through a half dozen times last night: a fire, Sam burning, a great elephant flailing at a crocodile while women drew water. She didn’t even recollect crawling into her bedroll.

When she ran her hand through her matted hair, her scalp prickled and her head hurt. Jade spat, once she could make enough saliva. Her tongue felt thick and the saliva pasty. Biscuit padded forward, a freshly killed grouse in his jaws. He deposited it at Jade’s feet and butted her with his big head.

“Thanks,” she said, picking up the gift. He’d never brought his kills to her before. “I must really have been in a bad way last night. My mouth tastes like I ate an old shoe.” Biscuit responded by licking her hand.

Jade poked at the campfire’s ashes and added a bit of kindling to refresh the few remaining coals. When the twigs caught, she carefully added the last of the sticks she’d gathered yesterday, saving one to spit part of the grouse. She drew her knife and skinned the bird, then cut off one leg and thigh. She gave the rest of the bird back to Biscuit and skewered her leg quarter with the remaining stick. After propping it up over some stones at the edge of the fire, Jade wandered off into the brush to relieve herself before returning to the river to wash her face.

The cold water felt good after such a feverish night, and with no danger of crocodiles at the top of the falls, she dunked her head to wash away the sweat from her hair. By then, it was time to turn her grouse leg over. She thought about reheating the leftover tea, then decided she’d dallied too long this morning and settled for several long pulls at her canteen.

The river and the canteen both went a long way towards reviving her, and Jade’s stomach growled with renewed hunger. Biscuit glanced up from his breakfast, and Jade apologized.

“Sorry, boy. Didn’t mean to startle you. Your food’s safe from me.” She turned her own portion again, then eyed the tightly covered plate left to one side. When she lifted the cast-iron lid, she saw that the cooked fish had been kept safe from ants and other scavengers. Jade picked it up with her fingers and tasted it.

She devoured it before turning her attention to her cooking bird. When it was done, she used her knife to slice chunks off the bone and eat them. Even with the sour taste in her mouth, the roasted meat was delicious.

“Thanks, Biscuit. I needed that, and I don’t think I felt like fishing this morning.”

A pygmy kingfisher flew past on its way below the falls, as though to mock her fishing abilities. The bright orange head and bill blazed in sharp contrast to the iridescent blue on its back. Jade followed it with her eyes until it disappeared below the falls, then turned her gaze to the opposite shore.

It had been sunset when she’d had her vision. Between the strain of receiving that photo and the campfire’s flickering glow, she couldn’t have seen anything clearly, she reasoned. Perhaps it had been only one of the Kikuyu watching her curiously before hurrying on to the village. But in her heart, she knew what she’d seen and no amount of rationalization could change that. The Kikuyu didn’t roam far afield after dark settled.

She’d seen a man, Boguli, who’d never existed to begin with. An old native whom she’d met on Mount Marsabit when she’d been tracking the ivory poachers. A man whom she’d photographed but who only appeared on film as the shadow of an ancient bull elephant, one who’d been shot by those very poachers. Jade had never been able to explain Boguli to herself. It had taken one of the old French priests at the mission to put him in perspective.

She’d accepted that idea then, mainly because of its comforting nature and because she was sitting at the priest’s big wooden refectory table enjoying hot bread and a mug of coffee. Right now with the rushing drone of the falls near her, it seemed eerie. And had she really held a picture of Sam last evening? Or had that been her imagination, too?

Jade took the stick that had held her grouse leg and poked at the fire, pushing the remaining sticks to one side. She rummaged through the ashes, but nothing recognizable appeared.
It wasn’t here!
She’d dropped it into last night’s cooking fire, not this campfire. She hurried over to that smaller, separate ring of stones and pawed the cold ash. A corner of photographic paper stuck out from where it had wedged between two of the stones. No image was visible, but the paper itself was proof that she hadn’t imagined the picture. She stuck the corner into her shirt pocket and wiped her sooty fingers on her handkerchief.

“Someone is playing at some nasty games, Biscuit,” she said. “Someone who lives around Nairobi, too.”

Suddenly she wanted to return and check her bungalow for any other sign of intrusion. Whoever had left that envelope had left it in her chop box, which meant they’d been inside her home.
Finch warned me to keep my door locked.
The thought made her skin prickle. Jade looked in the box for the envelope but couldn’t find it.

“I must have dropped it into the fire, too.”

She washed her skillet in the river, and used it to carry water back to the camp to douse the fire. Then, after taking down her tent, she carried the gear in two trips down the rocks to Avery’s truck, Biscuit following. As she loaded supplies, she remembered the truck parked downriver that she’d seen yesterday. Maybe someone had come up to her campsite while she was fishing and left the envelope in her box.

“Let’s see if this person is still there, Biscuit.” Even if they weren’t guilty, they might have seen someone nearby. Maybe they saw the native that she mistook for Boguli.

Twenty minutes and many more jolts later, Jade spied the truck she’d seen the other day. It was parked in the same location and, as before, no one was nearby. She turned Avery’s Dodge towards the river and parked forty feet away. “Hello,” she called as she stepped out. “Anyone here?”

She listened carefully for an answering sound but heard nothing. Jade picked up her rifle, chambered a round, and held it at the ready as she walked slowly towards the abandoned truck, her ears and eyes attentive to anything that hinted of danger. Only the slow murmur of the Athi greeted her. Biscuit padded softly behind her.