Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (15 page)

So much less lonely than those times she'd tried this act with humans.

 

Maybe from above, the crackle and thud of the humans had sounded like a few more gorillas approaching. Or it could be the apes were all crunching through too much celery to hear the people, the rain thundering down on the leaves all around.

Breathing hard, the rain on her hood, Max certainly heard nothing of the gorillas.

And so, she and the others simply stepped into the midst of the group. No time to give warning by clucking, no time to knucklewalk gradually in, no time for the apes to get used to the idea of the humans or for the humans to get used to the apes.

Max ducked under the branch of a bush, straightened up and saw beside her a large furry bureau. Her head swiveled.

She stood as close as in a cocktail party, as though she might be about to pass this silverback—Titus—the salmon croquettes.

Even as she jerked her gaze away, his eyes were widening. Time telescoped out.

Staring down at the ground now, she could feel him begin to straighten up, rising on his hind legs, all this width and heat and smell and sculpted black leather skin, all of his wet hair ruffling up like the fur on a dog when it's angry, making him bigger and bigger.

And seared into her memory was his face. Such a sense of presence, that he was
there
, staring back. Two dark shining eyes, thin chapped lips, a complex combination of emotion and soul. An immense face furrowing into fury.

He screamed with anger and, grabbing hold of a three-inch-wide branch, ripped it off a tree as easily as Max could tear paper.

From somewhere in the distance, Yoko's voice hissed, “Get
down
.”

But Max stood frozen, breathing through her mouth.

He slashed the branch through the air a foot from her head.

The breeze rushed past her face, startling her. She threw herself to the ground, as though before an emperor or God.

The speed angered him. The branch swished by twice more, just above, his screams cutting the air, more furious by the second.

He roared, galloped away and then back, a bristling blur of hair and mass. She clenched every muscle in her body. Yoko had said she could not run, not run. He slid to a halt a few feet away, as he threw his arms up and up, the branch in his hands. Then it began to come down. His massive shoulders behind its weight, his back, his legs. The wood whistling through the air. She knew she'd never even make it to her feet. Don't move, don't move. Closing her eyes, forcing herself motionless, concentrating with all her strength.

The wood punched the earth a yard from her head. Through the ground, she heard the dull
whhmp
, like some far-off explosion. The branch shattered into a thousand pieces. Shreds of bark pattered down on her cheek.

Her breath sighed out her nose. She lay on the ground, slack as a wet towel.

As had happened after the buff had charged her, her jittery nerves realigned.

Complete silence. All the humans and gorillas motionless. After thirty seconds, maybe longer, he sidled a half step closer. One of his hands cautiously touched the ground a foot from her face. His fingers up close were leathery cigars, the dry skin so scuffed it was a light gray. Filled with a feeling of calm like cool water, she eyed his knuckles and fingernails.

An animal with cuticles, she thought.

She heard him sniff. His bristly chin lowered further.

And strangely enough,
she
glanced up.

Looked him in the eye. Not a flash-glance, a real look.

His brown eyes widened.

She didn't see his arm move, it was too fast, didn't feel his hand hit, her body simply became airborne, flying backward, the wind in her ears, then a loud
thwack
as she hit a tree
—
somehow the sound outside her body. She slid down the trunk to the ground. Lay there on her side, breathing.

Her eyes pointed ever so obediently now away from him. The shock focusing her mind.

Having shown his mastery of her, he coughed twice and moved off.

The idea of movement wasn't even a possibility in her head. Her heart
ba-bumped
rhythmically in her chest. Everything she saw appeared crisply luminous, as though lit from within. Three feet from her nose, along the underside of a fern's frond, she could pick out its granular dots of sporangia. The patterned precision mesmerized her.

She pictured herself gently nipping the sporangia off the frond like candy buttons from a strip of paper. She inhaled the scent of the grass near her cheek. Only gradually did the numbness of her body begin to shift to a throbbing along her ribs where she'd hit the tree.

Looking cautiously around, she found the gorillas were sixty feet uphill from her, throwing her occasional spooked looks. Yoko was sitting fifteen feet to her left and Mutara crouched a little past that. Both of them eating wild celery, putting on busy displays of being harmless primates while they stared at her. Her ribs now pulsing solidly with pain. She pushed herself up in stages into a sitting position, trying to look small. Something that shouldn't move grated together in her chest. Sparkling lights appeared in the periphery of her vision. At least one rib was fractured. She focused on the lights.

She ran one hand slowly over her side, testing for other injuries. She waited for the pasty taste of pain to retreat. Titus had only cuffed her with the back of one hand, the way one might discipline a dog.

The gorillas were clustered together, trying not to look nervous. They crunched and rustled through the underbrush, shooting glances at her from the corners of their eyes. Titus sat with his back turned to her, loudly uninterested, chomping on a bamboo shoot.

Yoko knucklewalked over on her hands and knees, imitating as best she could the way the gorillas moved, munching on celery, stopping occasionally to check if any of them were bothered by her movement.

Three feet from Max she stopped and whispered, “You ok?”

Max didn't nod because that might make her rib grate again. She kept her head very still and whispered, “Yes.” She tried to breathe moving only her belly, not her ribs.

“Don't ever look them in the eyes again, especially not Titus.”

“OK.”

“Gorillas consider staring aggressive. They tend to hit.”

“Yep.” As a child, hitting was how she'd instinctively reacted to staring also, until her mom made her stop.

“Also, don't get too close to them,” said Yoko. “They don't like it. Never touch them.”

“Alrightie.”

“Jesus, that was scary. You sure you're OK?”

And for a second time Max said, “Yes.” She did not like doctors with all their prodding and poking. She didn't want to go to the hospital at the base of these mountains, the one Yoko had said was bad. She would tightly wrap the rib tonight. That was probably all any doctor would do anyway.

“Well, stay fairly still today. Just let them get used to your presence. Be quiet and keep at least fifty feet away.” Yoko snuck a clipboard out of her knapsack. “Tell me if you need anything. OK?” She crawled over to a pile of poop and began to make notes.

Max's rib had changed from a throbbing to something close to a high-pitched humming, a white heat. She kept her body as still as she could. In an effort to distract herself, she watched the gorillas, willed herself into studying them. If at any point they looked at her, she darted her eyes away to make sure they didn't get angry.

They sat on their heels, hairy Buddhists monks, jutting vegetarian bellies. Combing their way through the foliage, they focused on plants, absorbed in their task. From sixty feet away, she tried to figure out what they were eating. Bamboo shoots, wild celery. One gorilla was plucking some type of berries off a bush. She couldn't identify the species of bush from here. Sometimes they tugged a plant or two out of the ground and chewed on roots, or reached up and yanked down moss or vines hanging from branches. The crunching and rustling sounds like a herd of moose rummaging. Occasionally there was a loud crack when a branch was broken.

A young gorilla the size of a five-year-old child glanced at her from around its mother's hip. Its face was as wrinkled as an old person's face, but with these shiny eyes. It glanced fast, then ducked back behind its mom.

When the other gorillas looked at Max, Yoko, or Mutara, it was with the same type of shy glance, and then they'd look away. At first she assumed this was from fear of the humans, but after a while, she noticed that this was how they looked at each other too, a short flick of a glance. Also when two or more of them ate off the same bush, they didn't seem to interact much. They gave each other room and waited their turn, eyes averted. They acted a bit like strangers in a cafeteria collecting their lunch, striving not to invade anyone else's personal space. This confused her because, from what Yoko had said, this was basically a family: Titus the father, the females the mothers. Yoko had told her this group of seventeen had been together for years, most of them born into it.

Puzzling this over, she noticed that, although they treated each other like strangers, they never wandered more than twenty feet from the group. As they moved through the jungle, they stayed clustered together, wanting this closeness.

The young gorilla she'd spotted before had wandered about seven feet away from its mom. It looked back at its mom, glancing fast, as though they'd never been introduced. Then it began a seemingly casual knucklewalk closer, strolling circuitously, until it was near enough to sit down with its back to the mother. A precise gap of twelve inches between their bodies.

Instantly recognizable to Max. Her mom and her on the couch.

Quickly she looked around, searching for other clues and spotted a female sitting in a beam of sunlight, eyes closed, no movement at all except for breathing.

Motionless and concentrated. Max's dad.

Surprised, she whispered, “Asparagus.”

U
ngan Singh found a N'derobbo to lead Jeremy to Otombe's village. Without Patsy, Jeremy was forced to walk everywhere, feeling the labor of travel, time dribbling by. Moving slower, he could notice more, found himself studying the river, the jungle, the grace of the N'derobbo's body and walk. The man had outlined ribs, while the joint of his knees bulged wider than his thighs. Not a fleshy people, Jeremy thought. They must run so much, chasing food and escaping danger.

At first he did not recognize the village as a village. The open gate, woven from nyika, merged seamlessly with the forest. The walls of the round huts were fashioned from cattle feces and mud, the roofs of woven grass—from a distance they had the appearance of small hillocks. Abruptly they snapped into focus as human habitation. He walked in through the gate, staring.

His guide led him to one hut, pounded the butt of his spear three times onto the ground, and called out a greeting. Otombe gracefully stooped out of a doorway that was no taller than Jeremy's hip. Inexplicably, Jeremy felt mortified, as though he had come upon Otombe snarling over a piece of meat. Through the door, the floor was visible, simple beaten earth. Looking around, almost everything he could see was made of grass, manure, animal skins, or mud.

“Otombe,” he said, inclining his head. “I hope your family is well.” Etiquette had always been his first recourse.

Otombe nodded, replied he hoped the same was true for him, no surprise visible in his face at Jeremy being here. He added nothing more to the conversation. A group of villagers began to form, staring at Jeremy.

He smiled uncomfortably. He was the only one he could see wearing anything he would refer to as trousers.

“I have come to request your help,” Jeremy said. “A lion has killed two men in camp. No one there is brave enough to help me hunt it.”

“It is not one lion,” said Otombe, “but two who work together.”

He was startled, not used to being contradicted. “How would you know?”

“They have been killing the N'derobbo, WaKikuyu, and Masai for months. The people track them, chase them. The lions always get away, always kill again. Never have there been such creatures.” After a short pause, he added, “They took my younger brother, not yet ten summers old.”

“Was he . . . Did he . . . survive?”

Otombe stared at him.

Jeremy blushed at his own North American innocence. “Why didn't you tell me what was happening?” By this time the crowd around them was large. He thought possibly every man, woman, and child in the village was standing within fifteen feet of him.

“Would you have done anything?” His eyes glittered. The interview was not going well.

Then a small child stepped forward, latched her fingers onto Jeremy's belt and started scrambling upwards.

“What does she want?” Jeremy asked, his hands held out, not sure if he were allowed to touch her, if her parents might react badly. Her tiny feet kicked for purchase on his calf, her arms straining, trying to scale him. She wore no clothes, only a necklace made of shells and a leather thong around her waist.

“To touch your hair,” Otombe spoke without emotion. “She has never seen anything like it.”

Jeremy looked down at her big eyes, bony legs and arms. She weighed no more than twenty pounds, yet—from the shape of her face and her facility of movement—seemed to be at least four years old.

He remembered once when his sister's child, Beatrice, was about this age, he had lifted her in his arms to feed Patsy a carrot. He had been surprised by the compact weight of her body, her strength as she strained upward with the carrot. There was no fear, not of the giant Patsy or himself. She had propped one hand back against his face for balance, using him without thought. His family had recently begun to withdraw from him, conversation stopped when he entered the room. Physical touch was a surprise. Her tiny hand had felt hot against his skin, her fingers pressed tight against his cheek. Ever since that day, he had loved her utterly.

For two nights in a row now, the only sleep he had gotten was dozing in the hunting blind. He was tired; this morning he had nodded off in a chair waiting for Singh to bring his breakfast. Whenever he could, he leaned his weight against a tree or a post, found himself blinking around at the sights as though he had imbibed a glass or two of wine. Perhaps he was not thinking with his usual restraint.

He forgot about this child's skin color, her nudity, the diseases Alan had warned him any of them might carry. He simply bent down on one knee, took off his hat and lowered his head. The girl's hand fluttered nervously over his hair three times, light as a wing, and then she laughed. A laugh sounding to his ears remarkably American, no accent here, no foreign trait, a child's straightforward delight.

And then, before he could arise, the other children rushed in, touching his hair and face, one running a finger over his pale lips, one tugging on his ear, all of their faces filled with surprise. The touches gentle. In the three weeks since he had moved here, to a construction camp of men, this was the first time he had been touched on purpose. For a moment, closing his eyes for a toddler to pat his eyelids, he felt such gratitude to be here, the strangeness of this Africa.

One of the adults clapped and called and, fast as that, the children were gone, running behind legs and up into arms, a cloud of red dust raised in their wake.

He got to his feet, busily brushing off his knees, hoping he had not offended anyone. Otombe was staring at him.

He tried to get back on track, sound businesslike. “Will you help me hunt the lions? I have some guns. They should help. We might be able to stop them from killing more.”

Otombe blinked surprised down at where the children had been a moment ago. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

 

Back in the railroad camp, Jeremy showed Otombe the hunting blind first, proud of it. Otombe walked slowly around it. Watching him closely for his approval, Jeremy realized he moved in a different fashion from the N'derobbo guide who had led him to Otombe's village. The other man had walked so smoothly, his head high, limbs relaxed, clearly part of a group whose only transportation was their own feet. Otombe instead walked with a slight waddle, his feet angled out a fraction, his back stiff. His eyebrows cocked artificially high. At first considering some mild birth defect or muscular inability, it took Jeremy a long moment to recognize—in this nearly naked man of a nilotic tribe—the English gait and facial expression. This was the inheritance his missionary foster parents had left him with.

There must be other changes in his mind and habits, in his desires and fears. Leaning down to the river for a drink, was Otombe surprised to see his own dark face reflected? Halfway between the cultures, was he at home in his village, or did he sometimes feel as isolated as Jeremy had been on his family farm?

On the walk to camp, Jeremy asked what recompense he wished for hunting the lions. Otombe was silent for a moment, then asked not for money but for food, five pounds of rice a day and ten pounds of meat, a forty-pound bonus of both for any lion they killed.

At this request, Jeremy reconsidered Otombe's stripped-down body, every tendon visible along his bony legs, the skin tight across his cheekbones. He had assumed this was simply the way these people were built, streamlined as antelope.

For the first time, he remembered the two-year-long drought that had just ended, no new crops yet able to mature.

Shamed, he nodded acquiescence to Otombe's request, tried to picture how many children he had seen in the village, how far ten pounds of meat would go.

Otombe stood looking in the window of Jeremy's hunting blind, shaking his head. “The lions have good vision. At night, they see you through this window.” He sniffed at the branches Jeremy had had tied to the blind as camouflage. “They can smell you. You forget. These creatures are different. They will not run away like duiker or gazelle. They are smart and very hungry. If they sense you in any way, they will hunt you.”

 

In the afternoon, Otombe led him to where the lions had killed two nights ago, a WaKikuyu village three miles distant along a game trail. Since he was a child, Jeremy had been riding in a carriage or on a horse. He had never realized how much energy walking could take, how much time. The prickly heat rash under his arms had spread across his chest and back, as well as in areas more private. His linen underclothes scraped against the rash with every step. Sticky with sweat, the spine protector gradually rumpled as he walked, climbing up his back, seemingly determined to crawl out his collar. Sweat bees dive-bombed his face and armpits. Jeremy nervously flapped his hands at them. Otombe, on the other hand, walked calmly on, hands at his sides, bees crawling across his face and arms.

“A sickness has killed off many of the Cape Buffalo,” said Otombe, his eyes as always scanning the nyika around them. The path was only two paces wide, the branches entwined thickly all around, even above. Jeremy kept his rifle in his hands. He imagined the lions dropping down on them from above, or springing on them from the side. Even if he saw them before they jumped, the distance would be so short, little more than the length of the rifle.

“Rinderpest,” said Jeremy, trying to concentrate on the conversation, rather than his fear. “That is the name of the disease. The physician at camp told me it was imported with European cattle.” A large dragonfly whizzed by his nose, making him jump.

Otombe shot his eyes at him. “There are many new diseases your people have brought, for both the humans and the animals. Fevers, measles, mumps, sores that come with intercourse.”

Jeremy stared at him, jarred by the word “intercourse.”

Otombe added, “Half of my people are dead.”

He was not sure how to respond. He had been told native people did not have a strong grasp of mathematical concepts. Otombe must be overestimating the impact.

Seeing his expression, Otombe looked away into the nyika. He turned the conversation back to the subject of the lions. “The Cape Buffalo are what the lions prefer to eat. There used to be herds of hundreds. Now not many remain. This land is dry, high up, few other animals live here. The drought and rinderpest have killed most of these.”

“So two of the lions have switched to humans instead,” Jeremy said.

Otombe nodded. “For the last few months, these lions have eaten a few from this village, a few from that. Then you arrived. The railroad. Hundreds of men, not many guns and no spears. At first you did not even build bomas.”

They emerged onto the savannah, the grass green and full from the recent rain. In places it had grown as tall as Jeremy's forehead. The blades swayed in the wind, brushing his face. Pausing for a moment, amazed at this ocean of grass viewed from the level of someone drowning in it, Jeremy lost sight of the shorter Otombe. He half-ran to catch up, the grass rustling loudly with his movements. If any animal stalked him here, he would never hear it over the noise of his own progress.

Fighting claustrophobia, he asked the first question he could think of. “Are both the lions female?”

“Excuse me?” Otombe stopped in the hallway of his passage, looking back at him.

“Are both of them female? The men in camp, the time they spotted one, it was maneless but apparently huge. I wondered if the second lion were female too.”

“Oh,” Otombe walked on, the panting laugh in his throat soundless. “These are Tsavo lions. For other lions, the ones down on the plains, life is easy, plenty of water, less heat. They sleep a lot, kill zebra and antelope, smaller animals. For Tsavo lions, not much lives up here worth eating except buffalo, two or three times the size of a zebra, sharp horns, dangerous. The lions here, they are bigger, stronger. Some stand this tall.” He held his hand out, four feet from the ground. Jeremy stared into the space under his hand, trying to fill it with a head, chest, legs and paws. He tried to imagine this creature padding forward through the grass, its face appearing at his elbow. “The males, from the heat and maybe the thorns, many times they have no manes.”

Jeremy absorbed this. “You think they are both males?”

“From the size of the paw prints, yes.” After a moment, he continued. “Some people, they say Tsavo lions are more aggressive. In comparison to a buffalo, a human without a gun is simple to kill.”

“Have you ever hunted a Tsavo lion?”

For the second time Otombe stopped, facing Jeremy directly, the grass waving in front of his face. “I told you before. I am not a white. I am not tall with a loud voice and a gun. My tribe and I, we survive by keeping away from danger.”

The wind blew, the grass swayed forward, hiding all of Otombe's face but part of his forehead and one eye. “But do not worry. To avoid a lion, I have to be able to think like the lion, where he will be, what he wants. We have a gun now and a need. I will think like these lions and I will find them.”

His eye watched Jeremy. “Then you, you have to shoot fast and well.”