It was dusk on a new-moon night. I was several kilometers away from the road, completely lost after searching for an elephant carcass to no avail and somehow breaking my arm in the process. I had wrapped it in a piece of my shirt that I had torn off from the bottom, leaving my stomach exposed to the thorns.
The whole area was dense thorny scrub, not a climbable tree in sight. If only I could get myself up higher out of the bush, I thought, I might be able to see the road in the distance.
My body was sore from too many scratches, and I was dying of thirst. There was no way I could get back to my vehicle safely in the dark with a broken arm and only two bullets left.
Not ready to give in, I walked faster, the strap of my .458 rifle digging into the shoulder of my good arm. I had to find a way to the road. I could move a lot faster that way and would be confident that I wasn’t going in circles.
As dusk turned to pitch-dark night and the creaking, crackling sounds of the bush closed in around me, I ended up climbing a termitarium, wedging the rifle next to my good shoulder. It felt better up there, even if it was only a few meters off the ground. I spent much of a sleepless night trying to tame my vivid imagination, until a lioness came prowling.
She had crept up behind me and grunted. I was so surprised that I fired a shot to chase her off, which nearly blew out the shoulder of my good arm. I dropped the rifle and it skittered to the ground below me. “Damn it!”
I waited a while to move, but eventually retrieved the rifle and settled back on my perch. Then the hyenas came. First there was a whoop from a distance. Although my arm was broken and in a sling, it wasn’t bleeding, and I was determined not to fall asleep. I could handle this, I thought.
A while later, there was another whoop and then that dreaded, horrific giggling hyenas make when excited, often about food. The hair on the back of my neck rose as I sensed movement all around me. Another call at close range and, suddenly, they closed in on me from three directions, giggling, laughing, and moaning demonically.
I braced myself and shot my last bullet. The hyenas scattered.
Finally there was silence and I lost track of time and nodded off, only to wake without being able to take a breath. I was surrounded again by demonic giggling. One of the grimacing devils grabbed my hand and another my foot, as a third delivered the crushing bite to my windpipe.
I woke at dawn in a cold sweat, totally disoriented, the sound of hyenas becoming the loud barking and yipping of a pack of dogs running down the street. I rolled onto my side, holding the arm that had been broken in my dream.
The vivid nightmares were getting more elaborate. And it was getting harder and harder to shake them when I woke up. They stayed vivid throughout the day, and it was affecting my judgment. I had to get some better sleep and hoped to switch to doxycycline, but I didn’t want to have to go back to Geldenhuis to get it. I’d have to get Craig to deliver a supply.
I lay there for a few minutes, breathing as slowly as I could, trying to rid my mind of the horrific bloody images of being torn apart. The damp air was cool this time of morning, before the heat took over. Although we were heading into the full-on dry season, the humidity still lingered. That would change soon as June approached.
I sat up when I heard Jon groaning at the dogs from his room. He was cursing the incessant barking as he turned the radio on. I heard a BBC radio newscaster’s voice reporting continued gross violations of human rights in South Sudan…Misconceptions fuel Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
I could hear Jon get up and shuffle through the concrete hall toward the kitchen, where it sounded like Nigel already had the kettle on.
Syrian refugees in Tripoli and their Lebanese supporters protest the election expected to give the president a third seven-year term.
I got up and put on a short-sleeved nylon shirt and a thin cotton wrap skirt. I combed my hair out and put it up with a chopstick. Then I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and splash water on my face. After brushing my teeth and thinking I looked like hell after all the nightmares, I turned on the tap and splashed my face with cold water. Mid-splash I heard a voice behind me.
“I trust you had a terrible night?”
Startled, I looked up in the mirror to see Jon’s unexpectedly handsome torso above a kikoy sarong.
He leaned against the doorway provocatively. “Dogs penetrating the REM and nipping at the heels of sanity’s unsuspecting Achilles tendon?”
I couldn’t help staring for a second and then put my head down again and continued splashing. “Worse.” I spat water out of my mouth. “Hyenas.”
“Catherine, you are one of us!” Jon beamed, holding out a fresh towel. “Come, I’ve made tea.”
I turned around and looked at his torso again before wiping my face and following him to the kitchen, now getting the chance to admire his back. I had the sudden urge to be alone with him again, like in that intimate moment back on his houseboat. This thought surprised me, as I had gone to bed relieved that that moment had passed without being realized. But there it was again. Somehow his regular clothes made him look unkempt, more wiry than muscular, more hopeless than controlled. But seeing the muscles on his back move made me want to touch them, to have them take control of me. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable in some time.
Jon handed me a mug, and I sat down at the table. “Thanks, Jon. Good morning, Nigel.”
“Morning, Catherine. Sorry about the dogs.”
“Me, too.”
Jon stared at me as I took a sip. He winced. “Would you like a dollop of cream?”
I smiled and shook my head as there was a knock at the door.
Jon looked down at his watch and moaned. “Come in.”
The knocking became banging.
“Bloody hell.” Jon marched through the empty living room to the front door. From the kitchen, I watched him peer out through the louvers and then open the door.
He shook a finger at the youth standing on the porch, wearing an untucked brightly colored shirt. “I told you not to come here. I thought I had made myself abundantly clear.” Jon fumed and waved the boy off. “Now, go! If you have information, I’ll see you at the wholesaler at noon.”
“Chief, it’s bigger this time.”
“Damn it. I will see you in town, later. Leave now!”
“But, Chief, it’s tonight. If you want in, you know where you have to be.”
Jon shook his finger again. “Stop calling me ‘Chief.’ See me in town around lunchtime.”
Jon slammed the door and marched back into the kitchen. “Bloody clueless.” He poured himself more tea and dug his hand into a box of rusks as there was a tapping at the kitchen window louvers.
“Ernest is involved,” said the boy.
Jon spun around and shooed him off. “Ernest has been incorporated into the flesh of a crocodile, now, get out of my garden!”
I assumed that Jon didn’t want this boy knowing that he knew that Ernest was alive.
The boy spoke quickly. “The doc’s got a new deal with UNITA. Four hundred tusks this time. Be ready at the Piggery with backup.” Jon tried to grab the youth between the broken louver and torn screen, and caught his hand for a second, but the boy ran off.
Jon clenched his fist while he gulped down his tea. “Cream of this country’s youth. They should be out inventing things!”
I watched the boy disappear through the neighbor’s hedge. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
“He’s a chancer. They’re all bloody chancers, these smart youths with their dark sunglasses and bad Salvation Army shirts.” He slammed down his mug. “Four hundred tusks! They all think they’re so very clever.”
“And Ernest?” Nigel asked. “I thought it took a month for a crocodile to digest a whole body,” he said with a smirk.
Jon swung at Nigel in jest and marched off to his bedroom. He called back to Nigel, “You don’t want to think about how fast the crocodile can digest a meal.”
Nigel and I sat in silence, listening to Jon’s murmurings from the other room until he reemerged in his ministry uniform just as the cricket scores were announced on the BBC. India had beaten Jamaica again. “Yes!” Jon clapped his hands in triumph.
Nigel got up to leave. “Jon, I’ll see you this afternoon?”
“Yes. After three. Have a meeting with the magistrate at two. We’ll get to the bottom of this evidence debacle with the good doctor’s case.” He looked at me. “You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced our fine legal system.”
I tried to smile, but in the back of my mind, I was worried about Craig’s concerns about the evidence I obtained illegally in Zambia holding up in court. “Just let me know if there’s anything more WIA can do. In the meantime, I’ll work on coordinates for the census areas.”
Jon grinned. “Catherine, you’re a good man in Africa.”