The pain was gone. Poof. Vanished. I willed it away in my sleep.
Now, more awake and aware than ever, I stoked the fire and boiled some water. I observed the superficial bullet hole. It was crusting into some sick version of yellow that had no business being a color. I didn’t fancy the look of it, so I grabbed the bucket from the fire with my bare hands. Was the handle scalding hot? Probably. I wasn’t fazed. Instead, I poured the searing water over my shoulder. That did the trick. That cauterized the shit out of it. Steam fizzled from flesh and I breathed it in — the stank of my own hot skin. With the blood cleared away, my shoulder was akin to an unblinking eye. It looked at me and through me.
What are you looking at, wound?
A smirk dressed my face. I knew that this scene had to play itself out in order to get to the next one. I relished what was to come. I hungered for it. It was like I was that eager child again, preparing for my first hunt. It was glorious.
Soon, death will reign.
A glimmer of something behind the shack caught my eye. I made my way over to it — an inch of metal poking out of the dirt. Using my hands, I dug around. As I excavated the thing, I was immediately reminded of the digging I’d done the day before. Then, I’d buried Kuwajii; now, Kuwajii’s machete was unearthed.
I gave Kuwajii the weapon when we celebrated his twelfth birthday. I shaped it out of iron, fire, and sleepless nights. When I handed it to him, I lectured the boy that the gift did not make him a man. I explained that the machete represented manhood, but to unleash that ultimate gift, the boy would have to first learn to wield the massive weapon, and wield it well.
When young Kuwajii tried to lift it with his small hands, he was, of course, unsuccessful. The thing probably weighed more than he did. I refrained from laughing at the humorous sight. It would have crushed the boy. But it was a blessed thing to witness as Kuwajii flexed every muscle and every hope he had to raise his gift. I allowed him his struggle for a couple minutes and then, tenderly, reached for it. He let the machete go and I raised it effortlessly, high over my head. I slam-stuck it into a giant log by the fire. I used such skilled force that the log did not split but rather, swallowed the blade up. Just as I intended.
“When you can remove the blade from this log,” I told him. “Then will you be a man.” And he immediately went to it. Bless his soul. He yanked on that handle like it was the reason he was born. The veins in his neck popped out and sweat poured off him. The machete did not budge an inch.
At last exhausted, Kuwajii collapsed back to the earth.
“What you need, my boy, is incentive,” I said. “It is incentive that gives a man his strength. And it is strength that makes a man a man.”
He had his breath back and he sat on the log between me and his stubborn birthday present.
“That’s enough for tonight,” I said. “Happy birthday, Kuwajii.”
As I lay down on my bed of straw that night, I once again heard Kuwajii’s ineffectual grunts outside. I drifted off to sleep pondering the man he would one day become.
That was a good day — the day when Kuwajii turned twelve. Or at least, the day we’d designated as his birthday.
How did we ever get from there to here?
I sniffed the air. It smelled of early August. I would be turning thirty soon. A few days after that, Kuwajii would turn sixteen.
No.
Kuwajii would never turn sixteen.
I repeated the heartbreaking facts in my head.
Kuwajii told me I had no right. Kuwajii was an infant. Kuwajii shot me. Kuwajii was a boy. Kuwajii held my hand. Kuwajii. Kuwajii. Kuwajii. These memories I have shared with you. They run together. They are distorted. This is the heart of it.
I was hungry. I wanted to get up and go, but I had to eat. I needed my strength to make the trek to Popaltree. I pulled some random meat from our stash, chopped it up, ate it raw, washed it down with half a gallon of water. My body was replenished. I was lucky that it never went into shock, depleted and emotionally wrecked as it was.
The proof of Kuwajii’s manhood lay before me. Somewhere along the way, he’d finally managed to remove the machete from the log and then, for some reason, had hidden it in the low dirt.
I tried to recall the last time I’d seen his machete stuck in the log. It could have been days or months prior. When you are used to seeing a thing time and again, it can, in a way, always remain there in front of your eyes.
I spoke softly to his ghost, wherever it may be.
“You are a man, Kuwajii. Forgive me for not noticing.”
I picked up Kuwajii’s machete and felt its raw power pulsate. I supposed I would never see our humble home again. I took a last, savoring look and then left it all behind.
It was a half-day hike to Popaltree. I moved swift, like a black panther late to a warthog feast. When I approached the outskirts of the damned town, I encountered an old hound dog chained to a post, standing on his haunches. He peered me over, displaying his worn gums behind withered teeth. The poor thing was attempting to appear menacing, but was really no more dangerous than a beetlebug without wings. I admired his gumption.
“Good doggy,” I said, allowing him to smell my groin. In under a minute, I had him in the palm of my hand — literally. The old hound slobbered my fingers and I let him. When he was quite satisfied that I wasn’t going to cause him any harm, I took back my hand, shook off the goo, and rubbed his head.
“Stay here, pup,” I said.
I walked slowly into town and found the same tavern I’d caught Kuwajii in weeks earlier. I ascended the three rotting stairs to the porch. The machete I held in my hands was a thing of beauty, stained with my own dried blood.
The doors parted and I entered. There was no piano to stop playing, no din to cease, no jukebox to be silenced. This was Zambia. There was nothing. With that said, the handful of scumbags in that bar definitely took notice. They hushed and slurped their drinks. The bartender was the first to speak.
“You leave your weapon at the door. This is a peaceful place.”
Yeah, right. If it was so peaceful, then why did a group of six broad-shouldered men all lower their hands to their waists?
“I know what this place is,” I said. “It is a pisshole for vermin to shit their piss and lap it up like feral dogs. And then ask their dicks for seconds.”
The biggest of the six men exploded out of his seat. This was him. The man I was after. Had to be. The five vagabonds with him didn’t move a muscle but just looked up at the standing man, ready to go at a moment’s notice.
“Who you calling vermin, you bastard son of a bitch?” Good. So he knew me. My instinct to come here had been dead right. This was the man responsible for Kuwajii’s death.
The bartender finished cleaning a stein and motioned for me to sit down at the bar.
“First one’s on the house, son.”
The poor, well-meaning fool thought there was a way he could stop what was about to happen.
“That first drink will be your last, Marcus Fox.” My enemy spit in my direction. Kuwajii’s maniac machete grew warm in my hand.
“You killed Kuwajii.” It was not a question.
“I always knew you’d resurface,” he said. “I saw you on the day we killed your whole damned tribe. We made a fortune off those lion skins, you know. You were just a boy then, but you somehow managed to kill many of my men. You did me a favor, Marcus Fox! You left me with fewer men to split the profit! I should be thanking you! Hell, I wish you’d killed more of ’em!”
He had himself a big, portly belly and his joke made him laugh from his fat gut up. His good humor moved the same way I envisioned Kuwajii’s machete would slit him open. His five henchmen also laughed for a moment, but only for a moment, as slowly it dawned on each of them that their leader had just wished them dead.
“I always wondered why you didn’t come for me,” the talking dead man continued. He seemed quite disinterested in his coming apocalypse and even dared to saunter up to the bar and help himself to another pour from the tap. The bartender minded not.
“At first, I was sure you would seek your revenge. But time went on and I never saw you again. And honestly, I stopped giving a diseased rat’s asshole about you. I had all the fortune I needed to last my entire life in this shit corner of this shit world. So I figured, fuck you, and I got on.” He took a big swig of his beer and wiped his mouth with a sweaty arm. I kept my silence a little longer and allowed my rage to swell.
“And then, holy shit, guess what happens fifteen years later? Some dipshit kid comes around looking for trouble. Well I gave it to him, didn’t I? I gave him the business and he was none the wiser. I poisoned that dumb twat’s mind, just for fun.”
The excrement sack’s mouth flapped on and on. He was antagonizing me with his sad truth — that he existed only to spread poison and to get rich from death. I took his sour bait. His words had the opposite effect of what he’d intended. Rather than egging me into a hurried mistake, his idiot drivel fueled my strategic acumen. I bit my lip and bided my time.
“Do you know how long I have manipulated your people? The Shakasantie were the dumbest breed of humans on the planet.” He laughed. “Wait, no, I take that back. Seeing as you, Marcus, believed in those weak puppets and believed the boy you raised was anything more than a growing weapon of my design … well, that makes you the dumbest breed of human, doesn’t it?”
“You slaughtered them. You killed them all. For what?”
“For a cool two mil on the black market, son.”
“I am not your son.”
“You’re not much of anything, are you now? Never were, by the looks of you. Why don’t you tell me, tell yourself in fact, just what the fuck it is you are doing out here in the wild, Marcus Fox?”
I did not blink. The man standing before me was responsible for every hatred in my heart.
“I have long wondered,” he went on. His words never stopped pouring out of his abhorrent, pockmarked, bulbous face. “Why did you do nothing to stop their extinction? How do you live with yourself?”
He was going to die soon. That was certain. I answered him only to help find the answers within myself.
“It was too horrible to be real,” I said, mostly to my own conscience. “I never fully believed in my own memories. The Shakasantie — they were almost too beautiful to be real.”
Shumbuto. Shandra-Namba. I love you. Forgive me.
“Also, there was the boy to consider. I had to look after the boy.”
The dead man before me laughed wildly, and his five companions joined him. I allowed them their final merriment.
“The boy!” He spit on the dirt on the ground where he would soon lie. “And how did that work out for you?” he asked.
“Kuwajii,” I said. “Why turn him against me?”
“You turned him yourself, you dumb fuck! That idiot boy came wandering into town looking for answers. Do you think it mattered what the answers were? He just wanted someone to blame. All his life, he’d wondered about his parents’ murderer. According to him, you never gave him any bit of a truth. You made it too easy, Marcus! He needed very little prodding. All I did was point him in the direction of his home.”
“I did not kill Shumbuto. I did not kill Shandra-Namba. I did not end the Shakasantie.”
“No, but you didn’t keep them alive either, did you? You’re not very good at keeping anyone alive, it seems. Least of all yourself!”
He was fast, but I was faster. I raised Kuwajii’s machete one half of one microsecond before he freed his gun from its holster and fired. Sparks flew when the bullet ricocheted off the mighty blade and lodged into the wall, six feet behind him. Clutching his throat with pudgy, blood-soaked fingers, the man who took my family became acquainted with his end.
The rest of the soon-to-be-forever-forgotten Doom Squad stared stupidly into the gaping crater of his gurgling trachea. He danced around for a few seconds, staring into the void of wherever he was headed and then collapsed at my feet, face first, in his own choked, red spit. He was still. He was dead. Everything had happened exactly as I planned.
“Behold the power of Kuwajii’s blade!” My voice boomed off every wall, bringing forth dark, suffering shadows. The remaining five men trembled before me as I waved the maniac machete in tiny arcs and spirals, captivating the damned.
“Kuwajii, son of Shumbuto, was the chosen one — the one the Shakasantie had long foretold would restore them to glory.”
I paused, reflecting, choosing my words wisely for those who might retell them someday.
“This beast of a man who was your leader was right: I allowed the Shakasantie to perish. Every last one of them. They are all dead because of my intrusion, my disruption upon their humble existence. I could save not a one.”
I lowered Kuwajii’s machete. In that moment, I knew I would never kill, hunt, or know joy again.
“I will spare the rest of your lives, so that you may carry on with your worthless miseries. But heed what I tell you now: Marcus Fox is not a murderer. Marcus Fox is an accidental exterminator. I, Marcus Fox, am the greatest nobody Shakasantie ever knew, the falsest kinsman Zambia ever saw, and the fiercest, most insignificant hunter Africa ever had the poor misfortune to host. But now, now I am no more. Now I am as dead as my father and mother and brother before me.”
I was finished. There was nothing else.
I looked down at the man I’d killed. I felt nothing.
The bartender made a noise behind me. “I think you should have that beer now,” he said.
I walked over, accepted it, and drank it in one, large gulp.
“No law here in Popaltree,” said the bartender. “But if there was, you’d be innocent. I saw what happened. Don’t believe that I saw it. But I know that I saw it. And I’ll swear to it, just as I saw it. God be my witness. Why, that was God’s work there!” He pointed toward the floor where the Shakasantie slayer lay.
“Wasn’t God’s work,” I grunted. I finally understood a truth I must have known my whole life. “There is no God.”
I placed Kuwajii’s blade on the bar and walked on out of there. I figured I would go somewhere quiet and hang myself.
Outside, I sensed something skulking nearby, unseen, around the corner maybe, behind the western wall of the bar? Figuring it was yet another member of the Doom Squad I hadn’t accounted for, I sat on the front steps and let him come for me. Everything was nothing now. There was nothing left for me to do or be. My story was over. I deserved whatever end I had coming. Let it come.
And then, I was wet with slobber.
It was the hound dog, licking my face, unafraid. His chain was nowhere in sight.
“Now how in the hell did you get free, you rascal?” I asked him. He barked and ran away from me, signaling me to follow.
My new four-legged friend led me to a dock hanging over the Zambezi. My sense of direction must have been on the fritz, as I didn’t even realize we were that close to the river. Halfway across the dock, the dog looked back and barked again, begging me to keep up.
There was a seaplane tied to the two pillars. On the side, in big, bold, blue letters, it read “Safari Hunter.” I figured this to be the property of the man I had just expertly killed. Was the dog his, too?
The hound dog howled, nipped, and leapt, clearly trying to tell me it was time for both of us to escape this place, once and for all.
“All right,” I told him. “If you’ve got a death wish, too, we might as well finish it out together.”
I opened the seaplane door and the happy mutt jumped inside. Once settled in the surprisingly comfortable cockpit seat, I started randomly flicking switches until one of them started the engine.
“Well that’s a bit of good fortune,” I said. My companion barked his approval.
Having no idea whatsoever what I was doing, I flicked another couple of switches until the propeller started to turn. I then grabbed hold of the wheel and pushed it forward. Water spouted up behind us like an upside-down fountain. The plane didn’t move an inch. I eased off the throttle and thought it over.
“Of course,” I said, then opened the pilot side door. The dog barked again, and as I stepped back out onto the dock, I made a mental note to name him. I inspected all four corners of the plane and found the ropes that were holding us back. I untied and tossed them aside. Once released from its mooring, the plane started to move.
“Fuck,” I exclaimed, and the hound dog barked a “fuck” back.
The seaplane slowly picked up speed as I rushed back to the pilot’s side, opened the door, and dove in, to be greeted by more perturbed yawps.
“Yeah, Charlie, I’m sorry,” I said. And with that, the fleabag had himself a name.
As we sped downriver, I tried to recall any helpful memories from the last time I was in a plane. Since that brought to mind nothing but pain, I decided to just wing it.
Heh. Wing it. Get it? ’Course you do.
I grabbed hold of the wheel once more and pushed, harder this time. The plane shot out even faster.
This flying thing is easy, I thought. Then I saw the big rock. It stood out about 500 meters ahead. I tried to turn the wheel left and then right, but it seemed to be locked in place. We were on a collision course with an immortal boulder.
“Tell me what to do, Charlie!”
He growled at the imposing monolith as it drew closer. Also, I don’t think he was very much enamored with his name.
Given that I was still quite keen on suicide, you might imagine I would welcome this turn of events. I did not. Mind you, I very much intended to die, but it would be on my terms. I wasn’t interested in having my brains splattered across the side of this bitch-stone. No, I wasn’t gonna go out like that. I’d much rather dive nose-first into the middle of the great blue yonder and go out in a hail of ocean spray. But to do that, I first had to get airborne over the river.
Leaning all of my weight on the wheel only resulted in forcing the plane to accelerate more. So I attempted the reverse. I pulled back on the wheel, and the front of the plane edged up. My co-pilot continued his rhythmic barking as I drew out more wheel. The death rock was looming dangerously close now, and it was larger than I originally thought. But the plane was rising. It was! It was not wishful thinking. She was lifting.
Just as we were on the brink of smashing ourselves into a million little pieces, I closed my eyes tight and jerked the wheel out as hard as I could. My homemade shoulder stitches popped, and just like that, we were flying.
The seaplane rocked from side to side, propelling us forward, away from the setting sun’s kaleidoscope of color and light. As we gained altitude, the Zambezi River grew small below us. Our seemingly endless path stretched out new horizons and the night sky soon snuck up from the unknown. The water’s surface never faltered; it just faded in and out of view. We flew over sparsely populated land, areas I’d never traversed before. The Zambezi, ever strong, ever righteous, kept reappearing in bits and pieces. For the most part, we followed the river’s path. I’d followed it for so long that I didn’t need the light of day to show me where it flowed. It weaved its menacing way through that unchartered land, then expanded and poured its life force into the Mozambique Channel.
Once she steadied, the plane turned out to be a peach of an easy vehicle to control. Pull the wheel to go up, push it in to descend, left goes left, right goes right. Flying was child’s play.
The deep cloud cover parted and the stars made their way through. These same stars I’d grown so accustomed to appeared strange from this height. On the ground, they were always so distant, unreachable. Here, they were still very much out of grasp, but I felt more of a kinship with them. They twinkled brighter, as if they were speaking to me in some ancient Egyptian Morse code. I wanted to share the moment with Charlie, but my faithful co-pilot was sound asleep. The view was mine and mine alone to behold.
There were at least a hundred dials, gadgets, and gauges in front of me. Maybe there was more to the whole flying thing than mere steering and yanking and flicking.
My eyes lit upon something called an altimeter. It sounded enough like altitude and it read 1,500. I experimented by releasing my grip on the wheel. It instantly shrank back toward the console, and the altimeter started dropping off rapidly. Could it be feet? Meters? Neither seemed plausible. Maybe the damned thing was broken. Or maybe it stood for something else. I figured it best not to concern myself with things I could not control. I pulled on the wheel again, and the nose of the plane tilted upward. The altimeter clicked to 2,750, and I decided to ease off there. I held the wheel steady at that number and took it all in.
The moon was full and I was speeding toward it. Its dizzying, kaleidoscopic light bedazzled me with possibilities. Something about the impetuous way that moonlight slam-sashayed my visibility was reminiscent of the ofttimes merciless, hypnotic, rampaging cradle and flow of the Zambezi. I’d grown to fear and respect that embodiment of Mother Nature’s untamed strength. I never imagined I would meet her up there too, that close to the cosmos.
How glorious it would be to live forever within the surge of the unforgiving river! I thought, not for the first time. How wonderful to become a constant fluid state. To be anything else but myself. To swim out to the vast ocean and become a blue whale or a shark or …
No, those were both hunters. I was done with hunting. I knew it was an irrefutable fact. That part of my life ended when the man responsible for the genocide of my people spent his last, choking breath at my feet. And yes, one could argue that I should have wiped the faces clean off his companions’ faces with my bloodsport, as well. But I recognized the shame and gutless fear behind their baby blue eyes. They were mere, incapable minions through and through. Hard to say if they’d been following Captain Doomdick nigh on these past sixteen years. Chances were good they’d just hitched to his wagon this past year. No doubt they’d done their share of misdeeds, but likely none I was responsible to cure. Besides, I’d had it up to here with death. Death could go ahead and fucking die already.
The gas gauge read “full.” In fact, it was more than full. The needle was resting atop the top rung of the F. I flicked a switch that read “autopilot” and eased off my control of the plane.
Charlie made a peaceful whimper in his sleep. I leaned back in my seat and shut my eyes. The steady roar and hum of the plane’s engine lulled me. It was like a lion’s purr after a full three-course meal of zebra, antelope, and boar. With the promise of false heavens swirling around us, I traveled backward in my mind. The years flew by with the stars.
Like Shakasantie spirits, we flew on into the night, undetected by the world.
“Fuck, it’s the fuzz!”
I woke to find myself in a pool of my own sweat. My birth mother’s voice bellowed through the wall of the adjacent room at the Paradise Inn. The sound of Billy and Calliope blasting their mouth cannons at each other never surprised me. However, this time, the urgency in her voice was real. It was not her typical, I’m-so-angry-I-don’t-even-know-why-I’m-angry voice. This time, she yelled with fear. I tried to ignore it. I grabbed one of the five pillows from the motel bed and squished it up against my ear. I had a vague impression of hypnotic blue and red lights behind my closed-tight eyes.
“WILLIAM AND CALLIOPE FOX … THIS IS THE POLICE. WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP.”
I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes. The closed, unimpressive beige curtains were now drenched in color.
“Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!” my father sang. I could hear him pacing back and forth behind our adjoining door. He was like a madman. A feral, trapped beast.
“COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED.”
The authority in the cop’s voice was unwavering. I shuffled out of bed and walked to the window. I pulled the curtain back just to peek. Outside, there were a dozen police cars, maybe more. The motel parking lot was jam-packed with cops. Countless guns were drawn. I let the curtain go and rubbed some distant, free-fall dream from my eyes. In this moment, I understood. My parents were more than just dime-store criminals. They were truly a special breed of asshole.
“Marcus!” my mother hollered, but she was not addressing me. She was speaking to my father. “We have Marcus! They don’t know about Marcus!”
Before I knew what was happening, my father had kicked open the midway door and barreled into my room. The act of violence was certainly unnecessary, as I’d seen him open and close it in a normal fashion, earlier that day.
“Get up,” he said. I stood and went to him. “Marcus. They don’t know about you. OK? Do you know what that means?”
I shook my head, and my father crouched to my level.
“It means that we’ve got the upper hand. We can get out of this. All of us, as a family.” It was the first time I’d ever heard that word. What could it possibly mean? Whatever the connotation, it sounded good coming from his lips.
My mother stood behind him. The look of disgust she always reserved for me was now focused on dear old dad.
“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP OR WE’RE COMING IN, GUNS BLAZING!”
“We don’t have time to baby him, Billy, come on!” She disappeared back into her room and then bellowed so loud the walls rattled. “FUCK YOU, COPPER! WE GOT A HOSTAGE!”
Silence rang out in my crazy world. The word “hostage” had a completely different meaning than “family.” Of this, I was sure.
“Don’t you worry, ace.” My father winked at me. “It’s all just a game, all right? Just you remember that and you’ll be fine. Don’t you ever forget. It’s all just a game.”
I was crying now. I loved my father in that moment. “OK, Dad,” I said, and he pulled his gun.
“YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT, CALLIOPE!” the cop replied. “WE’RE COMING IN!”
“You come in here and I’ll splatter this kid’s brains all over the rug!”
This I understood. My mother was serious too. I looked at my father and he shook his head no.
“She’s bluffing,” he whispered to me, and winked.
“SHOW US THE KID!” the cop demanded. My father walked me into their room and unlatched the door to the outside.
“All right,” my mother bargained. “Don’t shoot!”
“Remember Marcus, it’s just a game. And you’re gonna help us win. OK?”
Sure, I was afraid, but now I was feeling important. Like I held the key to whatever the final outcome of this terrifying situation might be.
Billy turned the knob and pushed open the door a crack. He held tight to the back collar of my shirt as I poked my head out. A blinding light shone in my eyes, and I recoiled back into the room.
“Oh fuck,” I heard one officer proclaim before the door shut tight.
“Now here’s how it’s gonna go down!” Calliope commanded. “You’re all gonna move your pig cars outta the way and clear a path! We’re gonna get in our Impala and drive on outta here. You got that?!”
Silence echoed from the outside. And then, the sound of all those police cars moving out of the way, obeying her. My parents are brilliant, I thought.
When the noise of the retreating vehicles ceased, the officer in charge got back on the bullhorn. “OK, YOU CAN COME OUT NOW. JUST DON’T HURT THE KID!”
My mother gave me a look that chilled my blood. She said, “Not one peep out of you, Marcus. Not one!” And then she pulled me away from my father and pointed her gun at me.
“What are you doing?” a titmouse with my father’s voice asked.
“We both know you don’t have the balls.”
“To do what?”
“Whatever needs to be done. Now march.”
I looked up at my father for reassurance, but he seemed to be busy trying to read my mother’s crazed face. In his eyes, I saw recognition as he studied her. He knew she meant business. He’d always known.
“Your mother and I aren’t the winners of the game here, Marcus.” He winked. “You are.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder and opened the door.
“I’m not armed,” he lied. I could see the bulge of his gun tucked under his shirt clearly, just above his belt in the back. “Shoot and Calliope does the kid!”
“You hear that, Marcus?” my mother whispered as she pressed her gun to the back of my head. “That’s freedom your father’s preachin’.”
With one arm wrapped too tight around my neck, she pushed me forward. We stepped out into the light, following my father.
The getaway car was just a few feet away in its cozy parking space. My father was already arranging himself behind the wheel. His was the only figure I could see through the endless rays of headlights beaming on me. He got the car started, and his rugged expression held my focus. Out there, in the sea of white-hot light, there were maybe a million cops watching him, watching me, watching my mother walk me slowly to the car, holding a gun to her only child’s head and getting off on the adrenaline. Her heart was beating through her sweat-stained shirt.
“Babe, let’s go!” my father said, and we rushed into the backseat. She slammed the door behind her and threw me to the floor. Her window was open and she hung her head out of it. She knew she was a target for any over-enthusiastic, trigger-happy cop. She didn’t care.
“If we catch sight of you in the rearview, the kid dies!” From their lack of response, I gathered they believed her. My father backed up slowly, then our getaway car made rubble of the pavement. “Nice knowin’ ya, fuckos,” Calliope cackled as we left nothing but dust in the parking lot of that roadside motel.
A minute later, I looked up and she was smoking. The gun was in her lap. I could have grabbed it and shot her dead. I knew I could have. She wasn’t even paying attention. She was gazing out into the distance as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And really, had it? Just another day in the life of young Marcus Fox. I got up off the floor and sat next to her. She didn’t move or say a word. I chanced a glance out the back window and didn’t see a car for miles. The lonely desert road went on and on and on.
“Well that was almost too easy, wouldn’t you say?”
My father drove on, ignoring her for now. He was steady, trained, like a robot doing exactly what it was designed to do. I looked from her to him, then back to her again. She was looking through me, like I was nothing, insignificant, a worm. I cringed into the nook where my seat met the door and she leaned down at me.
“The first chance I get,” she whispered, “I’m throwing you back to the wolves.”
But we are Foxes! I thought. Not wolves!
“Bah!” She dismissed me with her yellowed cigarette hand and climbed over the front seat, taking her rightful place next to her man.
“Good thing this piece of shit car still runs,” she said.
“Piece of shit, my ass! We’re doin’ a buck twenty. Put your belt on. Marcus, you hear me?”
I did hear him. I clicked my belt tight.
You know, for safety.
BEEP.
BEEP.
BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP.
BARK BARK BARK!
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBARKBARKBARKBEEPBARKBARK.
“What?!”
My eyes flashed wide and I was yanked back into the present. I remembered everything about my dream, about my past. I’d let it go for so many years. I hadn’t thought about my early childhood horrors in forever. But that part of my life was back. All of it. Out of the clear blue sky. In my head, trying to hurt me. I wouldn’t let it. Not now. Something else was happening.
Charlie was barking his head off and the airplane was beeping its gadgets off.
“OK, shut up, dog! I’m up.”
I checked the gas gauge. The needle was well below E. The inevitable had arrived. The engine would choke out, the propellers would stop turning, and we would crash and die in the middle of the Mozambique Channel.
As if the hopeless thought willed it to happen, the engine sputtered and belched. A loud mechanical pop was the last sound I heard as the propellers slowed to a halt. Briefly, we rested there on a plateau, sailing in a straight, perfect, serene line. In those few precious moments, the entire universe bowed to me. I was the ruler of all. Then, our slow descent began.
There was nowhere to land safely down below. There was no land! Only water as far as the eye could see. But how? When we’d made the flight in the opposite direction all those years ago, the pilot had flown from Madagascar to Zambia on half a tank! Maybe I’d misremembered that insignificant detail of my life. After all, I was six and drugged.
BEEP BEEP BARK.
My heart, risen to my throat, had the flavor and mass of a sour six-toed hedgehog.
The altimeter dropped 100 feet (or meters or whatever it was) per second. There was no time to think. I surveyed the small cabin and saw nothing that would help us survive. What I was looking for was a miracle. And I did not believe in miracles, so I guess I was looking for nothing.
900, 800, 700; the altimeter was crashing and so were we. I looked to Charlie and apologized without words. In that moment, I saw in his big, sad dog eyes a look that clearly said, “You are an idiot, Marcus.” He dropped his head under his seat and snapped something out with his teeth. It was a strap. He dragged it further and tossed it into my lap.
“Genius, Charlie!” I praised him, flipping the parachute bag and escorting it over my arms.
600, 500, 400. The water was there now. I could see it just below us in the moonlight. It gleamed with hundreds of thousands of wavy, broken-glass shards. They were rising their way toward us. Pulling us to them to rip us to shreds.
I leaned to one side and kicked out the door. It flew open and I grabbed Charlie and hurled us both out. The moment we were free, I pulled the cord with my good arm and held tight to Charlie with the other. The chute flew open and caught the wind. We were launched upward at the very last possible instant. The force was so great that my arm jerked away from me and I lost Charlie.
I lost him.
The plane crashed not far at all from where I hit. The last thing I saw before the warm waters surrounded me was a fireball splash. But none of that mattered. The poor mutt that saved my life was gone. Yet another casualty of war in the life lived by yours truly.
The sea surged to drag me down. I fought, at first, against its fury. I climbed the underwater ladder rung by rung and broke the surface to view the desolation and destruction once again. The seaplane, The Safari Hunter, was aflame and going down without a fight of its own. Black smoke swirled high into the air, drifting toward where Madagascar should be.
I did not care for my life anymore. I suppose instinct and the desire to save Charlie had given me the strength to jump out of the plane. But I did feel terrible about my new friend, and I decided to stay conscious and alive for a couple more hours, just to tread water in hopes that I might find him.
The more I swam, the more hopeless it appeared to be. There was no way Charlie could have survived the crash. He died because of me. Nothing new there.
Full of self-pity, impossible sadness, and too many shitty fucking memories, I let my limbs go limp in the current.
“Take me,” I spoke softly to no one in particular. Death, perhaps. “Take me now.”
Before I swallowed a world of water, I imagined that Shumbuto, mighty and alive and well, was wrapping his blessed arm around me and pulling me to shore.
Sadly, my savior was but a beautiful memory in my diseased and drowning mind.
The fucking end.