A Plea for Constant Motion

by Paul Carlucci

  In a way, Justine has always hated Ron. She tutored him in first-year college, stopped him just short of flunking out. They fooled around in darkened corners of the library, his peach-fuzz heavy-metal moustache sweeping blackheads off her shoulders. He was a roughneck with a pickup truck and a small-time criminal record. She was an outdoorsy jock with good grades and a few pot plants in her closet.

  He liked country music and sex with the lights off. He collected saw blades in a metal box under the driver’s seat of his truck. Once, he suggested they move north of the city, to get away from all the “Hindus.” After their graduation ceremony, dressed in a cheap blue suit and a baseball cap, he took her to McDonald’s and ordered three double cheeseburgers at the drive-thru. They parked in an abandoned lot, and with sesame seeds lodged in the cracks of his front teeth, he proposed. Justine began to cry. Ron slid a brass engagement ring on her finger and passed her a warm can of Busch beer. “We’ll be happy,” he promised. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  And he did. To his credit, up until the invasion, Ron took care of her basic needs. Within a year of their marriage, he’d become foreman in a small crew renovating row houses in the east end. The money was fantastic, and every weekend they drove up the winding Sea to Sky Highway in search of a future home. The following year, Ron started his own company and began bidding for jobs as far north as Whistler. He had his mechanic paste a swooping black decal on the side of his truck: A1 Construction! Give Us A Call!!

  Justine drifted through this period in a haze. While they still lived in Vancouver, she found entry-level work at an accounting firm. She developed an intense but inexplicable crush on her boss. His name was Howie. He was an obese widower with the permanent trace of garlic on his breath. She left the job when they moved north, and cried the whole way to the Smoke Bluffs. “It’s okay,” Ron told her, squeezing her knee with his coarse fingers. “You’ll make new friends here, I promise.”

  She still slept with Ron. Greg was adamant about that. What they had together was a small circle of still water in a roiling sea. Only they could enter it. But if they stayed there, they would invite the storm and lose the patch. It would become the sea. So they had to maintain their exterior lives. Row willfully against the waves. Keep their spouses. Start their families.

  But she resented the status quo. Justine’s better self transpired from her makeup mirror. It looked just like her high school photos. Strong. Sexy. Competitive. “You’re lazy,” said Better Justine, blue eyes flashing with malice. She rummaged in the kitchen. She crept up behind Better Ron while he loaded his shotgun. She slit his throat and spat on him while he slapped at his jugular, trying to keep the blood in.

  Justine ran, desperate to find Nick before anything happened to him. People say her better self roams the Smoke Bluffs, hunting, and Justine knows her better self is looking for Greg, for a way into his life. They’ve probably slept together. More than once. But the thing is, Greg’s gone now, so which one of the two Justines is the best?

  When Nick was born, when he lay bundled in her arms, not screaming or crying, but sitting calmly, looking out at the world as if he’d seen it all before, she just knew that he was Greg’s. He had a sensitivity in his eyes. His pupils opened up onto something so vast she couldn’t understand it, but the sense of the thing fizzed all through her. There was no way this boy was Ron’s, not with such ghostly kindness.

  And when Christina was born, the opposite was obvious. Here was one of Ron’s children. Deformed and angry, thrashing in her blanket, stamping her fists, screeching all night long. Justine couldn’t please her, couldn’t calm her. But Ron had only to touch her and the tantrums tapered off. Justine didn’t begrudge him this. He would need someone to see him through. She had Nick. And she had Greg.

  Last night, her plan had been to leave, to take Nick and head up the coast. A lot of people have the same idea. Apparently, there are still communities up there, stubborn outposts in the foggy inlets. But first, she wanted to see Greg’s wife and kids, to see the impressions he left on them, little legacies in their bodies and habits. It would’ve been good for Nick, too. Before their better selves, he’d always wanted to go next door, to tag along. Maybe he could’ve mourned with them. But when they arrived around noon, Greg’s camp was empty.

  Now, with the air so infused with Greg, Justine knows she has to go back to Ron. It isn’t for his benefit. Or for Christina’s. It’s for her and Nick. Ron still has something to offer, shelter at least, and maybe, now that Greg isn’t around to prop him up, food. Nick won’t like it. But for now, it’s the only way forward.

  It’s not that she isn’t ready to die. Of course she is. She even looks forward to it. To the degradation of her flesh. She wants to drift with Greg, to fling her molecules into the jet stream, to hurtle across the Earth. Together, they will be an aloe vera plant in Egypt.

  But Nick is too young to die. Too special. He’s the human expression of her love for Greg. The war will end, and Nick will be there to help rebuild.

  They return to camp at dusk. Ron is crouched over a fire, his tool belt dangling from his hips like an anvil. He has his back to them, and his shoulders bob and toss as he tears at something between his boots. The smell of meat makes her mouth water.

  Nick strides ahead of her, his thin, bent frame breaking through the thicket and into the clearing. Ron freezes and turns his head, offering his face in profile, his bearded chin floating above his shoulder, his brown eyes flat and unsurprised.

  “Both of you wait there,” he says, smoke twisting upward from the fire in front of him. “It’s not quite ready.”

  ACT II

  Hippos

  I.

  She’s a dream client, low maintenance and probably a big tipper, reaching up from the back seat to tap him on the shoulder when she wants to pull over and study an animal, raising a nude finger to her thin lips when he begins his tired monologues on the social hierarchies of hippo pods and lion prides, on the contentious theories of impala pregnancies and the unwilling solitude of pubescent male elephants. Up to now, women like Roberta Sewell have been the stuff of safari legend, the slinky starlets of big-fish banter at the bar, mentioned often enough, but always the charge of some other guide. Now, in her semi-sexy profile, Gordon has found his own little piece of the lore. The next three days are just a question of driving, cooking, and camping, with plenty of time to contemplate safe passage into her loose-fitting cargo pants.

  They’re parked on a ridge in the thin shade of a mopane tree. Dry season is at its peak, the river low and still, the landscape parched and yellow. All the animals are squeezed toward the same few drinking pools, the same sparse and ragged foliage.

  At the bottom of the embankment, half buried in the dried earth of a wading pool, a male hippo appears dead. Flies buzz, twist, and swoop. And yet, there are no vultures, no signs of hyenas, so maybe the deposed king is still alive, clinging to some inner force, immobile as he awaits the rains.

  Roberta jumps down from the Land Cruiser, her bare feet thumping dust. “Poor fucker,” she mutters, one hand on her invisible hips. “Dead and bloated.” She sniffs, spits, and sucks on a canteen she claimed was for water but is probably for booze, judging by the wince that passes over her face.

  Below them, the hippo’s gray and mud-encrusted rump rises out of the hard packed earth. The park is littered with these pitiful outcasts. Once, he dominated a pod. He fought for a prized piece of the riverside. Females gave themselves to his lineage. He sprayed shit on the alphas of neighbouring groups, and if a young, imperial male tried to make incursions, the king rose out of the water and opened wide his jaws, flashing his sabre-sized teeth in the sun.

  But things change. Maybe the king grew tired. Maybe he grew old. The younger females lost interest in him. They shunned his inquisitive snorts. When a brawny bull slipped into the kingdom, ears and eyes cruising the surface of the river, no one alerted the sovereign. It was
a sneak attack. Huge bodies thrashed in the current. Spectating monkeys shrieked from the trees. The king was dethroned. He sulked up the riverbank, blood streaming from his flank, off to ensconce himself in one of these desiccating holes. Maybe, if he’s proud enough, he’ll launch a counterattack. Reclaim the crown. But victory is a temporary state. The throne is always in contest. The fate of all kings is to die alone in the hardening mud of dry season, far from the rivers they once ruled.

  Roberta holds a camera up to her face. She’s one of these Westerners that isn’t ashamed of her wealth. She’s the one you see walking through crowded markets with a five-thousand-dollar Canon slung round her neck. She takes pictures without asking. She gives money to no one. Gordon leans forward against the steering wheel and cranes his neck to watch her crouch. A dry wind lifts the charcoal hair off her shoulders and pins her T-shirt to her ribs, to the under-swell of her breasts, and he imagines her naked, the muscles taught in her legs, sweat beading down her abdomen. These little vignettes, these stolen glances, they’re what keep the job interesting. Otherwise, nothing changes.

  “You’d think they would just start over, go some place new.” She’s climbing back into the Land Cruiser, digging through her backpack and pulling out a notebook. “Who gives up just to die?”

  Gordon looks at her in the rear-view mirror, notes the way her hair obscures her face when she bends over her notebook. “Well,” he says, “it’s because they don’t really have a lot of options. They don’t —”

  But she flicks her head back and silences him with an irritated stab of the eyes. “I’m just talking to myself, alright? I already know the answer.”

  He takes her to Pointer’s Plateau to set up camp for the night. Usually, his clients jump out of the vehicle and rush to the edge of the cliff. They point at the sun-splashed horizon, the columns of rain in the distance, the termite mounds between trees below. He’s seen every reaction, heard every remark. Some people prattle on about another sunset on a different safari, how it was ever so slightly better because a giraffe waltzed through the red beams of flagging light. Others buffet him with questions: How far away is the western boundary of the park, how can he be sure they’ll be safe in the night, is he from South Africa or Zimbabwe? There’s always one mother hen with a can of bug dope spraying everyone’s arms and legs, a noxious cloud of the stuff billowing into the dusk. And someone else, taking him aside, whispering under her breath, is it safe to have a crap?

  The newly middle-class blacks are the worst. Gordon grinds his teeth at the thought of them. They’re obviously thrilled by the sight of it all, but they don’t want to seem less exposed than he is, less rugged, and so they start talking about football or cricket and they hassle him no matter how cold the beer is. Once, in the middle of the night, he woke up and pissed in one of their brand new backpacks. Blamed it on a monkey while serving coffee the next morning. It’s not lost on him, this little role reversal, this fact of him working for them.

  Roberta stays in the Land Cruiser while Gordon sets up camp. He takes his shirt off, drapes it over the side-view mirror, and clenches his abdomen. He likes to stay fit for the job. When he’s not working, he wakes up every morning at six. He splashes water on his face, eats an apple, and sips a tea. Then it’s flat on his back to rip through a series of sit-up drills, left knee, right knee, left foot, right foot. He does a hundred in all. Next he rolls over and hammers through just as many push-ups, sweat cascading from his forehead, spots expanding on the carpet.

  It’s exhausting, but he keeps himself energized with a collage of terrible memories from Zim. Torches in the night. Macheted cattle herds and smouldering tobacco fields. His father bleeding from a gash in the forehead, holding a rifle. Pointing a rifle. The family and their neighbours slipping across the Zambezi at dawn, resentfully caving in to the violence. Not their era anymore. These thoughts yank him off the carpet and out the front door for a thirty-minute jog.

  So he is fit, and he wants Roberta to notice. He pitches their tents, exaggerating his movements. He gathers fuel for a fire, swinging his axe, grunting and tossing the cuts aside. But she stays in the Cruiser, swilling from her canteen, once again bent over her notebook. Resigned, Gordon sits by the fire and meditates on the flames.

  At nine o’clock, she opens the door and staggers toward the fire. He ladles some stew into a bowl and passes it to her. In the flickering light, her face is ghoulish and haggard, cheekbones high, eyes sunken.

  “You know.” She speaks with her mouth full. Flecks of broth arch from her lips to sizzle on the rocks around the fire. “I’d like to see the look on his face. When he wakes up there. Reaches over for me. And poof. I’m gone.”

  II.

  Usually, his clients are up at five. Everyone drinks coffee and fiddles with their cameras while Gordon tears down the campsite and loads up the Cruiser. He shifts gears along the networks of roads criss-crossing the park, pointing out animals as they go. On each trip, he does the bit about the impalas. About the dark, M-shaped fur on their rumps. McDonald’s of the bush, he says. Fast food, Africa-style. He fakes a smile when everyone laughs.

  But Roberta doesn’t wake up until ten. By that time, he’s got the Cruiser packed, leaving only the portable shower and coffee pot, plus a few bottles of water and some fruit. She emerges from her tent with puffy eyes and a hand pressed against her forehead. “Water. Give me some water.”

  He gives her a jug and a little bucket, swallowing a lump of irritation when she makes no remark about how scarce the stuff is, how few rivers there are for them to draw from. But then he’s amused when he sees her duck behind a couple boulders, strain to fill one of the buckets, and pour the whole thing over her head in one shot, still managing to miss her back. Nothing like a tourist taking a bucket shower. It’s almost worth the water.

  For the past hour, he’s heard the rumbling of an engine at the base of the plateau. Some other guide and his catch. Now the engine grows louder. On a perfect safari, Gordon doesn’t cross paths with anyone. It’s not just that it cheapens the experience for clients, makes them feel less remote and therefore less inclined to tip, but he also hates his colleagues, a bunch of boastful, competitive assholes, each with wildly embellished stories of stampeding elephants and roaring lions, pouncing leopards and twisting crocs. And so when the other vehicle trails a cloud of dust into camp, when he recognizes Lenny Marten behind the wheel — aviator sunglasses, bushy sideburns, and a packet of cigarettes folded into the sleeve of his burgundy shirt — Gordon is instantly depressed.

  Lenny pulls up broadside, sending a cloud of dirt into Gordon’s face. A quartet of Asian broads giggles and points from the back seats, sweat stains spreading from their armpits. “Well good morning, china.” Lenny grins and winks. “How’s it? I see you slept in a bit late, didn’t you?”

  “Client’s own schedule.” Gordon nods at Roberta. They can just barely see her behind the boulders. Her bare, wet back shines in the sun, matted strands of hair like black weeds across her shoulder blades.

  “Oh, is it?” Leaning forward with a leer, Lenny lowers his aviators with a gnarled and hairy index finger. His sharp blue eyes dart across the site and circle Roberta. Gordon feels a flash of territorial rage. “Oh yes, it is, it is. Finally got yourself a gig, yeah? Nice one too. Sharp, china, very sharp.”

  “Alright, Len. Time to go, yeah? I reckon the lady wants her privacy. Anyway, looks like you finally got yourself a gig, too. Best be off with it.”

  Lenny looks over his shoulder and scratches one of his sideburns. “Right. Got some clients, don’t I?” He smiles at the girls. “But nothing unusual about that. Been working staff at the lodge, haven’t I? Clients every day. Bloody tips galore, I tell you, man. Figure I’ll leave the freelance racket for the desperate likes of yourself.”

  From the corner of his eye, Gordon peeks at Roberta. She doesn’t seem to be taking any of this in. She’s pouring a bucket of water over her head and
leaning against a rock, shoulders heaving miserably. Lenny fires up his Cruiser, puts it in gear, and drives a wide circle around Gordon, arching close to Roberta as she dumps another bucket of water over her head. “Alright, love,” he shouts. “Looking real nice, yeah? Lookin’ lekker.”

  It’s almost noon by the time they leave camp. Roberta no longer disguises her drinking. Hair pinned away from her face, bags under her eyes gradually receding, she pulls straight from a bottle of whiskey. “Today, we go way deeper. I don’t want to bump into your frat-boy friends again.” She winces after a shot from the bottle. “And don’t stop unless I tell you.”

  The land bounces by. Once, years ago, he found this thrilling, this journey through wild Africa, the swaying trees and buzzing swamps, the kicking zebras and swinging monkeys, the reaching giraffes and sleeping lions. The rainbow bursts of diving birds. The way the land rose and fell, thick and green near the water, dry and yellow throughout the flats, with dark blue mountains undulating across the horizon.

  But now it’s the signs of violence that strike him. Not just hippos, but everything. Everywhere. The remains of slaughter: a carcass disemboweled in the shores of a marsh, the bleached jaw of a wildebeest in tall grass, the antlers of a buck trailing a foot of blackened spinal cord. And the elephants, the rowdy young males, the way they fan their ears at you, drop confrontational mounds of shit, cross the river to trample the villagers’ crops and bash up against their crumbling mud-brick homes. And people flock to see all this, desperate to witness, to press unscratched binoculars into their eye sockets as huge cats tear apart lagging antelopes and hang their bodies from trees.