Rhinoceros Summer

by Jamie Thornton

  Paul knew Billy understood the power of their bullets. They gave the older males they hunted one last chance to die with honor, to die fighting. A chance the world of women and modern city life wanted to do away with.

  They understood all those things. Left them unsaid. Between two men like them, it didn’t need saying.

  4

  Paul watched as Lydia stepped down the resort stairs. She carried some photography book in hand and made her way to the common room. To the phone. He’d thought about removing it but had left it as bait.

  He thought about the offer Jack had made. Some zoo lion hunt in California that Jack’s son wanted to film. Paul hadn’t said anything to Billy about it. Didn’t yet believe Jack’s offer was real.

  Lydia walked out of sight. Paul followed.

  He remembered Walter taking him out that first time to hunt. The silence and solitude and peace in stalking his first Cape buffalo, and Walter’s words: “Go for the sure thing. Don’t guess and doubt. Don’t face death by accident. Walk up to it.” Soldiering, hunting—they were about time, about freezing the moment, living in a space that had been turned inside out.

  Paul’s transition from soldier to Christian to professional hunter had been an easy one. Different words and ideas swapped out for the same moments of discipline. He knew all of them took a certain commitment to fatalism, a certain courage to live in spite of all the dangers in the world. Or maybe because of them.

  He slipped into stalking mode even as the walls and area rugs reminded him the resort was a civilized place. He’d figured Lydia would call her parents and had called them first in order to provide the appropriate preparation.

  He couldn’t let her leave yet with so many things undone.

  CHAPTER 15

  Lydia

  Lydia went in search of the resort phone, her book of Women Photographers in hand. She hadn’t put down its slick cover, now smudged with her fingerprints, since her meeting with Paul two days before. No amount of showers or teeth brushing rid her of the slimy film that seemed shrink-wrapped to her skin and tongue. Lydia couldn’t imagine anything worse than an entire month spent with another guy like Jack Hellerman.

  The last two weeks had drained all thoughts except those that consisted of avoiding Mr. Hellerman’s eyes, avoiding Mr. Hellerman’s words, avoiding Mr. Hellerman’s hands. When Caleb had punched him, she’d actually swallowed back a laugh. Laughed at watching someone get beat up. She didn’t know what that said about her, didn’t want to know.

  Paul might believe Mr. Hellerman was harmless—sometimes men didn’t notice that kind of stuff. Lydia knew he was anything but harmless. She’d thought she could handle the weird looks and slimy words until it turned into touching her on the arm. Compared to all that, the leopard in the dark was nothing.

  Not nothing. Thrilling.

  But she didn’t want her parents to know about that—why she was in the dark, shivering at the touch of Caleb’s hand on her bare shoulder.

  Lydia picked up the phone from its little shelf next to the fireplace and dialed her parents. The smells of stone and burnt wood and old plastic felt disturbingly familiar. Even as she listened to the rings, she didn’t know what she would say, what she would admit, what she wanted to happen next. A part of her hoped to hear the click of the answering machine. Sacramento seemed like a different universe and she had traveled too far to ever return. But she knew she should try.

  “Happy belated birthday!” her parents said after she said hello.

  “What day is today?” she asked.

  “August 12th,” Dad said. “So you’re a big eighteen now. Officially an adult. But don’t get headstrong on us now. God can’t steer a parked car…Get it?”

  She sighed soft enough so he couldn’t hear. “I get it, Dad. Thanks for the advice.” She turned through the pages of the photography book in the hopes of finding something to anchor her, something that would help her decide what to say.

  Someone walked into the room but she continued facing the fireplace mantle so as not to be interrupted. If she didn’t confess now to her parents, she might never gain back the courage.

  “So, how has the trip been going? We’ve heard things have been tough but good,” Mom said.

  They’d heard? Who had they heard from? “I feel like I can’t get clean. I’m tired all the time and I think…maybe I should come home.”

  “Are you sick?” Mom asked. “Have you been taking your malaria pills, is it malaria?”

  “No, I’m not sick.”

  Dad said in a soothing voice. “No need to make any rush decisions. Tell us what’s worrying you and we’ll pray about what you should do.”

  “We saw some elephants that had been killed by poachers…” She stopped, unsure of what she wanted to say. The kind of animal that made up the landscape of her life was the standard pet. Dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, a lizard or two. The biggest animals she’d experienced were Great Danes walking politely on a leash.

  The one time she visited the Sacramento Zoo in junior high, it was to battle out familiar friendships in a new setting. She’d concentrated on not being left behind, on not pissing off Meghan too thoroughly, on making sure she sat at the right bench for lunch, never lingering too long at any one animal station for fear of the sarcasm that might shoot her way. “Oh, Lydia’s in love with the baboons,” or some such thing. It didn’t matter what was said, but how it was said, and that it would be directed in a way meant to knock her down a peg or two.

  She’d smelled the manure and hay of the zoo stalls, felt the humidity of the reptile room, wondered at the chimp enclosure, and mostly thought the animals sad but content. Not until Tanzania, not until the Land Cruiser rumbled towards the elephant herd—across rough dirt and dead yellow grass, leaving her thirsty and on the verge of coughing—not until they were close enough so she could pick out individual differences among the animals, did she feel it. These were no Great Danes. These were no fenced-off zoo animals. They loomed over her, dwarfing her body. These were no panting dogs watching her every move, cats meowing for dinner, lizards running for safety, birds pooping on the driveway while balancing on the telephone wires.

  It had left her short of breath as she watched the elephants drink and eat and caress one another, blow dirt over their backs, corral a baby to safety within the group, rumble and trumpet conversations. These elephants had a life bigger than her own.

  They roamed this landscape and feared almost nothing. She couldn’t describe it. Never, never had she experienced a living thing on this earth so much bigger than her. So much larger than what her life amounted to.

  “Lydia…I know what you saw was disturbing but think of all the good you are doing there,” Dad said.

  “I just…” Lydia’s focus turned back to her photography book. She knew this was the moment. She should blurt it all out: this old man kept touching me, Paul is a game hunter, Caleb is Paul’s real son. But she flipped through a few pages of the book instead, pausing for no longer than a glance until her fingers stopped over a picture taken in darkness, this violent view of a young elephant with a lioness hugging its back; the lioness’s teeth hanging onto the elephant’s skin, stretching the skin from the spine.

  She stared at the wild looks in both animals’ eyes, the mud covering the young elephant’s trunk as it struggled in pain, young enough so it hadn’t begun growing tusks yet, its eyes rolling back to see the terrifying creature keeping him from his mother. Where was his mother, already dead? Trumpeting her grief off camera somewhere? Lydia closed her eyes and remembered how the dead elephant skin had felt beneath her fingers. She hadn’t liked taking those pictures but that didn’t mean they didn’t need to be taken.

  This was real life. And real life was dangerous. Her parents would never understand why photography was worth all this.

  Lydia gripped the pitted plastic in both hands and explained about the elephants, and how she’d taken pictures of Caleb cutting out the tusks so poachers wouldn’t profit from them, an
d then she began to tell them that Caleb was—

  “But that’s what happens on these kinds of trips. You get broken down in order to be built back up,” Dad said.

  Something didn’t feel right. Her parents should be clamoring with questions, demanding explanations, not trying to talk her into staying. Whoever had walked into the room had not left, was in fact—based on how hot and close the breathing felt on her shoulder—standing directly behind her. She turned and almost dropped the phone.

  Paul held out his hand. “How about you hand me the phone and we’ll see if we can’t get things straightened out.”

  Lydia gave the phone to him as if it were burning her skin. Gave it to him, and then realized she should have kept talking, should have told her parents everything while she’d had the chance.

  He held the receiver and over the next twenty minutes he spun what she imagined as a highly-skilled spider’s web. He fine-tuned the netting so that her parents saw sparkling silver strands studded with diamond dewdrops. Lydia was at its center, like a jewel in its metal setting, and though she was trapped there, he made it seem like it was all for her benefit.

  “We talked about this yesterday,” Paul then said into the phone. “We discussed the stress she’s been put under. I know I didn’t give you the details at the time. I wanted her to share them with you first. But I take full responsibility…” He trailed off.

  Lydia strained to hear how her parents responded but couldn’t make it out. What had he said to them yesterday? How had he managed to so thoroughly get them onto his side?

  “Yes, Caleb is here. It was unexpected, but he checks in every now and then, and I couldn’t see turning away this chance to reconnect. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it before, but I didn’t know he was coming last time we talked—”

  Lydia heard a high-pitched warble, probably her mom’s voice.

  She should shout out that Paul was lying. She felt the words heavy on her tongue, tasting foul, tasting angry—that he would dare to lie about his own son, lie to her parents with that Cheshire cat smile of satisfaction on his face.

  “Oh, no numbers to report yet, we’re doing mostly relief work right now,” Paul said.

  She held onto the opened page of the book as if it was an anchor. Paul had managed to calm her parents’ fears so completely that Dad was asking about her ‘numbers.’ Most mission trips gave a regular report back to the sponsoring church of the total number of people saved.

  Gathering up her courage felt like trying to pick up shredded paper from the floor, but she couldn’t let him get away with this. “You can’t do this,” she said in a loud voice.

  Paul glanced in her direction and said, “We’ve been having some phone problems here. I’m surprised we haven’t gotten cut off yet, money is so tight. I’m late on the bill. I’ll make sure Lydia calls you as soon as we return from the next missionary outreach. It’ll be about a month from now…Oh no, sorry. Some of the local kids insisted she play a game of jump rope with them. She’s out there now. I’ll have her contact you again soon.”

  Paul hung up the phone. His hand rested on the phone cradle. His jeans were dusty, a heavy scent of grass and dirt and sun, and something else, she could recognize that scent now for what it was, something wild, emanated off him.

  “Don’t say a word.” He unlaced the phone cord and pulled the jack out of the wall. “You made a promise—”

  He held up his hand at her protest. “Maybe it wasn’t a vocal one. But a promise was made all the same when you left California to come out here and take pictures for me. I’ve fed you, housed you, taken you out to experience things people pay tens of thousands of dollars to experience. I don’t like people breaking their promises. If you can’t stand by your word, then—”

  “I didn’t ask for you to pay for any of that and I’m not the one lying about his own son.” Even those few words took the strength out of her. Words that she should have shouted out, words that should have pinned Paul against the wall with guilt.

  “Sometimes, in order to keep a promise, a person has to lie.” He twirled the cords around the phone and tucked everything under his arm. “I promised you pictures that would jumpstart your photography career. You promised to take those pictures for me. If you cannot—I am helping you keep your promises, because I plan on keeping mine.”

  Paul walked out of the room without another word, keeping the phone close his body.

  Lydia’s fingers traced the outlines of the lioness and elephant locked together in the photograph. She noticed the ragged edges of her nails, the dry cuticle skin on the verge of cracking, the palms of her hands still soft, untried. She had never yelled at an adult before, let alone accused one of lying.

  Except for her fingers, she was too stunned to function, as if a glacier had encased her, with no guarantee the ice would ever thaw enough for someone to find her.

  2

  The next day, before breakfast, Lydia packed a small bag containing her camera body and two basic zoom lenses, a wide angle and telephoto. She slung the bag across her back. Taking a deep breath, she tried to push down her anxieties and enjoy the peace the morning silence offered. Here there was no low hum of electronics or electricity, no vehicle engines or horns or tires braking. Nothing separated her from the outside world except the wooden walls, and even those seemed inconsequential. Wood smelled different than the plastic and paint and polyester she was used to being surrounded by. She hadn’t known that difference before but she knew it now.

  The view from her bedroom balcony held a pair of small red-feathered birds twirling and tumbling through the air. But for remembering her own actions the day before, she might have enjoyed the scene by pulling out her camera. Instead, a hot flush crept up her body as she thought about yesterday. Paul had gotten away with all of it.

  “That won’t happen again,” she said to her empty bedroom. She tried to push a fierce sense of command into her voice. “I will not let that happen again.”

  The mirror next to her bedroom door showed deep circles under her eyes. “I will not give him the satisfaction.” With eyebrows drawn together and lips tilted down, Lydia used the mirror to practice keeping her expression blank or angry or stone-faced or disdainful, anything but afraid.

  Maybe it was foolish practicing like this. It certainly felt foolish but facing Paul without some kind of defense in place seemed downright dangerous.

  She resettled the bag, finding comfort in its weight. “Only until I can get to the airport.” But before she could get to the airport, she needed to figure out who on Paul’s staff she could trust. She’d considered asking Caleb to take her to the airport, but something in her rebelled against that. She didn’t want him to know she was planning to give up. The thought of Caleb finding out what had happened with the phone—she didn’t want to be a part of any violence between father and son. No matter how much Paul might deserve it. No, she would ask someone else for help.

  The smell of bacon and maple syrup hit her nose as soon as she stepped onto the first floor. In the dining room, tall glasses of orange juice sat at each placemat instead of the champagne that had been customary with the Hellerman safari. The room was empty except for Muna setting out platters of steaming food.

  “I guess I’m the first?”

  “They be down soon,” Muna responded, giving Lydia a sunny smile. “Here, try this.” She pushed a powdered sugar ball towards Lydia. “Not traditional but it taste good.”

  Lydia took out her camera to get a shot of Muna leaning over the table of food, her back arched so the sun shining through the outside window seemed to pillow her slim body. She returned her camera to its bag and tasted the pastry, deciding it was like a donut hole, except cakier. She relished the sweetness, licking her lips free of the powdered sugar. “Thanks. That was good.”

  “I know. I made,” Muna said with another smile.

  Lydia smiled in return, not holding anything back, so glad to take at least one picture that didn’t contain violence.

/>   She grabbed a seat facing the doorway, careful to set her camera bag under her chair where it wouldn’t be knocked down. Maybe she would ask Muna after breakfast to help her figure out a ride to the airport.

  Caleb entered the room, shuffling his boots along the wooden floor. He scowled at Lydia and sat at the opposite end of the table. Muna retreated to the kitchen. The other staff members arrived. Twelve in all, they wore the khaki-colored Blue Nile Safari uniform, some smiling, some silent. Lydia only recognized four of them—those who had worked at Owl Point. M’soko and Juja she knew the best, though they both hardly said more than morning greetings to her in Swahili. “Jambo,” she said in return. Abiba, her tall body covered in a bright red kanga, gave Lydia a close-lipped smile before sitting next to Caleb.

  Paul and the new client entered. “Let’s eat! Intros later.”

  Dishes heaped with Muna’s cooking were passed around: bacon, pancakes, French toast, scrambled eggs, hash browns.

  Lydia picked at the food on her plate. Paul acted so normal, so unconcerned, so innocent—like yesterday hadn’t happened.

  Paul turned to each staff member. “Everyone well?”

  Most of the staff nodded in response. Paul smiled. He clapped his hand on the back of the client. “This is Billy Compton, the man who’s going to bring in record-breaking trophies this safari.”

  “Ah, cut the horseshit Paul, I’m no newbie who needs his ego stroked.” Mr. Compton laughed then placed another heaping pile of bacon on his plate.

  Lydia stared at Mr. Compton, gauging his tone. He had balding white hair and carried extra weight around his gut, but there was something about him that fit next to Paul’s tanned skin and bloodshot eyes. The two men seemed more comfortable together than Paul had been with Mr. Hellerman.

  “You never know.” Paul shrugged his shoulders, taking a bite of egg off his fork. “We always had good luck hunting together.”

  Abiba rose from the table, coffee pot in hand. Paul waved her away. “Billy doesn’t want any special treatment, Abiba. He’s a true sportsman and will make do for himself. I, on the other hand,” he pointed at his empty coffee cup, “could use a refill.”