Streaks of dark liquid ran haphazardly down the three bodies. Blood. The two elephants charged at once, tore gulleys into the sides of the rhino, and then rushed away.
A killing rage enthralled the elephants. If the rhino were to survive, the elephants needed to be killed.
He called for the rifle.
M’soko placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know what to do,” he said. “Wait here.”
Caleb hid in the bush with dart gun in hand. Five minutes passed. A lifetime in the world of horns and tusks. The rhino’s defensive thrusts showed fatigue. She barely had strength left to track the elephant movements.
Engine noise added itself to the trumpets and snorts. All three animals froze for a moment and raised angled ears.
The Land Cruiser barreled into view. Lights blazed, the horn blew, tree saplings fell, M’soko shouted through the open windows.
Caleb ran on an intercepting course.
M’soko slowed for a precious few seconds.
Caleb jumped and grabbed an exterior sidebar.
M’soko drove them into the middle of the battle. The rhino had been pushed to its knees, beyond its limits. It did not rise. M’soko used the Land Cruiser to bully away the other two giants. He sounded off a blast from his rifle over the heads of the elephants.
Caleb added his own shouts and hand-waving.
With trunks blaring, both elephants charged.
Caleb jumped off the Land Cruiser, fell hard on his ankle, ignored the pain, took aim, and fired his tranq gun.
The dart missed, barely skimming a spine. The elephant with the broken tusk slammed its trunk against the car hood. M’soko gunned the engine in reverse and both elephants followed.
Sweat poured off Caleb as he raised the tranq gun and aimed for the single-tusked elephant. This time the dart buried deep into the elephant’s shoulder.
Caleb reloaded and aimed for the second elephant still trying to tear apart the Land Cruiser. Windshield glass flew everywhere. M’soko’s face gleamed with streaks of blood. He darted the second one on the side.
Neither elephant dropped.
M’soko backed the car away from their blows. This time the elephants did not follow but ran into the darkness. The darts weren’t powerful enough to overcome their rage but had taken the fight out of them for a little while. Caleb felt regret as the elephants disappeared into the woodlands, lost to the dysfunction of their bloody nightmares.
The rhino struggled to raise itself from its knees. Caleb repositioned the tranq gun against his shoulder, then darted the rhino. It dropped and did not stir.
3
The headlights from the land cruiser shined on the now-quiet scene, throwing long, sharp shadows onto the grass.
Caleb leaned against the driver’s door and craned his neck to find the position M’soko had taken in a tree. M’soko sat above a pile of dynamite. Caleb wouldn’t call a groggy rhino ready to wake up at any moment, and whatever predators the blood attracted, anything but a pile of dynamite with the fuse already burning.
“If she wakes up, she could tear down your tree.”
M’soko rested the butt of his rifle against the tree limb. He let one leg hang and crooked the other against the limb. “I am Kiswahili. I know this thing can be done.”
“But you can’t—”
“Do not offend me.” M’soko held up his hand. “I have decided to stay and you will go. Paul should be stopped. You will stop him. And this faru is not important to only you. This animal is my country’s animal. I will protect it. Do not offend me by saying, I will not! Besides,” a smile twitched on his face, almost imperceptible, “Muna will have anger with me if you do not go.” He resettled into the limb and laid the gun across his lap.
Caleb continued to argue but M’soko would not budge.
Finally, he took off in the Land Cruiser and left M’soko in the darkness, with the satellite phone for company. Dust flowed unimpeded through the broken windshield. Caleb sneezed. Wind whipped tears from his eyes. Maybe he’d arrive in time to stop Lydia. Maybe not. Part of him blamed Paul, but part of him thought Lydia was acting very, very stupidly. God knows Caleb had made plenty of his own stupid decisions, but how could she think going after Paul by herself was a good idea?
A large acacia loomed out of the darkness. Caleb turned sharply to avoid it. Glass in the passenger seat clanked together. He slowed the car to a stop and checked the vials. Inside the case were three vials of blood from the rhino. DNA backup, if the worst happened.
Caleb continued driving, careful not to let the Land Cruiser bottom out in the infinite number of ditches created by the Cape buffalo and other hooved creatures forming their own animal highways throughout Africa. To have done right by M’soko and the rhino, he should have stayed. He should have waited for daylight by M’soko’s side. He should have guarded this female to ensure she would survive long enough to help her species avoid extinction.
For Lydia, he had let M’soko stay behind alone. He didn’t know how he would forgive her, or himself.
CHAPTER 26
Lydia
Lydia limped out of Blue Nile’s front entrance. The morning light had not yet burned away the dew. Muna and Abiba helped with her bags even as the dust plume that marked a vehicle topped the horizon.
Lydia made it to where Juja waited in the driver’s seat to take Lydia to Kilimanjaro Airport, but before she opened the door, the oncoming vehicle began honking a furious tune. Muna and Abiba stopped their help and Lydia turned to see who it was.
Caleb stepped out the driver’s door of a mangled Land Cruiser with a missing windshield before it fully stopped. Something had left large dents in the hood and sides. Something else that looked like dried blood crusted much of the dash and rimmed the broken glass still attached to the windshield frame.
Lydia’s stomach twisted in a knot and she braced her good hand against the car. It looked bad.
Muna dropped Lydia’s bag on the dirt and ran up to Caleb. “Where is M’soko?”
“He’s fine, Muna. He’s okay.” Caleb pressed a GPS unit into her hands and spoke quietly to her for a moment.
Before Lydia knew what happened, Muna had jumped in the passenger side next to Juja and yelled something at him in Swahili. Lydia stepped back from the car as they drove off in a cloud of dust.
“What’s wrong with M’soko?” Lydia asked. “Where are they going?”
“He’s okay,” Caleb said, brushing past her. He looked almost as bad as the car. His hair was full of twigs, mud, and blood, as was the thick stubble on his chin and neck. Something had ripped his shirt at the collar. Blood speckled the fabric. More mud crusted his arms and she could not tell the original color of his pants. His eyes were red-rimmed and streaks of mud flared out from his temples.
He talked in Swahili with Abiba for a moment, then handed her a small Styrofoam case.
“Are you sure he’s okay?” Lydia said.
“M’soko is with the rhino.” He glanced at Lydia, then looked away. “He stayed behind.”
“You got the blood sample?”
Caleb did not answer her but continued speaking with Abiba.
With Caleb’s back turned, she slowly picked up the bag Muna had dropped and inched her way over to his Land Cruiser. Despite the pain in her thigh and hand, she opened the driver’s side door. It produced a low groan, but Caleb did not notice. She put herself in the driver’s seat to Caleb’s car. Glass pellets crunched under her butt and thighs. Dried blood dotted the gearshift and steering wheel. The open windshield left her exposed and disconcerted. Its sharp, bloody edges spoke of horrific events.
She started the engine and put the gearshift in reverse.
Caleb yelled her name and ran behind the Land Cruiser. She braked, afraid to run him over. The car stalled. She restarted it, shifted the car into drive, put her foot down too hard on the gas and made the car jump, shudder, and die again.
Caleb yanked open the passenger side door and jumped in. “Stop, Lydia. Just stop.�
�
Lydia’s fingers twisted at the key but failed to turn it. She began crying. “I can’t. I have to do this. I have to go.”
“Lydia,” Caleb said softly. “I know. I’m coming with you. But I need my passport.”
Lydia lifted her foot and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She felt too ashamed to look at Caleb. She did not deserve his kindness.
A shadow appeared at Caleb’s window. Abiba handed Caleb a dark blue booklet through the broken windshield.
Something gently touched her shoulder. She looked up and was caught in Caleb’s shining eyes. No anger resided there. Somehow, he had forgiven her, and she suddenly vowed to become worthy of such a gift and such a man, even if she could never forgive herself. She grabbed up his hand with her uninjured one and pressed it against her cheek. “I will do better,” she said.
“Be who you are,” Caleb responded. “I would not change you, or ask you to change. Only…”
“What?” She would do it. Whatever he asked of her now, she would do it for him.
“…allow me to drive us to the airport, okay? No offense, but, I’d like to get there alive.”
He smiled and she laughed. He brushed her cheek. They traded seats.
2
At the transfer in London and then again in Chicago, she pulled out her passport, and before the customs agent even asked, she would smile and say at Caleb’s suggestion, “Scalpel safari.” The various agents only nodded their heads and moved on to the next person in line, acting as if gashes on her scalp, bruises on her face, and a limp in her walk were normal. According to Caleb, they were. Parts of Africa were fast becoming like India or the Philippines—dental work, chemotherapy, reproductive therapy, all for a reduced price as long as a person took a little overseas trip.
During the London stop, Lydia and Caleb found an Internet station and looked up directions to the hunting ranch Mr. Compton had provided. He had not wanted to admit even that much to Lydia, but she’d explained the full situation to him and he’d given in. She also called and left a message for her parents to let them know about her flight arrival. A part of her hoped they would not get the message in time. She had talked with her parents for only a few minutes here and there since the leopard attack. No details. Just enough to reassure them she was fine and coming home soon and not to worry or fly out themselves.
She tried to picture Caleb from her parents’ perspective with his dark brown hair grown lanky, his beard clean, but grown in thickly since his last shave. He’d purchased tourist clothes in the Arusha airport to replace his bloody, tattered ones. They’d both spent time at each airport stop cleaning up in the various bathrooms, but only so much could be done. There was no way for him to hide the wildness about himself, just as there was no way for her to hide her stitches and bandages.
The plane began its descent over the Sacramento Valley. A clear day showed carefully gridded fields and then the rushing lines of the runway.
An attendant brought a wheelchair for her and she began to shake as Caleb helped move her into it. The shakes moved from her legs to her upper body.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said as Caleb wheeled her away from the boarding gate.
He bent over her and brushed a piece of hair from her forehead. “Your painkillers stop working?”
Lydia shook her head and closed her eyes. Hours upon hours on the plane had made her body impossibly stiff, but she knew the shakes weren’t from her injuries. “I can’t face my parents like this.”
“Yes, you can.”
She held onto the armrests and let him push her as she watched the airport posters glide by. Posters highlighting the river, the local college, fancy downtown restaurants. They stopped at the top of the escalator.
“Uh, is there an elevator somewhere?”
She lifted herself out of the wheelchair. “I’m okay. Better if I walk down, I don’t want to give my parents a heart attack.” She stepped onto the moving escalator and, just as she expected, her parents waited at the bottom, near a bench set against a wall of windows.
As she and Caleb floated down that escalator, she realized her parents hadn’t recognized her. She stepped onto the linoleum tiles with Caleb’s steadying hand on her back. Their gaze was still fixed to the top of the escalator, waiting for someone else to appear.
“Mom. Dad.”
Both turned as if doing a half-pirouette on the tiled floor. Both looked shocked, her mother’s short stature giving their ‘O’ mouths a slanted feel.
“Lydia!” They rushed her, Mom arriving first. Caleb's hand dropped off as her parents’ arms came around.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Lydia said.
“What happened?” Mom said in a whisper lost in the echoes of people hugging and laughing around them.
She still had not thought of any reasonable explanation. Nothing that could be said standing in an airport with a deadline over their heads to reach Paul. “It’s mostly bruises…I fell and…” She stepped back, reaching for Caleb’s hand. “…This is Caleb. He’s—”
“I’m Paul’s son.” Caleb stretched his hand across the gap.
Dad kept his arms at his side.
Caleb’s hand dangled in the empty air for several long seconds. He withdrew it and returned it to Lydia’s back. A movement she knew Mom caught.
“Do we have this young man to thank for your behavior? For your injuries?” Mom looked her over. “Where was he when you fell?”
“This,” Lydia said, waving her bandaged hand like a flag whipping in the wind, “is Paul’s fault. Or my fault, depending how you look at it.”
Dad moved as if to stand between her and Caleb.
She grabbed Caleb’s hand instead. “This isn’t Caleb’s fault.”
“What has this boy done to you?” Mom said. “When you couldn’t take the time to call, Paul did. He told us how this boy started fights, distracted you so you couldn’t bother to call us more than twice these last three months! How his goal this entire time has been to sabotage Paul, how,” she sniffed and repositioned her legs, looking as if her sandaled feet might create stress fractures through the tile, “he took you out alone in the wilderness. Just the two of you. We didn’t want to have this conversation while you were gone in that country. We didn’t want to have this conversation now—but you brought him with you! And you’ve come back with these injuries and no one has explained to us exactly how this all happened, but we get a call from this young man who won’t tell us anything but that you’re injured and coming home early…” Mom drew in a sharp breath. “Are you pregnant?”
A solemn expression came over Dad’s face. “Forbidden fruit creates many jams.” He said this slowly, putting the full weight of his disappointment in the Gibb Quip.
“Aaron.” Mom frowned and then patted Lydia’s shoulder. “Just tell us, Lydia. We’re here with you. Listen to the ones who love you.”
Lydia wanted back the woman who had threatened Dad with a pink shaded lamp and acted suspicious of Paul’s character. She did not dare look at Caleb. Even though she’d tried to prepare, her parents’ accusations cut her deeply. She’d done nothing wrong, at least, not any of the things her parents accused her of.
“Mom, I’m not…” She kept her voice steady. “Remember before I left, when you thought Paul had gotten that girl, Abby, pregnant? He did. It’s true what you thought before. Paul is not a good man.” She took a deep breath, ready to tell them about the hunting, the photos, the lies, the extent of her injuries. She would lay it all out on the linoleum of the airport, each betrayal face up like a deck of cards. Each one evidence of how Paul was a liar. How horrible a person she was for having helped him in some small way.
Mom reached out to touch her shoulder. “We just talked to him a few hours ago and—”
“Shit.” Caleb’s voice.
“Excuse me, young man,” Dad said. “What word did you just use in my daughter’s presence?”
Lydia laughed, almost hysterical. Her father, with his s
lim, manicured hands, looked mad, shaking mad. He looked ready to remove her from Caleb’s strong hands lined with Tanzanian dirt that had brushed hair from her forehead when she cried, supported her back when she walked, used a rifle to save her life who knew how many times.
“He knows we’re coming,” Caleb said.
Lydia transferred her gaze to Caleb’s strained face. “How could he know?”
Caleb sighed. “Billy, probably. I don’t know, maybe he was just hedging his bets. Either way.”
“Are you limping?” Her mother came to hug her. “Oh, my baby. What happened? We should never have let you go.”
It was then, in her mother’s embrace, that Lydia began to cry. She hadn’t meant to or thought she needed to, but that didn’t stop the tears from slipping down her cheeks.
Her parents huddled around her and she let go of Caleb’s hand. She thought about the last twenty-two hours, how exhausting it had been to clean her wounds, how cramped her muscles had become sitting in one position for so long. How every time she touched a bruise or felt the stitches in her scalp, she remembered her stolen pictures and camera, remembered going after the wounded leopard. Remembered everything that came before that, all the way to the beginning, when, for those first few hours in the Kilimanjaro airport she was still her parents’ daughter. Still a girl who went to church and worked at a Christian bookstore. A girl to whom taking pictures of foreign places was still a dream.
Her parents acted as if they’d expected to pick up the same Lydia they had dropped off three months before. She cried because she knew she was never going to be that girl again. She cried because, though it was never her intention, she was going to break her parents’ heart.
“Let’s get your bags and finish this at home,” Dad said, moving their huddle towards baggage claim.
Lydia looked for Caleb but didn’t find him. “Where’d Caleb go?”
Red outlined Mom’s eyes. She brought a tissue to her nose. “Who?”
“Caleb.”
“Oh. Him.” She sniffed.
“Mom,” Lydia admonished. She scanned the area around the escalator. She couldn’t believe he’d left without her.
Rhinoceros Summer Page 27