Rhinoceros Summer

by Jamie Thornton

  Caleb took one of the rifles from the lodge. He checked the cartridges, then chose a four-wheeler and picked out the corresponding keys from an unlocked shed. It would be easy enough to track Paul with the marks left by whatever truck they’d taken out. But if they were more than a few miles away, the hunt might be long over.

  There wasn’t anything left for him except to see this though. He had to protect his reputation, and in that moment, as he took up the truck’s trail, he felt a strange connection with his father. His reputation meant everything to him, to his future—just as it did to his father. In this, they were in agreement.

  But in nothing else.

  No anger there. No hate. Just fact.

  Maybe he had lost it for a little while—the belief that he had time to fix things. He’d felt Paul’s stain on his life, like a sweat mark on a T-shirt no amount of washing would take out. But he believed again. There were still things that needed saving. He still had the time to save them.

  He lifted the rifle to his shoulder as the four-wheeler zoomed up a slight incline. The sound of the engine’s torque bounced back at him from against the darkening tree canopy. Little more than a mile away, he came upon the truck and picked up speed. He shot out across a small clearing and barreled onward. Paul’s back was to him and he could see a spear in Paul’s hand.

  Caleb shouted as Paul launched a spear at something. In less than a second, he was within yards of Paul. He readied himself to jump off without stopping first in order to tackle his father, but then a tawny-colored monster of fur flew through the air and tore him free of the four-wheeler.

  CHAPTER 31

  Paul

  Paul didn’t see caleb until it was too late.

  He’d raised his spear. The men hiding in nearby trees had thrown rocks at the eating lion to turn it from the dead hog and onto Paul. With his feet spread wide, his knees bent at the knee, his grip sure on the spear, Paul faced the lion as it gave an angry warning cough. He faced his destiny, whatever that might be.

  Paul heard the engine and figured it was the police. He sped up his plans, determined to see it through before someone could stop him. The engine noise grew. He charged the lion. Just as Paul launched the spear, he heard a shout. The lion turned. His spear missed and fell to the ground dozens of yards away. He spun around and saw Caleb’s shocked face. Caleb, who had not seen the lion in time to bring his rifle up or jump off the four-wheeler.

  Paul ran to Caleb, to his son, with only his bare hands as weapons to tear the lion away—he would tear that lion away with his bare hands.

  A rifle shot that drove ice into his heart. A rifle shot that had not come from Caleb’s gun.

  Paul dove for the lion’s mane, wrapped his arms around its neck and pressed his fingers into the lion’s eyes, digging in, trying to make the pulpy flesh pop, trying to save the life of his son.

  Another shot blasted Paul’s ears. His leg suddenly stung. He gathered all the primal energy he could muster as he held onto the lion ripping his son into ribbons of flesh. “Stop shooting!”

  He felt the lion’s left eye pop. The lion leapt back and he became weightless as it threw him off. He landed hard on the pine needle-covered dirt. The lion rushed into the darkness the pine trees created in the failing evening light, down the hillside, toward the ranch house.

  Failure.

  Failed.

  His son.

  CHAPTER 32

  Lydia

  “You’d lie to the police?” Lydia asked, surprised.

  “How do we know it’s a lie? It looks like the truth from here!” Mom said.

  Lydia wanted to yell at them in frustration but something stopped her. They had no reason to trust her, no reason to believe anything good about Caleb. And she had lied to them.

  “You know what. I think it’s a good idea. You should call the police but don’t lie, just tell them it looks like there’s been a break-in. Until they get here, will you let me prove to you Caleb is not the one to blame?”

  Her parents shared a look, and then her dad made the call.

  “Thank you.”

  Her mom waited in silence, probably waiting for her father to finish before they started in on her again. She used the respite to search the room for her pictures. It didn’t take long. A small desk pushed against the wall next to the fireplace, opposite the wall of windows, held a computer, a printer, memory cards, and color prints of her photos. She pocketed the memory cards and held the prints in both hands. Exhaustion descended upon her. She could claim victory now but it felt hollow.

  Her father appeared holding three cups of steaming liquid. “Let’s sit down,” he said.

  He handed her a cup and then her parents sat on a sofa that faced the fireplace.

  She wanted to prolong the peace for as long as possible. A steamy cinnamon smell hit Lydia’s nose as she took a sip. “Where’d the tea come from?”

  “They had a vending machine in the hallway,” Dad said.

  Mom took a careful sip and stared at the empty fireplace. “This is going to make it hard on your father. Did you think of that? He could lose his job over this. All that money spent, the shame of walking into church after all this comes out—” Her voice trailed off.

  “We want to know exactly what kind of relationship you and Caleb have and why, exactly, you felt compelled to lie to us.” He rested a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “Your conscience is God’s built-in alarm system, Lydia. Examine your conscience now, with us.”

  “That’s what you’re concerned about?”

  “He broke down the door, didn’t he?” Mom said.

  “Everyone can be redeemed,” Dad said. “But you must first want redemption in order for God to give it to you.”

  For a moment, the room spun out of control and she feared she might fall to the floor. She looked at the way the two of them sat together, a team intent on bringing back to life the daughter who had died in Tanzania.

  “Look at these.” She spread the prints across the coffee table in front of them. Her back was to the fireplace. Her parents bent their heads over the prints. The wall of windows behind them showed nothing of the outside, the lights inside too bright of a contrast compared to the evening light outside. “Do you recognize anyone?”

  Mom pushed some of the pictures around—mostly ones of Paul with gun in hand, stalking live prey or standing over dead ones.

  “Paul is the liar. Not Caleb,” Lydia said.

  Mom continued to skim the pictures, letting out small gasps as she came across different violent images. “You took these?”

  A skittering of rocks caught Lydia’s attention. She tried to find the source of the sound, but unless she limped across the room and pressed her face against the glass, the lights made it impossible to see anything but her own reflection in the window.

  “Lydia? Are you listening? Did you take these?”

  She glanced down but another skittering of rocks distracted her again. She limped away from the couch and to the foyer. Could Caleb be back already? Had he found Paul?

  “Lydia! Your mother is talking to you.”

  A deep crack sounded throughout the room and the windows shuddered under the weight of whatever large thing had thrown itself against the glass. The glass rushed into the room as a white wave of tinkling shards. Something half coughed, half roared, and then she saw what it was. A lion that looked almost as surprised to be there as she felt. Blood oozed out of several lacerations on its face, and more blood and a different type of slime oozed from one of the lion’s eyes.

  The shards made her shoe slip out from under her and she went down on her bad leg. Glass dug into her knee through her pants. He roared so loud it vibrated the remaining windows and her entire body. She could almost feel his hot breath on her. She crawled the rest of the way to the rifles, ignoring the dozens of shards her bandaged hand and bare arms picked up.

  She crouched and made sure her parents would not be in her line of fire. They both stood, mouths open, horrified expressions o
n their faces. The sofa was between them and the lion. If she missed her shot, they would not be hit.

  The lion thrashed his head around, his thick mane streaked with glass and blood. He pawed at his bad eye and sniffed the air in a manner that seemed to say he had no idea how he’d gotten himself into this situation. Then he fixed his good eye on Lydia.

  She took the safety off. She maneuvered the gun so she could pull the trigger with her left hand, sending out a small wish that her missing fingers would not make her miss.

  He roared and leapt at her.

  She shot him in the head.

  She shot the lion again, and then her leg gave out.

  2

  Lydia tried to stand but couldn’t put weight on her injured leg. Dark red liquid seeped through the denim on her thigh. She pressed her bandaged hand against it but quickly took it back. The layer of glass shards cut through the jeans and into her leg, jabbing more of the stitches.

  She set the rifle on the floor and tried to stand up again. This time, she managed to half stumble, half walk, arms and legs dripping blood, to her parents.

  More sounds of crunching glass made Lydia swear. She stumbled back for the rifle, damning herself for leaving it behind.

  But she stopped when she saw the human silhouette. Every detail showed against the backdrop, as if the person had pushed through dark theater curtains into the stage light. It was Paul, and he held a bloody, motionless Caleb in his arms, limp like a doll.

  Other figures moved within the umbrella of light, figures she couldn’t make out because she wasn’t looking at them, she was stumbling over to Caleb. She was going to force the breath back into him.

  “Wasn’t our fault,” Hellerman said. “Couldn’t leave the trees or we’d be the ones dead.”

  And then she heard sirens.

  3

  Lydia’s parents stayed by her side in the waiting room. Mom tried to hold her hand that first day, after Lydia tried to stop Caleb from bleeding while the paramedics rushed through the lodge, after Paul had long disappeared.

  The other men, including Jack Hellerman, were taken into police custody. Her mom tried to hold her hand but then stopped, unsure of this stranger who had pulled out a rifle and used it to shoot a lion.

  “You saved our lives,” Mom said at the hospital, after the doctors had stabilized Caleb. “We were frozen there on the couch. But you knew exactly what to do.”

  Lydia just shook her head.

  Her parents listened as Lydia described her various wounds to a nurse so that her thigh could be re-stitched and her hand could be checked, cleaned, and rewrapped. “You don’t want to look at this,” Lydia said to her parents as the nurse unwrapped her hand.

  Enough painkillers ran through her system that she no longer felt pain throbbing through her body, but they did not blur out her mom’s silent sobs or the way her father’s face blanched and pulled back into his neck like a turtle doing his best to block out the world.

  “My baby girl,” Mom said between sobs.

  When the doctors came to say Caleb would make it with all his body parts intact, she asked, “When can I see him?” and her parents did not protest.

  “We’re keeping him in a drug-induced coma for a few days,” the doctor said. His injuries were worse than hers, but he’d only had to wait maybe an hour before receiving medical help. This had made all the difference.

  For one more week, Lydia slept at her parents’ house, in her old bed, under freshly laundered cotton sheets. Sympathy cards littered the bedside table. Cards from youth group people, friends of her parents, from the M’s. Yet she also saw the memory cards she figured lost in her scramble for the rifle. Her dad had found them while the paramedics worked on Caleb.

  It was to these that she turned to during those restless nights, ignoring the welcome home cards, ignoring the M’s. She loaded the pictures onto a computer and sifted through hundreds of images. She relived those first mornings after Mr. Hellerman’s safari, when the entire staff sat around the white table-clothed dining table and the rays of sun fell on crystal glasses and glinted off silverware. She relived the dinners, the stampedes, the hunts. She found the best twenty, pictures she was proud of taking, but decided not to submit them to National Geographic after all. She was determined to get there eventually, but there was other work she needed to do first.

  She called the resort and felt a rush of joy at Muna’s, “Jambo.”

  “Rafiki habari?” Lydia responded.

  A silence on the other end of the phone and then Muna responded. “I am well, friend. And you?”

  She almost cried at the warm response. She filled Muna in on everything that had happened since leaving the resort. Muna said the Wildlife Division had given her and M’soko control of Blue Nile safaris until Paul’s mess of subleasing was sorted out. Abiba planned to run the Blue Nile resort.

  “Tell Abiba that he will be well again. Soon,” Lydia said.

  “When he wakes, tell him M’soko and the rhino are both safe. He succeeded. And you, my friend, you are well? Because you do not sound it.”

  “I would like to come back. If M’soko could talk to someone he knows…Could he find me work? Something that might do good?” She wanted a way to make up for the pictures she’d taken of living things destroyed and she was determined to pay the church back for the equipment they had bought her. “Something that might help,” she said, knowing how vague that must sound. “Where I would not be taking pictures for someone like Paul.”

  “M’soko already creates a plan. He needs you to send some pictures.”

  Wild hope rose in Lydia for the first time in weeks. She wrote down the information. They talked for a few more minutes, sharing everything they knew about what had happened. Finally, Lydia said, “Asante sana.”

  “You are welcome, my friend,” Muna responded.

  A few days later, after speaking again with Muna and M’soko, after being up all night in the hospital waiting room again, a doctor came to inform her that Caleb had woken up.

  She went to his hospital room and found him sucking down a milkshake.

  “Well, aren’t we the pair,” she said. Lines of stitches smeared in glossy antibiotic cream crisscrossed his arms and neck and forehead. She knew his hospital gown covered many more such lines. She pulled a chair over. “My bruises and half-healed wounds, and you sporting fresh ones.” She looked around the empty hospital room not expecting an answer. Only one vase of flowers, from her parents, interrupted the medical atmosphere of the room. “Did the doctors tell you what happened?”

  Caleb continued sucking on the straw.

  “Paul ran to the lodge with you,” Lydia began. “The owner of the lodge, he was the only one with a gun besides you. He was in the tree and tried to shoot the lion from there, but you were lucky. He completely missed you and the lion but managed to shoot Paul in the leg.” She smiled to show Caleb what a big joke it was, but it felt false on her face.

  “Where’s Paul?”

  “Gone,” she said. “The pig ranch owner said a truck was missing. The authorities in both the U.S. and Tanzania are looking for him, but doubt they’ll find him.” She just hoped he would stay gone. “But you’ll be okay. The doctors stitched everything back together. Amazing what’s possible with a hospital only twenty minutes away. You should know. M’soko is safe and so is the rhino. And there’s still your job waiting for you when you return.” She tried to smile again.

  Caleb turned his head to the side and looked out the window.

  She leaned over his hospital bed, touching the hand that held the milkshake. “Don’t you care?”

  The look on Caleb’s face said he hadn’t expected such a blunt question. She felt a flush rise in her cheeks.

  “Of course I care. It’s just hard to see all this, this perfect life you have here. Parents who care about you. You have a place,” Caleb said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Different question, then. Do you care about me?”

  Caleb sat there in sil
ence for so long, she didn’t think he would answer

  “I am so in love with you, it hurts.”

  Now Lydia was the one stunned into silence.

  Caleb sighed and brought the straw back to his lips. “Thought it was obvious.”

  “Well—”

  “Listen,” he said. “No pressure, okay. My life is a mess right now. I don’t think you should help me clean it up.”

  Lydia kissed him in answer and her lips burned with the touch.

  She pulled back, ducking her head to cover a smile and to regain her composure, but she still caught the look of shock mixed with pleasure on Caleb’s face.

  He didn’t say a word, and she didn’t know what to say after that, so she grabbed his milkshake and changed the subject. “Just because things are crazy doesn’t mean…M’soko showed my pictures to the Wildlife Trust in Kenya. They want me to take photos of their elephants. Living ones this time. If I spend six months with the sanctuary, they’ll pay me in equipment and try and find me a new assignment after that. They want me to help document the entire process—mix in a little video, a little journalism maybe. I won’t really get paid much, well anything, besides in equipment. But it will be mine, free and clear.” She dipped a spoon into the milkshake. The first spoonful always tasted the best. “M’soko said when you’re well enough, he needs you back out to help him with the village and tracking down those last two elephants. You’ll help, right?”

  “Of course I’m going back. But I don’t think you—”

  “I think I want to be with you, okay?” She sighed at the obstinate set of his face. “There’s nothing you can do about it, either way, so just let it go and act like you might actually be happy about spending more time with me.”

  “I am…I would be.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Caleb tensed his muscles for another moment, then relaxed back into his hospital bed. “Okay.”

  She looked down at the milkshake. “I’m going to finish eating this for you.” She smiled. “I mean, it’s for your own good. This tastes way too rich to be healthy.”