Augusts in Africa

by Thomas McIntyre

  I lay on my back, feeling the first cool breeze of the night passing through the mesh flaps and into the tent, the clicking noises diminishing as the insects flew away into the moonless August dark. After a time, I turned onto my left side with my arm under the pillow.

  At the edge of the waterhole, the shining graphite-gray mud was tilled by the hooves of heavy antelope, black butterflies with yellow markings and azure eyespots puddling in the wet, wings fluttering like petals blown by the wind. I was lying comfortably then, thinking, until the thinking stopped.

  In the shadowlight before daybreak, everything stood still and the colors of the thorn trees and pandanus fans were the same as the ground beneath them, motes stirring in shafts of light as the sun rose through the tall trunks in front of me.

  I lay in the bed once more, knowing there was darkness beyond my closed eyelids. I changed my position a little and saw the gleam on the spines of a drove of dagga boys, flanks caked in cracked clay armoring them like chain mail, grazing amid a stand of mopane, scuffing cleft tracks as they made deep lowings, the lead bull with the broad flinty boss halting and lifting his head, muzzle forward, rumbling grunts that stopped the other bulls, who looked where he did, walleyed stares approaching glares. Then the buffalo went off, and I slept.

  “Good morning,” came the African voice.

  I heard the hissing of the pressure lantern, and turning saw through the mosquito netting a bright, soft-edged globe of light entering the tent. In the light was a tray with a cup and plates and a small steel pot, balanced on the palm of a hand. The brightness kept me from seeing through the mesh flaps to measure how near to dawn it was, but I knew it was at least an hour away.

  The African in the khaki uniform crossed to the small table and placed the tray and the light on it. Lifting the pot and cup, he started to pour.

  “Tea?” he asked.

  I pulled back the blanket and swung my feet onto the slippers on the rug.

  Nodding to the African, I rubbed my face and hair, and said, “Yes.”

  And then I said, “Thank you–tatenda,” clapping together the flats of my hands.

  Author’s Note

  Thomas McIntyre has written hundreds of magazine articles and television scripts since 1975. He has published seven books about the outdoors, starting with Days Afield in 1984, and is the editor of, and contributor to, Wild & Fair, a collection of North American hunting stories, including works by Pulitzer Prize winners Philip Caputo and David Mamet. Tom’s work has been included in a score of anthologies, was awarded Best Magazine Story in The Sporting News’s “Best Sports Stories 1982;” and he was named the 2013 Carl Zeiss Outdoor Writer of the Year. He is the author of the novella, The Snow Leopard’s Tale. His son Bryan is a graduate of the University of Iowa; and Tom and his wife, Elaine, live in north-central Wyoming with their English field cocker, Mickey, a likely spawn of Satan.

  Illustrator’s Note

  A native of northwest England, Andrew Warrington trained in fine arts and illustration, specializing in wildlife with pencil. His unique work with graphite and pastel has earned him an acclaimed international reputation. Having traveled extensively through Europe and North America, working in the outdoors and studying native game, he has had his art exhibited widely, and carried by publishers such as Wild Wings. Over the years, his illustrations have appeared on the covers, and with the content, of nearly all the magazines devoted to hunting, as well as with some of the finest books on the outdoors, hunting, and wildlife; and he has previously illustrated several of the author’s books. The sales of his prints and original art have benefitted the efforts of major conservation organizations. He continues to exhibit in galleries around the world.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to the editors, past and present, of Sports Afield, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Sporting Classics, The Field, American Hunter and the other publications in which some of these pieces first appeared. Especial thanks to Jay Cassell and Lindsey Breuer-Barnes for their invaluable editorial input in the production of this book.