The Newcomers: a novel of global invasion , human resilience, and the wild places of the planet

by Pamela Jekel

  Jack turned to him with such joy, that Chase had to look away again. “We can fly back together! Thank you, son. I can’t wait for your mom to see you. This is wonderful, and Miranda! She’ll climb you like a tree. Thank you!”

  “Sijambo.”

  “What does that mean again?”

  “No problem.”

  When Chase announced his decision to accompany his father back to America for a visit, both Asha and Desta smiled in approval. “Of course, you should see your family,” Asha said.

  “And your new baby brother!” Desta added.

  “And when you fly back to Kenya, or sail back, you will email Desta, and we shall send Peter and Neddy to retrieve you again.”

  “Don’t give away my job.” Chase put his arm around Asha’s shoulder, half-teasing.

  “It will be waiting for you,” she said.

  “I’ll be back before the short rains. I want to get a good crop started this year.”

  She nodded. “You will see Baako before you go?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll give him his Christmas present early, let him tell me to stuff it a few times, push me around, call me a rotten tosser.”

  Desta chuckled. “I’m sure it’s been building up. You best allow plenty of time before your plane takes off.”

  “Or he’ll have leftovers for you,” Chase added.

  She rolled her eyes. “I can fetch him up fast enough.”

  Chase went to the kitchen to say goodbye to Jata. She wiped her hands and turned to him, and he was struck at how little she’d changed since that first time she’d made him cry in her kitchen. No more tears, he vowed silently. He gave her a huge hug and said, “Be sure my dog gets fed now and then?”

  She reached up and encircled his neck with her slender arms. “Lucky son. This one is the lucky son.”

  He chuckled. “You always said so.”

  She pulled back and peered at him, her eyes bright and knowing. “Jata was right. You see.”

  They left the next morning and drove to meet Baako at the freshman lounge on the Catholic University campus. After introductions had been made, Baako said, “You should change your mind about college, mate.” He smirked. “The women love a man with prospects.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll let you do all the prospecting for awhile,” Chase chuckled. “I got fields to plow.”

  They talked about Nairobi, Baako’s new mates at college, the farm, and when Baako asked Jack about America, he responded with the same light optimism he’d given Asha and Desta. “We’re coming back. The U.S. is on her feet again.”

  The second time he heard that reassurance, Chase was even more skeptical than the first time. But he’d soon see for himself, he thought. And really, concerns for the future of his homeland were not nearly as pressing as his hopes for his own land.

  When it was time to say farewell, Baako embraced Chase in a hug, without the subtle crushing domination which had accompanied some of those same hugs in the past. “Come back soon,” he said, with a genuine grin. “I’ll introduce you to my mates and some of my girlfriends. The more homely ones.”

  “Well, that’ll eliminate the lot,” Chase said.

  Baako pumped Jack’s hand. “Good to meet you, Mister Cummings. You have a fine son.”

  “I know that,” Jack said. “You have my deep gratitude for everything you’ve done for him.”

  “I call it a good trade.” He turned and took Chase’s hand in both of his. “Take care, brother. My best to your family.” He studied him for a moment. “We’ve come through it, yes?”

  “Quite,” Chase smiled.

  Peter got them to the terminal and at the checkpoint, set down Chase’s small bag and turned to shake his hand. Chase pulled him into his arms. “Now then, I expect you to get that last stretch of fence finished before I get home. I know it’ll be tough on you, without my supervision. Think you can manage it?”

  “No worries, bwana kijana. Come back soon. My woman will miss you.”

  “And I’ll miss her. Kwaheri. Keep you both safe.”

  Peter put Jomo’s old crumpled hat back on his head and walked away, turning once to lift his hand in farewell.

  It was that final wave that cinched Chase’s throat and made his eyes water. But he swallowed it back and turned to board the plane for the United States, walking next to his father.

  As they neared the boarding ramp, Jack asked, “When will you be old enough to be called plain ol’ bwana?”

  “Never. That’ll be Baako. I’ll be young mister until I’m older than you.”

  Chase looked up at the entrance to the plane and saw the armed soldier standing guard. All around him, white children of various ages were being brought forward by black families, saying their farewells, most of them weeping. It had none of the panic of the previous farewell he remembered so many years ago, but much of the sadness. There were a very few old white people there, obviously parents who had come to retrieve their children as Jack had done. His eyes kept straying back to the terminal.

  “You alright?” Jack asked softly.

  He cleared his throat, but he knew his father hadn’t missed his sorrow. “Sure, Dad,” he said finally.

  His father turned to him on the tarmac and embraced him. Chase accepted his father’s embrace, noticed that it seemed smaller somehow, less enveloping. Chase held on for a long moment. For the first time, he felt that he was stronger, larger than his father. And then he remembered what his father had said about being the father, wanting to stay the father. Needing that. He held onto him. People passed them on the tarmac, as though they were waters flowing around a stone. Jack patted his back, cupped the crown of his head, and murmured, “It’s okay, son.” And with his words, their positions turned again, returned, and restored them both back to where they began and belonged.

  * * *

  A six-summer lioness with her two adolescent cubs watched the wildebeest herds from the shade of the acacias. The afternoon heat was abating, and the shadows were getting long. The pride would hunt the herds tonight, and once more, her cubs would not stay behind to be watched by one of her sisters, but would accompany her out into the darkness. She glanced over to where they slept on their backs, their legs lolling, their bellies moving rhythmically as they panted in the heat, twitching at the yellow flies. A male and a female, two summers old, all that remained of her last litter, one lost to hyenas, one lost to weakness, one simply lost in the travels of the pride, no matter how she called and searched. Two left. The faint darker rosettes of their youth still showed on their bellies. She yawned, showing her three-inch canines, and closed her eyes, sniffing the wind.

  With eyes half-closed, her tawny face looked almost serene, as though she dreamed. But her appearance of repose was false. She was gathering her energy for the hard work of the hunt. Her gaze seemed to be focused within, but in reality, she watched the movement of the herds at the horizon, and she smelled the dust clouds as they began to converge towards the river. Her ears twitched with the sounds of their grunts, as they moved through the yellow grasses, and her jaws parted slightly, her eyes widened, and the cubs sensed her change of mood, waking and rolling upright.

  The lioness watched her sisters, who were also rousing. The pride was dwindling, she knew. Once large and powerful, controlling a hundred miles with twelve lionesses and two black-maned males, the pride now was down to five sisters, four cubs, and a single male, lean and scruffy, with the lighter mane which signaled less testosterone. Squeezed on all sides by the herds and villages of man, the sisters hunted less than a twenty-five mile territory, and the male was always on patrol of the boundaries. Now would come the seasons when more cubs would fail from starvation, if they were born at all. But of course, the lioness could not know this. She knew only that the pride must be fed. Their last meal, two nights before, was part of a dead hippo washed up on the banks of the river.

  Gradually, her sisters began yawn and stretch. The dominant female, her eldest sister, rose, urinated, and twitched her tuf
ted tail signaling the others to rise. The lioness moaned softly to her cubs, alerting them to the movement of the pride. Obediently, they followed her as the sisters strode into the bush. A pair of giraffes stared fixedly as they walked, and a signal moved through the herds. The impala raised their heads and froze, twitching their tails nervously, and a zebra wheezed a warning. The hunt had begun.

  The pride walked to the river to a marsh of mud and reeds where they could hide and wait for the herds to approach to drink. The wildebeest began to mass along the ridge above the river and there they stopped, snorting uneasily. They knew that death could be hiding in the reeds, but the water was life. They began to spill down the riverbank within paces of the reeds, their nostrils still stretched, trying to catch the taint of lion on the breeze.

  The lioness lay crouched in the reeds with the cubs behind her. The dominant sister was at the front of the reeds, another sister at her side. As the herds expanded, the latecomers were pushed closer to the waiting lions. Suddenly, the sisters charged the herd, and the wildebeest stampeded, blasting into each other in their panic. The lioness launched her attack at the other edge of the herd, her cubs close behind her, throwing the wildebeest into greater chaos, and as the herd hammered off, she saw that one wildebeest cow, panicked by the charge of the second lion, had run the wrong way into the marsh mud and was now wallowed up to her belly.

  The lioness called her cubs to her and watched as they tried to pull the wildebeest from the mud. She saw that the dominant lioness had taken another wildebeest down and had suffocated it with her mouth covering its nose and mouth. Its kicks had not yet stopped, when the sister was on its flanks, opening it easily. The cubs managed to pull the sunken cow from the mud. She was too exhausted to run. She kicked feebly then lay with heaving flanks while they dragged her up the bank. The male cub fell on her belly, while the female sprang forward and sunk her canines into the wildebeest’s muzzle. She tried to raise her head and rolled her eyes in distress, but she could not throw them off. The lioness waited and watched, as her cubs clumsily managed to kill the cow, trying several times for the killing bite.

  The pride fed heavily on the two carcasses and then, their bellies swollen, they moved to the marsh mud to rest. The hyenas came down to the river and covered their kills with snapping, giggling jaws. The dominant female rose, unwilling to share the night with the noise and stench of the scavengers, and began the walk back to their acacia copse. As they moved through the bush, the lioness sensed a movement near her in the tall grass, and with a startled woof, she sprang away. Too late to avoid the strike of a red spitting cobra, who was hunting the grass mice burrows. The cobra rose and hissed, swiveling rapidly, ready to spray its venom at the cubs, who sprang away and snarled, stumbling over each other in their eagerness to get away.

  The lioness growled a warning, moaned softly to her sisters, and fell back in line. They were still several miles from their resting place under the acacias. She stopped once and licked at her rapidly-swelling rear leg, as her cubs nuzzled her anxiously. The lioness felt the poison’s pain moving up her leg and into her flank, and she sensed that this might be a dangerous wound. She had been wounded before, a groin slice from a wildebeest’s horn, a kick from a zebra to her ribs, common accidents for any hunter. The slightest misjudgment was punished. But the lioness was healthy and, like most predators, was able to heal remarkably well from large injuries. Other wounds had not slowed her for long. This bite, however, was already hobbling her stride, and a mounting agony was moving into her spine and her belly.

  She moaned again and slowed. The dominant lioness turned around, and the sisters warily approached her. Her cubs lay down quietly at her side, still instinctively seeking her bulk to protect them, though they were now more than half her size. Her oldest sister now came forward and rubbed her shoulder against her head, licking her mouth and switching her tail. The lioness tried to purr but could not, for the drool that was filling her mouth and spilling from her jaws. The oldest sister lay down beside her, signaling her intention to wait with a relaxation of her body and a calmed tail. The rest of the pride took their places around the cubs and the lioness, settling down to listen to the night sounds with full bellies.

  By dawn, they all needed water, and none so urgently as the poisoned lioness. Her head was now grossly swollen, her flanks were paralyzed, and her breathing was harsh and labored. The dominant lioness rubbed against her briefly and then walked away, leading the rest of the pride. The cubs, nervous and confused, remained by their mother, until she finally snarled at them viciously, swiping at them and driving them off. Yowling softly, they padded after the pride into the bush, frequently stopping to look back to where their mother lay, her sides heaving with the effort to breathe.

  The dominant lioness coughed once, twice, calling to them. Urged by their instinct to stay with the pride, they hurried to join their mother’s sisters.

  Epilogue

  After a week’s journey of hitching rides with passing supply trucks and walking, Jack and Chase stood at last at the top of the dirt drive, looking down through the bare branches of the trees to the little cabin near the river. An orchard stood where they’d planted apple and peach saplings years before. Small patches of old snow crusted under their feet and lay in the shadows of the Georgia pines, a ribbon of smoke came from the chimney, and the sound of chopping wood rang from somewhere in the woods. The river, gray-green and quiet, glinted through the trees. On the porch, Chase could see someone, a young girl, holding a little child on her hip, bundled in a quilt. She looked up the road, saw them, and stood, shading her eyes against the winter sun. Chase heard her call out something, and the door opened. A woman came out and stood on the porch, watching them as they walked closer. Suddenly, she raced down the steps and up the drive, her arms open, calling his name.

  She was slender, older, shorter, and her dark hair was braided with strands of gray down her back. He ran towards her and swooped his mother into his arms, letting his tears mingle with hers as he pressed his face to her cheek. Behind her, Miranda hurried on long, coltish legs, carrying a toddler, who laughed and reached his arms out to be held.