Wild Life

by Keena Roberts

  Our coach settled onto a bench and took out her stopwatch, motioning us into a line in the corner of the field. Eight laps, I said to myself. This’ll be fun. I heard the sound of a revving throttle in my head. Christine looked a little sick, so I smiled at her. At the sound of our coach’s whistle, we were off. I began to run, immediately passing Christine and settling into a quick pace directly behind Brooke, who, as one of the tallest girls, was also one of the fastest. I knew I couldn’t beat her—she was too fast for me—but if I pushed myself hard I could stay right behind her. Legs pumping, I watched Brooke’s blonde ponytail bounce against her back ahead of me. Don’t look back, Brooke, I thought. There’s a monkey on your tail.

  I finished the run in second place, trailing Brooke by ten seconds or so. She collapsed in a heap on the grass, gasping for air and glaring at me, clearly somehow offended that I had kept up with her.

  “You really are a freak,” she panted. The other runners began to trickle in, flopping on the grass next to Brooke. I stood to the side, looking up at the sky and feeling the sweat drip down my back. My legs ached but my head felt calm and clear, more peaceful than it had all day. I closed my eyes, blocking out the sounds of cars on the road and airplanes passing high above and focusing instead on the smell of the dead grass and the feeling of the warm sun on my face. When I opened my eyes, Brooke was still looking at me. The rest of the team was quiet, recovering from their run. All told, probably twenty girls surrounded Brooke and me at the end of the field.

  “Why aren’t you on the cross-country team?” Brooke asked nastily. “You’re a fast runner and a terrible field hockey player.”

  “Of course I’m terrible,” I said, seeing no reason to lie with so many people looking at me. It was true; I could move quickly but I was horrible at actually playing field hockey. We’d always been in Botswana during the fall and I never had the chance to learn the sports kids played in that season. “What do you expect? I only learned the rules this week.” Someone laughed.

  “So why exactly are you here?” Brooke said. Why couldn’t she leave me alone? I hated having the rest of the team stare at me. I sought Christine out in the crowd and she smiled at me, giving me just enough confidence to respond.

  “You read the article, didn’t you?” I said casually. “I’m here for socialization.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The Hippo Situation Is Grim

  My first year in high school ended up being fine, just like my eighth-grade year had been. I kept my head down and worked hard. By following Christine’s example of how to fit in, I settled into high school like a human chameleon, blending into the crowds of students as seamlessly as one of the striped kudu in the woods behind our camp. I moved silently through the halls, keeping to myself and trying to stay off the social radar. I was not popular (and did not want to be), so my ability to become invisible was the biggest indicator of my successful transformation into American Keena: if no one saw me, I was doing something right.

  The year went by slowly but eventually the spring semester started to wrap up. Summer was coming and our return to Baboon Camp was getting close. We would all be going back until school began again in September, though as usual my parents planned to keep us away until the last possible second. I was feeling good and thought it might be time to be just a little brave and relax my new rule about not reading fantasy in school, a rule I’d created because reading fantasy was more a Botswana Keena thing and not at all something my new school role models would do.

  It was a warm day in May when I mustered enough courage to walk down the hallway in school carrying my book. Though I’d sworn off all fantasy fiction with dragons and elves, I thought Watership Down might be more acceptable to bring to school; the cover was plain enough and no one could immediately tell that it was also fantasy fiction, not just about rabbits. I felt a great affinity to animals on a mission.

  I was just at the part where General Woundwort began his attack on the rabbit colony of Watership Down when my book went missing. I’d left it lying on the top of my backpack in the cafeteria while I went to the bathroom, and when I returned it was gone.

  At first I thought Nat might have swiped it but thought that unlikely when I remembered how angry he’d been when I borrowed his copy of Dune without asking. I couldn’t figure out why anyone else would take it. No one else read those kinds of books, and it had been sitting on top of a backpack that was very clearly mine, since no one else’s backpack was faded and dusty and had a brown stain on the side that was definitely not from baboon poop.

  I had three classes left in my day before lacrosse practice and found it harder than usual to focus on my schoolwork. Where was my book? I looked for it everywhere. I didn’t really expect to find it just lying on a bench in a hallway somewhere, but I couldn’t stop myself from scanning the halls just in case. Half of me thought that if someone had taken it accidentally they might have left it in an obvious place when they realized their mistake. That’s what I would have done, anyway. Taking someone’s book was a cardinal sin in my world, second only to giving someone a book you’d already read as a present. Mom told me that when she was little she used to believe that if you read a book before you gave it to someone else it “weakened the words.”

  When the bell rang to end the school day, Watership Down was still nowhere to be found, and I walked to practice in a foul mood with Laurana the lacrosse stick slung over my shoulder. I was thinking that at least now I could work out some of my frustration by running when I heard someone call my name behind me. I turned around and saw Meghan’s friend Sarah come jogging toward me, the one who had remarked on my fake professional tan the year before.

  “Hey,” she said. “I found this in the seniors’ lounge. I think it’s yours.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out Watership Down, the spine broken and the front cover bent in half. Most of the pages had been ripped out. My head swam and I felt hot, angry tears building behind my eyes.

  “Thanks,” I managed to say.

  “I’m really sorry,” Sarah said. “I don’t know what happened to it. I…uh…it was behind a trash can and I figured it was yours. No one else reads books about rabbits.” I wiped my eyes on the backs of my hands and harshly told myself to pull it together. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault my book was wrecked, and she had been nice enough to bring it back to me.

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. No, I wanted to say. No, I’m not all right. It’s not fair that I can’t even read a book without people harassing me. I am sad and angry and embarrassed that everyone knows I like rabbits and I am terribly lonely and want you to walk to practice with me but don’t know how to ask.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks a lot for finding my book. I’ll talk to you later.” I turned away and continued walking toward the practice fields, my heart racing and my hand clenched so tightly around Laurana that the aluminum ridges cut into my palm. Well, I guess that’s that, I told myself. No more books at school. Ever.

  All the way back to Baboon Camp, as we flew through New York, Paris, Johannesburg, and Maun, I fumed. I’d been trying so hard to fit in, and it had been working fairly well, but nothing had really changed. It didn’t matter that I dressed the way everyone else did or kept to myself or helped other people with their homework when they asked. No one was interested in liking me for me, and even the tiniest, slightest deviation from the norm had such dramatic consequences. The most frustrating thing was that there wasn’t any reason behind it, at least none that made sense.

  When animals attacked each other in Botswana, they always had a reason for doing it, like their baby was threatened or someone was trying to steal their food. Animals were violent and dangerous, but never without reason. That was why I had never been as scared of the animals as I maybe should have been. Lions didn’t attack people for no reason. If I respected them and left them alone, they would do the same to me. Same with elephants, and same with leopards, though I couldn’t cou
nt buffalo and hippos in the same category because I knew they were much, much stupider. I couldn’t understand why people didn’t operate the same way. But if that’s the way it’s going to be, I said to myself, I will give them nothing. Botswana Keena will stay completely in Botswana, and not even the tiniest bit of her will go back to America.

  The second I dropped my bags on the tarp outside my tent, I took a deep breath. My lungs filled with the smells of the river, dust, and the sage bushes that grew by the laundry area. A fish eagle called to its mate from the fig tree, throwing its head back and forth in the bright blue sky and echoing through the quiet woodland beyond the shower. The wind blew softly through the trees and if I closed my eyes, I could hear all the other noises from the forest—the snap of twigs as squirrels raced each other up and down the sausage tree, the liquid burble from the Okavango oriole in the rain tree, and the babbler birds muttering to each other as they foraged through the dry leaves on the forest floor, looking for insects, seeds, and snakes to attack.

  Everything is just the same, I said to myself. Everything is right, and good, and the way it should be. I ripped off my sneakers and went racing down the road toward the open plains behind camp. My feet had lost their calluses after a year of wearing shoes and the thorns tore into my feet as I ran across the dust. That’s it, I thought. Start with my feet. Turn me back into the person I’m supposed to be.

  June 10, 1999

  Keena’s Journal

  Everything was very chaotic yesterday, but we are HERE! The flood hasn’t arrived yet in full, but the floodplains are at their highest that I’ve ever seen, or even that the Maun old-timers have seen. The water is almost up to the kitchen table in camp and it’s virtually impossible to walk to C5. Flying up we could really see how the water was taking over the islands.

  And the hippo situation is grim. At Delta Camp a hippo bit through a mokoro that a tourist was taking a ride in and the tourist lost her leg and bled to death. I have never heard of that happening before. And another hippo bit through one of the fancy Xaxaba boats and sank it (though luckily no one got hurt).

  Hello, ladies.

  Dawn and Jim left to go visit their family in the US and left a note that there’s a group of seven buffalo that pretty much live in camp, as well as a giant crocodile that has taken up living near the water pump. All this, combined with the fact that all the plains are filled with tall, tall grass due to all the rain, makes me a little nervous. Tall grass is where lions like to hide. I don’t know what I’m going to do about going running. Maybe I’ll start running with a machete? Ha ha.

  Mokupi seems happy to see us, but that may be only because he has “business” to discuss with Dad. He and Mpitsang are not speaking to each other. It started, as far as we know from Dawn, when Mokupi had a swollen leg. He said he had been cursed and spent almost three months’ worth of his salary going to see a traditional healer in Etsha for a cure. The healer gave him a mirror that was supposed to show him the face of the person who cursed him—and Mokupi saw Mpitsang (though this is not that hard to believe since they are brothers and look alike).

  This discovery led to a series of really scary physical fights between the two of them in camp and two months in which only one of them would show up for work. Then, the climax: they got attacked by a hippo on the way to work and barely escaped with their lives. The hippo came up under their mokoro and bit it in half, just like the one at Delta Camp had done. Being intelligent bush guys, they swam underwater to get away from the hippo and Mokupi actually kicked the hippo a couple of times.

  We got more of the story later when Mom and Dad sat down to talk with Dawn and Jim after they arrived back at camp in September. According to Dawn, Mpitsang reported that the hippo attack had been staged—that Mokupi had hired the hippo to kill Mpitsang because of the mirror and the curse described by the healer. Mpitsang said that the hippo must not have understood Mokupi’s instructions properly because Mpitsang was still alive, but he refused to work with Mokupi anymore because Mokupi had tried to have him killed. Mokupi also said he refused to work with Mpitsang because of the curse that originally resulted in his swollen leg.

  Dawn hadn’t known what to do, but ended up letting Mpitsang go because she couldn’t really do her research without Mokupi, and even though Mpitsang had been employed longer, he was, in the end, only a day laborer. She asked Mokupi to recommend someone from the Xaxaba staff village who might want to take over Mpitsang’s job, and the next day Mokupi showed up with a new guy named Press. Press was a cousin of Mokupi’s and Mpitsang’s, and looked almost identical to Mpitsang: tall and quiet, but with a lighter personality that was much more reminiscent of Mokupi’s.

  It was sad to think that I might not see Mpitsang again. Though I didn’t know him as well as Mokupi at this point, I had known him for seven years and worried about him. Mokupi assured me that it would be easy for Mpitsang to find another job, but in the meantime, he was traveling back to Etsha to spend some time with his children and, though Mokupi didn’t want to see him again, promised me that he would be okay.

  June 13, 1999

  Keena’s Journal

  I stayed in camp today to take care of Lucy who has a fever and a bad sinus infection. We can’t get her medicine so I’m boiling chicken to make her some broth. Mom is worried that the raft holding the water pump is sinking, so we need to figure that out ASAP. Last night I was woken up by enormous crashing next to the tent; turns out it was a hippo that left deep footprints all over the area by the kitchen table and sprayed poop all over our firepit. I had a dream that an elephant ate one of the kitchen walls, and Mokupi told me he has been having a dream that a hippo is standing over him with a knife.

  The camp was very quiet. Dawn and Jim had left a few days before we arrived to visit family back in the US and wouldn’t be returning until September. They left the camp fully provisioned for us, but as per usual, the supplies they had been able to find in Maun were mismatched and somewhat challenging to work with. A week or so after we arrived, I showered and bundled up against the freezing winter evening, then went to help make dinner. Dawn had left us a note saying that the butcher wasn’t selling whole chickens and she’d been forced to buy individual breasts that had been frozen together into a block that she and Jim had labeled “Block o’ Chick.” Dad pulled the gigantic hunk of meat out of the deep freeze and attempted to slice it into pieces using a hacksaw from the storage shed while I held one side up and tried to help.

  I braced my shoulder against the Block o’ Chick and used my free hand to pop open a can of Hansa, my favorite Botswana beer. Dad sawed back and forth with the hacksaw and slowly carved away a chunk of chicken to grill on the campfire for dinner. His face looked grim in the glow of his headlamp and I realized he hadn’t said anything for several minutes.

  “Dad?” I asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy to be back?” A chunk of chicken detached itself from the Block o’ Chick and landed on the cutting board with a satisfying thunk.

  “I’m very happy to be back,” Dad said, leaning the hacksaw against the doorframe. “I’m just a bit anxious, to be honest with you.” This was new. Dad never talked about his feelings. None of us did. I’d never once heard him say anything about his emotions other than that he was hungry or tired. And Dad was never anxious—or at least never told me before that he was. The only thing I’d ever suspected of making him anxious was going through customs.

  “Why are you anxious?” I asked. Dad sighed.

  “Maybe anxious isn’t the right word,” he said. He leaned against the kitchen counter and took a sip of his Hansa. “I’m nervous. Remember last year when I said going out with the baboons was getting too exciting for me?” I nodded. “Well, I meant it. When we first came to Baboon Camp in 1992, do you remember how often we saw elephants and lions?”

  “Not that often,” I said. “It was something like a week before we saw an elephant and it must have been a couple months before we sa
w lions.”

  “And how often do we see them now?”

  “Last year it was…more or less every day, I think. At least with the elephants, we saw them so often I stopped paying attention.” I remembered talking to the guides at Xaxaba about it at one point. They told us that the population of elephants and lions was increasing so quickly because the animals were all moving into Botswana from Zimbabwe because it was safer and there were fewer poachers. While that was a good thing from a conservation standpoint, it also meant that the elephants were more likely to charge people because they’d been exposed to poachers and knew that humans were dangerous.

  “That’s not a good thing for us,” Dad went on. “Having more elephants and lions around means there’s a greater chance that we could get attacked by them. Maybe not you,” he added quickly, seeing me instantly bristle at the insinuation that I couldn’t handle myself out in the bush. “But we have postdocs here that we’re responsible for, and Mom and I aren’t always here when they are. We can’t guarantee their protection. What if one of them just has a bad day? The project would end immediately if that happened, besides the fact that someone could be seriously injured or killed.” I took a sip of my beer. Dad had never talked to me like this before.

  “Do you think something really bad will happen?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Dad said. “We have no way of knowing. I just don’t like the odds.” I looked past Dad and out through the chicken-wire window of the kitchen. Lucy was on her way from our tent and her headlamp bobbed down the path in the fading light. I’d always understood that there was a chance something might leap out of the bushes and grab her, I just never truly believed it would ever happen. It hadn’t so far.