by Tony Park
She looked at him, the laughter replaced by a look of concern.
‘Is that how you feel? Is it all so helpless trying to care for wildlife?’
He didn’t have the heart to tell her what he really thought. ‘No.’
At a stone-walled hide called Little Tom’s they got out of the truck and scared an owl out when they walked into the structure. A trio of warthogs wallowed in the mud at the edge of the waterhole in front of the hide. Graham spotted lion spoor outside and around the building. ‘Looks like it was here last night.’
The openness and emptiness of this grand national park lulled them into a companionable silence as they carried on their circuitous game drive. Graham was pleased Kerry had stopped asking questions. He glanced at her every now and then, his eyes lingering when she was occupied looking out the window for game. She was beautiful with her black hair, golden skin and her seemingly incongruous Australian accent. He had seen foreigners like this before; they didn’t stay foreigners for long. She wasn’t in love with Africa – how could one be in love with a place where she’d nearly died twice and been exposed in such a short time to the greed, corruption, cruelty, crime and hopelessness of this continent?
No. Kerry Maxwell was addicted to Africa. The continent had reached out its tendrils, wrapped itself around her heart and hooked her with its thorny barbs.
The next stop on their route was an elevated viewing platform called Big Toms. The sun was high so Kerry busied herself making a salad sandwich for herself and ham and cheese for Graham from the supermarket provisions they had put in the vehicle’s cooler box.
Graham took his binoculars and climbed the cement stairs to the elevated pole and thatch hide, from where he surveyed the landscape. The overnight rains had formed pools out on an area that had been beaten to dust by the trampling big feet of thousands of elephants coming and going. A pair of elephant bulls, one bigger and with longer, thicker ivory than the other, slurped noisily from a trough to the right of the hide, which was fed by a solar-powered pump. Water from the trough, when it was full, spilled over and into the narrow stream that ran across the front of the viewing hide. The pachyderms were taking it in turns to place the tips of their trunks over the inlet pipe to mainline the clean fresh water coming from the borehole.
Graham checked on Kerry; she kept looking over her shoulder at the elephants as she finished making the sandwiches.
Then one of the elephants stopped drinking, turned surprisingly quickly and raised his trunk in the air. It was the smaller of the two bulls. The animal’s sudden change in behaviour alerted Graham, just as it disturbed the older elephant, who raised his big head. The younger bull let out a shrill trumpet blast.
‘Stop where you are,’ Graham said to Kerry, who was halfway between the Land Cruiser and the foot of the stairs.
‘What is it?’
‘Shush.’ He followed the younger elephant’s gaze to the tree line, beyond the beaten ground about a hundred metres behind where the truck was parked in an open-sided boma of rotting logs.
He saw it.
‘Graham?’ Kerry hissed.
‘Quiet. Do not move.’ He pointed.
Slowly, Kerry turned her head, then froze, her torso twisted, a sandwich in each hand.
Graham stood at the top of the stairs, knowing that the best thing for him, for both of them, to do right now was to stay rock-solid still as the lion walked towards the water trough – and Kerry.
It was a male, with a big shaggy mane so pale it was almost blond, though the hair turned to black where it approached his chest, signalling that he was mature. He padded defiantly towards the elephants, who were both facing him now, ears out and trunks up.
The lion stopped.
He looked around him and his golden-eyed gaze rested on the vehicle in the exposed car park. He lifted his head.
‘Graham,’ Kerry said out of the corner of her mouth. She slowly swivelled her head to look up at him.
Graham put up a hand to warn her to be quiet.
The lion trotted forward.
Graham knew he should stay motionless but he was worried Kerry was going to run. If she did, the lion would vector in on her as quickly as a house cat would pounce on a mouse. As it was, the big cat seemed to be tossing up between defying the elephants and coming over to check out the vehicle. Perhaps, Graham thought, he could smell the ham sandwich.
Now was not the time to joke.
The lion followed a route between the elephants and the hide. When he was almost abreast of both – Graham could see Kerry physically shaking, her hands still holding up the sandwiches as if she were about to deliver them – the younger elephant sounded the charge through his trunk.
Elephants, Graham knew, detested lions, and this pair were determined to show the king of the jungle who was the rightful ruler. They left their water and headed for him. The smaller elephant waved his trunk frantically and shook his head so that his ears flapped, but the dominant bull was ready for the kill, ears back, head down and trunk tucked up between his long, deadly front teeth. If they caught that lion they would pulverise him then toss him in the air with a hooked tusk just for fun.
The lion ran a few steps towards them, but his bravado vanished in a heartbeat. He kicked up a mini dust cloud as he skidded to a halt, turned in a bound and ran. His flight, however, took him towards Kerry and the parked Land Cruiser.
Graham used the moment of pandemonium to sling his binoculars and run down the steep narrow stairs, two at a time, very nearly falling and breaking his neck on the bottom step. Kerry shrieked and ran headlong into his arms.
Grabbing her, Graham barrelled the pair of them into the toilet located below the hide and slammed the door behind them.
Kerry slumped against the wall, panting, her eyes wide, a sandwich still in each hand.
‘Not again.’
It was his turn to laugh. ‘Another near-death experience?’
She nodded, her face pale.
Graham opened the door a crack and looked out. There was the sound of a receding trumpet blast as the younger elephant continued chasing the lion down the vlei. The bigger bull, having seen off the intruder, was ambling back to the water trough.
He looked back at her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I just realised something.’
‘What?’ he asked her.
Kerry forced a smile. ‘I’ve just seen my very first lion.’
*
Graham got the truck bogged in the mud as a finale to their eventful day of game driving.
They had stopped at a picnic site called Deteema to stretch their legs, and Graham was taking a short cut across a wide-open vlei to get to the dam of the same name. Vlei, he explained to Kerry, was a local word meaning plain or floodplain, and that, she thought, should have been a good enough reason not to drive over the low-lying ground after a night’s worth of torrential rain.
The Land Cruiser went down like a submarine. After finding the recovery gear stashed in the back of the vehicle and working out that the high-lift jack had a problem relating to a bent pin, they also realised it would be a long walk to find any trees or branches big enough to jam under the wheels in the event they were able to lift the Cruiser up. Graham was getting ready to walk back to the picnic site when the attendant, whom they had met earlier, came trudging through the mud, his AK-47 balanced on his shoulder. Luckily, the man had a radio and was in contact with another ranger who, in turn, was working with a team laying a new pipeline from a borehole to the Deteema Dam. They had a tractor with them, which was summoned and, eventually, they pulled the stricken four-wheel drive out of the mud.
They arrived back at Robins Camp just in time, as the sun was setting. Graham lit a fire and Kerry had a lukewarm bath – the wood-burning hot water heater was not quite hot enough. Still it was refreshing, and she came outside, clean and changed, to find Graham sitting in front of the braai fire with a beer. He reached into the cooler box, took the top off another Zambezi and handed it to her
without standing. Kerry settled into the chair next to him.
The fire was mesmerising, bush television they called it in Africa – and Australia. Somewhat to her surprise, Kerry found she wasn’t missing home. Despite all her troubles here, and everything that hadn’t gone according to plan, she felt even more strongly than before that she wasn’t ready to go back to work, and Australia, any time soon.
She sighed.
‘Thinking about home?’
‘How did you know?’ She sipped some beer. It tasted good after the long but enjoyably eventful day in the bush.
‘You’ve got that look. I’ve seen it before.’
She smiled. ‘I’m not missing it – Australia, that is. I wonder if I’ll be able to settle back into my normal routine again.’
He gave a snort. ‘A lot of South Africans would kill for the chance to have a good job in a country like Australia. You know, pretty well every white I know in South Africa has had that discussion with themselves – whether to stay or go.’
‘What about you?’ she asked. It was still warm, even though the sun had gone down, and sticky because of the lingering moisture from the rain.
‘Some people leave because they see no future for their kids in South Africa. Others have had bad experiences with crime. Others lose their jobs and can’t see a future for themselves.’
‘And you?’ she pressed.
‘I thought about it. My wife wanted to leave, much more than
I did.’
‘Had you decided to leave, before she passed away?’
Graham stood up. ‘I’ll go get those steaks and veggie burgers out of the fridge. Fire’ll be ready to cook on soon.’
Kerry slumped into her chair. He was a strange man. He was effusive, the life of the party when he was drinking, but he clammed up when it came to talking about himself. He had to be smart, to be a vet, but he seemed content to play the fool much of the time. She would catch him, every now and then, looking away, not from her but more like at something else, or someone else, perhaps from another time. Like he had just then.
She nursed her beer and watched the dancing flames.
Graham came back out and cooked the food on the grill over glowing coals. They talked about their day over dinner and a bottle of red wine. Kerry thought about the lion, how vulnerable she had been, how scared, and yet at the same time how excited.
‘Do you ever get scared, Graham?’
He drank the last drops from his glass. ‘Of course, sometimes. Not around animals, though. They’re predictable, in their own unpredictable way. You know, say, with a lion, that unless you’re really unlucky it will leave you alone, unless you get too close to it or surprise it, or if you run.’
‘And people?’
‘Thoroughly unpredictable,’ he said, ‘and far more dangerous. That’s why it was a good idea for us to make ourselves scarce for a while. Even though this job didn’t pan out, it was good timing.’
‘But you’ll never consider leaving Africa altogether?’
He shook his head. ‘This is my home. Crazy, mixed-up, unpredictable, sometimes dangerous place that it is, I’ve got nowhere else to go.’
Kerry thought about what she had been through – everything Graham had just summed up. She had faced death, yet she had never felt so alive in her life.
Chapter 21
Kerry was first up the next morning. She’d had a restless night, as she always did the evening before she had to catch a flight somewhere.
There were slight variations to her pre-travel dream, but they all ended in disaster – a forgotten passport, sleeping through an alarm, a traffic jam on the way to the airport, all leading to a missed flight. Last night, however, had been a full-blown nightmare in which the man who had hijacked her on the way to Hoedspruit was chasing her again, through the bush. Her legs felt like they were encased in lead and when she gave up running and turned the AK-47 she was carrying on her pursuer, nothing happened when she pulled the trigger. She had awoken bathed in sweat.
To make matters worse, a lone mosquito had found its way in through the ageing national parks–issue net over her bed. With sleep eluding her she had found a packet of bandaids in her cosmetic bag, and while she had patched the hole in the net, all she succeeded in doing was trapping the insect inside with her.
The dawn light was beautiful and a balm on her dream-ravaged mind as she sat outside and sipped a cup of coffee. She went and woke Graham and he took a bath.
While she waited for him she boiled some eggs then went back outside and watched a troop of banded mongooses go about their business. They moved as a family unit, all the while softly babbling to each other in muted squeaks. They inspected the rubbish bins, looked under the Land Cruiser, scratched at the ground here and there, and then scattered in panic in a dozen different directions when they realised Kerry was there. She laughed, and when she sat down they emerged, coalesced, checked her out, and carried on with their business.
Graham, dressed in his dirty clothes, came outside with a cup of coffee. ‘How did you sleep?’
She told him about the mosquito. ‘It bit me a couple of times, until I plastered more repellent on myself.’
‘Listen to me.’ His tone was serious.
‘Yes?’
‘When you get back to Australia, if you are feeling at all like you have a cold or flu, or off colour, go straight to your doctor and tell him you’ve been in Africa in a malaria area. Do you understand?’
She was taken aback, again, by his concern over the disease, even though she now knew where it came from. ‘Of course. I’ve read all about malaria and my doctor gave me plenty of information.’
‘Good. Well, just do as you’re told.’
Kerry bridled at being spoken to in such a manner, but she didn’t reply.
When Graham was ready they loaded the truck and set off for Victoria Falls. Their flight was at two in the afternoon and it had taken them three hours to get to Robins Camp, so by leaving at seven in the morning, which they managed, Kerry was cautiously comfortable that they had plenty of time.
They were driving the road they had come in on and, by Kerry’s reckoning, were about halfway to the Robins Gate entry to the park when Graham turned left.
‘What are you doing, Graham?’
He gestured ahead and to the right, to a hill in the distance. ‘There’s an old camp up there, called Nantwich. It’s been deserted but a friend of mine has been negotiating with the national parks people to take it over and revamp it as a private safari camp.’
‘So?’
‘So, I want to take a look, maybe snap some pictures for my friend.’
Kerry held up her watch. ‘We have a flight to catch, Graham.’
‘Yes, in seven hours. Stop being a worrywart, woman. This is a short cut to Nantwich.’
‘Don’t address me as “woman”.’ Kerry frowned. They were crossing what appeared to be an open grassy vlei area and Kerry had a sudden flashback to the day before.
‘Graham, there’s water on the road ahead, puddles.’
‘Relax,’ he said, and accelerated.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘Watch this, we’ll plough right through.’
Black water fantailed up the sides of the Land Cruiser, spattering the windows, and Kerry gave a shriek and grabbed the handle in front of her as she felt the rear of the vehicle start to slide. Graham started to lose traction.
He reached for a switch. ‘I’ll put on the difflock.’
The Cruiser seemed to wallow.
‘Graham!’
He clung to the wheel. ‘Come on, come on.’ A second later they were through the wallow. ‘There, see, told you.’
‘Turn around, Graham.’
He looked at her as the vehicle trundled on. ‘I can’t turn around. The ground will be softer either side of the wheel ruts and we might not back it through that patch a second time.’
She held on for dear life as he accelerated.
They came to
another spot where the previous night’s rainwater had pooled in twin grooves of the ruts where someone else had become stuck, presumably in the last wet season.
‘Oh, no,’ she said.
‘Quiet.’
‘Don’t tell me to be quiet!’
Graham hit the puddles at speed and, as before, fountains erupted either side, but this time Kerry experienced the same sickening feeling in her gut as the Land Cruiser’s tyres moaned and groaned and the truck slowed to a stop.
‘Shit.’ Graham revved the accelerator.
‘Stop, Graham, you’re just digging us deeper into the mud.’
‘I know that’s what’s happening.’
‘Then why the hell are you doing it?’
Graham left the engine running but opened his door, got out and slammed it.
Kerry took a deep breath. She knew now was not the time to panic, but she also felt like she was in a new version of her travel dream, except this time no amount of pinching would wake her from it. She checked her watch, then opened her door, looked out over the open expanse of grass, and then got out.
Graham was walking around the Land Cruiser. He got down on his knees. ‘Bogged to the axles, both rear wheels.’
‘Should we call for help?’ Kerry took out her phone. ‘Nope. No signal.’
‘Of course there’s no signal, we’re in the wilds of bloody Zimbabwe.’
‘Don’t “of course” me, you’re the one who got us in this mess.’
Graham slammed the body of the Land Cruiser. ‘Ow.’
‘Take a breath, stop and think.’
He ran a hand through his lank hair, then went to the back of the Land Cruiser, opened it and hauled out the recovery equipment. ‘Shovel, high-lift jack, little bottle jack suitable for a Nissan Micra, and that’s about it.’
‘We don’t have all day, Graham. We have a flight to catch.’
‘I know, I know.’ He walked around the vehicle again. He ran his hand down the left side of the vehicle, along a foot rail used by passengers to get in and out of their compartment. ‘We can use this as a jacking point for the high-lift jack. I’ll get started – you go find some branches. Remember – this part of the park, the Robins area, has the highest density of lions in Hwange.’