He remembered once when his sister’s child, Beatrice, was about this age, he had lifted her in his arms to feed Patsy a carrot. He had been surprised by the compact weight of her body, her strength as she strained upward with the carrot. There was no fear, not of the giant Patsy or himself. She had propped one hand back against his face for balance, using him without thought. His family had recently begun to withdraw from him, conversation stopped when he entered the room. Physical touch was a surprise. Her tiny hand had felt hot against his skin, her fingers pressed tight against his cheek. Ever since that day, he had loved her utterly.
For two nights in a row now, the only sleep he had gotten was dozing in the hunting blind. He was tired; this morning he had nodded off in a chair waiting for Singh to bring his breakfast. Whenever he could, he leaned his weight against a tree or a post, found himself blinking around at the sights as though he had imbibed a glass or two of wine. Perhaps he was not thinking with his usual restraint.
He forgot about this child’s skin color, her nudity, the diseases Alan had warned him any of them might carry. He simply bent down on one knee, took off his hat and lowered his head. The girl’s hand fluttered nervously over his hair three times, light as a wing, and then she laughed. A laugh sounding to his ears remarkably American, no accent here, no foreign trait, a child’s straightforward delight.
And then, before he could arise, the other children rushed in, touching his hair and face, one running a finger over his pale lips, one tugging on his ear, all of their faces filled with surprise. The touches gentle. In the three weeks since he had moved here, to a construction camp of men, this was the first time he had been touched on purpose. For a moment, closing his eyes for a toddler to pat his eyelids, he felt such gratitude to be here, the strangeness of this Africa.
One of the adults clapped and called and, fast as that, the children were gone, running behind legs and up into arms, a cloud of red dust raised in their wake.
He got to his feet, busily brushing off his knees, hoping he had not offended anyone. Otombe was staring at him.
He tried to get back on track, sound businesslike. “Will you help me hunt the lions? I have some guns. They should help. We might be able to stop them from killing more.”
Otombe blinked surprised down at where the children had been a moment ago. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
Back in the railroad camp, Jeremy showed Otombe the hunting blind first, proud of it. Otombe walked slowly around it. Watching him closely for his approval, Jeremy realized he moved in a different fashion from the N’derobbo guide who had led him to Otombe’s village. The other man had walked so smoothly, his head high, limbs relaxed, clearly part of a group whose only transportation was their own feet. Otombe instead walked with a slight waddle, his feet angled out a fraction, his back stiff. His eyebrows cocked artificially high. At first considering some mild birth defect or muscular inability, it took Jeremy a long moment to recognize—in this nearly naked man of a nilotic tribe—the English gait and facial expression. This was the inheritance his missionary foster parents had left him with.
There must be other changes in his mind and habits, in his desires and fears. Leaning down to the river for a drink, was Otombe surprised to see his own dark face reflected? Halfway between the cultures, was he at home in his village, or did he sometimes feel as isolated as Jeremy had been on his family farm?
On the walk to camp, Jeremy asked what recompense he wished for hunting the lions. Otombe was silent for a moment, then asked not for money but for food, five pounds of rice a day and ten pounds of meat, a forty-pound bonus of both for any lion they killed.
At this request, Jeremy reconsidered Otombe’s stripped-down body, every tendon visible along his bony legs, the skin tight across his cheekbones. He had assumed this was simply the way these people were built, streamlined as antelope.
For the first time, he remembered the two-year-long drought that had just ended, no new crops yet able to mature.
Shamed, he nodded acquiescence to Otombe’s request, tried to picture how many children he had seen in the village, how far ten pounds of meat would go.
Otombe stood looking in the window of Jeremy’s hunting blind, shaking his head. “The lions have good vision. At night, they see you through this window.” He sniffed at the branches Jeremy had had tied to the blind as camouflage. “They can smell you. You forget. These creatures are different. They will not run away like duiker or gazelle. They are smart and very hungry. If they sense you in any way, they will hunt you.”
In the afternoon, Otombe led him to where the lions had killed two nights ago, a WaKikuyu village three miles distant along a game trail. Since he was a child, Jeremy had been riding in a carriage or on a horse. He had never realized how much energy walking could take, how much time. The prickly heat rash under his arms had spread across his chest and back, as well as in areas more private. His linen underclothes scraped against the rash with every step. Sticky with sweat, the spine protector gradually rumpled as he walked, climbing up his back, seemingly determined to crawl out his collar. Sweat bees dive-bombed his face and armpits. Jeremy nervously flapped his hands at them. Otombe, on the other hand, walked calmly on, hands at his sides, bees crawling across his face and arms.
“A sickness has killed off many of the Cape Buffalo,” said Otombe, his eyes as always scanning the nyika around them. The path was only two paces wide, the branches entwined thickly all around, even above. Jeremy kept his rifle in his hands. He imagined the lions dropping down on them from above, or springing on them from the side. Even if he saw them before they jumped, the distance would be so short, little more than the length of the rifle.
“Rinderpest,” said Jeremy, trying to concentrate on the conversation, rather than his fear. “That is the name of the disease. The physician at camp told me it was imported with European cattle.” A large dragonfly whizzed by his nose, making him jump.
Otombe shot his eyes at him. “There are many new diseases your people have brought, for both the humans and the animals. Fevers, measles, mumps, sores that come with intercourse.”
Jeremy stared at him, jarred by the word “intercourse.”
Otombe added, “Half of my people are dead.”
He was not sure how to respond. He had been told native people did not have a strong grasp of mathematical concepts. Otombe must be overestimating the impact.
Seeing his expression, Otombe looked away into the nyika. He turned the conversation back to the subject of the lions. “The Cape Buffalo are what the lions prefer to eat. There used to be herds of hundreds. Now not many remain. This land is dry, high up, few other animals live here. The drought and rinderpest have killed most of these.”
“So two of the lions have switched to humans instead,” Jeremy said.
Otombe nodded. “For the last few months, these lions have eaten a few from this village, a few from that. Then you arrived. The railroad. Hundreds of men, not many guns and no spears. At first you did not even build bomas.”
They emerged onto the savannah, the grass green and full from the recent rain. In places it had grown as tall as Jeremy’s forehead. The blades swayed in the wind, brushing his face. Pausing for a moment, amazed at this ocean of grass viewed from the level of someone drowning in it, Jeremy lost sight of the shorter Otombe. He half-ran to catch up, the grass rustling loudly with his movements. If any animal stalked him here, he would never hear it over the noise of his own progress.
Fighting claustrophobia, he asked the first question he could think of. “Are both the lions female?”
“Excuse me?” Otombe stopped in the hallway of his passage, looking back at him.
“Are both of them female? The men in camp, the time they spotted one, it was maneless but apparently huge. I wondered if the second lion were female too.”
“Oh,” Otombe walked on, the panting laugh in his throat soundless. “These are Tsavo lions. For other lions, the ones down on the plains, life is easy, plenty of water, less heat.
They sleep a lot, kill zebra and antelope, smaller animals. For Tsavo lions, not much lives up here worth eating except buffalo, two or three times the size of a zebra, sharp horns, dangerous. The lions here, they are bigger, stronger. Some stand this tall.” He held his hand out, four feet from the ground. Jeremy stared into the space under his hand, trying to fill it with a head, chest, legs and paws. He tried to imagine this creature padding forward through the grass, its face appearing at his elbow. “The males, from the heat and maybe the thorns, many times they have no manes.”
Jeremy absorbed this. “You think they are both males?”
“From the size of the paw prints, yes.” After a moment, he continued. “Some people, they say Tsavo lions are more aggressive. In comparison to a buffalo, a human without a gun is simple to kill.”
“Have you ever hunted a Tsavo lion?”
For the second time Otombe stopped, facing Jeremy directly, the grass waving in front of his face. “I told you before. I am not a white. I am not tall with a loud voice and a gun. My tribe and I, we survive by keeping away from danger.”
The wind blew, the grass swayed forward, hiding all of Otombe’s face but part of his forehead and one eye. “But do not worry. To avoid a lion, I have to be able to think like the lion, where he will be, what he wants. We have a gun now and a need. I will think like these lions and I will find them.”
His eye watched Jeremy. “Then you, you have to shoot fast and well.”
FOURTEEN
December 15, 2000
The next morning, the humans approached the gorillas, slowly foraging and knucklewalking, eyes obediently down. When the family spotted Max, they stopped eating to cluster together on the far side of Titus, watching her with great attention. A few of them coughed at her, loud aggressive barks that echoed through the trees. Titus stood squared off on all fours, vast and impassive, considering.
Forty feet down the slope, Max waited, head down, her breath rasping in her throat, riffling her fingers through some grasses in front of her. Before getting dressed this morning, she’d ripped up a sheet and wrapped it tightly around her ribs. Climbing the mountain to the gorillas, she’d worked hard to move somewhat normally, to hide the pain of her fractured rib. She had to search for the vine. And she wanted to see the gorillas.
Somehow overnight she’d forgotten how big they looked, a sense of immense furry weight and those shiny eyes. And they weren’t like a school of fish or a herd of deer, where she knew without doubt exactly what the reaction would be at her approach, all of them wheeling to flee as a single body. These primates instead examined her, evaluating their options. She plucked some of the grass and chewed on the ends, trying to make her movements appear slow and relaxed. Her heart thumped in her chest.
Rising on his hind legs, Titus beat his chest in a rapidly escalating tattoo. She could see a bit of his movement from the corner of her eyes. The sound wasn’t the deadened thud-thud of knuckles pounding flesh as in King Kong movies. No, this was a much louder sound, a popping noise. Must come from him clapping his cupped palms hard against his bare skin.
He screamed down at her. Somehow her actions—keeping her head down and pawing half-heartedly through the grass—weren’t reassuring enough. He was warming himself up toward real anger. He began to pace back and forth, agitated.
On impulse, considering how aspie-like they’d seemed yesterday, she experimented. Shot one flash-glance directly at them, then away.
She heard a fast inhale from Yoko.
From the gorillas, on the other hand, there was a silence. She could feel them considering her. Titus paused in mid-motion, head cocked to one side.
As a child, when she’d been introduced to a stranger, she’d tried to circle round to the person’s back or sides, some place where it felt less likely the person’s eyes might suddenly snap up and stare at her. Allowing her to slowly get used to the person, without worrying about that confrontational stare.
So now, she casually shouldered her way up onto her knuckles, shifting herself six inches to the left to face a wild ginger plant, settling back down with her side to the gorillas. She tugged at the plant, busily. Happy unto herself.
The gorillas were utterly still.
She dusted the plant’s roots off, then sniffed them. The spicy ginger scent. She took an exploratory bite of the crisp root and chewed. The white flesh inside tinged green. She kept her hands out where the gorillas could see them.
Normals met each other face on, shaking hands in a vestigial gesture developed long ago to reassure the other they clasped no small weapons.
The aspie version of a handshake would be parallel play, shoulders turned.
After watching her for a long moment, Titus made his decision.
He yawned. Angling her head just a little, she could see the edge of him. His massive stagy gesture—head thrown back, wide gaping mouth, loud groan of an exhale—demonstrated his utter boredom with her, while also elaborately displaying the length of his yellow fangs.
Then he sat down and stared off in another direction, mirroring her own turned-away posture.
Given this all-clear signal, within a few minutes the family started eating again, tossing an occasional glance at her, but no longer acting as alarmed.
Yoko knuckled over. “I told you not to look at them.”
“I remember.”
“Then why’d you do that? Listen to me. If I believe you’re acting unsafe with them at any time, that you’re endangering yourself or them, I will kick you off this mountain.”
Max was still watching the gorillas from the edges of her eyes, listening to them. She stated, “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Yoko grunted, sounding like Titus. “You’re lucky they calmed down so fast. That was weird.” Then she moved off, heading toward a steaming stool sample.
That whole morning, Max kept at least thirty feet from the apes, allowing them time and space to get used to her, and her to them. From the edges of her eyes, or with fast glances, she watched their posture, gestures, and what they were eating.
While the gorillas moved through the jungle, she followed leisurely behind them, picking up the half-eaten pieces of plants they’d dropped and examining each. Identifying the plant and the part eaten. Galium ruwenzoriense—they pulled the whole vine down, eating the leaves, stem, berries and flowers. With their huge fingers, they neatly picked blackberries off the bushes and popped them into their mouths, smacking their lips with satisfaction. They plucked leaves off nettle bushes and balled them up so the spines wouldn’t jab them in the mouths, rolling each leaf up as carefully as a spitball before swallowing it. Like horses, they ate continuously, but unlike horses, they didn’t rip mouthfuls off the landscape indiscriminately. Instead they considered each possible bite: giant gastronomic vegetarians picking through the countryside.
Every piece of chewed-up foliage that she found discarded on the ground, she sniffed intently for what chemicals might be inside. She closed her eyes and sucked in the smell in short bursts, concentrating. She took no notes. She had no need. She remembered everything.
About halfway through the morning, she noticed when they moved toward a new plant or spot, they didn’t walk directly, but more eased up on their goal, wandering in slightly roundabout, as though they didn’t want to startle the plant. Yoko and Mutara didn’t seem to have noticed this because each time they headed for something, they knucklewalked forward in a line as straight as an arrow. Their actions determined and fast. Like a tone-deaf person humming, they could purse their lips and make noise but not get the tune. Each time, the gorillas glanced at them, their eyes glittering.
The next time she moved to a new spot, Max tried easing up sideways on the locale. At her movement, the apes kept eating, not bothering to look.
She foraged like they did, her head down and focused on the plants.
On the other hand, Mutara just leaned against a tree, off to the side, his hands empty, directly facing the apes. Yoko also sat still, unoccupied, w
aiting on the outskirts of the group until one of them crouched for a moment and pooped. As soon as the gorilla had moved away, she knuckled forward in a straight line, bug-eyed in her safety goggles, to burrow through the soft glop, looking for parasites. The family watched her from the edges of their eyes.
As Max worked, she listened to the gorillas’ sounds, not just the noises of them munching through the foliage, but their vocalizations: loud smacks of enjoyment, a few satisfied grunts and chuckles, some cavernous burps.
About halfway through the morning, the sun broke out from behind the clouds, changing the jungle light from a gloomy underwater feel, to the flickering light of a disco. One of the females (Max knew the gender from the lack of a silvered fur across the back as well as the lack of swaggering muscles) stopped in a shaft of light and tilted her leather face to the sun. Steam rose from her fur. She let out a grumbly purr of contentment. It came out in two syllables, “Ra-oohm, ra-oohm.” A meditative chant mixed with a rumbling sound suggestive of digestion. Her eyes were closed, a chunk of juicy Galium vine clutched in her hand. Her voice low in the gut.
The family considered her statement, then a gorilla to her left chipped in to agree. “Ra-oohm, ra-oohm,” the gorilla answered. And one by one, like a role call of happiness, all the other family members responded with a chant-purr, each voice so distinct and emotive it clearly offered the speaker’s identity, location, and mood.
The last one to respond was the baby gorilla—Yoko had said her name was Asante. After she chant-purred, she stood up on her tiny bowed legs to beat her cupped hands against her chest for a muffled patter. Unlike a horse or dog, she didn’t prick her ears forward or wag her tail. Instead she showed her emotion the way a human would. She smiled, lips closed, her chin tilted proudly.
At midday each family member wove a giant bird’s nest on the ground for their nap, padding the inside with soft grass and ferns. They lay down with loud sighs, staring up at the jungle canopy and lazily making popping noises with their lips. Ready to fall asleep, they flash-glance repeatedly at the humans until Yoko signaled to the other two they should leave.
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