AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE STORY OF BONES IS a companion to my previous novel, Waiting for Bones, which focuses on the four Americans Bones abandons at the baobab tree. The account of what happened to Abby, Todd, Nina, and Griff during their harrowing day and night in the bush ends with unanswered questions about their guide.
Although my intention in Waiting for Bones was to illustrate the precarious nature of life in the bush—animals and people can and do simply disappear—in hindsight, the mystery of what had happened to Bones was too intriguing to ignore. Did he go off to smoke a cigarette? Be sick? Scout for animals? Did a lion get him? Did he twist an ankle and encounter hyenas? Was it snake bite? Sunstroke?
We knew Bones kept a journal. When he walked away, leaving the foursome parked under a baobab tree, he took his rifle and long-range radio but not the journal or his canteen. He went toward the river past a stand of trees, where a baboon barked a warning. When he reached the river, he dropped out of sight. Although he abandoned them, the Americans thought he was an excellent guide. That was all we knew about the man named Bones.
I decided to flesh out Bones’s story in the voice of Bones himself, starting with his life as a ten-year-old boy and following him as he grows to manhood in a sub-Saharan village. My own travels to southern Africa supplied background, including templates for the fictional camp, Motembo, and the general routines of an African safari. Although the scourge of wildlife poaching is all too real, The Story of Bones, including locations, characters, and events, is fiction—an imaginative work anchored in research and insights gained from people I consulted, leaned on, and pestered.
Daniel Karn walked me through the world of hunters, firearms, and ammunition, answering countless inquiries with patience and wonderful detail. His response to the question “What do you carry when you go hunting?” was a list of forty-nine specific items.
Brian Cousins, a master angler, supplied all I needed to know about fishermen and fishing, including the phenomenon of birds stealing a catch.
John Cousins, whose breadth of interests and knowledge is legendary, answered questions about vehicles, jacks, winches, mud, rifles, guns, solid lead projectiles, river currents and cut banks, water temperatures, and the adventures of small boys.
Tim Sanborn, MD, and his colleague Ted Feldman, MD, supplied Kate Swale’s symptoms, diagnosis, and cure.
Judith Barnard interrupted her own writing to offer cogent insights and wordsmithing.
Shelly Bell Hetner crafted a striking cover and provided guidance on all things digital.
Readers who previewed the entire manuscript reminded me how essential fresh, discerning eyes are to the quality of a final draft. These previewers gave generously of their time and enthusiasm and showed eagle-eyed attention to detail: David H. Colton, Reven Fellars, Susan Garrett, Marianne Devries Horrell, Julia M. Nowicki, and Frani O’Toole.
My profound thanks to each and every one.
My husband, Dirk Vos, has been an unfailing source of encouragement since the day the screen was blank. I am deeply grateful for his love and support every step of the way.
An excerpt from Waiting for Bones
by
Donna Cousins
CHAPTER 1
“WAIT HERE,” THE GUIDE SAID.
Then he stepped down from the Land Cruiser and set off on a path so sketchy it might not have been a path at all. The four passengers seated two-by-two in ascending rows behind the front seat watched puffs of dust explode behind his boots as he stalked away. Bones, the guide, had never left them alone out there—not for a minute.
They were parked beneath a colossal baobab tree that thrust itself up from parched sub-Saharan earth. The sun had only moments before breached the horizon and begun its assault on the cold morning air. Sitting in the roofless, wide-open vehicle in zipped-up jackets they would soon fling away, they stared at their leader’s back, alert for any clue to his unexplained departure.
The land around them appeared spare and endless. Random clusters of flat-topped vegetation measured a foot in height or twenty and stood a few yards away or a mile, perspective being the first casualty of a vast, alien wilderness. To gaze into the distant dawn was to feel as small as an insect. Yet a short drive in any direction could change the landscape entirely, from wide-open bushveld to dense, riverine woodland or muddy, croc-infested delta.
“He’s going for a smoke,” Todd said, squinting into the middle range. He was leaning forward, with his kneecaps hard against the back of the vacated driver’s seat. “Bones smokes, you know.”
Abby was resting her hand on the plank of Todd’s thigh, one variation of the bodily contact that was as characteristic of this pair as their fair-haired good looks. They were always touching, if not like this then with Todd’s arm around Abby or her head tilted against his shoulder, as though physical contact formed the bond that made them a couple. But as she watched Bones shrink into the landscape, Abby’s fingers gripped more forcefully than before the rock-hard quadriceps of the man she would most likely marry.
“No, I think he wants a better look, up there,” she said. She released Todd’s thigh to point a crescent of varnished fingernail at a rise spiked with termite mounds the size of tepees. “See? He’s walking that way.”
In her other hand Abby cradled a pair of binoculars so powerful she could spot the ticks on a distant rhino. She held the lenses against her cheekbones and dialed down on a bouncing black cavern that turned out to be the barrel of the rifle slung over Bones’s shoulder. Bones took the rifle? She hadn’t noticed until now.
A glance across the seat in front of her confirmed that the gun rack was indeed empty, a long, dark void. Bones’s canteen was still there, so old and battered it might have watered Ernest Hemingway on his way to shoot a lion. The ignition held a key attached to a fob that hung in the air like a spider lowering itself for a glance at Bones’s guidebooks: The Birds of Southern Africa, Reptile Encyclopedia. Next to the books sat Bones’s journal, a rain-swelled volume with curling ivory pages.
“I’ve seen him smoke,” Todd insisted, nodding his head. “More than once.” He had watched Bones light up after dinner, the flame of the matchstick a tiny comet next to the campfire that warmed them each night under a bright swath of stars. The guide had stood unblinking in the amber glow of the fire, exhaling tusks of smoke that curled upward and vanished into the night. A young man who had seen everything.
Abby rubbed the lenses of her binoculars with a silken square, then folded the cloth in a neat rectangle and tucked it inside her multipocketed travel vest. Simple tasks that tidied and organized steadied her in untamed surroundings. A careful traveler, she looked for adventure modified by first-class provisions for comfort and safety. She would go almost anywhere with a guide as capable as Bones, and she planned and packed with attention to the smallest detail, ticking from a list the clothes, hardware, and pharmaceuticals suggested for every possible contingency.
“He took the rifle,” she announced, in case anyone had failed to notice. “And the radio.”
Behind Abby and Todd their friends Nina and Griff occupied the uppermost seat and a marginally superior vantage point for taking in the great sweep of the African bush. At the moment no parts of Nina and Griff happened to be pressed together, but the two shared the nearly telepathic bandwidth that comes with almost three decades of marriage. Now they exchanged a bewildered look that said, Bones is walking away?
None of them needed reminding that Bones was more than their driver. He was a bush-savvy scout, navigator, and tracker—the unquestioned leader. Safari guides interpreted roars, snorts, and cackles. They were repositories of essential wilderness skills and lifesaving wisdom. Most of all, they stood between the tourists perched high in unenclosed safari vehicles and the hard realities of the African bush.
In the middle seat, Todd shifted his legs to a new acute angle. His tall, angular body appeared
devoid of fat, and he had recently worked his storkish stride the entire length of the Chicago marathon. Immobility chafed at him like a tether. Hands that spanned two and a half octaves on the piano now fingered a riff across the tops of his khaki-clad thighs. As he watched Bones stride away, his head bobbed on his long neck as if keeping time to music, and the toes of his shoes rose and fell against the metal floorboard. He was the image of uncontained energy, a man who had spent a lifetime fidgeting and training, every muscle primed for the long haul.
He visored his hand to stare at Bones’s retreating form, hoping to prove his own astute grasp of the situation. “He’s probably got a Dunhill going already.”
“Why couldn’t he smoke right here?” Abby wanted to know. “We wouldn’t report him or anything.” Her voice had grown testy. She needed the wide, reassuring moat formed by expert guides and camp staffs who kept luxury inside and everything that was harsh and dangerous out. For her, Bones’s departure changed everything.
“He doesn’t know that,” Todd answered. “And he’s not going to break a rule in front of us.”
“Leaving us here isn’t breaking a rule?” She lifted her binoculars. “Look how far he’s gone.” She paused, watching. “Maybe he wants to see what’s behind that hill.”
“You mean the dagga boy?” A hint of a smile played on Todd’s lips.
Abby twirled the focus. “A buffalo?” The pitch of her voice had risen. “There’s no buffalo.”
Bones had warned them about dagga boys, the bachelor Cape buffalos infamous for aggression. Ornery and persevering, a dagga boy would charge any intruder, even stalk a person on foot for miles.
“Maybe he wants to shoot our supper,” Griff said, joking, hoping to ease her discomfort. “Buffalo burgers.”
Nina gave him a look. “Bones would rather shoot a poacher than almost any animal. Whatever he’s doing, he’ll be right back.” She said this with her usual unshakable assurance. It suited Nina to believe that life was controllable and that she was in charge of her own roomy universe, but of course this was as untrue for her as it was for everyone else.
She tipped her face to search the forked thicket of baobab that canopied above their heads and wondered uneasily what wild creatures might be attracted to that stout, sheltering leviathan of a tree. Without guidance from Bones, she was not sure exactly what to look at or listen for. Now every twig and mote, every toot and whistle seemed equally significant. She picked out the network of veins in a translucent leaf. A tiny gecko stared back at her. The natural world seemed to be projecting itself with unusual clarity.
Todd locked his fingers and placed both hands flat on top of his head. He twisted around to look at Griff. “This is fun. Just sitting here.”
“Relax, Todd,” Griff said. “Watch for birds.”
Abby pointed at a small one poised like a jewel on the tip of a thistle. “Look. A lilac-breasted roller.”
Todd looked, unimpressed. He was okay during game drives, when the excitement of the hunt sucked up every joule of excess energy. Stopped dead under a tree, however, the urge to move tormented him like an itch. Now he squirmed, drummed his fingers, and eyed their guide’s diminishing backside.
Abby, too, was watching Bones. He had walked past the termite mounds, hurried right past them. “Now where’s he going?” she said, exasperated.
Todd stood and reached for the side rail. “I’ll go find out.”
“You’re not serious.” The expression on Abby’s face said she knew he was.
“Forget it, Todd,” Griff said. “He’s only been out there a few minutes.”
“Less than ten,” Nina put in.
“Less than ten? Who’s wearing a watch?” Todd’s eyes traveled from wrist to wrist.
Griff reached over and tugged on Todd’s sleeve. “Sit. Please. No one walks around here unarmed. He’ll come back any minute.”
The expression on Todd’s face said, You are so lame. But before he could shape his disgust into words, the jarring yak-yak-yak of a frantic baboon rang across the grassland. Yak! Yak! Yak! An unmistakable warning to head for the trees.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donna Cousins earned a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism before becoming a fiction writer. She has worked in Europe and Asia, where her articles on local culture have appeared in the Courier, the Singapore American newspaper, Orientations, and Asia Magazine, among other publications. In the United States, she was a founding editor of Career World magazine. Her previous novels include Landscape and Waiting for Bones, for which she won awards from Writer’s Digest, ForeWord Review, ForeWord Magazine, and the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. She lives in Chicago.
www.donnacousins.com
[email protected]
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