by Linda Ihle
Massive tracks in the sand and large piles of fly-blown dung attested to the recent presence of elephant. Other spoor indicated that buck, large and small, had been here. As she approached the tree where she hoped to spend the night, she meandered toward the larger pool near the marula tree. The spoor there was much the same as that near the smaller pools, but an additional one, a broad, flat gouge with a thinner line running down the middle of it, testified to the presence of crocodile. She cupped her hand over her eyes and looked beyond the pool to the sand and boulders under the marula, but could not discern any crocodiles. Must be in the water, she surmised, and suppressed a shiver and the almost overwhelming temptation to drag her aching feet through the cool water.
She climbed up to where the baobab jutted from the side of the gorge and inspected it. It seemed solid enough, as baobabs go, and the upper branches depending over the river bed appeared sturdy. She walked around the tree, examining it for any caves or crannies which would harbor snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and button or baboon spiders. The telltale webs of the brown widow (button) spiders were not present, but that really did not mean a great deal. She walked around to the south side of the tree and noted that, from that perspective, it really would not meet her needs in terms of height. She looked across at the marula, a massive tree with broad limbs and plenty of foliage, considering its possibilities. Finally, she decided to walk on down through the gorge and see what the rest of this section of the river offered. She would keep the marula in mind in case she could not find anything more suitable, and as a source of food even as distasteful as the marula fruit was to her.
Clambering down the rocks, Devin heard a very familiar call - guinea fowl. She had wondered earlier that day how she would sustain herself on the biltong, water and barely ripe marulas, having long refused to eat those fruit because the stench of them fermenting on the ground nauseated her. She determined that she would maybe try a monkey orange if she could find a tree, but even those had innards that made her stomach turn. She had not even bothered to check the mopanes for mopane worms; never would she eat caterpillars! Shooting a buck or hare would require that the animal be skinned and gutted before she could cook and eat it, and she really did not have the heart to kill either one or a knife to accomplish the skinning part. She absolutely refused to kill a snake unless it directly threatened her life, and she wasn’t too sure she would be able to eat one anyway. Guinea fowl, however, were a different matter – an acquired taste for some, but once acquired, not forgotten.
She stood balancing on a slick, blue-grey boulder in the shade of the baobab, and listened. The call came again, closer now and she surmised that the fowl were close to the mouth of the gorge. She climbed back down into the sand, retrieved the kerosene can, and headed as quietly as possible for the poort. As she approached the jutting, red-soil and black-rock encased poort, stark in contrast to the sun-beaten white sand of the river bed, the first of the guinea fowl trotted across her path, about 30 yards in front of her. Devin dropped the can, and fell to her knees, pulling the AK-47 around. This time she was ready for the shattering thud of recoil, but knew all the same it was going to hurt just as much as when she had killed the python.
She waited for the rest of the fowl and, as they skipped in a clump, chattering and bickering through the hot sand, she fired. The fire-cracker clamor of the weapon shattered the quiet of the hot afternoon, echoing off the rocky walls of the poort, and this time the recoil knocked her flat on her backside. She quickly picked herself up and ran over to where the guinea fowl had crossed. One lay absolutely still, its head blown away, and another was wounded, trying to get up and run. Devin put the weapon down and grabbed the hen, wringing its neck quickly, then dropped it in the sand. She retrieved the weapon and walked quickly into the shadow of the poort, sitting down behind a boulder, waiting to see if the gunfire had drawn attention.
The minutes passed, and soon the buzzing, humming, and tweeting returned, indicating everything was back to normal. Devin picked up the limp bodies, and continued through the mouth of the gorge, carrying the fowl by their legs. The river took an eastward turn and she noticed that the gorge had not in fact ended; rather its sides had become lower. She headed for a small inlet-like area where shade abounded and dropped her dinner on the sand. Looking around she noted that this area of the river seemed to offer even more pools, and was more rocky. The roots of large trees growing on the lip of the gorge had pushed through the soil and now coiled and twisted over the rocks, seeking water.
Devin gathered kindling and wood for a fire, using dry grass to get the flames started, then began trying to clean the fowl. It was not as easy as it had looked when, as a child, she had seen the trackers doing it, and soon she was swearing as feathers flew up her nose and clung to her lips.
“If you bastards have lice, I’ll bloody well kill you,” she muttered. “That’s stupid,” she laughed. “You okes are already dead, hey.”
It took her a good half hour to get the first one cleaned to her satisfaction, but felt sure the second one would be easier. She didn’t know if she could eat both of them, so decided to wait until one was roasting on the fire before she started trying to clean the other. She put it on a shade-cooled rock where the boulders overhung the fire, and set about making a very makeshift spit to hold the cleaned bird. Using rocks to hold the forks steady in the sand, she fed a thin branch through the headless fowl and hung it over the fire. She stoked the flames, wanting this meal to cook as quickly and thoroughly as possible, then sat back and lit a cigarette, all the while keeping a wary eye on the surroundings.
As the light in the gorge began to fade and the shadow of the westerly wall spread across the river bed, engulfing one of the pools, the fragrance of the roasting guinea fowl permeated the air. Devin gave the spit one more turn, before climbing to the top of the gorge to check the position of the sun. Its first red-gold glow was apparent in the west, although it probably would not set for at least another hour. She sighed and scrambled back down to the cave-like inlet. She wondered if she would be relatively safe right here with the ebon walls of rock behind and on either side of her, a roof of hard red clay and rock, and the fire before her. Or should she seek the high ground again? It was getting late – what if she could not find a tree?
She shrugged it off and decided that if she could not locate a suitable tree, she would build the fire up and take her chances in the makeshift cave. She pulled the spit off the fire and placed it on a rock. As fat dribbled from the thighs of the bird, pooling in the intricate fissures of the boulder, she gingerly began to pull hot pieces of meat from the breast and back areas, shoveling them into her mouth and burning both fingers and lips in the process. It was so good! Within minutes only the bare bones of the bird remained, scattered on the boulder. “I have less manners than a hyena,” she said aloud, and laughed. She picked the bones from the rock and placed as many of them as possible into the tin cup, filled that with water, and set it in the coals to boil.
While the broth cooked, Devin warily cleaned up at the edge of the nearest pool, dipping her feet into the cool water, reveling in the soothing sensation. As she relaxed cautiously there, she heard the large cats begin to herald the coming of night. She scrambled to her feet, checking her perimeters, then trotted back to the fire. She took the soup off the coals and placed it on a rock to cool, grabbed the automatic weapon and followed the river bed in search of a tree. The sound of monkeys chattering ahead gave her hope that there would be some big marulas, msasa, fig or even mahobohobo trees around. She rounded the curve of the riverbed and gasped at what she saw. It was there! The rock, the shower, the boulders, the sand.
“Oh, man!” she whispered. “I have been here!”
Knowing then what lay ahead of her, she returned quickly to the fire and extinguished it with sand. She drank the cooled soup and scattered the bones of the guinea fowl away from the cave area. She grabbed her water can and the stiffening corpse of the other fowl and headed back up river.
11.
Devin walked quickly to the rock where she had placed her watch so many years ago, then to the liana curtain, lifted it and peered behind it. The water continued to pour there into the rocky sand, pooling in the pond under the rock where the baboons had played. She looked back down the river and saw that the shadows were darker, longer, so continued upstream as quickly as she could, startling a lone waterbuck slaking its thirst at one of the pools. She knew there was a much larger pool near the old camp site, and listened as she walked for the sound of hippo, and the grunting of bull crocs. She gave the quicksand along the western edge of the river bed a wide berth, and was almost trotting when she rounded the final long bend of the river.
There she slowed, maintaining a very wary surveillance of her surrounds. She could see the tall msasa and fig trees under which she had slept, safe with her sister in the back of the old jeep. Her father and the tracker had slept by the fire. The second night there, they had woken to find the tracker with his head in the mouth of a hyena, terrified to the point of speechlessness, his skin grey-white in the light of the dying fire, the roar of lion echoing through the gorge, and the constant tom-tom of the drums across the river. Her father had fired a shot from his .458 into the air and the hyena had dropped its prize and run. Her father had found the whole affair quite amusing, toasting the tracker with warm beer, however, the latter was less pleased and it was soon after that trip that he had gone to “visit his family” in the TTLs and never returned.
Can’t blame him, Devin thought. He put up with so much crap from Daddy and his hunting cronies. Hey! I wonder if that was him, the terr who gave me this rifle and stuff. “No,” she said aloud, “that bloke was too young.”
The large pool was still there, about 100 yards ahead of her now, its blue-black surface glassy, beginning to pick up the colours of the end of the day. On the southeast side of the pool a large shadow moved and slid silently into the water causing barely a ripple. Crocodile. She trotted toward the high, pitted bank, veined with twisting tree roots seeking the water from the river bed. She used these to help her climb the crumbling bank. Once she reached the clearing in the small forest, she stopped, panting, and peered up into the lush canopies of the trees. She chose the southernmost msasa because it was taller, and seemed to have more foliage and thicker, sturdy limbs and a maze of forks. It was also in the midst of a stand of developing elephant grass and thorn scrub, so it was unlikely anyone would sit under it. Moreover, the heavy canopy of the fig was probably hiding all manner of beasts such as she had dealt with the night before. She had no intention of repeating that experience.
She dropped her possessions, holding onto the weapon though, at the base of the tree where huge, knotted and gnarled roots thrust up through the soil, then scrutinized each branch, fork, leaf and twig. Satisfied that the tree was not harbouring any large cats and/or snakes, she pondered how she would get up to the top, with all her possessions. The lowest branches on the tree were about two feet above her head, but a thick limb just above a smaller dying branch hung out over the river bank and offered a flat fork. She placed the weapon at the base of that fork, then hoisted the kerosene can up next to it. Before climbing, she squatted in a small clearing just west of the trunk and urinated -- didn’t want to get caught short in the middle of the night.
Devin pulled herself up into the tree, grunting with the effort, scrabbling for purchase with her bare toes on the rough bark. She sat on the thick branch for a second, getting her breath, then started moving her treasures up the tree. When she finally decided on the safest and most comfortable perch, she arranged the water and the rifle so that both were readily accessible, the rifle in particular. That was when she realized that she had left the guinea fowl under the tree. She sat for a moment debating whether she should keep it or get rid of it. She decided the latter course was the wisest as the smell of the carcass would draw hyenas and other scavengers, so she climbed back down the tree, and swung down to the ground from the lowest limb.
As she bent to pick up the body of the guinea fowl, she heard a low growl in the grass about 15 feet away. She froze, dead fowl grasped in her right hand, her eyes wide, ears pricked, breath stopped. The animal growled again, this time with a snarl injected, causing the fine hairs all over her body to stiffen. Without considering any consequences, Devin raised the fowl over her head and threw it into the grass, hoping it would hit whatever was threatening in there, then scrambled back up the tree, grazing her knees and inner thighs on the bark. She climbed rapidly to the top, imagining all the way that she could hear something following her up there. She did not turn to look down until she had her back against a thick branch and the AK-47 in her hand.
Nothing moved in the tree, but the young elephant grass to the right of the tree was twitching and swaying. The growl came again, but this time it sounded like one emitted by a cat with its mouth full. Devin aimed the weapon downward at the swaying grass and waited. Within seconds she observed a greyish back and then the animal lifted its head and she could see the rounded black ears, white muzzle and the raccoon-like mask – a civet!
“Oh, wow!” she whispered.
She had never seen a live one; they were so endangered they had been placed on the protected list. The cat-like creature was lithe, its coat shining in the dying light. In its mouth it carried the dead fowl she had hurled toward it just moments before. It did not look up at her, but continued stalking toward the river bank, all the while emitting that snarling growl, daring anything to try and take the bird. It jumped down to the river bed and then began to trot, carrying the guinea fowl across the river to the far bank above the pool. Devin watched it disappear into the twilit shadows and sighed. The first one she had ever seen had been lying dead, blood-soaked, on the banks of the Zambezi, and while she had stood there and stared at it, the man who had killed it was being given a beating which would take him to within an inch of his life.
Devin sighed and settled back against the broad limb, tying herself in as she had done the night before. She pulled the cigarette pack out from under her bra strap and counted the cigarettes left. Five. Shit! She decided to wait until the sun had settled beyond the kopjes and turned her attention to the growing activity at the waterhole. A small herd of impala joined a skittish duiker at the water’s edge and took turns drinking. A sudden violent thrashing in the water announced a kill by the crocodile and the remaining antelope scattered, turning to stare at the water, before, as one, heading downriver to the smaller pools. Devin shuddered as she watched the roiling water knowing that crocodile was drowning what it had seized in its filthy jaws. “God, I hate them,” she muttered.
From the west came the sound of the big cats, interspersed with the occasional short bark of the kudu, and the rare trumpeting of an elephant. The night was coming alive. Soon after hearing the elephant, Devin felt the unmistakable vibrations in the earth, pounding through the tree where she sat, and soon a small herd was in full view in the dying light of the day, heading for the water, swaying through the crimson-tipped elephant grass. They lumbered down over the bank and on to the pool, only a very young calf hesitating at the bank, then sliding down hurriedly to keep up with his mother. They gathered and drank, seemingly thoroughly unperturbed by the crocodiles. Their thirst slaked, they began to amble off, one by one, up river to a low spot at the farthest point before the bed bent northward. There they climbed the bank, their grey hulks blending into the shadows so quickly and so completely, they might never have been there.
A small group of warthog had approached while the elephant were drinking and had intermingled with the giant bodies, darting here and there, sipping quickly, watchfully. When the elephant left, so did the warthog, also trotting up river toward the western bank, stopping here and there to root in the sand. Before they reached the bank, however, they turned, snorting and squealing, and began to run south. They climbed the bank under her tree and fled into the grass. Devin peered upstream to see what had been there that would have star
tled the warthog, but the twilight and the foliage blurred her view. She kept close watch on the area, though, and soon the cause of the frenzied flight became apparent: An old, black-maned lion stalked slowly downstream, the tawny and black tip of his tail twitching, his head held high. He looked strong, healthy, well-nourished: He was gorgeous!
He walked to the pool where he drank, slowly, his disdain for the crocodiles apparent in his haughty demeanor. She could see one crocodile as it floated at the surface of the pool, its eyes and the gnarled top of its head breaking through. It lay there completely still, watchful, but made no attempt to harass the cat. As Devin watched this scene, night fell, swiftly, as was its wont in this part of the world, and she could no longer make out the animals at the water’s edge. She thought she heard the lion pass beneath the branches of her tree, but could not be sure. Her eyes were beginning to burn with holding them open so wide, so long, in her vigilance, but she could not relax her guard. From far off, down-river, came the shriek of a baboon, and she knew the night’s work had begun. The hunt was on and she was far from among the fittest.