Rhinoceros Summer Read online

  Caleb seemed to shrink into the dirt. “I’m here. I didn’t leave.”

  Paul and Mr. Compton chose that moment to walk out of the dining tent. Paul’s eyes traveled between Lydia and Caleb. “Get some food in you. We’re leaving in thirty minutes and making fly camp for the night.”

  Both Mr. Compton and Caleb walked away—Mr. Compton toward the game officer, Caleb toward his tent, his back tense and straight, the set of his shoulders now heavy. Lydia was left standing alone with Paul.

  His scuffed-up jeans and faded olive green shirt were both wrinkled and patched. The look in his eyes, like he’d been squinting in the sun too much, seemed just as worn out as Lydia felt.

  “Don’t know what you think about what’s happened. What you believe about me. About trophy hunting. But don’t go getting ideas about what trophy hunting is and isn’t. You can believe…Use your pictures to work against me if you want. If that gives you the strength to keep taking them.”

  If he had a bit of straw to chew on, it would complete the picture. This worn and hardened man, covered by dust and time and who knew what else, stood in front of her like some old Wild West cowboy complete with mustache and beard and gun. He hadn’t spoken so many words as this since the last time he talked her into staying.

  “You just think about what I’ve said before deciding whether you go hunting buffalo with us. You can give up. Complain about the blood and the animal cruelty and the bleeding heart inhumanity of it all. Stay behind at Owl Camp. Or you can come out and document it and show this world another world, with your camera.”

  She stared at him, fascinated at the way he kept not looking at her. Fascinated that he hadn’t figured she was already set on staying. Her passing thought at hitching a ride with the game officer had been just that, a passing thought. Even if Caleb had thought it would’ve worked, she realized right then, she wouldn’t have left with Mark anyway. The pictures she was taking, the dangers she’d experienced, the thrills. They only made her want more.

  5

  The next day, they drove through rolling hills and open valleys dotted with brush, palm, and acacia trees, over jarring rocks and through long elephant grass not yet burned by the dry season fires.

  Caleb ignored her from the front seat. She felt like a child exiled for some unknown crime. She envied Muna in that moment—the future Muna might have with M’soko, living the way they wanted, helping their people make a living, making big plans.

  It would take another forty-five minutes or so to reach the Moyowosi flood plain, where plenty of buffalo should be grazing, taking advantage of the water and green elephant grass.

  The two Land Cruisers stopped within sight of a herd.

  Paul gathered them together. “We’re not hunting for trophies. If we find a trophy worthy bull, we’ll give Billy a shot at it. We want to find a group of five or so bulls and approach them downwind. Get real close and bang ‘em dead.” After a pause, Paul added, “Only come along if you want to.”

  Juja nodded and headed back to the vehicles. The look on his face said he wasn’t paid enough to handle five charging bulls at once. M’soko seemed resigned to his fate. Mr. Compton’s face flushed with excitement. The grim look on Caleb’s face said he was also determined to join them.

  Lydia had no intention of staying behind. She pushed everything out of her mind except for the task she’d set for herself: to take the best pictures of her life.

  They headed to the waterline.

  “We’ll be avoiding cows and calves of course,” Paul said, “but I don’t want to take any young males that could develop into suitable trophies later. We’re going after mature males, but only one should be trophy quality.” Paul nodded at Mr. Compton, M’soko and Caleb. “Keep your eyes open. Lydia, stay to the side or in back.”

  They stalked forward another fifteen minutes, circling around the back of the herd. Paul paused every few minutes to test the wind. Lydia captured some long shots of the herd, hundreds of dark blobs in the green grass.

  The wind picked up. She was in East Africa. She was hunting buffalo with a camera. Her pictures might become the only record of these animals existing: eating grass, drinking water, fathering calves, fighting other buffalo, protecting themselves from a lion’s teeth.

  M’soko pointed to a separate group of buffalo near the rear of the herd. “We can approach without alerting the rest.”

  Paul nodded.

  They trekked down a small hill. A few bush thickets and scraggly trees blocked their path. Thorns caught in her clothing and pulled at her camera strap.

  “We’ll stalk within thirty yards and see what’s gonna happen,” Paul said. “Safety off.”

  Lydia heard four distinct clicks. They continued forward, doing a crouch-creep on hands and knees. She lifted her camera above the ground so it didn’t drag.

  Smells of crushed grass and buffalo dung surrounded her. The bulls had trampled down the area between her and them, enough so she could clearly make out the five bulls grazing.

  Lydia took a snapshot of their hulking dark bodies. Two bulls with broad bosses faced them, the other three showed their tales. She twisted her lens to focus the buffalo in the background and blur the grass as a frame in the foreground—a picture from the perspective of the hunter hidden in the grass, stalking its prey in temporary anonymity.

  The wind shifted. Instead of blowing dung and grass smells softly across her face, a quick burst traveled along her hunched back to the buffalo.

  The five bulls raised their heads, their eyes wary, their muscles trembling—on the verge of exploding in all directions. Lydia kept her telephoto lens focused on one bull’s face. His eyes rolled. This close up, his boss looked like a Swedish girl’s twin braids instead of sharp impaling horns.

  Paul stood and shouted, “Now!” He ran forward with his gun in position against his shoulder.

  Lydia tore off her telephoto lens. She tried dropping it in her bag while pulling out the wide angle lens. It missed and disappeared into the grass. A hole opened up in her stomach as the lens vanished; no time to search for it. She attached the new lens and raced to Paul’s side. He let out a blast, placing a solid in one bull’s chest. She stood her ground, the tunnel vision of her viewfinder fading out everything else.

  Paul’s double-barreled rifle extended into her frame. No man attached to the barrel, just a long tube exploding with fire toward the buffalo now stampeding in all directions.

  “I’m out!” Paul said. She turned the viewfinder to him and took pictures as he reloaded with bullets from his gun belt. His fingers shook, she thought either from fear or adrenaline. The bullets were huge, at least three inches.

  The metallic smell of blood filled the air. She returned her focus to the bulls. Time slowed down.

  A bull dripping blood from its nose made a wide turn and stampeded in her direction.

  She should jump out of the way. She raised her camera to capture the buffalo in mid-charge.

  One hundred feet away. Lydia couldn’t feel her body anymore, except for her shutter finger.

  Twenty-five feet away. She could see the blood in greater detail. The nose of the buffalo looked huge but soft, like an oversized dog nose. She reached out one hand as if to pet that nose and offer it comfort.

  A loud bang in her left ear made her fall. She flipped through the grass, hit her head on something hard and almost blacked out. Where adrenaline had run, now fear coursed through her veins. Had another bull come from the side? Her ear filled with a high-pitched ring. Her mind clouded.

  She managed to sit up in the grass. Her hand touched the back of her head and came away with blood. She forced herself up. Her legs felt shaky, almost unable to hold her weight.

  “Hold it.”

  She barely heard the voice over the ringing. If he had spoken on her left side, she never would have heard the soft whisper of his next words.

  “Don’t move.”

  She froze. There were no bulls in her line of sight, but her vision was still
hazy.

  Another loud bang sounded behind her. Another bullet driving itself into flesh and bone.

  Mr. Compton had his barrel within inches of a prostrate buffalo’s head. He put another shot into its brain, spraying a mist of blood across Lydia’s front so that she tasted copper on her lips. The bull lay on its side and took one more breath before becoming as inert as the rock Lydia had fallen on.

  Four more buffalo carcasses came into focus, their bodies in piles around the four men. Rifles now rested against shoulders. Blood covered everything, as if they stood in a moat of it.

  Before the flies came, Lydia forced her muscles to work. She moved back two steps—enough distance to capture the four men standing stoic in the aftermath of the battle, their bodies in contrast to the bloody hills of gunshot flesh. Took the shot.

  And then.

  Then she sat down in the grass. She turned her back against the picture, put her head down, and tried not to cry from the pain.

  She felt arms move around her, to hold her.

  CHAPTER 16

  Caleb

  Caleb crouched next to Lydia and embraced her.

  He wiped her tears away with the back of his hand, streaking mud and blood across her cheek. His eyes stung from the gun smoke. His ears rang from the noise of fired bullets and buffalo death cries, but he managed to hear Paul’s voice. “She hurt?”

  “Got knocked in the head,” Caleb said. He avoided mentioning her tears. “I’ll walk her back.”

  “Just wait here, we’ll get the car and come back,” Paul said.

  “Walking would help,” Lydia said.

  Paul looked at Caleb in question, she okay? Caleb nodded in response, good enough to walk. He helped Lydia up from the grass and positioned himself between her and the others to provide some privacy.

  He noticed Billy stood over one of the bulls, estimating the length of its outside spread. “Forty-three inches here, I think,” Billy said.

  “That the one you hunted?” Paul asked.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Shot it three times, though the first should have dropped it.”

  Lydia ineffectually brushed dust off her clothes. Caleb grabbed her camera from the grass.

  Her eyes widened in horror. “My lens.” She began searching the grass stalks, mindless of thorns and insects.

  Caleb hung the camera around his neck and scanned the ground. “Which one was it?”

  “Here!” She stooped and picked up a long black cylinder.

  “I can’t believe it.” Caleb shook his head. “How did it manage to stay in one piece?”

  Lydia hugged the lens to her chest, and then held out her hand for the camera. He handed it to her and watched as she quickly placed everything in her backpack. Only then did she seem to relax. Worry pinched at Caleb. No good ever came from feeling that attached to something.

  Lydia stumbled. He caught his arm around her waist and helped her walk. It felt too good to touch her, even with the stink of blood and the sound of buzzing flies around them.

  “Tell Juja to bring the Land Cruiser,” Paul said.

  Caleb waved to let Paul know he heard. “Sorry,” Caleb said quietly to Lydia. “I took the shot that made you fall.”

  Lydia half-smiled. “I don’t remember.”

  “Why didn’t you move?”

  She tensed in his arms and shook her head.

  “You’re too reckless. You shouldn’t risk your life just because Paul wants some pictures.” The words came out too harsh. Now was not the time to start an argument, but helplessness had engulfed him when the bull charged her. What if he hadn’t shot it in time?

  “I’m not doing this for him,” she said.

  They crested a small hill and were now out of sight of the hunting party but not yet close enough to see the Land Cruiser.

  She stumbled again and sat down in the sandy dirt.

  “We should keep walking,” Caleb said.

  “I’m feeling dizzy.” She dragged in a few ragged breaths. “You don’t think I should be here, but if you hate him so much, why are you doing all this?”

  “I’m here for my job. For the elephants,” he said.

  “Aren’t there elephants in other places?” Lydia rubbed her temples and tried to comb her fingers through her disheveled hair.

  How could he explain how everything worked in on itself? How his father had marked him. How he had tried to leave Paul far behind but instead traveled in a circle. “You know I work for the Wildlife Division. Well, there’s a rumor about an almost extinct rhino, here, in Paul’s hunting bloc. I know this territory better than most so they sent me to investigate.”

  “What happens if you find it?”

  “Protect it from the likes of Paul. Take a sample of its DNA to prove whether or not it really is a northern white rhino. There’s only ten left in the whole world. So the chance this rhino is the eleventh—it’s impossible. Nobody knows how it could have survived, let alone gotten out here, but of course I came. The rhino is irreplaceable. Though I’m not sure Paul would see it that way.” He held out a hand to help lift her up from the ground. “C’mon, we should keep you moving.”

  She tightened her small hand around his. Her slim fingers were covered in mud and dark buffalo blood and mixed with the mud and blood on his own hands.

  “I’m a scientist,” he said. “I want to be one of those guys who spends half the year outdoors, collecting, discovering, adventuring, then brings my work back to the lab for analysis. But that kind of thing takes money. That’s why I’m with the Tanzanian government. They’re the ones who assigned me to Paul.” He took a deep breath and focused on explaining a foreign world to someone like Lydia. “Some professional hunters view hunting as a privilege. Some view it as a god-given right. Even if that means hunting animals into extinction for no reason other than you can, or maybe you want the tongue, or ivory, or want to feel the power in watching so many animals die by your hand.” Most other professional hunters fell somewhere in the middle and maybe even leaned toward the regulation side, since it meant more money in the long-term. A legitimate PH did not want to overhunt. They needed enough trophy-worthy animals to survive and breed the next generation of trophies.

  “Without people coming out and paying big money to hunt, all that would stand in the way of ranchers and farmers taking over the reserves would be conservationists. There’s a profit incentive for the government to keep the land and wild animals protected, except to those who can pay for their hunting privileges.”

  “Like Mr. Hellerman,” Lydia said.

  “Yeah, sometimes they’re like him. But it’s more complicated than that. Most responsible hunters have their own code of ethics: never kill the females, avoid the adolescent males. The older males tend to give better trophies anyway—bigger horns, thicker manes—and they’ve lived long enough to breed and pass their trophy genes onto the next generation, so the hunter isn’t doing any lasting harm to the species. But when it comes to an animal like the elephant, the most important members are the older generation. So the trophy hunting philosophy falls apart. Going for the oldest members of an elephant herd destroys their entire social order, turns the survivors into killers.”

  Lydia bent her head. Caleb hoped she wouldn’t throw up. No sight of the car and here he was talking his head off. She probably wouldn’t remember any of it tomorrow but he couldn’t stop. “It doesn’t just apply to elephants. Violence creates the perfect killer elephant but also the perfect child soldier. I went to Uganda to learn about their elephant problem and bring solutions back to Tanzania…” He shook his head and fell silent for a moment. “I saw elephants killing and destroying, not out of necessity, but out of, I don’t know—trauma, pleasure, anger. Uganda was in the middle of civil war, that’s what had created the elephant problem in the first place. The war encouraged poaching. But the problem didn’t stay with the elephants. Adolescent boys who had watched their elders lined up and executed, their mothers raped and killed—these traumatized orphaned males
, human and elephant, formed roaming groups and wreaked destruction wherever they went.”

  She struggled to her feet. “I thought those elephants we saw die—it’s the ones who watched and survived it, you’re saying it’s even worse for them?”

  Caleb relaxed for the first time in weeks. She was listening. She believed him. She understood. “Yes, because of what they witnessed. Because no one old enough was left alive to show them how to live differently.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you hate Paul so much. The way you talk and act around him. He’s your father.” She suddenly looked embarrassed. Her hand smeared the dirt on her cheek. “I’m sorry, maybe you don’t want to say. I just…I know he’s not a good person, but…I think I need to sit down again.” She dropped cross-legged onto the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He stared at her. She still believed there were some lines Paul wouldn’t cross. All that Paul had already done, it wasn’t enough to shake the innocence out of Lydia. How sheltered her life in California must be. He imagined two loving parents, a freshly-painted home, food on her table every day, new clothes for when other clothes got old. Not used up, just old.

  Caleb dug his hands into his jean pockets and walked ahead. He felt the old anger return like an unwelcome friend. Anger at the existence of Ugandan soldiers, Tanzanian poachers, people like Jack Hellerman. People like Paul who felt no compunction about treating a girl as if she were a piece of paper to use and throw away. And yet people, good people like Lydia, still bought the lies Paul dished out.

  He pivoted and marched back. He towered over her hunched body, throwing his shadow across her face. “You want to know what my father did to make me hate him?” He didn’t bother to wait for her answer. “For my sixteenth birthday my father said he had a special present for me. I grew up with Abiba’s daughter, but Paul didn’t notice we were friends. Brother and sister.” Caleb spit on the ground, trying to push out the bitterness he tasted. “Paul likes to find uses for people. He took Neela from me and used her. For me, he said. For my sake.”