Rhinoceros Summer Read online

  “What are you talking about?”

  She looked so pale and unsteady. Guilt swept through him. He should be taking better care of her. “I want to show you something,” he said, suddenly gentle. He crouched on the ground and reached into the inside pocket of his shirt. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, thankful the blood and mud had dried enough to avoid transfer. “Paul had seen me drawing this kind of stuff.”

  Lydia traced a few lines with her finger. “This is beautiful.”

  The paper displayed a series of sketches of the tsetse fly. Sometimes he drew from memory, other times he used a magnifying glass and studied a dead tsetse for hours, finding the rhythm of its compartmentalized body, seeking out the repetition of lines in its wings and body. “When I was a kid, Paul didn’t like my drawings. He didn’t think it was appropriate for a professional hunter. He wanted to make a man out of me.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He burned them.”

  Lydia looked up. The dark, dirt-lined rings around her eyes deepened.

  “But that’s not even the worst of it. He took me into Arusha for my birthday, to this tin shack. He said my present waited inside. I found Neela naked on a bed.” Caleb swallowed and tried not to think about that day—the hollowness and horror at the sight of Neela on top of the white cotton sheets. “I ran. But I heard her cry out my name in recognition. Paul had set her up as a prostitute. I was going to be her first client but he hadn’t told her. This was his way of making me into a man. This was his way of handling his women. He tried to make us believe he’d meant to teach both of us a lesson.” Caleb spit onto the ground again. “Some lesson.”

  Lydia started to shake, although the hot afternoon sun sat high above their heads. “I…”

  Caleb noticed Lydia’s pale face. “Drink this.” He pulled out a canteen and handed it to her.

  She gulped the water down. “How could he do that?”

  “Didn’t the same thing almost happen to you with Hellerman?”

  Lydia’s body shuddered. “That bastard,” she said.

  Caleb let out a startled laugh. Her words brought him back to the present, back to this beautiful, blood-streaked girl he’d almost lost to a stampeding buffalo. “Goddamn bastard,” he said. He brushed away a tendril of hair from her face, leaned in, and kissed her. She tasted like Tanzania, like the future.

  She leaned into him so he kissed her longer.

  Suddenly, she drew away. “You’re using me to get back at your father.”

  He froze. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I do,” Lydia said. “But—”

  “Then what are you trying to say exactly?”

  She looked at him with unfocused eyes. “Seems like everyone here wants to use me for something. You all have acted crazy from the first moment I got to the airport.”

  He wanted to yell. He ground his teeth instead. He’d bared his darkest secrets to her and she threw it back at him like it meant nothing. Worse than nothing. As if he was like Paul, using information to wield power over people.

  “My head hurts, my body hurts, I can’t think straight. You mix me up. You mix me up and then you kiss me and don’t even give me a chance to think. I know Paul isn’t…What about what I want? All Paul seems to want from me is the same thing I want. To take pictures.” She pressed fingers into her temples. “Please. Just take me back.”

  2

  “You are coward,” Abiba said.

  Caleb knew it was true.

  They stood outside Abiba’s tent in the late afternoon light. He’d cleaned himself up, but sweat already covered his forehead again.

  “I have to leave.”

  “So kiss and run. Very big, very much like Paul.”

  He shrank into his body at her words.

  “I am sorry.” She closed her eyes. “I do not mean that. But it hard to watch and know his kind of man.”

  “I never understood why you stayed,” he said in a low voice. He could only imagine what Abiba had lived through these last years. Neela was sent away, but what about Abiba? He’d abandoned her. Forced her to deal with Paul alone.

  Abiba shrugged, a movement filled with resignation. “Where else do I go? Men are men everywhere. But Paul pay for her school.” She brushed her hand against his cheek. “I stay for you, too.”

  Caleb held her hand against his face.

  “You not Paul. You always better than Paul. You cannot continue to run.”

  Caleb shook his head. “No. I should leave now, before she comes out for dinner.”

  Abiba did not persuade him further.

  He took one of the staff cars and Paul could go screw himself if he thought Caleb was stealing it.

  He crossed hours of grassland before finding a dirt road, a herd of grazers, a baboon troupe. The afternoon turned into evening. The further he drove, the more Abiba’s words echoed in his mind and the more he knew he’d made the wrong decision.

  He braked in front of a large baobab tree. He had not touched one in a long time. He left the Land Cruiser and felt the trunk, the scars left by some elephant stripping the tree of its bark. He brushed his hand along an untouched piece of shiny, pink-grey bark. Africa’s upside-down tree. This one towered high into the sky, like a telephone pole. His arms did not even reach one quarter of the way around it.

  When he was a child, Abiba had explained how the baobab tree complained to the gods. It wanted to be tall like a palm tree, so the gods made it taller. It wanted fruit like the fig tree, so the gods gave it fruit. It wanted…But the gods grew too tired of the baobab’s vanity, so they threw it out of their garden and into Africa. It landed upside-down, and the gods were happy because now the tree shut up, but the baobab grew anyway, even with its roots in the air.

  Ernst Haeckel knew them as monkey-bread trees. Neela had liked that name the best and would sing out, “Way up high in the monkey-bread tree…” They survived burning, bark stripping. There were only two ways to kill the tree: let an elephant eat all of it or let it rot from the inside out. Abiba said you could not kill a tree if its soul had sickened and committed self-death, and she did not believe a tree would ever do such a thing. She said the baobab tree was a tree of life that could not die, but when it had humbled itself enough, it could return to the garden of the gods. So it would disappear from Africa, leaving only a heap of fibers where it had once stood like a towering, upside-down sentinel.

  Abiba had spoken the stories to him and Neela in hushed tones at night, long after Paul thought them asleep, about all the countless creatures that lived on and inside the baobab, scurrying through the crevices. How birds nested in its branches, bush babies drank the nectar, how baboons craved the foot-long fruit for its vitamin C, how the tree never grew from a seed but was always thrown down whole by the gods as soon as it became too vain. How you must never, ever pluck its white flower or a lion would surely eat you as punishment for the desecration.

  Paul had heard Abiba speak that last one and laughed at her. He’d taken Caleb out, plucked a flower from a baobab, crushed it in his hand, and looked around as if to dare the lion to him. None had come.

  Caleb pressed his forehead against the bark. Better to think about the magic contained in this baobab tree than about the elephants, or the white rhino, or how afraid he felt. Afraid that he had done as Lydia said—that he had used her in his long history of fights with Paul, as Paul had used her against Caleb. Yet, he could not touch the baobab tree without thinking of Abiba. He could not think of Abiba without hearing: “You are coward.”

  He returned to the Land Cruiser. He had left to clear his head, but now he knew he couldn’t stay away. He would go back to Owl Camp. He would not run away again.

  The engine coughed and caught, then died. He tried again. No luck.

  He cursed, hit the steering wheel, and then grabbed a flashlight from the dash.

  3

  It took him a full day to find the problem. A dirty rotor. Then several more hours to clean the rotor of enough debri
s to allow it to spark. He had plenty of water but no food. He preferred to go hungry instead of killing a bush baby. By the time he fixed the rotor, darkness had fallen.

  As soon as the sun rose, he started for Owl Camp. He arrived late in the afternoon. Something about the state of the tents, the lack of any noise except for the irregular flapping of canvas, immediately set him on edge.

  The Land Cruiser sputtered into silence. The jangled tone of the keys as he stuffed them into his pocket somehow added to his unease. He hurried into the dining tent to find Muna and Abiba sipping tea and playing a game of cards.

  “Where’s Lydia?”

  Abiba looked up from the cards, surprised. “She gone. M’soko, Paul, Billy, Lydia. Gone yesterday morning.”

  He felt rooted to the ground. He’d failed her again.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “They are long gone,” Muna said. “She would not be persuaded to stay, not after whatever it is you said to her.” Muna shrugged. “She would not say. But M’soko is with them.” She returned to the cards.

  Caleb remained silent. There must be a way to find them. “Where’s the satellite phone?”

  “You can try,” Abiba said, “but I do not think Paul will answer.”

  Muna laid down her cards, pushed back her chair and walked past Caleb. “Come on. You can try.”

  He set up a small chair and table outside to provide the best reception for the satellite phone. He tried for more than half an hour to raise someone from Paul’s group. No answer.

  He put in a call to his supervisor’s office but the satellite phone had no reception.

  “I’m going out for a few days to check out the closest village. Maybe they’ll have heard something about Paul or the elephants or…” He wouldn’t continue listing all the ways he had failed. He headed for the Land Cruiser and climbed into the driver’s seat. The passenger door opened and Muna climbed in. “I will go with you.”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Not your idea,” she said. “I am still going.” She shut the door and clicked in her seatbelt. “You think trouble. Well, I will not sit and wait to be told what happens next.” She stared out the dusty windshield and proceeded to ignore him.

  An hour or so later, a flock of birds a mile ahead took flight. Caleb knew the area well enough to suspect a disturbance at a nearby watering hole.

  The Land Cruiser crested a low hill, providing Caleb and Muna a view of a dried-up pond. It was more a mud hole than anything else. A small herd of skittish antelope stood on the far side, dipping into the mud and scooping out small sips of water, on the verge of bolting. A half-dozen elephants congregated on the Land Cruiser’s side of the watering hole.

  Caleb shut off the engine and pulled out his binoculars.

  “Are these the survivors?” Muna asked.

  He focused in on each elephant and noticed the dark, oily substance oozing from football-sized swellings on the sides of their heads.

  One of the elephants pierced the ground with his tusks. Caleb knew the action was meant to relieve the pressure those swelling glands placed on the back of the eyes. “Yes. They are the ones the grenade didn’t kill. They’re all in musth.”

  Musth completely changed the chemistry of a male elephant’s body, mind, and hormones. It forced ketones to flood the brain, surging testosterone levels. Every one of the six was on the verge of an aggressive breakdown. A testosterone rage. All six in musth with no matriarch or mature bull left alive to play referee.

  The huge ears on all six elephants flared and flapped. Ratty tails twisted and swung in agitation. Two young bulls clashed, flinging muddy water into the air. Sunlight refracted against the water, casting glare, making the elephant skin glisten.

  A loud crack sounded through the Land Cruiser’s closed windows. One elephant now stood with a tusk busted almost in half. The broken piece of ivory disappeared into the mud. These elephants were young and their tusks not large to begin with. The injured elephant was left with not much more than a stump.

  The trumpets, squeals, tusk-locking, and head banging continued. Soon a third elephant approached the other two, looking ready to join the tussle.

  “We should leave,” Caleb said.

  Muna pointed to two other elephants whose ears now rose in the Land Cruiser’s direction. Their trunks curled and sniffed the air in a decidedly investigative fashion. A trumpet from the fighting bulls caught the attention of all six, but only for a moment. One turned and stared at where Caleb and Muna sat in their box of thin metal and glass. The elephant stretched its trunk out, throwing an invisible line that cut the space between Caleb and Muna in two. The Land Cruiser was maybe a few hundred meters away from the mud hole.

  “We go,” Muna said.

  Caleb thought carefully about their next move. Sometimes revving the engine helped ward off an elephant approaching too close, a car’s version of the aggressive, don’t-mess-with-me announcement. With the state these young bulls were in, engine noise would invite a charge.

  He looked backward to confirm a clear exit path. He inserted the key and cast out a wish to the gods that the Land Cruiser start on the first try.

  The one tusker had not changed the direction of its pointing trunk. With ears flared and flapping, it took a step away from the mud hole and to the Land Cruiser.

  Caleb tensed his fingers, waiting, waiting for the right moment. He wanted to time it to a clash between the three fighting bulls to drown out the cough of the engine.

  The tusker didn’t wait but galloped at the Land Cruiser.

  Caleb jammed on the key. “C’mon, c’mon.” The engine stuttered and caught. He slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The Land Cruiser lurched in reverse, almost throwing him and Muna into the windshield. It ground over stones and into rivets as it traveled back up the hill. Caleb tried to keep a clear view of both the ground behind them and the charging bull.

  “Fast,” Muna said. “Go fast.”

  The bull lifted its head, giving his tusks a better spearing angle. Caleb kept his foot pressed to the floor, tried to keep the Land Cruiser from spinning its wheels in the dirt. He hoped the other five bulls would not decide to join their buddy.

  One of the tires caught on an obstacle. The entire vehicle pivoted and lost momentum, throwing Caleb and Muna against the doors. The young bull continued its galloping charge. Caleb regained control. A sharp clang and a thud shuddered through the Land Cruiser. Caleb stared into the wild eyes of the elephant as it flapped and trumpeted and beat its trunk against the metal hood. Drops of the dark oily secretion from the elephant’s temporal glands flew onto the windshield glass.

  Caleb picked up speed on the flat ground. The elephant slowed in its all-out charge, until finally stopping and lowering its ears. The bull gave a final trumpet, of victory or warning, Caleb couldn’t tell.

  Caleb shifted the Land Cruiser into drive and wasted no time leaving the area.

  He realized Muna still gripped her seat hard enough to turn the skin of her knuckles a pale yellow.

  “The village will be okay,” he said.

  She didn’t respond.

  4

  Like always, they smelled burning trash before they saw the village. Caleb parked some distance away so as not to throw dust into the homes.

  The thatched huts formed a haphazard circle around the open center of the village. A few women frowned as the two of them arrived at the edge of the circle, and then smiled once they recognized Muna. She joined the women, talking and laughing in a local dialect he didn’t understand.

  He recognized a few of the older men from his childhood, the ones who would often collect meat after a successful trophy hunt. Paul had sometimes quarreled with them about territory and whether to make restitution for damaged crops.

  Though he didn’t know the local dialect, most of the villagers also spoke Swahili. This was the language he decided to use when one of the older men approached him. “Hello, honored elder. I am fro
m the Wildlife Division.” He held out his right hand in a show of proper respect.

  The elder, his face a map of weathered seams, still looked far from frail. He gave Caleb a slight nod but did not shake his hand. “Yes, we have a big problem with these elephants. They have turned nasty. They have destroyed one quarter of our crops. You tell me how the Wildlife Division plans to fix this. How will the Wildlife Division protect us from an elephant’s rage, from its tusks spearing through my son’s hut? You tell me, how will we eat?”

  “Has anyone been hurt?”

  “We do not have enough food for the year—yes, the elephant has hurt us.”

  Caleb took a deep breath. Now was not the time to play politics. “I will do everything I can to help.”

  “Well, this land surrounding the village, it is our right to decide how to use the land, yes?”

  “Up to the boundary of the park.” This encompassed the waterhole Caleb and Muna had just fled.

  “We are thinking, we will cut down all trees and plant more fields. We will take over the water and the animals will go bother someone else.”

  Any response interpreted as disrespecting the villager’s rights to water, food, and shelter would only make future negotiations impossible. Game Control Areas often overlapped onto village land. It was a village decision on whether to lease, cultivate, or keep the borderland wild. Of course, animals didn’t respect imaginary lines drawn onto paper maps. “I’m here to take care of your elephant problem.”

  As soon as the words came out he feared the elder might label him a kisettler, someone who would always be a stranger, wanting to ‘settle’ the land and people and world. Kisettlers wanted to swoop in, ‘fix’ things in the short term, and mess it all up in the long term. They looked out for white people first, then the animals and land, then maybe other people, all while speaking pidgin Swahili because it was beneath them to learn the full language. He felt confident at least that no one could fault his Swahili. Abiba had taught him well.

  The elder crossed his arms over his chest, flecks of white hair sticking to his skin like powder. “The government does not care about our suffering. We will cultivate the whole area and there will be no wildlife left at all to make us suffer.”