Rhinoceros Summer Read online

  He knew why the elder threatened him. The wildlife near the village did not benefit the people, but instead, the hunting and tourist money flowed to the central government and didn’t return in any way that mattered to the village. The village, the people most in need of economic relief, food, shelter, health care, education—the people most likely to control the fate of the wildlife in their area—were also the least likely to benefit.

  “I agree,” Caleb said. “If the animals hurt your village and no compensation is given in return, why should you be happy to see them? They are like vermin to you and your families. House-sized vermin.”

  The elder looked surprised. “I am listening.”

  Caleb broke into a cold sweat. The best way to protect the animals was to protect the plants they fed on. The best way to protect the plants was to protect the soil. Farming forced out the native plants, but he could not say this to the elder. It wasn’t a solution for right now, for their destroyed crops or the killer elephants roaming nearby.

  Muna joined their conversation and saved Caleb from answering. “I spoke with the women. There may be a solution.”

  Caleb raised his eyebrows. A solution, just like that?

  “They tend beehives here. I told them to bring them into the village, make a border around it. Not enough hives to save the fields but maybe the people. At least until you can deal with the elephants.”

  He’d heard of the idea. It made the rounds in some academic papers, though no one had conducted any extensive field trials. Still, it was well known that an elephant could eat an entire baobab tree if it wanted to but would always try to avoid a hive. He’d seen a herd bolt across a river at only the sound of buzzing bees. But to stake lives on it?

  “These aren’t ordinary elephants,” he said. “These elephants are crazy with musth and feeding off each other’s energy. They are unable to calm themselves down, unable to function correctly. Their minds are messed up not only by hormones but by the violence they’ve experienced. There’s no way to know if it will work.”

  She shrugged. “This is all that can be done now. And post village watchers maybe. Unless you want village men to hunt the elephants with spears? No man has a gun here except you.”

  The women and some of the men were already preparing to move the hives. Everyone carried some kind of weapon—metal-tipped spear, wooden club, cast-iron cooking pot—but Caleb’s gun marked him as a rich man. An outsider.

  “Is there a village radio?”

  The elder led Caleb and Muna to one of the huts where Caleb radioed in a request for game officers. It would take days, maybe weeks, before help and equipment arrived. The bees might give them enough time to capture and ship the bulls out of the area. With an entire village at stake, there wasn’t any room for error. If capture didn’t work, they would need to kill the bulls.

  He could not go after Paul or Lydia. He could not forsake the village. He hated leaving anything in Paul’s care, even thinking about it threatened his resolve. M’soko allowed him the peace of mind to stay. Caleb could trust his friend to protect Lydia.

  “You can go back to Owl Camp if you need to,” he said to Muna. “I will stay and do what I can to protect the people and the crops. Just make sure to avoid the water hole.”

  Muna laughed. “I will warn Abiba, but yes, I think I will take the long way back to camp.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Lydia

  “Put that camera down and give this a try.”

  Lydia drew away from the viewfinder. Mr. Compton held out a rifle.

  “C’mon, girl. You’re spending all this time out here, might as well try one out.”

  Lydia looked for M’soko and Paul. They were about a football field away, setting up targets along a log balanced on top of two boulders.

  “I’m not sure.” She’d never held a gun before. She was curious to try it. Her grandfather had showed her one of his own once but never let her touch it.

  “This is your only chance,” Mr. Compton said. “We gotta practice a bit now, before we get in too deep. Otherwise the gunshot noise will scare away most of the animals we’ll be going after.”

  Lydia put away her camera and set the bag inside the vehicle. “Targets would be okay, I guess.” Over the last two weeks, ever since they left Owl Camp and Caleb behind, Lydia had felt a new freedom overtake her. She didn’t know what to think about how Caleb had kissed her, and decided she’d returned the kiss because of her concussion. Instead of thinking about him, she thought about how the hunts went smoothly now, how the pictures she took awed her. M’soko had taught her more Swahili, Mr. Compton treated her like she was his favorite niece, and Paul left her alone. She would leave whatever was between her and Caleb alone until she next saw him.

  “Good. All right, then, let’s get you set up.”

  She patted her shirt down, brushed her hair off her face, and took the rifle from Mr. Compton’s outstretched hands. Maybe trying the gun out would help her to better understand the story behind her hunting pictures.

  She never, never planned to shoot a living thing, but she wondered if she could hold her own with Paul, or Mr. Compton, or Caleb. They all seemed to carry their guns so casually, like simple tools. In her hands, the rifle felt like a bomb ready to explode at any moment. She cautiously positioned each finger, afraid one wrong move would send off a shot. Isn’t that what happened? If you didn’t watch a loaded gun every second, it would kill something by accident?

  “That’s a Charles Osborne .577. It’s got some kick, but not like the elephant gun I’ll be practicing with,” Mr. Compton said.

  “There’s a special gun just for elephants?”

  “There’s a special gun, or at least, a special kind of bullet for every kind of animal we hunt. You hadn’t picked up on that yet?”

  Lydia shook her head. To her they were all just guns and bullets meant to destroy things.

  “You shooting?” Paul asked.

  Lydia tried to turn to where Paul had come up behind her without wildly swinging the rifle. “I guess,” she said.

  “Come on over. Billy, you all set up?”

  “Yeah.”

  M’soko came over. Lydia shrank under his gaze, thinking he would tell her she had no business carrying a gun.

  “Like this,” M’soko said. He reached down and shifted her grip so one hand wrapped around the bottom of the stock. He pushed her other hand farther down the barrel. “Easier to carry like this.”

  It did feel more balanced. “Thanks,” she said.

  “This is a good idea,” M’soko said. “You try out several of the guns and see which you’re best with. Camera isn’t enough protection here.” He opened up the Land Cruiser and pulled out a gun case. “Try out this one too. Try all of them.”

  The four of them set up on a line Paul had marked into the dirt. Paul fired and hit all four of his targets. Mr. Compton stepped up and took down two targets, reloaded, then missed one and hit another one. M’soko made all his shots too. Then it was Lydia’s turn.

  “Step up, girl,” Mr. Compton said. “Show us what you got.”

  Lydia brought the butt to her shoulder.

  “Hold up.” Mr. Compton fiddled with her rifle placement, straightened her shoulders, shifted her hands, and told her to unlock her knees. He was like a favorite uncle showing off his expertise. Lydia concentrated on not feeling embarrassed about holding the rifle wrong.

  Mr. Compton stepped back. “Now. Let one off.”

  Clouds filled the mid-morning sky. A soft breeze tickled her hair, the temperature not yet hot enough to cause her to sweat. She closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. The close, loud bang stunned her ears. The powerful recoil shot pain into her right shoulder, as if someone slammed a pipe against it. She opened her eyes, no hit. She waited for some sort of cutting remark from Paul.

  “Landed about ten feet from the log,” Mr. Compton said. “Not bad for your first try. Especially with your eyes closed.” He laughed. “Don’t worry. I did that myself w
hen I was first learning. Gut instinct or something. Try keeping your eyes open this time.”

  He stepped back and Lydia raised the rifle again. Already her arm muscles trembled. She felt nervous about people watching her. She tried to remember what Mr. Compton had said about foot placement.

  This time, forcing her eyes to stay open, she squeezed off another shot. The bullet still missed the targets but thudded into the log.

  Mr. Compton made a whooping noise. “All right!” he said.

  M’soko nodded in approval. Paul stood with his arms crossed. He didn’t seem happy or mad, just watchful.

  “One more, Lydia,” Mr. Compton said.

  “No,” Paul said.

  “C’mon, Paul. Let the lady have another go.”

  Paul shook his head. “Not with the Osborne. M’soko, pull out the .22 rimfire. She keeps shooting that .577, she won’t have any strength left to lift her camera.”

  M’soko pulled out a thin rifle from its case, set it up and handed it to Lydia. The .22 seemed to weigh less than half of the first one.

  “C’mon, Paul. That little toy of a gun won’t stop anything. Hell, it’d take three or four of those to stop a man, let alone some charging beast.”

  “You always practice technique first,” Paul said. “Brute force is better saved for when no alternative is left.” He waved Lydia off. “Go ahead.”

  She set her sights again, gritted her teeth and squeezed the trigger. The bullet popped out and went wild, farther away from the targets than her first two shots, but she wasn’t thrown backwards. M’soko showed her how to handle the bolt, open the breech, and reload. Now that she knew the gun wouldn’t try to knock her down, she concentrated on her aim. She attempted to hit three more targets, missing all of them, but hitting the log each time. The fifth shot finally nicked a rock and sent it spinning into another rock. Both targets flew off the log.

  “Yeah!” Mr. Compton again.

  “Excellent,” M’soko said.

  A glow of satisfaction filled her. She tried the heavier rifle once more, but her shoulder muscles quivered and almost seized up. She quickly traded it back for the .22. She wasn’t any sort of marksman. Still, she hit the targets more often.

  Paul loped over to the log a few times to set up additional targets. He didn’t take any more shots. M’soko did a few more rounds and then stood back and let Lydia and Mr. Compton take turns finishing the hour.

  She didn’t know what she was trying to prove to Paul, to herself. Why she took turns with Mr. Compton. Why she felt a powerful urge to not stop until she hit two targets in a row. She should be shooting pictures, not bullets, but she continued until she did hit two in a row. She whooped and smiled at both Mr. Compton and M’soko.

  She received their congratulations with pleasure and then caught Paul’s face. He still had his arms crossed and stood in what Lydia thought of as a bull-fighting stance, his legs anchored in the dirt, knees slightly bent. He didn’t say a word, but he looked pleased too.

  The adrenaline drained from Lydia’s body.

  Mr. Compton urged her to take another shot.

  She stepped back from the line in the dirt. “I think I’m done.” Her ears still rang and her right shoulder began to spasm. Her head felt all mixed up with fading adrenaline and a kind of emptiness. She handed the rifle to M’soko. “I just want to get some water.”

  Once she climbed into the backseat of the car, she shut the doors to soften the sound of the three men and their continued target practice. She took a sip from her water bottle, closed her eyes and leaned against the glass window.

  Why did she pick up a rifle now? After all these weeks of not once feeling interested in the guns except for how they showed up in her viewfinder, she’d easily put her camera away for a few hours.

  If Caleb had been here, he’d have started some argument, not wanted her to shoot—made her defend her decision so that she worked out wanting to shoot for the right reasons. She’d have known it was just practice. She’d have known Caleb wouldn’t let Paul find some way to mess it up, make it into some weird compromise or strategy to get her to agree to something she shouldn’t. If Caleb were here, he’d tell her that Paul looking pleased with himself never meant anything good.

  If Caleb were here, she wouldn’t be taking the best pictures of her life.

  Lydia sighed. She opened her eyes and watched the three men disassemble the targets and pack up the rifles.

  She didn’t know what she was changing into. There’d be nothing to regret if she had just taken pictures. It didn’t count if all you were doing was acting as a witness. Didn’t that give you immunity?

  Somewhere in the last hour, with Mr. Compton goading her on and M’soko silent but encouraging, and Caleb long gone, and Paul just standing with his arms crossed, pleased with himself, she’d done it, walked right past some line, through some door she hadn’t known was there until too late.

  She pressed her forehead against the glass as the men loaded up. The car soon ate up miles of bumpy track as they drove at an angle away from the late afternoon sun.

  “We’ll go for another hour or so.” Paul pointed through the dust-covered windshield. “Make it close to that hill rise and camp for the night.”

  “Nothing better than this,” Mr. Compton said, pointing out his window.

  Lydia looked through his window to see what had caught his attention. Nothing much; a rolling landscape of dirt, brush, a few trees M’soko called baobabs that Lydia thought looked more like broken umbrellas, the trunk a handle, the branches like the spindles of an umbrella without its cloth. The little track of dirt stretched to the horizon like a scratch on the earth. A few grazers dotted a small hill.

  M’soko veered to avoid a deep rut and that’s when Lydia saw it—a shiny glint of metal through the bushes and tree branches.

  “You see that?” Lydia asked. She turned and looked back through the windshield. Definitely something big, blue, and metal glinted back there. “M’soko could you stop?” Lydia asked.

  “Keep driving,” Paul said.

  M’soko slowed and stopped.

  Lydia grabbed her camera bag from the floorboards. “I just want to see what it is.” She fast-walked the hundred feet or so between her and the copse of trees and saw it: a blue, rusting-out, beater of a car. It looked like something from a junkyard, or a car that should be propped on blocks in a driveway, or one that would shoot exhaust while heaving down a potholed road. No way a car like that belonged in the wilderness. “How did something like this ever make it out here?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Paul said.

  Lydia jumped at Paul’s voice. She had not heard him walk up behind her.

  M’soko approached the car and studied the interior with his hands clasped behind his back.

  Mr. Compton brushed back some weeds from the front hood. “Thought so. Pontiac. 1987, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Lydia lifted her camera out of the bag, waited until Mr. Compton and M’soko backed away, and then started shooting.

  “We’re wasting time,” Paul said.

  Lydia ignored him. There was something about this piece of metal. It sat where it had no right to be and looked for all the world like it had been there for years, sinking into the ground, making itself at home. She wanted to capture that feeling.

  “Fascinating,” Mr. Compton said. “It does boggle the mind how such a thing made it out here. Any theories, Paul? M’soko?”

  M’soko stuck his head through the open driver’s window. Lydia took a photo of him leaning half his body in, as if the weed-covered car was swallowing M’soko headfirst, ready to shudder and gulp down the rest of him at any second.

  “Someone had good reason to come all this way,” M’soko said, his voice muffled. “Good reason and bad sense.”

  Lydia moved to take in the car at the foreground and the expanse of African wilderness in the background. She wanted to jar the viewer by juxtaposing the machine against the wild landscape.

  “Wha
t do ya think, Paul? Maybe there’s some clue in the glove box.” Mr. Compton headed for the far side of the car.

  Paul arrived first and yanked open the passenger door. “Probably crazies. Got to be crazy to drive out in a car like this. You just stay back unless you want to get bit by a sleeping snake or a spider the size of your fist. Whoever’s car this used to be, it’s part of Africa now and you sticking your heads into this metal animal home like a pair of idiots—like you ain’t got no sense—even a first year Boy Scout would know better than that.” Paul took up a stick and whacked it around the inside of the car. “Acting like idiots so I’ll have to drag both your asses to the hospital which means you all’d die since it’s more than a day’s drive from here. We got things to do.” Paul fumbled with the glove box latch.

  Lydia heard a pop as it opened. She kept her camera ready in case Paul got bit. She wouldn’t want to miss that.

  “Nothing,” Paul said. He stood back from the car. “Nothing but webs and dirt and weeds and animal dung.”

  “All right, Paul,” Mr. Compton said. “All right.”

  Paul slammed the door shut. The noise sounded like a gunshot. A couple birds flew into the air.

  “You got your pictures now?” Paul said. “You ready to let us move on so we can make camp before it gets too dark to do anything but let the wilderness swallow us up?”

  Lydia stared wide-eyed at him and held the camera at her chin. She wished more of it could block her from Paul’s sight.

  Paul stalked off.

  As if trying to make light of this outburst, M’soko smiled at her and pulled the car keys halfway out of his pocket. “He forgets I have these. Take the pictures you want.”

  “Thank you. Just a few more while the light is good,” Lydia said.

  CHAPTER 18

  Paul

  Paul studied Lydia as she took pictures of the Pontiac. He’d seen it happen with plenty of people, the empowerment created by gaining a little skill with a weapon.