A Spear of Summer Grass

14



I shot a sizeable antelope for the cooking pot, and the men smiled their appreciation. The cook made it into some sort of stew with gourds and onions and they devoured it by their own fires, one for each tribe. They had piled their fires high with green matter causing them to smoke heavily, driving away the insects that would have plagued them. They would sleep under the stars, but two tents had been pitched on level ground, one for me and another for Ryder. Tusker refused to sleep in a tent, choosing the car instead.

“No, thank you,” she said when I offered to share. “I have had quite enough experience of snakes in the bush. It makes me drink just to think about it. A nice day’s hunting and no sooner do you fall asleep than something comes slithering into your tent to bed down between your legs. No, thank you, indeed.”

Ryder’s mouth was twitching hard, and I looked away so as not to laugh. Tusker excused herself and I rose from the fireside, wrapping a length of Masai cloth about my shoulders. Gideon had presented it to me before trotting off to make a bed for himself under the trees, and I was glad of it. Nights on the plains could be cool.

“Delilah,” Ryder called as I reached my tent. I paused.

“Yes?”

He looked up from where he lounged, hands laced behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle.

“You might get scared,” he said evenly. “There are noises in the bush, scary things with teeth and claws that go bump in the night. You might need protecting. I could help with that.”

“Don’t worry,” I said sweetly. “I have my gun. If I hear anything coming toward my tent, I’ll just shoot first and worry about what it might have been later.”

He was still laughing when I shut myself in my tent.

The next morning we picked up the track again and it veered sharply south. Ryder was quiet, his mood solemn, and Gideon must have sensed it. He didn’t ask for poetry and I doubt he would have gotten any if he had. Ryder grew even quieter as we approached an outcropping of rock. Gideon fell back with the headman and the porters and together they kept to the track. Only Ryder struck off, heading straight toward the rocks. I followed him, and he slowed, matching his pace to mine. I did not ask where we were going. The rocks rose straight before us, grey and weathered, the only real landmark in this part of the savannah.

We stopped at the foot and I saw where a cross had been carved roughly into the rock. Ryder took off his hat as we moved close. He passed his hand over it, tracing the lines, first down, then across. He laid the flat of his hand over the stone, palm to rock, and remained that way for several minutes. Then he gave a great sigh and backed away to stand next to me. His hand brushed mine, but he did not reach for my fingers.

“Is this where your wife is buried?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “Eliza? No. This is my father’s grave.”

“Why is he here and not the churchyard?”

“Because this is where I killed him.”

He clapped his hat back onto his head and swung around to rejoin the group. I strode after him, matching him step for step. “You can’t just say something like that and walk off, you know. What happened?”

He took in a deep breath then blew it out slowly. “Elephant attack. He was hunting and got too close to a cow, the biggest female I’ve ever seen. Each tusk was two hundred pounds and he wanted the ivory for a trophy.” His jaw was set as he told the story, grinding out the words as if each one hurt to give. “He slipped as he made the first shot. She was on him before he could fire again. I shot her twice and she rolled to the side, but it was too late. She’d already torn him open from neck to groin. It was just a matter of time.”

“So you shot him to put him out of his suffering.”

“You can dress it up to sound noble, but the ugly truth is that I put a bullet straight between his eyes. I did it because he asked me to.” His gaze had gone flat and cold. “He wanted to do it himself, but she had crushed his fingers. He couldn’t pull the trigger on his own revolver.”

I shook my head. “Don’t tell me any more.”

“You asked, princess. Don’t you want to hear it all? Don’t you want to know that we fought just before he took that shot? I told him she was too close and he didn’t need another damned trophy. I called him an old fool. Those were the last words I said to him, you know. He asked me to kill him and I did it and I forgot to tell him I was sorry. I forgot to tell him I loved him. I forgot to tell him that everything I know about being a man I learned from him. I forgot everything I should have said, and then he was dead and it was too late. It will always be too late.”

I slipped my hand in his, and that small touch seemed to release something within him. The coiled tension eased, and his shoulders lowered. His jaw softened and he took out his handkerchief and handed it to me.

“Don’t you ever carry your own?”

I shook my head and wiped at my eyes. I held it out, but he shook his head. “Keep it. I like to think of you owning something of mine.”

He dropped my hand then and we walked back to the others who were still filing slowly across the wide African plain.

Late that afternoon we were walking sluggishly, full after a good lunch and feeling the pull of the warm sun towards the occasional shadow of an acacia. Suddenly, Gideon began speaking rapidly in Swahili to Ryder who bent swiftly over the tracks. Ryder turned to me, smiling broadly.

“We’ve got him and another. He’s found a mate.”

There in the soft soil, next to the pug marks of the large male, were the smaller prints of a female, sometimes bounding ahead, sometimes circling flirtatiously behind. Ryder explained that we had to move forward cautiously until we found them.

“You don’t want to sneak up on a mating pair,” he told me. Gideon took out the ash bag and sifted out a handful to toss lightly into the air. The wind was favourable and we moved forward, signalling to the porters and Tusker to stay behind. They began to set up camp as we followed the lions.

We heard them before we saw them. Just past a little rise, the land dipped down to a small lugga. There was scant vegetation, just a few thornbushes and an acacia, but there was some shade and it was here that the lions had decided to copulate. Gideon circled slightly to the left and made a series of swift hand signals while I stayed with Ryder.

“We won’t go any closer and we won’t take him now,” he said, his mouth against my ear.

I shrugged slightly and he put a finger to his lips then gestured for me to watch. The lioness had apparently just decided to succumb. She was crouching low, flicking her tail back and forth under the lion’s jaw, teasing him. With a low roar he flung himself forward, covering her as she dug her claws into the earth. He bit her neck, holding her down in submission as he pushed himself into her. She gave a little mew and turned her head, nuzzling at him. He was monstrous, a solid thing of muscle and bone and sinew and far larger than I had expected him to be. Even at a distance, I could feel the ground shake with the violence of his thrusting.

All at once, it was over. The lioness turned on him, letting out an impatient roar and lashing his nose with her claw. Blood spurted from his nose and he snarled at her as she whipped her tail, giving a low growl in response. They fought, first one lunging, then the other, and occasionally rolling around, raising a cloud of dust to powder them both. Then just as suddenly as they began the fight, it was finished. The male shook his head, the blood running freely from his nose. The female crept near, licking it, nuzzling. He turned his head, aloof to her attentions. She moved past him, graceful as a dancer, tantalizing him with the tuft at the end of her tail, again flicking it gently under his chin. He growled and she turned to walk past again, sinuous, inviting. He lowered his head and she moved past a third time, shifting her hips. At a sound from him she crouched, moving her tail aside as he lunged to cover her again.

Ryder touched my arm. “Best go while they’re occupied,” he murmured. We crept away and he signalled to Gideon to meet us at the encampment.

“If you’re sure that’s the man-eater, why didn’t you take him?” I demanded.

“Oh, I’m sure. He’s missing a toe on his back foot. No mistaking him.”

“Again, why didn’t you take him?”

Ryder’s lips twitched. “I thought instead of a last meal he might like a last—”

“Never mind,” I said.

He laughed. “Relax, princess. He is our man-eater and we’ll get him tomorrow. But he’ll be mating with that female for the next two days. I just thought I’d give him a chance to get cubs on her before I shot him.”

“You think more lions are a good thing? When they eat people’s children and cattle?”

He swung to face me. “I’m not a scientist, and I’m not a historian, but I can tell you those lions were here long before we were. And they won’t be here much longer if everybody starts treating them like vermin. Now, I’ve got no problem taking out a lion that’s a nuisance. But just because he’s a man-eater doesn’t mean his cubs will be.”

“But they might,” I pressed.

“Then I’ll kill them, too. Happy?”

“No! You are the most contradictory person I’ve ever met—a white hunter who doesn’t like to hunt?”

He sighed. “Delilah.” The softness of my name stopped me in my tracks. He was looking at me, really looking, as if the strength of that looking could teach me to understand him. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I saw what happened in the States when people were given free rein to hunt buffalo. There used to be millions of them roaming the plains. Now they’re gone, vanished into nothing, and with them went all the tribes that used to survive on them. It’s a whole way of life that just isn’t there anymore, and that’s a tragedy. It’s more than a tragedy, it’s a crime, only no one is ever going to swing for it. The one thing Roosevelt did right was to create protected parkland and preserves. Maybe, just maybe, some of the kind of wilderness I grew up in will survive. But there’s nobody to do that here. It’s all too new, too much chaos and too much arguing. Nobody is putting aside parkland and nobody is protecting the way of life that’s been here for thousands of years.”

He took a step closer, his tone urging. “Don’t you see? Those zebra we saw yesterday are part of something bigger, a huge migration that moves over these plains in a vast circle every year. First the wildebeest come, then the zebra, then the small gazelles. There’s a rhythm to it, a rhyme and a reason that makes you believe in a god when nothing else will. And when people stay out of it, the system works just fine. Some of the hooved stock are lost to the lion and the leopard, but most aren’t. Most survive, and so do the cats, and so do the people who live out here. It works, at least it did until the white folks came in and started taking it apart. Now there’s only so much time left until it’s all undone.”

He stopped and drew a deep breath. “The odds are long that the lioness will even conceive. And if she does, most of the cubs probably won’t even make it to adulthood. But if one does, then I will have undone what I have to do when I kill that man-eater. I can bring everything back into balance, and when this place goes to hell, when there’s nothing left on this plain but memories and regrets, it won’t be all my fault. Can you understand that? Will you understand that?”

He was standing so close I could see the gold flecks in the blue of his eyes. I opened my mouth, but he turned. “I shouldn’t have preached. Come on. Let’s see what Tusker rustled up for dinner.”

Tusker’s cook produced a marvel of a meal, and while Ryder went to the porters to discuss what would happen during the next day’s shoot, Tusker and I lounged by the fire with pink gins. The nightjars were calling and the crickets sang as the ripening moon rose. Tusker threw her head back and inhaled deeply.

“Breathe in Africa, child. It’s the most revivifying place I have ever been.”

“Did you grow up here?”

She gave a short, barking laugh. “God, no. I was brought up in England, a proper little debutante, making my curtsey to the Prince of Wales and filling in my dance card. I broke out as soon as I could. Told Balfour I would marry him if he took me right out of England. It was an escape plan, you see.”

“Escape?”

“From all of it, the expectations and the decorum and the polite smiles hiding vicious tongues. I’d had my heart broken, you see. Fell in love with the wrong chap and he crushed me right down to the bedrock. Nothing left but humiliation.”

“And Balfour picked up the pieces?”

“He did. A good fellow, was Balfour. For a poofter.”

She took a long sip of her cocktail and I blinked at her. “He was a homosexual?”

“Oh, as flouncy as they come! But I didn’t care. It meant he would never bother me in the bedroom, and that’s all I wanted. So I married him and he brought me here. We got on quite well together. Poor dear, he always had schemes for making money and none of them ever worked. But we rubbed along together and we were happy enough.”

“What became of him?”

She flapped a hand. “Same thing that happens to all of us, dear child. He got dead.” She took another deep drink. “It was blackwater fever that took him. A nasty business, that. It comes after you’ve had malaria too many times and it can kill you. A man can only withstand so many bouts of blackwater fever before his body just gives out and he drops dead. Poor Balfour died his first go-round with it. But Ryder is stronger stuff. I imagine he’ll make it through another time or two before he goes.” She frowned at her glass. “I think I need topping off. What about you, dearie?”

I held out my glass and she poured. “What did you mean about Ryder? He’s sick?”

“Not now. Got the constitution of an ox. But he’s had blackwater fever three times. No man lives through five.”

“Is there any way to prevent getting it?”

She shrugged. “Kill all the mosquitoes? It’s the mosquitoes that cause it, you see. It starts with the malaria. Just after the rains, when the weather is warm and damp, he takes precautions. Usually heads up to the hills, gets up too high for the mosquitoes to be a nuisance. But there are no guarantees. Oh, don’t look so grim, child! He doesn’t think twice about it most days. And why should he? Out here you can be right as rain and step on a cobra and that’s it, your number is up and you’re singing harmony in St. Peter’s choir.”

She fell silent and I glanced to where the men had gathered around their fire. They were listening intently to Ryder, plucking ticks off their legs and flinging them into the flames.

“It must be nice for the two of you to have one another out here. Family, I mean.”

“Oh, that. Well, it was an accident, pure and simple. I’d lost touch with his father after he left home. Ran off at seventeen, Jonas did. Always a flighty boy. There’s a streak of wildness in the family, you know,” she added with a wink and a nod. “But he always wanted to see the world, and see it he did. I wasn’t altogether surprised when he landed here. Of course, if you’re English and you want wilderness, there aren’t many spots left, are there? All the cast-offs and vagabonds make it through Mombasa at some point. When I heard Jonas was there, I cabled him and he came up. I was surprised to find he had a boy. None of us had known about him. And that brought troubles of its own, of course.”

“Troubles?”

“Our elder brother, Miles, had inherited the family title. Nothing at all impressive, just a baronetcy with no money and little land. But Miles hadn’t had children of his own yet, and Ryder was heir presumptive. Miles insisted on having him sent to England to be educated. Ordinarily, Jonas wouldn’t have agreed, but he’d just been through a bad patch health-wise. Feeling a bit of his own mortality, the Grim Reaper’s long shadow, all that rot. So he sent Ryder to England, much against the boy’s protestations, I can assure you. He spent two terms at Rugby and was sent down for fighting. Miles decided to find a private tutor and that was even worse. The boy ran away and it took a fortnight to find him, living rough on Dartmoor, of all places.”

“I can believe it,” I said, smiling into my glass.

“Yes, well, that was enough for Jonas to regain his sense. He brought Ryder back to Africa and Miles did what he ought to have done and found himself a wife and started making his own heirs.”

“I take it Ryder isn’t the heir anymore.”

“God, no. There are now seven between him and the title, and that is perfectly fine with him. He’d sooner hang than live in England. He said the whole country is too damned small. Gave him claustrophobia.”

“It can be a little stifling,” I agreed.

“What about you? Where do your people come from?” she asked suddenly.

“Here and there. My father was a Devonshire Drummond and my mother is a L’Hommedieu from Louisiana.”

“Devonshire? I remember dancing with a Devonshire Drummond at my coming-out party. Thick as two planks nailed together but a damned fine dancer. And quite good-looking. All the Devonshire Drummonds are handsome and stupid.”

“That sounds about right.”

“What are the L’Hommedieus like?”

“Stupid and handsome.”

She laughed her barking laugh again. “Do tell.”

“Well, not stupid precisely, but doggedly attached to the old ways, come Hell or high water. My grandfather L’Hommedieu was the youngest colonel in his cavalry regiment.”

“A military man, eh? Nothing wrong with that.”

“He was a Confederate.”

“Ha! Backed a losing side. Shame. Ah, well. It happens to all of us now and then. I presume your people are Creoles. You’ve a look of them with that black hair.”

“Yes, dark as the devil and twice as wild, my grandmother always says.”

“Blood will out,” Tusker agreed. “The first thing you learn in breeding horses and it holds true for people as well. That’s why you’ve got to bring in fresh blood.”

“So my mother preaches. But there are a dozen other stables in her part of the county. It must be more difficult for you to get fresh stock.”

She fixed Ryder with a pointed stare as he came near. “Tell him that. My racehorses are pedigreed, but I breed others, too, also fast as the wind. They’re tidy little earners, but someone refuses to go and get me new stallions.”

Ryder snorted. “That’s because the last time I went, it nearly cost me my manhood.”

Tusker let out a peal of laughter, holding her sides. “Oh, it’s true, my dear,” she said in response to my skeptical look. “The best horses in the world are bred in Abyssinia, but it’s impossible to trade for them. I bet Ryder he couldn’t bring me back an Abyssinian stallion and pair of mares without getting himself caught and castrated.”

“Castrated?” I stared at Ryder.

“The penalties for horse thieving in Abyssinia are a bit extreme,” he admitted.

“You rode all the way to Abyssinia to risk castration?”

“Of course not,” he said, giving me a slow smile. “I walked.”

I shook my head as Tusker went off in gales of laughter again. She wiped her eyes on the hem of her shirt. “I thought for certain the boy was dead. He was gone weeks, weeks. He finally came limping back leading a string of the most beautiful horses you’ve ever clapped eyes on, Delilah. Each one of them was worthy of an emperor. That trip was so dangerous, it was written up in the book at the club.”

“And greatly exaggerated,” Ryder put in. “I didn’t kill three lions. Just one.” He rubbed a finger over the braided bracelet at his wrist. I leaned closer.

“A souvenir?”

He held up his wrist. “He was after the horses. Killed one before I could get him, but I thought a bit of his mane might make a nice memento.” The hair was black as a starless night.

“I didn’t realise they came with black manes.” I touched the hair. It was springy and thick. My fingertip brushed the pulse at his wrist, and for a moment we locked eyes.

“Anything with black hair is trouble for me,” he said. His tone was light, but his expression was serious. A nicer woman would have felt sorry for him. A kinder woman would have put him out of his misery and taken his hand and walked him back to her tent. A sweeter woman would have let him spend the night.

But I’m none of those things. So I rose and said good-night and went to bed alone.

The next morning we woke before sunrise. The lions were still mating. The sounds of their copulating rolled over the plains, and the porters scurried about with a new urgency. Today was the day they’d been waiting for. A kill, a good meal, and the start of the journey home with their families and a hefty tip waiting at the end.

Ryder checked the weapons and he and Gideon and I set out after breakfast. I hadn’t eaten, but Ryder shoved a packet of sandwiches at me and told me to carry them. I took my rifle and ammunition and followed him across the grass and down to the lugga where death waited.

The lion had paid for his pleasure. She’d given him a beating; open cuts laced his nose where she had lashed him. Her own back was marked with foamy pink froth from his mouth where he’d held her, sometimes ungently. Ryder had gone over the procedure while he ate. When they separated, we were to take the male and leave the female if possible. He explained that she might charge, but it was a chance we were going to have to take.

We settled into the bushes and began to wait. We waited all that morning and into the afternoon, sitting so still that it felt as if we had never known how to move at all. The sun rose overhead, burning off the early morning cloud and casting short shadows. Hunger came and went again, and still we waited. At last, as the afternoon was drawing to a close, the lion finished mounting her for the last time. She lashed at him and he crouched and rolled on the ground. She hadn’t meant it. She stretched and wandered a little distance to the stream to drink and then she simply walked away, tail held high, no longer interested in him.

Just then, the male caught sight of something, or perhaps he smelled us.

He rolled back onto his four massive paws, lifting his enormous head and moving slowly toward us. Gideon lifted his spear and Ryder and I shouldered our rifles.

“Got him?” Ryder asked coolly.

“Yes.” The trigger was cold under my finger.

“He’s yours. Take him.”

My belly rolled. I didn’t want to do this. I would never have done this. This was destruction, something that felt criminal and wrong. The lion moved closer, never hurrying, secure in his own size, his own ferocity. His amber eyes surveyed the bush, and I saw that they were yellow around the pupils, just like Ryder’s.

“Princess?”

“I have him,” I said. My voice shook, but my hand was steady. The lion gathered himself then, and gave a roar so loud the ground trembled under my feet. The sound moved from the earth up into my legs and spread through my belly and my heart and lodged in my throat. I could feel it still when I pulled the trigger and the roar of the lion and the roar of the gun and the roar of my own voice were the same.

The lion stopped, stuttered a step, then kept coming. I fired again, and this time he gave a whimper and rolled onto his side. Ryder told me to reload and cover him as he moved out from the bushes. My hands were slick, and the bullets rattled in my palm.

“I will cover him, Bibi,” Gideon said softly, his spear arm ready.

I nodded and stuffed the bullets into the chamber, cocking the gun. Ryder motioned me forward.

“He’s done.”

“I don’t want to see him. Do I have to see him?”

“He’s your trophy.”

“Leave him there. I don’t want him touched. The hyenas can have him. And that’s not why I killed him. You know that.”

“Doesn’t matter to him,” Ryder pointed out. He bent to the bloody business with his knife, and rose a moment later. He walked back and opened my hand. He pressed something hard in the palm and I looked down. It was a tooth, as long and broad as a man’s finger. It was sharp and gleaming white through the blood. It was warm in my hand. He gave me a tuft of its mane as well, and I shoved the two trophies into my pocket.

Ryder turned to Gideon. “Any sign of the female?”

“No, Bwana. She ran at the sound of the guns.”

“Good,” Ryder told him.

“Yes, I am relieved,” Gideon said with his gap-toothed smile.

We turned and began to walk back to the camp. I felt nothing, no fear, no euphoria, nothing but an odd, incomparable lightness. I could have floated away just then, and only the weight of that tooth in my pocket held me down.

“Why are you relieved?” I asked suddenly.

Gideon turned to me. “The female is very deadly and very dangerous, and if she decided to avenge her mate, she could harm Bwana. And then perhaps I would have to kill her myself.”

“You don’t want to kill her?”

“No, Bibi. I have killed nine lions. That is enough.”

“Nine is a very great number,” I agreed.

He shook his head. “It is too great a number. For a man to kill more than nine lions, he has taken more than his share, and he will suffer very bad luck, Bibi. Very bad luck indeed.”