by Katy Yocom
Akbar roars. It’s a physical wallop, hard as an ax blow against the tree trunks. The intruder flinches but doesn’t flee, just shifts his weight on muddy paws.
Akbar advances on him. The intruder circles, emerging from the trees a few paces downwind. He glances at the doe, licks his mouth. Akbar takes that moment to charge. The tigers engage, rearing up on hind legs to pound each other with their forepaws, claws slashing, daggerlike canine teeth bared, faces wrinkled in full recoil, ears pinned back. Their roars rip the air and set the forest shrieking with alarm calls. Birds lift off in a whir of beating wings. My heart pounds against my ribs.
Akbar is the giant in the clearing, deep-chested and mighty. He lashes his tail, gathers himself, and launches in a blur of fangs and blazing eyes, smashing blows and battering roars. He lands a wallop against the side of the intruder’s skull that sends him falling to the slippery ground. On the way down, his hind leg scrapes the dead doe’s hoof, opening a wound. Akbar unlooses a shattering roar and leaps for the kill.
But even wounded, the intruder is quick. He rolls to his feet and bounds into the forest, crashing through the brush. Akbar chases him a distance, then stops and gives a final bellow, quaking the leaves on the trees. He licks a long slash on his shoulder. His blood must taste hot and metallic, the same as the animals he eats.
He returns to the dead doe, chases off the vultures that have already plucked out her eyes, and sets to eating.
I know the younger male has no choice in the matter. He has survived so far by skulking and thieving, but that kind of subsistence is too meager to sustain a full-grown tiger for long. If he wants to survive, he has to take a territory in the forest for himself. So he will seek out Akbar again, even at risk of his life.
I know I’m not supposed to get attached, but I can’t stand the thought of the intruder laying waste to Machli’s cubs and their whole generation, all across the park. Especially not after she lost her cubs last year. It’s awful to say this, but I hope Akbar kills him.
.
Something was happening between her and Sanjay. Maybe it was the drought, the stress it placed on everyone. Maybe it was the conflict in the park. Sanjay told her one night that if he were free, he would marry her. They’d just made love, and she judged him still caught up in the chemical rush.
“Really?” she said. “What would your parents have thought of that?”
He squinted, thinking. “To tell you the truth, I think they would have liked the same things about you that they liked about Lakshmi. You’re both opinionated and smart. My father would have appreciated your sense of adventure. My mother loved to host journalists and professors in our home. She thought it broadened us. She would have wanted to know everything about your travels.”
“But?”
“But you two would have clashed if we married. She would have wanted you to play the Indian daughter-in-law.”
“Submissive,” Sarah said.
“Only till you produced a son. Then you could rule the house, maximum bossy style.”
She thought about that. Their son would be beautiful. His skin fairer than Sanjay’s, darker than hers. He would have curls, no doubt. Sanjay would pick him up and kiss his soft, round cheek. And the neighbors would stop by with gifts because all of this family-making would happen in the open, in perfect freedom, and no one in Sawai would judge Sanjay harshly for divorcing his wife and marrying Sarah.
If only.
She could feel the want coming off him, his palpable need for a son. Was it coincidence that Sanjay had devoted his life to saving the tiger from extinction when his own family was destined for that fate? Genetically only the tiniest of lines would disappear: the one that began with his parents and ended with him. In terms of species survival, their DNA would not be missed. But she knew it saddened him that there was no one to take custody of the memories. He had told her once that his mother loved nothing better than a wedding because it gave her the chance to dress up in her best sari and dance till the sun came up. His father had taken excellent care of his possessions; he taught Sanjay to wipe down his motorbike after every ride. He tousled Sanjay’s hair when he was proud of him and told him stories when Sanjay felt troubled, stories that never had anything to do with Sanjay’s problem yet made him feel better just the same. Even his marriage. He and Lakshmi had had good times that first year, a period of romance and hope before the first miscarriage. Sanjay had told Sarah funny stories about his efforts to win over his mother-in-law; he talked about it like a game of strategy with a worthy opponent. It seemed so clear that Sanjay needed to pass his memories on, needed someone to understand that they mattered. If he couldn’t have a son, then Sarah would gladly do that for him.
“I wonder sometimes how you ended up here in my arms,” he said.
“I think it was all the times I nearly threw up on you.” She lay back against his chest. “Actually, it was the day I saw you at the cinema with Hari’s boys. That was the moment I fell in love with you. I didn’t realize it at the time.”
“Children mean a great deal to you. The boy soldiers. Your niece and nephew.” He lay silent a moment. “I want to introduce you to the boys.”
Quinn
In the weeks after the twins witnessed Quinn and Pete’s fight, bedtimes grew fraught with drama. Alaina became clingy, Nick quiet and serious. One night after Quinn tucked him in, he said, “Mom? Are you and Dad gonna get a divorce?”
She sat down on the edge of his bed and petted his hair. “No, honey. We’ve just been disagreeing about some things, is all.” She kissed his forehead. “Things will get better.” Once, in a fit of love blindness when the twins were babies, she had told Pete she would never lie to them. It hadn’t occurred to her that there would be times she would have no idea what the truth was.
Afterward, she came downstairs and stood awkwardly at the couch, where Pete sat in a pool of yellow lamplight, staring at nothing.
“We can’t let ourselves fight in front of them again,” she said.
He shrugged. “They can see things aren’t right. Maybe it just makes it worse if we pretend everything’s okay.”
“Well,” she said quietly, “then let’s make everything okay.”
He looked up at her with sudden hope.
“I don’t know how,” she admitted. “But we’ll figure it out.”
He looked away again, defeated.
She rekindled her long-abandoned habit of meditating in the mornings, not really expecting it to help. The Buddha said resistance to change, not change itself, was the cause of suffering. She didn’t know if she believed that. So much was unacceptable: what had happened to Marcus, what could happen to Nick. What kind of sister would she be, what kind of mother, if she accepted those things?
Meditation proved useful for identifying old hurts. The hurt, for instance, that Sarah had spent her life rejecting Quinn’s overtures. And her anger at the unfairness: Now that the invitation was on Sarah’s terms, Quinn should drop everything and go? Useful, too, for identifying her real agenda for sitting in meditation. She was trying to meditate her way into becoming the old Quinn, the one her husband could live with and her kids surely needed: maybe not brave, but brave enough.
Alaina accepted Quinn’s practice with unconcern. Nick mocked it. “Omm!” he chanted at her, furious, one morning. Her sweet son, her old soul of a child. She caught him as he stomped out of the room, sat down with him, talked with him till he calmed down.
It’s too selfish, she thought. How can I leave them?
She spent the next two days thinking on that question. On the third morning, she sat down to meditate. When she opened her eyes, she knew what she needed to do.
Sarah
The sun was nosing over the horizon when Sanjay killed the engine of his motorbike outside the park gates. Sarah, sitting sidesaddle, slid off the back and lifted the boys down, and they began leaping and chasing e
ach other, exultant with the joy of the ride.
“That was absolutely terrifying,” Sarah said. “I don’t know how Indian women do it.”
Sanjay smiled. “Let me tell you, Indian women have nerves of steel.”
“Is it a long walk, Uncle?” Mohan shouted. He was the younger boy, seven or so and missing teeth.
“It’s a terribly long walk. Adventures are never easy.”
Mohan and Jai grabbed Sarah’s hands and swung them, and they joined the trail of worshippers heading toward the fortress. Sarah had never thought the park lacked for color, what with the parakeets, kingfishers, and peacocks, not to mention the tigers—but now, surrounded by the vivid hues of Rajasthani textiles, she felt as if she’d stumbled into a kaleidoscope.
The dusty road entered the forest, where large birds rustled in the trees and peafowl mewed, and the boys looked around, wide-eyed as any foreigner.
“Are there tigers in the forest?” Jai asked.
“Yes, but they have an agreement with Ganesha,” Sanjay said. “They leave his worshippers alone.”
Jai nodded seriously. “I can’t believe anybody would kill a tiger, even if they needed the money.”
“Everything is connected,” Sanjay said. “Protecting the tiger will protect every species of animal and plant that shares its habitat. The trees that scrub pollution from the air and the rivers that supply water to every living thing.”
“So to save the tiger is to save all of nature,” Jai said. “Including us.”
“Well said, young man.” Sanjay tousled his hair.
A forest guard recognized Sanjay and offered a ride to the base of the cliff, for which the boys clamored with relief. When the guard dropped them off, the boys tilted their heads far back to look up to the fortress ramparts a thousand feet above, glowing orange against the bright blue sky. The sun had broken above the eastern cliffs, sending daylight halfway down the western slopes.
“All the way up there?” Jai pointed.
“All the way up.”
On the long, crowded trek upward, they passed a penitent inchworming his way up the track. “Why is he lying down with his face in the dirt?” Mohan asked loudly.
“He’s going all the way to the temple just the way he’s going now,” Sanjay said. “Prostrating himself full out, getting up, placing his feet in his handprints, and prostrating himself again.”
“Won’t his mommy be angry with him for getting his clothes dirty?”
“Not at all. He’s doing it because he feels the need to shed his sins.”
Mohan looked confused. “He can shed his sins by crawling in the dirt?”
“By doing something humble and difficult.”
“But why are people touching his feet?”
“Out of respect for his piety.”
“Come on, Mohan, you’ve seen people do that at our temple,” Jai said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have.”
“You boys remind me of two kids I know back in America,” Sarah said.
“We do?” Jai said, shocked.
At the top of the cliff, the earth flattened out. The boys looked around, awed to find themselves so elevated. They walked past monkeys, past a white-bearded holy man tending the Hanuman shrine. Sanjay stayed a few steps behind Sarah and the boys. “Walk with us,” she invited, but he shook his head, smiling.
“I like watching you three together.”
The temple yard bustled with humans and langurs. Ancient stone buildings bounded the wide courtyard, interspersed with temporary markets of scraggly timber posts roofed with blue tarp, where men sold candies and cassette tapes and garlands of marigolds. At one end of the courtyard stood the low temple, topped by a colorful striped dome against the bright blue sky.
Inside the dim temple, the atmosphere changed. A gong clanged, loud and insistent, over the hollow beat of a goatskin drum and the sounds of a flute rising and falling like a cold wind. It was as if they’d stepped through a portal into some loud, wild place high in the mountains. All this clangor to draw Ganesha’s attention to the presence of worshippers.
They joined the throng shuffling to the altar in a haze of sandalwood. When their turn came, they stepped past the rail and found themselves face-to-face with the god. Ganesha sat in his niche in statue form: pot-bellied, elephant-headed bestower of wisdom and remover of obstacles. At his feet lay garlands of marigold and rose, a brass bowl filled with golden oil, powdery mounds of ochre spices.
What should she pray for? She didn’t know.
Yes, she did.
The most righteous prayers were not petitions to get what you wanted. They were pleas for the grace to bear whatever came your way. She knew that. She did.
She looked straight at Ganesha and prayed: Let Sanjay be mine.
They emerged squinting into the bright blue day, the sun a coin high above. A short-horned white bullock with an extra hoof growing out of his back stood ambitionless outside the temple. Sad, Sarah thought. Or was it? Did the other cattle shun him, or did the extra hoof mean nothing? India did not hide illness and deformity. Life was so much more various here.
She looked at Sanjay, wondering if he could feel the grit of her prayer. If he knew she had claimed him.
“What do you think?” he asked the boys.
“I liked it,” Jai said. “I liked having to come so far. It makes it more special.”
“I like the monkeys,” Mohan said.
“Be careful about the monkeys,” Sanjay warned. “Sometimes they’ll leap up and snatch your garland from right around your neck.”
“Why?” Mohan clutched his garland.
“So they can eat the flowers.”
“Stay away, monkey,” Mohan scolded a nearby langur.
“And don’t look him in the eye, or he’ll attack you.”
“Why?”
“It’s considered aggressive in monkey society. It makes them think you want to fight.”
“Do you think a forest guard will take us back to your motorbike?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“It’s an adventure,” Sarah reminded them. Her eyes met Sanjay’s over the boys’ heads, and they exchanged a smile.
Someone called Sanjay’s name: a short, balding man with thick glasses. “Mr. Jain,” Sanjay said. “Namaskar.”
Mr. Jain looked at Mohan and Jai and particularly Sarah, clearly dying to know what was going on here. “Ms. DeVaughan is a colleague,” Sanjay said. “Jai and Mohan are here today learning about the park’s ecosystems.”
“Always teaching,” Mr. Jain said. “Since you were a boy. Well, Jai, Mohan, today will be a great education for you. Teacher uncle knows all about this park.” He gave Sarah a friendly nod and said his goodbyes.
Sarah watched him walk away, pulled a five-rupee coin from her pocket, and sent the boys, whooping, to a confectionery stall nearby. She turned to Sanjay.
“He’s an old family friend,” Sanjay said.
“That doesn’t mean he won’t gossip.”
“You’re a colleague. It’s perfectly normal for us to be together.”
It was true, but it didn’t feel true.
The boys came running back with a bag and showed off the boiled sweets they’d chosen. Sarah congratulated the boys on their excellent taste, and when she looked up at Sanjay, she saw that he loved her, and loved the boys, so much that it nearly crushed him.
It was so plainly visible. She wondered if Mr. Jain had seen it.
.
On their next drive in the park, they sighted Akbar lying flat on his side beneath a neem tree. Sarah raised her field glasses and watched his flank rise and fall with his breathing. Something was different; she was trying to parse it out when Sanjay, looking through his own binoculars, murmured, “Can you get us closer,
Hari?”
Hari maneuvered them to a field not far from where the tiger lay. It was clear now. Akbar’s coat looked scruffy and battered, torn in places. Though Hari had kept a respectful distance, the big male raised his head at their approach, struggled to his feet, and hobbled away on three legs, his head bobbing with each step. He couldn’t bear weight on his right front paw. His flanks were caved in with hunger.
High overhead, a single vulture hung in midair, suspended on a thermal. They were silent the rest of the drive.
.
The knock at her door came at dawn two mornings later. She answered it in pajamas, her skin damp from sleep. William. She took in his expression.
He didn’t have to say it. She already knew.
By the time they arrived, the forest guards had pulled the body from beneath the branches of a capparis shrub and collected wood for the fire.
“Oh, Akbar.” Sarah knelt next to his ruined form and ran a hand over his matted ruff. It seemed impossible that he didn’t flinch at her touch. He had looked so regal her first day in the park, when he had stepped in front of their jeep. Now his ribs showed through dirty, blood-matted fur, and his massive head seemed too big for his body.
“He’s been fighting,” Geeta said. “All these fresh scars.” She crouched and picked up his paw, bigger by far than her hand, and felt among the pads. “Look at this. Puncture wound. That was what did it.” She held the paw in both hands. “Akbar. You were such a good papa.”
The wildlife veterinarian arrived with his kit and drew a knife from his bag. Sarah turned away as he set to work. It was a gray, shadowless day with nothing to look at, nothing to distract from the gruesome, wet sounds of a body being dismantled. She glanced at William and Sanjay, their eyes cast down. Geeta stared straight at the body, her expression unreadable.
