The Crocodile's Last Embrace

by Arruda, Suzanne

  Jade was considering mixing a batch of biscuits when a familiar call drifted down on the evening air from Ol Donyo Sabuk. Jade remained motionless and listened as the male lion hurled his throaty challenge to the last half hour of sunlight. As the call died away in a series of softer harrumphs, she felt her throat constrict and her eyes dampen. Her own words to Sam came back to her as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud.

  If you think for one instant that I’m going to forget about you, then you’re crazy. I’m going to see you in every sky and hear your voice in every lion’s roar.

  “Stop it!” she scolded herself out loud. “He left you behind. You’re wasting your life fretting over one man.” She let her anger deepen in an attempt to drive out more maudlin emotions. “When I do see him, he’s getting a piece of my mind!”

  In an effort to occupy herself, she decided to make the biscuits. She slid the fish onto her plate, covered it with the heavy cast-iron lid, and opened a box where she stored the wooden bowl, flour canister, lard tin, and baking powder. Her hands trembled and she felt her mind race from Sam to David to Lilith, never staying on one person for more than a few seconds.

  Get a grip on yourself!

  She tugged at the canister’s lid and pulled it off in a jerky movement, spilling some of the flour. Idiot. Jade measured the flour using her shaking hand, closed the tin, and reached into the box for the lard can. But when she’d lifted it from the box, she dropped the can and yanked her hand back. Stuck to the bottom of the lard can was a dirty envelope coated with dried mud.

  Jade’s heart hammered in her chest and ears, and her throat constricted. She tried to swallow the knot growing inside her. Reluctantly, she pulled off the envelope and opened it. Inside was a mud-stained photograph of her and Sam, taken at the Nairobi railway station the day Sam had left. A rent sliced through Sam’s face, as if someone had stabbed it with a knife. She turned the photograph over. On the back was written, You’ll never belong to him. You belong to me even if I have to come out of the grave for you. It was signed, David.

  Jade’s cry pierced the air as the anguish knifed through her chest. She hugged her midsection to stop the sensation that her innards were spilling out. But the visceral pain was as relentless as a pack of wild dogs devouring her alive. She curled into a ball and collapsed on her knees beside the chop box. Biscuit, alerted by her outcry, hurried to his mistress’ side. Jade’s left hand reached for the cheetah’s comforting presence and clamped around his barrel chest. Her other shook as it gripped the haunted memento. Then, in a movement that might have been involuntary, Jade sat up and flicked the offending photograph into the cook fire.

  It caught immediately and the reddened flames licked at her face and Sam’s.

  Forgotten were the fish, the biscuits, the pot of tea. The river’s rush and tumble drifted into nothingness. Only her heartbeat was real, beating a rapid staccato. She thought she heard an elephant trumpet somewhere nearby. How many times could a person endure this measure of pain and survive? Each blow struck deeper, twisting her emotions, her body, and her mind.

  Jade looked up from the fire with the sudden feeling that she was being watched. Her eyes darted from side to side as she searched the darkness for someone or something that stalked her. The darkness itself shifted and crawled like a giant, creeping maw opening to swallow her.

  That was when she saw the wizened old native encased in his gray cloak swaying from side to side as he watched her from across the river.

  Boguli?

  She felt Biscuit strain against her grip and saw that he, too, was staring across the river. The ephemeral image pointed from his mouth to his head as though trying to tell her something. She tried to reply that she didn’t understand, but he vanished into an evening mist much as he’d long ago slipped away into the fog-shrouded forests of Mount Marsabit. Only an elephant’s distant trumpeting drifted back to her in the night air.

  JADE WOKE TO THE MORNING SUN warming her tent. She didn’t recall having entered it. She pulled out her pocket watch and stared at it in disbelief. Seven thirty! She’d never slept so late. As she wound her watch and slipped it back in her pocket, she tried to recall what had driven her into her tent so early last evening. She remembered cooking her fish and starting to make biscuits. Beyond that, everything jumbled into a nightmare, the same one she’d fought her way through a half dozen times last night: a fire, Sam burning, a great elephant flailing at a crocodile while women drew water. She didn’t even recollect crawling into her bedroll.

  When she ran her hand through her matted hair, her scalp prickled and her head hurt. Jade spat, once she could make enough saliva. Her tongue felt thick and the saliva pasty. Biscuit padded forward, a freshly killed grouse in his jaws. He deposited it at Jade’s feet and butted her with his big head.

  “Thanks,” she said, picking up the gift. He’d never brought his kills to her before. “I must really have been in a bad way last night. My mouth tastes like I ate an old shoe.” Biscuit responded by licking her hand.

  Jade poked at the campfire’s ashes and added a bit of kindling to refresh the few remaining coals. When the twigs caught, she carefully added the last of the sticks she’d gathered yesterday, saving one to spit part of the grouse. She drew her knife and skinned the bird, then cut off one leg and thigh. She gave the rest of the bird back to Biscuit and skewered her leg quarter with the remaining stick. After propping it up over some stones at the edge of the fire, Jade wandered off into the brush to relieve herself before returning to the river to wash her face.

  The cold water felt good after such a feverish night, and with no danger of crocodiles at the top of the falls, she dunked her head to wash away the sweat from her hair. By then, it was time to turn her grouse leg over. She thought about reheating the leftover tea, then decided she’d dallied too long this morning and settled for several long pulls at her canteen.

  The river and the canteen both went a long way towards reviving her, and Jade’s stomach growled with renewed hunger. Biscuit glanced up from his breakfast, and Jade apologized.

  “Sorry, boy. Didn’t mean to startle you. Your food’s safe from me.” She turned her own portion again, then eyed the tightly covered plate left to one side. When she lifted the cast-iron lid, she saw that the cooked fish had been kept safe from ants and other scavengers. Jade picked it up with her fingers and tasted it.

  Still good!

  She devoured it before turning her attention to her cooking bird. When it was done, she used her knife to slice chunks off the bone and eat them. Even with the sour taste in her mouth, the roasted meat was delicious.

  “Thanks, Biscuit. I needed that, and I don’t think I felt like fishing this morning.”

  A pygmy kingfisher flew past on its way below the falls, as though to mock her fishing abilities. The bright orange head and bill blazed in sharp contrast to the iridescent blue on its back. Jade followed it with her eyes until it disappeared below the falls, then turned her gaze to the opposite shore.

  Just what did you see last evening?

  It had been sunset when she’d had her vision. Between the strain of receiving that photo and the campfire’s flickering glow, she couldn’t have seen anything clearly, she reasoned. Perhaps it had been only one of the Kikuyu watching her curiously before hurrying on to the village. But in her heart, she knew what she’d seen and no amount of rationalization could change that. The Kikuyu didn’t roam far afield after dark settled.

  She’d seen a man, Boguli, who’d never existed to begin with. An old native whom she’d met on Mount Marsabit when she’d been tracking the ivory poachers. A man whom she’d photographed but who only appeared on film as the shadow of an ancient bull elephant, one who’d been shot by those very poachers. Jade had never been able to explain Boguli to herself. It had taken one of the old French priests at the mission to put him in perspective.

  Perhaps he was a guardian angel, mademoiselle. One who came in a form that you would trust.

  She’d accepted
that idea then, mainly because of its comforting nature and because she was sitting at the priest’s big wooden refectory table enjoying hot bread and a mug of coffee. Right now with the rushing drone of the falls near her, it seemed eerie. And had she really held a picture of Sam last evening? Or had that been her imagination, too?

  Jade took the stick that had held her grouse leg and poked at the fire, pushing the remaining sticks to one side. She rummaged through the ashes, but nothing recognizable appeared. It wasn’t here! She’d dropped it into last night’s cooking fire, not this campfire. She hurried over to that smaller, separate ring of stones and pawed the cold ash. A corner of photographic paper stuck out from where it had wedged between two of the stones. No image was visible, but the paper itself was proof that she hadn’t imagined the picture. She stuck the corner into her shirt pocket and wiped her sooty fingers on her handkerchief.

  “Someone is playing at some nasty games, Biscuit,” she said. “Someone who lives around Nairobi, too.”

  Suddenly she wanted to return and check her bungalow for any other sign of intrusion. Whoever had left that envelope had left it in her chop box, which meant they’d been inside her home. Finch warned me to keep my door locked. The thought made her skin prickle. Jade looked in the box for the envelope but couldn’t find it.

  “I must have dropped it into the fire, too.”

  She washed her skillet in the river, and used it to carry water back to the camp to douse the fire. Then, after taking down her tent, she carried the gear in two trips down the rocks to Avery’s truck, Biscuit following. As she loaded supplies, she remembered the truck parked downriver that she’d seen yesterday. Maybe someone had come up to her campsite while she was fishing and left the envelope in her box.

  “Let’s see if this person is still there, Biscuit.” Even if they weren’t guilty, they might have seen someone nearby. Maybe they saw the native that she mistook for Boguli.

  Twenty minutes and many more jolts later, Jade spied the truck she’d seen the other day. It was parked in the same location and, as before, no one was nearby. She turned Avery’s Dodge towards the river and parked forty feet away. “Hello,” she called as she stepped out. “Anyone here?”

  She listened carefully for an answering sound but heard nothing. Jade picked up her rifle, chambered a round, and held it at the ready as she walked slowly towards the abandoned truck, her ears and eyes attentive to anything that hinted of danger. Only the slow murmur of the Athi greeted her. Biscuit padded softly behind her.

  A tackle box and a fishing pole lay on the ground, but there was no tent or any other articles of camp about. Neither was there any angler. “This doesn’t look right, boy,” she said to Biscuit. Jade eyed the truck and took a deep breath, steeling herself to look inside. Her reasoning told her that there was no body in the truck; otherwise the vultures and other scavengers would have been about. Still, she had to look.

  She approached the truck and looked first in the bed, then in the cab. All she saw was a pith helmet lying on the ground by the front tire. Jade moved closer to the bank when, at twenty feet away, two warnings stopped her. For one, her left knee throbbed. For another, Biscuit hissed.

  “What is it, boy?” she whispered. She took one more wary step towards the riverbank when the cheetah took hold of her leg in his mouth and stopped her in midstep. Caught off balance, Jade tumbled backwards. She landed hard on her rear, her finger jerking back on the trigger.

  Her Winchester went off just as the river boiled up in one frenzied roll, and a huge, spectral gray and green crocodile surged out of the water. The bullet struck the side of his skull and ricocheted off. It hit the abandoned truck, shattering the windshield.

  “Holy . . .” Jade muttered. She backpedaled, pushing herself farther from the shore before the eerie beast decided to come after her. Jade caught a brief glimpse of a blue-gray eye behind a massive jaw. Then she scrambled to her feet and ran back to her own truck, Biscuit leading the way.

  As the croc slid into the water, there was little doubt in Jade’s mind as to what had happened to the missing fisherman.

  CHAPTER 8

  Do not be deceived by a calm, peaceful surface.

  Death may well lurk just beneath it in the form of iron jaws.

  —The Traveler

  “TIE IT ON GOOD AND TIGHT,” said Blaney Percival, the colony’s chief game warden. “We don’t want the bait to slip off the line.”

  It was Tuesday, and Jade was back at the site of the crocodile attack with an entire retinue. Mr. Percival was present, along with European constable Miller, Constable Singh and his camera, and Harry Hascombe. Two gun bearers attended the hunters, and trailing all of them was a reporter from the East African Standard. The only one missing besides a representative from the Leader was Biscuit. Jade had left him with Beverly.

  Miller poked around the abandoned truck, Singh photographed the scene, and the reporter photographed the constables. Percival and Jade stood by Harry’s truck, putting together a line baited with a haunch of zebra, while Harry stood guard with his Holland & Holland .375 in hand. Nakuru, the big Nyamwezi man whom Jade knew from her trips to Mounts Marsabit and Kilimanjaro, carried Harry’s heavy rifle, a .416 Rigby.

  Jade and Percival finished tying on the bait, and Percival’s gun bearer, Mukassa, whirled it over his head and released it to splash into the river. The other end of the rope was attached to a hand-cranked winch nailed to the bed of Harry’s truck. The winch was made with a handle on either side of the central spool so that two people could man it if needed. At present, only Jade stood beside it. They settled back to wait for the beast to take the bait.

  “If he’s still in this area, he’ll go for that meat,” said Harry.

  Percival picked up his .450 Rigby double rifle and chose a position with a clean line of fire to the shore. “It’s possible he’s gone on to the native village,” he suggested. “And you’re certain that this was a gray crocodile, Miss del Cameron?”

  “I only saw his head, sir,” Jade replied. “It was a dull iron gray with a few green and white splotches near the right eye. And the eye was a cloudy blue.”

  “I know that croc,” said Harry. “But when I last saw him five or six years ago, he was a lot farther south. He was a big fellow then, eleven or twelve feet. Ridges along his back were green and so were his legs. The rest of the beast was mostly gray with some patches of olive green. But as bizarre as that beast looked, there was something truly unnatural-looking about those eyes.”

  “I thought albino animals had red eyes and more yellowed skin rather than gray or white,” said Jade.

  “They do,” said Percival. “This brute’s not an albino. He’s an odd sort of freak, light overall with his mottled dark green ridges and that white spot behind the eye. I’ve seen a raven with one white wing before. That bird was always getting chased. Most animals mob the outlier, so it’s a wonder this croc survived infancy. Seems he’d have been easy to spot as a youngster by some hungry fish.”

  “Piebald,” said Jade.

  “Who’s bald?” asked Harry.

  “No, piebald. It’s what we call horses with that sort of mottling.”

  “Oh, right, piebald. Well, on this beast we call it ugly,” Harry replied.

  Blaney nodded. “He was an ugly brute at that. I’ve seen him, too. And you’re right, Hascombe; he was a good-sized bull, then, at thirteen feet. Probably fourteen by now.”

  “How do you know he’s a he?” asked Jade.

  “When I saw him, he was making a mating bellow,” explained Percival.

  “Ah. So what’s he doing up here?” asked Jade.

  “Like as not, an even bigger or more experienced bull chased him out of his territory when he tried to mate with the females,” Harry said. “Possibly those same females don’t want to mate with him, since he looks different. Hard to say what motivates a croc beyond its stomach.”

  “That is the truth,” said Percival. “They’ll take on anything from antelope to zeb
ra, and I hate the ruddy lot of them. They take far too many natives, especially the women.”

  “Interesting bit of lore there,” said Harry. “You’ll fancy this, Jade. Some tribes claim when a man or woman dies by another’s hand, the soul enters a croc and uses it to seek vengeance. That’s why so many native women still wash at the same spot where someone else was taken the day before. They assume that the victim had done someone wrong and, if their conscience is clear, no harm will come to them.”

  A scratching noise caught their attention and, as one, they turned to see the reporter hunkered by the truck’s bonnet, scribbling away. “Just keep talking,” he said. “This will make wonderful copy.”

  Harry raised his right arm as though to backhand the man. “Get off with you before you get in the way or get eaten.”

  “I’m waiting to see the croc,” the man said. He patted a nearby camera. “Hope to get a shot of it when you’ve killed it. For once I’ll scoop that bloke at the Leader. He’s too much of a dandy to come out here for a story. Fancies himself a bit of a gentleman.”

  “You’ll be shot if you don’t get out of the way. Bother the constables while you wait, not us,” said Harry. The reporter took the hint and joined Miller as he rooted under the seat for anything of note.

  “Do they know who’s missing yet?” asked Percival. He kept his gaze on the river, as did Jade and Harry, watching for any sign: a slight ripple, a bump that could be a nostril.

  Jade shook her head. “Not that I know. Surely someone back in town will recognize the vehicle if nothing else.” She studied the faint ruts behind the truck. “It looks as if there are two sets of tire tracks, but with most of them on the vegetation, there’s not much to compare. He might have driven back and forth for that matter.” She looked upriver to the falls and caught a glimpse of a rainbow breaking through the spray. “Hard to reconcile such beauty with this place of violent death.”