Dark Memory

by Jonathan Latimer

  “I never heard of four charging,” Jay said. “Are you coming?”

  “I suppose so,” Bill said.

  Jay looked at him. Bill was pale, but otherwise he seemed all right. It would do him good to shoot a lion. “Come on,” he said. He felt the feeling the other lion had given him. Herbert came up in the Ford.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you see the lions?”

  “Gawd, no!”

  Eve got out of the truck. “I’m going, too,” she said.

  “No,” Jay said.

  “Please. I don’t want to miss the fun.” She took a Mauser out of the station wagon. “I’ve never shot at a lion.”

  Herbert leaned out of the Ford. “You can’t go, Mrs. Salles. I’ve orders, you know.”

  She ignored him. “Mayn’t I?” she asked Jay.

  “Let her go,” Bill said. “We’ll do better with three guns.”

  “All right,” Jay said. “Have you solids?”

  “Mrs. Salles!” Herbert said anxiously.

  She showed Jay some cartridges. “These are solids, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. Let’s go.”

  “But my orders!” Herbert wanted to stop her, but he didn’t dare get out of the Ford. “How will I explain?”

  “I’m not going to be killed, Herbert,” she said.

  Halfway up the hill to the lions another clump of thorn grew by a raised place above the grass. The raised place looked like a large rock. “Let’s make for that,” Jay said.

  The grass was deeper than he thought. It reached their waists and it was very thick and they could not walk fast. A wind blew on them, rippling the grass, making it gleam in the sunlight. They went slowly up towards the bare place by the thorns, all the time hidden from the lions. Jay began to sweat, the fear or whatever it was warm and hard in his stomach. It seemed to him the lions must know they were going to be attacked. No, that was foolish. They couldn’t know anything. But if they had moved down into the grass and were waiting for them? He took the safety off the Springfield and blew through the sight aperture to clear it of dust.

  They walked as quietly as they could. Bill walked beside Jay, leaning against the hill, his shoulders hunched, his jaw set. He was white. Jay glanced back at Eve and she smiled at him. Good gal! he thought. When they were twenty yards from the exposed rock they saw the lions. A small valley they had not noticed in the grass ran from them to the lions two hundreds yards away. The females and the smaller male were going away from them over the hill, sneaking catlike through the grass. The big lion was watching the hunters from the shade of the thorn trees, his black-tipped tail switching irritably. He looked very arrogant. Bill raised the Mannlicher. “Too damn far,” Jay said.

  “I can hit him.”

  “You can’t kill him. Let’s get to our rock.”

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” Eve said.

  They had to cross the valley to reach the rock. In the valley they lost sight of the lions. Bill was running for the rock.

  “Not so fast,” Jay said.

  “I don’t like this damned grass.”

  “You can’t shoot if you’re out of breath,” Jay said.

  Just below the bare rock they saw the big lion again. He had started after the other lions, but when he saw the humans were still following he stopped and faced them. The tail with the black poodle-dog tip moved angrily. The low rumble of his voice made the hair rise on Jay’s neck. Then, because the humans had halted, he went after the other three.

  “Come on,” Jay said.

  They climbed on the rock. It looked like a volcanic formation, the surface gray and porous. It ran thirty feet in the direction of the lions. Jay crossed the rock. The other lions had waited for the big male. They were going together up the hill, not hurrying, but trotting loose-footed through the grass. The big male looked back and saw the humans and stopped at once. When they kept on across the rock he growled and started for them, head and tail up, bounding along like a big dog.

  “He’s yours, Bill,” Jay said.

  Bill aimed the Mannlicher and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The lion took a few more bounds, then, seeing the humans had halted, turned to join the other lions. Bill looked confusedly at the rifle.

  “Take off the safety,” Jay said.

  They followed the lion to the edge of the black rock. He saw them before they reached the grass and roared, and when they still came he put his head down and charged. The other three lions were nearly over the hill. The big lion was coming seriously now, running low and fast, leaving a wake in the grass. There was the deep explosion of the Mannlicher as Bill fired and missed. He fired again, too soon, and the shot got the lion somewhere along his flank, making him swerve, but not slowing him up at all. “Oh God!” Bill said.

  Jay knelt beside Bill and lifted the Springfield, freezing himself into an impersonality that did not see the fast, low-running lion as a menace, but as a target he must hit. He saw the black mane standing out from the lion’s neck and the golden eyes and the mouth and the yellow teeth and the too-big head and the flowing, swift, dangerous run, but he thought only of putting the Springfield’s sights on the white tuft of hair below the lion’s chin, of holding his breath, of squeezing, and then the rifle shoved his shoulder and there was the roar of escaping gunpowder and the hunk of the hard-metal bullet against bone and the sour-sharp smell of gunpowder, and he saw the lion slide forward on the grass, carried along by his speed, his legs suddenly useless. Then the lion was crawling towards him, almost at the edge of the rock; crawling and trying to get to his feet, his golden eyes fixed on the hunters, his flank bloody, the growl blood-choked in his lungs, able to use only his forelegs, but still coming, terrible in his determination to reach them, and then there was a shot beside Jay and he fired too, and the lion did not crawl any more.

  Eve was standing beside him, her hip almost touching his shoulder. She had fired the other shot. He got up, still frozen emotionally. The other lions had disappeared. The air was strong with the smell of gunpowder. He turned to her and found she was looking back at the clump of thorn trees across the rock. Bill was by the trees, where he had run with the empty Mannlicher. He had not reloaded. He looked sick, the blind fear that had paralyzed his hands so he could not reload still on his face. He was sick with terror and with shame. His face was bad to see.

  Jay walked with Eve to the lion. They did not look at each other. If there had been pleasure in having killed the lion, it was gone now. Jay did not even feel the pity he had felt with the gorillas. The lion looked strong and angry in death. They had certainly given him as sporting a chance as any lion ever got. He had charged before they fired; he had instituted the attack. He lived by violence and it seemed fair for him to die that way.

  “He doesn’t look so big now,” Eve said.

  “Big enough.”

  “Do you think I hit him?”

  They bent over the lion. One shot had been deflected by the bone over his right eye. Bill’s shot, gashing the tan flank, had drawn the most blood. Another bullet had gone in where the neck met the chest. That shot had killed him. And there was a fourth wound on his right shoulder.

  “We all hit him,” Jay said.

  The lion’s mane was dark, almost black, and the plume of the tail was black. Jay stared at him, really seeing him for the first time. He saw the soft pale fur of the underbelly and the loose wrinkled skin where the legs were and the strong delicate paws and the too-big head and the blue veins that ran from the scrotum along the inside of the hind legs. He was beautiful, all right, but he wasn’t the golden shadow that had come through the grass at them. He looked like a partially emptied sack.

  Bill came up. “Is he dead?”

  They did not look at him. “Yes,” Jay said.

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  “Skin him.”

  “I’ll get a knife from the truck.”

  Bill went down the hill to the road. Jay sat on the grass by the lio
n. He was having the reaction. He wondered why he hadn’t been scared when the lion charged. Too dumb to be scared, he thought. He was scared now.

  “What’s the matter?” Eve asked.

  “I’m scared.”

  “There’s nothing to fear now.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Were you scared when he was coming at us?”

  “No. But I don’t know why.”

  “You weren’t, though,” she said.

  “No.”

  “That’s the important thing,” she said.

  He had a feeling he had been away somewhere and had just returned. Everything looked a little different, yet there was no difference. He supposed it was part of the freezing process he had adopted to keep from being scared by the lion. Now he was coming out of it. The African hills with the grass and the thorn trees and brown patches of brush were at once familiar and different. It was like the feeling you had when you went to places, or met people you had never seen before, and you were sure of this, and yet they were familiar, as though you had dreamed them.

  He looked at Eve. “You made a fine shot.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re a beautiful shot,” he said. “You’re a beautiful gal, too.”

  She smiled at him. “We’re both beautiful.”

  Bill came back with two knives. “Herbert was about to decamp,” he said, giving Jay a knife. “Thought we were all dead.”

  “Wasn’t he going to look for our bodies?” Jay asked.

  “Oh, he wouldn’t,” Eve said. “He’s terrified of animals. Some people are, you know.”

  Jay looked at her, but her face was serene. Was she going to be that way with Bill? He hoped not. He knew what Bill was going through. There was no need of probing the wound.

  Bill said, “I’ll make the preliminary cuts.”

  He knew how to skin animals. He used the knife well, cutting delicately and firmly. Jay let him work alone.

  “Who killed him?” Bill asked.

  “Eve did.”

  “Do you really think so?” Eve asked.

  “Yes. I stopped him, but you killed him.”

  “Does that make him mine?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I won’t really take him,” Eve said. “He’s yours. But it’s wonderful to think I could.”

  “He’s absolutely yours,” said Jay.

  Bill was loosening the skin around the shoulders. “Here’s one bullet.” He gave it to Jay. It was from the Springfield.

  “There’s another in the neck,” Bill said.

  “Eve’s.”

  “Didn’t my second shot hit him?”

  “Did you think it did?” Eve asked.

  Her voice was strange. Bill stopped skinning the lion and glanced at her and then at Jay. “I didn’t know,” he said. “But I saw it hadn’t stopped him. So I ran back to load.”

  They looked down at him. He was kneeling by the lion’s head.

  “I wasn’t any good up there,” he said. They could hardly hear his voice. “So I ran back to load.”

  Eve said, “You went awfully far back. Was it better loading there?”

  “Let’s get on with the skinning,” Jay said.

  Bill stood up. He was looking at Eve. “Really, I ran back to load. There was no use my staying. I was in your way.”

  “You mean you were in the lion’s way.”

  “Come on,” Jay said. “Let’s skin him.”

  “Why don’t you admit it?” Eve asked Bill. “You ran like a rabbit. You didn’t even load your gun.”

  Bill’s face became gray again. He turned and left them, still carrying the bloody knife in his hand. He went down the hill in an unsteady walk, like a man who is sick, or drunk. They watched until he went behind the hill. Eve’s face softened a little. “I’m sorry,” she said to Jay.

  “You should be.”

  “I simply couldn’t bear his trying to squirm out of it.”

  “No one likes to admit he’s been a coward.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Couldn’t you have let him alone?”

  “Are you angry?”

  “Bill’s my best friend.”

  “Now? When he’s been such a coward?”

  “Are you still being a five-letter woman?”

  “Do you think I’ve been one?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Jay said. “You’ve been an utter bitch.”

  Now she was going down the hill through the grass, moving with quick, firm steps, her back angry. She had a lovely figure. Well, he thought, that’s that. Now the safari would be conducted on a formal basis, with everyone very distant and polite. That was probably best, and anyway she could talk to Lew Cable and Mr. Palmer. She needn’t have hurt Bill so badly. They were like that, some of them. They couldn’t resist hurting for the fun of giving pain.

  By the time he finished skinning the lion he was sweating again. The hot sun made the sweat sting his neck. He scraped the skin clean of flesh and rolled it up with the tail tucked inside. He did not know what he was supposed to do with the tail; split it and clean it, or leave it whole. He had done a lousy job on the lion anyway. It was too bad. It had been a good lion.

  CHAPTER 13

  JUST BEFORE DUSK the clouds that all afternoon had been in front of them shut off the sky and it began to rain. A cold spray entered the truck. The road was black with lava, and as soon as the surface got wet it shone under the headlights. Jay could see nothing but the shining road. The hills and the sky were black. The road had a curious effect upon him. It seemed as though the Citroën was passing through an enormous void on a path of pale light. Bill sat in silence on the far side of the seat, letting the spray wet his face. Jay wanted to speak to him, but there was nothing to say. It had passed the talking stage. He had done the talking when Bill was first scared. Now there was nothing left to say. It was a lonely business, he thought, being a coward.

  Sometime after dark they saw the fires of the camp. Jay stopped the truck and they got out into the rain, stiff from the cold, and walked to the dining tent. Eve and Lew Cable and Mr. Palmer were drinking whisky by the light of the safari lanterns.

  “Here they are,” Mr. Palmer said. “The hunters.”

  “Dinner’s getting cold,” Cable said. “A damned nuisance, you Boy Scouts always being late.”

  “Better wash, hunters,” Mr. Palmer said.

  Juma brought hot water to their tent. He was very excited about the lion. He made a long speech in Swahili to Bill, mentioning the word Simba several times. Then he touched both their shoulders And left. Jay sat on a cot while Bill washed. He wondered again why Cable was so nasty. Was it his way of showing authority? There was no need for it, if it was. Nobody doubted his authority. It was too bad he was so big; he’d like to take a punch at him. Maybe he would anyway.

  “Here, pal,” Bill said, pouring clean hot water in the basin.

  The hot water was wonderful. Jay soaked his hands in it for a long time, feeling the blood come into his cold fingers. Then he washed his face. The hot water hurt his ears.

  Bill was sitting on the cot. “I don’t think I’ll eat,” he said.

  “You’ve got to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Bill said. His voice was unsteady.

  “Oh, hell!” Jay said. “Come on.”

  The others were eating soup when they went into the dining tent. The soup smelled of rice and beef. Eve didn’t speak to them. Mr. Palmer gave them whisky. “For the lion,” he said.

  “Oh, God!” Jay said. “I forgot the skin. It’s in the truck.”

  “Mulu got it,” Mr. Palmer said. “Good lion, too. What’d you do, kill him with a hatchet?”

  Jay laughed. “It was pretty messy. How the hell do you skin one? I never had such a time.”

  “Poor beast! He’d never have rushed you if he’d known he was going to be mutilated.”

  “He should have worn a zipper.”

  “Mr. Palmer’s jealous,” Eve said.

/>   “He was a good lion,” said Mr. Palmer.

  “Is the skin utterly ruined?” Jay asked.

  “No. Mulu can fix it.”

  Cable asked, “Who the hell really shot it?”

  “Eve did.”

  “No,” Eve said. “We all did.” Bill’s face was tight. He was waiting for Eve to go on. He was afraid of what she would say. “We all banged away at him,” Eve said. “We hit him four times.”

  Jay suddenly felt fine. He finished his whisky. She was going to be a sport. That was swell. It would be so much easier on Bill. Maybe it was a good thing he had called her a bitch. He began to drink his soup.

  “To the killers,” Mr. Palmer said, raising the paper cup of whisky. “You’ll all be able to lecture now. How I killed Simba. With Lamont in Darkest Africa.”

  “Tell us how you did it, Scouts,” said Lew Cable.

  “Let Eve tell,” Jay said. “It’s her lion.”

  Mr. Palmer smiled at her. “Tell us if you were scared.”

  Eve said, “It sounds like sheer swank, but I wasn’t. I didn’t have sense enough.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Lew Cable said.

  “It was like a cinema,” Eve said. “The charge didn’t concern me. He was so beautiful. He was just a part of the motion picture. It wasn’t until Jay knocked him down I realized I was in it. That was stupid, wasn’t it?”

  “Felt like that myself sometimes,” Mr. Palmer said.

  Cable asked, “How about our boy, Jay?”

  “I was scared enough after it was over.”

  “Maybe that’s why you skinned him so badly,” Mr. Palmer said.

  They all laughed, and then Lew Cable asked, “How’d you feel, Bill?”

  Bill pushed back his camp chair and stood up. “I’m going to bed,” he said. He went out of the tent.

  “What the hell!” Cable said.

  “He’s tired,” Jay said.

  After dinner it was still raining. On the way to the sleeping tent Jay stopped and listened to the sound of falling water. It was a nice sound when you had a dry place to go to. He thought about Bill. He felt as bad as if he’d been frightened by the lion himself. It was curious how a change in country brought a change in your way of looking at things. At home you never thought about courage. You never wondered if this one or that one had courage. But in Africa courage was an important virtue. That was because it was a young country. When America was a young country, courage had been important, too. Now it wasn’t. It was more important to be able to dodge automobiles. Bill was an American. Why should he worry about the standards Africa imposed upon its men? No doubt there were a hell of a lot of African men, white men, that is, who could not survive the standards America imposed, especially in the big cities. Mr. Palmer might, but he was a hybrid; half English and half African.