by Webb, Peggy
Visitors to the Corday Research Center were always enchanted by the view and mesmerized by the sights and sounds of exotic animals just outside their door.
Malone was neither enchanted nor excited; he was depressed, almost angry.
“All I ask is one sunny day.”
He dragged his sheet across the floor and climbed back into bed. If he couldn’t have sunshine, at least he could have his sleep.
From high on the slopes of Karisimbi came a hair-raising scream that sent some of the center’s visitors racing toward the main house, calling for the police. Hard on the heels of the scream came an avalanche of thunderous, drumlike tattooing.
Malone grinned. Old Doby was at it again. He was the oldest male silverback in the Virungas, and the most prolific. If all the males were as horny as Old Doby, there would be no need to worry about the shrinking population of the mountain gorilla.
The screaming and chest beating continued while Malone drifted back to sleep, dreaming about the sun.
“Malone? Aren’t you up yet?” He opened his eyes slowly. His mother was standing in the doorway, her baggy khakis rolled at the leg and her white shirt knotted around her small waist. The cameras that were always slung over her shoulder were missing.
He rubbed his eyes.
“Time ‘zit?”
“Past time to get up, sleepyhead. Today is a big day.”
Malone grinned broadly. He hadn’t been sure his mother would remember.
“Is that ham I smell baking?”
“A ham’s baking, potatoes are roasting, and Matuka is planning to make the biggest coconut cake you ever saw.” Eleanor’s eyes sparkled as she described the elaborate preparations in the kitchen. “Brett loves coconut cake.”
“Brett?”
“Brett’s coming home today. How could you forget?”
“I just ... forgot.”
“Hurry and get dressed. I need you to run into Ruhengeri and pick up the coconut. He would be terribly disappointed if I didn’t have his favorite cake for his homecoming.” When she left, she was in what Malone’s father called a dither, running her hands through her curly bob in quick, nervous gestures and striding along as if she were trying to keep up with one of the herds of leaping antelope she photographed.
Malone was glad she left when she did. If she hadn’t, she might have seen how close he was to crying.
Crying. On his eighteenth birthday.
He didn’t even bother with underwear, just slid into his jeans and the wadded-up T-shirt lying on the floor. Inside the Jeep he floored the accelerator and took the first mountain curve at a daredevil speed, barely keeping control, half hoping he’d wrap himself around a tree on the next one.
It would serve them right. Eleanor and Joseph didn’t even know he existed. It was always Brett. No matter what Malone did, he could never hold a candle to the brother who had been born first.
Eighteen stupid years old and nobody cared.
Brett was coming home, flying in from Stanford with degrees running out his ears and honors plastered all over his broad chest, while Malone’s scrawny bones were getting sucked on by jungle insects as he did errands for the homecoming feast.
Not the return of the prodigal son, but the return of the favorite son.
“Damnation.”
Malone smote the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. Eleanor and Joseph would hang on Brett’s every word, as if he’d studied to be God instead of a doctor of anthropology and primatology.
It had been two years since Brett had last come home. What would his brother look like? The last picture he’d sent, he had a beard. Did all Ph.D.’s grow beards?
“Big deal.”
Suddenly he slammed or the brakes so hard, the tires squealed. A duiker stood in the road looking at him with big brown eyes.
“What you looking at, stupid? Waiting to see a grown man cry?”
The graceful neck turned his way, and the duiker stared as if he could see all the way through to Malone’s black heart. Contrite, Malone slumped on the wheel.
“What do I do if some wild Watusi comes up the road, Brett?”
“You get out of the way.”
“What if I bang up your car? Shit, man, it’s brand-new.”
“I guess I’ll just have to take it out on your skinny hide.” Brett reached over and tousled Malone’s hair. Then he crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back in his seat to enjoy the scenery. “I suggest you concentrate on your driving.”
He’d been only twelve years old when his eighteen-year-old brother had taught him to drive. Not only had Brett taught him to drive, he’d taught him to swim and to throw a fastball and to use the backboard to make baskets. When Malone had been thirteen and Brett had caught him smoking, he hadn’t told their parents but had lit up and joined his little brother. Then Brett had quietly told him the many reasons why he had decided not to make smoking a habit.
Only an ungrateful idiot would hate such a brother.
Malone straightened over the wheel and took the Jeep the rest of the way down the mountain at a sedate pace. By the time he’d delivered the coconut, preparations for the homecoming feast were in full swing. Eleanor was so preoccupied, she barely saw him come in.
Maybe she was just being cagey. Maybe the birthday candles were hidden in the cabinets and she was planning an elaborate surprise.
Maybe elephants had wings.
“I’m going to the village for a while,” he said. “Is it all right if I take the Jeep?”
“Ummmhummm.” His mother nodded absently. He’d lay odds if somebody asked her where he was, she wouldn’t remember. Not that anybody would ask.
o0o
The village of Kibumba was little more than a group of thatched-roof huts joined by muddy footpaths nestled at the base of Mount Mikenko. The mountain rose straight up, cool and green, the massive trees in its impenetrable rain forest clinging precariously to the steep slopes.
“Damned chilly, fog-dripping jungle.” Malone resisted the childish urge to shake his fist at the hated mountains. Today was the day he would put away childish things and become a man.
He wove the Jeep in and out of the villagers, who wouldn’t have known a yield sign if they’d seen one and would have cared even less. A few of them called to him in Swahili.
“Hey, Little Gorilla Man.”
He answered with a false grin and a wave. How he hated that term. Little Gorilla Man. The man whose father spent all his time up in the mountains studying the habits of the mountain gorillas and whose mother never saw him unless he was at the other end of a lens posing with a primate.
He ducked his head through the doorway, then stood inside the thatched hut, adjusting his eyes to the dimness. A large Watusi named Dinkus waved to him from the bar, but Malone was in no mood for company. He chose a table in the corner, one that afforded a view of the entire room.
A waitress named Sally brought his pombe. He blew the foam off the dark native beer and took a big swig. Sally waited, showing her buck teeth in a huge grin and wiggling her body so her enormous breasts swayed only inches from his eyes. He took another long drink, feeling the alcohol slide through him like liquid fire.
Even Sally was beginning to look good. Malone pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and stuffed it into the bit of cloth that barely covered her hips.
“Keep the pombe coming, baby,” he said in almost perfect native tongue.
She went off giggling.
Villagers drifted in and out, the crowd growing steadily larger as the day wore on. Dinkus left his place at the bar, and two men Malone didn’t know took his place. By the time he’d finished his second beer, the hut was filled with the smell of sweat and the sound of Swahili.
Suddenly a hush fell over the crowd, and heads swiveled toward the door.
Malone’s mouth fell open. Poised in the doorway was the most astonishing woman he’d ever seen. Imposing, nearly six feet tall, her skin shiny as polished ebony, she surveyed the crowd with sl
ow disdain. Finally, with her jewelry tinkling and her hips swaying in slow, hypnotic rhythm, she made her way to the bar.
When she passed his table, she gave him little more than a glance. If Brett had been with him, she’d have smiled and stopped to flirt. Women always threw themselves at his brother.
Her hips were tight and fine underneath the thin red sarong she wore. By the time she’d propped her elbow on the bamboo bar, Malone knew he had to have her.
It was his eighteenth birthday. Didn’t he deserve a prize?
Filled with alcoholic courage, he made his way to the tall, dark beauty. Forget that his scrawny chest didn’t fill out his T-shirt and that his lank hair was dishwater blond instead of thick and black and that he had freckles on his nose. For once in his life he was going to win the prize without Brett’s help.
“Hi.” He smiled at her, knowing his smile was nice. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t tell him to get lost, either.
That was a start.
“My name’s Malone Corday.” For once he was proud of his Swahili.
“The Little Gorilla Man.”
“Yes.”
“I’m Lubbie Simbi.”
“Any relation to Batubu Simbi?”
“I’m the Watusi warrior’s woman.”
His insides shook with excitement and fear.
“Is he joining you?”
“No.”
If he had any sense, he’d leave now, but it was his birthday and he was hell-bent on becoming a real man. “I call that a stroke of good luck.”
Lubbie set her glass of pombe on the bar and ran her fingers lightly up his arm. She dipped her index finger briefly into his armpit, then flattened her palm on his chest and leaned so close, he could smell the exotic oils she had rubbed in her hair.
“Luck has a way of running out, white man.”
She’d called him a man. And it was all because of his boldness.
Smiling, he covered her hand with his. Who needed Brett?
Chapter 5
Brett was almost blinded by the beauty of the Virungas. When he was close enough to feel the cool mists that came down from the rich green rain forests, he stopped the Jeep he’d rented at the airport. From a distance came the thunder of waterfalls tumbling down the side of Mount Karisimbi.
He closed his eyes, listening to the music of the waterfalls, inhaling the rich odors of the jungle and the lush fragrance of exotic flowers, absorbing the ever-present mists into his skin.
God, how he’d missed Africa.
Now he understood why the mountain gorillas beat their chests. It was more than a technique to show dominance; it was the manifestation of wonder, a divine exhilaration to be in the midst of an environment of such glorious and brutal beauty.
Raw energy pulsed through Brett. He felt reborn, a prisoner finally set free from a long and heartbreaking exile.
His years away had been a necessary evil, a wrenching departure from the land that possessed his soul. Nowhere in his beloved Africa could he have prepared himself for a life devoted to the preservation of the mountain gorilla that lived in the deep green jungles of the Virungas. Nowhere but Stanford could he have been as close to the work of experts who had experimented with the development of language in primates.
He was so filled with ideas, so excited by the remarkable possibilities, that he would have gone directly into the jungle and set up camp near the gorillas if he hadn’t known how anxiously his family would be waiting for him.
Grinning like a kid expecting his first bike for Christmas, he revved the engine and roared toward home.
Eleanor and Joseph were waiting for him in the front yard, just as he’d known they would be. Except for the wings of gray that fanned into her dark hair from her cheekbones, his mother had not changed.
Laughing, he gave her a bear hug that swung her off her feet.
“You big lug. Put me down.” She didn’t mean a word of it. He could tell by the way she laughed and the way she clung to his arm, even after he set her back on her feet.
“Big lug, you say?”
“My Lord, you look like a lumberjack. Doesn’t he, Joseph?”
“They must have been feeding him well out in California.”
Brett and his father clasped each other’s shoulders. The man who had always seemed bigger than life was smaller than Brett had remembered, as if he’d stayed out in the jungle so long, the rains had shrunk him. Joseph hadn’t been wearing glasses, either, when Brett had last seen him. But behind the lenses his black eyes were as lively as ever.
In the midst of the homecoming revelry Matuka came from the kitchen wiping her eyes with the edge of her apron.
“Mattie, you old reprobate.” Brett waltzed her around the front yard. She giggled like a teenager. Brett was the only person in the family she allowed to call her Mattie, the only Corday who could cut right through her dignity and make her giggle.
“Don’t give me that handsome-devil smile.” After he’d turned her loose, Mattie huffed around, setting her apron to rights. “You won’t get a thing from the kitchen until dinnertime. And that’s my final word.”
Her bluster fooled no one. Mattie had been letting Brett have his way since he’d been old enough to toddle. She’d been known to sneak forbidden treats to him when he hadn’t even asked.
He struck a dramatic pose with his hand over his heart.
“You break my heart, Mattie.”
“It’s not your heart I’m thinking about breaking. It’s your head.”
Everybody started laughing and talking at once. Brett grabbed his bags from the Jeep, and they made their way into the house.
“Your room’s still the same,” Eleanor said. “I haven’t changed a thing.”
“I won’t be staying here long.”
“I know. Still, I couldn’t bear to change it. I guess I’m just a silly, sentimental woman.”
Joseph draped his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “You’re about as silly as that stubborn old water buffalo who roots up the garden every night, and if you’re sentimental, I’m a mountain gorilla.”
“You almost are, Joseph.”
Brett smiled at the exchange between his parents. They were closer than most couples who had been together a long time, due in part, he thought, to their forced isolation on the slopes of Karisimbi. They had had only each other to depend upon. Any small breach between them would have been magnified a hundred times during nights that were sometimes howlingly lonely, during the desolate rainy season that made getting down the mountain an act of supreme endurance and iron will.
Matuka peeled off from the group and went back into the kitchen, which smelled like heaven to Brett. His parents followed him down the hall.
“I can’t tell you how proud and happy I am,” Joseph said. “My own son joining me in my life’s work. A man couldn’t ask for more.”
“I can hardly wait to get into the jungle and start field studies.”
Brett slung his bags onto his bed, then reached inside and pulled out a package with a crumpled blue foil wrapping tied with a bedraggled bow. He tried to reshape the bow, then gave it up as a lost cause.
“Where’s Malone?”
Eleanor and Joseph looked at the package in his hand and then at each other. They didn’t have to say anything for Brett to know what had happened: He’d upstaged his little brother again. One of the most important birthdays in Malone’s life had been forgotten because Brett was coming home.
He’d hoped that his years away would make a difference, that with him out of the picture his parents would notice Malone’s quiet, steady achievements.
Now those hopes were dashed. The old guilt slashed at him, and a muscle ticked in the side of his tight jaw.
“Where’s my brother?” he asked again, careful not to show his anger.
“I don’t know,” Joseph said. “I just came down from the slopes an hour ago.” He glanced at his wife once more, then added, “Three of Doby’s females are pregnant.” As if that ex
plained everything.
“He was here at noon. Let me see, he said something about using the Jeep. He was going ... I don’t know.” Eleanor stepped into the hall and called toward the kitchen. “Matuka, do you remember where Malone said he was going?”
Mattie rolled her eyes to the ceiling until nothing was showing except the whites. “That old voodoo village in the Congo.” Doom was in her voice and told exactly what she, a civilized Rwandan, thought of such a place. “Kibumba.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and Brett hit the door running.
He heard his mother call his name, but he didn’t bother to answer. There was nothing in Kibumba except trouble.
o0o
For once the intense mystical beauty of the jungle failed to move him. All his thoughts were centered on his brother. He remembered Malone at six, his cowlick standing straight up and a fresh crop of freckles blooming across his pale cheeks, coming home with a shy grin on his face and a perfect report card hidden behind his back. It was the day Brett had been named captain of the eighth-grade soccer team. A pale-faced Malone had sat quietly through the victory celebration for his brother. Afterward Brett had found the report card crumpled behind the door of Malone’s bedroom.
“Hey. What’s this?” he’d said, knowing full well what it was.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing! You blow away everybody in the classroom and call it nothing? I call it a reason to ask the old man for a bigger allowance.”
Malone had perked up, his freckles shining.
“You think so?”
“I know so. He’s in his study now. Why don’t you take this down there and ask him?”
Malone had looked down at the shoes he was scuffing on the wooden floor, then back at his older brother.
“Will you go with me?”
“Sure thing.”
It had been like that always, Malone cowering in Brett’s shadow.
Brett’s knuckles showed white on the steering wheel. He’d never meant to cast a big shadow, certainly not one that would hide his brother.
