“But I want to walk with you,” I said finally.
“Sorry,” said Chui, not sounding sorry at all, “but you don’t have a choice. I’m going to walk in to school first. You’ll come in after me.”
“What if I’m late?”
“I don’t care,” said Chui, his sneaky eyes narrowed to make his point. He turned to leave.
I was furious. It was my first day at school. I knew my brother didn’t like me, but all brothers and sisters walked together. I had never seen a child walking anywhere alone, ever.
“Fine, go on!” I had shouted at him. “Run away, Chuijoya!” Chui’s shoulders stiffened, but he just walked faster. Chui means “leopard” in Kiswahili, and Chui is proud of his strong name. Chuijoya means “paper leopard.” It’s a way to call him a coward, my little revenge for the way he calls me names when Asu isn’t around to hear them.
I kicked at the dirt in the road until I couldn’t see him anymore, then followed.
By the time I made it to the thatched three-wall schoolhouse in the village, I was late. Palms sweating, mind racing, I hovered by the mud wall listening to the hum of children’s voices as they greeted one another. You’re not getting any earlier, I finally told myself, and forced my feet to cross the threshold. When I entered, a hundred dark eyes swiveled around to stare at me. I had no one to go to, no one I knew who I could sit next to on the floor. I stood there, unable to move.
Then, like locusts coming in to destroy a year’s crops, the whispers spread through the room. Among the general hiss, I distinctly heard Chui’s voice whispering “mtoto pepo”—ghost boy. Burning with shame, I stood there alone and listened as the plague of whispers ate my hopes.
Even though it was six years ago, that memory still makes me angry. After that first day, I have never again tried to walk with Chui. Even if we’re going somewhere at the same time, I leave some space between us.
Which is why I’m surprised when Chui insists on coming with me and Alasiri. And I have to admit, though I never thought I would be grateful for Chui’s company, I’m glad it won’t be just the two of us for the day. For some reason, I can’t shake my dream of the lion whenever I’m around our eerily cheerful guide, and it makes me uneasy.
“All right, boys! Grab those tarps and get in!”
Following Alasiri’s directions, Chui and I haul four big squares of thick blue plastic out of the storage tent and heft them into the open back of the Jeep. The tarps smell the way our goat shed at home did after the nanny gave birth, and we both hold them at arm’s length.
“Hop in and sit on them so they don’t blow away,” commands Alasiri, turning the key in the ignition.
I hesitate, and Chui clambers past me.
“Habo will do that,” he says. “I’ll sit up front here, if that’s all right.”
Alasiri laughs delightedly at Chui’s forwardness, waving him to the empty front seat. I scowl and climb after him, sitting on the stinking tarps. I hunch into my long clothes to keep the sun off my skin, and face away from both of them.
As we drive away from the camp, I notice Asu standing with Mother, looking after us as if to memorize where we’re going. I realize, from the way our tire tracks stretch away from the camp, that we’re driving away from the road and out into the Serengeti.
When we’re out of sight of the camp, Alasiri brings out a small radio. He talks into it in a low voice, then releases the button and waits through minutes of static. He has stopped smiling. When a voice answers him, he turns the wheel sharply to the left and begins to drive faster.
“Where are we going?” asks Chui, leaning forward and examining the buttons on the radio.
“Ah,” says Alasiri. “We’re going hunting.”
“Hunting?” asks Chui. His eyes are sparkling with excitement. But this time Alasiri doesn’t answer.
Chui and Alasiri are sitting on padded seats with springs in them, but I bounce around every time we hit a rock or pothole. Which is all the time. The Serengeti seems so flat when you look at it—long tan fields of grass and slowly rolling green hills, dissolving away in the heat haze of the distance—but when you’re driving across the wildlife park the ground is full of animal tracks that have turned into dips and spikes when the mud dried, and the grass is full of stones and holes. I feel like someone is trying to shake my teeth into my brain and I’m having trouble keeping track of where we’re going. That must be why I feel like we’re going in circles.
The trip goes on and on. I’m now so jumbled around that I couldn’t even tell you which way the camp is from here. I could ask Alasiri, but he is serious again, and his eyes shine as he talks into his radio, and I’m afraid. Chui looks at me over the shoulder of the front seat. Even though neither of us says anything, I think he’s not so happy to be here anymore, either.
Finally, Alasiri lets out a little yelp and throws the car into park in the long grass on the side of a small hill, beside another battered-looking Jeep. For the first time in over an hour, his smile is back, and he turns to speak to us.
“Get out, boys! It’s time to make yourselves useful.”
Chui and I get out of the car gingerly. My vision sways a bit for a while even after I put my feet on the ground, though whether that’s from the bumpy ride or my usual bad eyes, I’m not sure. All I can make out against the bright sky is an immense lump on the hill that Alasiri is pushing us toward. I haven’t quite gotten my eyes to focus when I stumble and land heavily against the leathery side of the thing. It gives a little under my hands, and I pull away with a cry of surprise because it’s slightly warm. I realize I’m leaning against an enormous animal carcass, but I can barely imagine that an animal could be so huge. My mind races through what it knows about big animals, trying to match what we’ve found. Rhino? Elephant? Hippopotamus?
Alasiri steers Chui around the corner of the carcass, bending out of my line of sight. I hear Alasiri calling out greetings, men’s voices replying, and the sputtering of a small machine. The shape next to me is giving off the faint hay-and-earth smell that reminds me of the days when we could afford to keep a cow. There is also the hot, sticky smell of blood. I walk around to rejoin Chui and Alasiri, running my fingers along a spine with bones wider than my hand to steady myself as I go.
It’s the ears, like great gray leaves, that finally let me identify the animal. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a real elephant.
There are three men up at the front of this elephant, and Alasiri has joined them. The men are covered in blood, and bits of flesh hang off their arms and stick to their clothes. Two have machetes and one has a diesel chain saw, and they’re attacking the elephant’s head the way a boy beats a bush with a stick when he’s angry. But none of these men are angry; they smile at Alasiri and wave. The chain saw makes a wet sound as it digs into the cheek and then a high whining sound when it hits the bone of the skull. Clouds of black diesel smoke blow over us. I feel a little like I want to vomit, but this reaction embarrasses me. At home we butchered meat with knives, not with chain saws, but meat is meat and Alasiri did tell us we were going hunting. I should be glad that we’ll all have dinner tonight, not upset by the sounds we make getting it. And I’m not going to let Chui call me a coward! But I don’t like the expression on Alasiri’s face. He’s all lit up inside, a lamp burning excitement instead of kerosene. I’m sorry I ever agreed to come out here.
“Boys!” he shouts. “Go get the tarps!”
Chui and I walk to the Jeep, and I grab the first tarp my hand lands on, hauling it into my arms with all the force I can muster. It’s heavy. Soon, I think, soon we can leave. I repeat this to myself as I begin to drag the folded tarp over to the dead elephant. Alasiri waves and shouts, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. He seems upset. Then the weight goes off my arms, and I see that Chui has picked up the other end of the tarp where it had been dragging on the ground. Alasiri stops shouting and waves us for
ward.
As we get closer, the smell of a butcher shop on a hot day hits me again and the flies begin to land on my face. Food is food, I remind myself. I squint to keep the flies out of my eyes and keep trudging forward.
“Good, good!” Alasiri’s voice is right in front of me now, so I must have made it all the way to where the men are standing. The keening of the chain saw is just behind my left ear, but I refuse to turn and look at it. Instead I look at Alasiri. In his delight over the kill, all the lines of his face have shifted slightly. I no longer think he’s handsome.
“Not so curious now, eh?” He takes my face in his hands and grips it hard, then pushes my cheek away. “Go get the rest of the tarps, and be quick about it. We need to get out of here before any park rangers show up. Move!”
Chui and I trot to the Jeep, and then slowly, quickly, slowly, quickly we go, bringing the tarps to the elephant butchers. As we run I can feel the hot, slick imprint of Alasiri’s hands on my face drying and flaking off, little pieces of elephant blood falling like dry tears onto the ground in my wake.
Keep going, I tell myself. All you have to do is bring them these tarps, maybe help them cut up the meat, and then you’re done. Just keep going.
But instead of carving up the meat, the men are focusing entirely on the elephant’s head, leaving the huge body to bloat in the sun. All they seem interested in is ripping the long horns out of the animal’s face, though why they would do that is a mystery to me since you can’t eat bone.
As soon as the men have cut the long, curved horns out of the elephant’s face and have wrapped them in the tarps, they load one into each vehicle. After talking a little with Alasiri, the three men drive away in their Jeep, trailing a cloud of dust. Alasiri goes back to the elephant and picks more bits off with a long hunting knife. Again, though none of us has eaten lunch, he leaves the meat alone. He harvests the teeth and tail and toenails and dumps all of this in the last tarp, which he makes Chui and me carry to the Jeep. He helps us wedge the tarp through the rear door and then hops in the front himself. He starts the engine.
For a split second I’m terrified that he’s going to drive away and leave us here. I don’t know what it is that I fear, whether that evil spirits will be attracted to such a spot or scavengers with large teeth, but I know that I’m afraid to be there a moment longer.
Chui runs to get into the front seat again. But when he sits down, he looks away from Alasiri, out the window. I scramble in awkwardly, climbing over the pieces of elephant we have wedged in.
“Bwana, are we going to the camp now?” I ask.
“Oh, so now it’s ‘sir,’ is it?” He laughs and wipes the sweat out of his eyes, leaving a swatch of blood across his forehead. It makes him look fierce. “Ndiyo, we’re going back now.”
Alasiri drives at a slightly slower pace, but I wish for the bone-rattling speed of our first journey. Because all the way to camp, I am sitting on a tarp-wrapped bundle, still warm from the animal we have destroyed, and my feet give me no traction in the blood on the floor.
We are still far away when I hear Alasiri give an ugly chuckle. I pivot around, but all I can see is a blur of light in the distance, which at first I think is the setting sun, but Chui stands up in his seat and waves through the open top.
“What is it?” I ask him when he sits down.
“Mother and Asu have made a big fire,” Chui says, “and they’re standing in front of it, waiting for us. They’re the only ones there. The other Jeep isn’t here yet.”
I’m surprised that he’s willing to talk to me like this, but I guess he’s decided he likes me more than he likes Alasiri. It puts a warm feeling in my chest, and it’s hard right now to remind myself that I hate my brother.
When we get close enough that even I can see the outline of where Mother and Asu are standing, I raise my hand and wave, too. Alasiri pulls into camp in a spray of dust. I see Mother put down a heavy pan, and Asu returns a cleaver to the pile of cooking knives. I realize they were waiting for us, ready to fight Alasiri if he had left us behind or hurt us. This makes me feel warm inside, too. Alasiri puts on the parking brake and turns off the engine.
“Habari gani, Bibi!” he calls politely to Mother. “You can see that I’ve returned with both your sons in one piece.” His tone is pleasant, but I feel cold because I know he saw what she and Asu did. I worry what he will do, but he does nothing more than sit down beside the fire and wait for them to serve us our meal. I sit down as well, but on the other side of the fire, not next to Alasiri. After only a tiny hesitation, Chui sits next to me.
“Uh! Is that blood?” asks Mother, coming up behind us with plates of ugali. She leans forward to sniff at us and pulls away again, wrinkling her nose. She points toward the water barrel on the other side of camp. “Go wash up immediately!”
Chui and I look at each other, taking in our gore-crusted arms and spattered clothes. I’m about to answer her, but Alasiri drowns me out with a huge laugh.
“Ndiyo, Bibi, it’s blood! Today your little boys have become men! Hunters!”
A brief silence follows his statement as the women look us over. I know they can guess that there’s more to the story than that. Asu passes us a plastic bowl full of water and a rag. I start to scrub my face and arms. When I’m done, I hand the now-pink water to Chui. Asu cautiously breaks the silence.
“What did you hunt, boys?”
“Elephant,” Chui mumbles, scraping the blood out from under his stumpy fingernails. He does not look like the man of the family as he says it. I know that I don’t feel like a man, either. Hunching in the long shadows of late afternoon, I feel like a scavenger, taking from the dead.
“Well,” Asu says, filling her voice with a fake cheerfulness to cover our lack of enthusiasm, “I’ve never had elephant before. Shall I cook it to go with our ugali now, or will we have it later?”
Mother and Asu glance around for the meat, but of course they don’t see it because we haven’t brought any home. Just the thought of eating that gigantic, bloated carcass makes me wonder whether I’m really hungry after all.
“Ah, pretty one,” says Alasiri around a mouthful of ugali, “we did not hunt today for meat.”
Without realizing she’s doing it, Asu reaches up and touches her cheek at his compliment. Then her hand falls back by her side and she gives him a puzzled frown as the rest of his words sink in. “What did you hunt for, then?” she asks. Alasiri gets up off the ground and walks over to the Jeep.
“We went . . . for this!” He whips back the top tarp with a flourish. The curving expanse of bone gleams in the sunset and the firelight.
“What’s that?” asks Mother.
“That,” he says, “is ivory! It is the special thing that an elephant’s tusks are made of, and it’s very valuable. I get more money from one tusk of ivory than from an entire season working for the tourists!”
“Then why do you work for the tourists at all?” asks Chui. I can see that he’s getting interested in spite of himself. Chui is always interested in money.
“Because if I don’t find out where the rangers take the white people, how would I know what areas to avoid when I’m hunting ivory, hmm?”
Chui has no answer to Alasiri’s question and remains silent. Alasiri smiles at him, winks at Asu, and flips the tarp over the tusk again. He walks to his seat and continues eating the food Mother and Asu prepared while we were gone.
“Ivory is a very good thing for me,” he continues, pinching off wedges of ugali and using it to smush the spiced pigeon peas into his mouth, “and it’s a good thing for you, too, because now I’ll have to take it quickly and sell it, and that means that I will be driving straight across the game parks and can take you most, if not all, of the way to Mwanza.” He bumps Chui playfully with his elbow.
It’s only then that I notice that Chui has left me to go eat beside Alasiri. I guess money makes it al
l okay, I think bitterly. I look away from them both and pick at my food.
5.
Mother and Asu join us around the fire, satisfied with the explanation and with the offer of another ride. But I feel like my stomach is a piece of cloth that the women have washed in the river and are now twisting, twisting dry. I can’t get past the image in my head of the gigantic elephant, rotting out in the scrubland, not because anyone needed to eat, but because little pieces of it could be sold for a great deal of money.
The conversation moves on to other things. About an hour later, when the second Jeep of men arrives, Mother and Asu get food for the other men, too. I look over. Their Jeep is empty. They have already sold their piece of ivory. They brag to Alasiri about this, and I see his face tighten with anger, even though he laughs with them. I wouldn’t tease him the way they do. It’s not wise to tease a wild animal, no matter how big a stick you’re holding.
They also tell him about a park ranger that they saw after they completed their sale. Alasiri’s face looks like a storm about to split open with lightning. He turns to us with a tight smile.
“Bibi, you’re in luck. It appears I’m leaving right now and going in the direction of Mwanza. Would you like a ride?”
“Really?” asks Mother. “You can go straight across? At night? We were following the road and had to stay hidden all the time.”
“Ndiyo. We will go north and west through the game reserves. I have to make a few stops on the way, but then I need to see a man in Mwanza, and I can drop you off near the center of town.”
Mother nods to acknowledge this information and starts clearing away the dinner things. Alasiri pauses beside me on the way to his tent.
“Pack quickly, ghost boy!” He puts his hand heavily on my head when he says this. I try not to flinch at his touch. I see Asu’s eyes leave Alasiri’s face and fall on his hand. A small line appears between her eyebrows.
Golden Boy Page 4
