Rhinoceros Summer

by Jamie Thornton

  “We don’t need outsiders telling us what to do. True hunters have always been conservationists, otherwise we’d have nothing left to hunt. God, I can’t believe I’m saying this to you of all people.” Paul ran a hand through his hair. “Trophy hunting saves animals from extinction, pays big money to pick off certain individuals, pays to keep places wild instead of turning them into farms.”

  “You’re not telling me anything new,” Caleb said. It was the professional hunter back in the 1930s who lobbied for limits on the number of animals hunted each year. It was the hunter that often patrolled the game reserves—keeping out poachers, protecting future profits. But it wasn’t the whole story, at least not when it came to Paul.

  His father was good at that, handing out just enough truth to make a lie believable. “It doesn’t change the fact that I’m here to do a job and I’m going to do it the right way. Or do you even know what that looks like anymore?”

  Caleb turned his back on Paul and walked away.

  You didn’t turn your back on a predator. Ever. Not unless you knew it wasn’t dangerous anymore. Another one of the few lessons Paul had taught him that was worth keeping. It was Caleb’s own little lie, a bit of posturing. Paul was still dangerous, but Caleb had to act like it didn’t bother him. He hoped it might become true.

  2

  Caleb walked past the equipment shed and into the fields, and then doubled back to the resort only after Paul had gone inside.

  The rusted truck tempted him. He could drive it back to Arusha and never speak to Paul again.

  The elephant reports and images sprang into his mind. He tried to force them away, tried to justify abandoning his duties, but the images remained.

  A journalist had called it an elephant breakdown—groups of adolescent elephant males engaging in incredible levels of violence. Events human encroachment could not explain. Crops destroyed, people killed. Cross-species violence.

  These elephant males were doing things he’d never heard of before, things most people wouldn’t believe. Disturbing, outrageous behavior animals weren’t supposed to be capable of. That kind of viciousness was the exclusive domain of humans. But the incidents were well documented.

  He ached to be part of the search for a solution, but why did that mean he had to go to Paul’s bloc?

  He didn’t want to think about hunting bloc politics, poached animals, villages abandoned. Caleb didn’t see how his being here would solve any of it, but his supervisor at the Wildlife Division, David Bundi, thought otherwise.

  And deep down he knew—if Paul was hiding anything, if Paul had a hand in any of this mess, Caleb was the best person for the assignment. He’d be able to see through Paul’s bullshit better than anyone.

  He grabbed his bags from the dirt and went inside.

  More was at stake than the elephants. There were the rhino rumors to think about too.

  Because if the northern white rhino existed…It was outrageous—a northern white rhino was said to have been spotted near his father’s hunting bloc, but only ten, ten, were known to be alive in the entire world. All ten lived in a small reserve in the Congo with guards and guns watching over them twenty-four hours a day. All ten were accounted for.

  There was little hope the northern white was more than random talk between a couple of drunks. He’d as much said so to David.

  “Yes, yes,” David had said. David was a tall man in his forties, a native Tanzanian who had received his education in England and returned to help his country. It didn’t matter that Paul was Caleb’s father. David saw no conflict of interest. Instead, he’d told Caleb it made him perfect for the assignment.

  “It is probably a southern white but it still takes priority. If it exists, you must find it and protect it from unscrupulous individuals.”

  Caleb had signed up with the Division under his mother’s name—he could’ve probably canceled the assignment if he let it be known that Paul was his father. But he would not betray David’s trust in him like that. If David believed Caleb must be the one, then Caleb would believe him. Still, he looked at David as if pleading for his life. He remembered how David’s face had softened. “You are braver than you think,” David said.

  Caleb’s hands tightened into fists. He walked through the resort, pushed open Paul’s office door and started talking. “I’ll need a space to set up my workstation. And I’ll need access to your records.”

  “All right,” Paul said without looking up. “Whatever you need. Your old room upstairs is still set up for you.”

  The office looked exactly the same. He wasn’t ready for that. Dust-covered, book-filled. The same mounted trophies hung on the walls. His father looked exactly the same, sitting behind that desk running his hands through his hair, his head bent over a stack of papers, his fingers too thick to hold a pen comfortably.

  When Caleb was little, Paul would rise up from behind that desk and hold his arms out. Caleb was supposed to run and jump into them so his father could lift him high enough that his hair would touch the ceiling beams and his cheek brush against the dust-coated mane of the lion head on the side wall. Caleb always liked the tickle of its mane against his cheek. He would sneeze and make his father laugh.

  “When’s the first client coming?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  “What’s he licensed for?”

  “An elephant.”

  “All right,” Caleb said, hating how he’d made an unconscious echo of his father. “I want to see as many of the elephants in your bloc as I can. You still keep a logbook?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll need to take a look at that too.”

  “Nope.”

  Caleb shifted his weight from one leg to another and stiffened his back. “I need access to your records.”

  “You’ll have it, but not the logbook. That’s my eyes only.”

  “You used to—” Caleb decided not to finish that sentence.

  “How long you planning on staying?”

  “The letter should have said, you’d need to accommodate—”

  “I’m asking. How long you planning on staying?”

  Caleb didn’t want to see Paul’s stone-face soften. “Just through the hunting season.”

  “You could stay longer.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Nothing stopping you.”

  “I didn’t want to come here in the first place. I did everything I could to get out of it.”

  The lion glowered at Caleb, its glass eyes catching light from the hanging bulb and glowing as if it were really the frozen face of some animal god.

  He wanted to retreat to his room, but even that seemed not right. Retreat to the same room he’d left behind? It didn’t seem any safer than this.

  He thought about David Bundi again, and how incapable he felt at this moment. He was the best one for this job, but he shouldn’t have come.

  “I want you to know something,” Paul said. “I want you to know, after you left, I sent Neela away. I didn’t understand until after it all went wrong, but thought you should know I sent her to a good school—”

  “I already knew that. Abiba told me.”

  “How often you been talking to her?”

  Caleb took a deep breath. “About once a month.”

  “For the last five years?”

  Caleb nodded.

  “I never saw any letters. I never once caught you on the phone.”

  “We were smart about it. We didn’t want you to know.”

  “You’re my son, not hers.” Paul laid his hands flat on the desktop. “Mine.”

  Caleb felt the anger bubble up in him, then relaxed. This was the Paul he needed to remember. The selfishness, the jealousy. “That was over a long time ago.” He backed up to the door, ready to leave while he’d come out on top.

  “You don’t want to walk out that door yet.”

  “I’m going to unpack my things. I have a job to do.” He turned his back on Paul again, held his hand out to grasp t
he doorknob.

  “I got a girl coming out to take pictures for me.”

  Caleb pivoted. “What’re you talking about?”

  “About your age. Couple years younger.”

  “What exactly are you setting up here?”

  Paul tossed a photograph into the air so it cut across the room, like the swooping flight of a vulture, to land on Caleb’s boot. “She’s a daughter of an old friend. She’s only coming out to take pictures for me. Didn’t want to surprise you.”

  Caleb bent over and picked up the photograph. He crushed it in his hand. His father’s voice had taken on that soothing tone, as if trying to coax an animal to within shooting range.

  He retreated from the office, facing Paul as he backed away and shut the door.

  After getting into his old room, he uncrumpled the photograph and smoothed it out against the bedspread. He spent a long time staring at this little family portrait, the three people dressed up in their nice holiday clothes, brushed hair, big smiles. The girl didn’t look like anything special, just some stupid American teenager about to get in over her head.

  He stuffed the photo into his pocket and scanned the room. Everything was like he remembered, especially his old dresser. He traced the familiar nicks and gouges on the top, then pushed aside the entire dresser. The hole in the wall was still there. He lifted out a square panel and pushed his hand in and downward. He couldn’t feel anything at first and then caught the edge of a stack of papers. He reached in further and felt the spine of a book. He pulled out all of it.

  Dust covered his Ernst Haeckel’s book of drawings. He used the end of his shirt to clean it. The book was full of detailed and colorized drawing of radiolarians—microscopic unicellular organisms that Haeckel magnified in his artwork to the size of a man’s fist.

  Caleb flipped through the pages of proriferans, annelids, and sea anemones. He’d filled hours of his childhood sifting through these pages, amazed at the symmetry and organic beauty that Haeckel’s hands had created. Only after he turned every page did he switch to the papers—old drawings he’d hidden from his father.

  He placed each paper face up on the floor. Most of them were amateurish, barely more than scribbles. He hadn’t gotten serious about drawing until he was given the Haeckel book for his eighth birthday.

  He laid out his old drawings alongside his most recent ones, the ones commissioned by David Bundi for the Wildlife Division. The papers revealed images of less-appreciated life in Tanzania: the tsetse fly, the nesting holes of bees hanging from baobab trees, the termites and their mounds that sometimes grew three feet high out of the dirt.

  His work for the Wildlife Division in Tanzania included many duties, but when David had seen Caleb’s drawings a few months before, he’d thought they might help raise publicity, and eventually money, for these lesser known keystone species. Caleb wanted to portray the organic symmetry he believed inhabited every species whether it be plant, insect, or animal. But he knew it would be difficult to generate public interest in the tiny creatures that made East African ecology possible. Most tourists didn’t travel to Tanzania for the insects. They weren’t beautiful, they weren’t furry, their young weren’t cute.

  He laughed. Still, who’d have thought ten years ago he’d actually make money off his art?

  He felt a deep loss at the thin pile of childhood papers. Paul had managed to find and burn most of the others on his thirteenth birthday. The one he looked at now was a sketch of Abiba and Neela together in the kitchen. They had been cooking stew. Chopped vegetables on cutting boards lined the counter. Abiba and Neela faced him in the drawing. Paul had kept only this one from the burn pile.

  Caleb decided to give it to Abiba, but first he needed to make some changes.

  He grasped the right corner of the paper and tore off the entire right third. There’d been a window he’d outlined in charcoal. Paul’s face was sketched inside the frame, peering at the three of them. Paul had stood there for just a few seconds before disappearing, but it was enough time for Caleb to capture Paul’s scowl in contrast to Abiba and Neela’s smiles in front of the piles of chopped vegetables.

  Caleb crumpled the scrap and tossed it into the wastebasket. He returned the drawings to the hole and moved back the dresser. He left the book on the bed and began unpacking.

  He managed to unload one bag when someone knocked on his door.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Hodi! Caleb?”

  He quickly opened the door. “Karibu, mama.”

  With an armful of sheets in her hands, Abiba leaned over and brushed her cheek against his. “I was not here to first meet you.” She set the sheets on the bed and turned to fully embrace him. “I did not want first return home to be alone.”

  “I am not alone, mama. Not now.” He hugged her and took in the fresh soap smell of her hair. He searched her face for worry lines or a sign of disappointment that he’d stayed away so long. He found none.

  He felt a small shock in seeing her in person again. Not that she didn’t look the same. She did. That was what surprised him. She looked exactly as he’d left her five years before.

  “I know this.” Abiba rested her hand against his face. “You grow hair now.” She gave him a wistful smile. “I did not look up to face before.”

  “Habari za, Neela?”

  “Nzuri tu. All A’s. She want you at graduation next year. You come?”

  “Of course,” Caleb said. He sent money and birthday presents and long letters to Neela at her school. She always wrote back and made jokes about her studies and teachers and asked Caleb to forget about the past and come visit, but he hadn’t the courage. He wouldn’t let himself miss her graduation though.

  “Hujambo, Caleb?”

  “Sijambo.” Caleb returned to unpacking his second bag. “I’ve been better.” He began setting out shirts and pants, and then concentrated on his equipment case. He planned to use the dresser top as a jerry-rigged workstation until out in the field.

  Abiba began to shake out the sheets. He moved his stuff aside so she could tuck in the corners, just like he remembered. She smoothed her hands across the top and gave it one final pat.

  “This better welcome for a son much missed,” she said.

  He wanted to bask in the warmth of those words. Paul could never break this.

  Abiba surveyed the assorted equipment laid out: test tubes, needle packs and Styrofoam casings, work notes and various other medical looking paraphernalia. “Both my children smart. Come visit later once settled?”

  “I’ll eat in the kitchen with you tonight.” He decided to give her the drawing then.

  CHAPTER 5

  Paul

  Paul went straight for Caleb’s room.

  Caleb and Abiba had walked off together, maybe to take a tour of Blue Nile. Not much had changed about the place unless you counted grass growing taller than a man’s head for lack of cutting, or some sheds disintegrating from age and disrepair. With his three year-round people—Muna, M’soko and Juja—gone into town for supplies, he saw this as his one opportunity.

  Caleb hadn’t told him the whole story about why he was at Blue Nile. Paul wouldn’t have if he were in Caleb’s shoes.

  Paul took a key from his jean pocket and unlocked Caleb’s door.

  The air in the room felt stuffy, different than the remembered smells of boy clothes left unlaundered, mud from dirty boots, maybe a plate of half-eaten food spoiling. The room felt almost sterile now.

  Paul rifled through Caleb’s bag but only found clothes and shoes. He ran his fingers across the dresser top, through the test tubes, Styrofoam, vials of chemicals and tranquilizer needles. He pocketed a needle and vial to add to his own tranquilizer set and then opened the first dresser drawer. A collection of drawings were scattered across the bottom.

  Paul pulled out the stack and rifled through. Caleb’s drawings had caused so much trouble and he still hadn’t given them up. Mostly animals, a few landscapes. They looked recent, better than he
ever remembered Caleb producing as a kid.

  The drawings were better than good. They showed skill and intensity. The hunter, the craftsman, in him couldn’t deny the skill. He sighed and tossed the stack on the bed.

  Caleb might not remember, but Paul hadn’t been against the drawings at first. Whatever the boy had wanted was fine with Paul, as long as Caleb still took care of his responsibilities.

  It was Walter’s fault. Paul was grateful to Walter for a lot of things, but he’d also never forgive how Walter encouraged the boy by giving him that damn Haeckel book. There was a time when Caleb’s drawings were just something to waste time with. Not anymore.

  The edge of one paper caught his eye. He pulled it from the pile on the bed. It showed an angled profile of two people, mostly their backs. Paul recognized himself, and Caleb as a child. It was a black and white drawing—pencil, charcoal, or something. Both their rifles were out and leveled at two Cape buffalo a few yards away. Towering acacia trees bordered one side of the scene. Paul stood behind and to the side of Caleb, watching both the buffalo and his boy. One buffalo pawed at the ground.

  He knew what day Caleb had drawn.

  Paul had taken Caleb out for a two-week hunt. Truth was, he’d bought Caleb a new rifle for his tenth birthday and wanted the boy to try it out.

  He remembered Caleb unwrapping that William Evans .400 double-barreled rifle with Boxlock, scroll engravings, a 26-inch barrel, and ejector. It weighed in at nine pounds and was a bit big on the recoil for a boy his size, but Paul knew Caleb would grow into it.

  Caleb’s eyes had shone so bright.

  Paul remembered that—the gratitude he saw in his son’s eyes that day. “I’m taking you out next week to test it.” He wanted it to be the beginning of their business together.

  Caleb shouted and jumped with rifle in hand, his ten-year-old face still gleaming. He then ran to tell Abiba.

  Paul had filled up with satisfaction.

  All gangly limbs and no facial hair in sight, but the boy made him proud. Proud of Caleb’s excitement about his new .400 and how he ran to tell Abiba about the trip. Just like it should be. The resort was a home for the four of them—Paul, Abiba, Caleb, Neela.