Rhinoceros Summer

by Jamie Thornton

  He laughed. “And he made such a point of telling me about you.”

  Lydia recoiled at the anger she heard in his voice. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did but I’m sorry.” Sweat slicked her hands. Her neck hurt from the flight. She took a deep breath. “Do you know where Mr. Besly, I mean…Do you know where Paul is?” She slumped deeper into her island of luggage and tried to hold back tears. The last thing she wanted was for this man to hear her cry.

  “Well, Paul should be there by now.”

  Lydia looked around. “I don’t see anyone that could be him.” Then she noticed the guard shake hands and take something that looked like money from the caterpillar man’s hand. They both began to walk inside the terminal doors.

  She was in plain sight.

  “Please.” She tried to keep the tone of her voice normal, tried not to let it squeak into a higher register. “Please, could you come get me yourself? My bags are too heavy to carry and I don’t know where to go. This man keeps wanting to help me with my luggage but I don’t think he’s from your group, so I didn’t want to go with him and I was supposed to meet you here, I thought, but—”

  He burst out in what she assumed must be Swahili. Then in English, “Stay where you are, in a public place. Don’t go anywhere with anybody until I get there—”

  “How will I know—”

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  The phone clicked dead. With trembling fingers, Lydia returned it to the receiver.

  The two men stopped to buy coffee from one of the lounge areas, not yet noticing her.

  Careful not to make a commotion, Lydia moved her bags to a chair in the middle of the waiting area, near a large pillar, and hid herself as best she could while maintaining a decent sight line to the airport entrance. She prayed Caleb would arrive before the caterpillar man offered to help her again.

  CHAPTER 8

  Caleb

  Caleb swore and hit the truck’s steering wheel with his fist as the truck bottomed out from a rut in the dirt road and threw him hard against the seatbelt. The Gibb Christmas picture Paul had forced on him went skidding across the dashboard. Caleb had tossed it there before taking off from the resort to know Lydia when he saw her.

  The photo moved under the windshield glass as more ruts in the dirt made the truck jerk from side to side. Unpaved roads in Tanzania were always ready to jump out from under a vehicle and cause its passengers to bang their heads, especially if the driver didn’t keep the speed down.

  Just like his father not to show.

  He gunned the accelerator and turned up the tape of hip-hop music Juja had left in the truck so it drowned out everything else. He’d bet money on Paul to be in some town bar feeling up a woman, losing track of time, forgetting his duty, leaving Lydia vulnerable to the local prostitute recruiters, forcing Caleb to come out for the girl instead. Probably had planned it that way to force the two of them together as he’d tried with him and Neela.

  “Goddamn bastard.” The truck hit a nasty ditch and fishtailed to the right. Caleb yanked the wheel around and pushed the accelerator again, ignoring the smell of burned rubber. He caught Lydia’s photo before it flew out the open driver’s side window and then stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

  Abiba had been like a mother to him and Neela, his milk sister, but then Paul had taken it all away. Dirtied it. Bringing out this girl with her cameras was another one of Paul’s schemes. Caleb didn’t know why Paul wanted her—that answer about stirring up publicity was pure crap. What he did know was that Paul’s plans hurt people. Sometimes destroyed them.

  He tried to push away the memory of the scratched and peeling door. The sight of her—the stink of fear that had filled his nostrils. He wasn’t ready, didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to deal with that.

  He forced his thoughts back to current problems. If Paul really wanted to save Blue Nile Safari, it would take more than a little girl with a camera to do it. Paul needed to think more about conservation, about local control, and placing more value on keeping the big game alive instead of killing it. It’s what Caleb had gone to school for—to figure out how to keep the tourists happy without sacrificing the local populations, both animals and humans. But did Paul care?

  Caleb spit out the open window. “No guns? No women? What are you thinking, Caleb? You’re a man aren’t you?” He mimicked his father’s voice, almost feeling Paul’s hand slap the back of his head.

  Unless Caleb came to the resort with a freshly killed leopard over one shoulder and freshly conquered woman over the other, Paul would grind down on him for not being a real man.

  The truck hit another rut, releasing the dashboard lock so some of Caleb’s drawings began flying throughout the cab. He pushed on the brakes and the tires slid across the dry dirt road to a stop.

  After organizing everything back into careful, flattened layers, he made sure the dash latched firmly. Then he continued, driving a little slower. The papers were too important to risk, but he couldn’t let them stay at the resort for Paul to find.

  He coughed as the dust entered into his lungs from the open window and then released his harsh grip on the steering wheel as he came to a decision.

  He would pick up Lydia, take her back to the resort, and then leave. He would return to Dar es Salaam and force his father to deal with this mess by himself. Better to leave Paul to his plans than to risk getting caught in them again.

  2

  The truck hit the paved streets leading to Kilimanjaro Airport.

  Minutes later, Caleb pulled up to the front of the terminal. He wiped the dust from his forehead and looked at the sky. Sometimes on a clear day, you could see the mountain peak, even the snowcap that was slowly disappearing. Climate change would enlarge the tsetse fly territory, move it into colder elevations it had never lived in before. The people who made a living raising livestock in the higher elevations would need to leave because the tsetse fly would kill their animals. Their economy would collapse, but it would make conservation areas easier to maintain. People tended to stay out of tsetse fly territory. Elephants kept the tsetse fly in check by tearing down trees and turning forest into savannah—an environment the fly avoided. Without the elephants to keep the savannah free of trees, the fly moved in.

  You could call it spiritual, the Circle of Life, the ecosystem, a biosphere. You could call it whatever the hell you wanted, it all led to the same conclusion. Everything was connected.

  Maybe to some people that meant everything was doomed, but Caleb believed humans still had the opportunity to turn things around. As long as people like Paul didn’t get in the way.

  Caleb strode into the airport lobby and saw a young woman with dark brown hair that hung loose past her shoulders, her skin a light cinnamon color. She clutched a burgundy bag to her chest and seemed dwarfed by the two pieces of luggage surrounding her as if she were using them as shields. A man in a dark blue suit seemed to be arguing with her and was large enough that he looked like he could throw her over one shoulder and not even feel it.

  Caleb took the crumpled picture out of his shirt pocket and compared it to the real-life version.

  She was Paul’s kind of beautiful. Not the kind to stop a crowd in its tracks, but something subtle that still managed to show up in a photograph and become undeniable in person. It unsettled him to think about what Paul had planned for her.

  He closed his fist around the photo and pushed it back into his pocket. She didn’t have a clue about the whole heap of trouble coming her way.

  He evaluated the situation for another moment then marched over to position himself between the two of them. “What’s going on here? Do we have a problem?” He narrowed his eyes at the man.

  The man stepped back and raised his hands in mock innocence. “Just chatting with the lady.” He motioned toward the flustered Lydia.

  Caleb glanced at her, took in her flushed face and how the strap from her carry-on looked like it had dug a trench in her shoulder. He sighed. “Caleb Morr
ell at your service, ma’am,” but then returned his gaze to the problem standing in their way. The man was probably a high-class pimp trying to procure an easy target—a girl traveling alone, clearly lost, and too polite to tell the guy to get lost. The sex slave trade in Tanzania wouldn’t disappear, no matter how many resources the government directed to ferreting it out. If tourists were willing to pay, women were willing to be paid. And if they weren’t, plenty of men were available to encourage a woman’s cooperation for a cut of the money.

  “Have everything you need?” Caleb asked without looking at her. It was something you had to do with dogs and other hierarchical animals—use the masculine stare to prove who was meaner, who was willing to cross the lines of social niceties first.

  “We were just talking,” the man said.

  “We were just leaving.”

  Caleb stepped forward and saw the day-old stubble on the man’s chin, the bits of food staining his coat pocket.

  The man averted his eyes.

  “Ready?” Caleb asked.

  “Yes, please,” Lydia whispered.

  Caleb took the carry-on from Lydia’s shoulder, threw it around his own, and grabbed the two luggage bags. “I’m right out front,” Caleb said, his eyes never leaving the man’s averted gaze. That was one thing Paul had taught him well. Everyone you meet is an animal first, and then a person.

  Caleb escorted Lydia out the front and he threw the two big pieces of luggage in the back of the truck he’d parked at the curb. Before he tossed in the carry-on, Lydia grabbed it.

  “I’ll keep it in my lap.” She pointed her gaze to the pavement as she said it.

  He shrugged his shoulders and climbed into the driver’s side.

  They drove the first ten minutes in silence, passing dozens of people on foot. Women in brightly colored clothing walked with baskets on their heads next to little kids, or carried bundles of sticks for firewood. A huge four-star hotel dwarfed the tin shacks down the street from it. The market was still open for the day and people waded between huge pyramid mounds of fruit. There were no real traffic laws. Or if there were, nobody remembered to follow them.

  Caleb picked his way through a throng of people, some moving heavily loaded bicycles in and out of the street. Old flatbed trucks unloaded their wares directly onto the sidewalk—where there was sidewalk. Little pushcart vendors sold a mix of aromatic sweets and roasted meats that combined with the smell of exhaust. European music bled out of a swanky club that rich tourists frequented, while the sounds of Arusha hip-hop and people speaking Swahili could be heard from a different, less-expensive-looking club.

  Once Caleb hit unpaved road he rolled up the window and Lydia did the same. He drove with more care on this return trip. He wanted to avoid throwing Lydia’s head against the roof of the car.

  “You shouldn’t have come. Do you know why Paul wanted you here?”

  “He told me.” She shook the bag on her lap. “These are the cameras he asked me to bring. He wants me to take pictures of his missionary work to help him fund-raise.”

  Her answer shocked Caleb so completely he almost ran the truck off the road.

  Lydia yelped and held onto the doorframe as he tried to get the car back under control. They were miles from people now, in the no-man’s-land between town and the resort. Not a good time for an accident.

  “That’s what he told you? That he’s a missionary?”

  Lydia clutched her bag even tighter. “What are you talking about?”

  “Paul isn’t a missionary.” Caleb laughed bitterly. “Oh, god. This is classic.”

  “But he and my dad went to college together. Dad became a pastor and he became a missionary. He told us over the phone—”

  “Aren’t you wondering why Paul didn’t say anything about a 21-year-old son?”

  “But he did, sort of. He said he took care of you, even though you weren’t his, but you left. You’re only three years older than me?”

  Caleb couldn’t help himself. He laughed a big belly laugh until tears came to his eyes.

  The truck slowed to a crawl. Hadn’t he changed his last name in order to distance himself from Paul? Maybe it was only fair Paul no longer claimed him. Still, Lydia needed to know the truth, then she’d realize she should turn right back around and fly out of here.

  He rubbed his unshaved chin with his hand. He knew his fieldwork out in the bush and sun and heat must make him look older than he was, especially compared to Lydia’s almost baby-like skin. “You’re eighteen?”

  Lydia nodded. “I will be next month.”

  “And your parents had you when they graduated from Biola right?”

  Lydia nodded again.

  “Well, that means…”

  “You were born while Paul was still in college,” Lydia said.

  “He knocked up my mom, Abby, while they were on a mission trip to Tanzania. Paul thought it would be better for people to believe he was following a calling to bring The Word into the Dark Continent than tell them he had a bastard son.”

  “But he said you were Abby’s kid. He didn’t hide it, I mean, you, at all. He said he helped support her child for a while. You. Even though he wasn’t the father.”

  “He handed out just enough truth to make your parents believe it,” Caleb said. “You should go home, back to your parents where everything is safe and comfortable, and you can take pictures of nice people and their families.”

  “I’m almost eighteen and I’ll decide for myself whether I…shouldn’t stay. I’m not going to just go home because you say so.”

  “Because you were just fine at the airport,” Caleb said, annoyed at the disdain he heard in her voice. He sped up until they drove at a normal speed again. “I already know this is going to be too much for you to handle.”

  “He’s giving me an opportunity here. I’ve always wanted to photograph real life. Real people with problems. You know, the beauty of pain and, and…and why should I even believe you? He said you left and maybe you’re lying—”

  “Paul hunts animals.”

  Caleb glanced over and saw her turn away to look out the window. She clutched the camera bag to her chest. He became angry at how lost she looked. She wasn’t going to make it through the next day, let alone the next few months, if she didn’t learn to toughen up.

  “Paul is going to use you up. He’s going to throw you out among the lions and elephants and hippos and buffalo and make you take pictures while his clients shoot them.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “And when he’s done with the hunt he’s going to push you on one of the clients.”

  The engine coughed and settled. The tires scraped along the dirt as the road began to level out.

  He bit back a curse. There was no way for this missionary girl to know what Paul was capable of. “If you’re going to stay, you need to watch out for yourself better than you did at the airport. Don’t let anybody push you around.”

  After minutes of more silence. They arrived at the resort. Caleb stopped the truck at its steps. Lydia didn’t wait for him or her two bags but stalked up the steps and through the front door.

  He knew she didn’t believe a word he said. Paul had already gotten to her.

  CHAPTER 9

  Paul

  The walls of the small bar were old. Old enough to still be made of wood with tin patches here and there to keep out the draft. It was the kind of place a man could go for a good, stiff drink. Not that Paul would dare to bring a client here. Too African for his white customers. Too poor.

  Tin sheets covered the low roof. The floor was made of packed-down dirt that accumulated cigarette butts and broken glass for weeks before the owner swept. Dust-covered glasses hung from the ceiling beams in a makeshift rack. The bartender rinsed glasses only if he felt like it. Curtains on the windows blocked curious eyes but still allowed fresh air inside.

  The other customers were civil to Paul but he knew he wasn’t welcome. They glanced in his direction and moved away, t
alking quietly in Swahili so he wouldn’t catch more than one or two words.

  Paul picked up his whiskey glass from the table and took a long drink, tasting the sweet edge of it before the alcohol hit him. Underneath the aroma of fried plantains wafting back from the cook stove, Paul could smell the sweat of men who’d put in a long day’s work.

  This was where he’d first met Walter Fritz. Walter, the white hunter who’d made Paul fall in love with going after the Big Five: lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo.

  Paul was almost six feet tall, but Walter Fritz, even sitting down at a worn-out table, had looked impossibly long, with legs folded in on themselves underneath the tabletop. A glass of some kind of liquor had sat on the wood in front of him. He’d worn a grey khaki getup. Matching pants and shirt with dozens of buttoned and velcroed pockets. A matching grey baseball cap rested on his narrow head, edges of white hair poking out. A set of binoculars hung around his neck and a knife hung at his belt.

  Walter looked as if he’d spend a long day driving on an unpaved road. Paul didn’t think it possible Walter could see through the dusty film on his Coke-bottle-thick glasses, let alone shoot at something and hit it.

  Paul had walked into the bar and sat at Walter’s table by random chance.

  He’d been ready to engage Walter in a conversation with the religious pamphlets he carried. Instead, Paul was the one who listened. This old white man spun out a tale with eyes bloodshot from what Paul assumed at first to be alcohol but what turned out to be from squinting in the sun all day while tracking a wounded lion.

  Paul started in on something about the power of prayer but Walter had interrupted.

  “Hunting is a form of prayer.”

  Paul lapsed into silence trying to decide if he needed to say something about sin and idols, or if the guy was making some kind of joke. “I don’t know anything about that, sir. But if you take a look at this pamphlet about prayer—”