Rhinoceros Summer

by Jamie Thornton

  It wasn’t until years later that Caleb realized Paul never paid attention to Neela’s skills for hunting and bringing in trophies. To Paul, Neela was a nonentity, and then later, a tool to use at his discretion. She was there because Paul wanted Abiba there—to take care of Caleb, he’d said over and over again. Though by the time Caleb was ten both he and Neela knew more was going on.

  “Mzungu bothers Mama a lot,” she’d said one afternoon as they sat panting in the heat and dirt, studying the six green snakes laid out on vertical lines before them.

  Caleb shrugged his shoulders, preferring to compare his half of the kills against Neela’s to see who had the better ‘safari.’

  “Your dad wants my mom to do something and she won’t. He always leaves the room angry.” Neela made a face. “He scrunches up like this and all his skin gets blotchy red.”

  “So?”

  “It’s not very handsome.”

  “What do you know about handsome? You’re eleven!”

  “You’re not the only boy I know! Halahala mti na macho!” Beware a stick and your eyes!

  She threw one of her dead snakes at him so he felt the cold clamminess of its skin hit his bare leg.

  He laughed and chucked one of his snakes back at her. They soon ran out of snakes to throw and started flinging dirt clods, shouting dares, laughing when the dirt missed its target, yelping when it hit.

  After the dust settled, neither one could figure out which snakes each had killed. “Race you to the house!” Neela said, a film of dust covering her from head to toe. She’d taken off, leaving him laughing in the dirt, watching her brown legs disappear in the tall grass, tracking her progress by the dust clouds rolling up from her clothes and into the sky.

  By the time Caleb made it back inside, panting for breath, ready to shout some challenge and wrestle victory out of Neela on the dirt floor of the kitchen, Paul was waiting for him.

  “You’re done playing. Clean up and get into the dining room. There are clients waiting for you to take their measure,” Paul said with a scowl on his face. He left the kitchen without waiting for Caleb’s response. He ignored Abiba cleaning up Neela like they were two pieces of furniture.

  But Caleb saw them, his mama and sister, their big eyes full of love for each other. Abiba laughed softly and wiped a rag across Neela’s dirt-crusted forehead while telling her how her trophies were always excellently large or especially colorful.

  “Mpingo,” Abiba said, using her nickname for Caleb. “Come here.” She motioned him over with her rag hand. He almost ran across the kitchen so she could also wipe him off.

  “Not let his thorns hurt you, Mpingo,” she said as she rubbed his forehead with the damp rag like he imagined a lioness would use her rasping tongue on her cubs. She did not need to say who ‘he’ was.

  And Caleb had known that Neela was right. Paul and Abiba didn’t get along. But he didn’t know Paul was trying to push Abiba back into his bed. At eleven years old, he was too busy thinking about what Paul meant when he said, “Take their measure.” He was too busy trying to prove to Paul that he was big and smart and ready to train for his professional hunter’s license.

  2

  Caleb decided to make sure his drawings and science equipment were packed in the Land Cruiser. He opened the back door of the porch and a loud call from a pair of cranes a hundred yards away greeted him. So did Paul.

  “You coming?” Paul said as soon as Caleb stepped down from the porch.

  “Yeah. Here.” He held out two bags.

  “Fine.” Paul tossed them in the back with the rest of the equipment: the standard complement of bagged guns, ammunition, some basic lunch food, gallons of water, a first-aid kit with bandages and a faded yellow bucket full of antiseptic. On a hunting safari, any real medical help was hours away. Caleb couldn’t remember ever going out without that five-gallon bucket. Antiseptic sometimes meant the difference between losing a limb to infection and giving the doctors enough uncontaminated parts to put everything back together.

  Paul finished packing the Land Cruiser and shut the doors. “Muna and Abiba already left to set up camp at Owl Point. We’ll sleep and eat there tonight then start out in the morning. I’ve got a list of likely GPS coordinates for finding elephants.”

  Caleb left Paul to finish packing before they could start an argument. He looked around to see if the cranes were still nearby, but they’d flown out of sight. He went to sit under the shade of a mpingo tree, careful to avoid its thorns. It was one of the trees he and Neela used to play under, looking for small animals that might make Paul proud. He was surprised to see it hadn’t been cut down. The mpingo wasn’t on the endangered species list yet, but Caleb thought it was only a matter of time. There was no other equivalent to mpingo for making woodwind instruments like bagpipes and clarinets, which meant it was being hunted into extinction much like everything else in Africa.

  Eventually, after Paul went inside, Caleb returned to the vehicles to help M’soko and Juja pack in the rest of the equipment, including the feast they would have later for dinner.

  They spent long hours driving over rutted dirt roads. Jack, Lydia, Paul and Juja in the lead car. Caleb and M’soko in the second car with the majority of the gear.

  M’soko had arrived at the resort a full year before Caleb left. Paul had originally apprenticed him to Juja as a gun bearer. M’soko was a classic village-boy-makes-good tale, a child born into a family of too many trying to farm land that produced too little. He’d left the village for the city of Arusha to find work and send cash home. He was several years older than Caleb, but that hadn’t stopped them from spending many secret evenings drinking under the mpingo trees at the resort and commiserating over their subsequent hangovers.

  Caleb hadn’t spoken to M’soko in five years. Not because there was anger between them, but talking to M’soko meant Caleb would have had to face his father.

  Now, in the Land Cruiser together, Caleb tried to strike up a friendship he wasn’t sure was salvageable until M’soko smiled in the old way, as he had done during those drunken evenings. It was a sarcastic, talking-shit kind of smile that meant he wasn’t going to hold back what he thought just because Caleb was a white bwana’s son and M’soko a native black man escaping his village’s poverty.

  “Today,” M’soko said, motioning with one hand on the steering wheel while the other waved at the landscape through the windshield. “This is the beginning of dry season, but everything is still wet. The animals are still spread out and Paul books ten-day safari to find trophy elephant.”

  High grass, still green from the rainy season, made spotting game harder. When water was abundant, animals didn’t congregate. Both Caleb and M’soko knew ten days wasn’t enough. They knew it because Paul had taught it to them.

  “Why aren’t we in the Selous Reserve? Are there even trophy elephants in these northeastern blocs anymore?” Caleb asked.

  “This is the only bloc rights Paul has left.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Subleasing,” M’soko said.

  Caleb shook his head. Subleasing and subdividing hunting blocs created major headaches for the Wildlife Division.

  Only a small percentage of protected land in Tanzania had a high enough density of animals and appropriate access for camera tourists. The rest was better suited for controlled, recreational hunting. Trophy hunting generated billions of dollars of business worldwide. It wasn’t going away anytime soon. There were always plenty of trophy-hunting loopholes the Wildlife Division struggled to close—and always plenty of men to exploit those loopholes. Subleasing hunting blocs was one.

  “Who’s he subleasing to?” Caleb asked.

  M’soko shrugged his shoulders. “A better question is who he is subleasing from?”

  That almost shocked Caleb into silence. “What are you talking about?”

  “Paul sold his bloc to various operators and only kept a couple parts for Blue Nile. Don’t know who exactly but heard maybe
some prince from Europe is one. Paul thinks this is some personal business matter, his lease, so it’s nobody’s business, especially the government’s, on what he decides to do with his lease.”

  They made little conversation after that. Caleb was too busy considering the possibilities. It was well known within the Wildlife Division that only a few big hunting companies owned rights to the majority of quality hunting areas. They paid a small token fee to gain rights to the bloc, usually for five years. Most of these companies weren’t as small an operation as Blue Nile Safari, but they still wouldn’t have the manpower to fully utilize their blocs. Some would then sublease the blocs to outsiders—charging ten times what the government charged. They weren’t supposed to do that. The Wildlife Division didn’t see any of that money, and many times, the subleaser remained unknown and unregulated. Unknown hunters out in the wilderness? Just another euphemism for white poacher.

  Subleasers were only interested in a quick cash return—maximizing profits—without a care for quotas, quality of the trophies, or leaving animals for the next generation. They were about selling the most hunts possible, regardless of the consequences.

  They reached Owl Point late in the day. Caleb’s focus on what to do with M’soko’s information was interrupted when he saw Lydia climb out of the car. She looked harried, dirty, tired.

  “You okay?” Caleb asked.

  Lydia almost jumped at the sound of his voice. “I’m fine,” she mumbled. She walked with lowered head to where dinner waited.

  Shame filled him. There was no reason for her to think well of him, and it was Paul’s fault.

  He entered the main canvas tent after Lydia. Though he could see patched holes in the lining, the permanent tent still looked luxurious with its high ceilings and timber floors. Solid wood chairs and tables with white tablecloths, silver service and candlelight, all added to the illusion of luxury. Comfortable beds and flushing toilets waited for them in the sleeping tents. The Blue Nile resort was a permanent structure built close to town. Owl Point was a semipermanent camp meant to bring luxury out into the wilderness. Paul always liked to prove he could import any kind of food or drink the client wanted. Wine and champagne bottles, as yet unopened, littered the table. The smell of cooked duck permeated the tent.

  He wondered if farmer-Hellerman would even notice.

  “Perfect timing.” Paul slapped Caleb on the back. “Take a seat, we’re just about to serve the first course.”

  Everyone ate in silence, except Paul. He began to tell hunting stories to amp Jack up. “Most of the good hunters, those that other hunters remembered, start young. Guys like Bryan Coleman or Jack Judd grew up in the bush and were born with guns in their fists.”

  Jack listened with eyes wide. His mouth chomped away at the juicy meat that covered his lips in oil.

  Caleb knew Paul’s game—better to let a client think Paul was a modern-day Coleman or Judd than a man who’d grown up as a city boy in America.

  Paul continued with his stories. Run-ins with poachers: “May even come across some, never know.” How dangerous a wounded leopard was to hunt: “You never want to track a wounded one, it’s like committing suicide.” How smart elephants were: “They’re at the top of my list, Jack. The most dangerous big game. An elephant has a long memory. It can recognize a man’s gun and charge before you know what’s coming.” How hunting with Blue Nile was a chance in a lifetime: “Like back in the days of Roosevelt, Selous, or Black. Great hunters hunting great animals, hacking through the dark world of inner Africa, trailblazing the way for colonial powers to build townships and railroads.”

  The same old rhetoric.

  “I watched the Barabaig hunt elephant once. You know who they are?” Paul reached for a piece of orange-glazed duck. “They wear the blue and yellow beads. Ferocious people. It’s a test of honor for the young men to hunt elephants using only a spear. To the Barabaig, an elephant is one of their eternal enemies. Hunting elephant without a license is illegal so the tribe doesn’t let just anyone watch. They have to trust you. But you should have seen it, Jack. Steel-tipped spears with only red fabric around their waists and blue and yellow beads around their necks. A hunter in the group almost always dies. But the first two who make the killing thrusts…All the glory you could imagine.”

  “You’d hunt one like that, with just spears?” Jack asked.

  “I’ve always wanted to hunt an elephant or lion that way, Jack. But it’s too goddamn dangerous. A double-barreled rifle is the only way to go with those beasts. Elephants are too smart and vengeful, and lions too unpredictable to go after them with anything else. Still…”

  Lydia shivered in her chair, catching Caleb’s attention. She meticulously ate her food, as if the very act took all her energy.

  “Glory goes to the hunter, Jack. I wouldn’t be willing to risk your life or mine like that now, but someday. For the glory of it. Because when those men returned victorious to their camps, carrying the tusks of the fallen elephant as proof of their kill, they returned not as boys but heroes. They’re given wealth, girls, authority, respect. They become men.”

  Abiba abruptly rose from the table. “I go to bed now. Lydia, I show tent we share.” Abiba glanced at Caleb for a moment as if in signal.

  “I think we should take more breaks tomorrow,” Caleb said after Lydia and Abiba left. “Jack, I’m sure you’re not used to driving like this all day and Lydia doesn’t look like she is either.”

  “When did Lydia start concerning you?” Paul said as if speaking to the air.

  “I couldn’t care less about the girl, but if you want any usable video or photos out of this trip, you better be more careful.” He glared at Jack while he said it. Being careful meant more than just additional rest breaks. “Jack, why don’t you ride in my car tomorrow? There’s more leg room.”

  “Oh no, son. I’m fine. I much prefer Lydia’s company over yours. No offense,” he said with a curled smile, “but Paul was right. Even after a day’s drive like this, she still smells and looks better than either of you.”

  Caleb pushed his chair back so it almost tipped as it skidded against the wood floor. He left the tent without saying another word but not before seeing Paul’s half-smile.

  3

  Caleb checked to make sure his bags full of test tubes, syringes, and Styrofoam had made it through the drive okay. Both M’soko and Juja had already left the tent the three of them shared. Safaris went best with an early start.

  Caleb went in search of breakfast and found Abiba also making her way to the cooking tent. “What time do we strike out?”

  Abiba shook her head and said Jack was still snoring in his tent.

  “How’d she sleep?” No reason to say who ‘she’ was.

  “Fine. Some bad dreams maybe,” Abiba said.

  “Paul isn’t making being here easy.”

  “Of course,” she said. “He use Jack make jealous. Try to drive you off.”

  She looked as if there were more she wanted to say, but Caleb felt too frustrated to press her. “I’m not jealous.”

  She shook her head and touched the side of his face with her cheek. She spoke Swahili to him then. “Je! iko namna?” Is there a way through this mess?

  The safari left a few hours later. They drove to a small marsh where Paul had notated in his logbook that a group of elephants watered as of last hunting season. The plan was to find an elephant, then creep up on foot as shooting from a vehicle was illegal.

  Except they couldn’t find any elephants.

  “I thought Tanzania was full of elephants,” Jack said around the dinner table later that night.

  “It’s just an off day,” Paul said.

  But Caleb knew it was more than that. M’soko cornered him after dinner outside the tent. “Bwana drives away from the game.”

  “I know,” Caleb said.

  “Bwana is not acting like a hunter trying to find a trophy. He plays a dangerous game.”

  “I know, but why?”

 
A disapproving look came over M’soko’s face. “I do not know.”

  The next day brought no elephant spoor—no tracks, no trees pulled up by the roots, no rocks with tusk gouges, no piles of elephant dung. And the next. And the next.

  Paul shared more hunting stories to pass the time, expounding on various tribal methods of killing lions and elephants without using guns, dogs, bow and arrows—just a man, his hands, and a spear. But they couldn’t find the elephants. Not a small herd, not one elephant. Nothing for Jack to hunt or Caleb to dart and collect samples from.

  This safari was a bust and they all knew it.

  During dinner at Owl Point, on the ninth day of the safari, the day that should have been full of feasting and packing up for the trip back to the resort, Jack and Paul drank too much wine. Caleb also drank more than usual. Abiba let him know with her frowns that he was overdoing it but he didn’t care. He was here to find elephants and a rhino. To make reports and collect DNA samples. He hadn’t accomplished a damn thing. Part of him believed Paul wasn’t just down on his luck—he was intentionally avoiding the elephants so Caleb would fail.

  Caleb left the main dining tent to take in some fresh air. Owl Point was situated hundreds of miles from the nearest city, maybe the nearest person, but the noises from Paul’s stories and Jack’s drinking drowned out any sound a wild animal might make.

  He walked far enough away that the real Africa came crowding back in, making Caleb wish he’d brought his gun. That was something he’d learned well as a hunter’s son—never leave your gun behind. Never.

  Working with the Wildlife Division didn’t change that. It was usually a game warden’s job to take down the troubled animals, especially the injured ones. You never let an injured animal stay alive to maul or kill an unsuspecting person. As a conservationist he took no pleasure culling wildlife. But an ever-increasing human population grew into the spaces meant for uncultivated land. Managing big game in Africa, helping support villages, and helping the local people want to keep the animals unpoached sometimes meant using a gun.