Rhinoceros Summer

by Jamie Thornton

  Caleb crept back to the tents, grabbed his gun, and went to slip away again to enjoy the night sky alone.

  He moved to the space between the dining and sleeping tents and saw that Jack and Paul stood off to the edge of where the artificial light pierced the Tanzanian darkness. Soft moonlight created contrasting shadows against their faces so Caleb couldn’t make out their expressions, though he could see each held what he figured to be another glass of Scotch.

  As Caleb crept closer he could smell the smoky tang of cigars. He knew he was slightly drunk, but they were probably too drunk themselves to notice him.

  “You need another five days here. Give me five more days and I’ll get you a good tusker.”

  “It’s more money than I wanted to spend.”

  “I’ll give you a discount, waive some of the fees.”

  “That’s not going to be enough.”

  “Look. Sometimes it’s like this. We’re in the wild. Things can be unpredictable.”

  “I want some time alone with Lydia.”

  Caleb froze, then crept closer, trying not to breathe like a rhinoceros about to stampede.

  “I told you before. I don’t control what she does. She’s here to take photos, but,” Paul took a deep drag from the cigar, then blew the smoke out into the darkness, “I won’t stop you from pursuing her.” He glanced at Jack’s shadowed face then returned to stare into the darkness. “You’ll need a few more days to warm her up.”

  Caleb almost raised his rifle to shoot the both of them. He stalked away instead and tried to squeeze the life out of his rifle barrel. He hurried towards Lydia’s tent. She was going to hear the brutal truth from his own mouth. Just let Paul try to fix this.

  “Lydia,” he whispered fiercely through the canvas cloth. He tottered on his feet for a moment and used the butt of the rifle to steady himself.

  She poked her head through the tent opening. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and he saw she’d already changed into pajamas.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need to talk to you.” He looked around. Abiba or Jack or M’soko or any of the other people preparing for bed could see them here. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “I’m not dressed.”

  “It’s dark. You’re fine.”

  She bit her lip in apprehension.

  “This is important.”

  She moved back inside the tent for so long Caleb was about to let hospitality go to hell and walk in after her, but then she appeared wearing her pajama top with tennis shoes and jeans.

  “C’mon,” he said, still holding the rifle in one hand.

  “Don’t we need a flashlight?”

  “Just come on.” He walked away from the tent, hoping she would follow him as he wound around to the backside of camp, away from where the tent entrances faced. He didn’t want Paul to interrupt before Caleb could tell her everything.

  A small part of him jumped at the chance to be alone with her. He looked back once and finally stopped when they reached a solitary tree, far enough away that no one would distinguish their figures, even with the moonlight casting long shadows through the cloud cover. He felt uneasy under the long branches and thought about moving somewhere else until Lydia spoke.

  “What are we doing out here?”

  He tried to see the details of her face in the moonlight. She had her arms across her chest. It wasn’t even cold but she looked like she was about to shiver.

  “How bad has it been with Jack?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Caleb remained silent for a moment, then said, “You know what I mean.”

  “I…It’s…” Lydia stumbled over her words, choking up, but it was too dark to see if she was crying. “Paul says I shouldn’t make a big deal out of it. Jack’s just flirting. He said it would help if I could pretend to like it.”

  Caleb hit his fist into the tree trunk, making the limbs shake—though he didn’t think he’d hit it that hard. “How far are you going to let him go?”

  Silence, then, “I can take care of it.”

  Caleb’s voice slurred and he couldn’t keep the anger out of his next words. “So you like the attention he’s giving you?”

  “Just stop it.” She began to pull away from him. He reached out to stop her, accidentally hitting her arm with the rifle butt.

  She froze. “Don’t touch me.”

  He recoiled, about to apologize, shame rising red in his cheeks. “You know they’re talking about you right now.” He waved toward the lighted camp area. “Jack and Paul. Talking about letting Jack extend his safari so he can spend more time alone with you.”

  Then he heard it. A low rustle in the tree above him.

  He knew it wasn’t the wind in the leaves. “Damn it,” he said softly, trying to get his bearings. The wine wasn’t helping him focus. Was the leopard just watching, about to feed, or already finished?

  Lydia started for the tents.

  “Lydia. Stay where you are.”

  “I shouldn’t be out here with you.”

  “Lydia!” he shouted, trying to scare off the leopard. They were usually wary of humans, as long as they hadn’t been injured or upset in some other way. “Goddamn it! Listen to me, there’s a leopard around here!” He started stomping towards Lydia, making noise, anything to get the cat to freeze or run away. He couldn’t see worth anything in this darkness.

  He felt around for Lydia’s arm and then pulled her close as they made for the tents. He tried to steady his rifle with one hand. If necessary, he thought he could give the leopard a good bash on the head with it.

  A noise and shadow slammed into the grass in front of them. A sleek, low body of movement dashed across their path. Lydia grabbed onto Caleb’s arm, squeezing it with all her strength, but she didn’t scream.

  “Keep walking, it’s going away from us. Just walk to the tents.” He let go of her arm to gain better range of movement and listened for the rustle of movement until that too disappeared into the darkness.

  They broke into the rim of light circling the camp. “Are you okay?”

  Lydia was breathing hard. The light from the tent lamps made her eyes seem wide, wild.

  “That was a leopard?”

  “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head, trying to clear out the rest of the alcohol.

  Lydia looked back into the darkness, back to the tree. Her pajama top had moved so he could see bare skin. He pulled the shirt over to cover her shoulder.

  She jumped at his touch. “I…I should get some sleep. I wish I’d had my camera.”

  “It would have been hard to take pictures in the dark.”

  “I could have tried.” She clutched at her pajama top and turned away.

  “Wait.”

  She turned back.

  “What are you going to do about Jack?” he asked.

  She stared at him. “I’m going to get my pictures for the internship. If I don’t—” she lapsed into silence. She gathered more of her pajama top in her hands. “If I don’t, then I let him stop me. I’d let him win, wouldn’t I?”

  A sinking feeling settled into Caleb’s chest. Who was this girl, how could she so easily ignore the danger around her? “You’re being foolish,” he said softly. “They’re setting you up for money. Paul just wants the money. And Jack wants you. You can’t trust any of them.”

  She gave him a circumspect look. “I know.”

  He waited for more, but she stepped into the tent and zipped up the entrance flap. He returned to the tent he shared with M’soko and Juja. Careful to not wake the gun bearers as he climbed into bed, he kept his rifle loaded and by his side in case the leopard, or anyone else, decided to visit Lydia that night.

  4

  The headache pounding in Caleb’s brain drove him to seek out the dining tent in the hopes of begging for some tea.

  “Thank you,” Caleb said as Muna handed him a steaming cup.

  She nodded and returned to making breakfast.

  Muna was a newer ad
dition to Paul’s staff. Abiba had said she was a shy girl that Paul hired to learn how to prepare American and other foreign foods so he didn’t have to pay a real cook’s wages.

  “What were you thinking,” Paul yelled out, “walking around in the dark last night, pissing off a leopard? The whole camp heard you shouting.”

  Caleb turned and saw Paul had entered the dining tent. He held a smoking cigar in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

  To keep his headache in check, Caleb went to stand in front of Paul and said in a low voice, “I heard you and Jack.”

  Paul didn’t look surprised at Caleb’s words, just raised his eyebrow and took a sip of coffee. “A true businessman considers all his options and I’m a businessman. Can’t you tell by now when I’m playing a client? No harm’s going to come to Lydia. I have no intention of forcing her to do something she doesn’t decide to do for herself. Even if you decide not to believe it, that’s how I’ve always done things.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Deep down, Caleb did think Paul meant what he said. Whether he would still mean it five minutes from now was another story.

  “You’re a broken record, Caleb. Why’s any of this your business?” Paul sighed and looked away. “You need me to promise I’ll protect her? I promise. Will that help you stay? Then I promise. No matter what bullshit I sell to Hellerman, he won’t get a real chance at her.”

  “A real chance? What does that mean, Dad? He can do anything he wants to her until she screams for help?”

  “She has a right to it. If she wants help, she’ll ask for it and I’ll be there to give it. If she doesn’t, that’s her business too. Not mine. Not yours.” Paul turned back to Caleb. “But why are you even here? You didn’t want to be a part of this anymore.”

  “It’s about sustainable conservation.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. I taught you better than that.”

  Caleb’s headache flared. “What happens when we leave, Dad?” he said, as if speaking a dirty word. “During the rainy season—”

  “Trophy hunting helps the big game survive. We’re out there, patrolling the land, not shooting it up with hand grenades or AK-47s—”

  “A double rifle still kills them.”

  “It’s hunting, not killing.”

  “Not when it’s elephants,” Caleb said.

  “What poachers do isn’t our fault. We do the best we can with what we got.”

  “It’s not enough.” Caleb thought of all the ivory the Department of Wildlife knew left the country illegally every year. The black market in elephant tusks still existed. Most ivory found its way to Asian apothecaries and was turned into powders used as aphrodisiacs. A decently-sized Asian Tanzanian population, mostly the Asians who had worked on the railroads during Lt. Colonel Patterson’s time, was usually the middlemen. Many of them had stayed after the railroads were finished, setting up merchant shops yet attaining no real political power.

  “What’s not enough?” Jack moved into Caleb’s line of vision, wearing leather bed slippers and flannel pants. His belly pushed out through the matching flannel shirt. “Awoke to the smell of the cigar. And Paul’s yelling. Y’all aren’t very quiet.” Jack ran a hand over his head as Paul pulled out another cigar for him.

  “Just discussing how professional hunters keep poachers out of the reserves,” Paul said.

  “Damn right,” Jack said. He took a long drag from the cigar. “Africans are lucky we came along to build railroads and give’em electricity and roads and cars. I did my hunter’s reading before we left Nebraska. You guys were the first real pioneers here.” He slapped Paul on the back and gave him a big grin. “Like the gold miners in the old west, except the gold here has manes and tusks.”

  Paul laughed.

  Caleb remained silent as the two of them shared one of those hunting moments—when men realize they have the power to destroy things.

  “Damn straight. Let’s hunt some elephant.” Paul took a last drag from his cigar and stood up.

  Jack put his cigar out next to Paul’s. “Lydia up yet?”

  In spite of his headache, Caleb stepped close to Jack. “You stay away from her.”

  Jack just kept his cigar pressed into the dirt. “Boy, you best back up and out of my business.”

  Caleb bunched his hand into a fist. He would pummel Jack into the dirt outside Paul’s tent. Let Paul watch him lose control. Return to David empty-handed. Anything to wipe the sneer off Jack.

  Then Caleb noticed the look on Paul’s face. That gleam in the eye, the casual way Paul held the coffee cup, the silent half-smile.

  Caleb reined in his anger. Paul was orchestrating some sort of plan and Caleb was playing right into it. Hell, for all Caleb knew, Paul might think this was the way to win back his son.

  Caleb relaxed his fist, stepped back and took a slow sip of his tea. The last bit of headache left his head and he thought he saw clearly for the first time in weeks. He had a job to do and he wasn’t going to let Paul get in his way.

  Whether by luck or plan, at that moment Juja returned from his scouting trip. He drove through the middle of Owl Point, kicking up trails of dust and shouting out the driver’s window, “Tembo! Tembo!”

  Juja braked next to Caleb, jumped out, and spoke with Paul in Swahili—talking about a herd of a few dozen elephants grazing in a valley about three hours from camp.

  “Load up!” Paul shouted.

  5

  The safari’s afternoon break at the top of a hill ended at Juja’s whistle.

  Caleb raised his binoculars and saw the elephants as a bunch of dark blobs resting in the shade a few miles away. Just as Juja had described them.

  Paul discussed the situation with Juja for a few moments then squatted next to Jack in the grass. “Juja and I are gonna scout the herd. You’ll follow, but keep your distance. We’re only scouting today. Not enough light left for a hunt. We’ll make fly camp tonight and begin at dawn.” Paul motioned to Lydia. “Make sure your equipment is ready for tomorrow.”

  Lydia fumbled with both the video and photo cameras around her neck.

  Though they hadn’t said more than half a dozen words to each other since the leopard, Caleb knew Lydia didn’t want to shoot video. “Let me take the video. I’ll shoot with that so you can concentrate on your stills.” He figured he could make a copy of the tape and add it to his research report.

  She hesitated then quickly handed it over. “Thanks.” She centered the photography camera on her chest.

  “Get around,” Paul said, his gun in one hand. He waved them to a few large termite mounds near a patch of grass the elephants had mowed down with their eating. They walked over as a group to observe the herd.

  The old mother elephant faced outward, alert for harm to her family. Younger mothers, with calves dancing in the space between the thick legs, grazed near the center. Caleb could hear the sounds of their conversation, low rumblings from the adults, higher pitched trumpets from the calves. The old mother’s tusks rested inches from the ground as she approached a calf and caressed the baby’s lower jaw with her trunk.

  “She’s teaching the calf how to say hello,” Caleb said.

  Lydia kept her eye on the viewfinder but nodded slightly.

  Caleb rested his gun against the termite mound and began filming. He noticed a few adolescent males getting excited, their restless energy in contrast to the mothers and calves enjoying the long grass and acacia leaves. “The adolescents look ready to start a family squabble,” he said for Lydia’s benefit.

  Paul glanced back at Caleb, then Jack. “We want that old bull there.”

  Caleb cringed at the thought of destroying the bonds he saw here. This was a family—grandmother, mothers, daughters, aunts, cousins, sons, father. Maybe it was a family full of sibling rivalry, mating jealousies, the outcast at the bottom of the hierarchy, but a family nonetheless. More than he’d ever had. And they were going to take the big bull out, the prime male who’d lived maybe fifty, sixty years and helped k
eep the adolescents in line. They were going to take this bull down so Jack could display the tusks in his living room.

  A client like Jack Hellerman could purchase one elephant-hunting license per year. Even with the international ban on ivory trade, even with the hundreds of pounds of ivory confiscated and burned by the government in huge bonfires, a trophy hunter had the legal right to export his ivory. He’d be able to take his tusks pretty much anywhere—into the United States, Europe, wherever. The ivory was completely legit when categorized as a trophy.

  Caleb didn’t join the Wildlife Division to make Paul mad or try to change his mind—didn’t think it could be done. But Caleb could help change other people’s minds. Dispel the idea that relationships and intelligence and emotion were the sole domain of the human species.

  Even if he ignored the research on chimp intelligence and emotion done by Dr. Jane Goodall on the Gombe chimps, or the fieldwork done by Dian Fossey with gorillas, or the 99.7% genetic similarity between chimps and humans, even if he ignored the dolphins, their intelligence, their family bonds, their language, this was what Caleb knew for sure: MRI scans showed the elephant brain to have a huge hippocampus and limbic system—the seats of memories and emotions.

  He wanted to reason with people, but he knew it was pointless with someone like Paul or Jack. They would dismiss his ideas and forget humans were animals too.

  Paul planned the next day’s hunt as the herd went about their business of eating and playing and living. Lydia clicked away with her camera. Part of Caleb wanted to live in the anger he felt rise up every time Paul came within sight. Part of him tried to hold it back and figure out what Paul was planning.

  They didn’t return to Owl Point that evening but set up a quick fly camp and made dinner out of canned beans and bread. They kept all lights off, just laid some tarps on the ground to keep the sleeping bags dry. Caleb didn’t put his sleeping bag down until he’d positioned himself, Juja, and M’soko, between Jack and Lydia. He moved her tarp away from the other men. Both Abiba and Muna had stayed behind at Owl Point. He tried to give Lydia a plastic island of safety.