The Devil's Horn

by David L. Robbins

  “I speak first.” Promise could tell her lies best if she started.

  The captain mirrored her posture, folding his long legs under him in the dirt. He took off his helmet to rub a hand over his crew cut. He looked at Wophule with noticeable sadness; this man seemed more than a soldier and a killer. The other one she could not guess at. He set himself to gathering in the ghostly parachutes they’d left on the ground.

  “Go ahead, ma’am,” the captain prompted.

  “Wophule and I found the drone. While we were looking it over, poachers came. They shot Wophule before we knew they were there. I fired back, but they surrounded me. I surrendered. They took our rifles.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Two.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Two hours.”

  “Alright.”

  “The drone had a missile under one wing. It was inside a box, a launcher, I think. The poachers pulled it off and took it with them. They said it was an American missile.”

  She held out a hand to the captain as proof that this was right.

  “Why was your missile on this drone?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  His evasion made Promise feel better as a liar. She and the Americans were going to be equals, they would tell each other less than the truth.

  Promise moved her hand to her pocket. “I have to phone it in now.”

  “You haven’t done that yet?”

  “No.”

  The captain held up a pale palm in the dark veld.

  “I have to ask you not to call anything in just yet.”

  “Why?”

  The captain considered what denial or half-truth to say next.

  “My country doesn’t just leave things like this lying around. The two of us jumped in to get a handle on the situation. I’ve got to ask you to let us deal with it.”

  “Why should I do that? You have your job. I have mine.”

  The American rubbed a hand across his mouth. He seemed reluctant to say what he had in mind. Promise supposed this would be the first full truth between them, and it would be painful.

  “You don’t need me to tell you that you and your partner stumbled onto some of my country’s secrets. I’m not going to apologize for them, not my place to do that. But the sergeant and me, we’ve been sent in to clean them up. That’s all. If you call this drone in, it’ll get out of our hands. The damage that’ll do is more than I can describe to you, but believe me, this needs to stay secret.”

  The captain’s hand drifted to the grip of the pistol jammed in his belt.

  “If you run, I know we can’t catch you. So I will shoot you. I’ll do everything I can to shoot you in the leg. But I will fire. Now I’ll have your phone, please.”

  Nothing about the captain said this was a bluff. Promise handed over the phone. The captain left the gun in his belt to accept. She’d called Juma with that phone. This was the first bit of her to fall away, like a comet over the bush. More pieces would tear off before long, lies and murder, and Promise wondered what would be left.

  The stout sergeant finished stowing the parachutes and came to stand over her, hands on hips. These men had come to clean up America’s secrets; that’s what the captain had said. Promise felt an urge, fleeting but powerful, to tell them all of hers: Juma and toothless Good Luck, the rhino she’d cut down, Bongani and the aardvark, Wophule. She might ask the Americans if they could clean away her secrets, too. Promise said nothing. She and the captain exchanged lonesome looks in the starlight, as if he knew and could do nothing for her.

  The captain said, “I’m sorry.”

  No, he’d not protect her.

  The sergeant took a knee close to Promise, as if inspecting her. The nearness of Wophule’s body did not appear to bother this one.

  “What are we going to do with you?”

  The captain touched Promise’s wrist, sincere.

  “Are you going to run? I don’t want to tie you up.”

  “I won’t run, Captain. I’ll stay with Wophule.”

  “Can we trust you?”

  Promise almost wept at the question; for so much of her life the answer to that question was always yes. She wanted to say it again, to mean it, cherish it.

  “Yes.” This felt like another secret.

  Both Americans got to their feet. Promise stayed seated because she did not know what to do next. Neither did the standing soldiers; they glanced into the dark, and once more the bush reminded them with screeches and roars that their presence was known.

  The captain seemed to percolate, rubbing his chin and the top of his head for a plan. The sergeant rubbed only his belly.

  “Where’s Smokey?”

  Promise asked, “Who is that?”

  The sergeant scowled. “Never you mind.” He seemed to be nursing hurt feelings from being hung up in the thorns.

  A dome of pearly light rose in the east over Mozambique, the half-moon would be up soon. The drone, broken and skewed, finally appeared at peace in the milky light, no more tangled than anything else in the dark Kruger. Wophule had been right, they should have left the thing alone. The bush would take it to itself, wind and sun, rain and claws, grinding it down to bits and rust. But the drone had fallen from the hands of man, and man did not let go so easily.

  Just so. She could not let go of Wophule. Guilt was another thing only man brought into the Kruger.

  “LB, I’m going to call Torres on the sat phone. You get started covering the boy.”

  Promise would not let him be called “the boy.”

  “Wophule.”

  “I apologize. Wophule.”

  The sergeant turned to his chore. With an easy strength, he lifted the big rock he’d dropped on first sight of Promise and set it beside Wophule’s boot.

  The captain laid a gentle touch on her again.

  “Go help him.”

  First, they laid an outline of stones around Wophule. Once he was encircled, Promise and the sergeant paused to rest. Wophule looked peaceful, even handsome inside his palisade. Promise looked on him with a taint of envy that he’d died unmarred by her sins and had died thinking of love.

  The sergeant blew out his cheeks. He was less winded than Promise would have guessed a man who looked like him would be. His body was a teakettle, neck as wide as his head. He shook his head, not at the work but at the killing of Wophule.

  “Why did the captain call you LB?”

  “Why do you call yourself Promise?”

  “For Zulu, it is rude to call a person you do not know well by his proper name. So we are given other names, and our real names are kept for family.”

  “That’s actually a good answer.”

  “Now you.”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “I already do not like you.”

  The sergeant laughed at this. He nodded, accepting a sort of fairness in what she’d said.

  “It means ‘Little Bastard.’ ”

  “It suits.”

  The sergeant, LB, shrugged.

  “Your partner?” he asked.

  “Yes. For two years. This is Shingwedzi. Our sector.”

  LB took off his helmet, an automatic and respectful act.

  “That’s rough. I’m sorry.”

  LB had donned a new tone and a new light under the stars. For long moments he did not lift his eyes from the stones and cool body. He seemed to be seeing many more dead on the ground than Wophule.

  “Let’s get him covered up, okay?”

  They returned to work. LB lowered his night goggles to find larger stones off the paths, while Promise collected armfuls of smaller rocks. Together, they did not drop their loads on Wophule but placed the stones one at a time, assembling the mound with an unspoken, shared care.

  The captain stood well away, near the drone. He circled the wreck, describing what he saw into the phone at his ear. When he finished his conversation, he came to Promise and LB, adding his hands to the job of covering Wophule
.

  Quickly, the boy faded beneath a lattice of stones. The rocks were of many sizes, weights, shapes and were shot through with quartz, spotted or solid, as if Wophule had been laid under a collection of his days. Promise stood aside to let the Americans close the last gaps. Finally, with their helmets, the two scooped dirt to pour over the stones, enclosing Wophule’s life and the smell of his death.

  When they were done, the soldiers stepped back, leaving Promise closest to Wophule. Both men mopped their brows. LB gestured to the mound.

  “Go ahead.”

  Promise did not speak to God or Wophule, but to the Americans.

  “He cannot be left here. Wophule is Xhosa. He cannot be away from his village. His ancestors.”

  The captain replied.

  “It’s just until we get this sorted out.”

  “How long will that be?”

  The man opened and closed his mouth. Promise answered for him.

  “You cannot tell me. I know.”

  The Americans crossed their hands at their waists, waiting for Promise to conclude. She thought of words but could say none of them, they were all admissions. Wophule’s killing was one blade of her grief, but she had many stabbing her. She could drop to her knees and confess all to his spirit, but Wophule would become restless, he would grieve her, not go into the afterlife. And the Americans would hear. She had no muti to give to help him rest. So Promise danced.

  She lifted her knees and arms, waved her wrists at the stars. She asked the dark sky to call Wophule’s ancestors here to the heart of the Kruger so they might comfort him until he could come home. She promised to kill a beast for them later, an ox or whatever she could afford. She danced to lessen the evil of Wophule’s murder, to give him light feet to travel onward, and mostly to make him go away from this life and not haunt her.

  Promise lost sight of Wophule, the Americans, and the Kruger. She fixed her eyes upward, pleading into the darkness. She skipped circles around the rock mound, twisting her own spirit into the dance. She rounded Wophule many times, until sweat fell in her eyes. But she sensed nothing from the sky and night. Wophule had died unnaturally, wrongfully. His ancestors would not answer her call; she was responsible for his murder. They waited and wanted more from Promise than secrets and a dance. She was left in life with Wophule, and he with her.

  Promise stumbled against the stones. Her knees buckled, and she tumbled to the ground where she belonged.

  Before she could collapse, the sergeant caught her by the arm.

  “Whoa, okay. Come on, girl.”

  Promise made herself limp to crumble the rest of the way, but LB held her up. His strength was remarkable.

  “Hey, that’s enough. Here we go, take a seat.”

  Somehow the sergeant seemed on all sides of her, like the night. She let him ease her away from Wophule. He sat her down with her back to the mound of stones.

  Chapter 14

  One scotch glass held two ice cubes. The other, neat, Allyn handed over.

  Leaning against the headboard, the whore sipped and closed her eyes to make a show over the quality of the liquor.

  She surveyed the big bedroom. Oddly, as her eyes flitted about, she clucked her tongue as though tasting the sculptures, oil paintings, fabrics, appreciating more than their beauty—perhaps their cost. This made Allyn think he’d insist on a better class of prostitute if he did this again.

  He sank into his leather reading chair; the cushions cooled his bare bottom, feeling wrong. In all the years he’d lived here, he’d never once sat in this chair naked. Allyn turned on the gooseneck lamp for the whore to see better, but the light shined on his nakedness and age, so he snapped it off. She paid no notice.

  “You got a beautiful house.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How long ago did your wife pass?”

  “Weeks.”

  “So sorry.”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t mind. May I look around?”

  Allyn had arrived home with the whore at dusk, and had done nothing to lighten the gloom of the large house. The master bedroom, lit by a small china lamp Eva had bought at a flea market in Rome, was the only glowing spot in the mansion. The woman would have to turn on lights. He had no qualm about that, and rather liked the notion of the place warming up for the whore to wander. Many rooms he’d not entered in years and could not now picture in his mind’s eye. Just the kitchen, the den and dining room, his office, and the bedroom. He could not conjure his son’s old room or the guest rooms, his wife’s sewing room, the servants’ quarters; he barely knew the yard beyond the deck umbrellas and chaises. This had been Eva’s home far more than his, what Allyn had given his wife and child in the bargain.

  “Go ahead.”

  The whore scooted off the bed, careful not to spill the scotch. She began to pull up the sheets.

  “That’s alright. Leave it.”

  She flipped a casual hand to say, Whatever. She reached for her dress and underthings lapped over the back of an upholstered wing chair bought in Hong Kong.

  “Leave them, too.”

  Facing him, she swirled the scotch glass, elbow tucked into her bare waist, and shifted her weight to one leg. The woman was shapely, ample in the bottom, with spectacular golden eyes that were likely contact lenses.

  “You want me to go around your house like this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright.”

  The whore left the bedroom with the highball in hand. Allyn didn’t care where she went in the house or what she saw, and if she was naked, what could she steal? But that wasn’t why the notion had come to him to send her off that way. He couldn’t be sure why he’d told her to leave her clothes behind. The idea of a naked hooker flowing through the house, admiring and touching Eva’s things, seemed somehow cleansing. There was a benefit to that, but he couldn’t wrap his thoughts around what that would be. Like a mine, the value lay at the end, in the rock, dark as the woman.

  Allyn sat alone, with her in the veins of the house. An hour ago he’d forgotten her name when she told it to him, it sounded as fake as her eyes, so he’d let it slide off him with his pants and shirt. The house was too large to listen out for her; he’d need to stand outside the bedroom and look over the rail, down into the gallery, to get any sense of where she was. She didn’t rattle about but, barefoot, glided through the place. Naked in the leather chair, Allyn turned on the gooseneck lamp again. He examined his small hands, their creased palms and spotted backs.

  The whore’s laugh came from somewhere on the first floor. Her voice was surprised. She’d come upon something expensive and marveled aloud, feeling free to do so in the great expanses of the house. Perhaps she’d intended for Allyn to hear, meant her outburst as flattery. But she came off as vulgar, and Allyn realized why he’d brought her home, and why he’d let her loose.

  The whore fouled what she touched, stained what she saw. All of it was Eva’s. The whore was helping to bury the last of his wife, helping Allyn say good-bye. The whore was a shame, like Juma and the money he made. Eva, in her lifetime, did nothing shameful. She would not approve, so Allyn was taking away her voice.

  He stared at the bedroom’s open door for the whore to return. He was not impatient. He waited while she toured, blank of mind the way a man stands a long time in a hot shower, under a good scouring.

  When his cell phone lit up, it showed Juma calling. Allyn drew a sharp breath, awakened. He didn’t answer Juma but gathered the whore’s clothes and shoes, carried them out to the landing, and dumped everything over the rail. At the clatter on the oriental carpet below, she emerged from the recesses of the house. Her breasts jiggled while she collected her things.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Take something and go. Something small.”

  High above her, bare and dangling like the whore, Allyn indicated a table beside a sofa. He pointed at a marble carving of a leaping dolphin, from Florida.

  “That.”

&nb
sp; The whore shook her head up at him, confounded but keeping her mouth shut. She did as instructed. Allyn watched her step into her panties, wiggle into her dress. He felt no distaste or drive for her, only finished. She snatched the statue off the table and flounced out the front door.

  Allyn dressed. Downstairs, he turned off all the lights the whore had left burning. Eva had made a bright home, she liked candles and music fluting throughout. She’d not been an overly smart woman but had a full heart, a filling way, even as a girl. Eva gave gift baskets and visited sick friends, threw theme parties, hugged everyone hello and good-bye. Over the decades, as Allyn got rich, she didn’t change, not a whit. Maybe this was because she’d been born wealthy, and he had not. The struggle for money claimed him, hardened him more than Eva could soften him. But he’d done much of it for her, to protect her and their son. He’d won that contest. Eva’s life was a cushioned thing, so was the boy’s. She was gone now, and the boy was on his own. Allyn had been abandoned to be the wealthy man he’d become.

  He followed the whore and Eva around the first floor. One room and light switch at a time, he sank the empty house into dimness. When the only glow was again from the upstairs bedroom, Allyn took the phone outside.

  The black lake made an upside-down reflected world. Stars glittered beneath the windows of the lit-up homes on the opposite shore. Doors and porches were flipped. One neighbor came home and walked in on his ceiling. Allyn wished for a pebble to throw into the lake to break the surface and the quiet, separate world on it. He had nothing on hand but the cell phone. He considered throwing it, but the man who could do that, who could not call Juma back, was long gone, if he’d ever existed.

  Juma answered on the first ring. He’d been waiting.

  “Hello, shamwari.”

  “Juma. What is it?”

  “Are you alright? You sound tired.”

  “It’s difficult sometimes. That’s all.”

  “I understand. I’ve lost, too. Many times over. It’s a sad thing. Not the loss of the loved one alone but the hardening, the killing of your own heart to get through it. A sensitive man like you can’t survive if you don’t die a little.”