Ivory Ghosts

by Caitlin O'Connell

Jon rushed toward a clearing in front of us. I ran after him and, as the clearing opened out, I could see a dead elephant and two former UNITA soldiers in tattered uniforms hacking out a tusk with their machetes. Jon waived Gidean and Natembo ahead to the left and right, and they entered the clearing from three sides.

  “Halt or we’ll shoot!” Jon held them at gunpoint as Gidean and Natembo walked toward them, looking around to the north in case there were more soldiers.

  The soldiers dropped their machetes, grabbed the tusk, and ran. Gidean fired low and hit one of them in the leg as they disappeared into the bush. Gidean and Natembo ran after them, yelling and shooting in the air, while Jon stayed behind to investigate the clearing.

  “Shit!” He looked at tire tracks. “They’ve got a vehicle.”

  As Jon searched for further clues, I couldn’t help but stare at the fresh carcass. I approached the mutilated face and touched the splintered bloody jaw where the tusk had been hacked out. It was a small cow. I looked down and noticed her enlarged mammary glands.

  From the surrounding tracks of both elephants and humans, it looked as if the soldiers had separated this young female elephant from her family. A set of tiny tracks followed along next to and underneath the larger elephant.

  I imagined the mother tossing her trunk at the soldiers with wild eyes, keeping her baby tucked under her. The deep circular drag marks from her feet indicated she had spun wildly around, probably to avoid having her back to her assailants.

  The soldiers would have opened fire and riddled her with bullets before she dropped. I moved over to a depression in the loose dirt next to the drag marks, just next to where the cow lay. It looked like the place where she had dropped to her chest but was then pushed over. The boot marks around the site told me that they probably put a bullet in the side of her head to finish her off before pushing her over so they could chop out her tusks.

  I realized that the second series of roars that we had heard must have come from a baby. They always sounded much louder than expected. It probably tried to charge them. I quickly scoured the area for the footprints left by the calf after the struggle. Sure enough, baby tracks led off to the right. I started following and could see drops of blood. “Bastards!”

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “The baby. It can’t be far.”

  “Are you mad? Catherine, get back here!”

  I kept walking.

  A vehicle started in the distance, and I stopped short. More yelling. Gunfire exchange. As the vehicle noise receded to the north, Gidean and Natembo burst back into the clearing.

  “We’ve got to go. We’ve got to catch them before they cross the border.”

  “We can’t just leave it here to die!”

  “A lot more baby elephants will die if we don’t stop this.”

  I pointed to the footprints. “But it can’t be that far. And it’s wounded.”

  “And what will we do? Invite it to join our herd? Come on, Catherine. There could be more soldiers out here. We’ve got to beat them to the border.”

  I stared into the bush.

  “We can come have a look tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t bear the thought of that baby out there alone and wounded with its mutilated dead mother lying here. I looked at Natembo and Gidean, wondering what they must have thought of me.

  Jon touched my elbow and I followed him. We retraced our route, again running from tree to tree, watching our backs, ears alert for the noise of a snapping twig or the crunch of dried leaves underfoot. We searched vigilantly for fresh footprints until we got to the vehicle.

  After a tense drive to the border, we saw the vehicle tracks enter Angola, and we turned back frustrated. There was nothing we could do.

  Jon dropped me off at my place just after dark. “I’ll pick you up six A.M. sharp. We’ll go find the little tyke.”

  I nodded and got out, knowing that the young elephant probably wouldn’t make it through the night.

  Chapter 24

  I went to bed with two muesli rusks and a fresh cup of rooibos tea with a dab of condensed milk. I was avoiding opening a box of long-life milk and having it go bad—that, and the desire for the sweetness of comfort food. Anything to soothe me after the horror I had just witnessed. I lit a candle, and by the time I had arranged my mosquito net, a moth had already gotten into my tea.

  I gently removed the moth and put it on my cardboard box nightstand. It tried pathetically to flutter its wet, sticky wings. After staring at its struggle, I got up and released it through a hole in the screen, knowing it wouldn’t survive.

  I dipped my rusk into my now scaly tea and took a bite, the crunching echoing in my head. After a few more bites, I blew out the candle, got into bed, and shut my eyes. Somehow I managed to pass the night between nightmares and waking dreams.

  —

  I woke with a start and looked at my watch. Five thirty A.M. and still dark. It didn’t matter how pointless it was to relive it, but when I woke from the recurring reenactment of Sean’s death, I always kept rewinding and replaying it again and again. Sometimes I froze up, and the actual memory would restart. Sometimes I’d follow through with the killing blow, and the altered memory would restart.

  I opened the tiny woven basket on my nightstand and pulled out my ring. I held it in my fingers, turning it around and around, and then put it on. I had been afraid to wear it again, but it suddenly felt like I needed the crutch.

  I groaned, got up, and splashed cold water on my face from the bathroom tap. I inhaled and then exhaled slowly. A shower would have helped, but I hadn’t hooked up my Geyser hot water heater yet. I wasn’t in the mood for a tongue-biting shower despite how much I would have appreciated it afterward. Showering in the middle of the day when the water had been heated up in the pipes was more bearable. I promised myself that I’d hook up the Geyser the following week.

  I went to the kitchen to light the kettle, grab a couple of rusks, and put together my backpack. I packed a small bottle of gin, two tonics, and a can of pilchards. I didn’t think I’d feel much like drinking, but I couldn’t help anticipating the probable fate of the baby elephant. I shoved an extra shirt and light sweater into my bag, not sure how long a day it would be. Habit forced me to pack for getting stuck. I also packed my binoculars, my revolver, and some extra shells.

  I sat on my porch staring at the floodplain for a while, dunking my rusk into my tea, until Jon’s vehicle pulled up. He got out and walked up the steps. “You look refreshed.”

  “Good night’s sleep and tea fixes just about anything, right?” I smiled unconvincingly. “Tea?”

  “Cheers, thanks. I’ve had.” Jon looked around at the wasps’ nests and sagging roof. “How are you getting on in this ol’ dump anyway?”

  “Love the view.”

  “Must be an oven inside.”

  I nodded. “Not sure which is worse, the ghosts or the bad dreams.”

  Jon picked up a rusk and pointed it at me. “The truth holds more horror than dreams around here, Catherine.” He took a bite and crunched loudly as he walked down the stairs with me following. “Of that, I can assure you,” he said over his shoulder.

  “How is Bernie’s wife?”

  He grimaced. “She’ll be okay. She had to be expecting it. It’s amazing he lasted this long.”

  Jon climbed into the vehicle and started it up as I threw my backpack into the passenger seat and got in. We drove over a rise and down to the expansive floodplain, chasing a herd of zebra back into the forest. The sky was wide and blue, spotted with fluffy clouds that promised to stay innocuous, at least for a while.

  “You’ll be relieved to know that the wounded buffalo has been put out of its misery. They found the tracks near the station a half hour ago and decided to follow them up the river.”

  “That’s good to hear. After yesterday, I couldn’t help wondering what happens when you come across poachers. Do you shoot them?”

  Jon shook his head and lowered his voice.
“I’ve got a letter from the permanent secretary. Says we’re allowed to defend ourselves in the line of duty. No one would go out if they couldn’t. You saw what it was like.”

  As we approached the clearing where we had seen the elephants the day before, Jon parked next to a tree and turned off the engine. I pulled out my holster. “Okay for me to carry?”

  Jon paused and looked at my pistol. “That thing registered?”

  I nodded.

  “Then, okay, as backup.”

  We got out and walked cautiously toward the site of the poaching incident. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I braced myself for the worst.

  We heard a low cough.

  Jon whispered, “Lion.”

  Jon held up his rifle and peered into the clearing. It was a gruesome sight—elephant entrails splayed out and a pride of fatted lions littered about the clearing, sticky with blood. Some yearling lions were crouched down, stalking something behind the carcass.

  We kept our distance from the lions and slowly walked around the carcass. The lions glared at us with mouths open and panting, immobilized by their full bellies. The baby elephant stood behind its dead mother, exhausted and mortally wounded with deep claw marks across its back. His hindquarters were gnawed to the bone. I couldn’t believe he was still alive.

  The poor thing was charging at the lions hopelessly, ears out, tossing its torn and flaccid trunk at the taunting lions. The young lions seemed amused and surrounded the calf, some crouching at the front while another jumped on its back.

  The calf bellowed.

  Without thinking, I pulled my revolver out of the holster and fired off a shot. The lions scattered—the elders more sluggish than the youngsters. The baby elephant also ran off.

  “Catherine!”

  “I just couldn’t let them do it!”

  “But that’s nature, Catherine. It’s goddamned bloody nature.”

  I was furious. “That elephant didn’t lose its mother by natural causes!” I moved to follow the baby, and Jon held me back by the arm.

  “Catherine, the little bugger is finished. As soon as you make this personal, you lose everything. Can’t you see that?”

  I shook my head and tried to hold back a flood of tears. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

  He turned and gave me a grave look. “I just don’t want to see you make a mistake. You need to keep your head on straight if you really want to make a difference in this place.”

  I hesitated. If Jon only knew just how straight my head had been on in order to keep everything that I had witnessed in the past week inside, he wouldn’t have said that. I kicked the sand littered with acacia thorns. “Couldn’t we at least put it out of its misery?”

  Jon tightened his lips and motioned for me to follow him. We tracked the baby and found it standing next to a tree looking hideously mauled and pathetic. Jon held up his rifle and shot once. The calf collapsed.

  In the silent aftermath, Jon put a hand on my shoulder. “The broken dreams of both man and beast.” He took my hand, squeezed it, and led me away. “Come, I know just what we need right now.”

  Chapter 25

  We drove back over several rises and down onto a winding floodplain track that turned from Terminalia open woodland to dense acacia forest. It was only noon, so I was glad of Jon’s offer of a drive so as not to spend the rest of the day in my barracks.

  As I looked out at the landscape, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a great day for a flight. I would have loved to have offered to take Jon up in the air, but Craig had asked me not to fly again until he got further international clearance for me to fly into Zambia at night. It turned out that Craig’s concerns were legitimate; my night flight had caused some political waves with the Zambian authorities, since my clearance was for daytime only. And not having expected me to see as much as I did in Angola on my first flight, we had to be strategic. If I was seen in the air too much, Geldenhuis might start to keep an eye on my movements, which was exactly what we didn’t want to happen. I planned to keep a low profile and not fly again until we did the census.

  We passed some broken-down military installations within the trees. I looked out at the concrete rubble. “What happened here?”

  “It was one of those last-minute things, just after the South African Defense Force left the area. They didn’t want to give Namibia anything, after promising to leave their entire infrastructure in place. Things went sour, and they came up and demolished it all.”

  “What a waste.”

  “A bloody stuff-up is what it was.”

  We drove on, the terrain alternating between forest and open floodplain, until we reached a hippo-filled lagoon where the acacia trees had been heavily eaten by elephants. Jon slowed to a stop.

  I looked out at a forest chewed to the ground. He was right. This place was worse than the last. “I’ve never seen anything this bad.”

  “It’s particularly heavy near the river. The elephants were never this concentrated. After the eighties, with no more funding by your Hollywood cowboy president and our guys in South Africa, UNITA took to wildlife for their army’s sustenance. There was nothing left to eat but the pachyderms back then. But after Savimbi died, it got even worse. Their elephants have taken permanent refuge here in the Caprivi.”

  Suddenly, a hippo hooted, snorted, and then hollered in the background. “Come on. It’s getting late, and the night belongs to elephants.” He looked at his watch. “There’s still time for a quick visit to Horseshoe. I’ve got a little tree platform I want to show you. The view is to die for.”

  We rounded a corner and arrived at the expansive oxbow lake I had seen from the air, the river bending around in a perfect horseshoe, hence the name of the place. A herd of about two hundred buffalo finished their drink and returned to the bush. A baboon troop descended from a sausage tree and ran off bickering and screeching. Several species of lapwing scattered from the water’s edge, the metallic, punctuated call of the blacksmith lapwing filling the air.

  “Nice spot for a braai, hmm? Next time I’ll bring along a bit of flam wors, maybe a lamb rib?”

  “It’s spectacular.” I took in the scene as Jon slowly drove around the lake through the deep sand. He stopped in front of a huge leadwood tree.

  Jon pointed to a tiny platform about fifteen meters up the tree. “There she is. My solace in the bush.”

  I craned my neck to see the platform. “Wow, that’s some serious elevation. How did you get it so high?”

  “Hell, the view is stunning.” Jon got out and started to climb up a series of bent rebar rungs that had been hammered into the trunk.

  I grabbed my backpack and followed him up. “Did you put in this rebar yourself?” My foot slipped on a few of the rungs and my stomach lurched.

  “Lots of downtime between month’s end and poacher’s delight.”

  To avoid looking down, I stared out at the floodplain. A lazy hot breeze fed a distant fire, fueling the haze in the late afternoon air. Fires like this marked the end of the wet season when farmers burned their fields after harvest. This fire had spread to a tree island, where one after another the trees were engulfed in flame. But they didn’t explode as they had near the border in Angola. This fire wasn’t nearly as hot. And the forest wasn’t as dense and dry; it was wetter along the river than it was inland along the Angolan border.

  I slowly made my way from one rung to the next, having to stretch my legs awkwardly between each rung until I got to the top. The view from the tiny half-split-log platform was breathtaking.

  Looking down from the leafy height, I could see two hippos dozing at the base of the oxbow, puffing an occasional blast of air. Another munched loudly on the vegetation next to the river, wearing a long clump of wet grass on its back.

  In the distance, the river snaked down the several-kilometer-wide floodplain, taking a twist here and a turn there as it flowed past scars of old sandy paths marking a time long gone. Downstream, a fisherman poled through the reeds in his mokoro. To
the south there was a sudden burst of elephant screams and bellows as a large herd broke cover and ran to the water.

  I grabbed Jon’s arm, and he shook his head, indicating that all was well. “It’s okay. This time it’s a reunion.”

  “That’s even crazier than what I’ve heard at Susuwe.”

  “Usually gets that way leading up to a full moon. Loopy as bloody wolves.”

  In a few minutes a large family group of elephants emerged from the tree line and approached the water’s edge to the south. Having just heard the roaring and bellowing of an elephant being killed, it was a little hard to remember just how vocal the elephants in the Caprivi were in general, and that this noise did not necessarily mean something bad. There were a number of nights at Susuwe when I heard such a commotion from large family groups, and it took me a little while to habituate to the fact that reunions were very noisy affairs.

  Carefully, I sat down and got out my binoculars.

  “Charismatic megafauna. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It’s amazing. One, two, three, four. There’re four babies in this group. Is that unusual?”

  “We had a great wet season two years back. Elephant babies are the evidence.” Jon looked around, then sat down next to me. “Hell, this is the thing that keeps me going in this bloody heart of darkness. Elephants walking around, remembering the good old days.”

  Two young calves were trying to learn how to control their limp trunks, which looked like noodles dangling in front of their faces. One moved its head from side to side, setting its trunk spinning in limp circles while flapping its tiny ears. The other bounced its head up and down, making its trunk move like a useless yo-yo. An older calf came over to stir up trouble with the youngsters, pulling at one of their trunks in play, prompting the victim to bellow loudly. What looked like an older sister jumped in and stopped the bullying, pushing the older calf away.

  Two young bulls began a jousting session, while some youngsters tackled each other in the shallows, creating a muddy bath where others were trying to drink. Mothers looked on and kept a close watch on the youngest ones, tucking a stray under a belly as needed.