Part 10 (1/2)
”In fact,” says Richard, ”all of us are ready to pitch in. We can start tonight, by keeping watch.” He holds out his hands for the rifle, which is always at Johnny's side. ”You can't go all night without sleeping.”
”But you've never shot a rifle like that,” I point out.
”I'll learn.”
”Don't you think that's up to Johnny to decide?”
”No, Millie. I do not think he should be the only one in control of the gun.”
”What are you doing, Richard?” I whisper.
”I could ask the same of you.” The look he gives me is radioactive. Everyone around the campfire goes quiet, and in the silence we hear the distant whoops of hyenas, feasting on the gift of entrails we left behind.
Johnny says, calmly: ”I've already asked Isao to take the second watch tonight.”
Richard looks in surprise at Mr. Matsunaga. ”Why him?”
”He knows his way around a rifle. I checked him out earlier.”
”I am the number one marksman in the Tokyo shooting club,” says Mr. Matsunaga, smiling proudly. ”What time do you wish me to stand watch?”
”I'll wake you up at two, Isao,” says Johnny. ”You'd best get to bed early.”
THE RAGE IN OUR tent is like a living thing, a monster with glowing eyes that waits to attack. I am the one in its sight, the victim in whom its claws will sink, and I keep my voice low and calm, hoping the claws will pa.s.s me by, that those eyes will burn themselves out. But Richard won't let it die.
”What's he been saying to you? What were you two talking about so lovingly?” he demands.
”What do you think we were talking about? How we can make it through this week alive.”
”So it was all about survival, was it?”
”Yes.”
”And Johnny's so b.l.o.o.d.y good at it, we're now stranded.”
”You blame him for this?”
”He's proved to us he can't be trusted. But of course you can't see that.” He laughs. ”There's a term for it, you know. They call it khaki fever.”
”What?”
”It's when women fall into l.u.s.t for their bush guides. All it takes is the sight of a man wearing khaki, and they'll spread their legs for him.”
It's the crudest insult he could fling at me, yet I manage to remain calm because nothing he says can hurt me now. I simply don't care. Instead I laugh. ”You know, I've just realized something about you. You really are a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
”At least I'm not the one who wants to f.u.c.k the bush guide.”
”How do you know I haven't already?”
He flings himself onto his side, turning his back to me. I know he wants to storm out of this tent as much as I do, but it's not safe to even step outside. Anyway, we have nowhere else to go. All I can do is move as far away from him as I can and stay silent. I no longer know who this man is. Something has changed inside him, some transformation that happened while I wasn't watching. The bush has done this. Africa has done this. Richard is now a stranger, or perhaps he was always a stranger. Can you ever really know a person? I once read about a wife who was married for a decade before she discovered her husband was a serial killer. How could she not know it? I thought when I read that article.
But now I do understand how it can happen. I'm lying in a tent with a man I've known for four years, a man I thought I loved, and I feel like the serial killer's wife, the truth about her husband finally laid bare.
Outside our tent, there's a thump, a crackle, and the fire flares brighter. Johnny has just added wood to the flames to keep the animals at bay. Did he hear us talking? Does he know this argument is about him? Perhaps he's seen this happen countless times before on other safaris. Couples dissolving, accusations flying. Khaki fever. A phenomenon so common it's earned a name of its own.
I close my eyes and an image appears in my mind. Johnny standing in the tall gra.s.s at dawn, his shoulders silhouetted by sunrise. Am I infected, just a little, by the fever? He is the one who protects us, who keeps us alive. At the moment he sighted the impala, I was standing right beside him, so close that I saw the muscles snap taut on his arm as he raised the rifle. Once again I feel the thrill of the explosion, as if I myself had pulled the trigger, I had brought down the impala. A shared kill, binding us with blood.
Oh yes, Africa has changed me, too.
I hold my breath as Johnny's silhouette pauses outside our tent. Then he moves past and his shadow glides away. When I fall asleep, it's not Richard I dream about, but Johnny, standing tall and straight in the gra.s.s. Johnny, who makes me feel safe.
Until the next morning, when I wake up to the news that Isao Matsunaga has vanished.
KEIKO KNEELS IN THE GRa.s.s, SOBBING SOFTLY AS SHE ROCKS BACK and forth like a metronome ticking off a rhythm of despair. We've found the rifle, lying just beyond the bell-strung perimeter, but we have not yet found her husband. She knows what that means. We all know.
I stand over Keiko, uselessly stroking her shoulder because I don't know what else to do. I've never been good at comforting people. After my father died, and my mother sat weeping in his hospital room, all I could do was rub her arm, rub, rub, rub, until she finally cried out: ”Stop it, Millie! That's so annoying!” I think Keiko is too distraught to even notice that I'm touching her. Looking down at her bowed head, I see white roots peeking through her black hair. With her pale, smooth skin, she seemed so much younger than her husband, but now I realize she's not young at all. That a few months out here will reveal her true age as her black hair turns to silver, as her skin darkens and wrinkles in the sun. Already she seems to be shriveling before my eyes.
”I'm going to search by the river,” says Johnny, and he picks up the rifle. ”All of you, stay here. Better yet, wait in the truck.”
”The truck?” Richard says. ”You mean that piece of junk you can't even start?”
”If you stay in the truck, nothing will hurt you. I can't search for Isao and protect you at the same time.”
”Wait. Johnny,” I speak up. ”Should you be out there by yourself?”
”He's got the f.u.c.king gun, Millie,” Richard says. ”We've got nothing.”
”While he's hunting for tracks, someone needs to watch his back,” I point out.
Johnny gives a curt nod. ”Okay, you're my spotter, Millie. Stay close.”
As I step over the perimeter wire, my boot b.u.mps the strand and the bells tinkle. Such a sweet ringing, like a wind chime on the breeze, but out here it means the enemy has invaded and my heart gives a reflexive kick of alarm at the sound. I take a deep breath and follow Johnny into the gra.s.s.
I was right to come with him. His attention is fixed on the ground as he searches for clues, and he could very well miss seeing the flick of a lion's tail off in the underbrush. As we move forward I am constantly scanning behind us, all around us. The gra.s.s is tall, up to my hips, and I think of puff adders and how you might step on one and not know it until fangs sink into your leg.
”Here,” Johnny says quietly.
I look where the gra.s.s has been flattened and see a bare patch of soil and a sc.r.a.pe mark left by something being dragged across it. Johnny's already moving again, following the trail of flattened gra.s.s.
”Did the hyenas take him?”
”Not hyenas. Not this time.”
”How do you know?”
He doesn't answer, but keeps moving toward a grove of trees, which I'm now able to recognize as sycamore figs and jackal berries. Though I cannot see the river, I hear it rus.h.i.+ng somewhere close by, and I think of crocodiles. Everywhere you look in this place, in the trees, in the river, in the gra.s.s, teeth are waiting to bite, and Johnny relies on me to spot them. Fear sharpens my senses and I'm aware of details I've never noticed before. The kiss of river-chilled wind against my cheek. The way freshly trampled gra.s.s smells like onions. I am looking, listening, smelling. We are a team, Johnny and I, and I won't fail him.
Suddenly I sense the change in him. His soft intake of breath, his abrupt stillness. He is no longer focused on the ground, but has straightened to his full height, shoulders squared.