“And your mother?”
“I know my mother. She is right where I left her. And yet I will see her, Tracker. I leave in two days. Then we can go on whatever adventure you like.”
“You are the one always seeking adventure. Meet me in Malakal.”
“Meet me where you smell my scent. A lazy night this is, and we have fucked out the entire quarter. Drink some more.”
I drank and he drank until we tamed that fire in the chest, and then we drank more. And he said, Let us forget talk of fathers, friend. Then he kissed me on the mouth. This was nothing; Nyka kissed all and everyone, in greeting or parting.
“I shall find you in ten days,” I said to him.
“Eight is the better number,” he said. “More than seven days with my mother and all I can do is try not to kill her. Drink some more.”
A warmth, first on my forehead, ran down my neck. I opened my eyes and the piss hit my face and blinded me. I rubbed my eyes without thinking, and my right hand pulled my left. A shackle on my right hand, a chain, a shackle on my left. In front of me, a leg raised and piss spurting on me. Off in the dark, loud laughter. I lashed out but the chain stopped me. I tried to stand, I tried to scream, the women in the dark laughed louder. The animal, the beast, the dog pissed on me like I was the trunk of a tree. First I thought Nyka just left me drunk in an alley to be pissed on by dogs. Or someone, a madman or a slaver—they infested these alleys—or a husband who did not want me to find him now found me. My mind went wild, thinking three men or four, or five had found me in the alley and said, Here is the man who took the comfort from our lives. But men did not laugh like women. The dog lowered his foot and trotted away. The floor was dirt and I could make out walls. My mind went wild again. I would ask, Who are you men that I shall soon kill, but something gagged my mouth.
Popping out of the dark first, two red eyes. Then teeth, long and white and ready. Light was above me when I looked up, light peeking through branches hiding this hole. A trap I fell into. A trap long forgotten, so that even the trapper would not know that I shall die here. But who put a gag in my mouth? Was it so that I could not scream while it bit into me and tore chunks apart? And yet before I saw the face, when it was just eyes and teeth, the piss told me everything. The hyena backed up in the dark, then charged straight at me. Another jumped out of the dark from the side and knocked her in the ribs, and they both rolled into the dark, scowling, growling, barking. Then they stopped and started laughing again.
“Men in the West call us the Bultungi. You have unfinished business with us,” she said in the dark.
I would have said I have no business with spotted devils, or that nothing glorious springs from deceiving scavengers, but I had a gag in my mouth. And hyenas, from what I knew, had no qualm with live flesh.
The three came out of the dark: a girl; a woman older, perhaps her mother; and a still older woman, thin, with her back straight. The girl and the old woman wore nothing. The girl, her breasts like large plums, hips spread wide; her nana, a sprout of black-haired bush. The old woman, her face mostly cheekbones, her arms and frame thin, and her breasts lanky. The middle woman, her hair in braids, wore a red boubou tunic with rips and smudges. Wine, or dirt, or blood, or shit, I didn’t know; I could smell all of them. Also this. I looked into the dark for the male who pissed on me, but no man came. But the two naked women came in the little light, and I saw it on both of them. Long cocks, or what looked like cocks between their legs, thick and swinging quick.
“Behold, it looks at us,” the middle one said.
“Look at hyena womankind, longer and harder than you,” the young one said.
“Shall we eat it now? Take him in? Limb by limb?” the old one said.
“Will you raise much fuss, man? Living or dead flesh makes no difference to us,” the middle one said.
“Come, come no fuss, rend the flesh, juice the blood, eat it, us,” the old one said.
“I say we kill him now,” the young one said.
“No, no, eat him slow, start with the feet, precious meat,” the old woman said.
“Now.”
“Later.”
“Now!”
“Later!”
“Quiet!” the middle one shouted, then swung her arms wide and struck both.
The young one changed first, in a blink. Her nose and mouth and chin shot out of her face and her eyes went white. The muscles on her shoulder pumped and popped up, and those in her arms raised from arm to fingertip as if snakes ran under the skin. On the old woman her chest spread as if new flesh was tearing out of the old, all under her rough skin. Her face went the same. Her fingers, now black claws, the tips like iron. All this happened far quicker than I describe it. The old woman growled, and the young girl did the heh-heh-heh laugh that was not a laugh. The old woman charged the middle one but she swatted her away like a fly. The old woman pawed the ground, thinking to charge again.
“It took your ribs five moons to heal last time,” the middle one said.
“Take the gag out and let him give us sport,” the old one said. The young one changed back to girl. She came to me and indeed her smell was foul. Whatever she last ate, she ate days ago and chunks of it rotted somewhere on her body. She ran her hands around the back of my head and I thought of banging my head against the wall, anything, even the slightest thing to resist. She laughed and her foul breath ran past my nose. She pulled the gag and I coughed up vomit. They all laughed. She came in close to my face as if about to lick the vomit off, or kiss it.
“A comely bitch, this one be,” she said.
“As man goes, he will not be the worst to go down my stomach,” the old one said.
“Long in leg, thin in muscle, lean in fat, he will not be much of a meal,” said the old one.
“Salt him with his brains, and add some hog fat to his flesh,” said the young one.
“I give him this,” said the middle one. “In the only matter that counts with man, he impresses me. How do you run with it swinging so low?”
I coughed until my throat was raw.
“Maybe he will have water,” the old one said.
“I have in me some strong water,” the young one said, and laughed. She hiked up her left leg and grabbed her dangling cock, then laughed instead of pissed. The old one laughed as well.
The middle one stepped forward. She said, “We are the Bultungi, and you have unfinished business with us.”
“Unfinished business I will finish with my hatchet,” I coughed. They all laughed.
“Chop it off, place it in another room, and boom! Man still acting like he swinging,” said the old one.
“Old bitch, not even me understand that,” said the young one.
The middle one stood right before me. “Do you not remember us?” she said.
“The hyena has never been a memorable beast.”
“Make me give him something to remember,” the young one said.
“Truly who remembers the hyena? You look like the head of a dog pushing out of the asshole of cat walking backwards.”
The old and middle women laughed, but the young one flipped to fury. She changed. Still on two legs, she charged for me. Middle one kicked her leg out and tripped her. Young one landed hard on her chin and slid a little. She crouched and growled at the middle one, then started to circle her as if about to fight over fresh kill. She growled again, but the middle one, still in the form of woman, let loose a snarl louder than a roar. Maybe the room shook or maybe the young one, but even I felt something shift. She whimpered heh-heh-hehs under her breath.
“How long since you saw our sisters?”
I coughed again.
“I stay away from half-dead hogs and rotting antelope, so I would never see your sisters.”