Fogg heard him talking and turned. “Made a friend, I see, Mr. Drake?”
“Seems to be the case,” Edgar said. “Here.” He rummaged in his pocket until he found an anna. He tossed it down. The boy reached out but missed it, and the coin bounced into a small puddle by the side of the road. The boy dropped to his knees and thrust his hands into the water, searching for the coin, a frightened look on his face. Suddenly his hand grasped something, and he pulled the coin from the water and looked at it triumphantly. He spat on his hand and wiped off the coin, then scampered back to show his friends. Within seconds they were gathered around Edgar’s horse. “No,” said Edgar. “No more coins.” He looked forward and tried to ignore the little outstretched hands.
The villager who had spoken to them left the group and returned minutes later with an older boy, who climbed onto the horse of the first rider. They followed a trail that led out of the village and ran between the rice fields and the uncleared jungle. Behind them, the group of boys ran in gleeful pursuit, their bare feet pattering across the road. At the base of the slope, they turned away from the fields, following a rough clearing which skirted the forest. Soon they passed two men standing at the edge of the jungle. Naked to the waist, one of the men wore a poor imitation of a British helmet and held a rusty old rifle.
“A soldier,” Witherspoon joked. “I hope he didn’t get that from someone he shot.”
Edgar frowned. Fogg chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry. Defects from our factories in Calcutta have an astonishing way of finding their way into places where even our soldiers are afraid to travel.”
Dalton rode up with their guide. “Have they seen the tiger?” Fogg asked.
“Not today, but it was last seen near here. We should load our rifles. Drake, you too.”
“Oh, really, I don’t think…”
“We are going to need all the firepower possible if the beast rushes us. Now, where did all those little children go?”
“I don’t know, I saw them chasing a bird into the forest.”
“Good. Let’s not play Father Christmas here. The last thing we want is an entourage of noisy children.”
“Sorry, I didn’t think—”
Suddenly Witherspoon raised his hand. “Shhh!”
Dalton and Edgar looked at him. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Something in the bushes at the far end of the clearing.”
“Come on, move carefully.” Dalton kicked at his horse. The party advanced slowly.
“There, now I see it!” This time it came from their guide. He raised his arm and pointed to thick bushes. The horses stopped. They were now less than twenty yards from the edge of the clearing.
Edgar felt his heart pound as he followed the man’s arm toward the forest. There was stillness, a slowing, and he gripped his gun and felt the tension of his finger against the trigger. At his side Witherspoon raised his rifle.
They waited. The bushes trembled.
“Blast it, I can’t see a thing. It could be anywhere in there.”
“Don’t fire unless you know it is the tiger. You took enough chances in the forest with that monkey. We have one chance, and we all need to fire at once.”
“It’s there, Captain.”
“Easy now.”
“Damn it, get your rifles ready. It’s moving again.” Wither spoon cocked his rifle and peered through the sights. There was movement in the bushes, slinking steadily, the shaking growing stronger. “It’s coming. Get your rifles up.”
“All right, rifles up. Mr. Drake, you too. We only have one shot at this. Fogg?”
“Locked and loaded. You call the shot, Captain.”
Edgar felt cold sweat break out over his body. His arms were shaking. He could barely raise the rifle stock to his shoulder.
Above them, a vulture flew, looking down on the scene, a group of eight men, five horses, standing in the dry grass of the clearing, hedged on either side by dense jungle that stretched out over the hills. Behind, in the rice fields, a group of women was advancing toward them, walking faster, now running.
Edgar’s horse stood in the back of the group, and so he saw the women first. They seemed to be shouting. He turned and yelled, “Captain!”
“Quiet, Drake, it’s coming.”
“Captain, wait.”
“Shut up, Drake,” Witherspoon snarled, not dropping his eyes from the sights.
But then they heard the shouts too, and Dalton turned. “What is going on?”
The Burman said something. Edgar turned back to look at the bushes. They were shaking more strongly. He could hear the crash of feet in the underbrush.
The women were screaming.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Someone shut them up. They are going to scare it away.”
“Witherspoon, drop your rifle.”
“Don’t ruin this, Dalton.”
“Witherspoon, I told you, drop the rifle. Something is wrong.”
The women were closer. Their cries rose up above the men’s voices.
“Damn! Someone get them to shut up. Fogg, do something!”
Edgar could see Witherspoon stare down his rifle. Fogg, who had been silent until now, swung around on his horse and faced the women. “Halt!” he yelled. The women kept running, crying, lifting the edge of their hta mains as they came.
“Halt! Damn you!”
All was a blur, the running, the shouts, the incessant sun.
Edgar whirled to look back at the forest.
“There it is!” Fogg yelled.
“Captain! Drop your weapon!” Dalton shouted, and kicked his horse toward Witherspoon, who tightened his grip on his rifle and fired.
The rest remains frozen, a sun-washed memory, a slanting. There are cries and screams, but it is the slanting that will haunt Edgar Drake most, the impossible angle of grief, mother to child, the arms outstretched, reaching, pulling at those who try to restrain. A slanting he has never seen, but still recognizes, from pietas, Greek urns with tiny figures wailing oi moi.
He stands and watches for a long time, but it will be days before the horror of what happened comes to him, slamming into his chest, entering him as if he is suddenly possessed. It will happen at an officers’ function at the Administrator’s residence, when he will see a servant girl walk by, carrying her child on her hip. Then it will come, he will feel himself drowning, choking, mumbling half excuses to puzzled officers who ask him if he is feeling well, and he, Yes, don’t worry, I am just a little faint, that’s all, and now stumbling, outside and down the steps, into the garden, where he will fall vomiting into the roses, tears welling up behind his eyes, and he will begin to cry, sobbing, shaking, a grief beyond all proportion, so that later he will think back and wonder for what else he mourned.
But in that moment, in the stillness of the day, as he stands before the scene, he doesn’t move. The boy, the mother, the quiet hush of branches, swayed by a sweet wind that swept over the stillness and the screams. They stand, he and the other pale men. They watch the scene below them, the mother shaking the little body, kissing it, running her bloodied hands over his face, over her face, wailing in an unearthly tone which is both so foreign and so familiar. Until at his side there is a rustling, flashes of other women who rush in, falling by the mother, pulling her back from the boy. Her body tenses forward, against gravity, a canceling of forces. A man at his side, his face washed out in the sun, takes a step backward, staggers briefly, balancing himself against the ground with the butt of his rifle.
That night he awakes many times, disoriented. It will be two days before he collapses in the rose garden, but he feels already that a tear has begun, irreparable, like bits of paint lost as dust to the wind in the ripping of a canvas. It has changed everything, he thinks, This is not part of my plan, my contract, my commission. He remembers writing to Katherine when he first reached Burma that he couldn’t believe he had arrived, that he was really away. A letter that now probably sits on a mail train speeding toward home. And I alone in Rangoon.