Willie opened the door and smiled, “Hello, you chaps.” He looked for Mary and said, “Get the lion yet, Miss Mary?”
He spoke in a sort of swinging lilting voice that moved with the rhythm that a great boxer has when he is floating in and out with perfect, unwasting movements. His voice had a sweetness that was true but I knew it could say the most deadly things without a change of tone.
“I couldn’t kill him, Willie,” Miss Mary called. “He hasn’t come down yet.”
“Pity,” said Willie. “I have to get a few odds and ends out here. Ngui can give me a hand. Pots of mail for you, Miss Mary. Papa has a few bills. Here’s the mail.”
He tossed the big manila envelope to me and I caught it.
“Good to see you retain some sign of basic reflexes,” Willie said. “G.C. sent his love. He’s on his way.”
I handed the mail to Mary and we commenced to unload the plane and put the packages and boxes into the hunting car.
“Better not do any actual physical labor, Papa,” Willie said. “Don’t tire yourself. Remember we’re saving you for the Main Event.”
“I heard it was canceled.”
“Still on I believe,” Willie said. “Not that I’d pay to see it.”
“Even you and Willie,” Mary said.
“Come on let’s go to campi,” she said to Willie.
“Coming, Miss Mary,” Willie said. He came down now in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his blue serge shorts and his low brogues and smiled lovingly at Miss Mary as he took her hand. He was handsome with fine merry eyes and an alive tanned face and dark hair and shy without any awkwardness. He was the most natural and best-mannered person I have ever known. He had all the sureness of a great pilot. He was modest and he was doing what he loved in the country he loved.
We had never asked each other any questions except about aircraft and flying. Everything else was supposed to be understood. I assumed he had been born in Kenya because he spoke such fine Swahili and was gentle and understanding with Africans but it never occurred to me to ask him where he was born and he might have come out to Africa as a boy for all I knew.
We drove slowly into camp in order not to raise dust and got out under the big tree between our tents and the lines. Miss Mary went over to see Mbebia the cook to have him make lunch at once and Willie and I walked over to the mess tent. I opened a bottle of beer that was still cold in the canvas bag that hung against the tree and poured one in each of our glasses.
“What’s the true gen, Papa,” Willie asked. I told him.
“I saw him,” Willie said. “Old Arap Meina seemed to have him under fairly close arrest. He does look a little bit the type, Papa.”
“Well, we’ll check his Shamba. Maybe he has a Shamba and maybe they had elephant trouble.”
“We’ll check the elephants too. That will save time and then we’ll drop him off here and then have a general look around on the other thing. I’m taking Ngui. If there are elephant and we have to work it out Meina knows all the country and he and Ngui and I will do it and Ngui and I will have made the recon.”
“It all seems sound,” Willie said. “You fellows do keep quite busy here for a quiet area. Here comes Miss Mary.”
Mary came in delighted with the prospect of the meal.
“We’re having Tommy chops, mashed potatoes and a salad. And it will be here right away. And a surprise. Thank you so much for finding the Campari, Willie. I’m going to have one now. Will you?”
“No thank you, Miss Mary. Papa and I are drinking a beer.”
“Willie, I wish I could go. But anyway I’ll have all the lists made and write the checks and the letters ready and after I kill the lion I’ll fly in with you to Nairobi to get the things for Christmas.”
“You must be shooting very well, Miss Mary, from that beautiful meat I saw hanging in the cheesecloth.”
“There’s a haunch for you and I told them to change it around carefully to be in the shade all day and then wrap it well for you just before you go back.”
“How is everything at the Shamba, Papa?” Willie asked.
“My father-in-law has some sort of combination chest and stomach ailment,” I said. “I’ve been treating it with Sloan’s liniment. Sloan’s came to him as rather a shock the first time I rubbed it in.”
“Ngui told him it was part of Papa’s religion,” Mary said. “They all have the same religion now and it’s reached a point where it is basically awful. They all eat kipper snacks and drink beer at eleven o’clock and explain it is part of their religion. I wish you’d stay here Willie and tell me what really goes on. They have horrible slogans and dreadful secrets.”
“It’s Gitchi Manitou the Mighty versus All Others,” I explained to Willie. “We retain the best of various other sects and tribal law and customs. But we weld them into a whole that all can believe. Miss Mary coming from the Northern Frontier Province, Minnesota, and never having been to the Rocky Mountains until we were married is handicapped.”
“Papa has everybody but the Mohammedans believing in the Great Spirit,” Mary said. “The Great Spirit is one of the worst characters I’ve ever known. I know Papa makes up the religion and makes it more complicated every day. He and Ngui and the others. But the Great Spirit frightens even me sometimes.”
“I try to hold him down, Willie,” I said. “But he gets away from me.”
“How does he feel about aircraft?” Willie asked.
“I can’t reveal that before Mary,” I said. “When we are airborne I’ll give you the word.”
“Anything I can do to help you, Miss Mary, count on me,” Willie said.
“I just wish you could stay around or that G.C. or Mr. P. was here,” Mary said. “I’ve never been present at the birth of a new religion before and it makes me nervous.”
“You must be something along the lines of the White Goddess, Miss Mary. There’s always a beautiful White Goddess isn’t there?”
“I don’t think I am. One of the basic points of the faith as I gather it is that neither Papa nor I are white.”
“That is timely.”
“We tolerate the whites and wish to live in harmony with them as I understand it. But on our own terms. That is on Papa’s and Ngui’s and Mthuka’s terms. It’s Papa’s religion and it is a frightfully old religion and now he and the others are adapting it to Kamba custom and usage.”
“I was never a missionary before, Willie,” I said. “It is very inspiring. I’ve been very fortunate that we have Kibo here that is almost the exact counterpart of one of the foothills of the Wind River range where the religion was first revealed to me and where I had my early visions.”
“They teach us so little at school,” Willie said. “Could you give me any gen on the Wind Rivers, Papa?”
“We call them the Fathers of the Himalayas,” I explained modestly. “The main low range is approximately the height of that mountain Tensing the Sherpa carried that talented New Zealand beekeeper to the top of last year.”
“Could that be Everest?” Willie asked. “There was some mention of the incident in the East African Standard.”
“Everest it was. I was trying to remember the name all day yesterday when we were having evening indoctrination at the Shamba.”
“Jolly good show the old beekeeper put up being carried so high so far from home,” Willie said. “How did it all come about, Papa?”