“Are you all right, honey?”
“No,” she said. “I was so proud and Charo was so proud and it was one shot whack like the pelota ball hitting the wall of the fronton. He couldn’t have heard the shot even and Charo and I were shaking hands. You know what it’s like to do something yourself for the first time with all the responsibility. You and G.C. know and that’s why he kissed me.”
“Anybody’d kiss you anytime.”
“Maybe if I wanted them to. Or made them. But this wasn’t like that.”
“Why do you feel bad, honey?”
“You know. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“No, I don’t,” I lied.
“I held straight on the center of his shoulder. It was big and black and shiny and I was about twenty yards from him. He was half toward me and looking toward us. I could see his eyes and they looked so sad. He looked as though he would cry. He looked sadder than anything I’ve ever seen and his leg looked awful. Honey, he had such a long sad face. I don’t have to tell G.C. do I?”
“No.”
“I didn’t have to tell you. But we’re going after the lion together and now my god-damn confidence is gone again.”
“You’ll shoot beautifully. I’m proud to be with you with the lion.”
“The awful thing is that I can shoot properly too. You know it.”
“I remember all the beauty shots you made. And all the wonderful times you shot better than anyone at Escondido.”
“You just help me get back my confidence. But there’s such a short time.”
“You’ll get it back and we won’t tell G.C.”
We sent the lorry for the wildebeest. When they came back with him G.C. and I climbed up to have a look at him. They are never a handsome animal when dead. He lay big paunched and dusty, all his bluff gone and his horns gray and undistinguished. “Mary took an awfully fancy shot at him,” G.C. said. The wildebeest’s eyes were glazed and his tongue out. His tongue was dusty too and he had been drilled behind the ear just at the base of the skull.
“Now where do you suppose she actually held?”
“She shot him from only twenty yards. She had a right to hold up there if she wanted to.”
“I’d have thought she’d have taken him through the shoulder,” G.C. said.
I didn’t say anything. There was no use trying to fool him and if I lied to G.C. he would not forgive me.
“What about that leg?” I asked.
“Someone chasing at night with a car. Could be something else.”
“How old would you say it was?”
“Two days. It’s maggoty.”
“Somebody up the hill then. We’ve heard no cars at night. He’d come downhill with the leg anyway. He certainly wouldn’t climb with it.”
“He’s not you and me,” G.C. said. “He’s a wildebeest.”
We had stopped under the hitching post tree and were all getting out. G.C. and I went over to the truck which still held the wildebeest and he explained to his Chief Game Scout and the other scouts who had come up where we wanted the bait tied up. It was only to be dragged up to the tree from the road and then hung up out of reach of hyenas. The lions would pull it down if they came to it. It was to be dragged past where last night’s kill had been. They were to go up and get it up as quickly as possible and return to camp. My people had all the baboon baits hung up and I told Mthuka to wash the car out well. He said he had stopped at the stream and washed it.
We all took our baths. Mary took hers first and I helped dry her with a big towel and held her mosquito boots for her. She put a bathrobe on over her pajamas and went out by the fire to have a drink with G.C. before they started their cooking. I stayed with them until Mwindi came out from the tent and said “Bathi Bwana,” and then I took my drink into the tent and undressed and lay back in the canvas tub and soaped myself and relaxed in the hot water.
“What do the old men say the lion will do tonight?” I asked Mwindi, who was folding my clothes and laying out pajamas, dressing gown and my mosquito boots.
“Keiti says Memsahib’s lion maybe eats on bait maybe not. What does Bwana say?”
“The same as Keiti.”
“Keiti says you mganga with the lion.”
“No. Only a little good medicine to find out when he dies.”
“When he die?”
“In three days. I could not find out which day.”
“Mzuri. Maybe he dies tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so. But he may.”
“Keiti don’t think so either.”
“When does he think?”
“In three days.”
“Mzuri. Please bring me the towel.”
“Towel right by your hand. Bring him if you like.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. There is no word for I’m sorry in Swahili.
“Hapana sorry. I just say where it was. You want me rub back?’ ”
“No thank you.”
“You feel good?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Hapana why. I ask to know.”
“Feel very good.” I stood up and got out of the tub and started to dry myself. I wanted to say that I felt good and very relaxed and a little sleepy and did not feel much like talking and would have preferred fresh meat to spaghetti but had not wished to kill anything and that I was worried about all three of my children for different causes and that I was worried about the Shamba and I was a little worried about G.C. and quite worried about Mary and that I was a fake as a good witch doctor, but no more a fake than the others were, and that I wished Mr. Singh would keep out of trouble and that I hoped the operation we were committed in as from Christmas Day would go well and that I had some more 220 grain solids and that Simenon would write fewer and better books. I did not know all the things Pop would discuss with Keiti when he had his bath but I knew Mwindi wanted to be friendly and so did I. But I was tired tonight for no reason and he knew it and was worried.
“You ask me for Wakamba words,” he said.
So I asked him for Wakamba words and tried to memorize them and then I thanked him and went out to the fire to sit by the fire in an old pair of pajamas from Idaho, tucked into a pair of warm mosquito boots made in Hong Kong and wearing a warm wool robe from Pendleton, Oregon, and drank a whisky and soda made from a bottle of whisky Mr. Singh had given me as a Christmas present and boiled water from the stream that ran down from the Mountain animated by a siphon cartridge made in Nairobi.
I’m a stranger here, I thought. But the whisky said no and it was the time of day for the whisky to be right. Whisky can be as right as it can be wrong and it said I was not a stranger and I knew it was correct at this time of night. Anyway my boots had come home because they were made of ostrich hide and I remembered the place where I had found the leather in the boot-maker’s in Hong Kong. No, it was not me who found the leather. It was someone else and then I thought about who had found the leather and about those days and then I thought about different women and how they would be in Africa and how lucky I had been to have known fine women that loved Africa. I had known some really terrible ones who had only gone there to have been there and I had known some true bitches and several alcoholics to whom Africa had just been another place for more ample bitchery or fuller drunkenness.
Africa took them and changed them all in some ways. If they could not change they hated it.
So I was very happy to have G.C. back in camp and so was Mary. He was happy to be back too because we had become a family and we always missed each other when we were apart. He loved his job and believed in it and its importance almost fanatically. He loved the game and wanted to care for it and protect it and that was about all he believed in, I think, except a very stern and complicated system of ethics.