Sitting on Pious Rock, his left elbow on his raised knee, the thick carrying strap of his hunting rifle swinging slightly underneath his right elbow, Paul Radford trained the cross-hairs of his scope across the body-littered ground. Within that dark magnified circle, finding the boma alive with bloodhawks and hyenas tearing at the grayed human flesh, he spied on the dead and dying, seeing first a bald pate exploded under a high-impact round, seeing next a khaki-shirted chest wheezing bubbles of steaming blood from a punctured lung; turning the focus on the scope, he sighted a sun-bronzed back gored red under repeated rifle fire. As he swept the cold muzzle of his rifle across the scene, barely noting the still burning trucks and trailers, the wind-borne remnants of tents, stores and a movie set, he took careful aim on the lion hunkering on its belly, shaking its black voluminous mane as it worried a bedraggled arm off a young black woman who, still alive, was screaming in anguished pain and horror. He fired.
The bright morning air above the boma exploded into a flurry of black wings and curved red beaks. The lion, having taken the shot below the shoulder, rolled angrily to its side, as if violently pushed, then stormed up on all four legs, bracing itself with unsheathed claws against the invisible intruder that had dared challenge it for the still-warm meat…while the naked woman, not yet fallen into shock from the loss of blood, mewled on her belly underneath it. The sharp report echoed against the walls of the ridge and, in echoes, kept the bloodhawks in air, stirring the funnels of oily smoke. As the echoes of that rifle shot dwindled to naught, the small packs of hyenas, which had bounded back from the isolated puddles of carcasses and wounded men at the first sound of gunfire, skulked back, their wriggling snouts searching that acrid air for who or what had disturbed their orgy of meat.
The young girl beside Radford, naked but for a blanket that was partially open past the upward sweep of her legs, shivered again in the face of wholesale carnage, smelling the appalling stink of it just below the dusty bluffs. Petite M’Abele patted the blanket down at the cross of her legs, as if to keep the snaking stench from invading her nether regions, her unfulfilled desires. She looked to the white man raising the barrel of his rifle to the sky, the wooden stock now down on his bare knee, then looked down at herself again, wondering if she was woman enough for such a man. “Did you get him, Mister Paul?”
Down below, the lion snuffled the air, finding the smell of the man and the girl within the various odors of cordite, burnt cloth and sizzled rubber, all of it masked under the sweet smell of coagulant blood. Steam from its exhalations rising from its nostrils in the warming air, bristly whiskers hanging heavy with crimson droplets of the young woman’s blood, it raised a forepaw to tramp toward its assailant, only to become aware of the bullet at its shoulder, blood of its own now spurting under pressure of a daunted heart before commingling with that of the dead and dying.
Radford stood up, letting the lion see him in silhouette against the morning sun. “I got him,” he answered simply, assured of his skill, his kill. When the beast roared in defiance and pique, seeing him now as the cause of its deadly wound, which pulsed blood in ever-increasing spurts down its left foreleg, Radford shouldered the rifle and began his descent from the bluffs. A meter down, he stopped and looked over his shoulder as he realized the young citoyenne wasn’t following.
“Can I go back to the jeep?” Petite asked meekly, holding her hand out in the direction of the path through the rocky ridge, indicating her way back to the peaceful clean air of the waterhole. “I don’t like it here. There are spirits about, vengeful spirits that will do us harm.”
“There are clothes down there for you: a shirt, pants, shoes. Don’t you want them?” When she remained stock still, unwilling to be persuaded, he turned his back on her and continued scuffing down the slippery slope, scrambling among the rocks and shrubs for handholds before letting gravity force him into a short run down to the base of the bluffs. With a few more strides, his trekking boots now raising wisps of dust at the worn heels, he made it to the edge of the boma, much of it crushed under the track of tanks and trucks, the body of a white man fallen in the thorns, his civil war slouch cap only decimeters from his bloodied face, urine and what else besmirching his trousers. Holding his rifle at the ready while hyenas circled around and away from him, Radford padded across the thorn brush to the bloodied grounds, his boots tinkling the brass casings of dispensed ammunition, sun-brightened under wisps of boot-borne dust.
“Mister Paul,” Petite called from Pious Rock, shifting her weight from foot to bare foot. “Can you get me a shirt, a big shirt?”
He paused, if only for a moment to consider her request, before continuing on to the next body in his line of sight, all the while keeping his eyes on the black-maned lion, teetering now on three legs, its left forepaw raised off the ground, the woman pinned underneath the creature crooking her neck to stare with round dark eyes, beseeching him to hurry.
Whatever it was thinking ~ if it was thinking, certainly believing the man was coming to engage it in a contest that would be the end of one or the other ~ the lion sheathed and unsheathed the claws of its left forepaw, perhaps gauging how effective that deadly defense would actually be, knowing it needed its stronger right forepaw to hold it up against the coming onslaught of raw nerve and muscle, predator to prey. While watching him tread slowly across the bloodied ground, ever closer ~ waiting for him to pounce, to engage in a mortal contest of wills to live, to survive, to feast another day ~ it fixed him eye to eye, seeing there the assurance of victory, of battle cleanly finished, past and soon forgotten, fixed him eye to eye only to see him break eye contact and stare down at the riddled body of a man in cowboy boots, faded jeans under leather chaps, and a red-and-orange checkered shirt.
With the toe of his mud-caked boot, Radford flipped the body onto its back, noting the three bullet holes in the lower abdomen but none across the belly or chest. Leaning on his rifle, he went down on one knee and unbuttoned the shirt, worked the man’s arms out of the sleeves and, in whipping it off him, flipped him over once again onto his front, leaving the cowboy barebacked, the skin translucently white with the blood drained from it. Shaking the jumble of flannel to its full length, one of the tails slightly blooded, he flopped the shirt over his shoulder and stood up, hefting the rifle now by the breech. His fingers far from the trigger, he began walking again towards the lion, no other stops in between, while the woman tried to claw out from underneath the beast with her remaining arm, sniveling all the while, hurting, wondering why he wasn’t hurrying.
Whatever it was thinking ~ if it was thinking, slavering bloody saliva in a long gooey trail onto the mangled arm on which it had been feeding ~ the lion smelled the arrogant confidence in the man approaching him, noting the difference in the man’s smell from that of the woman underneath it, of her black meat adrenalized in fear while his, that white flesh bronzed under African sun, exuded only the sweat of calm assurance, of a final triumph. The lion flared its ears back and bared its yellowed fangs, preparing to mete battle with the full force of its nature, even as the man came closer, ever closer, breathing easily, comfortably unafraid, stopping only when the steam of their intermingled breath rose between them.
Staring at its wide-set eyes, overshadowed by an unruly black forelock, he watched it slowly unsheathe its claws and knead the bloody earth in imitation of mauled flesh, its challenge to him, in defiance of an easy kill. In response, Radford raised his chin at the creature, king of beasts. Though the woman begged in spittle blasts to be freed of the heavy weight on the back of her legs, he simply returned the glowering glare from the monstrous killer, his right hand taut on the handle of his knife, still sheathed in the scabbard at his belt. For the longest time, he watched those tawny orbs until they slowly glazed and closed over the vertical slits in the center of each eye. He raised his mud-clumped boot and, placing it against the lion’s shoulder, pushed, toppling it over…dead.
“Is it…? Is it…?” she woman immediately wailed, trying to claw herself out from under the heavy weight, the fingernails of her good arm scratching into rock and earth, the other arm lying lifeless only decimeters from her face, bare bone and tendons exposed. “Help me!”
He took a backward step, the better to see her face which had been mauled to mush, the scalp partially hanging over her left eye. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, raising the barrel of his rifle to her temple, close enough to touch her. You wouldn’t want to live like this.”
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