The Story of Bones Page 4

  “Zero?” I felt a thud in my heart. A world without elephants seemed impossible.

  “We lose tens of thousands of elephants a year to ivory hunters. The stress of the gunfire and killing can cause surviving herds to stop breeding altogether.”

  “Isn’t anyone fighting the poachers?” The question came out sharpish. I couldn’t believe the extermination of elephants would go unchallenged.

  “Game rangers do their best, but they’re outmanned and outgunned. They walk into the bush, land they’ve lived on and loved all their lives, and come face-to-face with hardened fighters—soldiers, really, who will not hesitate to shoot. Rangers can make arrests, but they’re not allowed to fire except in self-defense. The two sides operate under entirely different, unfair rules.”

  How my father had come upon this information, I didn’t know. He must have read my mind because he looked up from the slab of meat and said, “A few rangers live in the village. They keep quiet to avoid becoming targets.” His face was as expressionless as a lid. But his eyes locked on mine in a way that told me more.

  “You help them, don’t you?” My voice came out a whisper while something like relief flooded through me. My father had never truly believed the atrocities were “beyond us.”

  He looked down, considering. “When I can. I’ve alerted rangers to tire tracks and fresh graves. I do this quietly, you understand.”

  I nodded, both afraid for him and swelled by the confidence he had shown in me. “Graves?”

  “Poachers try to hide actual murder.”

  When I found my voice, I said, “Did you tell the rangers about the elephants today?” I guessed he had completed more than one errand at Captain Biggie’s.

  He nodded. “They already knew.” He paused and shook his head. “They saw the vultures too. But they got there too late to do anything except file a report.”

  Almost involuntarily, I raised my eyes and scanned the sky. From that moment forward, every funnel of vultures I saw spiraling toward earth would carry a new and troubling possibility.

  * * *

  We finished the brining in time for me to hang around the kitchen and help Zola cook. “We’re having the heart for dinner,” she said when she saw me, flashing a tender look so like Mama’s that I forgave her for her abrupt dismissal earlier. She had already sliced the kidneys and liver and put them to soak in water mixed with lemon juice. I knew she would make a delicious kidney scramble in the morning and liver and onions tomorrow night.

  “I’m following Mama’s recipes. At least I think this is how she did it.”

  We fell silent for a moment at the mention of our dead mother. From her little chair in the corner, Hannie called, “Mama, Mama.” Hannie knew the word but not the heartache.

  I stood close to Zola, admiring her long, tapering fingers and the easy way she handled the knife. She applied the slender blade to the thickest part of the muscle, telling me about each part as she cut it away—the ventricles, the valve openings.

  “This is a lot like hollowing out a bell pepper after you’ve sliced off the stem and cap,” she informed me.

  I had never hollowed out a bell pepper, but I nodded, fine with her assumption that I knew more than I did. Like Baba, Zola liked to teach me things. I had learned a lot about anatomy from watching her clean game in the kitchen. Now, as the trimmed heart flesh fell neatly away, the image of the eviscerated elephants flashed before me, and my mood darkened.

  “We saw dead elephants,” I said all at once. I hadn’t planned to tell her; the words simply escaped. “A whole herd of them.”

  She held the knife midair, looking at me. “Dead elephants? Today?”

  “Poachers cut out their tusks.”

  “That must have been a terrible thing to see.”

  “It was.” Having gained her full attention, I stood a little taller, manning up to the trauma in a way I thought fitting for a triumphal impala hunter. Nonetheless, my chin trembled. “It was terrible.”

  I waited, hoping for more sympathy. But Zola had turned away. She took up the trimmed heart, cupping it in her hands as gently as she would a baby. She held the heart under running water for a moment and then laid the rinsed muscle on the cutting board.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? So hardworking, and now it feeds us too.” She paused, looking at me. “You did well today. You can be proud of your hunting. Poachers have to run and hide.”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. I had never attached the word “beautiful” to an organ cut from an animal. I watched the moist cutlets tip from Zola’s knife and found solace in the reminder that “my” impala’s recently beating heart would nourish five people. The pride I had felt at my clean shot resided somewhere beneath the boulder in my chest. As much as I loved hunting, mixed feelings like these had become a familiar aftereffect of taking the life of an innocent creature. I wondered whether poachers who slaughtered elephants for ivory felt even a twinge of remorse. The likelihood that they did not gave me a chill.

  We sat down for our meal of fried heart and potatoes. Zola cut Hannie’s portion into tiny bits. I liked mine with ketchup, even though Baba said anything other than salt and pepper was sacrilegious. When we finished, Baba retired to the front porch to smoke a cigarette and finish his six-pack. Zola freed me from cleanup to tend the brined meat that sat waiting on the workbench outside.

  We had eaten early, but already the sun was sinking. I pumped fresh water into a pail and added a splash of vinegar, hurrying to make the most of the remaining light. On the workbench I lined up the container of brined meat, the pail of vinegar water, and the lengths of string we boiled and reused for hanging game. At the end of this row, next to the workbench, sat the drying rack with four horizontal rods spaced a hand’s width apart.

  The sharp bark of a baboon pierced the air, calling a troop to its evening roost. The air simmered with mosquitoes. I rubbed vinegar on my skin to discourage them from biting me. I felt belly-full and grown-up, an essential cog in the welfare of my family. Rinsing, tying, and hanging each strip of meat was tedious work, but this night I welcomed the job. I liked the prospect of biltong in our pantry made from game I had bagged, cured, and hung myself. I still felt pleased that Baba had trusted me to take the shot. Even now, as he sat useless on the porch, peering out through the amber lens of his fifth or sixth beer, I didn’t resent him for abandoning me after dinner or judge him harshly for his bad habits.

  I suppose my forbearance, no matter how much Baba drank or disappointed, sprang in part from my guilt about Mama’s death. I knew I could have done things differently: yelled for help or screamed at Mama about the snake under the washtub. To my relief, Baba never associated me with the horror of that day. I don’t think he even remembered I had been at home. For weeks his grief was a frightful, crushing thing so all-consuming that he forgot to eat and wash and even misplaced our names. He would stumble out of his dark room and stare at Zola, Hannie, and me as if taken aback by the strangers in his kitchen. He lost weight, grew an untidy beard, and sprouted silvery threads in his hair. We feared he might never recover until one day he stepped through the door and said, “Good morning, Bonesy, Zola. What’s for breakfast?”

  If he had been an abusive drunk, like another father or two in the village whose sons came to school marked with ugly purple bruises, things would have been very different. But alcohol made our father quiet and dreamy. He could go for days, even weeks, between binges. During the sober periods, he was capable of impressive spurts of energy. He would be up at sunrise to hoe, weed, and water. He repaired the fence, the pump, Hannie’s broken doll, anything that needed fixing. He sold surplus vegetables at the market; he bought supplies for Zola. He took me fishing and hunting. He did all of this with the urgency of a family man preparing for disaster—a loving father who knew his sobriety wouldn’t last.

  A bright, gibbous moon appeared just as I got to work. Soon I found a rhyt
hm. Rinse, tie, hang. Rinse, tie, hang. I was careful to space the strips of meat evenly so that each one hung free, not touching another. The rack could hold about fifty strips per pole—two hundred total. I kept count, and as the number grew, so did my gratitude to the animal whose life I had taken.

  Every household in our village claimed to have the best biltong recipe. Some families rubbed the flesh with spices or sugar. Some liked it soft and fatty; others preferred it hard and dry. Rooper Nobbs said his grandmother added coriander, aniseed, and garlic to her brine. Now that sounded sacrilegious. Our method required only salt and vinegar, one day of drying in the sun, and about four days in the shade. This produced biltong with a clean, meaty flavor and a nice chew, not too soft and not too hard. Stored in tight containers, our biltong lasted for months.

  By the time I finished, I had hung ninety-nine strips, and the moon shone bright as a lantern. A light breeze had come up that would broadcast the scent of meat to every nocturnal scavenger within miles. I ran to my room and snatched the mosquito netting from my bed. Good people waging war on blood parasites that spread malaria, encephalitis, West Nile virus, and dengue and yellow fevers frowned on the removal of bed nets from beds. Even so, repurposing was common in our village, particularly among fishermen wanting nets and brides needing veils. By the light of the moon, I arranged the diaphanous material over the drying racks and gathered stones to place at close intervals around the perimeter. Finally, I dragged my mattress and a blanket to a spot nearby, lay down with my shotgun by my side, and fell asleep.

  Some time later, the crackle of footfalls woke me. I gripped my gun and sprang to a crouch with my back against the netting. Moon shadow spilled over me. I peered through the blackness, searching for a shape out of sync, a pair of shining amber eyes, or worse, several pairs of shining amber eyes signaling a pride or a pack. The slightest sound caused me to brace and aim. Although the night air felt sharp in my lungs, a bead of sweat rolled down my neck. Another faint crunch told me the intruder was approaching from the other side of the rack. The footfall of a man? I turned, steadied the gun against my shoulder, and rose.

  “Whoa, Bonesy. Don’t shoot.”

  “Zola?” She looked ghostly in a pale shawl wrapped over her white cotton nightdress. My hands shook as I lowered the gun. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Restless.” She walked around the rack and held out a cup. “I warmed some milk to help us sleep.”

  I didn’t point out that I had been sleeping just fine before she turned up. “Uh, thanks. I’m glad I didn’t shoot you and spill the milk.”

  Thin moon glow lit her fleeting smile. “Baba went to Captain Biggie’s. He’s still not back.”

  I sipped the warm liquid, stalling, while I thought this over. Baba’s visits to the tavern weren’t always about drink; I knew that now. Helping rangers fight poachers was a dangerous business, yet he had done this for … how long? For the first time, the news that our father had gone to the tavern filled me with cautious pride.

  “That’s nothing new.” I tried to sound nonchalant even as I pictured Baba conferring secretly with rangers, maybe over a map or a cache of high-powered rifles. “He’ll be back.”

  She hugged herself against the cold night air. “Do you think he has a girlfriend?”

  I had never considered the possibility. “No way.” I found the notion offensive and mildly shocking. “He likes his bottle.” This was true but a tad disloyal considering I believed I knew the real reason he might be out late. At the moment I preferred to think of Baba with almost any companion other than a woman who was not our mother. I swallowed the rest of the milk and handed back the cup. “Thanks.”

  “He will eventually, you know.”

  “I know. Just not yet.”

  After Zola left, I stayed awake thinking about Baba and the secret we shared. I couldn’t explain how I knew he wasn’t seeing a girlfriend, even though his trips to the village easily could have included more than one stop. I had seen his shock and grief, the way his face had collapsed, and how tenderly he had carried Mama into the house on the day she died, only a few months earlier. I supposed he would find someone eventually, but this was way too soon.

  I drifted off and slept through the rest of the night. When I awoke, Baba was standing over me, holding a bowl of steaming oatmeal. I sat up and eyed him over the spoonfuls I shoveled into my mouth. He looked too fresh and clear-headed for the morning after a binge. I didn’t ask about his nighttime visit to Captain Biggie’s, and he didn’t offer a report.

  All day Sunday I stood guard while the hot sun did its work. My shotgun came in handy for waving away birds that flew in for a look at the meat, but I never had to shoot. At dusk, Baba and I relocated the rack to the porch, where he kept watch for the next four days while I was at school. Near the end of the week, we got our first taste.

  Baba, Zola, and I each chose a strip from the rack. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, we held, flexed, and sniffed the dried delicacy before taking the first, crucial bite. Too salty? Too dry? I closed my eyes and worked my jaws, thinking, Man oh man, it’s perfect. I raised one eyelid to spy on Baba. He had closed his eyes too and was chewing, intent as a ruminant. It didn’t take long for him to grin and say, “This is the best biltong I’ve ever eaten.” Zola was too busy chewing to speak, but she nodded and looked pleased enough.

  Afterward, she and I emptied the racks. We worked silently, untying the string and laying the biltong in a flat container, our movements fluid and sure. I handled each piece with care, placing it parallel to the others in a tidy row, adding up the numbers. Zola moved faster, building haphazard piles that stuck out every which way and made me lose count. What looked like disrespect for the food I had shot, cured, hung, guarded, and dried for days chafed me like a rope on a goat. I reached over and straightened her mess, getting in her way.

  “They’re not bars of gold, Bonesy,” she said, swatting away my hands.

  “They are when you’re hungry.” Even as I said the words, I knew they didn’t make sense. Nonetheless, I eyed her with a stern expression.

  A small smile played on her face. “Let’s hope not.”

  4

  MY UNCLE STASH GAVE ME the name Bonesy. He was fond of nicknames, and I had been a skinny, angular, rib-chested tot. Uncle Stash’s real name was Stanley. As a young man he had worn a moustache, but my father said the stash of money he made working as a carpenter was more to the point. Baba asserted his older brother’s financial advantage without rancor or jealousy, which told me something good about their relationship.

  Stash had a gimpy leg from falling out of a tree when he was a boy. The accident had left him unfit for working in the field with Baba and their father, so instead he had become the family handyman, starting with only a hammer, a saw, and a bucket of nails. He had made it far enough in school to decipher the carpentry book he found on a shelf at the Sisters of Charity, and he could read the manuals that came with the tools and shop equipment he gradually acquired. Like Baba, Stash had learned a lot on his own.

  Now, his woodworking shop occupied a ramshackle shed behind the house where he and Aunt Letty lived, just down the road from us. A thick electrical wire running from a pole to the roof was all that distinguished the shop from the other patched and rickety structures on the lane. But the inside was rich and magical: a jungle of half-built tables and chairs, exotic tools, and winking piles of metal and glass.

  As a gift to my parents, Uncle Stash had built a cradle when Zola was born. It was a beautiful thing, crafted of mahogany with heart-shaped dovetails at the corners and rockers cut for gentle movement without tipping. The cradle later held me and, subsequently, Hannie. It would last for generations. Cradles became one of Uncle Stash’s specialties, along with household furniture and cabinets that he sent on trucks to bigger markets in the cities. Our school principal, Mr. Kitwick, even hired him to build and repair the desks and benches that saw h
ard duty in our classrooms.

  Uncle Stash and Aunt Letty’s son, Squeak, and I were born the same year. We became close pals, like brothers. As young children Squeak and I were frequent visitors to the carpentry shop, where Aunt Letty’s home-baked cookies greeted us on most days after school. When we weren’t in the shop or at school, we ran around outdoors, playing kickball in the road, climbing trees, fishing, or swimming in the river with other kids from the village. Often there were as many as a dozen of us, a pack of laughing, shouting, howling boys our mothers were glad to keep outside.

  One hot afternoon when Squeak and I were still in grade school, ten of us went for a swim. I knew we had ten because we had just played Capture the Flag with five on each side. The game had ended when Skinner and his pack of low-life followers showed up to snatch away the flour sacks we used for flags. We had come to expect trouble from those boys. The mere sight of Skinner triggered fear and loathing in me even then, years before the cobra killed Mama. He had at various times pushed me down, stolen my fishing pole, thrown my bike into the river, made rude remarks about my sister, and told Roop not to play with me because I was a dweeb. I was not Skinner’s only victim, but that was small consolation.

  On this day, when he and his cobullies grabbed the flags, our enthusiasm for the game had already dwindled. We were hot and sweaty, and there was strength in our number. When Squeak yelled, “Beat you to the river!” we raced after him, happy to leave the older boys behind.

  None of us owned swimming trunks. We pulled off our T-shirts, stepped out of our flip-flops, squelched through the mud, and plunged in. On the hottest days it wasn’t unusual for us to cool off like this two or three times. Between dips, our shorts dried fast in the breeze. I often found mud in my pockets and, one time, a leech.