Disposition of Remains (16 page)

“Does this say twice a
day?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I think you should take them both now,” I instructed, and he complied. “Your heart has become overloaded with this amount of exertion. It can’t continue to pump the volume of fluid in your bloodstream, so some of it is being pushed into your lungs. We need to get the excess fluid out of your system so you can breathe easier.”

I then asked if I might have one of his pills. He gave me a confused nod. Ascitis could be treated with diuretics if necessary. It didn’t hurt for me to be prepared if I ran into problems in a third-world country. It felt good to make some use out of the knowledge I’d pushed aside for so many years.

Within a short period of time, the man’s lungs began to sound clearer. Nevertheless, I watched as a look of desperation washed over his face.

“Victor, he needs to go to the bathroom.”

“He can go in the lake,” Victor replied with a casual shrug.

“No!” the Dutchman cried.

I turned my back to him and whispered to Victor, “His son died here. He doesn’t want to pee on his memory. Victor, can you please drink your water?”

Clearly understanding my intent, Victor smiled and gulped
his water down like it was a Corona on a hot summer day. I drank mine in the same manner, and we both handed our empty bottles to our patient to use as makeshift urinals.

As the Dutchman went to do his business, we heard the next tour group approaching, so Victor and I left to run interference until he was done. When we returned to his side, the man had his arm around his wife, and the two were staring forlornly into the cold,
dark water. After some had time passed, he nudged his wife, indicating that they should leave. Victor then led us slowly up and out of the cave. At the top, the man headed directly to the bathroom inside the museum.

The
Dutchman gave Victor and me a quiet “thank you” as we parted ways. We smiled and shook his hand, but it just didn’t seem like enough to me. That was no way to have said their goodbyes to their son. It was so tragic. I turned and ran back to them.

“Your son was lucky to have had you,” I blurted. “I think he felt that you were here. In fact, I’m sure he did,” I managed as convincingly as possible. I had never been the touchy-feely type, but adopting that attitude seemed appropriate and necessary.

As tears spilled from her eyes, the man’s wife placed her hand on my cheek, and whispered, “Bless you.”

It still wasn’t enough, but it was all I could think of to say. When Sister Constance said that God has a surprise for me, had she really believed it? Or was she doing what I was doing: just tossing out some random comforting words? As if I had any knowledge of what their son might be doing in the afterlife.

It was so strange saying goodbye to Victor—even a little bit sad. We had bonded somewhat over the peeing Dutchman ordeal. On the long trip to the hotel, Victor had opened up quite a bit about his wife and kids and what life was really like during apartheid. He explained that Wilbur had been instrumental in his return to South Africa. Wilbur was just setting up his company in Africa and needed a South African guide, as all of the major flights come into Johannesburg. They had met in Botswana and, despite their racial and cultural differences, had become fast friends.

The funky modern hotel that Wilbur had arranged in Johannesburg, or
Jo’burg,
as the locals call it, was modeled after an aircraft hangar. The stairs and primary décor were constructed from brushed metal and were of a far more contemporary style than I would have expected to find in Africa. Johannesburg itself was much more of a bustling city than I had anticipated as well. It was stocked with high-rises, shopping malls, and restaurants galore. I suppose I still possessed the notion that the entire continent was like the topless images I’d come across as a child within the pages of
National Geographic.

I was grateful for the opportunity to take a long, hot shower, which I did immediately after setting down my backpack in my luxurious hotel room. Afterward, I wolfed down a delicious dinner alone in the hotel restaurant, without regard for the possibility of dysentery or any other gastrointestinal malady. Then I crashed for ten glorious hours.

Victor had instructed me to be in the hotel lobby at eight o’clock sharp the next morning to meet the rest of my travel group. Wilbur’s company was in the business of escorting assemblies of six to eight tourists at a time around the countries of southern Africa. That was all I knew about what was in store for me. I approached the small gathering of people in the lobby and introduced myself to David and Mary Reily, John and Sally Callahan, Clifford Hunter, and Carol—who would only tell us her first name, as though she were Madonna. But that woman was definitely no Madonna.

A shuttle picked us up and carted us to the airport where we were set to fly to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. After planing and deplaning, we were corralled into the crowded, hot, stuffy customs area, pungent with the
odor of human sweat. Since I had been unable to acquire a visa ahead of time, I had to purchase one at the “special” negotiated price at the airport. I got the clear impression that the “special” price changed depending on how gullible one looked. It was equally clear that if I refused to pay their price, my only option would be to turn around and leave. In other words, they had me and they knew it.

It was noon by the time we made it through customs in Zimbabwe,
and the group clustered together once again. I was the “kid” of the ensemble by a wide margin. The next youngest was most likely Carol, but in the same way she would not divulge her last name, she also would not confess her age. It figured that I’d ended up with what I would have referred to in my youth as “the closer-to-death crowd,” and yet
I
was the one least likely to survive the trip. The old codgers probably had years on me.

The two couples, the Reilys and the Callahans, were like carbon copies of one another. These old friends of many years clung to each other and avoided the rest of us like some wrinkled, silver-haired clique. They huddled and whispered and laughed at their own G-rated jokes. I’m sure that deep down they were lovely people, but I couldn’t relate to them at all.

Carol and Clifford were traveling as singles, and from what I could see, they were unlikely to rectify their solitary situations anytime soon. Carol was a seventy-something trying to embody a twenty-something. She was overly bleached, tanned, and collagened, as well as stuffed into obnoxious clothes that were two sizes too small. She clearly loved to hear the sound of her own voice and completely ignored everyone else’s…though perhaps she simply needed a better hearing aid.

Clifford was round and boorish, and spoke with a heavy Southern accent. He embraced his age a bit better than Carol, but was prone to heckle just about everyone, as though he were some crazy Confederate version of George Carlin.

When the minibus arrived to retrieve us, we were greeted by a muscular African man who introduced himself as Edison. He announced that he would be our guide for the duration of our journey. Carol jostled past the rest of us to guarantee herself the front seat on the bus. There is one in every group, and it was instantly clear that Carol was our
one.
Once she claimed her throne, the rest of us filed onboard, anxiously awaiting our next destination.

Before long, the bus crossed a bridge over a mammoth waterfall, at which point Carol asked, “Excuse me, Guide. What is that?”

Carol apparently deemed him unworthy of his given name. She never called him anything but “Guide,” and Edison never corrected her.

Edison was extremely polite. He knew his job was to please unruly hordes of American tourists by any means necessary. He swallowed a laugh when Carol asked about the waterfall as if she were looking at her backside in the mirror and wondering aloud what that large protrusion was. I was just as in the
dark as Carol about the waterfall, so that was one stupid question I was rather glad she’d asked.

“That is Victoria Falls, otherwise known as The Cloud of Thunder,” he said, pausing for some recognition. “The largest waterfalls on the planet?”

From his reaction, I could tell in return he’d received a look of vacancy from Carol. I cringed at the thought of having anything in common with her, even if it were only ignorance. I nodded my head as if I were reinforcing Edison’s claim, and shot her an
Are-you-an-idiot?
look.

“One of the seven natural wonders of the world?” Edison prodded as he searched her face again.

Still nothing. By now everyone else was staring.

“We will be spending more time here at the end of the trip,” Edison conceded and turned toward the front of the bus.

Edison was tall and brawny with a shaved head, a gap-toothed smile and an Eddie Murphy-style laugh. He was a native of Zimbabwe and had a fantastic accent to go along with his booming voice. He spoke perfect English along with thirteen different African dialects. He was like a giant sponge jam-packed with a plethora of interesting factoids, just waiting for us to squeeze them out.

We were to take a three-hour bus ride before we reached our destination just outside of Chobe National Park in Botswana. I hadn’t prepared for the trip, so of course, I had no idea that I should expect a wild elephant to charge, angrily trumpeting, out of the trees and head straight for our bus. The driver actually had to speed up to avoid a collision
with him. I sat dumbfounded, while everyone else reached for his or her camera. I’d finally seen an animal!

The driver pulled over so everyone could take pictures of the four-ton beast, who was now quietly staring at our motionless vehicle. Clifford extracted a camera
from his luggage with a lens as big as his ten-gallon head. In fact, each member of our group was sporting some serious photo equipment. I hadn’t even brought a camera. I didn’t see the point of taking pictures except to toss them in with my rotting corpse. Instead, I did my best to sear the magnificent images into my brain.

“We are outside the reserve area but there are no fences and someone forgot to tell the elephant where the boun
dary is,” Edison joked with a throaty laugh.

“There are fifty thousand elephants just in the twelve thousand square kilometers of Chobe National Park alone. Elephants have a lifespan similar to that of humans, but in Africa they actually outlive many of the people. The average lifespan of a male human being is
forty; for an elephant, it’s sixty to seventy years. You must be careful of them; just about every family I know has lost one of its members as a result of being trampled, tossed, or impaled.”

Once again, it brought me back to my sad truth. Although I would rather die doing something adventurous rather than languishing in a hospital bed, being trampled by an elephant wasn’t ideal. I found it oddly comforting to know, however, that if I were an African male, I would
have only had two more years to live anyway. I was nearing the end of my lifespan by African standards. There is a plethora of ways that our frail lives could end. It could happen at any moment of any day. I felt strangely fortunate at that moment, that I had some insight into my own timeline.

Edison saw something ahead and asked the driver
to pull over once again. Walking along the road was a menacing black bird reminiscent of a scaled-down version of a prehistoric pterodactyl. The winged monster stood at least three feet tall with a red face and throat to contrast his ebony feathers. The sight unnerved the bus driver, even more so when Edison began to feed us information on the intimidating creature.

“That is a ground hornbill, very unusual to see. The terror you see on our bus driver’s face is because they are associated with witchcraft. Amari is one of the Maasai people. They believe that if a ground hornbill walks into your homestead or lands on your roof, someone is going to die. The people will relocate right away and never return.”

I was being stalked by the soothsayers of nature, I thought. First the owl in Sedona, and now the demonic dinosaur creature. My lack of a camera was a blessing in the face of the bird of death.

“Do you eat them?” Carol asked.

Edison looked at her in disbelief.

“No, they are bad luck; we are afraid of them.”

That was to be the second of countless idiotic questions that were asked by Carol.

We passed by a flatbed, fenced-in truck crammed with people, a goat, and a few chickens.

“That is our public transportation,” Edison explained. “It’s called a chicken bus.”

I laughed to myself as I imagined the group of us football-carrying Carol and dumping her in with the goats and chickens.

We arrived at the lodge three hours later—two of which I’d spent wishing Carol had an “off” switch, or at least a mute button. The lodge was completely isolated in the trees up a narrow, winding road. It was not at all like Mufasa’s Pride Rock, not a dry, brushy plain. It was green, lush, and set above a river with bathing elephants and chimpanzees playing in the nearby trees. I scanned the fairytale setting, smack in the middle of the animals’ playground, in wonderment and disbelief. I leaned against a balcony and just marinated in my own awe.

Carol’s shriek
ripped me out of my reverie.

“What about me?!” she cried.

I turned around to find the two couples being escorted to two of the only four tented guest cabins. Terror struck my very soul at the thought of being forced to bunk with Carol. I was convinced that she never stopped talking, even in her sleep, and figured I might die just having to listen to her shrill, ever-present voice. I found myself hoping for a moment that the cancer might take me first.

Then a miracle happened. Perhaps Sister Constance’s prayers for me had worked some magic. They called for Carol next, and to my surprise, did not call for me. Clifford and I looked at one another; one cabin to go, and we were the only ones left. We shook our heads in unison. It couldn’t be possible that they would have the two of us bunk together, but right then it seemed to me that Clifford would still make for a better bunkmate than Carol.

They called for Clifford, and off he trotted with another one of the staff, leaving me by myself. I walked back over to the balcony and conjured an image of myself roughing it in the wild, making myself one with the environment, submerged in the circle of life until I became part of the grass. But it was not to be. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to find a young, pregnant African girl standing behind me.

“Anaastayzia?” she asked with terrible mispronunciation.

“Call me Stacia.”

“I am Raashi
da. I will take you to your room.”

I shrugged and followed
behind her down an elevated wooden, planked path in the opposite direction of the other cabins. Raashida motioned for me enter a cabin, set off by itself, that was twice the size as the others.

“Why is my cabin so much larger?”

“This is the owner’s cabin. He said you are a friend of his? Yes?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

We
were
friends, I supposed—friends who barely knew each other and who had sucked face once. I found myself lost again in the memory of that magical evening, his soft lips mingling with mine. I suddenly felt so alone. Why did I find myself spending my last days with strangers on the African plains, when I could have spent them in Wilbur’s amazing arms?

Raashi
da showed me where all of the lights were, as well as some bug repellent, a flashlight, and an air horn for emergencies. I stopped to contemplate what sorts of emergencies might arise: animal attacks, strange men climbing into the window, Carol sleepwalking…

The cabin was a wooden structure with canvas “windows” and doors. It had two bedrooms with elegant wooden furniture and plush bedding, a hardwood floor, running hot and cold water, and electricity that ran on a generator during
daylight hours. There were insect nets surrounding the beds, but I had yet to see an actual insect—a situation that would rectify itself later that night.