Endangered (13 page)

That afternoon I didn't let Otto out of my sight. He'd wander a few feet and I would call him and he would bound back, his mouth full of grass. I held on to him and rocked him and kissed him and tried not to think of Banalia, spun so violently by the bullet entering her head.

After the havoc of the morning, Mushie neglected to build me a nest that night, so I slept on the ground. It hadn't rained for days, so the earth was dry, and Otto and I slept on a mossy flat rock in the next clearing over, using the emptied duffel and Mama Brunelle's
pagne
as ground cloths. I woke up to a cricket chirping near my ear, and when I sat up, a horde of them skipped away, like a handful of clay pellets hurled into the tall yellow grass. Otto exacted a minor revenge by eating the two he could catch.

I stood up, yawned, peeled the socks off my hands, and shook the duffel casing. More crickets and a pair of inchworms fell out. I stuffed my spare clothes back in, shaking each piece first in case of snakes or centipedes, and slung the bag over my shoulder. My still-sore nose scrunched while I forced my feet into my sneakers. They smelled so bad; if feet had taste buds, I'd be puking. It wasn't only my sneakers that stank; all my clothes were dingy and mildewed — but at least everything was holding together. The sleeping pills that had been for the plane were still in their plastic cylinder, and also in the duffel I had a liter of pond water and a handful of foraged nuts. That was the sum of my possessions.

I made special note of which two trees the dawning sun appeared between and set my sights for the opposite direction. Kinshasa was a sprawling city of ten million, and if we headed west we'd be sure to hit some part of it. If by some chance we came in too far north we'd reach the Congo River instead, and could follow that downstream.

The bonobos were still asleep. Not about to sleep on the
ground, but rejected by her mother, Songololo had crowded into Ikwa's nest. I heard her stirring and murping, but Ikwa was still snoring loudly. Mushie and Anastasia were in nests higher up. I felt bad to desert them all, but bonobos don't range more than a kilometer a day, and Otto and I needed to go much faster than that. Besides, these bonobos were free of the sanctuary
kata-kata
now, and in a jungle rich with food — they might make it for quite a while, and with a little luck could last out the war until Mom and I were able to come back and track them down and bring them to the sanctuary. If there was a sanctuary to go back to.

I placed my arms through the duffel bag's hand straps so it became a sort of backpack. Otto scampered up and settled on top of it, winding his feet through the straps and using them as stirrups. The air smelled fresh and loamy, and in the clean light of morning, I felt something like happiness, or at least hope. I knew the day was fraught and shapeless, and that anything could go wrong inside it, but with so many hours ahead, it seemed like there was an infinite space to work through whatever came up.

“I'll miss you, Songololo,” I whispered, and headed out.

But she wasn't going to leave it at that. Discreet as I tried to be, Songololo spotted us and scrambled out of Ikwa's nest and down the tree. Ikwa woke up and was soon sounding his high-pitched call after her.

And then, suddenly, I heard a puff of air and smelled chemical smoke. A shot from an air rifle, almost silent. I knew hunters went after bonobos in the evening or the morning, taking advantage of the moments they clustered together and revealed their position by calling out. But this region wasn't natural bonobo habitat, so it hadn't crossed my mind that there would be any bushmeat hunters around. But here was the snap and recoil of a rifle firing, the hot smell. Here was Songololo shrieking, Anastasia and Mushie shrieking, Ikwa quiet and staring, sniffing the air.

I dashed behind a tree. I still couldn't tell where the shot had come from, and might have been revealing myself instead of hiding away, but it was the best I could think to do. I grabbed Otto's arm and whirled him to my front, holding him in the air and checking for wounds. Nothing. He murped to me, his eyes wide with fear.

I leaned around the tree to check on the others. None was bleeding. The hunter had missed.

As I frantically tried to find out where the gunfire had come from, another shot came.

He missed again. I spotted him, shooting from a bush from the direction of the sanctuary. He was one of the
kata-kata
, the short bald man who had pointed a rifle at Otto on the front walk so many days ago. He was firing wildly now, a line of bullets tocking into the gun, hot casings popping out the other side. He pointed the gun at Ikwa and then Anastasia. Teeth bared, the bonobos jumped and shrieked in the trees. Only the man's awkward angle and the height of their nests had kept them alive so far.

With a rising shriek, a shape dropped from the trees and knocked the hunter to the ground. The creature rolled and came to its feet, and it took me a second to recognize the bonobo. Pweto. He wielded his useless arm like a club, flexing his powerful shoulder muscles to hurl it against the ground while he barked. When he bared his teeth, the flesh of his maimed cheek parted and revealed a row of yellow and black molars.

The hunter raised his rifle at Pweto. Terror made the muzzle shake.

Pweto didn't retreat and didn't charge. He didn't want to attack the man, but neither was he going to back down until the man left.

I cringed, curling my body around Otto. I waited for the shot to come.

The man put his eye to the rifle sight, got a good look at Pweto's teeth, then thought better and fled, turning right around
and crashing through the undergrowth. The bonobos still in their nests kept shrieking while those of us nearby gawked at Pweto.

He stood still in the clearing, his crippled arm lying in the dirt, and his chest heaving from exertion. He stared after the man. I tentatively lowered Otto to the ground.

Anastasia descended her tree, barking, and body-slammed Pweto. He rolled across the clearing, got to his feet, and gave a stricken cry.

Enraged, Anastasia paced around the clearing, beating against tree trunks, ripping up shoots, and hurling them into the air. Mushie joined her, devotedly mimicking her movements. Cringing, Pweto slunk into the bush and disappeared.

I wished we could speak, that I could convince Anastasia that Pweto had saved us by attacking the hunter and that she should finally forgive him. Of course bonobos didn't have language, couldn't trap thoughts and keep them to use on others. But beyond the language issue, that kind of reasoning was beyond bonobos, smart as they were. The simple fact of the matter was that Anastasia had been scared and adrenaline had surged, and once the hunter was gone, Pweto had become her next target.

Finally, Anastasia and Mushie calmed down enough to begin rubbing against each other to ease their tension. Ikwa and Songololo joined me and Otto, and we four sat on a log and stared at a nearby anthill. I don't know what their thoughts were, but once the excitement had passed all I could think about was Pweto.

He must have gotten out of his personal enclosure, during the attack or once the power went out, and hid out in the surrounding jungle until he saw us leave. Then he tailed us from the sanctuary, too afraid of Anastasia to present himself but coming as close as he'd dared. He spent the night a ways back, and therefore was the only one to see the approaching hunter.

Maybe he'd been harassing the soldiers ever since the attack. Maybe he was why the hunters, instead of swarming us, had stayed inside and shot from the second story.

After the excitement died down, Ikwa assumed his role as the wise man at my side, sweaty hand in mine. Songololo wrapped her arms around my waist and peered nervously at her agitated mother. Mushie and Anastasia did their courtship thing. There would be no quietly sneaking away anytime soon.

I'd have to leave them openly instead. I put the duffel back on, despite the hindrance of Songololo's grasping arms, and waited for Otto to climb aboard. As we headed from the clearing, I felt a hand work its way back into mine. Ikwa. With my free hand I tried to remove Songololo from my waist, and she took the opportunity to grasp my other palm, escorting me along on two legs. I tried to extricate my fingers from hers, but she held tight. I had one bonobo on each side, and another on my back. Each time I made a step forward, we all moved together.

I sat down, and so did Songololo and Ikwa. After a while they let go of me. Songololo went off to track down her mother, and Ikwa lay back in the grass. I waited maybe ten minutes and then stood up. Ikwa stared up at me with a penetrating look, like he was acknowledging my coming betrayal. His eyes, one a gentle tea brown, the other milky, both rimmed in silver whiskers, watched me with wistful sadness. How had he figured out my secret plan, that Otto and I weren't heading off to forage?

Ikwa started to follow me, but he passed too near a tree on his blind side and smacked into it. Disoriented, he staggered, trying to get his bearings. Otto murped, and Ikwa located us and walked in our direction again.

Could I leave him — all of them — behind?

I had to. I was heading into civilization. They had a much better chance fending for themselves here.

Please stay
, I thought, beaming the thoughts to Ikwa.
It's better that you wait here. This is for your sake.

But these weren't wild bonobos — they'd been raised with people, and had been cast out of their tiny familiar world and into a strange planet, where the hunters with guns, those mother-killers, were back. We'd left their world and entered mine, and I sensed that they knew that. As I walked into the jungle, Songololo kept by my side. I heard crashes as Ikwa lumbered after us. And from on high, Mushie and Anastasia called to each other as they passed through the trees.

Maybe
, I told myself,
in a few hours they'll pick a spot and give up on following me.

I went at the fastest pace I could manage through the thick vegetation. There was one moment when I thought I'd succeeded in losing them. Otto and I'd stopped to eat a fruit lunch, swatting at heavy flies and bolting down globs of mango before I filled my water bottle from a nearby stream. I hadn't drunk any water from outside the sanctuary, and hoped I wouldn't have to ever risk it; so far the fruit we were eating was juicy enough that my thirst hadn't become too nagging. Songololo had left my side a while ago to join her mother in the treetops, so it was just us. But then I heard bonobo shrieks nearing, and before I knew it, the group had descended on us, drinking from the stream and ripping away their own mangoes from a nearby tree.

Bonobos weren't supposed to act like this — we'd already gone a few miles, more than they would ever range in one direction in the wild. But these were extraordinary times, and they were apparently willing to make an exception for their leader. Me.

That afternoon we continued our progress through the choking green of the jungle, until it thinned out and finally retreated completely. Anastasia and Mushie descended from the trees and joined me on the ground as we came upon a field planted with short, weedy bushes. Manioc was common throughout Congo, and its starchy root kept millions from starvation. There wasn't anyone in the field and, judging by the thick weeds engulfing the manioc plants, hadn't been for a while. The bonobos were unsure of the change in terrain and stuck to the edge, calling out to me when I stepped into the greenery. Songololo made a few steps with me and Otto, then ran screaming back to her mother, her courage spent.

I pulled up manioc, knocking away clods of dirt and stuffing it into the duffel. I'd need fire to roast the roots, but until then the leaves could be eaten like lettuce. The idea of subsisting on greenery alone — of prolonging that full-yet-empty stabbing sensation in my stomach — was totally unappealing, but the leaves would keep me alive. Otto watched from my back as I harvested, squirming at the constant up-and-down.

As Otto and I continued through the field, my eyes on the horizon for any sign of life, the bonobos followed us as best they could from along the jungle line. Past the fields was a trail that skirted another abandoned farm, also overgrown and untended. An entire village appeared to have been abandoned. All that remained were the shadows of huts, rings of waxy charred black on the ground. There was nothing else: not a clay pot, not a fork, not a body.

All the structures had been burned, except a simple straw hut that had been only half scorched away. It fronted the jungle, and as I investigated it — hoping to find a pot, a lighter, anything — the bonobos joined me. Mushie and Anastasia shared the roof while Ikwa helped me sift through the trash that had accumulated against the wooden poles.

I found nothing useful. But the village got me thinking. The area had the alien quiet of a place that had been long abandoned, and was connected to the jungle by trails, not roads, so with the villagers gone, no new people were likely to pass by. With nothing left but a soon-to-wither manioc crop, it could hardly be a strategic advantage for the combatants to seize on. And the area was distinctive enough with its one remaining hut that I could track it down later, after I'd gotten out of Congo and come back after the conflict.

It was a good place to leave the bonobos.

But how? If Otto and I walked out, Songololo would tag along, and Anastasia after her, and then the whole group. I had to prevent them, but even if I found a way to restrain them it wasn't an option, since then they wouldn't be able to forage and keep themselves alive.

I removed the sleeping pills from my bag and rolled them out like dice onto a flat rock. With their love of novelty, the bonobos swarmed me, poking at the pills. Mushie immediately took one and stuck it in his mouth, and it was only by throwing my body over the pills that I prevented him from eating them all.

Songololo was the one I had to drug, but I had trouble judging her weight. I figured she was forty pounds, and if the pills were meant for me, then I should give her … two-sevenths? I found myself doing calculations I'd failed at in geometry class as I determined the angle to cut the round pill. After I finally made the cut and handed it to Songololo, she looked at my hand and kissed it,
knocking the fragment to the soil. The wedge winked at us, pretty and pink.

Granola crumbs did the trick. I pressed the drug into their gooey center and then gave the morsel to Songololo. She gulped it down, licking her fingers and marveling at this turn in her luck. When the rest went up into the trees, she stayed on the ground, snoozily leaning her head against my knee. Soon she was snoring away. When Songololo was quickly followed by Mushie, Anastasia and Ikwa grew perplexed and settled down on the ground beside them. Anastasia prodded Songololo, pried her eyes open with her fingers, only to have her daughter, in a move that looked familiar from my own typical Saturday morning behavior, roll over, groan, and put her arms over her face.

Anastasia was clearly anxious about Songololo, getting up, walking in a circle, and sitting back down at her side. I wished I could tell her it was going to be okay, but all I did was maneuver to Ikwa's blind side, take Otto in my arms, and slink away. I didn't risk a second to say good-bye; I crossed the abandoned fields in the rapidly diminishing light and was alone by the time the Congo five-minute twilight began.

I got to business, arranging some thatch that had fallen from a ruined hut and laying clothes over it to make a sort of mattress. As I finished the bed, thinking it looked surprisingly comfortable, a terrible black feeling came over me and I shuddered, aching at the sudden loneliness. I missed my new family.

I sat on the mattress with Otto, splayed him in my lap, and gave him a good tickle. At first he resisted, looking around anxiously for the other bonobos. Then he finally gave in, and the raspy laughter he made heartened me a little. We had each other, after all. I blew a big raspberry into the sole of one of his feet and then the other, and he made the husky wheeze that meant he was truly
delighted, almost losing his breath entirely. When I stopped he threw his arms around my head, indicating he wanted me to continue. So I tickled him more, even though by then it was dark and I had to go by feel. When I finally stopped, I felt him at my shoes, playing with the laces. I was going to leave them on for sleeping, anyway, to avoid bug bites, and figured I could tie them again come morning. I fell fast asleep, Otto at my feet.

When I woke up, I did my best to fill our bellies with manioc leaves. My feet felt clumsy, and when I looked down I saw that my shoes were already tied. Otto had not only played with untying my laces, he'd also tried to retie them by doing the same simple cross knot over and over. It looked more like a carpet tassel than a shoelace.

Once I'd retied my shoes, I regained my bearings from the sun and we continued toward Kinshasa. I was thirsty, my tongue a mixture of dry and moist patches, like a sun-baked pond bed, but I didn't want to hazard drinking the wild stream water unless it was totally necessary.

Within a few hours the jungle began to clear, and finally thinned out entirely to another field. It, too, was planted with manioc, and seemed recently tended. Whoever worked this land was probably still alive.

A farmer was not likely to be trouble, I decided, so I figured I would try to track him or her down and find out what I could about the war's progress. I put my poncho on over Otto, hoping whoever I came across would assume I was wearing a pack. He loved being blinded and hot under the plastic, and gave contented sighs.

I walked through the manioc, brilliant green parrots scattering before me. When I neared the far side of the field, an ancient woman emerged from a thatched hut to watch me. She disappeared inside and came back out with a young boy, no more than nine or
ten. He rubbed his eyes sleepily. She hunched behind him, scowling, holding him forward with her arms. He was only a child, but he was her protection.

As I approached, the woman rubbed her hands on her dirty dress and then made shooing motions at me. She whispered in the boy's ear, and he began making shooing motions, too.

“I need your help,” I called in Lingala, holding up my open hands to show I meant no harm, the same way the bonobos did. “Please.”

Otto began to murp on my back, and I prayed he would be quiet.

As I continued to walk toward them, the woman got more and more agitated. “I don't need anything from you,” I said. “Just information.”

“What do you need to know?” the boy called back. I stepped closer. “You have to stop there,” he said shrilly. “You have to.”

I held still.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“What has happened?” I asked.

He conferred with the old woman. “What do you mean?”

“I've been away for a month. What has happened here?”

“They killed my parents and my sister,” he said. The woman shushed him furiously. “She thinks you're a witch,” the boy added.

“I'm not,” I said quickly. In the villages, anyone unusual could be thought a witch. And witches didn't survive very long.

“They're taking children,” the boy said, “so that means they have witches with them.”

“They?”

“The combatants.”

“Is the capital safe?”

The boy conferred with the woman. “We don't know.”

“Can I stay here for a day?” I asked.

She shook her head savagely.

“Which way is the capital?” I asked.

She pointed in a direction, the same one I'd been heading. At least that was confirmed.

“You can take as much manioc as you can carry,” the boy called as the woman pulled their grass curtain closed.

At first I wondered why they would give away their food and livelihood, but then I realized: There weren't enough people left to eat it.

I emptied my bottle and refilled it from their well. Otto and I gulped down cold, clean water straight from the pump, and then we headed back across the field. The trail joined an empty road, and I nearly shouted for joy. It was the N-1 capital road, the same one where, many miles farther along and many weeks ago, I'd first found Otto.

I'd be able to reach Kinshasa much more quickly over the road, but it was also more dangerous. Many kinds of horrible things could happen to me there if I ran into the wrong men.

Otto was getting heavy on my back, and wherever his weight rested my muscles were becoming tight cords. I tugged him down to the ground and we walked hand in hand for a ways. Otto's short strides meant moving slower, but my back needed the break. Nervous that someone might come down the road, I kept scanning the horizon ahead and behind. Otto copied my movements.

The road's dirt and pebbles weren't easy on Otto's feet, and after a while he stopped and refused to go any farther, giving me his
Why are you putting us through this?
look. The going wasn't easy on my feet, either, which had blistered in my ever-moist sneakers, but I picked up Otto and placed him on my back, which ached in familiar protest.

We'd gone a few more paces when I saw a low cloud of dust at the horizon. I scurried into the jungle growth, hiding a few feet
back and out of view behind a briar. The dirt was kicked up by a truck, moving with extreme slowness. When it neared, I saw that the back was clogged with shirtless men with guns and machetes. The reason the truck was going so slowly was because an equal number of guys were behind it, pushing. It must have been out of gas or broken, but they weren't going to give it up.

The men in the cab — four of them, pressed shoulder to bare shoulder — were all wearing evening gowns. One had on a bright green wig. I'd heard that soldiers searched out fancy clothing from the women they'd killed, thinking it made them fearsome and magical. It would have been funny if the men hadn't had such severe, heartless expressions. I sighed in relief when they rolled past us. If they had seen me hide away and come after us, or if Otto had cried out … but that hadn't happened. I didn't have any fear to waste on hypotheticals. Still, the fact that roving gangs were free to travel on the main thoroughfare didn't bode well for the condition of the capital.

Otto and I returned to the road, and I took advantage of our moment of rest to lower him to the ground. We made a sharp turn, and when I rounded the corner I saw, not far away, a lone man wearing a military uniform. He was long and lean, sitting against a tree with a club at his side. When he saw me he sprang to his feet and approached. I froze. I could disappear into the jungle, but what if he followed? I'd rather confront him somewhere there was a chance of someone compassionate coming along.

A side road forked off, and though I had no idea where it went, I tripped along it, pulling a protesting Otto up from the ground as I went. I risked a look behind me and saw the soldier following and closing distance. I sped up, breaking into a jog. Otto barked at the man over my shoulder, and I pressed my hand to the back of his head, willing him to stop. Spread across the road was a metal bar, which we skirted. There was a sign on the other side, a big piece of
plywood with the letters
S-I-D-A
scrawled across in red paint, French for
AIDS
.

The word gave me pause, but nevertheless I hurried down the road, and when I looked back, I saw the soldier stopped at the other side of the
SIDA
sign, staring after me. AIDS was such a warranted fear here that the simple sign held him at bay. I knew you couldn't get HIV by walking into an area, but maybe he didn't. I had no idea what I
was
walking into, but I knew one thing for sure: It was preferable to falling into that soldier's hands on a lonely road.

Around a bend was an aging colonial house, with two peeling white stories and a much-repaired tin roof in every variation of sun-bleached red. Its many doors were wide open, and I could see shapes moving around inside. I stood nervously at the far side of the yard, wondering whether to approach. If that soldier wasn't willing to come near, did that automatically mean it was safe for me? Or did it mean the opposite?

My feet hurt, I was light-headed with stress and bad meals, and the idea of perhaps eating real food and sitting in a chair — or even sleeping in a bed! — sounded like bliss. I carefully draped my poncho over Otto on my back, then made a step forward.

A man stood at the front door, a weary expression on his face. He was old, and leaned heavily on one leg, probably the result of childhood polio. “There is AIDS here,” he warned.

“I don't understand what you mean,” I said. “You have AIDS?”
So what?
I thought.

He stared down at my dirty clothes, my skinniness, the squirming bundle at my back. “Do you want to come in?” he finally asked.

There was something about his face, the sad fatigue of a goodwill whose reserves have been exhausted, that made me start to trust him. But I wasn't ready to go inside yet. “What's the story with the sign out front?” I asked, not budging.