Endangered (18 page)

It was still dark when I woke, all around me the rush and hum of crickets. I sat up and swiped at my face. Something felt off.

I swept my hands around in the blackness and whispered Otto's name. The continuing thrum of the crickets was my only answer.

My voice rose each time I said his name, and soon I was screaming. I became aware of how vulnerable I was making myself, though, and held still, waiting to hear from Otto. Nothing.

What I wanted most was to go charging into the bush to find him. But I couldn't see well enough to do it, so I swiveled, shouting.

No response.

I would have to wait.

As his absence sank in, I said Otto's name less and less frequently, finally calling only every minute or so. For the despairing moments in between, I was left in my personal darkness. I'd always thought of loneliness as a slow, ocean-wide thing, but it came over me like a sharp and sudden blow. I needed Otto to be the one constant thing in my life, and I was ready to cry from confusion. “Please, Otto!” I whispered. Had he left me because I'd shoved him? He loved playing rough; I couldn't imagine my casting him off was enough to anger him. Had he gone to collect caterpillars and gotten lost? Had some hungry rebel or Mbandakois come and taken him during the night? I had to believe I would have woken up.

I stood there for a lifetime, carved out and desolate, and kept saying Otto's name. If there had been just one response from him, even a little squeak, the world would have had light in it. But it stayed quiet, and so it stayed dark.

I would have to wait for the sun to come up and the world to lighten the normal way. First the sky turned the palest green-blue at the horizon, like the bottom of a petal. It wasn't enough to see by yet, so I waited. Finally the light was gray enough that I could see shapes. The clearing was as I'd left it the night before, my bag hanging from a branch, the arrow I'd carved into a tree still glistening.

“Otto!” I cried. I crept a little ways back toward the edge of Mbandaka in case he'd gotten lost and headed for the more familiar. I hoped to find a few bonobo-crushed caterpillars, but I could see no sign of Otto's passing. As I returned to the clearing, I imagined finding him there on my tarp, lying back with one foot in one hand, the position he so loved; but it was empty. I packed my supplies away, retied the plastic bag onto my belt loop.

The forest was thick on either side. Knowing Otto — though how well did I really know him, apparently, if I'd been unable to predict this? — he'd prefer going along the trail. So I continued forward along it.

Something big moved deep in the trees, and I froze, stopping and calling Otto's name. There was no response, though; it had been more of a skittering sound than one that a bonobo would make, probably some reptile escaping into the ferns. I wished I could see better; walking in semidarkness left me helpless. But dawns here came on as suddenly as sunsets, and it wasn't too long before the trail was bright enough for me to walk at normal speed.

Everywhere I looked, I could see small creatures moving. I called out Otto's name again.

This time, I thought I heard a bonobo call over the breeze rustling through the trees.

I sped toward the sound, tripping over ruts and roots but always scrambling ahead, sometimes on all fours, pushing against the ground with my knuckles. The calls got easier to hear, and I recognized the high-pitched, pulsating sound: Otto in distress.

The trail narrowed to pass through a thicket, and as I folded myself through I saw Otto at the far side of the clearing, dangling between two trees. A length of rope was wrapped tightly around his ankle: a snare. He swayed in the air, a good eight feet above the ground, revolving slowly, the green vine rope creaking.

The moment I saw him, I said his name. That instant I saw a black shape startle, turn, and crash into the brush. It had been a bonobo. A wild bonobo female, infant on her back.

Otto saw me and shrieked. He jerked in the air, then reached up and tried to grasp the knot in the snare. He failed, his arms again pointing to the distant ground. I didn't know how long he'd been up there, but his foot was swollen and purplish and the white of his eyes was replaced by red, like the vessels had broken. “Oh, my Otto,” I said. “I'll get you down.”

But how? Even raising my hand as high as I could, I wouldn't be able to reach him. So I took to the trees like a bonobo. I dug my fingertips into the little variations in the bark and, fully outside of my rational mind, pulled myself up high before I knew how. I plucked at the snare's tight rope, and it twanged like a guitar string. I'd hoped to haul Otto up, but the material was too slick to get a grip.

I craned into the open air, had my teeth around the plant fiber, and was about to start gnawing when voices made me freeze. Low, terse voices. I would have ignored anything and anyone to get Otto free, but if I were captured, there would be nothing I could do to
help him. I pulled back into the cover of the tree's lime-green leaves.

A man and a woman crept into the clearing. Their movements were purposeful, and I realized either Otto's cries or my own had drawn them here. The man exclaimed when he saw Otto dangling, and they both took positions under him. Otto stared down apprehensively, quietly murping. If they bothered to look closely, they'd see me farther above; they were peering straight at me, though their vision was focused a yard closer. They each had a string of bullets worn across their chests. She reached her rifle tip up and prodded Otto's forehead, causing him to shriek and stare imploringly in my direction. They laughed.

She was gorgeous, with glossy short hair and crazy-long legs, but with a massive scar across her face. The man had a head that had been scoured by acne long before war scars had been layered on top. He drew a short knife and jabbed it at Otto's hand. Otto brought his pricked palm to his mouth, whimpering in pain and fatigue and confusion. He tried to curl his body up and away, but he was too weak after the hours spent struggling against the snare.

I resisted the urge to hurtle out of the foliage to Otto's defense, tried to calm my mind enough to reason through what to do. These weren't typical hunters; the strings of bullets told me they were combatants, probably hungry and unpaid and setting traps for extra food. They had likely set the snare for smaller game, like macaque monkeys or antelope, but they'd be happy to eat a bonobo.

The combatants discussed for a minute, and then the woman took to the tree on the other side of the trail, knife clenched between her teeth. She could as easily have chosen my tree, and then I would have had to risk fighting her one-on-one. Once she came up to my level she crept forward, intent on the snare's knot.
She was only a few feet away, and I could see sweat dotting the base of her neck, could smell stale clothing and body odor. I could lunge at her. I could sink my teeth in her neck and throw her off the tree. It was what I most wanted, but what would that do? She'd fall to the ground, and she and her companion would have their guns out, and Otto and I both would be dead.

So I watched her shimmy down, watched her raise the knife. My muscles tensed. If the blade got within a foot of Otto, I would be on her.

She cut the rope.

Otto fell onto the man's chest and immediately reached his arms out to be held. Instead the man shrieked in surprise and dropped Otto heavily into the dirt, holding the cut rope at arm's length, like he was handling a snapping turtle. As Otto's swollen foot was dragged upward, he was forced to stand on one hand. He cried and flailed his free hand while the woman descended the tree, laughing at her startled partner.

The man handed her the rope and they left the way they'd come, the woman hauling Otto behind. As he skittered along the soil, he scrambled to stay on his back, pressing his coarse palms into the ground to avoid turning over and having his face dragged through the dirt and rocks. He cried hoarsely as the trio disappeared around the bend.

I slid down the tree, landing in a rough heap on the ground. Springing to my feet, I willed my breaths to keep coming against the sharp constriction in my throat.

I guess they saw no need to be quiet, and I was easily able to follow them as they made their way into the city, Otto bumping and shrieking behind.
I'm here,
mon petit.
You don't know it, but I'm here.

The hunting trail continued through the forest for a ways, until buildings began to appear. First it was huts, as silent and barren as the ones I'd seen earlier. I saw no one aside from a little
boy, sitting all on his own in the dusty street. I was sure he noticed me, like he had to have noticed the hunters and Otto, but he kept his eyes trained on his knees, hoping to be ignored.

I heard crowds ahead, though, and knew I'd soon be spotted by someone who cared if I continued tailing along so obviously.

We passed a simple concrete building, the faded paint of
LA POSTE
barely visible on top of the vivid black and green of rotting concrete. The letters must have been painted during the Belgian occupation over fifty years ago. I made the reluctant decision to hide away before I was discovered, and slipped into a space between two wooden planks nailed to the entrance.

Inside was all must and dankness — like a shut-up basement, only more so. I had to get to the roof before the combatants disappeared from view with Otto. The stairs had long ago rotted away, but I was able to press a foot into a divot in the lacey concrete wall and leap upward, my arms just clearing the second floor. Mushie the acrobat would have been proud. I passed from the second floor to the third the same way, and finally made it to the roof. I rushed to the edge, just in time to see Otto and his captors hit the city center.

The market was teeming. There were only a few vendors, and all were engaged in harried negotiations with rebels, lean and sullen and above all bored, jostling and shoving and bilking as a way to pass the time. I had no idea if it was money being passed or favors and the right to stay alive. Along the near edge, rebels sat against the road, sharpening their machetes on the chunked remains of what had, at some point in the last hundred years, been a paved thoroughfare.

There were immediate shouts of interest when the hunters entered with Otto, and they were soon surrounded. The crowd circled so thickly that I couldn't see him anymore, and I was stuck through by my horrible imaginings of what was happening.

But soon enough, the crowd thinned and I could see Otto again. He was intact, wrapped tightly around the leg of his female captor, head buried against her shin. She moved forward stiffly, her gapped mouth open wide as she guffawed. Otto refused to let go of her, even when she shook her leg violently. Helpless on the rooftop, I felt a many-edged combination of anger and fear and jealousy that came out as rage, rage, rage. I kicked at the crumbling cement of the roof's low wall, and a spray of bits fell to the ground below. I dropped out of sight in case I'd drawn anyone's attention.

When I dared emerge, I saw Otto had changed hands. His new owners had tied his leash to the leg of a plastic restaurant table, and he was sitting on top, holding his hurt foot in his hands, lips pulled back over his teeth. I couldn't make out much else of his expression from the distance, but there were men sitting all around him, lounging about and smoking. I resisted the urge to kick out at the roof's ledge again. How would I ever rescue him? I'd hoped I could sneak up and snatch him, but it would be impossible in that big crowd.

All I could do was wait for things to change. I'd give it an hour, I decided. Maybe by some miracle the market would clear by then and I could creep over.

So I crouched, watching Otto test the radius of his leash as he circled the table. A laughing teenage boy in a soiled tank top handed Otto a cigarette and, when he didn't take it, pressed a beer into his hands. Probably remembering the many times I'd given him water to drink from my bottle, Otto took it readily and drank.

He dropped the beer as soon as he tasted it, but the boy caught the bottle and pressed it against him. Staring into the boy's eyes, Otto drank again. He had counted on me to take care of him, and now he was surrounded by soldiers. At any moment they might begin to torture him, and I was powerless to do anything about it. My outrage, without outlet, was quickly turning to despair.

Once he'd finished the beer, Otto sat down heavily on the table. The empty bottle fell from his fingers and crashed onto the ground. He twiddled a toe, his eyes downcast.

I watched in silence as an older soldier walked by and started to untie him, stopping only when the teenager who had given Otto the beer complained loudly. As the afternoon burned into evening and the crowds dissipated, the teenager was one of the few who remained at the plastic tables. He opened the door of the former restaurant — maybe he had taken control of the space after the previous owner was killed — and stood there for a while, chatting with the soldiers who passed.

I raged at my helplessness. This wouldn't have happened if only Otto hadn't wandered off. What had gotten into him? But while I waited it struck me that we'd returned to native bonobo territory. That bonobo mother probably heard Otto's juvenile cries of distress and came to investigate, fleeing when I arrived. Did Otto remember — or ever really understand — that his real mother was dead?

Finally, as night began to fall, the teenager untied the leash. Otto looked up, but seemed unable to stand. The teenager wrapped his arms around him and carried him inside the restaurant door, Otto lolling in his hands.

It was past dinnertime, and I hadn't seen the boy eat anything. A new fear struck me: Was that what Otto was for?

I no longer had the luxury of waiting for an opening. I had to act now. Twilight had begun, which meant I had only minutes to get to the bottom of the building and over to the restaurant. I threw myself down to the second floor and then to the bottom, gave a quick glance between the boards on the doorway to see if the coast was clear, and slipped out.