Ivory Ghosts (28 page)

I sat upright and gasped for breath, heaving off the nightmarish leopard that had climbed through the window and had just pounced on my face. I scrutinized the gap in the open window to be sure that a leopard indeed couldn't fit through, before daring to get out of Jon's bed.

Outside on the street, a barking dog had reached a crescendo. It was still dark, but I could tell I'd slept longer than intended. I was afraid to look at my watch to confirm.

Jon's leg surgery was expected to last five hours, and the rangers had insisted that I get some rest. I wanted to stay close by, so Jon had given me the key to his house. I was so tired I could barely get my blood-soaked clothes off before collapsing into bed, intending to take a short nap. I couldn't even remember the flight back, as if someone else had been piloting the plane. I remember wishing I had taken a shower before sleeping, but my soiled hands and blood-matted hair made it clear that that hadn't happened.

Shooting someone at point-blank range is terrible enough, but it was all the more so, as after I shot Geldenhuis, I had stumbled over the strut of the airplane. I twisted my ankle and fell hard on my back, hitting my head on the edge of a small rock. It was a tiny gash, but the bleeding was unstoppable.

When we landed at Mpacha and I stepped out of the pilot's side with a blood-covered face, the rangers were more worried about me than they were about Jon. And his wound was life-threatening; mine just needed a stitch.

As I waited for the shower to warm up, I almost did a double take in the mirror. When the nurse put the stitch in my head, I wasn't really paying attention, but in retrospect, surely someone could have done me the favor of wiping the blood off my face? I looked like I had just come off the set of a cheap horror movie. It was too scary to look myself in the eye, so I looked down as I waited for the water to heat up.

I ran the tap all the way opened, and splashed water several times before the blood turned from a thick crust of brown on my face to a river of red in the sink. I kept flushing and flushing, until the smell of steam from the shower invited me in. In a few hours, the thought of a hot shower would be unthinkable, but for now, the cool morning allowed me to boil the devil off my skin.

By the time I got to the hospital, the rangers were sitting with Jon in the recovery room. His leg was elevated and wrapped as thick as a tree trunk. The rangers got up when I entered and Jon laughed at the sight of me. “My bed was that uncomfortable?”

I smiled and put a small vase next to his bed. “I see you don't need cheering up.” I touched his hand as I passed, bringing him the only two flowers that had been growing in his garden.

“We've got news.” Gidean beamed.

“Did you figure out who was in the boat?” I sat down.

Gidean shook his head.

“Any word on Ernest?”

Eli shook his head. “Nothing. He's probably deep within the Lower Luangwe Valley by now.”

“What's the news?”

“We caught Alvares at the border of Botswana with a hundred more tusks,” Gidean replied.

“Where was he keeping them?”

“Hippo Lodge, near the bank of the river. The police found the hole where they had been dug up.”

“Did he say anything?”

Jon piped in. “Couldn't get much out of him except that they were trying to fill the Dollar Store container destined for Hong Kong. The Botswana deal was the last of it. But after last night, they were trying to dispense with the rest in smaller lots.”

I thought back to the poor view that I had had of the two men in the boat while they tied the boat to the dock the previous night. The other man couldn't have been Alvares. Alvares was short and stout. This other man was tall and slim. “So, who could have been in the boat with Geldenhuis?”

Jon shook his head. “Don't know yet.”

“Alvares could be a key witness in this whole thing, right?”

Eli shook his head. “He says he'll take his chances in prison. If he talks, he'll be dead as soon as the door to his cell is opened.”

“We found Lin floating in the river this morning,” Gidean agreed.

“Mr. Lin is dead?” Geldenhuis's words rung in my head.
Mr. Lin is just a triad puppet
. I had been shocked at his mention that someone much bigger than him was involved in the ivory smuggling ring, even bigger than Mr. Lin.

Jon nodded. “Alvares knows what's in store for him.” He reached over and played with the limp petals on the flowers I had brought him.

“But Lin hadn't said anything yet.” I thought back to the last time I saw Lin. Nigel was in his office complaining about the quality of his game guard uniforms.

I watched Jon's fingers caressing orange flowers and laughed. “Sorry, they look pretty tired.” To me they looked like dead stalks of weeds with a few sprigs of wilted orange here and there, but Jon loved them because they were native. He kept complaining that the few native flowers that there were in the region were being choked out by invasive aliens such as bougainvillea. I had hesitated to cut them, but decided to when I saw a few more were about to bloom.

He smiled. “They look about how I feel right now.”

I suddenly remembered the surgery. “Oh my gosh, I didn't even ask. How did it go?”

Gidean winced. “Doc says to expect a long bed rest.”

“I refuse to convalesce amongst the hounds of the Baskervilles,” Jon announced.

I laughed. “What did you have in mind?”

Jon smiled devilishly. “I've decided that your porch would make a stunning recovery room.” He clasped his hands over his bandage. “I will get a head start on recipes for the Sated Rabbit. But we'll need that refrigerator.”

“I think that could be arranged.” I tried to keep an even tone, while thrilled at the thought of a long, uninterrupted stay at Susuwe together.

“Too late.” Jon waved his hand. “It's already been arranged.” His eyes beamed with boyish excitement. “The guys are going to drive me out later this morning.”

“That's a pretty fast discharge, isn't it?”

“Eli has it all sorted.” He looked at Eli. “Haven't you, Eli?”

Eli nodded.

Jon tried to sit up, but instead winced and grabbed his leg.

I rushed to his side. “Are you sure you're going to be able to move so soon?”

“If I don't fly out of this place, I promise you, a coffin will leap from behind the door and gobble me up. One of those
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
deals.”

We all laughed as Natembo covered his face and shook his head.

“I promise you. Can't you hear that banging in the background?” He knocked his knuckles on the edge of his dinner tray, slow and methodically, like the hammering of a nail.

I refocused my attention on the ambient noise and looked out the louvered window at the gray sand littered with garbage and goats. There was indeed the banging of a hammer emanating from the back of the hardware store.

“It's Caprivi's Tell-Tale Heart, banging out fresh coffins every morning.” He knocked, knocked, knocked, and then used both hands to knock just out of sync. “Somebody had their thinking cap on, placing the hardware store so close to the customer. This place is a death trap and the only way out is to claw your own exit plan.” Jon clawed at the air and burst out laughing. “In fact, you'd better hide that stitch of yours, or they'll try to admit you for observation,” he teased. “The white ward is a boon for the doctoring business around here.”

“You're going to sneak out, aren't you?” I whispered.

Jon smiled.

I laughed as I looked beyond the hardware store to the bank and remembered the sign
COFFINS WITH WREATHS
posted at the ATM machine when I was getting money just before the elephant census. It seemed like so long ago when Jon had been joking to Nigel and me about some of the misconceptions about HIV. I remembered Nigel laughing and readjusting his cap. I suddenly realized that I hadn't seen him at Sianga's funeral. Why hadn't he gone? Something else started surfacing in my subconscious. That cap. Not too many people in the region wore a cap like that.

“You look kilometers away.” Jon touched my arm. “Do you not want me at your place?”

I snapped out of my fog. “Gidean, would you mind accompanying me on an errand?”

Gidean got up.

“I hope you're not going out to Susuwe to make your place livable.” Jon smiled. “Please, no curtains on my account.”

My mind was racing. Why hadn't I thought of it sooner? It might already have been too late. “Not to worry, Jon, we'll be back in the afternoon.” I nodded a good-bye.

“And no curtains, right?” Jon called out after me.

“Right,” I called back, my mind halfway to Singalamwe, wondering what I was going to say when I got there.

As we turned the corner of the modest whitewashed brick-and-thatch home to the backyard, I couldn't help feeling that the place was like any other well-maintained home along Hout Bay in Cape Town, but was certainly out of place in the Caprivi. Never having been to Nigel's house, I hadn't thought about what it might look like. All I knew was that he lived across the river from the ranger station, up toward the border of Zambia, in the village of Singalamwe. I had just assumed it would be a simple reed-and-thatch rondavel surrounded by an unkempt mix of dust and weeds, like most village houses.

With his back to us, Nigel was trimming an impeccable line of rosebushes next to a bird feeder. The roses grew over a trellis and around a small fountain that trickled down a wall of rocks and into a koi pond. This garden would have taken some years to establish.

Nigel turned, as if surprised by our presence. “Oh,
mutozi,
Gidean.” He nodded the Lozi afternoon salutation as if he were meeting us for the very first time. “Catherine.” He bowed looking right through me, wearing that same cap, slightly curved more on one side than the other, similar to the one the man was wearing in the boat with Geldenhuis the night before.

I was unnerved by his behavior and yet furious that I was unnerved, as I suspected that that was exactly his intention. “Impressive gardening,” I said, looking around for more clues to peg him as the man I had seen in the boat with Geldenhuis the previous night.

“It is, isn't it.” He continued with his pruning. “I took it over from the Baptist minister. Shame, when his wife died of cerebral malaria, he couldn't face coming back here.” He snipped a branch. “I arrived just in time to inherit the place.”

I noticed that Nigel had orange mud on his boots and slashes of mud up his ankles.

“The funny thing about roses,” Nigel calmly explained while delicately snipping off a rose hip and holding it up to us, “is that people underestimate just how hardy they really are.”

Nigel turned his back again and heavily pruned back several branches. “The further you cut them back, the more they thrive. That doesn't seem like the quality of a delicate flower, does it?”

My eyes adjusted past the roses to see some luggage sitting on the back step. “We missed you at the funeral.” I probed for a reaction.

“Shame to have had to miss it. I would have liked to have given the induna my condolences.”

I nodded toward his muddy legs and boots. “Have another run-in with hippos?”

Nigel snipped at a branch and stabbed himself with a thorn. “Bugger.” He grabbed his hand and replied, “Yes, the hippos are an ongoing problem in these waters.”

“Perhaps Mr. Lin also had a run-in with a hippo.” I waited for a reaction, but when I didn't get any, I continued. “He was found in the Zambezi this morning.”

Nigel clucked his tongue. “The Chinese aren't very good swimmers,” he replied, seemingly unmoved, as he stepped onto an area of loose dirt and tamped it down with his feet. “I just had my gardeners turn over the plot. It was high time I try sunflowers instead of mealies. If planted closely enough, they have a certain elegance to them, while mealie fields always look so bloody scrappy.”

“Sunflowers?” Gidean asked as he walked across an area of freshly overturned soil.

“That's right,” Nigel replied. “Funny thing is, you can actually make a bloody decent wage from sunflower oil.” He shrugged. “I was just gardening for the aesthetic. I had thought about rice, but it's just so messy. And you have to be careful of mosquitoes, what with cerebral malaria being so common.”

I walked to his back stoop and stood next to his luggage. “Going on another trip?”

Nigel strolled back over to his bird feeder, removed a bag from his pocket, and poured the contents—a mix of seed and something larger—into the feeder. “Yes, in fact. Thought I'd leave a little extra for the birds this time. Shame, they've grown so dependent.”

I walked over to the bird feeder. Would he really take the time to feed the birds and trim the garden before leaving? I casually poked my finger into the bird feeder.

“I hand select the seeds myself.” Nigel's tone wavered.

I picked out a sunflower seed, cracked the shell with my fingers, and dropped it. “Fresh,” I said, impressed.

“Yes.” He smiled, his eyes focused on my fingers.

I poked my finger to the bottom, hitting what felt like jagged stones. I picked out another sunflower seed and put it in my mouth. “I was never a fan of the aftertaste.” I sucked. “But I do like the salt.” I spat out the whole seed.

We both said the word at the same time. “Unsalted.”

While I dipped my finger into the seed again, Nigel looked as if I had poked at an exposed tooth nerve. “Surprised you'd be taking off so soon again,” I said.

“Again?” Nigel asked as he casually put his hand over the seed, flattening the surface.

“After what must have been a very brief sojourn in the delta?” I poked a finger in between his, inspired by how uncomfortable he had become. “Gidean,” I called, “come have a taste of one of these sunflower seeds.” I glared at a man whose stare now chilled to the core—a man whom I had somehow never seen before now.

Gidean dug his hand down to the bottom of the feeder, grabbed a fistful of seed, and pulled it out. When he opened his palm, it was filled with large uncut diamonds speckled with seed.