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Go shoppingIn the long grass, Isack held his breath.
The men wore green and brown to camouflage themselves. They moved slowly around the tree and the cable trap, shifting the blades of grass to the side and checking for snakes on the ground. A bite from a black mamba would kill a man in half an hour.
[private]Bado, the man at the front, signalled for them to stop moving.
Isack crouched. Blood was throbbing in his ears. Never had he heard such perfect silence as out here on the flat plain. The air was solid and still. The sky was still hazy and pink with dawn. The sun was squashed against the horizon, which shimmered like glass. There was a smell of something baked. Baked earth. Baked animal.
A rustling sound. Isack’s stomach tightened. Bado turned around to face the men with his finger to his lips, and the noise became louder.
Then an almighty roar. Isack looked up quickly, through the grass. An elephant in the trap, its tough grey skin bulging at the neck where the cable had tightened. The ivory tusks gleamed, pearly-white. Those tusks would buy treatment for malaria for a long time. For Isack’s daughter. His hands gripped the axe, hard. The axe to hack off the tusks.
“We got him. Elephant! Tembo!” Bado said.
Isack was frozen, staring at the bellowing giant struggling in its noose. It was stately, rolling from side to side, swishing against the long grass.
No one spoke. Isack’s heart was pounding and beads of sweat were dripping down his forehead. His hands seemed rooted to his side. One hand held the axe steady, horizontal, on the ground. Ready.
Yet no one moved. Why hadn’t they pulled their triggers? Why hadn’t Bado given the command? The men were as silent and transfixed as Isack, cemented like statues in a circle around the frail animal.
The elephant thrashed its trunk.
There was a click. Bado flicked his safety catch. The other men did the same. Click click click, in sequence, like a percussion band.
Thrash, thrash, thrash. The elephant was moving its trunk high in the air, its head in a figure of eight. It was moving its legs, bold steps. Moving away from them. Tembo had escaped. Trundling fast, clumsy, maimed, into the bush. The cable hung from the tree, swinging like a dead man’s noose.
“He got away. Ka!” said Bado.
There was a silence. Not even the slightest breeze.
One of the other men spoke. A bold voice, chiming, echoless.
“I can get him.”
“No Lumbwi,” said Bado.
“Why not?” said Lumbwi.
Isack shifted in the grass. His feet were tingling from hovering on them.
“Because,” said Bado, “You won’t get him while he’s moving. You have to wait until there’s one in the trap again.”
Isack looked up at an eagle soaring in the sky.
“I’m going to go after him,” said Lumbwi.
Isack’s insides were churning. He pressed the axe, the only axe, firm against the earth.
“If I kill him,” Lumbwi said, his tone raising a notch. “I’m gonna keep those tusks.”
“Perhaps you’d better ask Isack if you can borrow his axe then?” said Bado.
All eyes turned on Isack. Isack’s hands trembled as he stared first at Lumbwi, then at Bado.
Lumbwi lifted a hand slowly and held it out to Isack. He was in reaching distance of the axe.
Isack tried to read Bado’s expression. It was a cold, stern look, which didn’t give much away. But Isack knew. Bado was testing Isack. Testing his loyalty.
Lumbwi’s hand was still extended. Isack looked back at Lumbwi, but kept his arms by his sides. The sweat was raining from his brow but he resisted the urge to wipe it dry. The sun was in his eyes but he tried not to squint.
“Isack,” said Lumbwi. “Give me your axe.”
Lumbwi raised his gun and pointed it right at Isack’s head.
Over the top of the long grass, Isack saw some elephants in the distance, blurred because of the hot air. Could he hear them too? – a faint trumpeting sound, majestic beasts trampling their territory.
But that was far away. Here, under the tree, there was a gun barrel in his face.
“I will count to three,” said Lumbwi. “One…two…thr…”
A gun shot shattered Isack’s eardrum and shook his body. He closed his eyes and waited, numb, for death. But when he opened them, he was still crouching in the grass and there was a flock of birds, squawking and flapping across the sky.
It was Lumbwi collapsed on the ground. His position was grotesque; his limbs were spread and bent.
There was a black gash on his head, oozing thick red blood.
Bado stood up in the grass like a young giraffe getting up for the first time. He looked around at the men.
“No more trouble, alright?” he said. “Now, we’re going to say he was killed by an elephant, OK?”
Isack understood. In this country, if the police found out you had killed, they would kill. You kill, you get killed.
Still holding his weapon, Bado walked over to the dead man. He picked up Lumbwi’s gun, which was lying on the ground, detached from his grasp when he fell into the soil.
He lifted the guns high in the air and then he hit the body. One side then the other. Hard blows which pelted the body to a pulpy mess. A flat, stamped-on body, moist and weeping.
When he had finished, Bado wiped his forehead with his wrist and spat into the grass.
“Let’s get out of here, man.”
The men stood up, and Bado started to run. The men followed him, panting like big cats. Isack picked up the axe and followed them. He was clumsy and his legs felt heavy; he didn’t even bother checking for snakes. Now it was hotter than ever and the air was close around him like a cumbersome cloak.
And the men ran. They would be back at the village by the time the sun was halfway up in the sky.[/private]
Laura Nelson is a science writer and journalist by profession, and has published articles in
New Scientist magazine and the Guardian, among others. She also has a short fiction story published
in Nature magazine.
