Susan Minot - Thirty Girls

What do I need to bring?

Nothing, he said.

But she went to the guest room and put some clothes in a bag. She peeled bills from a wad of cash and hid the rest with her passport behind some books. Her journal fell open and pictures fanned out on the floor. Harry picked them up and handed them back to her, sitting patiently while she wrote Lana a note saying she’d be back tomorrow or the next day. She took a white Ethiopian wrap Lana had lent her and got into Harry’s truck with him.

They drove through the Nairobi traffic with the Ngongs’ slate-gray peaks zigzagging above and headed west, up hills feathered with crevasses and past scribbled bushes and thin trees, and lit out on a spine-slamming potholed road.

They passed through the crossroad din of Narok, rattling with muffler-less cars. Yellow storefronts sat in a line beside blue storefronts. There were many groceries: Deep Grocery, Angel Food, Ice Me. People walked among goats or sat on piled tires; dust rose up. Then the colorful blur passed and suddenly the open windows framed a parched beige landscape smelling of smoke and dry grass. After long stretches of uninterrupted brush and flat dirt they’d find a scattering of huts with people on the side of the road, usually children, turning with slow, aimed faces to watch the vehicle pass.

Harry didn’t talk much, but after eight hours in a car she did learn some things.

The main thing for Harry was flying. Work was what you did to pick up a few shillings between missions. He’d had a few jobs, relief work in the north, construction work at a safari camp in Malawi. At home he could usually count on being hired by a German chap who put up electric fences for private houses in Langata. He spent a while too with a bloke trying to save wild dogs in the Tsavo desert. That had been a cool job, he said, nodding.

But mainly he flew. When he first started paragliding he would drive everywhere in the truck till he realized a motorcycle was better for the out-of-the-way places. And out-of-the-way places were the point. The whole continent of Africa was open to him, he’d only scratched the surface. A recent trip to Namibia over the baked desert clay was awesome. Sometimes he went with a mate, usually Andy, but he’d also go alone. His parachute folded up into a rucksack which he strapped to his bike.

She asked him questions; he answered them.

He’d go for days or weeks. Alone, he ate raw couscous, too lazy to cook. By the end of a trip he’d be living on vitamin pills and returned with burnt skin, weighing pounds lighter. His motorcycle got stuck in muddy swamps. Once, deep sand in the desert sputtered out the motor. There was the time he broke his collarbone landing on rocks which made the two-day drive home not so fun. Another time he dislocated his shoulder, but Andy was there and snapped it back.

Many places that he flew he could look in every direction and see no sign of people. Now and then a little cluster of huts was there blending into the brown earth or a thin wire of smoke rose out of the trees. But wildlife was everywhere. Elephants looked like tiny gray chips. Herds of gazelles were a swarm of flies on pale ground when you saw them from above. He looked down on the back of eagles with their stiff wings unflapping as he followed them down the thermal from behind.

Then Harry had a question. Who’s the man in the blue shirt? he said.

Jane looked at the unchanging landscape, thinking he meant someone on the road. Where?

In your book that fell out.

Oh. That’s my ex-husband.

You were married?

I was.

What happened?

Got divorced? she said brightly. Then, Got divorced. She felt him waiting for more. It was hard for Jane to stay silent if she felt someone wanted more. Two years ago, she said.

Harry rubbed his teeth with his tongue. You still love him? She looked at him, surprised. You keep his picture.

He’s dead.

He looked at her to see if this was true. Really?

Yup.

Whoa, he said under his breath. What happened?

OD.

That’s hectic.

Happens when you’re an addict, she said.

Yes, he said.

No, she agreed. It was bad.

They drove in silence.

How long were you married for?

Three years, but we were together for eight. He was in a clean period when we got we married. She laughed. As if that mattered.

Harry watched the road, tilting his head to show he was listening.

We weren’t together when he died, she said. But it was still … She didn’t finish.

What was his name? Harry said.

Jake.

Harry appeared thoughtful.

That was, Jane thought, all she was going to say about Jake. At least at the moment. Maybe she’d say more later. Some other time, when she knew him better. She might say more, if she thought he cared. But why would he want to know, really, was her first thought. And did she really want to tell him all that? Jake slipping back only a week after the little wedding, the wrenching final break, how she didn’t go to the funeral because the new girlfriend didn’t want her there. She’d had a hard enough time explaining it to herself without having to describe it to someone else. How do you describe hearing your husband say, I think I made a terrible mistake? And what more can you add about yourself if after hearing this you find that no vow of loyalty could have bound you more fiercely to him than this expression of rejection?

What about you? she said to Harry. You have a girlfriend?

His shoulders rose in a slow shrug. Sometimes, he said. Sort of. His face was placid.

Does she have a name?

He turned and smiled at Jane. Nope.

Open aluminum gates marked the entrance to the Massai Mara and a soft red road led them down a steep hill to the game reserve. They drove onto a flat green plain striped with thin shadows. In the distance a wall-like cliff rose on the western side.

They drove along the eastern edge among leafy trees. There she is, Harry said. To the south an escarpment curled like a giant wave about to break, dwindling off to the west and ending in a hazy bluff.

Harry pointed to some thornbushes which on closer examination turned out to be zebra sitting with ears up in a striped shade. Jane stared fascinated, feeling she was in a storybook, though she was to learn that zebra were not particularly impressive to Africans. Elephant, on the other hand, were by all standards worth driving off track for, as Harry did when he spotted a small herd low in a riverbank. The truck wove its tires through lumpy grasses and stopped, motor off and ticking, giving them a clear view of enormous wrinkled creatures, legs darkened by mud, swaying and bumping against one another. One lifted a trunk like a whip in slow motion and sprayed water. When a large female started flapping her ears, staring directly at the truck and making a throaty trumpet sound, Harry knew to start the engine and back up.

They passed the entrance to a safari camp and its wooden sign hanging on rope with the yellow recessed words Kichwa Tembo. Elephant Head. There were a number of commercial camps in the Mara, but Harry was taking her to a private house, owned by an anthropologist who’d married her Maasai translator and so had claims on the land. At the southern corner of the plain the red road tilted up, turning pale and chunky with white rocks. They lurched up a short vertical hill then hugged the side in diagonal slashes of switchbacks. Harry gripped the steering wheel as if he were wrestling something wild. They passed Maasai encampments he told her were called bomas, circular walls of tangled branches containing small huts and cattle which had to be protected from wildlife. On a day’s notice the boma would be dismantled and reassembled somewhere else where there was fresh grass.

Are we close? she said. But she wasn’t impatient. She felt happy and free. The land was majestic and riding beside him she had the feeling she was where she ought to be. It was not a feeling Jane had often.