Calvin Baker - Grace

When he roared next his foe did not respond, but began stealing away in defeat. The alpha would not let him part, though, until he had sealed his conquest with a coup de grâce , which he did in a swift brutal blow that left the other denatured. The hero went off with the lioness after that; the other, back into the dry savannah grass to die.

The others snapped away with their cameras, never taking them down from their faces the entire time. Sylvie was gripped between watching and turning away in distress.

“It’s horrific,” she said, her face twisted in pain. “We should not be seeing this.”

“It is the jungle,” I shrugged my hands. “It is what we are here to see.”

“Now I have seen it. I am ready to leave.”

Ali heard her, and turned the engine and headed back to camp, as the others still thrilled and cooed like pigeons at what they had seen.

“When the lion goes off with the lioness they make love three days. Thirty times every day, and do not eat,” Ali reported over the drumming motor.

“That is why they fought so hard,” the others joked, as they reviewed the footage they had shot.

“What will happen to the one who lost?”

“He will die. Or if he lives he will lose his mane, and it is a bad life for him after that.”

“That poor fellow,” said Effie. “Isn’t it awful, Edward?”

“I only hope,” Edward said, still looking behind us to the lion in the grass, “when he had them, he let them swing a bit from time to time.”

At camp there was a fire prepared, and the smell of roasting meat, which warmed against the oncoming chill. It was our last night at that station, so we were permitted showers to cleanse the red savannah dust, as the evening sun departed.

While Sylvie wrote in her journal, I returned to the campfire, where the others were already gathered, drinking the last of the cool beers, which Ali had put out.

“How did Ms. Sylvie like the big show?” Ali asked, coming over to where I was seated.

“She liked it fine, Ali.”

“What about you, sahib? You didn’t like it so hot?”

“It was something to see.”

“You cannot let the others bother you so much, boss. Just focus on the land. On the first day you see the green and golds. On the first night the moon and stars. On the second day you hear the birds and insects. On the third day you can see the difference between the types of plants and rocks. On the fourth day the insects no longer bother you. If you stay out here long enough and look the right way, you will eventually be able to see everything and how connected it is. The rest won’t bother you so much then.”

“Thanks, Ali.”

“You hear what happened in the north?” One of the Coalition cut us off, coming over to where we were.

“No?”

“They are all done for,” he said. “They sent in planes from Brussels, and those rebel boys have nowhere left to run.”

We gossiped until the beer was exhausted, and someone produced a bottle of the local spirit and passed it around the fire. The others added it to their chai, not knowing a bad bottle of the stuff could blind you.

We had dinner together sitting on dry logs, reliving the day’s adventure, until one of the Coalition produced a ukulele and started playing it, not too horribly, but he started trying to sing and had no voice. Sylvie and I slipped away after that, as they began to carry on under the stars.

From our tent in the trees we heard Effie sing a Gaelic dirge as we tried to sleep, and I thought less meanly of them for it, and was even happy for the music.

We remained awake deep into morning, whispering and laughing idly under the stars, until I shifted myself toward her beneath the covers.

“You still want to, after what we saw today?” Sylvie asked, moving away from me.

“I do,” I said.

“It was awful how he suffered,” she said.

“He got to lord over things awhile,” I replied. “It should not stop us from making love.”

“Maybe,” she allowed, as I cupped her breasts in my hands, “but only if we make love all the way.”

“I thought we always made love all the way.”

“That is not what I mean,” she answered, moving her body back toward mine.

Her voice in the darkness was clear and sultry, and I felt her pelvis move under mine, until I could feel each vertebrae.

“Come,” she said. “Make love to me all the way.”

“I will,” I told her.

“Until we make the world again?” she asked.

“No one can make the world again.”

“I feel divine tonight. Don’t you think it would be beautiful to make the world again?”

I thought how magnificent that would be. We made love and I told her we could try to make the world again. If we succeeded or even if we did not, it was beautiful and good to try. Again and again we tried.

We were spooled under the warm covers, still deep in the transparent hour of sleep, when the breakfast bell rang. We rose reluctantly into the morning chill, and climbed down to eat. We were moving up into the highlands that morning, which would entail a day’s travel, so there was a full breakfast of hen’s eggs, fried bacon, pineapples, blood fruit, sweet bananas, ugali , and bread toasted in the fire then slathered with raw cream butter.

Sylvie was trying to give up meat, but savored the smell of frying bacon as we sat on the night-damp logs and ate around the morning fire. It was still before sunrise when we finished, and barely light when we climbed into the lorry with our gear for the long drive across the country.

Instead of taking the main road, which would have consumed most of the day and taken us first back to the capital, the truck cut crow-wise through the countryside, so that we would reach our new base camp, up in the foothills of the mountains, by lunchtime.

The massive wheels made short work of the dusty road, and it was impressive to see the sixty-year-old vehicle still so reliable. The high beams carved a path through the morning fog, as the wheels found the ruts of a desired path the truck had etched out on previous journeys over the trail.

“It will last another hundred years,” Ali boasted, driving with the genial self-possession of a man at ease in his world, as he began to tell the story of how he had driven the truck from Europe, across the top of Africa five years earlier, to get his start in life.

When he saw we were still full of sleep, however, and did not need to be entertained, he fell into an equally good-natured silence. I had thought him a buffoon when we met, but had grown to understand he was not even an extrovert, but a quiet man, wearing the mask the world required of him, and trying to make a virtue of that. When the world was not there he slipped his mask right back off, as easily as coming home from the office, and the man he was beneath did not suffer too great a harm from carrying the burden for the man he presented to the outside.

Sylvie rested her head on my lap, and I propped myself against the side of the truck, in a not too uncomfortable position, as we absorbed the juts and bounces of the road, until we eventually fell in the rhythm of our own breathing, and were able to fall back asleep.

I do not know how long we had been dozing, but time passed until we were roused by a violent jolt, bringing the truck to an abrupt halt. We had struck a cement barrier, hidden in the fog, and could see shadowy figures in the road up ahead, surrounding the lorry and speaking brusquely to Ali in one of the local languages.

I peered out the side rail, and was able to make out a group of men in military fatigues, brandishing a ragtag assortment of Russian, American, and Chinese rifles and machine guns.