Thirty Girls. Susan Minot
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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.
Just up here, Harry said, and Jane didn’t care if they ever got there or ever stopped.
The white road ran along a naturally terraced area of the escarpment. Down to the right was a tunnel of greenery inside which flowed the Mara River. There was no road at all when Harry turned right down a slope of flattened grass strewn with hulking boulders at the end of which sat a stone house with a tin roof.
They got out. The air was loud with the sound of water rushing by in the river. They went to a door surrounded by a wrought-iron cage with a large padlock on it. No one appeared to be home. Jane sat for a moment in a chair left outside at a green painted table. The river surged by below, the color of café au lait, battering low branches that bounced against the white waves. Above the river a woolly ridge dark as a rain forest rose up against a yellowish sky. It was late afternoon. On the table a wineglass held a coin of red liquid and a dish had the last bits of a tart crust. Harry was digging around in the back of the truck, hauling out the backpack.
They walked straight up, first in the shade then passing the line into the sun. Jane followed Harry’s large backpack. They came to a narrow footpath. Halfway up they passed a thin woman, chest wrapped in a plaid red and blue shuka, walking down. Her head was shaved and her long earlobes hung with loops and beads. She was barefoot, probably around eighty, walking without hesitation. Jambo, they said and she nodded, passing by.
It didn’t take long to reach the top, and it felt as if they’d gone higher when they did. Soft wind blew and looking over the valley Jane had the sensation she’d never been able to see so far. Perhaps it was true.
Harry dumped out the sack and harness. He took off his shirt and put it back in the sack. As he unrolled the parachute it swelled out like foam. He shook it, then stepped into the harness attached to the thin ropes. His helmet was round and white, making his head look too big for his body. He stood a short distance from the edge with feet planted apart. Past the tall grass at the edge, the plain stretched miles below, brownish green but bleached of color. Behind Harry on the ground the chute flowed out like a wedding train. He pulled at it to free it from twigs and thorns, shaking at a dozen thin lines which all branched out into shorter lines attached to the chute. The likelihood of a tangle seemed immense. A harness of black straps fit over his shoulders and chest and wrapped around his thighs, arranged so that airborne he’d be seated. He stood for a while, staring out, listening. He looked at the clouds, gazing overhead, waiting for a gust. A white mist blew over them, dimming the sun and dampening Jane’s face,