The Devil's Horn (3 page)

Promise knelt beside Hard Life and the carcass. Stripped of his horns, shot and cut up, crushing his own legs, the beast looked shamed, nothing like the colossus he had been. On her knees, Promise slid her bloody hand into Hard Life’s. His small-boned grip trembled. Good Luck cursed them both and stalked off alone. Promise let him walk off; she could track him.

She found Good Luck two hundred meters away, pacing over open ground. Promise stomped up to the shooter.

“Give the boy the backpack.”

He shook his head. Promise grabbed one of the straps and tugged. Good Luck tried to back away, but she held him fast.

“It’s his job. He’s afraid you’ll try to have him paid less.”

Good Luck made his marred smile.

“You’re a suspicious woman.”

“What I am is not your concern. Take it off.”

The poacher sloughed the pack off his shoulders. Promise tossed it to the boy. She addressed both poachers.

“Walk where I walk.”

Promise took the lead with Hard Life behind, Good Luck in the rear. She didn’t know when the carcass would be discovered. The ECP might blunder into it tonight; maybe the rangers were on their trail right now. At first light, in four hours, buzzards would circle and mark the dead rhino.

She headed southeast to the busted spot in the fence where the Mozambicans had crossed, following the contours of the land past familiar acacia hedges and fever trees, mopanes and marulas, along game trails and dry creeks. When Promise did not recognize the land, she let the stars lead her. The blood on her skin dried like scabs, her black tunic and pants turned crusty. Promise paid more attention to the tracks and scat on the trail than she did the two poachers behind her. The more she blamed them, the faster she walked, sometimes jogging, and left it to the Mozambicans to keep up.

The trek through the bush took an hour and a half. Without breaking the pace, Promise reached the jumble of boulders near the border where she’d waited earlier. The poachers scrambled to her through the dark. Facing the granite rocks, remembering herself sitting on them with the moon just beginning to climb, Promise recalled a different girl. She wanted to wave her arms and shout at the ghost of herself, drive her away before Hard Life and Good Luck could arrive under the rising moon. But she was too late; the two came huffing up with the severed horns, and the moon had begun to vanish.

Reaching the boulders, Good Luck squatted on his sandals to rest. He spit through his teeth.

“I don’t like working with either of you.”

Promise and Hard Life stood on either side, looking down on the shooter. The boy poked him with the handle of the ax.

“Let’s go.”

“When I’m ready.”

Promise indicated the backpack.

“Do you have water?”

“Yes.”

“Give him some.”

Hard Life dropped the pack to dig inside. The long horn stuck out, sharp, accusing, and pointing at Promise.

The shooter grabbed the water bottle from the boy and sucked hard, he was dehydrated.

Hard Life jutted his chin toward the border.

“I know where to go. Come on.”

Hard Life shouldered the pack. The shooter made no move to join them but stayed folded and balanced on his sandals in the dirt, finishing the water. The boy took the lead, walking swiftly the way Promise had. On his back, the horn rose above his head.

The border between South Africa and Mozambique was nothing but a decades-old two-meter-high fence, just strands of wire and posts. The barrier lay on its face in as many places as it stood. Every year, thousands of poor Mozambicans snuck across illegally, either to poach in the Kruger or to find work in the cities. Many never returned, prevented by predators in the park, armed and angry rangers, or the urban, even more crushing kind of poverty that awaited them in Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Even with the fence down in so many places, the animals of the Kruger did not stray into Mozambique. They stayed away, as if they knew they would not be cared for there, as if they knew all the rhinos across the border had been killed.

The moon sank in the west while Promise followed Hard Life. East beyond the fence, the terrain climbed softly to a low ridgeline, a dark wave against a star-studded horizon. To the south, the earth fell into a steep ravine, a hidden and favorite crossing spot but not now, in the rainy season, when it was a mire.

A thirty-meter section of barrier lay on the ground, the posts rusty and the strands snapped. A dirt road ran just inside the boundary. Hard Life stepped across into Mozambique, dropped the pack to the road, and withdrew a flashlight. He aimed the beam into the slow-rising hillsides. No answer but winking stars came out of the black. The boy waved the light back and forth.

Good Luck came up and took the light from him with impatience. He blinked it once at the hills, twice, then once again, a signal. On the crest of a knoll a kilometer away, a pair of headlights flicked on and bounced down the slope.

Promise and the poachers waited silently while the pickup wove downhill through the brush. Promise did not cross the borderline but stayed on the verge inside her own country, standing on the links of the downed fence.

The
bakkie
pulled onto the dirt road, squeaking on bad springs to halt in front of Good Luck. The skinny shooter said nothing when he jumped into the truck bed, leaned his back against the cab, and laid the rifle across his bony, crossed ankles. He spit between his teeth a last time, not reaching South Africa or Promise.

Hard Life batted the long lashes of his child’s eyes at Promise, as though he might cry again. She only nodded in reply, to say she did not hate him.

Hard Life handed the backpack to the driver, who pulled the horns inside the dark cab. With the bloody hatchet, the boy climbed into the back beside Good Luck and pulled his bare knees to his chest.

The muzzle of an AK-47 appeared on the driver’s windowsill, aimed at Promise. Prickles scurried across her skin. Her hands rose from her sides, she retreated a step, not knowing what to do. A low voice issued from inside the bakkie.

“It’s alright.”

The weapon withdrew. The passenger door of the truck creaked open. The truck seemed to right itself when Juma got out, he was so big.

Juma walked in front of the headlights. In the years since Promise had seen him, his belly had grown, his face had fattened, and his gait had become more roly-poly. Juma’s years of wealth were mounting on him.

He spread his long arms and big hands, still strong from his time in the mines. Juma waited on his side of the fence, backlit by the truck’s lights. Jewelry sparkled on his wrists. He wore dark, long pants, a white silk pullover shirt, and dress shoes.

“When my sister called, I did not believe her.”

“Hello, Granduncle.”

“Hello, Nomawethu.” He used her family name. It meant
with my ancestors
. “Come give me a hug.”

Promise hesitated. Criminals crossed the border like that, on foot, without papers. Juma was a criminal, he should come to her. But Juma had her money.

She stepped over the remains of the fence into Mozambique, into her great-uncle’s heavy embrace. Her cheek flattened against his soft chest. Promise did not loop her arms around him, she could not have joined her hands. She rested them on the ledge of his waist.

Juma kissed the top of her head and whispered, “You did well.”

Promise dropped her hands, but he did not let her go.

“You have blood on you. Was it hard?”

She nodded into his breast.

“I’m sorry. I would have sent better men with you, not these two baboons. But I didn’t believe you would come.”

Promise stepped back against his arms. Juma set her loose, looking down on her with the wash of white light from the idling truck behind him. He wiped a broad, warm thumb down her cheek to clean a dot of blood.

“That’s why your grandmother calls you Promise. You keep your word.”

Juma stepped back, spreading his hands again. He appraised Promise.

“You’ve become quite a beauty. The bush agrees with you.”

Promise wanted to stand here no longer. The lit-up vehicle was a beacon, any patrol for kilometers in every direction could see it. Juma was little more than a stranger to her, a patchwork memory of a gigantic man, a rare visitor to the township bringing expensive gifts. Always her grandfather resented the presents, complaining afterward that Juma was not generous but crowing, showing off his dirty money. Her grandmother clucked her tongue and held out both hands to her brother’s visits and gifts.

“Do you have my money?”

Juma cocked his head, mimicking disappointment.

“I wish we had more time to talk, child. Some other time.”

Juma pulled from his pocket a roll of bills bound with a rubber band.

“Fifty thousand rand. As agreed.”

Promise accepted the cash with one hand. Juma reached to his other pocket for a money clip. He detached another sheaf of bills.

“And ten thousand more, for my family.”

Promise took this with her free hand.

Juma clapped meaty fingers around her wrist.

“I want you to know I met you out here on the border because I didn’t want you coming to me in Macandezulo. No matter what my sister said. I didn’t trust you. You’re a Kruger ranger.”

Juma laid a white calling card on top of the cash in her open palm.

“I trust you now.”

With a squeeze of her arm, Juma released her. He put his broad back to Promise, crossed through the headlights, and left her on the wrong side of the border.

With Juma, his poachers, and the moon all gone, Promise gazed across a murky vale. She squatted to listen to the far-off lions, the hoots of an owl, and the furtive Kruger. Her eyes readjusted from Juma’s headlights to the canopy of stars. She waited ten minutes, immobile on the dirt road in Mozambique, until she was sure she was unseen.

Promise took off her sandals to add a new set of tracks. Keeping to the game trail, she walked backward, careful to lay her bare heels into the dirt first before the pads of her feet to make forward-looking strides. Like this, she backed across the border all the way to the boulders. There she climbed on the rocks, where no prints could be recorded, and hopped from rock to rock until she ran out of granite.

Moving west again, Promise avoided the paths. She moved across open grazing lands that would not remember prints, high stepped through tall grasses to prevent a trail, and avoided sandy soil unless it was to walk backward and barefoot again. She trod through no brush, broke no twigs, stirred no scent from flowers and herbs, the antitracking tricks of the poachers.

With dawn two hours away, she reached the water hole. The animals knew she was coming, heads were up and awaiting. The hyenas were gone; perhaps they’d followed her to the rhino and were the first to feast. The female lions still lounged above the bank. The elephant mother and child had been joined by a great tusked bull who stood with the baby in the shallows. A tall kudu watched Promise with ears straight out, wary and ready to bolt.

Five strides from the water, Promise dropped to her knees. She shrugged the rifle off her back. She tucked Juma’s money under the weight of the gun. With the panga she dug a hole in the soft ground. The animals watched, and she watched them.

When the hole was deep enough to reach in up to her elbow, Promise tugged the black tunic over her head and stripped off her pants. She shoved the bloody clothes into the little pit, then covered them. She tamped the earth down, then eased naked into the pool.

In the dark, Promise cupped water over her hips and small breasts. She splashed the shore to blend in the hole she’d dug. The bull elephant took this as play and sprayed the youngster before him. The kudu trotted off.

Promise washed away the dead rhino. She scrubbed her hair and under her nails. The brown water dissolved the flaky blood and cooled her, but saddened her more; with the blood gone, with her clothes buried and tracks disguised, the evidence of what she’d done was left solely in her heart. The burden there seemed greatest.

Promise stood in the water, dripping. On the opposite bank a lioness yawned and eyed her. How could she go back to the rangers with this guilt? She might as well have kept the blood on her face. The lioness stared at her, unmoving. Promise let the big cat’s remorseless gaze harden her own heart. The elephants ignored her, playing, and this felt like forgiveness. The stars were distant and small, the night vast, and the untamed bush itself seemed to take no notice.