Safari Read online

  I had to set it two hours back on the flight to Lusaka.

  Which blew my mind. The trip was long enough. Granted there was no direct flight from JFK to Lusaka, I understood we had to fly somewhere else first. Still, did we have to overshoot it by two whole time zones? The mind boggled.

  Anyway, by the time we got to Lusaka, regardless of how many hours it took, it was daylight, and I had a wonderful view of the airport as we touched down. The terminal was long and flat-roofed. In front of it were a number of planes, all small single-engine prop planes, with the possible exception of a twin-engine or two, not significantly larger. We came to a stop in front of them and sat there on the runway, one huge 7-whatever-number-they-were-up-to-at-the-time-7 jumbo jet, a giant queen bee among drones.

  I wondered if they had a ladder in the terminal long enough to let us exit. Not to worry. We walked down canopied stairs onto the runway.

  Inside the terminal we were funneled through immigration. Our passports were not only stamped, but we were fingerprinted and had our eyeballs scanned. Apparently we passed, because we were waved on to collect our luggage. I had doubts whether business-class luggage downgraded to coach passing through umpty time zones and doubling back on itself would survive, but it did, and we lugged it to customs. Alice handed in the declaration sheet she had filled out on the plane stating we were tourists and had nothing to declare, and they waved us through. They never checked our duffles or backpacks. That was nice, but I couldn’t help thinking of all the current prescription bottles Alice had insisted I get for every pill I brought, having read that Zambia was tough on drugs and you could get busted for a Sudafed.

  We emerged from customs into the main terminal where an eager young man in a Clemson Safari cap held up a large sign on a stick which also read Clemson Safari. He was a skinny black man in safari shirt and shorts, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, with the whitest teeth outside a TV commercial. He had already snared four tourists and was looking around for fresh game.

  “Clemson Safari?” Alice said.

  The young man looked as if that were the most wonderful thing he had ever heard. I fully expected bells to ring, trumpets to blare, and a shower of confetti to rain down upon us as Alice was presented with a check for eighty million dollars. He consulted his clipboard and said, “Yes, yes! And you are?”

  “Alice and Stanley Hastings.”

  It was too good to be true. She even got the bonus question right. He nodded enthusiastically and checked us off on his list.

  We introduced ourselves to our fellow passengers. I missed their names, as is my fashion. There was a young married couple, no, not prepubescent, but younger than we were, and two women of indeterminate age but determinate size. The size was large. They were not obese, just solid, chunky. I could see them wrestling lions to the ground. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The women had their luggage on an airport cart, the type of SmartCart that costs five bucks at LaGuardia or JFK.

  I risked exposing myself as a total idiot and incurring Alice’s wrath by inquiring, “What do we do now?”

  He smiled. I think I could have asked him any question and he would have smiled. Is it true you raped and murdered your mother? “We wait for plane.”

  “Another plane?” I blurted. I couldn’t help myself. We’d been in the air for twenty-four hours.

  “Stanley,” Alice said. “You know the itinerary. Weren’t you paying attention? He doesn’t pay attention.”

  The smaller of the two large women said, “He’s just not happy. How long have you been traveling?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I said. “I’ve set my watch in so many directions I’m not sure if it’s Thursday or Friday.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “See?”

  The larger of the two women said, “Where did you come from?”

  “New York City.”

  “Then you have an excuse. We spent two days in Amsterdam.”

  “We could have gone through Amsterdam,” Alice said, “but the layover in the airport was too long.”

  And there they were, happy as clams, chatting away. While for me the bone of contention, what are we doing in this damn airport—partially answered with the threat of another plane in the offing—was still up in the air, so to speak.

  Luckily the married couple jumped in. At least the wife did. She looked younger than her husband, or perhaps it was just the ponytail in which she wore her straw-colored hair. But there was a spunky freshness about her, even in her loose green safari outfit. Her husband, a rather nerdy type, had that world-weary look of having been beaten into submission.

  “When is the plane?” the wife said. “We don’t want to miss it.”

  The young man smiled. “You will not. It is our plane.”

  “When do we board?” I asked.

  “We wait for two more guests.”

  I glanced around the terminal, saw what I was looking for. “Then I’m going to the men’s room,” I said.

  That roused Alice from her conversation with the Amsterdam women. “Are we about to board? Stanley always goes to the bathroom when we’re about to board.”

  I escaped to the men’s room with as much dignity as I could muster. I must admit, I carried a bit of ugly American prejudice with me, wondering what sort of facilities I would find.

  Surprise. Instead of being out in the open, the toilets were in stalls, with doors, no less. I picked the closest one and went in. Discovered it had no toilet seat, just the bare porcelain bowl. I went out, picked another. It also had no toilet seat. This did not bode well. Neither of the other toilets had seats either. It would appear there was either a serial toilet seat thief, or Zambia was taking extreme measures to combat the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Assuming no one sat on the bowl. Which was a pretty good assumption. All but the most obese would fall right in.

  Unfortunately, I had to use the toilet. I will not describe the scene that followed, but if cleanliness is next to godliness, I was not godly.

  I emerged from the stall, washed my hands quite well, and rejoined our little group.

  The last two members had just shown up.

  Lolita and her mother.

  4

  WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

  WE FLEW IN TWO PLANES. There were two, because we were eight, and the planes held five at best, and then only if the fifth passenger sat in the copilot’s seat.

  Lolita did not fly with us. The two married couples flew in one plane, the four women in the other.

  The seats were cozy. Two of them faced backwards. Alice pled airsickness and faced front. I volunteered to fly backwards, but the other two stepped up and took those seats. I missed their names, but learned they were an American couple living in Paris. He was in international banking, and she did something for an artist. Nude model sprang to mind, but that’s just me.

  Our pilot was a young white man who didn’t look old enough to vote, but who claimed he’d been flying for years, prompting visions of him sitting on Daddy’s lap.

  Alice was nervous enough that she managed to avoid mentioning I was a private eye. I’m never comfortable telling people that. Their perceptions come from books and TV, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I chase ambulances for a negligence lawyer, a semi-permanent job to supplement my writing and acting gigs, which as I grow older are fewer and farther between.

  We flew for an hour and a half and set down in the middle of nowhere. The airport consisted of a dirt runway, period. No terminal, no tower, no structure of any kind. Just a clearing in the trees long enough to land.

  “Welcome to the jungle,” I said.

  The nebbishy other husband said pedantically, “Actually, a jungle is a rainforest. Zambia is relatively dry.”

  I’m sure Alice would have decimated him had she not been fighting airsickness. Or beat him out at decimating me.

  There were two jeeps at the end of the runway, not on the runway, of course, but parked alongside. Each jeep was manned by a guide and a driver. Or
a guide who drove, and an assistant. I figured we’d sort all that out later. At any rate, the four men descended on us with welcoming smiles. They retrieved our luggage and stuffed it in the back of one of the jeeps. They’d just gotten it put away when the other plane arrived. I got out the video camera and filmed it coming in.

  Our pilot was younger. Bad as I am at estimating age, I say that without hesitation. The other pilot might have flown in World War II. A little old man with snow-white hair, he appeared to have trouble climbing out of the cockpit. The guides greeted him no less enthusiastically, as they did the passengers. The fact that they paid no special attention to Lolita I attribute to extraordinary discipline. Either that or all four were gay.

  The guides stowed their luggage and helped us up into the jeeps, which had three tiered passenger seats, making each successive row a slightly harder climb. Once again the couples got in one jeep and the women in the other. I wondered if we’d maintain the same positions for the duration. I kind of hoped so. It would be uncomfortable talking to Lolita in front of Alice. Neither was likely to hold her tongue.

  I looked back as we drove off. Our young pilot was already taxiing down the runway. The other pilot was still trying to climb into his plane.

  It was hard not to identify with him.

  We bounced out of the clearing on what was either a road or a recent set of tire tracks. I was immediately disappointed. No elephants. No zebras. No giraffes. Just antelopes. They were not just antelopes, of course, they were impalas, or gazelles, or some such like, and our guide pointed each species out gleefully as if it were a marvelous find. Alice took it all in, and would doubtless have great fun at my expense each time I misidentified one. Anyway, there must have been a zillion antelopes.

  Most likely that was because no lions were eating them.

  5

  ELEPHANTS IN CAMP

  WE ARRIVED AT CAMP, WHERE every Zambian citizen who could muster a smile was assembled in the parking lot. I climbed down from the jeep, which was a fair distance even from the second tier. Alice handed me the camera before climbing down herself. I did not know how much that simple act of holding the camera bag would foreshadow my prime directive for the trip.

  I helped Alice down and turned to meet the welcoming committee. First up was a skinny black man with a tray of wet facecloths. I accepted one and discovered just how dusty it was riding in a jeep with no windshield and no top.

  A young black woman with a tray of tall drinks of some kind smiled and pressed one on me.

  Alice pointed to it. “That’s not alcoholic, is it?”

  “He doesn’t drink alcohol,” a voice behind me said.

  Sure enough, Lolita came bouncing up, still rubbing her face with her washcloth. There was something sensual in the way she was doing it. I know that sounds stupid. You had to be there.

  Alice was, and I’m sure she picked up on it.

  I was saved from embarrassment by a large man booming in a hearty voice, “There they are! Welcome, welcome! I’m Clemson.” He smiled smugly. “Yes, that’s Clemson as in Clemson Safari. Hey, who was I going to name it after?” He chuckled at his joke. “Anyway, don’t let that fool you. I’m just one of the gang.”

  Clemson was just one of the gang in a plus-size safari outfit that was bursting at the seams. It was as if the man were attempting to become one with his company by devouring the camp. For all that, he wasn’t pudgy, just solid.

  “Well, well, let’s not hold them hostage in the parking lot,” he bubbled, and ushered us in the gate.

  “Oh, my god!”

  Alice was right. “Oh, my god” described it. The camp was like an upscale lodge. Yes, there were tents, but there are tents and there are tents. The tent to our right was a lounge and bar, complete with comfortable couches, cushioned chairs, and expensive-looking coffee tables.

  The tent to our left was a dining room such as might have catered a wedding in the courtyard of an East Hampton mansion. In front of us, a marbled terrace overlooked the most idyllic river ever.

  But all that escaped our notice.

  To the left and right of the terrace, on the grassy lawns between the tents and the river, were three elephants. The two together were a mother and a baby, the little elephant almost puppy-like in a clumsy, floppy way. The other was a large male or female, I couldn’t tell at first glance.

  Before I got a second, Alice was suddenly transformed into a wild person. “Stanley! Camera! Camera! Camera!”

  She was so vehement, it took me a moment to react, the idiot-husband reaction time famed in song and story. I swung the backpack off my arm, zipped it open, pulled out the camera with the long lens. Alice grabbed it, whipped off the lens cap, focused on the baby elephant.

  Alice was not alone. Half the members of our group were clicking a mile a minute, taking whatever type of picture cameras take now, I’m not up on this digital stuff. All I know is there’s no film, there’s memory, because Alice bought some for the trip. I know because she said witheringly she wished she could buy some for me.

  Lolita was shooting movies. I had a video camera, an ancient implement in dubious repair, left over from the days when our son Tommie was a boy. And I knew I should get it and shoot the baby elephant. Alice would be displeased if I didn’t. But if I did, would she think I was shooting video because Lolita was? I could just hear her ribbing me about that. And then there was the camera itself, embarrassingly old and outmoded. I didn’t want to whip it out in front of Lolita. Yes, I know how bad that sounds. That’s sort of what I was thinking.

  Anyway, I opted out of going to the videotape, and observed my fellow tourists.

  The only ones who weren’t shooting pictures were two men and a woman who had been sitting on the couch in the bar but had gotten up to join the group. One of the men wasn’t tall, but looked athletic, in a rugged, pretty-boy way. His safari outfit was short-sleeved with short pants. His safari hat hung down his back, probably to show off his full head of wavy brown hair. His smile was cocky, arrogant.

  The other man, in contrast, was taller, thinner, and probably older, though it was hard to tell as he wore aviator shades and a wide-brimmed safari hat pulled down over his forehead. His safari outfit was long-sleeved with long pants. His grin was non-existent.

  The woman, also in a safari outfit, seemed amiable, and looked older than most of the people in our group. I hoped that included me.

  I figured the three of them had been here for a while, and the sight of up-close elephants was not unusual enough to warrant getting out a camera.

  The rest of us shot like crazy.

  Clemson watched it all like a proud papa, as if he had carefully engineered our greeting. “I want you two elephants down here on the left, you over here on the right. And I want you on your best behavior. No running off, and no charging the guests. And no pooping. Not right away. I want you to look cute first. Then when you poop they’ll think it’s even cuter.”

  No such comment was forthcoming. Instead, when the clicking had died down, Clemson smiled, raised his finger, and said, “Now, these are not the only three elephants in camp. There are many many more, and they are not tame elephants. They do not live in camp, camp just happens to be in the area in which they live.”

  “That’s adorable,” one of the two women said. The larger of the two. I still hadn’t sorted out their names.

  Clemson’s smile was indulgent. “Yes. Adorable. They are also dangerous. Do you know where an elephant sleeps?” Before anyone could jump in, he said the punch line himself. “Anywhere it wants to. In the daytime you can walk around camp, but if an elephant is between you and the dining hall, you don’t go to the dining hall. You wait for the elephant to leave, or for someone to come and help you. At night you don’t go at all. After dark you can’t walk around by yourself. Someone will come to your tent and get you for dinner. After dinner someone will take you back. There are no exceptions. At night you walk with a guide with a flashlight and a rifle.”

  “Rifle?
” Lolita said. “You don’t shoot the elephants, do you?”

  “Of course not. That’s just a precaution. The guns are rarely needed. And then only to fire a warning shot.”

  “You’ve never shot an elephant?”

  “I’ve never shot an elephant.”

  “I mean the guides.”

  “I’ve never shot a guide.”

  Lolita giggled. “No, seriously.”

  Clemson, backed into a corner, took a breath. “No one wants to shoot an elephant. But we’re not going to let an elephant hurt a guest.”

  “Has that ever happened?”

  “Every camp has horror stories. The guides usually tell them on the last night when you’re leaving.”

  “We’re only here one night,” Lolita persisted.

  “You won’t have any trouble. Just do what the guides say and you’ll be fine.”

  The cocky young man who’d been sitting in the bar said, “It’s not a problem. We got here yesterday. Nothing’s scary. Everything’s perfectly safe.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. I could tell Lolita would have preferred scary.

  I could also tell she was eying the young man with more than a casual interest. Mommy, no doubt wanting to spoil the moment, stepped between them and said, “Are those elephants?”

  We all looked where she was pointing. The tops of rounded forms could be seen poking out of the water in the middle of the river.

  Bad luck for Mommy. Her question merely gave the young man a chance to show off as an old hand who’d been there a whole day. “No. Those are hippos.”

  Lolita was delighted. “Hippos! How exciting!”

  “Yes,” Clemson said. “And one reason you can’t swim in the river.”

  “You can’t?” Lolita said. She sounded crushed.

  I was unable to keep images of her in a bikini out of my mind.

  “’Fraid not. Hippos have big mouths. I don’t mean they talk a lot. I mean they’re huge. Wait’ll you see ’em up close. Not too close, of course. But out of the water.”