It was the damnedest thing I ever saw.
We were transfixed and watched them, and the matriarchs watched us, until we took another step away and they paid us no mind, but stripped the leaves from a low tree and fed their young. We were like that for one second or else one year, until the light made it clear we had better keep moving.
When we felt safe to turn our backs they hooted again and began fleeing up the mountain, in the opposite direction.
“They are people,” Sylvie said, as we pressed on toward the lake. “I did not know they were people.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Those poor people,” she said. “They look so wise, like ancient old people. Those poor people.”
“It’s a rough business,” I said.
“The poaching?”
“Peopling.”
“They are gentle, and it is the same thing that happens to all wise people.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think they have souls?” she pondered.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“They do. I know it. I felt it. They are souls. They rise from the earth, just as we do, and have the same spirits, just like us.”
“That’s for the cosmologists,” I said.
“That’s just something clever to say. You think I’m being irrational, and are damming it off. But I don’t care how clever anybody tries to be. They have souls.”
“Maybe.”
“God—”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“Don’t be petulant, honey. God is a metaphor. I thought you knew things.
“And the same God holds them, just like us, and rocks them, just as whatever you want to call It does us, in the hollow of His hand.” Her eyes were bright with tears, which she wiped away as they slipped down her face. “I don’t care what else anyone says. I know it. The way you just know some things. The same way I know I love you.”
38
The sapphire water of the lake twinkled in the distance. The sky blazed with bands of teal, saffron, red, and the pure gold of first light in that part of the world, as the wavelets on the water rippled in the dawn, reflecting the sun like veins of fire.
We reached the bank, and began searching around for a boat to hire or borrow without too much fuss. But there was no one on the shore, and we walked the rim a long while in silence, before we spied a low line of houses, set back among the trees. We stopped in front of the first one, where there was smoke rising through a hole in the roof, and called out.
We did not know who the people on this side of the lake were — what part they had in the fighting, or how they kept themselves out from the vise of it — but there was no other way. We called at the door until a little boy came out, staring at us in a moment of dazed wonderment before running back inside for his parents in fear.
From deep inside the smoky room a tall thin man, wearing a red sarong around his waist and a T-shirt that had been washed to a single cellular layer of material, walked out to us. The man was blue-black, like the boy, and looked at us with the same bewilderment, trying to figure out where we had come from.
“We need a boat to take us across the lake,” I explained.
The man looked at me, and it was clear he did not understand.
I pantomimed what I wanted until he grasped my meaning. He shook his head, though, making clear he would not take us anywhere, and did not want anything to do with us.
“Where can I find a boat?” I asked, scanning the horizon, then paddling the air with my hand. As I made the motion I saw him look suspiciously at the bandage around my shoulder, and wag his finger no. He was fearful and I tried to make him understand I did not need him to risk his neck for us, I just needed the boat.
Still he shook his head no, and began walking away. I pulled out the stack of notes from my wallet, which I held all out to him. It was a little more than a thousand dollars and, I would wager, more cash than he had ever seen in his life. Still he refused.
As I offered him the money Sylvie pointed to my shoulder and made him understand we needed to find a doctor. He looked at both of us, and nodded once, slowly, before leading us around to the back of the hut, where there was a dugout that did not look too unsafe.
“Hii ni bei gani?” I asked in Swahili. “How much does this cost?”
He panned his hand flat across the plane of the ground. He would not take money. I did not want to be in his debt, and thought it was stupid of him to refuse, and held out again the mixture of currencies, pushing them toward him. We stood staring at each other, neither of us yielding to the other’s way, but trying to figure each other out.
“It is of no use to him,” Sylvie shook her head, grasping his position. “They do not have money.”
“They do on the other side,” I said, refusing to believe he could not make use of it.
“Give him the gun.”
“No,” I said.
“He is giving us his boat.”
“I am trying to pay him.”
“He cannot use money here.”
“Somewhere he can.”
“How will he get there without his boat?”
“We may need the gun.”
“The boat is how he feeds his family.”
She pointed at my waistband, nodding to the pistol. He followed her gaze and nodded at it.
“It is a fair trade,” she said.
I took the gun reluctantly from where it was holstered snug against me, and slowly began handing it over, and I could see he saw what I thought, which was if I wanted to have the boat by force I could easily overpower him. But he had already given it to me and I felt guilty for my thoughts. I think he saw that, too, as I turned the barrel, and put the stock in his hand. He closed his fingers around it, feeling its metallic weight.
He turned it over several times, then nodded solemnly. I was not sure if he would use the gun, or barter it for something or bury it in the earth, but it was his now, and without it I felt immediately our vulnerability.
I was seized then by second doubts and fear, chagrined I had done the trade without further barter, and opened our pack, to offer him the camera instead. But Sylvie stopped me. It was the fair thing.
“We have the boat,” she said, seeing my worry. “That is all we need now.”
As we completed our transaction the little blue-black boy came out to the yard, trailed by a scrawny goat, so I saw how poor they were and did not feel so badly about the trade. The boy pulled at his father’s clothing, and said something in their language. The father nodded and asked in Swahili if we were hungry and wanted food.
“Yes,” Sylvie said. “Ndio.”
“We should find out what it is.”
“Poor, fatherless, motherless child. You cannot ask that.”
I asked what there was.
“Ugali.”
“Ugali is very good food.” Sylvie beamed. “We would like some very much. Thank you. Tell him thank you, honey. Tell him thank you very much.”
“Thank you,” I said, nodding.
The blue-black man spoke to the blue-black boy and the child went to the house to tell his mother.
“I will go help,” Sylvie said. “Do you think that would be okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think it would be fine.”
She followed the boy inside the house as the man showed me how the boat was outfitted. He was proud of it, I saw, and I was glad then he had gotten a good price for himself. Afterward, he started to drag the boat toward the water, pulling it down a worn little path from the side of the house toward the lake. I attempted to help, but he pointed at my shoulder and solidly refused, as the boy returned, along with two smaller children, who giggled and were shy of me as we headed toward the water.