“You’re a coward.”
“I am not a coward.”
“Start here,” the Drill Sergeant points.
I drove the dagger deep into the hartebeest’s rear hip.
“Keep pushing until you hit bone,” the Drill Sergeant says from behind me.
I try to drive the knife in further, but the flesh is raw and tough. I push hard with all my strength. “Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I scream as I drive the knife in further, using my arms, my legs, and every other muscle in my body—slaughtering everything that dead hartebeest represents: Fear, Shame, Grief and Guilt.
The knife hits bone with a blood-curdling screech. Then the knife seems to take on a life of its own, slicing and chopping its way through tendons and muscle, schlik, slosh, schlik. I feel through the moves, trying not to look as the leg becomes loose, exposing the mutilated insides.
Each time the knife makes contact with bone, it makes a grating noise. The knife catches, and I rip it harder. Blood sprays onto my jeans and shoes, staining them with dark red splotches.
Finally, the hip loosens its grip on the leg, and it swings unnaturally back and forth. I hold onto it tightly with one gloved hand to keep it in place. As the tendons are cut away, I release my grip on her leg, and the final motions of my knife become redundant as the weight of the leg pulls it from the body. Thud. It hits the floor, landing in a puddle of blood. The Drill Sergeant picks up the long leg and tosses it into a crate.
Stepping around to the other side, I hold the handle of the knife tightly with two hands and drive it in with force. As the knife pierces her hide, a confetti of blood sprays over the front of me, but this doesn’t stop me, or even slow me down. Now I am used to the bloodshed, each tear of flesh eradicates Fear, silencing him for good. The front legs are easier to amputate and weigh less than half of her hind legs. A wave of relief washes over me when the last leg hits the ground.
“This is how you remove the hide,” says the Drill Sergeant as he moves his arms through the air.
I make a long incision and begin to pluck away at her red fur coat, going deeper within.
With Fear hacked away, the gory battle with Guilt is now well underway. I chop away at him, stabbing him, ripping him apart. He fights back, but I am not backing down. I hadn’t realized how I had lost control when I thought I was gaining it. I hadn’t realized how I had let Guilt consume me. Mum understands why I had to let her go. I did the best I could. I did the best I could. I did the best I could.
I jab and stab, and am unstoppable until the entire hide is gone, leaving behind marbled flesh. The butchering continues. I carve large sheaths of meat from her sides and chest; it’s a long and bloody process. I cry tears of release, releasing the guilt that was born the day my mother died and that I had nurtured until it grew into a festering monster.
When I am finished there is no meat left on the carcass, only her head, spine, ribs and organs remain intact. I place the bloody knife into the Drill Sergeant’s hand.
I am covered in blood from head to toe. It was gruesome, but the circle is finally closing.
29
Finding Inyanga, Finding Freedom
“Jesus,” the Drill Sergeant finally says. “Are you all right?”
I nod. “I’m all right.” My voice is shaking, but the tears have stopped. Everything is brighter, lighter.
“You didn’t have to do all that.” He’s either impressed or thinks I’ve finally snapped.
“I may have gotten a little carried away.”
“You sure you’re all right?” The Drill Sergeant doesn’t quite recognize this chick from the city anymore.
“Yeah, I’m good. Really good.” A long, deep sigh escapes from the bottom of my lungs. The hardest thing I ever did was let my mum go. I held on to her so tightly in those last few weeks. Day after day I lay in that bed with her, squeezing her hand, forcing the life to stay in her. I was terrified to let go. I was afraid of the emptiness that would follow. Her health declined, and my guilt grew.
Our roles began to blur in those last few weeks. She relied on me heavily. I relied on her, too, but didn’t let her see the magnitude of my reliance. But she felt it, and that’s why she held on, for me. She really believed she was going to go home. I allowed her to believe that, I encouraged it. I wanted to protect her from the truth, and anyone who told her otherwise was cut-down by me. She was afraid when I wasn’t there. I wanted to protect her as she had always done for me. She gave me life, but I couldn’t save hers.
In the time since she passed, I buried my grief in one distraction after another—some bad, some good—anything not to face the reality that my mum was gone forever. But left unchecked, my grief turned to guilt and there is no demon viler than guilt. Had I allowed myself to grieve before, my mother’s death wouldn’t have given birth to this guilt that has been left to grow and fester. Being exposed to death and dying again has allowed me to go through the process. That hartebeest was more than just a hartebeest. Her death allowed me to openly grieve, and she allowed me to watch death consume and ultimately take her as it did to my mother.
I wept for that hartebeest the way I should have allowed myself to when my mother died. That hartebeest released within me the grief I had been carrying since my mum died. When my grief came to the surface, so did guilt, guilt that had no right to be there in the first place, I see that now. I did the best I could. I did everything I could. And that was enough, it was enough. The hartebeest’s death has given my life back to me.
And as the Drill Instructor keeps drilling into my head, the gift of her meat will provide life to the cheetahs.
The Drill Sergeant appears with a large crate of the meat I just butchered. We’ll go to the cheetah camp first, then head out onto the reserve to find Inyanga. She is due for a calcium supplement that we’ll inject into the meat.
When we arrive at the cheetah camp, there’s a small crowd of tourists watching them from just outside of the fence. The Drill Sergeant gives them a nonchalant nod as we each carry one side of the meat crate inside. Inside the enclosure is another enclosure, where one adolescent cheetah has escaped into the outer compound. He begins to approach us as soon as we go in. I instinctively crouch down, as one would do with a domestic cat.
“Get up!” roars the Drill Sergeant.
“Why?” I say, embarrassed, as he yanks me up by my shoulder.
“You know not to crouch down in front of a cheetah,” he snarls, “He’ll claw your throat out.”
There are loud gasps from the audience of tourists. The cameras have stopped. Their eyes only are on me now, eyes that seem to say, “What were you thinking?”
The Drill Sergeant didn’t have to make me look like an idiot in front of all these strangers. The cheetahs pace back and forth, fixated on the meat, hissing and growling. I purposely make quick turns to try and outrun the cheetah, but they can sense my next move before I even take it. The crowd loves the show I’m putting on, and I feel like I have regained my standing as a ranger, in their eyes, at least. The only one not impressed is the Drill Sergeant.
I toss the first piece of meat over the high fence to a young male who is perched back on his hind legs, ready to spring. While it is still high in the air, he jumps up and snatches it, shaking it violently back and forth, shredding the meat. The next cheetah charges the fence and even gets a shock, but he doesn’t back down, he snarls and hisses, only irritated by the shock. I throw the meat over to him quickly before he shocks himself again.
The feeding frenzy, and show, is over. We leave the enclosure, and I bow to the small crowd. I’m just about to say something clever when the Drill Sergeant interrupts me. “This is our current volunteer. She is learning the workings of a game reserve and, as you can see, even after spending every day with wildlife, it’s still easy to make enormous mistakes.”