Marcus Austin

12/08/09

Persistence

      Namkabe squatted on his heels upon the mountain overlooking their valley, his skin folding on his frame. The sun settled into the earth and the colors mixed with a fine brush growing over the folds and crags in the hills. Namkabe just stared. Two boulders in the distance, rounded and smooth, changed from orange to red. He recalled the story his father had told him once, of the people that sit on their heels—the baboons with their red butts. He laughed, and spilled some water from the ostrich egg he was holding. The texture of the wet eggshell intrigued him, but a breeze blew and he wiped his face with his wet hand, closing his eyes to enjoy the coolness. When the water evaporated from his skin, he stood and turned his eyes toward the fire down in the village. He saw children running between the huts, laughing and chasing each other. He leaned into the wind and began to run down the mountain, falling forward towards the valley floor, supporting his body with each gentle step, toes spread wide, leaving perfect footprints in the sand, stepping between bushes, choosing two steps instead of one when in doubt, and feeling the mountain pass under him with each quick slap of his foot on the earth.

      He strolled up to the fire where Xabon stood handing out the last slivers of cooked springbok to all of the hungry members of the band. One child laughed especially hard at another who waited for Xabon to give him his meat.

      “Nore, why do you laugh so hard at little Num? Is there a joke which I do not get?” she said, handing Num his meat.

      “Ha ha! Yes, he has dirt in his hair. Nate dared us to jump over a tall bush, and I did it. I said to Num that if he couldn’t make it I would laugh at him until the morning. He ran as fast as he could and jumped! Then he fell. He fell and rolled around in the dirt!” Nore said, taking his meat. He contorted himself into a fit of hysterical laughter, and ran off waving his arms around, still laughing.

      “You have already eaten your meat? Good, go and be strong young one,” she said to Num. He ran after Nore.

      “He has a steady gait, that one,” Namkabe said.

      “Unlike you, you tired old bull. Take this tender meat and fat since your teeth are falling out and your jaws are weak,” she said to him.

      “Where is all the other fat? Did you eat it?” he replied.

      “No, I gave it to the other men. They will need it since they will be running so much farther than you tomorrow,” she said, and turned away, trying to conceal her smile.

      Namkabe sat on the opposite side of the fire from Xabon. He had always enjoyed the nights with a full moon—the children were allowed to play as they pleased, and the adults always prepared dinner with extra care, even if the ingredients were growing scarce, as they were. He noticed Karoha and Nate sitting under the tree gnawing patiently and intently at the ribs Xabon had given them.

      Karoha saw the old man turn towards them and he gestured to him to come over and have a chat.

      “Tonight we must hold our spears close, but not so close as to shake our vision with the tremors of those who hold close a weapon of war. We will hold our spears like our grandfathers who wake in the middle of the night hearing a too-careful rustling, cunning animal footsteps in the dark which cease when the glare of a man’s eyes pierces the darkness and frightens all those who stand in its way. We will pierce the darkness with our gaze and not clench our fists, but prepare them by holding steady the weight of powerful tools, and like our grandfathers we will be ready to strike at the sitting baboon who leers at our young. Tonight we will prepare our bodies and focus our gaze through the light of the full moon on the kudu which run and play in the cool night, too close to a steady eye. We shall drink. We shall drink,” Namkabe said.

      “Take this, you senile old fool, and do not drop it. Karoha and Nate, please enjoy this water; Tike and the other young girls collected it from the clear spring this morning,” Xabon said.

      Xabon called out to everyone to bring their cups, and come to the tree. Tike came over, and Xabon instructed her to give everyone water. Tike hoisted the heavy jug and went around giving everyone a splash in their cups. She filled Karoha and Nate's cups to the brim again, and in Namkabe’s cup, she poured too much and it overflowed into the sand.

      Everyone drank in silence until Namkabe slurped the last drops out of his cup. Xabon stared at him until everyone started smacking their lips and chattering, at which point she walked away, the rest following in their own time.

      “I will go and keep an eye on the herd; you two can sleep and come find me in the morning,” Namkabe said.

      “Very well. We will find you in the morning,” Nate said. The two of them walked from under the tree, and went to get another glass of water before bed.

      Namkabe walked back towards the mountain, but decided to take a leisurely stroll around the south side, and keep an eye on the herd from downwind. He always loved walking. The plodding of his heel in the sand was so much less elegant than running, but that made it fun. Kick one leg out in front of the other and let your heel jam into the ground and repeat until you get where you are going. Everything was less important when he walked, and he felt less important, too. He felt less like a sapling dancing with the wind, and more like a couple sticks tumbling down a hill. He came up on a decent sized rock, and he took a big step over it, losing his balance and having to give a little hop to stay on his feet. He heard an almost imperceptible rustling up the hill about fifty feet, crouched and began to stalk.

      He used every muscle in his body.  The grains of sand under his feet became tiny arms lofting him gently. He headed towards a rock that looked inviting, but he did not know why. It could easily be a snake under the rock, and he was about to be close enough for even a baby snake to get a decent bite. He stopped and listened. There was definitely in the crevice on the other side. He leaned around slowly, trying to get a peak with the help of the moonlight.

      “Eeeee!” he shrieked, trying desperately to stifle his own voice. The kudu herd was probably less than a mile from where he stood. A bird flew out from the crevice and nearly scared him to death; he could not remember the last time his heart had beat so fast. Still a little worried that he had spooked the playing kudu, he lifted the big rock, sure that there was no snake under it now.

      “Ooh!”  he blurted, making the same mistake twice. He reminded himself again why he was out here, and what he was supposed to be doing.

      A little bird's nest, dappled with down, cradled five carefully arranged eggs. He could hardly contain his excitement, and did a little dance as quietly as he could.  He looked around and reached in to pick up the nest, but decided against it and just picked up each egg, placing them in his left palm. He hefted the fragile pile in his hand. Rolling them around a bit, he admired the speckles in the moonlight. He put the rock carefully back in its place, and began to walk back downhill.

      There wasn't much he loved more in life than eggs, and the thought put a little more elasticity in his legs. He preferred them boiled and chopped up, but Xabon was back in the village, and besides, she was probably already asleep. Eventually he came across a decent bush, and carefully arranged the eggs in the sand a few feet away. He spent a considerable time plucking only the softest leaves from the bush and making a pile in the corner of his bag next to the two hide-wrapped ostrich eggs. He went over and sat on the ground next to the eggs, placing his open bag in his lap. He took the ten largest leaves and spit on each one, carefully applying one to each side of every egg. Then he arranged them carefully in his bag, brushing the small leaves evenly between them. He grabbed a handful of sand and poured it on top.

      Namkabe tracked the kudu herd for nearly four miles before an inviting shade tree distracted him. He considered continuing the hunt, but he remembered he had breakfast and came up with a plan. He kneeled on the ground and dug a tunnel with his hands in the direction he thought the kudu would go. When he thought the hole sufficient, he took the long, thin spear he had brought with him and shoved it as deep as he could into the sideways hole. Placing the rounded end of the spear in his ear canal, he listened. He could not hear it, but he felt it deep in his skull—there were elephants nearby. There had not been elephants in the area in six months, and he figured they were headed for, or already at, the watering hole the spear was pointing to. If there was any water left at all there, the elephants would have it turned into a drying mud pit by the morning; but, if it was dry, the kudu would be smart enough to stay near the elephants, which he could track with the spear trick. Namkabe laid his bag on the ground near the trunk of the tree and curled up in the shade.

***

      “Where do you think he went? He tripped over this rock, and disappeared,” Karoha said, worried that a lioness had caught up to the old fool.

      “There was no scuffle. The old fool is just messing with us,” Nate said. He stood and ran off in the direction the tracks were headed before they disappeared.

      Karoha realized his mistake, but he just could not help jumping to such conclusions since the time he watched a pride of lions take down a full-grown bull elephant near a local watering hole during a particularly dry year.

      Nate caught up with Namkabe’s tracks after a few minutes of running, and gestured for Karoha to catch up.

      “See, I told you he was just fooling us. He was plodding along here, just like he does when he's giggling to himself like a little girl,” Nate said.

      “Hey, what's that? Something happened to that bush up there,” Karoha said, running

ahead.

      “He was here for awhile. He must have taken a kak nearby,” Nate said.

      “Why would he pick off all of the tiny leaves for a kak?”

      “Well,—“

      “Aha! Look at this! That's what he was doing when we lost his tracks earlier. He must have found a Francolin nest up on the mountain. There were five eggs here; he must have been picking leaves to pack them for the morning,” Karoha said, kneeling over the impressions in the sand.

      Nate agreed. They both stood around for a minute, and looked about. Nate took out one of his ostrich eggs and drank a few sips of water, before returning it to his bag. He leaned forward, and took off at a decent trot. Karoha followed.

      It began to heat up. After a mile, they started to sweat, and Karoha wondered if the kudu had gotten as wild Nate sometimes said they do when the full moon shines bright.

      When they found Namkabe, he was splayed out on the ground under the tree amongst the remnants of the Francolin eggs, drool dripping from the corner of his mouth end mixing with the dried protein on his face. He awoke to Nate and Karoha standing over him, catching their breath. Nate looked slightly annoyed.

      “Are you ready?” Namkabe asked, yawning and stretching,

      “Yes,” Nate replied.

      Namkabe crawled over and put his ear to the end of the spear, yanked it from the sand, donned his bag, and stood. “Let us go.”

      Karoha worried about the pace that Namkabe was setting. They had not spotted the kudu yet, so he decided to hang back a little. He did not like hunting during the dry season. The dry, loose sand made it necessary to float, to use perfect technique or risk using up the muscles in the feet too quickly. He preferred to hunt the springbok when the ground was wet; it not only allowed switching up his gait and utilize different muscle groups, but it also made the animal easier to track. The humidity complicated things a bit, but not so much that a little self-awareness could not fix.

      Karoha watched them stalk up to the hill about a half mile ahead—he recognized the hill. He caught up to them as quickly, and as quietly as he could. They were close, and anything could spook the herd. As he approached Namkabe and Nate, they spoke in soft melodic clicks and coos nearly impossible to discriminate from the sounds of birds. Before he could make out what they were saying, Namkabe began to stalk upwind.

            “What’s he doing?” Karoha asked, imitating his favorite bird,

“He said he has a plan.”

 “Are we about to run?”

 “I don’t know.”

      Namkabe hid behind a rock, and let out a silent fart. When the kudu caught wind of it, they spooked and ran downwind, away from the thick bush to the north.

      Namkabe came running, and chucked a stick in the direction the kudu had gone.

      Run.

      The kudu were out of sight in no time, but Namkabe and Nate were already in a trance, matching each step and breath of the fleeing kudu, feeling their every emotion as if they were their own.

      “Which one are we chasing?” Karoha asked Nate.

      “The old bull.”

      Karoha felt his head sag with the weight of its massive horns.

      Three hours passed with the only expressions coming from their sweat glands and the hands of Namkabe and Nate. They managed to separate the bull from the herd, and the sun was just about at its peak.

      “I cannot run any longer.” Namkabe said, slowing to a walk.

      Karoha and Nate did not look back.

      After the second loop around the mountain, Nate ran out of water. The bush thicket to the north began to get closer, and Karoha admitted to himself that Namkabe’s egg-tinged flatulence was a smell that he never thought he would miss.

      They determined from the tracks that the bull had slowed again.

      “Karoha,” Nate said, “I’ve run out of water. The bull is getting weaker, but it’s possible that he will head into the brush and deceive you while he recovers. Take the old lizard's trail, and beat him to the crooked shade tree. You must hurry. I will head back, and meet up with Namkabe up on the mountain. We will wait for your signal.”

      They touched fingers and parted ways. The old Lizard's trail was rocky, and littered with treacherous brush. It would be easy to trip and split his skull, and even easier to run across a sidewinder. The lizards would feel his footsteps and hide—there would be no much needed snack for him, but the sidewinders would be out on the lookout for tasty lizards, too. They would not go and hide at his approach, but stand their ground and puff. The snake's warning would be too late at the pace he would have to run through the trail.

      When he passed the place where Uahe had died five years ago, his thoughts were not with the kudu, and his legs began to fail him. He wanted to scream in agony, but he knew the kudu was within a mile, and did not want to spook him. He fell to the ground and clutched his legs. He laid there for a full minute, writhing in the sand before summoning the will to reach into his bag and get the last of his water. He sprinkled some of it on his face, and took a small sip. Eventually he struggled to his feet and staggered between the rocks and bushes, sipping slowly as he made his way down the trail.

      He began to regain his composure as he reached the brush thicket. His legs came back to him when he felt his head sinking again. He wasn't exactly sure where the crooked shade tree was at, but caring was not of necessity anymore.

      He heard a faint rustling, and stopped dead in his tracks. He felt tired again, instantly.   He let his body scream at him, and sank deep into the depths of his consciousness.

      He moved with the earth, conscious of no humanity until he found a faint impression in the sand.

      He reached and removed his spear from his back. He clutched it in his hand, crouching, stalking the prey which he only felt. He paused behind a large bush to breathe. He sidestepped from behind the bush, and there it was, resting beneath the crooked shade tree. The kudu leapt to his feet, but stumbled. Its eyes glazed over, and it collapsed in the clearing. Karoha stared in disbelief. He uncoiled himself and threw his spear into kudu’s chest.

      The kudu groaned.

      Karoha walked over to the dying animal, and knelt beside it. He grabbed a handful of sand and sprinkled it reverently over the old bull. He placed his hands on the kudu and felt its last breath. Placing his hands in the kudu's mouth, he scooped out its sticky saliva, and rubbed it into his exhausted and burning legs. He lay in the sand next to the dead kudu for nearly thirty minutes. When he regained the ability to stand, he did so, and began to fumble around in his bag.

      Karoha hung his head, reached into the sky, and fired the flare gun.