“We have eleven more just like him!” the one who was in charge yelled back at the jeeps. Then, his own rifle slung over his shoulder, he took his pistol and shot the porter in the side of the head, pushing the body over the lorry’s rear gate and onto the ground before the dead man’s legs could collapse at the knees. “Back off now, or we’ll kill another!” he shouted.
Benjamin wiped the sweat off his forehead. He was shaking, but it was rage, not fear. He hadn’t known the porter before this safari, but they were roughly the same age. He’d grown up in Kenya and gotten the job with Charlie Patton because his grandfather and Juma were friends, and because he had astonishing eyesight. He was hoping to train someday to be a guide, too: to point out the tiniest of birds in the whistling thorns and the cheetah sitting in wait in the far distance.
When the jeeps remained where they were, when there was no sign of withdrawal, the Russian pointed at Muema. “Bring me the guide.”
When Muema refused to stand, the guard grabbed him by the front of his shirt with his left hand, pulling him forward, and pressed the tip of the rifle against his chest. “Get up!”
Muema looked at Benjamin, his eyebrows raised in resignation, and nodded goodbye. Then he pressed his bound hands onto the floor of the cargo bay and struggled to his feet. Benjamin could see that the Russian was about to execute the guide, and that was too much for him. Muema was no pawn. And so this was the moment, it had without question arrived. Before the guard could shoot Muema, he threw himself into him, knocking both the captor and his captive onto the cargo bed. Benjamin’s hands were bound at the wrists, but he used them like a club and brought them down as hard as he could on the Russian’s neck.
“Not Muema!” he bellowed, and he was about to shout it again, when the drivers of both jeeps simultaneously gunned their engines and started toward them. The lorry driver, who had an assault rifle, started firing and managed to hit a front tire of one of the vehicles, and it skidded to a stop. But the other kept coming, even after the front windshield was obliterated, and then it was upon them, and all around Benjamin there was rifle fire.
And then he felt as if he had been hit in the upper back with a rock. It was like that time when he’d been a boy and he and some of his cousins were swimming in the river, and a few had been skimming stones. He’d emerged from underwater exactly when one of the rocks was careening along the surface—the cousin hadn’t realized that Benjamin was about to pop up right there, that very spot—and the rock had hit him just below his shoulder blade. But then Benjamin saw the blood puddling beneath him, on the Russian’s shirt and neck, and he knew. He knew. His blood was dripping from his own chest onto the man, and it was as this realization was dawning that he felt a deep and awful burning behind his ribs and suddenly it was hard to breathe. The Russian pushed him away, tossing him aside as if he were but a dead little dik-dik, and crawled to his knees, just behind the rear cargo door.
And then there was a pop and he toppled over beside Benjamin. Shot, too.
Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds, but then the Russian was gone.
Benjamin saw that Muema was looking down at him and the captives were all on their feet, and over the guide’s shoulder he saw three Black soldiers climbing into the lorry and the two surviving Russians dropping their rifles and surrendering. Muema looked away from him, shouting at the soldiers that they’d hit one of the hostages, and he was furious, but then he turned back to Benjamin and Benjamin was grateful. He wanted to see Muema’s face, those kind, penetrating eyes. The guide was speaking softly now, telling him that he was going to be okay, to stay strong, they’d send a plane for him. He tried to hang on to Muema’s calm voice because it was reassuring and he was scared, so very, very scared. The guide was thanking him, and Benjamin wanted to tell him he was welcome but he had to do it, he had chosen his moment. But he couldn’t speak. In the sky, which mostly was blue, he saw a trio of birds and a candelabra-shaped cloud that reminded him of the euphonium tree. Euphonium sap could blind you; it blistered the skin. And so the idea that the birds—he thought they were hoopoes, but it was all growing dim, or maybe he was squinting—were avoiding that cloud made all the sense in the world. Yes, he was squinting, he told himself. That was it. He should squint. You never stared into a sky so bright with sun. So, he gave in and closed his eyes completely, even if closing them meant, he had come to understand, that he was never going to tell his father he had met Terrance Dutton, and the great Black actor had wanted him—Benjamin!—to call him by his first name, and the regret was as deep and devastating as the physical pain. But the sun felt good on his face, and he listened to Muema until the voice was gone and the world was dark and he was no longer frightened at all.