Still drinking their booze.
Something like that.
Or, in the past tense, if you were back in Arusha or Nairobi. Still drank their booze.
It was the way a guide hunter would describe a safari that had all gone to shit because the clients were cowardly or stupid or cruel—because they snapped at each other or the woman tried sleeping with the hunter or the man was spooked by a buffalo or asked the hunter to bag his rhino for him—but it was part of the code that you never spoke ill of the people who were paying you well to find them their trophies. And so, if the safari had become one long annoyance, a hunter, when asked about it, would nod and murmur, “Still drinking their booze.”
And that was it. Hemingway, according to Patton, had co-opted the expression in a short story, and some of the hunters who read it had thought it was a betrayal—as if Hemingway had shared a secret code with the world.
Up until that moment in the breakfast tent, Margie supposed, no one in this group had been cowardly or stupid or cruel. But, of course, this was just a photo safari. So no one was ever leaving their Land Rovers when they spotted animals. No one was trying to “collect” （and that was the euphemism that Charlie and Peter seemed to use instead of “kill” or “shoot” or “slaughter”） a lion or leopard or buffalo.
And she rather doubted that Katie Barstow or Carmen Tedesco had tried to seduce Charlie Patton.
But then it dawned on her. The reason that Peter Merrick and Charlie Patton were laughing about such things was because Merrick was staying an extra week and Patton was taking him hunting in another section of Tanzania. Merrick knew at least something about guns. Maybe the two of them weren’t in either Land Rover because they were hatching some sort of scheme to rescue the rest of the group.
No. That wasn’t happening. She was trying to think like a screenwriter, and this wasn’t a movie and those two older men weren’t going to save them: this was real life and if Peter or Charlie weren’t in one of the Land Rovers, it was probably because they were dead. That was the difference between a horror film and a real horror. No one was going to appear suddenly on the horizon—the cavalry coming over the hill—and rescue them.
* * *
.?.?.
Juma’s patience was endless, Margie decided, a guide whose affection for the natural world never waned, no matter how many times he was out here in the Serengeti. And, clearly, he had been out here a lot, once upon a time as a cook boy, then a porter, a gun bearer, a head man, and now the chief guide for Charlie Patton, whose company these days brought far more Westerners to see the animals than to shoot them. He loved to speak of his grandchildren, whom he had taken on photo safaris since the creation of the reserve, sometimes having them travel in groups of two or three on the vacant seats of the puddle jumpers that flew from Arusha to the grass strip near Wasso.
By the end of the first day, Juma already had taught Katie Barstow’s group dozens of small facts that she thought would stay with her forever: a hyena’s poop was white because it ate so many bones; a topi was distinguishable from other antelope in a heartbeat because the coloring on its hind legs was reminiscent of blue jeans; a zebra’s striping was as unique as a human’s fingerprints, and zebra babies could instantly recognize their mothers in the herd.
Now, at the end of the second day, they were all drinking around the fire outside the dining tent, most of them sitting in canvas camp chairs, but Juma and Charlie were standing. The two of them were drinking tonic water, but everyone else was sipping gin or hot black coffee. There was a surprising chill in the air, and Margie finally decided she was just cold enough that she climbed from her seat and plopped herself into Billy’s lap, curling up against him for warmth like a small child. The stars stretched forever here, a quilt that spread beyond the horizon and offered a zodiac one constellation at a time. Each star was a bright pinprick, and Margie imagined little astronomy projects she would find in magazines that she would share with her child someday: black construction paper and colored chalk, using nail scissors to punch holes in the firmament, a bedroom light without a shade providing for her child the light of the cosmos.
Billy wrapped his arms around her. “Your fingers are like ice,” he observed and kissed her neck. She rapped his chest with one little fist because he had given her the chills on purpose. He did it all the time. He thought it was funny: he’d told her that he’d never met a person who got goosebumps as quickly.
“Soon you will be too big for Billy’s lap,” said Katie. “You’ll be a big, beautiful, pregnant whale.”