“Oh, I’ve seen animals do things that suggest they’re much smarter than we suppose and things that suggest we give them far too much credit,” Charlie was saying. “I saw a lone jackal racing like a madman with a good chunk of a tommie—a Thomson’s gazelle—in his mouth. There were a couple of hyenas hot on his tail. And he looked back at them, and when he did, pow. Ran headfirst into a baobab. For a second or two he was stunned, practically out like a light, and it would have been comic if this had been a children’s cartoon. You know, one of those moments where the coyote gets conked in those Road Runner cartoons. Needless to say, the hyenas got to finish off the tommie. And then there are the elephants.”
“I always heard elephants are smart,” said Katie.
“They are. Very smart. I love them for that. But just like people, sometimes they show absolutely no common sense. For instance, they love to eat from the doum palm. When they come across some, they’ll eat themselves into a stupor.”
“Don’t elephants have to eat all day long? Juma, didn’t you tell us that just yesterday?” Reggie asked.
Juma nodded. “I did and they do. But they love the fruit from the gingerbread tree. The doum palm. Sometimes, they eat so much they get sick.”
“You were in the war, Reggie. You must have seen some things that make your visit here seem rather tame,” Charlie said.
Reggie shrugged but otherwise didn’t respond. When he didn’t say anything, Charlie took a swallow of his drink and went on, “I had a veteran and his wife out here two months ago. We were in one of the hunting reserves, and he nearly got himself mauled by a couple of hyenas. Thought he was invincible.”
“Oh, I know I’m not invincible,” Reggie said.
“The thing was, he’d collected his leopard, and so he thought hyenas would be easy.”
“They’re not?”
“They’re different. Leopards are solitary beasts. They hunt alone. Hyenas hunt in packs. A leopard can rip out your stomach with one swipe of its claws. A hyena depends on its jaws.”
“What theater was this veteran in? Pacific? European? Just curious.”
Charlie smirked. “He was in England. I think he was some sort of code breaker. Real egghead. Never set foot on the Continent.”
“I have no doubts that what he did was important.”
“Probably,” said Charlie. “Anyway, he saw a couple hyenas devouring a dead wildebeest—getting the leftovers—and got a little too close. My fault, really. I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
“And?”
“And they’re strong. Very, very strong. I had to shoot them both when they charged the fellow. They would have tackled him and eaten him alive.”
“I suppose a man has no chance against a hyena.”
“Not really. Unless he has a gun. Otherwise?”
“Otherwise what?”
“You just go for the eyes and pray. But, most of the time, you’ll still wind up dinner.”
* * *
.?.?.
He had no idea whether it was a leopard, hyena, or jackal snarling almost into his ear, he just knew that its proximity was terrifying, and there were at least two animals, and one of them had the brim of his hat in its mouth and the chin strap was digging into the soft flesh under his jaw as his head was being yanked back, and then the strap snapped and the hat was gone. Carmen was howling, and he was pinning her against the bulbous trunk of the tree with his whole body, trying to shield her, and then her wails were biblical, a keening far louder than the hungry rumble from deep inside the animal’s throat. The other creature was pawing at his shoulders, trying to pull him to the ground.
And that’s when it clicked. These weren’t leopards, because hadn’t Charlie Patton told him about a leopard’s paws? The front and back claws? If these were leopards, they would have ripped open his neck by now. His face. They might have wrenched his whole head off his body.
And leopards never hunted together. Charlie had said they were solitary creatures.
He tried to punch the animal with his left hand, but he was still facing the tree and so he was swinging his arm across his body and his fist could barely reach his own right ear, and by then there was no power in the clout. He’d have to turn around and so he did, and—yes—they were hyenas, and so he pounded the nose of one with both hands, a reflex, but suddenly, somehow, his forearm was in its mouth and now he was yelling, too, his adrenaline no match for the pain as the animal’s teeth sliced through skin and muscle and then crunched the bone there into pieces. Desperately, with his other hand, he plunged his fingers into one of the animal’s open eyes, trying to poke it out, smash it like a black grape, and the hyena yelped, releasing his arm. He took his thumb and, as if he were hitchhiking, jammed it as hard as he could at the other eye, hitting the snout twice before he connected and the eye collapsed and spattered across his hand.