Whatever You Do, Don't Run Read online

  “Get in,” said Paul.

  “Wha?” I had time to say, before Paul leaned over and hauled me in.

  We had punched through the blockage and entered a lagoon, surely the home of at least one large crocodile. But it was not to protect me from this that Paul had pulled me in. Our arrival at the lagoon was greeted with a cacophony of snorts and bellows, followed by violent splashing and the rearing of enormous bodies. We drifted into the hippos, the propeller so clogged with grass it was barely effective. A bull hippo with a head broader than any of our shoulders opened his mouth, showing his chipped and yellow ivory spears, and charged toward us.

  “Paddle!” Cliffy shouted. Paul and I set to with the machetes, using their blades as oars, as Cliffy eked what propulsion he could from the motor. We felt a bump, and the boat lifted but did not tip. If it had, we would not have lived for long. We powered through, a frenzied dragon boat team, until we were out of the lagoon and into the channel that fed it.

  Now there were plains on either side of us, but Cliffy admitted that he really didn’t know where we were. Neither did Paul, and I was equally clueless.

  “Maybe we took the wrong fork, right at the start,” I admitted quietly. The others said nothing, so I knew they agreed. “Should we go back and take the other one?” I asked. Paul has an ability to say multiple things with a single look, and he glanced in the direction we had come just as a hippo snorted. The decision was made. We pressed on, convinced that the Boro River must feed the channel we were on and that at some point they would link up. It was yet another decision that we would be able to laugh at later when we saw aerial photographs of the region we had been in. We were miles from anywhere with a name, miles from any village, miles from any safari camp, miles from help if we needed it.

  We kept pushing forward, and the channel kept getting narrower and shallower. On occasion we would have to pull the boat through the lowest patches, and it wasn’t necessary to point out that we were not on the Boro River. We decided that Paul would pull the boat forward while Cliffy would walk on foot east across the plains to look for deeper water. I walked west in search of the same.

  I walked through lush green grass, cropped neat and short by zebra and wildebeest. In the distance impalas gave alarms and ran away, and some lechwe—another type of antelope—splashed through shallow water to avoid me. The scene was beautiful, and I stood for a moment before strolling to the only tree in the plain and climbing it.

  I was watchful for snakes as I climbed, and wary of bees, but found none. Scanning the distance I could see a channel, but it was far, far away. We would not be able to carry the boat to it. I appreciated the view for a while longer, tracking a group of storks that were stabbing at fish caught in a pond, before looking back to see Paul straining along in front of the boat. I climbed down, scraping the front of my knees so they matched the abraded backs.

  Back at the boat, Cliffy said he had also found a channel. This one, though, was reachable, as the eastern plain was still covered with shallow water. The flat-bottomed boat, once our weight was removed, could be coerced over it. We set to it, gently guiding the boat to a distant row of trees that indicated deep water. Wading along in ankle-deep water, we all agreed that lost or not it was one of the best adventures we had ever had. After some more splashing, Paul added that as much fun as he was having, he had to be back in Maun the next day to start a safari so maybe we should move faster.

  We pushed harder and made it to the deep water. For the first time in hours, we moved with speed, the propeller free of debris and the water clear of obstacles. There was a sense of urgency but also incredible freedom. We whooped and laughed and drank vodka mixed with Okavango water and fruit-flavoured rehydrating salts from the first aid kit.

  Paul was at the tiller when we came around a curve that had a steep bank on our right. He quickly cut the motor and raised an eyebrow, which Cliffy and I understood to mean that we should be quiet and sit still. He squatted, so the highest point on the boat was the drum of fuel. Paul’s outstretched finger indicated we should look ahead, and we saw a cheetah coming down to drink. It was intently checking for crocodiles, and we were close enough to see it hiss at the water before it noticed the odd lump of metal that was gently paddling toward it.

  It jumped and turned a three-sixty in the air before launching itself back across the plain at freakish speed, not even stopping to look back. This was a cheetah that had either had bad experiences with a human or had never seen one before.

  Paul powered up again, and we surged ahead, the square bow throwing a light spray. His face now had a look that said, “Okay, let’s stop dicking around, find Xigera, and get a plane to take me to work.” Cliffy and I were on leave, so we were in no such hurry. But we knew that our boss would hold us as responsible as Paul if eight tourists were left at Maun airport with nobody to guide them.

  I looked at the banks of the channel we were travelling on, and they were closer to the boat than when we had seen the cheetah. The water was shallower too, and I knew what this meant. Paul’s pursed mouth told me he knew too, and soon the water was so shallow that he and Cliffy got out and I took my turn pulling the boat while they scouted for another channel. Cliffy went east, Paul went west, and I pulled straight ahead.

  I was in a crucifix position, arms outstretched against the flat front of the boat. The channel was barely wide enough for the boat’s passage but was still waist deep. At times I had to scrape the boat partially overland, my legs driving forward as my feet sank into the soft sand underneath, squelching back out. Despite the labour, I was enjoying myself. I knew for sure that this was a place where nobody had ever been.

  I smiled at the sky. I smiled at the wide grassy plains that stretched treeless forever on either side of me. I smiled at the zebra that whistled and kicked the air in the distance. I smiled at the pied kingfisher that hovered and dropped for small fish in the channel ahead. And I even smiled as I stubbed my toe on a log and stumbled forward, the boat clanging into the back of my head.

  I righted myself, took a step forward, and had an epiphany. The beauty of the scenery was defined by its lack of trees. There really shouldn’t be a log here.

  The log moved, I looked down, and my phobia came to life. I had walked the full length of a crocodile’s tail and most of its back. My left foot was now between its shoulders, and I imagine it must have been thinking, “Well if you’re idiot enough to walk into my mouth . . . ”

  With an athleticism I was unaware I possessed, I pulled down the front of the boat and hauled myself up, like a gymnast on the Roman rings, hooking my buttocks on the lip of the bow and doing half a backflip in. I landed on my head with a resounding “dong,” but it was my strangled cry that drew Cliffy and Paul’s attention, just in time to see the croc’s tail flick as it headed for less busy waters.

  “It’s your turn to pull the bloody boat!” I shouted to whomever would listen from my upside-down position. But Cliffy had yet again found another channel.

  “This is the Boro Rover!” Cliffy proclaimed, beaming. “I’m sure of it!”

  Sure.

  We again dragged the boat through shallow water crosscountry and sped north once more. This was deep water, overhung with strangler figs that held the nests of fish eagles. The eyes of otters peered from tangled roots, and monitor lizards basked on the steep banks.

  We spoke of eating one of the lizards, since we were out of noodles, but the place felt sacred, so we decided to go hungry and let the animals’ first experience with man not be a predatory one.

  Dusk came, and with it the last chance of finding Xigera that day. It was too risky to drive the boat at night through unfamiliar waters. A tree root might cut the boat open, or an unseen hippo could tip us in a panic. So we camped again, on a larger island this time—one that would be part of a forest when the waters receded some more.

  We were more subdued around the fire than we had been the previous two nights. The waters were dropping faster than we had imagined, so
we probably didn’t have the option of going back the way we had come. The plains could be completely dry, and we would be stranded.

  In the morning I went for a pee, moving away from the other two and relieving myself against a sizable patch of tall, dry grass that swayed like a wheat field. As I was finishing the grass rustled, and I imagined another porcupine running late in getting back to its burrow.

  Instead a honey badger emerged, and I had never felt so vulnerable. Every guide has a fear of encountering a honey badger on foot because of the animal’s penchant for genital mutilation. And now I was standing in front of one with my pants down, which was surely asking for it.

  I knew it was one of the only animals that a human has a chance of outrunning, but it was not an option with my hips pinned by gaping canvas shorts. I cursed the difficult-to-fasten button fly as the badger stepped closer and sniffed my shin. He looked at me with no hostility, just curiosity, then trotted away. I slowly finished up and went back to Cliffy and Paul, who were busy hatching a plan.

  “We’re ditching the boat!” Cliffy announced. “And we’re walking to Mombo!”

  It was a great plan, I thought, but only if we knew which way to go to get there. I posited this and was told that since our original turn had been to the right, Xigera must have been to the left, and Mombo was by this reckoning just farther to the right. These were not bearings that would have pleased Magellan, I mused, but I was keen to give it a go anyway.

  We left the boat wallowing in a lagoon, tied to a sturdy tree, and started our walk. We dropped the bright red fuel tank in the first open area we reached so that we could look for it later from a plane. All we carried were some water bottles, the first aid kit in case of accident or snakebite, and the machetes in case Cliffy was wrong and we decided to eat him.

  None of us had serious doubts about our survival skills, and we knew that if we maintained a single direction we would eventually reach the end of the Delta. Once there, we could follow its fringe all the way around until we hit Maun. Then we could look for new jobs.

  Paul was setting the pace, walking fast, somehow still believing that we might make it to Mombo early enough for him to get a flight to Maun in time to meet the three o’clock flight from Johannesburg and his guests. It was a ludicrous idea, and I stopped by the skull of a huge crocodile that littered the grass.

  “Guys, are we just trying this because we don’t want to admit defeat? If we really pushed it, don’t you think we could make it back to Xaxaba in time for Paul to get out? I mean, if this guy couldn’t make it,” I tapped the skull with my foot, “how well are the three of us going to do out here?”

  Paul’s look said it all. We trudged back to the boat, turned it around, and let the current pick it up before starting the motor.

  Our mood was defeated and our heads hung low, so it took a while for us to notice the strange way the water was acting in front of us. It bubbled—not just with ripples but with froth and flashes of silver. It was alive and moving toward us.

  “Barbel run!” Cliffy shouted. The head of an enormous catfish emerged from the water, its mouth filled with minnows, then plunged back into the depths.

  This was a phenomenon I had heard of but had never witnessed. As the flood recedes, the millions of little fish who have hatched in the shallow plains swarm en masse back to the deep channels. Catfish—which in Africa are called barbel—mass into groups tens of yards long and rush into the minnows, gorging on the plentiful supply and making the water foam as it did now.

  We cut the motor so we weren’t chopping the fish up, and our world soon filled with the racket of hundreds of tails and fins slapping the tin as the barbel attacked.

  Soon they passed, and we watched the slaughter continue upstream. Around us floated a few dead minnows, like the remnants of a great battle.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” I said. Neither had the others. Between us we had more than twenty years’ experience in the bush, so seeing something new was unusual. We nodded at each other, acknowledging that this trip had been an experience, whether we had made it to Xigera or not.

  One more hippo came at us on our trip downstream, but we easily outpaced him now that the current was pushing us. And soon we saw the distant camp that we had left three days earlier.

  We left the boat at Xaxaba, and the three of us flew to Maun, picked up by a pilot friend who had just started arranging a search for us. Paul rushed to the plot, and after a quick shower and shave, met his guests, who will no doubt always tell of their adventurous ten-day African adventure, just as we would always speak of the three days we had spent lost on a boat.

  The Conversation

  The wildebeest had been dead for about two days and was starting to get a funky odour in the hot September sun. Armed with orange peel that I suggested my guests stuff in their nostrils, we sat and watched the lethargic lions as they ambled up, took a mouthful of flesh or two, then strolled back to the shade of the bush and flopped down, bellies bulging, doing little else except panting and farting.

  My guests took their photos and made bathroom jokes, but didn’t seem so offended by the stench that we needed to move on. The first two rows of seats held elderly couples from Europe, and in the back row sat a shy American man who was perhaps in his early forties. I had explained that because the rear seat sat behind the axle it was often the bounciest, and that for the sake of politeness people should rotate through it. He had insisted on taking it for every drive, though, as he didn’t want the older people to feel any discomfort. For every drive, he sat quietly, nodding as I explained the behaviour of animals and birds and where they all fit in the environment. He was clearly enjoying his safari, but he carried a melancholy with him that made me wonder if he was travelling alone because he had lost a partner. But I thought it impolite to ask.

  The American was as quiet as ever as I explained that despite the bulk of the prey, there would soon be little to show of its existence. The lions would eat the bulk of the meat, then hyenas would crack the bones for the nutritious marrow inside. Jackals would be next, accompanied by vultures. Even flesh-eating beetles would arrive, which would strip the tiniest scraps of gristle from whatever fragments remained.

  “You could send in whatever forensic experts you wanted in a week or so, and there would be no evidence at all of this animal having been here. This is the best place in the world to commit a crime, if that’s what you wanted to do.” People laughed politely, but not too deep, lest any of the rancid air get into their mouths.

  We returned to camp for brunch, which was devoured voraciously despite earlier claims in the stench that nobody was ever going to eat again. I ate just as heartily, excused myself, and started walking back to my vehicle. I was going to drive it to the back of camp to hose down, but in the turning circle the shy American stalked me and made his approach.

  “That sure was funny what you said back there,” he laughed, a strangely nervous-sounding laugh for someone who was paying a compliment.

  “Thank you,” I said. “But which thing?” I thought I said a lot of funny things, though my colleagues constantly assured me that I did not.

  “About being able to get away with murder out here.” He wiped perspiration from his face. It was winter. “Yeah . . . really funny. And interesting.”

  “Yeah!” I said, enthusiastically. “You could do pretty much anything. The cops are a hundred miles away, and I don’t think they’re that competent anyway. In fact, if you did it somewhere like Zimbabwe, you could just pay the cops not to investigate. It would make a great thriller. Are you a writer?” I’d been rambling on and by the look on his face realised that no, he wasn’t a writer, which made me seriously question why he wanted to know how to get away with murder.

  The world crashed back. This wasn’t happening, I thought, feeling a cocktail of outrage and reptilian fascination with this man who up until now I had slightly pitied. I should find a way to walk away, I thought, but banged my shin on the step as I tried to casually get i
nto the vehicle.

  “Bugger,” I said. “Klutz. That’s me. You wouldn’t want me handling anything serious.” I thought this was a genius strategy of disentanglement. I really didn’t want to hear who this man planned on introducing to the African food chain, and I wondered exactly which authorities I should contact.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” the man laughed again, which was inappropriate since I had just hurt myself and we were talking about murder. At least I thought we were, but I really didn’t know. Maybe he was just trying to make friends. The most awkward silence I have ever endured followed, until I again tried to swing myself into the Land Rover and banged my shin in the same place.

  He didn’t laugh this time, and I certainly didn’t either. I just clutched my injured limb and contemplated feeding whomever I had inherited my uncoordinated genes from to an animal as well.

  “It wouldn’t really work,” I said.

  “Why not?” He looked crestfallen.

  “Tracks,” I said this as if it was self-explanatory, just to make him squirm.

  “Tracks?”

  “When an animal kills another, they leave tracks. Two sets in, bad smell in the middle, one set out. It’s not forensics, but it’s still evidence.” I watched him nod as he digested this, and he looked defeated.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay,” softer this time, and his voice hitched as if he was heartbroken. I was intrigued now as well as repelled, and was desperate to know who in his life had driven him to ask such questions. Or was he playing with me?