I saw a huge colony of flamingos around sunset, thousands and thousands of stunningly beautiful birds, an incongruous sea of pink in the orangish light.
Finally we had to stop for the evening. We were both too tired to drive. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how many fathers got to tell their kids they’d spent a night in a real Africa
n jungle.
Chapter 68
I WOKE UP some hours later. Moses was already laying out breakfast on the tailgate of the Drifter.
Canned sausages, a couple of bruised tomatoes, and a two-liter jug of water to sip from.
“Looks good,” I said. “Thank you, Moses.”
“There is a river. Over there if you wish to wash up.” He pointed with his chin to the opposite side of the road. I noticed his shirt was soaking wet. “It is not far.”
I bushwhacked with my arms, skirting a huge knot of thorny scrub the way Moses had obviously done before me.
About twenty-five yards in, the brush opened up and I came out onto a mud-and-gravel bank.
The river itself was a wide, murky green piece of glass. I could barely tell it was moving.
I took a step toward the water and sank up to my ankle in mud.
When I pulled back, the mud sucked the shoe right off my foot. Shit. I’d wanted to clean myself up, not get filthier.
I looked up and down the bank, wondering where Moses had gone to wash.
First, I needed my shoe back, though. I reached down into the guck and felt around. It was actually nice and cool down there.
Suddenly the water in front of me boiled up. Something rough, like a huge log, came to the surface very, very quickly.
And then I saw that it was a full-blown, honest-to-God crocodile. Its black eyes were set on me. Breakfast was on the table.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Good-bye shoe. Good-bye leg or arm?
I stepped back ever so slowly. So far, the croc showed just a layer of tiled skin at the water’s surface. I could see the bulge of its snout. The great beast’s eyes didn’t leave me for a second.
Never taking a breath, I kept inching backward.
On the next step though, my foot turned in the mud. I fell! Like it had received a cue, the crocodile sprang forward.
Nine, ten, maybe as much as twelve feet long, it surged out of the water, slashing in and out of an S-shape as it leapt straight at me.
I tried to pull in my legs, if only to postpone the inevitable savage bite. How could this have happened? Everyone had been right—I shouldn’t have come to Africa.
Suddenly a shot exploded behind me!
Then a second shot!
The huge croc let out a strange, high-pitched noise that was part scream, part gasp. It reared up off its front legs, then smacked back down into the mud. I could see a red ooze on the side of its head. It thrashed once more, then rapidly backed away into the river and disappeared.
I turned to see Moses standing behind me. He was holding the Beretta.
“I am so sorry, sah. I meant to say that you should take this with you. Just in case.”
Chapter 69
AFRICA! WAS THERE anywhere in the world like it? I didn’t think so.