The Meadow Literary and Art Journal 2011

tents—without me.” He touched the rifle on his back. “The lions are right out there, in the taller grass.” He pointed, and smiled, to be polite. She smelled strongly of Citronella, a popular insect repellent. “No Citronella,” he said. “It attracts the elephants. They like fruit, and will push the tents over to get it.” She didn’t mind learning from him, although usually she bristled at a man telling her what to do and what not to do. “What else can you tell me?” she asked. She knew she had to learn quickly. She was a young white woman from Seattle doing graduate work in a place without a fence for a thousand miles in any direction. Most importantly, without a fence around her immediate encampment, and so nothing to separate predator from prey. He was a good-looking man, after all, thin and handsome in his pale green uniform, his face and hands as dark as any skin on the planet, his smile as bright and easy as any she’d ever seen. “That is it,” he told her. “You hear it? Like an engine trying to get going. Then the full howl. That’s the hyena.” “The dogs have made a kill?” she suggested, and he looked at her for the first time as a woman who impressed him. “Yes,” he smiled widely, his real smile. “Probably impala. The wild dogs are the most efficient hunters in Africa, with a 90% kill rate.” “Do you ever see the hyenas hunting?” she asked. “Only if the pack is big enough. Here the packs are not big enough.” “Did you say your name was Michael?” she asked him, pretending she had forgotten. “Yes. Did you say your name was Jillian?” He smiled. Two days later, the wild dogs passed by camp and everyone, even the cooks and the guides, ran out to get a glimpse of them. They were a rare sight because they roamed a huge territory. With their long, loping gait, they could run and hunt all night long. Watching them, you could see— you could feel—how each dog knew its role, and what a terrifying thing it would be if they were locked in on you as their target. When her team arrived, to drive off and study hyenas, Michael helped them load their equipment into the Land Rover they had arranged to borrow. “When will you return?” he asked her. “Our plan is not to backtrack. Only the driver will return,” she said. Their eyes met. Her blond hair and bright soul. His wild, black, iron strength. She reached out and touched his arm as she started for the Land Rover. “If we don’t find large packs, I’ll come back and see you,” she said. It was a crazy thing to promise, but she did return, and she lived and worked with him for a year at the camp, and then they decided to move to Seattle together, so their child could be born in a hospital in the United States. . . 20 theMeadow

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