Advance (Cairo to Chad): “It’s all about tusks,” he said to me, but what it was really about was risk taking, for a high, money, or dollars, and he was good at it, and he was not quite forty yet, in good health; myself, more like fifty-two, I was not young at all, of course, about to be married (again), and just got back from Java, and was sitting in a bar in Cairo, and he was sitting by me, and he smiled, and I smiled, and you know how that goes: where you from, where you going, stuff like that, and he pulls out a card, it reads “Gun for Hire,” I almost laughed, thinking it was a joke, you know like back when I was young and I watched TV show “Have Gun Will Travel.” (A show about a hired gun.) Well, just about when I was going to say: is this a joke, he said, “No joke, but I’m costly.” Well that is how it all began, AD 2000, in Cairo, Egypt, I’m Lee, and I suppose I can leave it at that, and I like traveling, kind of a Tourist Archeologist part time, and at times I suppose, I like adventurism to a small degree. I had just visited the pyramids, was about to go back home to St. Paul, Minnesota, in the good ole USA.
What I would find out is this (and then I shall get into the last days of my adventure, for there is where the premise of this story lays).
“Come with me,” he said, “to Chad (Central Africa)” towards the end of the night in the hotel, after meeting the Mayor of Cairo, and a lot of talk about Chad of course proceeded this invitation, he was headed to a campsite outside a national park that resides within its boundaries. He had shown me pictures of what he does, awful, horrifying pictures of cutout faces of elephants, he killed them he said, next, he cut them off their faces, before the rangers would appear (how ugly I thought, but then I had heard and seen a lot of ugliness in this world). “Usually…” he said, “some strays came out of the refuge, and when they didn’t,…” he’d go in after them; if indeed the rangers were not following the herd, which often times had certain routes, and he knew them all of course-by heart.
I am not sure why I would want to go and see this, I told myself at the time, until he said: “I’ll pay for the whole trip, you write down what you see, everything,” and I did, but I never published it until now, I suppose the reason being, it was too horrifying to me to publish. He simply wanted a witness, and he was willing to pay for it. A dangerous trip of course, but I had been in Vietnam, and Cambodia during the early ’70s, and war and such things were not new to me, just dangerous, and as I was about to say, a wife to be, waiting in South America, to meet me in a few months in Guatemala. Nonetheless, I agreed, and although I leave out names and direct places, it is for the better I think. Now I shall explain in a more direct narration.
The Story
(Flesh Death)
[In Chad, outside base Camp. vicinity, by Sahara area:] I knew this area where I was, or so it seemed, elephants would be dangerously vulnerable for attack, I saw a few days ago a few Armed guards in the far distance, with Ralph’s binoculars, I asked Ralf Zimmerman, “The Matriarch…” [He referred to these elephants as the woman leaders, if not grandmothers', whom the families, portions of the herd, or larger herds can turn to for leadership, a position of dominance in the herd, if not head of the family] I asked him, “The Matriarch searches for food, the wise elephants, or older females, whom are usually the leaders, do they have certain routes they know by heart?” (Thinking was the elephant really that smart.)
(This was the mongo rain season, a light shower here and there, especially night, but not the rainy season as it comes in June, I noticed scattered here and there on our journey dead elephants, some eaten by lions, Ralph told me, and Baboons perched in trees over our campsite at night, and giraffes in the distance, it was, if anything, a spectacular, adventure, except for the death, the flesh death, I came to calling it. I said nothing to him of my disgust, being a retired psychologist, I understood one thing, the only reason I was on this trip with him was because he trusted in me not to portraying him as evil (my past integrity would overcome this ugly sight of an existence) that is, the evil man incarnate, and he already knew he was. He wanted me to do what I was doing, witnessing, almost like a death wish, and without a bias. Perhaps he had a premonition, I didn’t know. But like in my practice, people tell you many things you want to scream at them for, but you can’t, you got to keep a flat face, no smile, empathy they call it: and hope you can bring them back to a whole person.
Base camp was several miles from the boarder of the refuge. This was my sixth day here, and basically the terrain I came over with the jeep, was riverbeds dotted with occasional pools, heat was all around us, and terminalia trees about. The closer we got to the boarder, the more trees I witnessed, and elephants were crowed under the shade by them. If they didn’t get the shade from the trees, they got wind from flipping their ears about (sometimes turning over), cooling their bodies. I came to love these animals, and here I was witnessing Flesh Death! I cried the sixth night, I couldn’t hold it back anymore, what was next, I asked myself, and it would be a surprise.
Ralph said on the seventh day, following a herd, turning towards me in his jeep, ‘…beyond the boundary line,’ as he called it, “…they will avoid trouble spots Lee, trails you could say, wise old females they are …they know where the danger lies and they know me, and they know were the food is and where it will be next month, and in-between seasons, and they know I know all this.”
“But if they are wise, how come they are not wise to you, I mean, how come they can’t out hide you, or kill you.” After he answered it, I thought, why did I asked such a dumb question, but my subconscious knew why.
“It’s a rhetorical question,” he said, “not really worthy of you Lee, but what you really wanted to ask, is how come I can out maneuver them, when you already know, because I already told you, but I will add this, they are running for their lives when they see me, I am running for my dinner when I see them, and a few other things. I can think straight, and have had lots of time to think about what I want to do; they are only protected by an imaginary fence, called a refuge, and are limited in reason. Does that answer your question?” (I thought then, but didn’t say: pride comes before destruction) then I nodded my head yes, because he gave me more information than I needed, but sometimes you got to play dumb to get the innermost secrets in the man’s soul, the core of his soul. I think he wanted, was waiting for the elephants to out smart him. It all turned into a game for him it seemed.
Fever of Revenge
(We were now outside of the Southern boarder of the National Park, it was the month of May, we had waited there all day for the herd to come, and it did, just like Ralph predicted it would, the head elephant a giant bull was spotted, with 3500-elephants behind him, I wanted to skedaddle, get out of there, I told myself, I was standing with him, he had a rifle in hand, and two guns in his belt, a knife around his ankle. “Now what?” I said, in an almost panic voice. “This may be the day,” he said to me, I didn’t know then what he meant, but of course I do now.
He shot the leading elephant, the huge one, dead, and it dropped and shook the ground around us (I think the elephant wanted to give the herd time to move away from his guns, thus, giving up his life), “Quick, get under the jeep,” he commanded with an almost evil eye, but now that I think back, it was more out of desperation for me, so I wouldn’t freeze (which I never do), but not knowing what to do, I might have jumped behind him, expecting the elephants coming to drop like fly’s or detour into another direction, but they simply slowed down to a walking pace, yet I did as he said.
He was now looking over him, the bull, and the large herd had stopped, completely stopped, while some of the females approached, looking, as the carcass of the bull lay by Ralph’s feet (I think Ralph was surprised the elephants did not turn, but almost surrounded him), I could smell the death of the beast, urine of the beast, he was now cutting out the tusks, cutting the face off the elephant. Several large elephants stepped ahead of the large herd, almost creeping, as Ralph was cutting fast, and faster, and the Elephants were approaching closer, slowly, but closer, with ever cut of the knife.
Everything now happened very quickly, the leading elephants bolted towards him, and the 3500-followed behind, dust filled the air, faster and faster they ran, little ones behind their parents’ tails, flapping in their faces, hitting their trunks, it was a stampede. Ralph stood firm behind the bull and started shooting pummeled the bodies of the nearing female elephants, bullets sinking into thick skin. Lodged into their muscles, bones and they fell; he looked at me, smiled, and then 14000-elephant feet stomped all over him, as he was wedged in (and now crushed between the hung elephant-smashed like mashed potatoes) in a favor of revenge.
3-14-2006
See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com