his grizzled beard and mane.
The vultures kept circling.
Ham and Alfie came back with Helen. They touched their dead comrade with the tips of their clubs, wiped the death smell into the dirt, and made threatening noises at the birds. Back and forth beneath the coral tree they strode, as if Jomo’s death were a great personal affront to every Minid, an ill-advised practical joke by a Landlord who did not deserve such forbearing tenants.
Helen was exhausted. I had no idea what due date an Air Force physician would have assigned her, but her time could not be too far off. She did not join Ham and Alfie in their protest, but crouched stiffly beside Guinevere and beckoned me forward to assist her. I saw then that she had brought my Swiss Army knife from our hut. She passed the knife to me, and Guinevere sat up to see what was happening.
Doubtful about the wisdom of humoring Helen, I pulled the knife’s large pen blade free and stropped it several times on my lava cobble. Helen retrieved the knife from me and put its point to Jomo’s right temple.
“Whoa,” I said, thinking of the Homo erectus skulls found once upon a time in a limestone cave at Choukoutien, China. The spinal cords of several of the skulls had been painstakingly enlarged, presumably to permit the removal of the brains. Did Helen wish to dine on Jomo’s gray matter? Did she think such a meal would impart to the old man’s unborn grandchild some of his knowledge, cunning, or wisdom?
My speculations were misplaced. Helen wanted to cut off the old man’s right ear. Hindered by her belly, she leaned over the mop of his hair and tentatively set to work. She was no more adept at this task than she had been at pulling the blade from the handle. Frustrated, she returned the knife to me and held the rubbery brown cauliflower of Jomo’s ear away from his head so that I could slice it off.
Swallowing my objections, I quickly did her bidding. Helen packed a bit of dried grass on the old man’s head to absorb the oozing blood and took possession of the ear. She then extended it on her palm to Guinevere, who looked back and forth between this offering and her daughter’s solemn face.
“It’s a keepsake,” I whispered. “Something to cherish.”
Guinevere finally accepted the melancholy gift.
A moment later Alfie, Ham, Helen, and I were boosting Jomo’s corpse back into the Kaffir boom. That accomplished, we consigned the old boy to the immemorial obsequies of the vultures.
In its own way, it was a lovely funeral.
* * *
Several days later Helen awakened me early, if only in my dream. Stick-pin stars held the darkness in place, and Mister Pibb was still on sentry duty in the flame tree beneath whose crepe-hung branches we slept. In an uneasy trance, for I was dreaming, I followed Helen down the mountainside to the moonlit chessboard of the savannah.
Friendly beyond all expectation, a pair of chalicotheres approached. Like camels, they knelt on their forelimbs and lowered their sloping hindquarters to the ground. Helen mounted the female, gripping its silken mane for purchase. With a curt nod she indicated that I should mount the other chalicothere, the male. Although I feared they would not be easy creatures to ride, I obeyed. A moment later both animals were back on their feet, and, swaying from side to side, our fossil steeds trotted out into the grasslands on their enormous talons.
This was the grand tour. We passed herds of dozing zebras, fitfully dreaming dinotheres, asleep-on-their-feet gazelles. Giraffids teetered through the distant thornveldt like antlered sea serpents; and, strangest of all, an albino hippopotamus ran across our path in painful slow motion, its thick neck extended and its legs languidly treading air. It was the color of blancmange, this hippo, with boiled-looking freckles on its broad back, and I remembered that I had seen one like it not very long ago, perhaps in a waking dream.
When it disappeared into the rivercourse toward which it had been loping, our chalicotheres turned aside, carried us past a gang of thuggish hyenas, and stampeded through the low grass toward a destination unknown to Helen and me. Desperately we clutched their manes and dug our knees into their shedding flanks.
A leopard appeared ahead of us. It had flattened its body against the ground, but not quickly enough to go unremarked.
Helen’s mount leapt like an impala, tossing her to the ground. I too