A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,23
an amused glance. “The desert? Princess, where do you think you are? This isn’t the goddamn Sahara.”
With that he gunned the engine and we roared off, away from Nairobi and the last vestiges of civilisation.
* * *
We drove for a little while in silence as he negotiated the traffic out of Nairobi. It was surprisingly busy—donkey carts and rickshaws jostling with sleek new automobiles and pedestrians laden with bundles of fruits and firewood. He did point out a few of the local landmarks, including the Turf Club and Kilimani Prison and the Japanese brothel, but I didn’t ask questions and Dodo was too busy nursing her “cure.” I stared out the window, watching as the shabby little bungalows that dotted the outskirts of Nairobi fell away. The murram road stretched upwards now, carving its way through the wilderness, a wilderness that hadn’t changed since Eve went dancing in a fig-leaf skirt. The soil was as red as good Georgia clay, and here and there a flat-topped thorn tree shaded the high savannah grasses. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but land and more land, an emptiness so big not even God himself could fill it. The miles rolled away and so did my bad mood, and when the first giraffe strode gracefully into view, I gasped aloud.
Ryder stopped the vehicle and gestured. “She’s got a foal.” I peered into the brush behind the giraffe and noticed a tiny version, teetering on impossibly long legs as it emerged. The mother turned back with a graceful gesture of the head and gave the little thing a push of encouragement. They came closer to the truck and I saw it wasn’t tiny at all—it was frankly enormous, and Ryder eased down the road, slowly so as not to startle them.
“Why did we leave?” I demanded. “I would have liked to have watched them.”
“Second rule of the bush. Never get too close to anything that has offspring.”
“What’s the first rule?”
“Food runs. If you don’t want to be food, don’t run.”
I smiled, expecting him to laugh, but he was deadly serious. His eyes were on the road, and I took the opportunity to study him a little more closely than I had the day before. He had tidied himself up a bit, even if his clothes were disreputable. His jaw was still rough with golden stubble, but his hands and face were clean. He had strong, steady hands, and I could tell from looking at them there was little he couldn’t do. Mossy always said you could tell everything you needed to know about a man from his hands. Some hands, she told me, were leaving hands. They were the wandering sort that slipped into places they shouldn’t, and they would wander right off again because those hands just couldn’t stay still. Some hands were worthless hands, fit only to hold a drink or flick ash from a cigar, and some were punishing hands that hit hard and didn’t leave a mark and those were the ones you never stayed to see twice.
But the best hands were knowing hands, Mossy told me with a slow smile. Knowing hands were capable; they could soothe a horse or a woman. They could take things apart—including your heart—and put them back together better than before. Knowing hands were rare, but if you found them, they were worth holding, at least for a little while. I looked at Ryder’s hands. They sat easily on the wheel and gearshift, coaxing instead of forcing, and I wondered how much they knew.
They had known pain; that much was certain from the scars that laced his left arm. He had been lucky. Whatever had dug itself into his arm hadn’t wanted to let go. They were long, raking white scars, like punctuation marks, dotted here and there with a full stop of knotted white scar tissue where whatever it was had hung on hard. Some men might have covered them up, rolled down their shirtsleeves and pretended it hadn’t happened. Others would have told the story as soon as you met, flaunting those scars for any Desdemona who might be impressed. But Ryder didn’t even seem conscious of his. He wore them as he did his bracelets—souvenirs of somewhere he had been. I could have asked him, but I didn’t. I liked not knowing his stories yet. He was a stranger, an impossible and uncouth one, but a stranger nonetheless. And there is nothing more interesting than a stranger.