Deep Impressions
A Short Story
The following is a short story I’ve worked on a few times over the years. It originated in a heavily Hemingway-influenced reading period, which will seem obvious to many.
“Sir, come look at this’un, Mr. Dempsey.” The paw print was huge, pounded firmly into the ground. A large male had made the print.
“What do you think, Thomas,” queried my assistant. Lyall was an Irishman. He was tall and lanky with a freckled complexion. He towered over me when he spoke, but he was always proper and gentle in his words. And despite being of Irish origins, he did his very best to lose his accent when he addressed me in front of others.
Every time we had gotten close to the animal, he would lose us. I was beginning to wonder if our guides were worth the money.
“Best to not chase anymore. This lion is not tame,” Bhim forcefully reminded me.
Bhim was our guide for this trip. He was shorter than the African guides I had worked with on my previous excursions, six in all.
When I stepped off a plane at the local airport, everyone rushed to offer me their services. Seeing someone like me get off a plane was enough to make many people scream for my attention. White meant money, and money was what everyone wanted. But after my last trip, I had decided to spend a couple of days in the city before heading out. I stopped in a local bar on my way to the hotel and Bhim was sitting at a table with six empty shot glasses keeping him company. He never made eye contact with me.
“You need a guide,” he stated.
I nodded.
“No better guide than me. I keep you safe.” His voice wavered a little. I smiled and was going to continue to my own table when he grabbed my arm, “you don’t like safety?” He never smiled, making it clear to me that he wasn’t trying to sell me on something. He looked at me as if he feared for my life.
Three days later, Bhim helped Lyall and I to pack our vehicles and brought along two more locals to assist. I had told him I would pay well if he could scrounge up two more people to help us on our journey. Tracking a lion didn’t require a regiment but catching one did. The new men immediately began to load the beat-up jeep. They didn’t even stop to introduce themselves. Guedado was a pole, very tall and very thin. He did not appear to be the sort of man you wanted on a hunt. However, he lifted my burdensome bags with one arm, displaying a hidden strength. He had strength, but there was something sad in his countenance, as if he harbored a wound that would not heal. Our third guide was Tembi, and he was different than anyone I had encountered on all my previous trips. He smiled constantly, as if his face had gotten stuck in the position. He knew a fair amount of English, and it seemed as though everything he knew was positive. Tembi was my height and had a clearly defined build. And he loved American music. The whole time he was loading up the gear, he kept singing “Nothing Compares to U.” I could not help but like him.
It was a seventeen-hour drive to the village where we were planning to begin our search, and Lyall was not looking forward to Tembi’s singing. “Please make him sit up front where he cannot be heard. I beg of you, do not make me sit through that atrocious noise.” Lyall was a good guy. He had been on two previous trips with me, and we worked well together. On all our trips, he only carried two personal items with him: his Bible, and a picture. The picture he kept in his shirt pocket, and it was of a young woman. He never liked to talk about her, although I did pry once. I had seen him staring at the picture by the fire when he thought everyone was asleep. Whoever she was, she made quite an impression.
After about six hours on the road, the jeep came to a screeching halt. Bhim, who had been asleep in the front seat, jolted up and asked Tembi what had happened.
“A lion…it was…on the road.”
Lyall began to check on the shaken Tembi while the rest of us jumped out to look for the lion. Guedado grabbed his rifle and Bhim did the same. There was a wooded area two miles east of us, but other than that there was only an open savannah and the road. We saw no lion.
“He must have been seeing things,” Lyall insisted. “Perhaps too much sun.”
“I saw it! It had eyes, macho-a moto… macho-a moto,” Tembi repeated.
My Swahili wasn’t great, but I recognized what he was saying.
Bhim was quick to translate. “Eyes of fire.” He turned to me. “We should return to the city tonight.”
I gazed out towards the horizon. “We have eleven hours till we reach the village, Bhim. I suggest we get moving.”
Guedado put his gun on the seat as we climbed back into the car, this time with Bhim behind the wheel. I smiled at Tembi, who was slowly coming back to his senses and beginning to grin from ear to ear. Although I was curious as to what had startled him so much, no ghost was going to give me pause in my quest. I was here to hunt the king of beasts. And I wanted a real one, not one made of vapors.
Days in Africa were long and hot. The nights were even worse. Nighttime was horribly lonely. We stopped around dusk and made camp about two hundred yards off the road. There was no need for tents this time of year, but the fire offered more than heat. The flames deterred creatures of the night, light for us to see by, and acted as our conversation starter. Everyone always let themselves go around a campfire. I was told that in Africa, you never knew which one would be your last.
It was always a joy to see the men like this. Lyall and Tembi had begun exchanging wretched jokes about priests and magic lamps, while Bhim and Guedado cleaned their rifles. Bhim talked, but it never seemed like Guedado heard anything he said. Maybe that was why Bhim talked so much to him; he trusted his words wouldn’t be repeated. While I was beginning to wonder if money really had anything to do with why Bhim had come on this trip, Tembi rolled into the fire. The boy had just been laughing too hard at one of Lyall’s “Irish farmer” jokes and caught his shirt on fire by getting too close. Guedado dumped a bucket of water over him as he moved out of the way and set my rifle down by my tent. Tembi stared at Guedado, a little out of fear I think, while Bhim and Lyall helped him up. I walked over by the distressed Tembi to check on him and we waited patiently for him to say something, but he seemed frozen. He couldn’t stop staring at Guedado. I could tell Lyall was going to try and alleviate the tension when we heard a low growling behind Guedado. Tembi hadn’t been fixated on the intimidating African, Tembi had been staring at a lion crouched down in the grass behind him.
There was nothing we could do. Bhim and Guedado’s rifles were dismantled with cleaning rags strung across them and my rifle was not close enough to grab. The beast had us at his mercy as he began to shift his haunches, preparing to skewer the large man in front of him. I tried to survey the men; see how they were holding up. Lyall was nervous, his face glistening in the firelight. Bhim was too far away for me to make anything out clearly, but his hands didn’t move. His whole body seemed still, like he had died standing up. Tembi was hysterical but doing his best to contain himself. I eyed Guedado. Being the closest to our prey, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of the silent goliath. As I watched him, I saw him shift his weight. He was going to lunge for my gun by the tent. Before I could dissuade him, he lunged and so did the lion. I hit the ground and by the time I got up, we could all hear Tembi’s screams getting farther and farther away.
Guedado had already taken off, my rifle in tow. Bhim scrambled to get the pistols out of the lockbox in his tent. He passed one out to Lyall and me. Lyall’s hands were trembling hysterically.
Bhim touched him on the shoulder to get his attention. “Lyall, maybe you should stay here at the camp.”
He shook his head.
We grabbed our flashlights and headed out to find Guedado, and hopefully to rescue Tembi. We could still hear his screams, but we couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. Every time we would turn in a direction it seemed as if the sounds echoed from somewhere else. After ten minutes of frenzied searching, the screams suddenly stopped. We were too late.
“We should go back to camp, Mr. Dempsey.” Bhim was very calm. He still didn’t seem scared.
As we headed back to our camp, Lyall and I kept scanning the dark, as if we would see our doom before it could attack. Bhim, however, looked forward towards the camp.
When we got back, Guedado had already returned, his clothes soaked in blood. I stood silent. Bhim told us to get some rest. He would stand watch until morning. Lyall and I went to our tents while Guedado just sat there. I didn’t want to think about what he saw of Tembi. As I tried to fall asleep in my bag, Lyall was restless. I didn’t want to talk. I knew he needed to say something, but I just wanted to sleep and quit imagining Tembi’s bloody remains.
“I loved her, Thomas. She died you know. No, I don’t guess you would know that. She had cancer. It took her quickly, but we still planned on getting married. But she didn’t make it. I miss her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Promise me you’ll have me buried next to her.” I started to stop him, but he had to get it out. “She’s at the Abbey Adara. Promise me, Thomas.”
“We should talk about it in the morning, Lyall. I think we need to rest right now.” I rolled over and shut my eyes so tight I thought I might hurt myself. I could hear Lyall thinking. He couldn’t shut his mind off. Truthfully, neither could I. After what seemed an eternity, I managed to fall asleep. I awoke to the sun shining in the door of my tent, which Lyall had left flapping in the morning breeze.
As I stepped outside, I could tell something was wrong. I rising sun cast a red cloud across the sky. The breeze was slight, as if the wind were afraid to move too much. There were no sounds. Normally, some kind of creature would be making noise at sunrise, but there was nothing. Bhim was sitting by the smoldering coals looking out towards the rising sun. Lyall had his Bible in his hands and was rubbing the leather cover intensely with his thumbs. Lyall looked at me with great sorrow. As he got ready to speak, I heard his voice tremble. “Guedado is gone. Bhim and I found his corpse by Tembi’s this morning. We were going to gather the remains, and…and there he was. Bhim sat up all night. He said he never heard a sound. He never screamed.” Lyall’s body buckled under the grief. I could see his whole body heave as he took a deep sigh. “What do we do, Thomas?”
I had thought about that as I fell asleep the night before, and even now I still didn’t know. There was a man-hunter out there.