‘Now your feet are the fastest in the land,’ said father, his wooden pipe clicking against his yellowed teeth. The heavy smoke smelled like a warthog mud bath. ‘Now you will be the one to save this family,’ said father, wrapping my feet in worn animal hide and black string.
‘I am not as fast as he was,’ I told him, clutching for balance the broad plateau of his shoulders with my small hands. Even kneeling, he loomed over me, and ash fell from his pipe into my hair.
‘You are smaller than he was,’ father grunted, ‘but you are faster.’
‘But I’m scared.’
‘You should not be scared to provide for your family,’ he said, taking the pipe from his mouth for a moment to grab the rifle from off the floor. ‘Every boy must eventually become the man of the house.’ He used the rifle as a cane to stand on wobbly legs and I stared at the scars of hyena bites around his knees. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘while you are a fast runner, I am an accurate shot.’ He aimed the rifle at the brick wall where mother’s dream catcher was hung, and I heard mother groan behind me, huddled in the shadow with my sisters.
‘You bury those groans,’ father growled.
‘You are not well,’ she said softly.
He promptly fired a bullet into the wall, cracking the bone frame of the dream catcher that hung now like two pieces of a broken heart.
‘Not well? My aim is perfect,’ said father.
Mother showed no reaction to father anymore, glaring at him through the puff of red-gray dust. I had never seen sadness like the one she carried, and while father seemed to ignore it, I yearned for a way to help her. Life in the desert had been hard even before the hyenas came, but with big brother gone it had become miserable, and the charm had gone from our family like the fat from our bones.
Stepping in front of father as he scowled at mother, I asked, ‘What if they are faster than me?’
He placed a calloused hand upon my head and ran his stony fingers through my sticky hair. ‘I will not let them catch you,’ he said.
The animal hide around my feet was rough as a cat’s tongue and hurt to walk upon, but father insisted it made me faster. While father loaded bullets into the rifle I crouched beside mother and kissed my sisters. They were trembling and cold to the touch, like plucked birds. Mother was thin and weak and hadn’t stopped crying since the hyenas ate big brother, her long face drooping as a flower does when deprived of its sun. She reached out for my hands and brought her eyes to meet mine, and with a small shake of her head I knew she didn’t want me to go.
‘But we must eat,’ I whispered.
Mother mumbled, ‘Be cautious. He is fevered.’
‘Come, boy,’ said father, puffing his pipe. ‘It is the hunting hour.’
‘Don’t fear for me,’ I told mother, who retracted her hands as a turtle does its head when startled. She did not watch me leave.
Father led me outside where we stood under the white weight of the stars and the half-moon, our eyes glowing like those of creatures hiding in the desert brush. It was cold but our wool clothes kept away the worst of the wind. If father killed a hyena tonight, we would have fire and food, and perhaps with warmth and a meal in our bellies we would feel happy again. I prayed that I would not fail.
‘Do you see the mound in the distance?’ father asked, pointing with his shaky finger across the silvery sand. I nodded, though with eyes swollen by tears I could see very little. ‘You will run from there to the mushroom tree. The one where we have buried your brother.’
‘Yes, father.’
With one eye squeezed shut and the other looking down the sight of the rifle, he scanned the desert, seeing things I could not. He had hunted these plains for rebels as a military man before the uprising and knew them far better than I. A winged creature swooped down from the stars for a midnight feast and flew away with a shrieking rat in its talons.
‘You will wait for the hyena to laugh before you run,’ he said, looping his arm through the rifle strap. ‘And this is how we will make them laugh.’ Father took my hand and with a knife he drew fresh blood from my palm. The warmth was welcoming until the sting bit like a snake and I chewed my tongue to keep from crying as big dark drops splashed to the dirt. ‘Now go, my boy. The hyenas have already caught your scent.’
With a pat on my back, I was guided toward the mound in the distance, a small blot against the backdrop of the sparkling heavens. My hand bled and I covered the wound with my other hand, wondering if that was the same blade that father used to turn big brother into bait. I listened to the whispers of nocturnal beasts debating what to make of me, their noses sniffing, stomachs rumbling. Off in the distance, a wolf howled and the hyenas cackled with madness.
At the mound, I looked back at our small hut built against a black boulder crooked as father’s front teeth. I could see father there, the small orange glow of his pipe, the rifle raised. For a moment I was more afraid of the gun and his quivering finger on the trigger than the predators in the dark. Father had been sick with the shakes lately. Mother had told me in private that she believed it was a bullet not a hyena’s tooth that took my brother’s life.
‘Please do not miss,’ I whispered.
My blood dripped from my fingertips like melted wax.
The mushroom tree where big brother was buried was about as far from the mound as our hut, a straight path over flat sand. I’d watched my brother run this distance a dozen times, flawlessly, courageously, until the day he fell. I doubted that I could run it any faster. Again I felt the presence of the rifle, its anxious bullet aimed at my back, and that was when I heard the hyena laugh.
I spotted the mangy monster as it sulked around the mound.
I smelled its rotten breath.
I ran.
Feet wrapped in rough animal hide, the discomfort was forgiven as I found better footing in the cold sand. I ran toward the mushroom tree, vaguely hearing the footfalls of the hyena giving chase. My father shouted something I could not hear for my heart had leapt into my skull to pound like a war drum. The beast snapped its teeth and hot saliva splashed the back of my leg.
Then father fired the rifle.
The hyena yelped and fell to the ground, spraying sand like a wave crashing against the shore behind me. I fell on my knees and tried to hide in the nearest bush in case the hyena still felt like sinking its fangs into me, but the hyena had already scurried away and left a small mess of inky blood.
Father yelled my name.
I stood and looked first into the empty desert, thinking the hyena had retreated, but I was wrong. The bloodthirsty beast had gone instead for the man with the gun. By the time I turned to see, there came a second rifle shot and my father screamed when the hyena pounced, snapped its jaws, and dragged him by the neck into the darkness. I shook free of the panic that froze me to the earth and ran for my father, arriving at the hut in time to tell mother to stay inside as she opened the door.
The rifle was left on the sand, its strap soaked in blood. I flung it quickly over my shoulder and followed father’s red trail into the desert, my eyes adjusted to the silver starlight. I had never shot the rifle before but I’d seen father practicing with big brother and big brother explained how it worked. In the distance, father’s screams faded and the sound of tearing flesh echoed through the valley like the crunch of dead branches.
I spotted them not far ahead.
I crouched and aimed the rifle, knowing I was equally likely to strike father as I was the foul creature dismembering him, and with a small prayer I pulled the trigger and was knocked backward, my eyes clenched shut, ears ringing.
From the silence that followed the smoke cloud, I knew that I’d been lucky. I went quickly to my father and pulled the dead hyena off his chest, hoping no others would come. Father smelled already of death. There was nothing hopeful about the state of his ripped clothing and flesh. He lifted a trembling arm and I took his hand to my tear-soaked cheek. Father pulled me down to his frightened face, turning my ear to meet his quivering lips.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘The bullet was not for your brother.’
‘Father? Do not die now, father...’
‘You are a good shot.’
‘What will we do?’
He coughed and groaned. He reached out to grip the dead creature’s fur and, before he died, father croaked, ‘Eat.’
I dragged the animal back to the house, struggling to keep the rifle slung behind my back. Mother stepped outside and glanced in the direction of father, but did not ask about him. I expected her to be crying but she seemed relieved, as one who wakes from a nightmare. After looking at the dead creature, she nodded and took the creature inside for skinning.
When I went to retrieve father’s body, it was already gone, and far away the hyenas were laughing. I felt the weight of the rifle on my shoulder like father’s arm across my back, leading me back to the house where I stopped and picked up his spilt pipe from the sand.