Free Malaika by van Heerling Page A

throat from the morning chill. This African tobacco chars more tender throats, but my once-virginal uvula and esophagus toughened up long ago. The fire these days simply continues to callous the linings of my ever-embattled breathing pipe. It’s an acquired taste. It is earned, I suppose. An argument for my ex-wife? Perhaps.
    It was to be a very clear day. January usually is, and hot of course, but this goes without saying—I wasn’t yet used to the opposite seasons. The only ones to complain about the heat are foreigners, so I complain—God, do I complain.
    I readjusted my back for a moment, lifting the slipping cup of joe to my mouth, and then lowering it back down to its roosting spot a foot or so off the ground, dangling from my fingertips.
    She was quiet. When you live in the wild and your hand is pushed into the air by what can only be bad , you notice. You notice real fast. I wasn’t sure if I was leaping from the foldout chair when I heard the guttural sniff or if I was already standing. This was a beast. At least three hundred pounds—a big cat. She paid little attention to me at first. Sniffing the spilt coffee as it contoured to the cracked earth. Pawing it, she sniffed and lapped up what she could find. Then licking her chops, she raised her head squarely at me. The sun looming over the mountains reflected in her eyes. Her body language was uninhibited, relaxed even, but those eyes—burned fierce.
    Swiftly I realized that neither one of us was moving. Not good. I had frozen at five feet away from her with my cigarette hand pressed out toward her as if the fiery cherry were a shield. I didn’t want to be the first to move. Then I remembered “deer in the headlights” syndrome, and thought– shit, move your ass! Just as I was about to shift my body weight backward, her eyes flickered toward my intended route. Smart. They’re not known as killing machines because they are guessers.
    Lions never hunt alone . . . I was a goner for sure. Knowing this was it, I figured that I better take another drag. When Abasi found what was left of me, he’d discover the last remnants of his sweet, sweet tobacco. I gently pulled my cherry shield back to my lips. I wasn’t dead yet or being dragged into the jungle. Good sign. So I sucked. It was the best smoke I’d ever had. Still not dead. Even better. I exhaled quietly as the smoke billowed from my mouth. She tilted her head up toward the expanding cloud of “Kenyan’s Best,” and, sniffing the air, her nostrils flared. She shook her head and huffed some from the foreign and relatively concentrated dose.
    Not that I wanted to see my disembowelment chasing me up, I did look, however, albeit slowly, to my right and my left. No other interested visitors that I could see. I wasn’t about to turn my back on this feline, but, even though I was sure to be dead in less than five minutes, I did gaze toward the house. It was wide open, both doors and all three windows. Even if I could manage to get in, she’d be on my heels or through a window before I could grab and cock my shotgun. I’d be wrestling a full-grown lion in a four hundred square foot sand brick hut. That is, if I could even make it through the door.
    She never took her eyes from me as she sniffed the air again. I billowed out yet another tobacco cloud. She sniffed the air a third time, but didn’t recoil from the smoke. Placing one paw toward me, her eyes continued to deadlock on mine but now lacked the fierceness of before. She sniffed the air again, I puffed again, and now another step toward me. Too close. I panicked and feebly pushed the cigarette from my hand where it landed just in front of her fuchsia and ebony-edged nostrils. I took two steps back. She noticed, but preoccupied herself with my token expression of “please-don’t-eat-me”. Huddling in front of the smoldering tobacco, hunched down, she investigated the curious object.
    “Careful. It’s h—” Her tongue peeled from her massive