Free The Lion Killer (The Dark Continent Chronicles) by James S. Gardner Page B

rustling made his heart race. He heard an animal sniffing and when he looked out from underneath the truck he saw hairy legs and shadows. The lions started excavating him from his burrow. He tunneled deeper, but the lions were better diggers. When he felt the truck move he knew they were in the bed. You're not lions. You're bloody hyenas and you're after Sam. He crawled out, climbed in his truck and switched on the headlamps. His truck was surrounded by glowing eyes. The canvas tarp wrapping Sam's corpse had been shredded. “Get you filthy buggers,” Rigby screamed, firing his rifle. The cackling hyenas loped off.
    Rigby was driving before sunrise. The hillsides were dotted with umbrella acacias budding in anticipation of the rainy season. He passed a cart pulled by four miserable looking donkeys; it was stacked with firewood and Africans. As he waved back, he wondered why Africans appear happy. Maybe it's because death in Africa isn't abstract, it permeates your soul. Life is tolerable when you know death intimately, he reflected. As he drove, he daydreamed about his wife. Early in their marriage, he tried to shelter his wife from the brutality of Africa.
    “ Rigby, tell me what you did in Mozambique? The London Times is calling it a massacre. It says the Rhodesians killed over a thousand freedom fighters.”
    “Helen, I wouldn't believe anything in the Times. We had been getting intelligence about a terrorist camp operating in Mozambique. The insurgents have been sneaking over our border and laying landmines. Those landmines are killing children. Someone finally decided to do something. That's all.”
    “Please tell me you didn't kill anyone?”
    “Me? I was part of a demolition team.”
    “Thank God. Will this lunacy ever end?” She daubed her eyes. “I'm glad you're not like the others.”
    “For me, this war ends in two months,” I told her. But my tour of duty didn't end and as the war turned against us; I became one of the ‘others.' She never asked me about the war again. Men do God awful things in war. Grisly things we keep hidden. Sam was right, some days were not good.
    Lupano was a village on the road. Rigby pulled up to the lone petrol pump and got out of his truck. He was surprised by the lack of children. The petrol attendant explained that the story of his journey had preceded him. Africans were wary of a man transporting a corpse. Rigby told him that he felt like Livingstone's trusted servant Susi, who carried the doctor's salt-cured corpse a thousand kilometers to Zanzibar to be shipped back to England for a proper burial. The man said he never heard of Livingstone or Susi. He politely asked Rigby to leave.
     
    ***
    Sam Mabota's funeral turned into a theatrical extravaganza. People came from every corner of the country. The attendees pitched tents on the Croxford farm. At night, smoke from their campfires cast a halo around the moon. African music struggled against monotonous native rap. Rigby had a truckload of chibuku delivered to his farm. Mounds of empties scarred the landscape. Some men slept where they fell, too drunk to find their way back to their tents. The drunken celebration of Sam's life lasted for three days.
    On the fourth day, the time came to put Sam in the ground. To the consternation of some, Sam was to be laid to rest in the Croxford family plot. Each attendee carried a small stick to the funeral. A black iron pot sat next to Sam's grave. If they had been treated fairly by Sam during his life, they deposited their stick in the pot. If Sam had wronged them, they would retrieve a stick. The length of the eulogy praising Sam's life would be directly proportional to the number of sticks in the pot. Not one stick was taken from the funeral pot that day.
    Sam's five wives and thirteen children wailed and threw themselves on the ground. After his brother's death, Sam had married his sister-in-law for her protection as well as her children's. This was the African custom.
    The honor of