Pride of Eden Read online

  Anse was hunched over the wheel, his chin pushed out like a hood ornament.

  “Serve her right, running out on me again.”

  Lope eyed the elephant gun rattling on the rack behind their heads.

  “Where’s your tranquilizer gun?”

  Anse sucked his lips into his mouth, then popped them out.

  “Forgot it.”

  They passed the old zombie neighborhoods built just before the market crashed. Satilla Shores, Camden Bluffs, King’s Retreat. Whole housing developments killed mid-construction, abandoned when the housing bubble burst. Their wrought-iron gates stood twisted with vines, their guard shacks dusty and overgrown, vacant but for snakes and possums and the odd hitchhiker needing shelter for the night. Their empty streets snaked through the pines, curling into cul-de-sacs, skating along bare river frontage.

  They turned in to one called Plantation Pointe, the sign weedy and discolored. The community was neatly paved, with greening curbs and sidewalks, periodic fire hydrants standing before overgrown lots. There were four or five houses built, pre-recession dreams that petered out. They were empty, their windows shining dumbly in the morning sun, their pipes dry, their circuits dead. Squatters had been found in some of them, vagrant families with their old vans or station wagons parked in the garages, the flotsam of Dumpsters and thrift stores strapped to the vehicles’ roofs. The vagrants cooked only at night, in fireplaces of brick or stone, like people of another age. They kept the curtains drawn.

  The dually rolled through the neighborhood, the tires crackling around empty cul-de-sacs. The windows were up. Lope had his ballcap turned backward to press his face closer to the glass, scanning for a flash of golden fur in the trees.

  “How’d she get loose?”

  Anse frowned. “Same’s last time.”

  “And how was that, exactly? I never got it straight.”

  Anse chewed on his bottom lip.

  “Look,” he said, pointing over the wheel. “A kill.”

  * * *

  They stood in the overgrown yard. It was a whitetail doe, or used to be. It had been torn inside out, the guts strung through the grass. The rib cage was visible, clutching an eaten heart.

  “Lord,” said Lope. “You been starving that thing or something?”

  Anse spat beneath his bush hat and looked up. A white clot bubbled in the grass.

  “She’s born for this. What do you expect?”

  Lope looked out at the tree line. Fragments of the Satilla River shone through the trunks and vines and moss. The lioness must have stalked the doe from the woods, bursting forth to catch her across this man-made veld.

  Anse had the elephant gun cradled against his chest, still staring at the mess in the yard.

  “Used to be lions all across this country, hunting three-toed horses and ground sloths, woolly mammoths.”

  “You mean saber-toothed tigers?”

  “They ain’t tigers. They’re saber cats. Smilodons. Then you had the American lion, too—Panthera leo atrox—four foot tall at the shoulder. Them cats owned the night. ’Course they disappeared at the same time as the rest of the megafauna, ten thousand years ago.”

  Lope shivered.

  “Thank the Lord,” he said.

  Anse’s upper lip curled in sneer.

  “They would of ate your Lord off his cross and shat him out in the woods.”

  Lope stiffened. He thought of the hymns sung in the small whitewashed church of his youth, where his father, a deacon, had often preached on Sundays, his face bright with sweat. Songs of chariots and lion dens and flying away home.

  He looked at Anse.

  “Not Daniel they didn’t. ‘God hath sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths.’”

  Anse smiled at the killed deer.

  “Hath he now?”

  * * *

  Lope could remember his first structure fire more clearly than his first kiss, than his first fumblings for buttons and zippers in the dark of movie theaters and backseats. The stable fire peeled back the darkness of the world, so bright it seared him.

  He was ten at the time. He’d already developed a fascination with fire. Under his bed, he kept a cardboard box filled with cigarette lighters he’d collected. He had a vintage Zippo, a butane jet lighter that hissed like a miniature blowtorch, even a stormproof trench lighter made from an antique bullet casing. He would sit cross-legged on his bed and thumb the wheel of a Zippo or Bic, relishing the secret fire in the house. Sometimes, after school, he would erect small temples of kindling and tinder in the backyard, then set them alight, watching rapt at the transformation—the twist and glow of their dying architecture, the chemical brightness.

  The day of the fire, he followed a black pillar of smoke home from school, weaving down the shoulder of the road on his BMX bike as the fire engines roared past. His heart raced faster and faster as he realized what was burning.

  The stables where his father worked.

  The man had grown up on one of the sea islands, riding bareback on marsh ponies while other children were still hopping around on hobbyhorses. A hard man among his family, but strangely tender with animals. He spoke to horses in Gullah—a tongue Lope never heard him use among men. His loose-jointed body seemed built for horseback, his seat and shoulders bobbing in time to their trots. With his long limbs, he could trick-ride with gusto, swinging low from the saddle like an Apache or standing high atop their spines, his arms spread like wings. He worked as the barn manager and groom for a local equine community.

  Lope straddled his bicycle before the blaze, his face licked with firelight. Antlers of flame roared from every window, like the blazing crown of a demon, and the smoke looked thick enough to climb. An evil hiss pervaded the scene, pierced now and again by the scream of a frightened animal. Only later did Lope learn that his father had been inside trying to save the last of the horses when the roof beams collapsed.

  Ten years old, Lope could not help but feel there was some connection, that his secret fascination had sparked this awful happening. His secret desires or jealousies. So many times, he’d wrapped his arms around himself and wished for the gentle touch and cooing voice his father gave only to his horses—never his son. So many times, Lope had huddled over his yard-built temples and pyres, watching them burn.

  Back at Anse’s truck, Lope called his wife. He told her to stay inside with the baby until she heard from him.

  “Larell Pope,” she said, using his full name. “I got a cut-and-color at ten. One of my best clients. I’m not canceling on her because some zoo animal is on the loose. I already have a girl coming to watch Lavonne.”

  Lope turned toward the truck, gripping the side mirror.

  “Please,” he said.

  “That new dryer ain’t going to pay itself off, Larell.”

  “It’ll get paid.”

  Lope could sense Anse waiting behind him, his bootheel grinding into the pavement.

  “Just cancel it,” he said, hanging up.

  When he turned around, the old man was sliding a giant, double-barreled pistol into a holster slung under one arm. The gun looked like something the captain of a pirate ship would carry, with twin rabbit-ear hammers and double triggers.

  “The hell is that thing?”

  “Howdah pistol,” said Anse.

  “Howdah?”

  “An elephant carriage. Back in the colonial days, hunters carried these pistols on shikars—tiger hunts—in case a pissed-off tiger tried to climb the elephant they were riding.”

  Lope swallowed.

  “Hell,” he said.

  The old man took the double rifle from the backseat and held it out.

  “Can you shoot?”

  Lope looked at the old safari gun. The twin barrels were huge, the stock scarred from years in hard country. He sniffed.

  “I can shoot,” he said.

  “Four-fifty Nitro Express.” Anse handed him the rifle. “Designed for dangerous game. That cartridge brought down Hun fighters like pheas
ants in World War One.”

  “How is it for lion?”

  Anse shrugged. “Great. If you don’t miss.”

  * * *

  Lope followed him through high, weed-ridden yards—tall as savannah grass in some places. The old man knelt here or there, examining the ground.

  “See any prints?”

  “Pugmarks,” said Anse, rising. “We call them pugmarks.”

  Lope trailed him, cradling the double rifle against his chest, stepping high-kneed through the weeds and creepers. Like always, he felt clumsy without a man-made surface beneath him, asphalt or concrete or milled wooden floors. Like his father, he was all hinges and sockets, a long-boned creature that seemed to have a few too many joints. His head rode high atop his shoulders, his arms long and ropy. People assumed he was good at basketball. Anse was small and square beneath him, neckless, his skin leathered a cancerous brown. They seemed of two different species almost, a race of over-tall princes and cowboy-toed dwarves.

  “People say you were a jockey once,” said Lope.

  Anse didn’t turn around.

  “That’s right.”

  “Thoroughbreds or quarter horses?”

  Anse looked over his shoulder.

  “You know horses?”

  “Grown up on a horse’s back. Daddy was a groom.”

  “Quarter horses, mainly. Back in the days they ran on Winstrol and cocaine. They weren’t but claiming races, mostly. Out in Texas, Oklahoma. I did race in the All American Futurity once.”

  “At Ruidoso Downs?”

  Anse nodded. “That’s right. A horse called Thunder Boy.”

  “You win?”

  “I thought about it,” said Anse. “But I didn’t want to get shot.”

  * * *

  Lope followed him into the trees. The cathedral pines shunted the sun. It fell over them in irregular scrawls, hunting for earth. Lope thought of Henrietta slinking from blaze to blaze, invisible in the light. Even now she could be stalking them, a cat the color of afternoon sunlight.

  For years, he’d dreamed he started the fire that killed his father. A lit book of matches on the dry bales of hay. A jet lighter touched to a ragged bed of straw. The yellow stalks curling and blackening before him, swirling aloft like burning flies. In the dream he stood watching the fury he’d loosed. The flames seemed alive, an orgy of snapping, singing tongues. They licked their way up king posts and raced across roof beams, turning the barn into a roaring maw of fire. They leapt from the barn, flickering across the fields to set the surrounding trees alight. They would spread and spread, consuming the whole world if they could.

  Young Lope would wake guilty each time, slimy with sweat, bedsheets coiled around him like a straitjacket. His blood thundering. To calm himself, he would imagine wielding a fire ax or hydrant wrench or attack hose—weapons against fire. He would become part of the thin red line that kept the flames of the world at bay.

  Now came the drone of an outboard motor. An old skiff rounded the bend of river, the pilot unaware of what exotic creature could be lurking along the shore. Lope watched the boat round out of sight, the sound dying. When he looked down again, Anse was bent on one knee, his hand pressed to the earth. His shoulders were quaking. Lope approached him. He thought to reach out, to touch the old man, but he wasn’t sure he should.

  “You okay, Mr. Anse?”

  Anse rose and turned to face him. He was short as a child, his eyes bright with tears. Beneath him, the paw print where his hand had rested.

  “I can’t believe she done me like this.”

  “We’ll find her, sir.”

  “Her of all of them,” said Anse. “You seen the enclosure I built her?”

  “I seen it.”

  Anse shook his head.

  “’Bout the size of Swaziland. She eats like a queen.”

  Lope shifted his weight.

  “Some people…’course they’re only kidding. Some people say you feed her strays.”

  Anse straightened. He sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

  “She eats like a queen,” he said.

  * * *

  They nooned under a big laurel oak set alongside the river, the shade heavy as lead. Anse said they could relax. Henrietta would be bedded down this time of day, avoiding the heat the same as them.

  Lope wicked the sweat from the back of his neck.

  “We ain’t avoiding it too well,” he said.

  Anse picked his nose with his thumb, examining what he’d found.

  “You ought to try Africa, you think this is hot.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  Anse flicked the booger away.

  “I was in Rhodesia.”

  “I heard that.”

  “It’s Zimbabwe now.”

  “Yeah, I heard that, too.”

  Anse seemed a long way off, his gray eyes steered distant.

  “They shot ’em just for fun.”

  “Shot who?”

  Anse sucked his teeth.

  “Lions, rhinos. Baboons. I seen them drop a mortar once into a herd of elephant.” He shook his head. “You know they call a herd of elephant a memory. That’s the fucking word.”

  “Who was doing all this?” asked Lope.

  Anse looked at him for the first time in the conversation, his round little glasses fogged by the heat.

  “Us.”

  * * *

  Lope hadn’t been on a horse in years. Now he preferred the saddle of his Suzuki sport bike, a 1300cc Hayabusa—falcon, in Japanese—which could reach 193 mph if you had the nerve. His knees stuck out like wings when he rode it, like the legs of a frog about to spring, and his helmet rumbled high up in the wind. But when he was paged for a multi-alarm fire, he would twist the throttle and the world would turn to flame, a green blaze of pine beneath the white torrent of sky. He would feel the elation of pyromania in his blood, like a man sparking demons from thin air and flint. He would pass through them, a fire-walker, kin to the heat.

  “Lope,” said a voice. “Larell.”

  A hand touched his shoulder. Lope came hard awake, grabbing the wrist of that hand. Sweat stung his eyes. He blinked it away, looking up.

  Anse stood over him, looking at Lope’s hand where it gripped him. Lope let go.

  “You fallen asleep,” said the old man. “It’s time to get moving.”

  Lope stood. He was slick with sweat, birthed from dream.

  “Right.”

  He followed Anse, wading through a maze of saw palmetto. The sun was streaming slantwise through the trees now, a canted forest of light. They broke onto the riverbank and the breeze was cool and pure, crusting the sweat against his skin. He could almost forget the beast skulking through the woods at his back, crackling like golden fire.

  “Look,” said Anse, pointing to the mud at river’s edge. “She drank here.”

  Prints stove the bank, clear as a mold.

  Anse shook his head. “River water. At home, she drinks only the filtered stuff.”

  “I’m sure it won’t hurt her none.”

  “Hurt her?” said Anse. “She was born to drink it. I’m worried she won’t want to come home.”

  “That’s what we got these for, I reckon,” said Lope, tapping his rifle.

  Anse glared. “You ain’t pulling that trigger ’less I tell you to.”

  “Four hundred pounds of angry cat coming at me, I’ll pull it whenever I damn well want.”

  Anse growled and turned, leading them farther through the woods. It was nearing dusk when they broke from the trees onto the overgrown lawns of a second zombie neighborhood. White street signs, empty cul-de-sacs. A single model home stared blindly across the expanse of waist-high weeds. Great earthmovers had roamed this ground, fellers and crawlers and mulchers that chewed man’s vision from the forest. Then the pavers and rollers, laying down ribbons of asphalt. The river swept past the empty lots, unsaluted by evening whiskey or barking dogs or the squeak-squeak of trampoline springs.
r />   Lope looked out over the tall grass, thinking of the lion.

  “Must look like home,” he said.

  “Come on,” said Anse, wading into it.

  “She could be laid up in here.”

  “She could be right behind you.”

  Despite himself, Lope glanced over his shoulder. Then he waded into the high grass behind Anse, the pair of them heading for the model house in the distance. It was a lowcountry design, a porched behemoth raised on brick pilings with dormer windows and storm shutters—the kind of house from which men had once looked out across cane fields or rice paddies, a storm rolling heavy and purple over scattered knots of slaves or field hands.

  Lope followed Anse up the porch steps. The old jockey draped his pistol from a porch post and squatted down, peering across the overgrown lots.

  “What now?” asked Lope.

  Anse spat on the planks, rubbed his chin with the back of his hand.

  “Sun’s dropping. We bait her and wait.”

  “What are we gonna bait her with?”

  Anse rubbed his hands together, a papery rasp.

  “You got a knife?”

  * * *

  Anse ran the flame of his cigarette lighter along the blade, again and again, sanitizing the edge. He squinted, thinking.

  “Man-Eaters of Eden,” he said. “That’s the book. A study of man-eating lions in South Africa. Turns out, lions are most likely to attack humans under a waning moon, like we have tonight, especially if the animal is sick or wounded.” He blew on the blade, briefly, then drew the edge across the heart line of his palm. “Some say they eat hundreds of refugees a year. Sometimes whole prides turn man-eater, have to be killed.”

  Lope swallowed.

  “Did hers?”

  Anse made a fist to force the blood from his hand, dripping it onto the front steps.

  “Hard to know.”

  “You think she’d attack you?”

  “I don’t believe she would.”

  “So I’m the one that’s bait?”

  Anse shrugged, holding out the knife to Lope.