Big Game
Last week’s sketch in “Not One Domino Shall Fall” brought us to an embassy high in the sky. This week, our narrator, the woman, and Ed travel on land into the desert in search of lions.
My understanding of geography was terrible, so I had no idea where we were. All I knew was we were in a jeep driving across an African desert with a couple of very big guns between our legs, looking for some big, sweet animals to fill with bullets, so Ed could mount their heads in his smoking room back in the States. The enterprise didn’t strike me as particularly honorable but Ed—the owner of an exceptionally popular chain of sandwich restaurants—was pretty fired up. There was bloodlust in his eyes.
Me and Ed went way back. When his company was sued by the Industrial Workers of the World for unfair labor practices (as a condition of their employment, the “sandwich artists” had to sign nondisclosure agreements, which prevented them from so much as saying the word “sandwich” for at least five years after leaving the company), my firm had provided his defense. I was a legal clerk—a glorified shoeshine boy—but Ed liked my sense of humor. That was why he’d asked me to come on this trip. He wanted someone to make him laugh while he shot baby elephants.
Our driver wasn’t laughing. After dinner one night, we had a few drinks at the resort bar—a garish, brightly lit affair with plastic palm fronds, stuffed animals, and ridiculous canned jungle sounds. Something about this ersatz environment seemed to get under the driver’s skin. Either that or it was Ed’s comments about how good she looked in her uniform. Ed was more than a bit soused.
After a few more Mai Tais, Ed fell back in his chair and rolled into the phony lion’s den behind our table. I asked one of the porters if they would help Ed to his room. The young man smiled and complied, but I could see something like defeat in his eyes. Ed had that effect on people.
The driver and I stuck around for a bit, and she told me about how she’d originally come to Africa with an NGO to build infrastructure for some of the remote villages in the area. She also helped with the books, which was how she came to realize there was some funny business going on, something about misappropriated funds. Even before this discovery, the whole enterprise had begun to feel like it was only a tool for rich celebrities (principle among them an Irish rock star with a penchant for self-aggrandizement) to launder their images.
“So, you like driving for the safaris better?” I asked.
She tilted her head and gave me a confused look. “Is that a serious question?”
We sat there a bit longer and I caught her staring into the lion’s den where only a few minutes before Ed had lay on his back like a drunk tortoise, arms and legs wriggling. “Is that guy your friend?” she asked.
“More of an acquaintance. It’s a business thing.” I sipped my drink. “I don’t think he has many real friends.”
I thought about Ed and how, when I was working on his case, he would laugh at the things I said. He would repeat them to his underlings and they would laugh, too. I started to think that maybe it wasn’t my jokes Ed was laughing at.
“How long do you think,” I motioned at the lion’s den with my glass, “a guy like Ed would last out there? On his own.”
She sipped her drink. “Not long. Not long at all.”
The next day Ed was red-faced and hungover, vomiting over the side of the open-cab jeep and firing his gun off at random intervals as if that would somehow calm his irritated bowels. His comments to the driver were getting increasingly lewd and lascivious, and when he wasn’t leering at her he was reminding me of something stupid I’d said or done. For a guy with a raging hangover, he was having a pretty good time.
The driver pulled over and pointed to a copse of fever trees. She said, “Last year a guy pulled down one of the biggest elephants I’ve ever seen.” Ed’s eyes lit up.
She drove us closer, and Ed pulled out his long, shiny elephant gun—the thing was almost as long as he was tall—and aimed it into the trees. The sand blew in my face, and I wished I had something to cover my mouth. Or maybe something to cover my eyes.
“You can’t get them from here,” she said. She sat up on the side of her door and pointed. “You’ve got to move in. Corner them by the pond.”
Ed had most of his color back and looked ready for anything. He hopped out of the car and crept towards the trees. I picked up my gun and held it for a moment, staring at the back of Ed’s bright red neck.
The driver looked at me and shook her head. In a flash she dropped into her seat, started the jeep, threw the thing in gear, and hit the gas. There were so many sounds, I couldn’t be sure if I was hearing the engine or the roar of a beast from somewhere in the trees.
Ed turned, a big dumb look on his face, and pointed his gun. The bullet grazed my left ear and blood started running down my neck. As we accelerated into the desert, I looked at the driver, only catching the side of her face. I opened my mouth and tried to ask her name, but the wind was too loud, the desert too wild.
Another sketch next week…
Jeremy Steen lives and writes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and has previously published work in the Oxford American, New World Writing Quarterly, The Racket, Rejection Letters, The Sublunary Review, among others.
Follow him on Bluesky.