A Bone From a Dry Sea (10 page)

‘Why wasn’t Joe cross with Fred for not coming on the fly-camp?’ asked Vinny.

May Anna sighed.

‘Well, I guess it was true what Fred said. He’s got his classification model to get drawn out for the Craig people on Thursday. But then again Joe wouldn’t get any satisfaction out of needling Fred. Fred’s kind of slippery. He’s like a fly you’re trying to swat. Wham, but it’s somewhere else already, you know? He just shrugs and smiles and doesn’t react.’

‘Why don’t you come?’

‘I’ve got work too – my skull. Did I tell you I found another piece fitted this morning? And I hate camping, too. This place is plenty primitive for me. I’m Minneapolis born and bred. I like streets. I say phooey to all that.’

She gestured derisively at the plain, but Vinny knew she was joking. The plain was wonderful. In England you’re doing well if you can see twenty miles, but here it could have been hundreds. The sky seemed huge. Far out across the tawny grassland something was moving, invisible itself but raising a haze of brown-gold dust. Not a car – it was too wide for that. A group of something, a whole herd, running, pounding up that dust with their hooves. Something must be hunting them. Lions? Wild dogs? Africa was incredibly old, Vinny thought. Animals had run from each other, hunted each other for millions of years. But even Africa changed. Once the plain had been sea and the badlands a sea-channel and then a marsh. She tried to imagine it then. What sort of an island, what sort of a marsh? What creatures then? Pigs, crocodiles, small deer, all under the fierce African sun? And what sort of people? But her imagination wouldn’t take hold. There was too much she didn’t know.

May Anna laughed in the silence. Vinny looked at her.

‘Just the way things pan out, I guess,’ said May Anna. ‘Were you nervous about coming?’

‘A bit, I suppose. Mainly I was just excited.’

‘It was the other way round with Sam. He doesn’t show he’s excited, but, boy, was he nervous! How d’you think you’re making out with him?’

‘I don’t know. It’s difficult with Joe trying to take me over. We were doing all right, I thought, only this morning, well, I suppose I got a bit too interested in a book I was telling him about and he didn’t approve of, and he started to go silent on me, and then, well, he sort of gave himself a shake and stopped. He told me to remember I’m my mother’s daughter.’

‘Tell me about your mom. Sam won’t. He says he doesn’t know how to be fair to her, and he refuses to be unfair. That’s typical of him, by the way. What’s she like, Vinny?’

‘Do you know any old English sheepdogs?’

‘Sure. Like that?’

‘Not to look at. Outside she’s small and neat, but inside she’s sort of all-overish and shaggy and always bouncing and wanting to play and take part and involve everyone.’

‘That figures. What was the book?’

‘It’s by somebody called Elaine Morgan and . . .’

May Anna crowed with laughter.

‘Have you read it?’ said Vinny.

‘Don’t tell anyone, but yes, I took it on vacation, where no-one would know who I was and I put a plain wrapper on it so no-one would ask me about it . . .’

‘Do
you
think it’s nonsense?’

‘No, not really. But I don’t go round talking about it. I think she’s wrong, but not crazy wrong. She deserves an answer.’

‘Why was Dad so upset?’

‘Because you got excited and reminded him of your mom?’

‘It wasn’t just that. It was something to do with the book.’

‘That too. Sam’s a real expert. He’s spent, oh, twenty years getting his expertise. Bones are his thing. Mine too, though I’m not as good as he is. Yet. Just think what it’s like having an amateur coming along and getting a lot of publicity saying the bones aren’t that important and the experts are all wrong. Who’s going to pay our salaries, who’s going to fund expeditions like this, who’s going to give us the respect and prestige we think we deserve, if people start taking her seriously? Those aren’t our conscious motives. Consciously all we’re interested in is the scientific truth, and we are – we really are! But by golly those other motives are there!’

‘So I’d better not talk about it again? I really want to, but . . .’

May Anna didn’t answer at once. Then she sighed.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t figured Sam out. But if you want my advice I’d say be what you are and talk about what you want to talk about. Sam wants his daughter. You want your dad. The real people, not imaginary ones. You’ve got to get used to each other. Now we’d better be moving. I don’t want to have to find my way back in the dark. Dark in Africa is real dark.’

THEN

THE SUN WAS
high by the time Greb’s challenge ended, so the tribe rested in the shallows of the bay, re-forming their family groups, fussing over anyone who’d been hurt in the mêlée, unsure and unhappy. The seniors visited Presh where he lay at the edge of the wave-lap, conscious now, but with his eyes shut and moaning at the slightest movement of his leg. Ma-ma and Hooa were with him, stroking his body beneath the water, and wetting his face often.

The visitors peered at him, muttering mournfully. The tribe needed a leader, but not one with a broken leg. They grieved because they liked Presh, but also because they felt things wouldn’t be right until a new leader established himself. Meanwhile Presh’s authority remained strong. When Ma-ma and Hooa tried to begin to tow him to calmer shallows at the end of the beach he barked at them to stop and they obeyed.

There was a further worry. These shingle beaches swarmed at night with savage little crabs which scavenged for flesh, living or dead. They would pick a stranded fish, however large, down to its skeleton by morning. They would do the same with Presh. As the sun moved on and the tribe began to think about foraging again before
the
night, Ma-ma and Hooa became increasingly fretful, and when Tong visited he stayed, sharing their anxiety. He took Presh’s arm as if to tow him elsewhere, but then like the females obeyed the order to stop. Despairing he looked around, saw Li close by and grunted
What to do?

Li had been as worried as the others. Presh, she could see, must be moved. He must be towed at high tide, soon before dark, out to the headland and lifted on to a shelf just above the water, where he could spend the night. And then, tomorrow . . . But tomorrow was tomorrow. First, he had to be moved, and for that to happen his leg must be protected.

She could see it in the clear water, foot and ankle grossly swollen. She could sense the grind of the bone-ends as the leg moved in the water. She must stop that grinding. When Greb had broken Nuhu’s arm . . . What could she use? There was nothing in the slop and slither of the sea. She looked along the barren little beach. A curtain of creeper hung from the cliff. A ridge of dried tide-wrack marked the highest reach of the waves. She left the water and climbed the burning shingle, thinking perhaps if she made a bundle of wrack and bound it round with creeper . . . A white gleam in the wrack caught her eye. Bone? She pulled the object free and found it was a crooked branch, wave-worn and sun-bleached. The thought of bone was still there, so she laid it against her leg. The bent part at the end followed the line of her feet. Something fizzed in her mind and said
Yes. I can do it
.

Carrying the branch she climbed and tested the creeper, swung herself up the mat and bit through suitable strands, as she had done for
earlier
attempts at net-making. On her way back to the water she gathered an armful of wrack and settled at the edge of the wave-lap to experiment on her own leg. This was awkward. She turned, saw Tong watching from the water and grunted
Come-help
. Children never gave commands to adults, but he came without resentment, only puzzled that she wanted to do things to his leg when it was Presh’s that needed her healing magic.

Her mind was still fizzing but her movements were slow. Her earlier experiments with creepers, reeds and grasses had taught her that a step-by-step approach was best, trying out each element and testing its possibilities and limits before moving on. She laid the branch beside Tong’s leg, looped creeper round it to hold it in place, padded it with wrack and tied the creeper more firmly, making adjustments till she was happy. She untied the bundle and turned towards Presh.

He would have to be right out on the beach. She couldn’t work in the water. Again she called
Come-help
, and set Tong and Hooa by his shoulders and Ma-ma by his waist while she readied herself to look after the broken leg. Having seen her experimenting on Tong’s leg they now understood what she wanted, and as soon as she grunted a
Now
they bent and lifted Presh.

At once he barked
Stop
. They stopped and looked at Li. She gestured and grunted
Now
and again they lifted Presh, and this time merely hesitated at his bark and then carried on, though he wrestled to loose Tong’s grip and cried with pain. As soon as he was out on the beach Ma-ma knelt by him, coaxing and soothing and stroking
his
mane. When Li started to work he tried to kick her away with his good leg, so that it took three males to hold him still. By now the helpers had understood what was needed – it had been the means, the possibilities and difficulties, that had been beyond them. Even Presh in the end lay still, only wincing or moaning as his leg was moved to work the lashings beneath it. By then many of the tribe had returned to the headland to forage, and a shark-watch had been set, though at whiles they’d come back to see what was happening and to help keep a cooling spatter of water over the group on the beach. There was a return of confidence and security. The tribe had its leader, though he was hurt for the time being. Li would see that he got well.

When they’d finished they carried Presh down into the water and towed him out towards the headland. He didn’t resist. It would be hard to say how much the splint Li had made prevented the break from hurting, and how much the change was due to the fact that once his commands had been overruled to get him out of the water both he and the tribe accepted that that would happen again if he tried to resist. Perhaps too his body and mind had become used to the pain and he was more able to cope with it. At any rate they took him out to where he could lie in a calm inlet and food could be brought for him, and then as the sun went down and the tide reached its full they lifted him out on to a smooth flat rock to spend the night. Hooa stayed with him for warmth and company while the others climbed up to their regular roosting-ledge to sleep.

* * *

By morning the sea had changed. Last night’s near-calm had become a slow heave of waves from the main ocean, which as the tide rose slopped on to the rock where Presh lay, the larger ones covering him and tugging at his body as they retreated. The tribe understood these signs and knew that by evening full-scale rollers would be dashing themselves in spume and thunder against the headland.

Li, exhausted, slept late. When she climbed down she found several of the adults bobbing in the water clear of the rock where Presh lay, watching him anxiously but not doing anything. He rose on one elbow to watch as she slid up beside him and tested the wrappings round his leg. The wrack had swollen with wetting and some of the vine-strands had worked loose. Crouching to shield the leg from the waves with her body, Li refastened the lashings and signalled to the others to come and help Presh into the water, but at once he snorted disapproval and before anyone could stop him used the backwash of the next wave to ease himself to the lip of the ledge, and on the next slid deftly into the sea, letting Li lift the wrapped leg clear of the rock as he went.

The effort must have hurt but Presh refused to make pain-noises as he let the others tow him clear of the rocks to rest in the lulling swell. Ma-ma and Hooa brought him food and the tribe spread out to forage as much as they could before the waves became dangerous. They felt that their world had returned almost to normal. They had their leader, and though his leg was broken Li had worked her magic and it would soon mend.

Only Li was worried. She was thinking about
fresh
water, for Presh to drink. (Spending so much time in the sea the tribe didn’t yet have the human need to sweat, which demands pints of drinking water every day. Their main need was to wash the salts from their diet out of their bodies from time to time, and they could go several days together without a drink, but then it became essential. Their whole economy depended on moving up and down the coast, balancing out their needs for food and drink and shelter.)

During the rains fresh water streamed for a few days out of the sky, runnelled down cliffs and filled every hollow, but for the rest of the year there were only three places. There was the river at the northern edge of their territory, the bay with the water-caves where they’d trapped the shark, which they had left only the day before Presh had fought with Greb, and a place three days further south where a steady flow of fresh water welled up from the sea-bed, enough in calm weather to make a wide pool where you felt your buoyancy lessen as you swam into it.

In none of these places was there enough food, and only at the bay was there shelter. The river held muddy fish and clams, but also crocodiles. From trees on the bank fell a fruit whose fermenting juices made you dance and shout and rollick for a while, and then fall, sad, but there were leopards and other night-hunters so the tribe would arrive at the river on a morning around new moon, post look-outs landward and seaward, and leave before dark on their tide-like drift down the coast.

At the bay there was food for two days, at most, for the whole tribe, while along the glaring coral beaches behind the sea-pool there was none at all.
Still
it was a place of great happiness. They took care to feed well before they reached it and would arrive with shouts of joy, and splash for a while across and around the pool and then, without any signal, form a rough ring and dive one after the other to the place where the water streamed out and allow it to take them back to the surface, soaring like gulls in an updraught. There were no fights there, and kin-quarrels were forgotten. The children chased through the frothing shallows while the adults lolled in deeper water, greeting each other as they went to and from the pool to drink, and couples who were ready swam a little way apart and mated. If they’d had words for such a thought they’d have called the pool holy. They came there twice a month for the middle part of a day, going south towards the shrimping grounds or back again north, moving as the moon changed, as both they and the moon seemed to have done for ever. Now the thought of their next visit to the pool was already growing in their minds.