The Lioness(81)

“It’s not like that,” Judy said, as if she had read his mind. “Ours isn’t, anyway.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Terrance agreed.

Eva nodded. “Terrance, I can’t tell you what you will feel in Kenya or Tanganyika—as a Black man. It’s not my place. And I only know you by reputation. But I am always happier there than I am in America. Just like Judy.”

“Hear, hear,” Judy said.

Terrance gazed for a moment into the flickering candle. “There are parts of this country I will never set foot in again. Never,” he told them. He said it calmly, wistfully. He wasn’t angry; it was just a fact of his life. If anything, it made him sad.

“You have no idea the way people attacked Terrance after Tender Madness,” Katie recalled ruefully.

“You, too,” David reminded her. “It’s not like that whole press junket was a picnic for you, either.”

“No, it wasn’t. But I experienced nothing compared to Terrance,” Katie corrected him. “I know some people thought it wasn’t a particularly savvy career move on my part, but no one threatened me or harassed me the way they did Terrance.”

“And the kiss never even made it into the final print,” Terrance said, and he shook his head.

“So, there was an actual kiss?” asked Eva.

“There was,” Katie said. “There was a love scene.”

“Well, of course they had to cut it. They would never have been allowed to show the film south of the Mason-Dixon Line if they’d kept the kiss in,” Judy said. Then she turned her attention squarely on Terrance and said, “I’m sorry I used the word plantation. Next time, I’ll use farm.”

“No harm, no foul,” he reassured her.

“East Africa has a long way to go in very many ways,” Eva said. “But in some ways? America has a much longer road ahead—and the potholes are just as dangerous.”



* * *



.?.?.

“Just a pothole,” Katie was saying, as the three Americans stood in the short grass off the dirt track and one of the Russians crawled under the rear of the Land Rover. Terrance wondered if she, too, was recalling their drinks just about a month ago at the Chateau Marmont, the word pothole being the association in his mind.

Of course, that wasn’t just a pothole that had nearly rolled the vehicle. That was a chasm across the road, and Terrance didn’t suppose that the driver, even if he was an auto mechanic, was going to be able to repair the Land Rover. They had a spare tire, but they sure as hell didn’t have a spare axle.

Suddenly Billy just sat down. Just collapsed where he was and put his forehead on his steepled knees. Katie knelt beside him and said his name and asked him if he was okay.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just tired. I just couldn’t stand a second more.”

Their guard, Glenn, gazed down at them but kept his rifle at his side. He didn’t seem to care that Billy was sitting and Katie was kneeling, and so Terrance sat down, too. He was exhausted. He honestly had no idea whether he was in as bad shape as Billy, but it was a horse race. God, what the two of them must look like to Katie. And, still, she believed that her husband and her sister-in-law were alive.

And, just maybe, Margie really was. But Terrance doubted it.

He licked his lips. He was thirsty, but he didn’t know how much water they had. Cooper had to realize that they weren’t going anywhere and so whatever water remained, the six of them were going to have to ration.

Cooper wandered over to them, and he and Glenn shared a few words in Russian. Were they discussing the radio in the Land Rover? Terrance supposed it worked, but he had no idea whether it had the power to reach anyone who might help them. Besides, their peers, the pair who had taken Reggie and Felix and Carmen, had disappeared. No, that wasn’t precisely right: from what Billy had heard, one was dead and one had disappeared—along with the other Americans. Or he was dead too, and the body was gone. Maybe they were all dead. The whole group.

Of course, there was also that lorry with the porters. Perhaps that was within radio range.

In the distance, he thought he saw a rhinoceros. There might even have been two. They were far enough away that they posed no danger, and Terrance didn’t imagine that the Russians had any desire to poach one. Already their kidnapping had gone to hell. And they had no skinners or porters. He was trying to focus on the animals when he heard the fellow working beneath the Land Rover bellow, and Terrance’s immediate reaction was that the vehicle had collapsed on the man’s legs. That was what he had envisioned.

But it hadn’t, and the guy was crawling out from beneath it now, cursing, his right hand on his left forearm, his eyes agog. And then, right behind him, coiling into an S the moment it emerged, came the snake. It paused, watching the humans and deciding whether fight or flight was in order. Terrance knew from the chevrons created by its scales that the snake was a puff adder—Juma had taught them that their first day, when he was going over the predators that were most likely to sneak up on them and kill them—and the son of a bitch who’d been bitten was probably going to be dead within minutes.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


    Katie Barstow





Dutton, like Poitier, is always a pot on simmer that any moment—with the flick of a wrist—can boil over. That’s why I like to see him paired with Katie Barstow versus (for instance) Diahann Carroll, because it makes that Dutton edge even sharper. Suddenly, the movie says something about race, among the pivotal human stories on this continent since white people first arrived, bringing with them Africans in chains, even though there isn’t a word in the script about the color of skin.