The Lioness(82)

But it also makes Barstow sharper. Barstow has demonstrated in her best work that she is more than a pretty face: that her blood can run the thermostat from very, very hot to ice cold. My sense is that the real Katie Barstow has inside her as much venom as she has sugar—like the most interesting actors and actresses.

—Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1962



The Russian’s howls had become pitiable moans as Cooper used twine to wrap a tourniquet around his biceps. He was seated with his back against one of the vehicle’s front tires, his legs stretched out before him. Cooper had ripped his shirt off him, and Katie could see clearly how the fellow’s forearm had ballooned. Already the swelling was so great that she was reminded of that illustration of the cartoon snake that had eaten the elephant in The Little Prince.

The real snake was gone now, but she and Terrance and Billy had all stood. It was as if the savanna was radioactive and sitting on the ground increased one’s exposure. Cooper had tried to shoot the adder with his pistol, but he’d missed and the snake had slithered into the brush. The creature’s fangs had reminded Katie of a syringe. Scattered in the field around them were baboons, easily a couple of dozen, some watching the humans and some watching their children, and some skittering across the land in a game that Katie suspected might be something like tag. But maybe not. Maybe they were grubbing for seeds and roots. For rodents.

The victim abruptly turned his head away from Cooper and vomited into the dirt track, his whole body hiccuping violently. Katie was no expert on snake bites, but she was a good student and recalled what Juma had taught them that first day: swelling, vomiting, and then death. The bite was excruciating. The victim would succumb to anaphylactic shock, which—if it knocked the person unconscious—was arguably a humane response on the part of the body, because then you might black out before you died.

Katie looked at her brother and Terrance. They were watching the scene before them intently, and she knew what they were thinking. What they both were thinking. Once the guy who’d been bitten by the snake was dead, they’d be two on two. Three on two, if they included her. Right now, only Glenn was holding a gun, though it was some kind of automatic rifle or machine gun that could kill the three of them in seconds.

Cooper finished tying off the tourniquet and said something softly to his patient, an attempt to console or reassure him, when the man’s chest convulsed upward and his arms, even the one with the tourniquet, flailed skyward. The spasm surprised Cooper so badly that he jerked back himself. The victim’s eyes rolled up and his body started to loll to the side, toward the front of the Land Rover, but Cooper grabbed him before he could topple into the dust. Still, it didn’t matter. It was clear. The adder’s poison had done its work, and the Russian was gone, as dead as if he’d been shot by the elephant gun that had blown away half of Juma’s head.

Which was when, as one, her brother and Terrance dove at Glenn, and so she threw herself at Cooper, who was still cradling the body of his dead comrade, and over her shoulder she heard the other Russian firing his automatic, but she didn’t turn around. It wasn’t that she was so focused on getting to Cooper before he could unholster his pistol. It was that she didn’t dare. She just didn’t dare.



* * *



.?.?.

A few days earlier, she had been sitting on the hood of the Land Rover, sipping from a canteen, the sun high overhead and the dust epoxied to her skin by her sweat. Charlie Patton was standing beside her, leaning against the vehicle, as the two of them watched a mother and child elephant amble into the distance. He had a double-barreled rifle in his arms, but no plans to use it. It was merely a precaution. The rest of the herd was strung out along a lengthy line heading south toward a river, and the sight of the two animals had her almost overwhelmed with happiness. Most of the men were lined up along the edge of the blankets where they had stopped for lunch, aiming their cameras at the pair. The group had just finished eating, and the porters were about to pack everything up when Benjamin Kikwete had spotted the elephants. There were probably twenty-five or thirty of them. It was clear they were going to pass within fifty yards of the humans, but it seemed evident that they didn’t give a damn that a bunch of people had stopped to eat not far from what they viewed as their highway.

Which was when it clicked for Katie: this hadn’t caught Patton off guard. It probably hadn’t caught Benjamin off guard. She smiled at the old hunter.

“You’re like a carnival barker,” she said to him.

“A carnie? Are you really calling me a carnie?”

“I am.”

“You grew up in New York City. You live in L.A. Have you ever even been to a carnival?”

“I have.”

“Freak shows and all? Bearded ladies, dwarves, ponies the size of puppies?”

“I stuck with the Ferris wheel and the cotton candy and the ring toss, thank you very much.”

“Ring toss? Pretty rigged game.”

“It is.”

“Now why would you suspect me of such tawdriness and manipulation? Do I look like a fraud?” Patton’s skin was leather, and the lines around his lips grew deep when he grinned.

“You knew those elephants were coming. They use that trail often, don’t they?” she replied. She knew she had busted him. He knew it, too.

“I hoped we might see some elephants. But I didn’t know it. Big difference.” He chuckled and then waved at the elephants with the back of his hand as they meandered across the savanna. “I’m no carnie. If I’m a showman, I’m…”