“Kitten, you go and sit in the car and have a drink from the Jinny flask. I’ll help them load him in the back.”
“Come and have a drink with me. I’ve just fed eighteen people with my rifle and I love you and I want to have a drink. Didn’t Charo and I get up close?”
“You got up beautifully. You couldn’t have done better.”
The Jinny flask was in one pocket of the old Spanish double cartridge pouches. It was a pint bottle of Gordon’s we had bought at Sultan Hamud and it was named after another old famous silver flask that had finally opened its seams at too many thousand feet during a war and had caused me to believe for a moment that I had been hit in the buttocks. The old Jinny flask had never repaired properly but we had named this squat pint bottle for the old tall hip-fitting flask that bore the name of a girl on its silver screw top and bore no names of the fights where it had been present nor any names of those who had drunk from it and now were dead. The battles and the names would have covered both sides of the old Jinny flask if they had been engraved in modest size. But this new and unspectacular Jinny flask had close to tribal status.
Mary drank from it and I drank from it and Mary said, “You know, Africa is the only place where straight gin doesn’t taste any stronger than water.”
“A little bit.”
“Oh, I meant it figuratively. I’ll take another one if I may.”
The gin did taste very good and clean and pleasantly warming and happy making and to me, not like water at all. I handed the water bag to Mary and she took a long drink and said, “Water’s lovely too. It isn’t fair to compare them.”
I left her holding the Jinny flask and went to the back of the car where the tailgate was down to help hoist the wildebeest in. We hoisted him in entire to save time and so that those that liked tripe could take their pieces when he would be dressed out at camp. Hoisted and pushed in he had no dignity and lay there glassy eyed and big bellied, his head at an absurd angle, his gray tongue protruding, like a hanged man. Ngui, who with Mthuka had done the heaviest lifting, put his finger in the bullet hole which was just above the shoulder. I nodded and we pushed the tailgate up and made it fast and I borrowed the water bag from Mary to wash my hands.
“Please take a drink, Papa,” she said. “What are you looking gloomy about?”
“I’m not gloomy. But let me have a drink. Do you want to shoot next? We have to get a Tommy or an impala for Keiti, Charo, Mwindi, you and me.”
“I’d like to get an impala. But I don’t want to shoot anymore today. Please, I’d rather not. I don’t want to spoil it. I’m shooting just where I want to now.”
“Where did you hold on him, kitten?” I said, hating to ask the question. I was taking a drink while I asked it to make it very easy and not too casual.
“Right on the center of his shoulder. Dead in the center. You saw the hole.”
There had been a big drop of blood that had rolled down from the tiny hole high in the spine, that had rolled down to the center of the shoulder and stopped there. I had seen it when the strange, black antelope lay there in the grass with the front part of him still alive, but quiet, and the after part quite dead.
“Good, kitten,” I said.
“I’ll take the Jinny flask,” Mary said. “I don’t have to shoot anymore. I’m so happy that I shot him so that it pleased you. I wish Pop had been here too.”
But Pop was not here and, at point-blank range, she had shot fourteen inches higher than she had aimed, killing the beast with a perfect high spinal shot. So a certain problem still existed.
We were going up through the park country now straight into the wind and the sun at our back. Ahead I saw the square white patches on the buttocks of the Grant’s gazelles and the flicking tails of the Thomson’s gazelles as they grazed ahead of us, bounding off as the car came close. Ngui knew what it was all about and so did Charo. Ngui turned back to Charo and said, “Jinny flask.”
Charo handed it over the seat back between the upended big gun and the shotgun in their clamps. Ngui unscrewed the top and handed it to me. I took a drink and it tasted nothing like water. I could never drink when we hunted lion with Mary because of the responsibility but the gin would loosen me up and we had all tightened up after the wildebeest except the porter who was happy and proud. Miss Mary was happy and proud too.
“He wants you to show off,” she said. “Show off, Papa. Please show off.”
“OK,” I said. “One more to show off.”
I reached for the Jinny flask and Ngui shook his head. “Hapana,” he said. “Mzuri.”