The people from the duka aided by Mthuka started taking the sacks of meal and the cases of soft drinks out and I paid the bill and bought a half dozen whistles for the Ngoma. Then, since the duka was shorthanded, I went out to guard the rifle while Keiti helped with the cases. I would have been glad to help with the loading but it was not considered seemly. When we were alone hunting we always worked together but in town and in public it would have been misunderstood so I sat in the front seat with the rifle between my legs and heard the petitions of the Masai who wanted to ride down the Mountain with us. The Chevrolet truck chassis on which the hunting car body had been built had good brakes but with the load we had we could not carry more than about six extra people. I had seen days of a dozen or more. But it was too dangerous on the curves, which sometimes made the Masai women sick. We never carried warriors down the Mountain road although we often picked them up coming up. At first there had been some bitterness about this but now it was an accepted practice and men we had carried up would explain it to the others.
Finally we had everything stowed and four women with their bags, bundles, gourds and mixed loads were in the back, three more sat on the second seat with Keiti at the right of them, and myself, Mwengi and Mthuka in front. We started off with the Masai waving and I opened the cold bottle of beer still wrapped in the newspapers and offered it to Mwengi. He motioned for me to drink and sank lower in the seat to be out of sight of Keiti. I drank and handed it to him and he drank deep using the side of his mouth to not tip the big quart bottle into sight. He handed it back to me and I offered it to Mthuka.
“Later,” he said.
“When a woman is sick,” Mwengi said.
Mthuka was driving very carefully getting the feel of his load on the steep dropping turns. Usually there would have been a Masai woman between Mthuka and me; one we knew was proof against roadsickness and two more being tested out between Ngui and Mwengi in the second seat. Now we all felt three women were being wasted on Keiti. One of them was a famous beauty who was as tall as I was, built wonderfully, and with the coldest and most insistent hands I had ever known. She usually sat between Mthuka and me on the front seat and she held my hand and courted Mthuka lightly and purposefully with her other hand while she looked at us both and laughed when there were reactions to her courtship. She was very classically beautiful with a lovely skin and she was quite shameless. I knew that both Ngui and Mthuka gave her their favors. She was curious about me and loved to provoke visible reactions and when we dropped her off to go to her Manyatta someone almost always dropped off with her too and made their way to camp later by foot.
But today we were riding down the road looking out on all our own country and Mthuka could not even have any beer because of Keiti his father sitting directly behind him and I was thinking about morality and drinking beer with Mwengi; we having torn a mark in the paper covering the bottle to mark the place below which the beer all belonged to Mthuka. According to basic morality it was perfectly all right for two of my best friends to go with this Masai woman but if I did so while I was on probation as a mkamba and while Debba and I felt seriously about each other it would have proved me to be irresponsible and profligate and not a serious man. On the other hand if I had not responded, visibly, when in unsought contact or when incited it would have been very bad all around. These simple studies in our tribal moeurs always made the trips to Laitokitok pleasant and instructive but sometimes, until you understood them, they could have been frustrating and puzzling except that you knew that if you wished to be a good mkamba it was necessary never to be frustrated and to never admit that you were puzzled.
Finally they called out from the back of the car that a woman was sick and I signaled to Mthuka to stop the car. We knew Keiti would take advantage of this halt to go into the brush and urinate so when he did with great dignity and casualness I passed the quart of beer to Mthuka and he drank his share rapidly leaving the rest for Mwengi and me.
“Drink it before it gets hot.”
The car loaded up again and with three unloadings we were relieved of our passengers and across the stream and going through the park country toward camp. We saw a herd of impala crossing through the woods and I got out of the car with Keiti to head them off. They looked red against the heavy green and a young buck looked back as I whistled almost silently. I held my breath, squeezed the trigger softly, and broke his neck and Keiti ran toward him to halal as the others leaped and jumped floatingly into the cover.