The Best of Friends Page 6

  Fast-forward fourteen years and I had another secret to share with her, nothing as devastating as the first, but one I hoped would change my life. After a quick shower at the tennis club, I was refreshed and excited as I drove off to meet her.

  As I walked up to the deck at the Mexican restaurant, I heard Sara laughing while the waiter fawned over her. Clearly he too had seen the billboard. Though we’d talked on the phone often, I’d only seen Sara once in the months since we met for dinner in New York, and that was on her wedding day. She’d looked positively radiant in her ivory dress and flowing veil, with her sisters by her side. The groom was handsome, a smile etched into his chiseled features. No one mentioned that they’d gotten engaged after knowing each other only seven months and gotten married a few months later. It didn’t seem to matter. They were smart, levelheaded, and obviously in love. Why wait? Why not get married?

  Along with the rest of the guests, I marveled at the fact that they’d actually met in Richmond. To me Richmond still meant a tight circle of family and old school friends, never venturing too far from the city’s West End and the protective cocoon of the white middle-class stereotype. Exciting strangers showed up in someone else’s home movie. But for Sara, CD had suddenly appeared, flying in from the West, camera slung over his shoulder, ready to share her life and her dreams. Clinging to the wall and studiously avoiding anyone who might ask, “Ginger, when are you getting married?” I watched as Sara and her new husband mingled with guests and talked about their future—the places they would go, the films they would make together, each place more remote, each story more intoxicating. Sara wouldn’t have to worry about him taking his heart with him when he traveled, soon she’d be going, too. But their first stop was Charlotte, a new job for her in a bigger market with more money and that huge billboard.

  “Hey, I saw you today.”

  Sara laughed as she got up to hug me. “Where?”

  “On I-85.”

  “Oh no. Was the smile a little bright?”

  “I’m not sure. I was blinded by your suit!”

  “Okay, okay. Maybe the red is a bit vivid. But enough about my wardrobe. How are you?”

  The pitcher of margaritas arrived just in time. I took a big gulp and blurted out, “I’m going back to Africa.”

  “You mean on safari?”

  “No, I miss the bush. I crave it, and I have got to get out of New York, so I’ve written to an old friend of Kevin’s, this guy John Varty who makes wildlife films, and asked him for a job. I can do research. I can type.”

  “Are you sure about the job description? And what’s he look like?” she asked with eyebrows arched.

  “Okay, okay. Enough about men. I mean it. Maybe he needs help, maybe not. I haven’t heard back from him yet, and I haven’t told a soul about this—not my family and no one at work knows either. It’s our secret.”

  “I think this is one secret we may have to break.”

  The next night over pasta and red wine Sara introduced me to her friends Julie and Jim Bruton. I quickly realized that Sara was connecting the spark that had flashed through her mind the evening before, the reason she had refused to take a vow of secrecy. Julie’s parents were famous wildlife filmmakers and she’d spent much of her life in the field with them, including a few years in Etosha National Park, a game reserve in South-West Africa, a protectorate of South Africa that was fighting for its independence. Years before, I’d sat on my parents’ den floor, riveted to the television, soaking in every moment of the Jen and Des Bartlett documentary film The Lions of Etosha.

  “Gin, while we were riding bikes and making mud pies in Richmond, you won’t believe what Julie was up to.” Julie just laughed and modestly began to share stories from her childhood—following snow geese down the central flyway from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, photographing koalas in their native Australia, and growing up in Kenya, where she nearly ended up as dinner for a friend’s supposedly tame lion.

  “That was a little scary.” Only Julie could have made these stories seem ordinary, just your typical childhood.

  Later, over coffee back at Sara and her husband’s perfect home, where handmade curtains framed a view onto old oak trees in the garden and their wedding photographs rested on the piano, Julie’s stories became more magical. She spoke of a land where sand dunes were the color of blood and stood tall as skyscrapers. Where elephants slid down them just for fun. A place where lions feasted on whales washed ashore by an ice-cold current and where beetles stood on their heads to drink fog water. All of this was happening in a remote park in South-West Africa called the Skeleton Coast, and her parents were there filming it.

  If those impossible things could happen, then anything was possible. For the first time in a long time, I felt a sense of hope begin to stir. It was as if I’d been shown a door to an enchanting new world. By introducing me to Julie, Sara had pushed it wide open. At the end of the evening Julie smiled warmly at her friend and then turned to me, saying, “When you go to Africa, you must meet my parents.”

  When I returned to New York, I opened the mailbox and the magic continued. There it was, a letter from John. He could use some help on a film about bird migration and he needed me right away.

  While I reassured my family that I’d only be gone for a year, my mom and sisters still questioned my sanity and worried about my safety when I quit a good job to embark upon an uncertain adventure in the wilds of Africa. The one person who understood my desire to test my limits was my father. For nearly thirty years he had been tied to a job that provided a steady paycheck and sound health insurance, elements of security his wife and four daughters needed, but little stimulation and few opportunities for himself. He had given up his choices so that my sisters and I would be free to make ours.

  “Gin, go. Have fun, but remember, you can always come home.”

  I felt the safety net spread beneath me, and I was off.

  I spent two thousand dollars, half my life savings, on a ticket to Johannesburg. I had a six-month contract with John and was back in the bush.

  “GINGER, WAKE UP.™ John tapped on my door. “Come on, we’re rolling.”

  “What?” It was December of 1988, but here in the southern hemisphere, that meant it was summer. But switching to opposite seasons wasn’t the only source of my confusion.

  “Come on, it’s nearly sunset.”

  My days were still turned around. I was jet-lagged, up before sunrise and trying to catch up on sleep during the day, tossing and turning at night.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  The Land Rover started. He threw it into gear. He wasn’t kidding.

  I shimmied into my jeans, grabbed a sweater, and ran outside.

  “Sorry.”

  A glance passed between John and Elmon Mhlongo, his trusted friend and tracker. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to understand it. After nearly a decade of working together, John and Elmon communicated silently, in code, yet the look that flashed between them was clear—they didn’t need a green, stupid American or anyone else around. I was trying to fit in, trying to learn about lenses, apertures, and f-stops, but there was still so much more I needed to know, not only about filming and reading minds but also about reading the bush.

  While driving along the bank of a dry riverbed, John suddenly slammed on the brakes.

  He whistled, pointed to his right, and Elmon jumped down from the Land Rover.

  “What is it?”

  “Mozambicans. Refugees.”

  This time, instead of seeing leopard tracks in the sand when I looked down, I saw footprints. At least eight pairs spread out in a tangle of different directions. Eight people who’d heard us and scattered, long before John had seen the embers of their campfire. Elmon slipped away, following one set of tracks. He moved quietly, gently, and then spoke softly in Shangaan, a language understood across regional borders. A woman emerged from behind a tree. Tied to her back were a few clothes, a chipped enamel mug, and a few loose pots and pans. When
she turned around, I saw a baby clinging to her breast, eyes wide open but quiet, as if sensing danger.

  “Ginger, you wait here with her. We’ll go find the others.”

  There was an unnatural quiet, the birds were hushed, no cicadas called. In the silence, the woman stared at me and I looked away first, embarrassed by an abundance of blessings, often taken for granted, like choice, freedom, security. Her life was reduced to the most basic element—survival. To be this far away from her homeland, she’d been walking for at least five days. Five days across land ruled by elephants, lions, and soldiers. At night did she dare make a fire to cut through the darkness? Did she allow herself to dream about a new life uninterrupted by gunfire? Slowly but steadily she was putting distance between herself and her war-ravaged country. That is, until now. If caught, refugees were supposed to be returned to Mozambique. But everyone knew that as soon as they were taken back, they’d regroup and try to leave again. When you have nothing left to lose, what is there to fear? Not leopards, not the heat, and certainly not me.

  She looked up, making eye contact with someone behind me. Without a second glance, she repositioned her baby, lifted her head proudly, and walked silently past me, leaving behind her blanket and all that was left of her world.

  For a few minutes I heard footfalls on the sand, then nothing. The sun had slipped behind the trees before the quiet was broken by the sound of laughter, strange too in the bush, especially tonight. John and Elmon had returned with six of her fellow refugees. There was backslapping and tears as Elmon explained that no one would force them to go back to Mozambique. Instead John would drive them to Gazankulu, one of ten homelands in South Africa, recognized only by the South African government, where borders didn’t matter. There they would find members of their tribe and hopefully their future.

  We picked up the abandoned blanket and threw it in the back of the Land Rover. For the next half hour it was quiet as we drove through the bush. A few of the refugees closed their eyes, daring to relax for the first time in a long time. Most of them stared into the distance, their eyes hooded, perhaps haunted by what or whom they had left behind.

  It was dark when we reached Gazankulu. The air was cold and the smell of raw earth engulfed us as we slowed to a stop. The engine shut down and sounds of life—men laughing, babies crying, the blaring of music from an old transistor radio—hit us. In the local store, a single naked lightbulb hung over shelves of cooking oil, washing powder, and corn meal. This was home. “Thank you, thank you” was spoken in a jumble of languages, through a mixture of laughter and tears, as everyone climbed out of the back of the Land Rover. I passed the woman’s blanket to another refugee and looked around for her and her child. They weren’t there yet, but I was certain they would make it.

  She’d risked everything for a chance to start over, a chance to live a life without fear of rebels burning her village in the night or having to plow a field of corn laced with land mines. My risks were completely insignificant. There was no comparison, yet seeing her made me resolute. I too would make it here. No matter what complications abounded in the bush.

  Almost daily in the weeks that followed, John and I climbed into his old Land Rover and went in search of one of Londolozi’s famous leopards. One afternoon we found her draped over a branch of a marula tree, one paw resting on the remains of an impala, last night’s dinner. She barely lifted her head as we approached. For the past seven years, John had filmed her life—from mating, to raising and losing cubs, to hunting. And John knew a lot about hunting. He was an advocate of man’s primal need to hunt, to conquer, and move on, and his prey was women. Luckily for me, he didn’t have his conquests stuffed and mounted; they either accepted the fact that he was off in pursuit of his next prize or they could leave.

  But I wasn’t ready to go just yet. I had finally found something to love.

  “Look at this shot.” Shelly Wells, the film editor, sent film flying as she rewound the spool on the editing machine.

  “Here, Ginger. See how the cameraman locked the camera in place? He gave me an editing point. Once the bird flies away—there—that last wobble of the branch—I can use that. But look at this. This leopard never walks out of frame. She just keeps going and going. Where the hell is she going? Where can I cut that shot? I can’t. It doesn’t work.” I sat with Shelly for hours at a time, cutting shots in my mind, drafting stories from reams of film, absorbing all she generously shared with me about how to tell a story with images. I knew I could do this, that I could be a wildlife filmmaker. Would it make me complete? Would it fill the gap left by Kevin, the one widened by my life in New York and aggravated by my dalliance with John? Who knew, but at least I had direction and it wasn’t linked to a man.

  For once, my timing was perfect. After six months of often tough but valuable lessons at Londolozi and a series of letters I exchanged with Sara and her friend Julie, I was on my way to spend a month with Julie’s parents, the filmmakers Jen and Des Bartlett. I packed a few clothes, a notebook, and my going-away present from John, a battered but sharp Nikon FE2, my first camera, in my suitcase. Once again I’d made a promise to do anything to help, anything to learn, but I had no idea what that would mean for the Bartletts until I arrived in the Skeleton Coast Park in South-West Africa.

  Whether we were in their tiny wooden shack at the beach buffeted by strong Atlantic winds or putting up tents in the middle of a dry riverbed, we were isolated, alone, and together round the clock. The Bartletts weren’t just sharing their work; they were sharing their lives. From before sunrise to long past sunset, I was underfoot. Yet they taught me how to change a tire in the sand, how to pull focus to follow the flight of a bird, and how to turn a bucket of water into a luxurious bath. Setting up his cameras to capture another spectacular sunset, Des explained the art of “painting with light,” his inspired version of cinematography. Later we cooked chicken in a solar-powered oven and counted satellites drifting between the stars at night. Before climbing into our tents, we listened to the evening news on the BBC World Service, and in the morning we read the news imprinted in the sand.

  Bundled in down jackets against the cold fog air, I often found Jen standing at the base of the dunes, lost in thought. This was where she taught me to read “the desert’s morning paper,” tracks in the sand that told the story of the night before. The wide track of a lizard showed that while we were asleep it had scurried over the dunes to nibble on the branches of a nara bush. Sometime later, a white lady spider had emerged from her burrow in the sand to grab a four-legged meal, leaving behind her pinprick-sized footprints and a thin drag mark. As the sun rose, we had heard a jackal’s plaintive cry nearby, followed by a howl rising up over the dunes. Now we saw the jackal’s paw prints layered over the other tracks. In the desert, the morning news was of life and survival, as raw and as powerful as anything Sara might have reported on television the night before.

  In thirty fleeting days, the Bartletts shared their passion for the bush, their incredible knowledge, and then their wealth of contacts. “When you get to town, contact Mary Seely. She runs Gobabeb, a research station in the Namib Desert. Tell her we suggested you visit. Maybe you’ll find a story there. Could turn out to be your first film.”

  A few days later I walked out of a trailer into the mist across the gravel plains at Gobabeb. Fog clung to the ground, obscuring the research station’s huge white water tower and shrouding the dunes in a blanket of mist. I looked down and spotted a tiny gerbil-like creature scurrying across the plains toward me. Behind her strode a tall man, with dark hair, darker skin, wearing the shortest shorts and the dirtiest jacket I’d ever seen. When he got closer, I saw that his big brown eyes were flecked with green and rimmed with extraordinarily long lashes.

  “Hey, where do you belong?” I reached down to pick up the meerkat, putting her inside my coat for warmth. She soon wrapped herself around my neck.

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “Shit. She bit me!”

  “That’s
what you get when you try and tame a wild animal.”

  “What? I—”

  “Don’t worry. You didn’t do it. Some other idiot got to her first. Forget about it, just come with me before you bleed to death.”

  While he swabbed my nose with ointment, we swapped stories. “So that’s it, just another crazy American in search of a story.” I finished describing my life to date in a few short paragraphs.

  “Lucky we met. I just came back this morning to grab a few supplies, then I’m headed back upriver.”

  “For how long?”

  “About three years.”

  “What?”

  He laughed at my startled expression and opened another beer. His fourth.

  “Yeah, just me and a troop of baboons, living the high life. They run away from me, while I console myself with hot beer.”

  “But why?”

  “There’s no refrigerator.”

  “No, not the beer. Why are you alone with a troop of baboons?”

  “I just finished vet school, and I have absolutely no desire to treat tiny Chihuahuas or their neurotic owners. Baboons are much more interesting.”

  Turned out that his name was Conrad Brain but everyone called him Nad. Just twenty-five years old, three years my junior, and fresh out of veterinary school, he was starting a Ph.D. project studying a small troop of baboons, primates like you and me, living in the desert.