a certain stillness

Outside the men, small and black and cut out sharply against the moon, which shimmered through a watery haze of heat, even this late, tended to the animals. Eleanor sat on the sill of the window in her room, a tiny square on the back of the old plantation house. The house still surprised her, a year after her arrival here. Imagine! she would think when it loomed up over the grassy horizon. Imagine, a southern relic like this in Africa, of all places. And then she would think: Africa! and be surprised at herself all over again.

Her hosts had long since retired to bed; they were as tired as she. Nobody was sleeping much lately.

The night was heavy and dry, and she fanned herself with a magazine as she watched the men struggle to pen the goats. The animals were spooked by the seductive orbit of the lions, who had circled the property for two nights, attracted first by the smell of blood, and second by the fact that the goats were there at all. The injured kid was in a small chicken-wired crate inside the pen, bleating unsettledly. The men were trying to corral the goats, who had been grazing in the yard, through the open gate.

She listened as the hands spoke in low, musical voices. She thought they might just lull her to sleep on an ordinary night. But tonight, if it were anything like the two previous, Eleanor expected to be kept awake by the strangely silent night. Last night the air had been so clear, and so unusually crisp, that the deep thrum of the lions muttering to each other had carried right into her room, where she restlessly tried to imagine herself anywhere else, anywhere at all.

Slowly, reluctantly, the goats responded, kicking up dust and stamping their impatient feet as they were gathered into their pen. Eleanor blinked against the mist of dirt. The curtains flapped against her face, and she pressed her small hands into them, pinning the drapes to the wall on either side of the window.

"Will they be fine?" she called gently into the evening.

One of the men turned and studied Eleanor for a long moment, and she realized abruptly how she must look, framed in her nightgown in the window in such startlingly bright moonlight. She held his gaze, and in her way, dared him to look away. He lifted his eyes, and she imagined the flush in his cheeks by the shame in his voice. He said, "They will be fine. But the lions worry them. They will not sleep tonight, again. Tonight, especially. They will get tired. I think that tonight the lions will come. We will protect the animals."

"Will they be loud?" Eleanor asked. "The goats?"

"I am afraid yes," the hand answered. "I hope we will not have to shoot. If we do -- I will try to shoot quietly."

A shout came from the action, and the man looked at the pen, which was spilling goats into the yard again. He looked at Eleanor and said, "I go." He nodded once to her, then jogged back to the melee.

Eleanor watched the goats in their dance -- resist, follow, dodge, follow -- until they were once again safely in the pen. A few of the goats took up an almost circular formation around the injured kid's crate, and Eleanor was surprised; she thought that only buffalo and such behaved this way. Extenuating circumstances, perhaps.

The men took up posts at all corners of the yard, and at even intervals between them, they lit bonfires. They struck a staggered pattern of smaller fires across the yard, lighting bundles of kindling with tall torches. The men settled in for a long night of waiting, always waiting. She could hear the dry rasp of their rifles and shotguns being loaded and racked. In the pen, the goats' eyes caught the firelight and winked nervously. Outside the pen, the dogs patrolled to the brink of shadow, leaning into the darkness, tails rigid.

Eleanor pulled the curtains shut, but there was no glass in the window to stay the wind. A warm breeze lifted the curtains and touched her hair. The wind, too heavy but still familiar, reminded her of home, of mild summer days spent swimming in the coves of Huffnagle. It was the first time in a long while she had remembered the island, the cliffs. She hadn't dreamed of them in years.

She stretched across the bed, on top of the thin blankets, and pulled the mosquito netting down behind her. She tucked her arms around herself, chilled suddenly. She lay quietly, listening to the soft conversations of the men, their words indiscernible but comforting, and to the dusty rain of hooves in the goat pen. One of the men laughed beautifully, and she smiled at the sound.

Her room, populated with antiquities and bric-a-brac, was shadowed in deep smudges of blue. The shapes of the furniture grew distended, seemed to yawn and twist in time with her breathing.

Outside the night wore on, the longest one that ever was, and the wind rode it through the curtains and into her bedroom. It stirred her hair, and she did not open her eyes when, finally, she heard it again:


 
(eleanor)