Short Story: The Rat

The Rat
The task was not difficult. A sliver of moon casting thin shadows made her way through the woods possible. The corners of her eyes were wide; she was used to sucking up light and bouncing it across her brain. The tangled trees gave off the scent of recent elephant wounds; the air was sticky with resin and the smell of dung. The hairs on her arms rose up in lazy response to familiar danger. She was going home. The task was not difficult.
But that night she knew she would not see the flicker of candle light through the palm scrub. She would not see the green canvas roofs of home. She knew the night would suck her up into the darkness. She was prepared. A greasy, grey blanket lay under the spare tyre. A dusty bottle of water rolled on the floor behind her and a tot or two of brandy might be squeezed from the bottle tucked into the pocket behind her seat. She turned her head to see if the crisp packet on the back seat was full or empty. She smiled. Her hands rested easily on the steering wheel, feeling the earth through her fingers. The Landrover busied its way across rotten logs, scratching through acacia branches, twisting, as if it belonged, through the monochrome. The bruise on her cheek was seeping purple.
She avoided the disused aardvark hole. It was unusually deep. She had not seen it. Feeling the earth give way her foot had found the brake. Before the land had broken, pulling her down, she had stopped. The choice was simple. She could either drive on or stay the night in the wood. She had made the choice before the sand slipped on the edges of the aardvark hole. She turned off the engine and reached for the crisps, her tongue pimpled with salt and vinegar. The night was quiet.
The lions were far away. An hour or two hour ago she had watched them heave their heavy bodies up from brittle grass and squat to empty their bladders. The warm indentations they had made in the grass would not be the only sign left to show they had staked a brief claim on a patch of Africa for the day. The urine would steam a heady vapour, thick with the molecules of love, and hang in a tantalizing breeze just long enough to arouse hope. One of the lions had defecated, starting a chain reaction among the group. A brief frenzy of activity observed by experienced eyes. Each bolos had been collected and placed in neatly labelled plastic bags and deposited in the small car freezer. The story of the dung had yet to be told.
She poured some brandy into the bottle cap and sipped. It made her dizzy. She must have been more dehydrated that usual. The dry winter air sucked at moisture leaking from her epidermis like a new born baby. She leaned down and reached for the water bottle. She had filled it with fresh water from the bore hole in camp early in the morning, before she had set out to find the lions. It had been cool and sweet, but after a hot day in the car it tasted metallic. When she had pulled out of camp he was still asleep- or maybe not- maybe he was waiting for her to go. Leaving had been easy. It always was.
It was not cold enough for the blanket. She would save that until the early morning when the temperature dropped sharply, just before dawn. She stretched her legs out across the passenger seat and leaned her head against the driver's window. It was cool. Her body ached. She could feel his hands on her bones. She did not care. She heard the deep rumble of an elephant to her left but she could not smell its hide. Let it be. Through the trees she could see patches of weak stars, their light leeched by the sliver of moon. The night drew in and embraced her. She was home. Her mind was cleaned by the simple necessity of being open to all that was around her. The living present was richer than a dead past. She heard a small creature scratching in the sand beside her and twisted her body round to look. It scurried away. It would come back. She rolled the window down so as not to disturb it later. The outside air filled her nose with cinnamon, she smiled. A few stray Mopani trees must have seeded themselves among the acacia woodland, their waxy, butterfly leaves releasing oily tannins into the night air to attract moths. She sniffed her arm. It smelt of dust. Her hair was stiff with sand but inside she felt soft and liquid. As she had felt the night before sitting around the fire in camp; when she had been warm and safe, before she knew his secret. Before they had opened a fresh bottle of whisky and let chaos loose.
The creature returned. It was very odd. Fat as a guinea pig, black and white, with little shovel claws and long front teeth. She frowned and shook her head. The animal did not belong here. A herd of buffalo could not have been more disquieting. But they would not come down from the delta until the first rains of summer released the sweet grass from their seed casings, casting a wispy veil of ephemeral green across parched land. Only the resident animals wandered the plains and woodlands in the dry winter months, nibbling at husks and browsing on dry leaves. The fat rat busied its self beside the car digging in the sand. She opened the door a crack to get a better look and it turned its face towards her. Their eyes met. Mutual curiosity bound them for a second before the taste of fear fuelled a brief scurry into the undergrowth. It would be back. The undergrowth offered only brief solace. Last night she had hidden among leaves and thorny branches listening for the sound off footsteps that never came. The triumphant howl of a hyena across the river had driven her from her nest. He had not stirred when she had pulled back the sheets. She slept beside him; they did not touch. Love not dead smelt safe and that was dangerous. The fat rat came back.
No other animal disturbed her- the night was silent -alive with secrets. A dry laugh rose up in to her throat, she swallowed it back. The rat was a puzzle; it was unlike any she had seen. Her mind scanned through the pictures in the field guide books in camp, no image matched. She would have to find a copy of Smithers Mammals of Southern Africa. She wondered if he would be worried about her, he had not radioed in to check up on her, nor had she wanted to call him. They would not talk about it again. Everything had been said. She looked at the clock on the dash board, it was getting late. He would be packing up for the night, putting the dirty dishes in plastic basin on top of the freezer in the larder. Storing the perishable food in the metal cupboard that failed to keep out the acacia rats, they could squeeze through gaps only millimetres wide. He would tie up the fridge fridge with the perishing rubber lock he had created after the hyena had raided the larder one night; ripping open the door, leaving large teeth marks in the white metal. He would slide the broom handle through the hooks above the larder door to secure it for the night and then he would blow out the candles and unhook the maglight torch hanging beside the sink and shine it onto the palm scrub before walking to their tent. When he was alone he broke the rules-she knew he would leave the car beside the mess tent. Soon he would be unzipping the tent flap and turning on the thin solar lamp above their bed. He might have had one last cigarette beside the embers of the fire before he turned in. He would know she was not coming back tonight, perhaps he would smell her scent on her pillow.
She was getting tired. Her limbs were heavy with sleep but her mind was open to the night that would not let her rest. She had known his secret for a long time. She had seen it in his eyes when he got off the plane after a visiting his children in America last summer. Her love for him was alive too all his hiding places. She had not said anything. Sleeping with his ex wife was not infidelity -it was habit. He would have reached for her hand across the fire place and lifted her from her chair. He might have smoothed a wisp of her long blonde hair away from her eyes before he led her up stairs. Maybe she had peed with familiar ease while he brushed his teeth. Maybe he had hovered outside the bedroom for a moment remembering Africa? The rat stopped scratching and she looked out of the window to see what it was doing. She was surprised to see it grooming. Her car must feel like safety to the small alien creature. She sat still so as not to disturb and watched it scratch behind its ears with its front foot. Some movement in the bush behind them caused the animal to freeze for a second, its head tipped to one side straining to translate the sound into a picture in its head. As suddenly the animal released all tension through its skin and the grooming became more intimate.
She looked away and poured the last dribble of brandy into the tin bottle top. She had never let her mind follow them into the bedroom. But last night she had forced him to tell more lies. They scratched the scab until it bled and then ripped at the flesh around the wound. Powered by self righteousness and the smell of blood she had driven him to frenzy. And all the while she had not cared he had slept with his ex-wife. She wanted to go home but the moon had fallen out of the sky and the night was darker now. She wanted to wrap the blanket round her body but she could not move. She wanted to keep the peace with the rat. It had started to dig again. He would be asleep now, his glasses on the bed side table within easy reach, the torch beside them. His trousers would be neatly laid across the back of the chair, his folded shirt and leather belt resting on top. His wallet and knife would be in the table. Maybe the shirt had been tossed into the dirty laundry basket with his socks and pants. Because she was not there to warm him he might have reached down for the extra blanket at the end of their bed and pulled it over him in his sleep. The resident acacia rat that lived in tunnels beneath the ground sheet of their tent would have begun its nightly wanderings, sometimes he threw a shoe across the floor and the scratching stopped for an instant. Would he have pulled the wicker basket in front of the broken tent zip, to keep out curious nocturnal beats, or did he just do that for her sake? Sometimes they held hands in their sleep.
She looked down at her night time companion and wanted to pick it up. But that would ever do. They did not belong together. They did not belong in the wood or in the open plains beyond the tree line. The creature had no hope of long term history without a mate; she had never seen a rat like it before. Its white fur broken by black stripes would act as beacon in the brownness of an African night and some creature or another would devour it. The air cooled suddenly. The night was coming to an end. She was disorientated and had no idea from which direction light would seep into the sky.
When the sun came up she would go home. The task made simple by the cool light of day.