Kalahari Read Free

freshwater.” He kept casting anxious looks at Miranda, who glared back at him as if being “closer to nature” was synonymous with “closer to hell.”
    Dad’s description of camp life and its scant luxuries continued as I fired up Hank for the return trip to the runway. By the time Theo and I had loaded all the supplies and arrived back at camp, the girls had disappeared into their tent and the guys were beating around in the bushes, Kase busy photographing every leaf and spider within a hundred-foot radius with his massive camera. Dad met us and started unloading boxes before I’d even properly parked.
    “God help us,” he said in a low voice as I helped him carry a cooler of meat into my tent, where we kept most of the provisions. Above us, the shadows of the trees danced over the beige canvas, like the reflection of rippling water. “What did we agree to, Sarah? Why are we doing this?”
    “Just keep smiling and think of all the fancy equipment you can buy with that grant money.”
    Dad groaned. “Your mother would have known what to do with them.”
    The blood drained from my face. For a moment, I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. In an instant, frost crackled over my heart. It had been four months, and still the simple mention of her crushed me.
    Dad’s hand went to my cheek, the warmth in his rough palm shattering the ice inside me.
    “Chin up, love,” he said softly, and he kissed my forehead. “We must soldier on, eh?”
    I couldn’t talk about her, not even in passing. Every time her name rose in my throat, I choked on it and fell apart. Dad knew that, and so he didn’t press me but held me to his chest for a moment while I pulled myself together. His rough cargo shirt smelled like all the things familiar to me: gasoline, campfire smoke, the lavender-scented laundry soap I used when I washed our clothes under the pump. I used that scent and his quiet strength to steady myself.
    “All right, then?” he asked, stroking my hair, and I nodded. “Good girl. Because I don’t think I can manage this lot without my Sissy Hati.”
    Oh, now he was really fishing for a smile, pulling out that old name. When I was three, I’d thought the Bengali term for a baby elephant
was Sissy Hati. Close, but not quite the right words. The village we were living in had turned the mispronunciation into a pet name for the little white girl who ran wild through the jungle with their own children, stripped to the waist and without a care in the world.
    Another kiss on the top of my head and Dad was gone, striding back to the truck.
    It took me a minute to catch my breath, and when I stepped outside again, I saw Sam helping to unload the truck. Kase had disappeared into his tent, and Joey—it took me a moment to locate him—had climbed to the top of an umbrella thorn acacia, which was a remarkable feat considering the two-inch thorns that covered it. I watched him for a moment, incredulous. Sam caught my eye and gave an exaggerated shrug, shaking his head at Joey’s antics.
    “You should have seen him on the plane,” he said. “I think the flight attendants were plotting to sedate him.”
    I showed Sam where to put the box of muesli he was carrying and held open the tent flap for him to duck inside.
    “This your place?” he asked.
    “Home sweet home.”
    He set the box down at the front of the tent with the others; my cot and the sum of my worldly possessions were at the back, behind a wall of boxes and crates. I had a shelf made of crates and boards, and it was cluttered with Bushman artifacts and crafts I’d bought from the children in the village markets. A worn stuffed elephant I’d had since I was three sat on my bed, alongside a stack of Agatha Christie books I was reading through for the third time. The mosquito net draped around the bed was decorated with tiny beads I’d painstakingly sewed on.
    I felt a sudden flare of embarrassment at this invasion of my privacy. Everything in my tent suddenly